by Mia Marshall
I felt that I should make some sort of apology for inadvertently comparing him to a mad scientist’s pet creation, but found that my exhausted brain wasn’t concerned with conversational pleasantries. “Who are you? More to the point, why are you standing between me and my bed?”
“Hey, Mac,” said Sera, finally making her way into the house with Simon. “What’s going on?”
“Heard your car pulling in and wanted to see if you needed any help unloading. Some of you seem to need more help than others.” He glanced toward me, and though I could barely make out his face in the dim light, I was almost certain he was laughing at me.
“You know Simon, right? And this is Aidan, freshly liberated from central Oregon. I told you about her, remember?” In the dark, I felt him turn to study me but was unable to make out his expression. In the morning, I’d quiz Sera about what parts of our past she’d chosen to share.
“I’ll introduce myself tomorrow, when there’s a chance she might remember it. Night, all.” With that, the mountain removed himself from my path and walked outside, closing the door behind him. I grunted something intended to sound like “good night” in Sera and Simon’s general direction and clambered up the stairs. An open door on my left led to an empty bedroom. The queen bed was neatly made, covered with a large plaid bedspread. I managed to kick off my shoes and slide between the sheets. A moment later, I was asleep and blissfully unaware that a dead body was being found just down the road.
My favorite time of day is that hour just before dawn, when it feels as if some old god has pressed pause on the entire world. The night animals have crawled back into their chilly dens, and the birds have yet to begin singing their praise of the approaching sun. Few humans have emerged from the warm cocoons of their beds, and the sounds of their voices and the growling of cars is several hours away. In that time just before dawn, the only sounds I might hear are the crash of ocean waves, the gentle lapping of a lake against the shore or, as now, the steady rush of river water passing over rocks. There is no more peaceful moment in the entire day. This is why the roaring that seemed to shake the very foundation of the house was so wholly unexpected, coming as it did at six-thirty a.m.
This particular morning, I was still in bed, sleeping off our late arrival the night before. I had slept so deeply that I hadn’t managed to change position during the night, let alone undress myself. I woke in a panic, still half-asleep and disoriented. I staggered out of bed, desperately scanning for burglars, fires, or rodents of unusual size before my conscious brain even knew it was awake.
The room appeared empty, unburnt, and still in possession of all my belongings. Just as I began to breathe again and my heart assumed a rhythm less likely to rip a hole through my chest, the roar once again tore through the house. It was a howl of pure, unadulterated rage. It was the type of sound that would cause any sane person to cower in a closet and wait for it to pass. Naturally, I walked straight toward it.
Turning around the spiral stairs on my way downstairs, I saw that others were already awake, drawn by the primal screams still reverberating through the house. Say what you will about A-frame houses, they have great acoustics. Simon sat cross-legged on the dining table. His pose was casual, but his eyes darted around the room, taking everything in.
A familiar looking woman sat in a chair next to him, and it took me several long moments to recognize her. Years before, Vivian had been pretty in a clean-cut, J. Crew model sort of way. She had also been extremely shy, spending far more time in front of her computer than she ever did interacting with other elementals. We knew her, the way we knew every elemental at our small college, but neither of us would have called her a friend.
She was still as lovely as she had been then, with her hazel eyes and dark, poreless skin, but she was no longer the neat and tidy overachiever I remembered. Her previously straightened hair now formed small dreadlocks that fell to the center of her back. Her jeans were soft and well-worn, and over her Henley she wore a T-shirt that read “My Marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.” Several years of education at a liberal arts college had apparently paid off. She offered me a hesitant smile, but before I could greet her, another roar, this time accompanied by a crashing sound, resonated through the house.
Sera stood in the kitchen, bracing herself on her elbows against the breakfast bar and looking outside with a worried look on her face. I followed her gaze and saw the source of all the noise standing on the back deck: the mountain from last night was in a frenzy, grabbing bits of firewood from the pile and chucking them with terrifying force into the forest. Wherever they hit, bits of bark flew from the trees, and several branches cracked and fell under his fury.
His back was to us, his attention wholly focused on the destruction he was causing. I made my way to Sera and cocked a silent eyebrow at her in inquiry. Her mouth twisted in answer, enough to tell me something very bad had happened. If the somber tone of the room and the shouting giant hadn’t made that clear, Sera’s serious expression drove the point home. I tilted my head toward the front door. She nodded and followed me outside.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Vivian just arrived with some bad news. As you can see, Mac is currently reacting to that news.”
“Is Vivian part of the band this time?”
She nodded. “Yes. She remembered what happened before and put the pieces together even faster than I did. She broke up with her girlfriend when she figured out what was going on, because she didn’t want to risk her life, but she’s none too happy about it. She wants someone to pay.”
“Can she really help us? She’s pretty low-level, isn’t she?”
“With earth, yes. With technology? She’s a freaking goddess. Vivian is a bona fide computer genius, and you know how hard that is to find among elementals.”
It was rare. We were an adaptable race, but we rarely learned more than the bare minimum, knowing it was only a matter of time before the next technological wave hit and we would need to start all over again.
“What’s today’s news?”
“There’s been another death. A guy named Mark, not too far from here. The police think he was killed a couple weeks ago, but the body was only found last night. You remember that Brian’s uncle is part of the local police force? He heard about it an hour ago, when they discovered the body.”
“Brian’s still here? Is he in the band, too?” Considering Sera had just told me that someone had been murdered, I shouldn’t have felt so happy to hear my old friend would be joining us. I schooled my features into a more appropriate expression of concern. “Same MO?” There it was again, the mouth twist. Something was definitely off. “Sera?”
“It was suffocation by earth again, if that’s what you mean. The body was found at a campsite on the Nevada side. It looks like the recent storms buried it in snow, so no one found it for a while. There aren’t a lot of campers around in March. Besides, you know what it’s like in Tahoe. Lots of places where no one is around, no matter the time of year.”
I knew. In many ways, it was the perfect region for a killer to hide. Lots of isolated wilderness and quiet mountain cabins, lots of inclement weather that kept people inside, and a large transient population from the tourists and winter skiers. If we didn’t know where to look, the bastard could evade us for years.
“Was it another human involved with an elemental?”
“No.”
“But that’s always been his prey. Humans that interacted with us. He’s not just killing off random humans now, is he?” That would make our work a lot harder. There were a limited number of humans mingling with elementals in a small community like this, which made them fairly easy to identify and track. If every human was a target, we lost our strongest lead.
“Not random, no.” She ran a hand through her hair, pulling the curls off her face in an abrupt, frustrated gesture. “It was a shifter.”
I shook my head, not understanding. “A shifter involved with a human? Did t
he killer not know what he was?” After all, I hadn’t known shifters even existed twenty-four hours ago.
“He knew. Calvin—the first man killed, the one before Christopher—he was a shifter, too.” She shook her head. “We all thought it was just a coincidence, because he was also dating an ice. It fit the profile. Only Simon thought it was a targeted kill.”
“Why was he so sure?”
“Calvin had been driving home from a costume party. He’d been a lion, of all the ludicrous things, but had washed his face and taken off his mane and tail before driving home. When he was found, he had whiskers painted on his cheeks. We all assumed someone just made a mistake, that he didn’t leave the party with a clean face. But this latest kill wasn’t near any costume parties last night, and someone painted whiskers on his face, too.”
“That’s fucked up.” Sera nodded in agreement. “And worrying. Why’s he changing it up now? Why also target shifters who date elementals?”
“That’s the thing, Ade. This guy wasn’t dating anyