Dark Currents: Elementals, Book 1

by Mima

  He was honoring her and challenging her. It took concentration to lift her arm. She ran her fingertips down a fold of skin. Lightly, quickly. It was warm and soft despite being drenched, vaguely oily. Adam gasped, shuddering.

  “Does it hurt?” Her heart twisted.

  “No. Not quite. It’s strong.”

  “Oh.” She felt like stepping back, but didn’t want to insult him. “Thank you, for the opportunity.”

  “Thank you for taking it.”

  She glanced down at the constantly pushing water around them. “I’ll wait on the beach.”

  “I won’t be long.”

  “No.” She spoke sharper than she meant to and he looked at her quickly. “I mean, I’m a bit better. Be a little longer.”

  “Don’t pick at your scab, Xia. We’ll start to push you when you’ve had more time.”

  She sighed gustily. Turning, she walked carefully up to one of the softer dunes. Halfway, she heard a wet, fleshy sound, and turned. The fur was around his shoulders, erasing his pale skin against the darkness. “Adam.”

  He turned his head to look at her, his eyes dark holes.

  “I’m so sorry about Vienna. It hurt, to disappoint you.”

  “It hurt that you didn’t trust me, warn me. I can’t stand at your side if you don’t let me.”

  “I want to. I want to have you by my side. I was foolish.”

  “Aye.” He turned away. His voice was muffled as he drew the gaping fur up over his skull. She caught a glimpse of empty eyeholes and shuddered. “’Tis past now.” He continued to draw the face of the fur over the crown of his head, pulling it down over his face. As he did, it rippled, tightened, with a shifting of muscles.

  He dropped into the water, enormous and sleek. This time, he didn’t surface to look back at her. She walked stiffly, terrified, to the whispering grasses. She sat on the lumpy earth and stared at how the foam came ever closer over the cobbles toward her feet. She stood her ground, and waited for Adam to return. Concentrating on keeping her breathing steady and deep, she couldn’t control her wildly thumping heart. He came up out of the sea nearly silently. But she’d been watching with burning eyes, and the spatter of water dripping off him as he waded forward didn’t surprise her. It had only been minutes, but she didn’t want to repeat them. His bare body prowled smoothly, easily, almost lazily. He was sated.

  He stuffed his feet in his shoes, wrapped an old towel with a picture of Nessie on it around his waist, and carried his clothes up to the bathroom in the carport. She brushed her teeth while he showered off the salt water. When he emerged, pulling a blue tee on above his jeans, she managed to not even jump on him. As they walked the short path to the croft, with the dunes on the inland shore hissing with softly blowing grasses, she glanced to see if Hammish was at his post. He wasn’t, but the sky was a buttery yellow and peach that stopped her feet with its beauty.

  “I’ve seen more of the dreamtime’s beauty in the last few days than I have in a long, long time. I’m rarely aware during this time to enjoy it.”

  “Aye. It’s almost time. Look there.” Adam pointed above the horizon to a spot about thirty degrees up in the sky. “Wait to see if it will come.”

  She set her eyes on the spot, a drifting part of the sky between two shades.

  He stepped up against her back, pulling her in against him. “You’re warm,” he purred.

  She stared into the sky, waiting as they stood in the very beginning of dawn, and after several minutes of peace, there was the most extraordinary flash of vivid green. Lime green, soft green, streaking across the sky in an arc, and gone.

  Xia gasped. “I saw it!” He hadn’t told her what they were waiting for, but she recognized it instantly.

  “Me too. ’Tis good. We were listening and were blessed.”

  “Blessed. Yes, that’s how I feel.”

  “The green ray of dawn is the moment God talks to earth. Only those who are listening with an open heart can see it.”

  Xia’s heart trembled. “Adam, that is absolutely beautiful. Is that a selkie belief?”

  “Gaelic.”

  His breath burned across her neck a moment before his lips closed on her ear. He nibbled there, and then his tongue went into the hollow below her lobe and toyed with her pulse.

  “Hey.” She protested with a half-hearted murmur. “There are watchers all around.”

  “Are there?” He spoke against her skin, his lips soft and agile. His kisses were molten touches down to her collarbone, each press searing a matching burn in her chest.

  The colors of the brightening sky blurred as her head lolled against him. “Yeah. Let’s go inside.”

  He sucked on the tendon that flowed out of her neck and she moaned, shivering.

  Then he jerked, hard, falling onto her heavily, toppling to the side with a grunt. Xia gasped, tried to grab him. She still couldn’t process the fleshy thunk sound.

  He caught himself on one arm and shoved her reaching hands away. “Run!”

  She fell to her knees, screaming at the huge arrow sticking out of his back. Drawing breath, she frantically looked up, back toward the still-darkened sky over the ocean. A creature hung in the air over the beach, her bow raising again with a second arrow. She was flame, talons, beak, flesh, feathers and bone. The ground dipped beneath Xia as her stomach heaved in terror.

  “Hammish! To me!” she shrieked.

  Adam crumpled forward onto his side. The wendigo, the Chamber’s watcher turned assassin, drifted higher, her bow drawing back as she angled to strike at Adam again. Adam? She was aiming at Adam!

  The bow vibrated at the arrow’s release and Xia screamed, throwing herself over Adam. “Confuto!”

  Algonquin magic clashed with witch magic and mostly won. The arrow barely glanced off Xia’s air shield and chunked into the ground three centimeters from her splayed hand. Oyster shells exploded back from it, one stinging against her cheek.

  There was a moment of total self-disgust. She’d had a bad scare earlier and hadn’t corrected her mistake. Her athame was still in her luggage.

  “Get up! Come on!” She pulled on Adam’s shoulder, ignoring the huge bloodstain that spread across his shirt. Lord and Lady, that arrow was as long as her arm and almost as big around.

  A rifle sounded, and wind blew hard, and Adam groaned as he got his knees under him. Xia hauled with all her might and he was sort-of up, bent over with his staggering weight across her shoulders. She stumbled down the shell path as wind whipped at her from every direction. Her hair was in her face, and Adam’s legs gave out within reach of the cottage door. She crashed to her knees. Cursing her decision to wear a skirt, ignoring her stinging knees, she lunged for the door and pushed it open. Gunshots rang in the dawn as Xia struggled to pull Adam’s inert, giant mass across the threshold.

  “Aeris!” Xia was a dreamer witch. Her specialty was spying in the dreamtime, floating, sinking through the other reality of the elements. She was a lousy enchantment witch. Summoning Aer was one thing when she was on the astral plane, a very similar construct to the dreamtime, but in real life, she was useless. The Aer she commanded to come to her did nothing but blow a gust of dust and sand into her face. Adam remained unmoving. She screamed as she pulled on his arm with all her weight, managing to move him exactly one centimeter.

  Dropping his arm, she dashed into the cottage and flung herself at her luggage. Grabbing her athame, she sliced her palm and dashed back out to stand, straddling Adam’s hips. People swarmed the beach, all with guns, one with a wand and gun. The wendigo danced and dipped. White waves crashed high on the shore in the gale winds.

  Gripping her athame in her bloody fist, she raised it and pointed at the wendigo, a creature of both Aer and Ignis.

  “Gelu.”

  Hail filled the sky. The wendigo turned toward her, beak clacking, flames for eyes. Her long black hair flowed behind her, and her feathered arms stretched apart as she drew her bow back with another arrow.

  Blam!


  A rifle shot exploded, and blood bloomed between her breasts. The arrow released and Xia watched it sail over the cottage’s roof. When she glanced back, the wendigo was flying away. The idiots cheered. Xia ended the hail spell.

  “Help me. He’s hit. We need a healer.” Her brain scrambled for the few healing spells she knew. If there was one thing she sucked at worse than offensive spells, it was healing.

  “Slow.” She touched the elegantly simple knife to Adam’s neck, praying that slowing his heart wouldn’t kill him.

  His wrist shot out faster than she could see. His hand clamped hard on her forearm, pulling her down to him. Through gritted teeth, he growled, “Markos.”

  He collapsed. In slow motion, horror freezing her blood, she watched his fingers slide from her skin, lax. Looking blankly up toward the running footsteps, she was blinded by the rising sun cresting the horizon. Tears ran down her face.

  But this was not Xia’s first crisis. “You.” She pointed to the one with the wand. “Are you a healer?”

  “I can be, but our clan has better.”

  “Get over here. I’ve slowed his heart. You and you and you, get him inside and onto the table.” She scrambled out of the way. “You’re to get the healer.” The slight young girl just stood watching the bigger men bend over Adam. “Now. Go!”

  Responding to the commanding whip of Xia’s voice, she turned and ran with selkie speed straight to the ocean. Turning to the blond man who was holding the door open for the men talking through Adam’s move, she said, “Are you Hammish?”

  “Aye.”

  His familiar, simple answer stabbed at her heart. Adam was not dead. She knew that. Magically, she could feel his life. But her brain replayed that heavy fall of his arm. “Get help to hold the croft. She’ll be back in moments.”

  “I shot her!” one of the selkies yelled triumphantly from inside.

  “You’re a moron. That was a wendigo. She’ll be back. Get outside, get fortified and prepare.”

  “Can you help us?” One of the men asked as he edged past her in the doorway.

  “I’ll protect the cottage from her fire, but I’m a morphi.”

  Another man, an enormous redhead, groaned.

  She shot him a dirty look. “If it gets bad, retreat here. I won’t leave him.”

  He nodded, and the men blended into the long shadows of the rising dawn.

  “His lung is collapsed, and at least two ribs shattered.” This from the helpful selkie-witch who had ripped Adam’s T-shirt off. She’d been fond of that one. “He’d be okay from those wounds, but this arrow is spelled.”

  Of course it was. Because the Lord needed to spice things up for her. The Lady too, apparently, because the phone began to ring. But it wasn’t hers. The selkie-witch touched his wand to the shaft of the arrow and was blown across the room into Adam’s shelves. His belongings rained down on the unconscious man.

  “Fuck.” Xia screamed. She stormed over to the dresser and flung T-shirts until she found the phone, which hadn’t gone to voicemail. “What.” She shouted into it as she put her fingers on the throat of the fallen selkie mage.

  “Xia?”

  “Crisis, here!” The man was alive. That was good. She needed him awake to help. That was bad.

  “Bugger it. The Chamber’s watcher we assigned you was found dead in Glasgow.” Ah, it was Robert.

  “Murder capital of the world,” Xia quipped. “We’ve got a wendigo that put a spelled arrow through Adam’s back. He’s down. We’ve driven her away once. The selkies are scrambling for her return.”

  There was a beat of silence. “Adam?” he asked tensely.

  “Alive. Can I go now?” she snarked, as she took some of his T-shirts, and carefully tried to wad them up around the base of the arrow, pushing against the still-seeping blood welling there. It was hard to do with an athame in your hand and a cell phone on your shoulder. And she’d poo-poo’d those little ear devices.

  “I’m coming now.” He disconnected.

  With a snort, Xia muttered, “Lovely. What wonderful help.”

  She tossed the phone in the direction of the bed and swiped at the tears still pouring down her face. The door blew open, and she squeaked in surprise like a little girl. Wind roared through the house. The wendigo was back. Xia rushed to the door. She set her shoulder to holding it closed and slapped her athame up against the wood. A spell to defend, a spell to stop fire, and a spell to not burn encased the house. She dropped the stout oak bar across the door, sorry that it would slow the retreat of the selkies if they needed to get in.

  Rushing back over to the selkie-witch, she touched his forehead with her athame and commanded, “Awake.”

  He bowed off the floor, screaming. Blood gushed from his nose.

  “Sleep! Sleep!” Xia yelled, frantic.

  He fell limp to the ground. Gasping, crying, cursing, Xia went to her phone and dialed Markos.

  “Xia,” he answered.

  “We’re under attack. Adam’s down with a wendigo’s arrow and said to call you.”

  “Are you defensible?”

  “Sort of. We’re in a two-hundred-year-old cottage by the sea with a thatch roof.”

  “Hold the line. Let me call Robert.”

  “He just called. He’s going to jaunt over.”

  “He is? Well, then you’ll be okay.” The relief in Markos’s voice was deep. “Hold tight.”

  “Hold tight! For what, six hours?”

  The ground rattled with the force of a roar unlike anything Xia had ever felt. It was similar to the supersonic boom of a fighter jet. Her ribs shook, the walls shook, dust sifted down from the ceiling.

  When she could hear again, there was pounding on the door.

  “Witch! It’s the healer!”

  Xia tossed Markos onto the bed, ran to the door, hauled up the bar. The door blew open, knocking her on her ass. The healer ran in with three other people, and Xia sat with a gaping jaw as she watched a dragon battle a wendigo in Adam’s cove.

  He was teal, with darker stripes and dappled shading, his lizard form flowing as if the air was something to swim in. He had a ruff of deep orange fur around his neck and at the back of each foot, like Asian dragons did. There were two curving bone spikes that came forward from the crown of his head, like some sort of demonic tusks, and a long thin whip tail that carried the bony ridge of upright plates from his back to its very tip like a dinosaur. The wendigo had dropped her bow and was tearing at the dragon with her clawed hands and feet, leaving shimmering waves of flame where she struck, as if it was napalm instead of simple fire. The dragon snapped and clawed. He landed a hit once, and she tumbled through the air, feathers swirling loose.

  “Close the damn door!”

  Xia became aware that wind was racing through the cottage, her hair streaming from her face. She got on her knees and forced the door shut. The young woman she’d sent away before helped her latch it.

  Collapsing against the base of the door, she gasped, “The arrow is spelled.”

  “Was. Isn’t anymore. I need to know what kind of tip this arrow had.”

  “I’ll go tell you.” Xia pulled herself to her feet, and threw up the crossbar they’d just fought to close. Learning, this time she spun away from the door bursting open so she stayed on her feet. She dashed down the white path. Grabbing a piece of driftwood, she swung it at the arrow embedded in the ground, again and again until it knocked loose and fell over. Ignoring the feeling of large things pulsing in the air over her head, she dropped to her knees and studied the arrow, her tangling hair clutched in one fist.

  She ran back to the cottage, where the small woman was waiting to slam the door behind her. “Flat, shiny black, flared at the base of the shaft, tapering down about the length of my hand.”

  The healer nodded to her and sent his knife deep into Adam’s back. Vomit exploded in Xia’s mouth. She made it to the stove where she puked in a saucepan. She stayed there, facing the corner, listening to the two selkies’ urgent voi
ces as they directed each other’s movements. Sliding down the front of the stove, she closed her eyes and prayed. In the middle of her prayer, she remembered Markos. Crawling on her hands and knees, she went around the perimeter of the room, over the unconscious mage, to the bed.

  “Markos?” she croaked into the phone.

  “I’m here. I’ll stay on the line until my flight boards. Status.”

  “Uhh, I guess the same, except the wendigo is distracted by a dragon.”

  Markos sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to see that.”

  “I’ll send it to you.”

  He chuckled. “And I’ll take that memory. Listen, Xia, I made some calls. One of the Chamber members was mind-ridden, probably by the crew who are waking Aqua. He’s the one that sent the wendigo to assassinate Adam, but only after you’d finished your transcription. Which makes no sense. Because if they want Aqua to continue to wake, then they should stop your information.”

  Xia swallowed the bile in her mouth, understanding instantly. “If Aqua wakes, it might be politically useful to have a madwoman’s ravings, direct from Terra, saying it is the supreme element.” Her fingers clutched at the down mattress to keep from turning at the tumult of frantic voices working over Adam. He was still alive. She could feel it. “They expect us to fail. Aqua’s already too far past sleep.”

  “Ah. Yes, that I can see.”

  “And of course, we were conveniently standing in the open right at dawn, presenting. He thought she was our watcher. Robert said our real watcher is dead.”

  Markos sent a low whistle of amazement through the phone. “Big, big chaos.” A loudspeaker blared in the background. “I’m boarding. I’ll be to your location soon.”

  “You’re coming here?” Xia boggled.

  “I’ve been ordered there, dream dancer. See you soon. Adam is tough. Don’t worry.”

  Xia closed the phone, and knelt at the side of the bed. She bowed her head and went back to prayer—

  “Witch! We need cloth!”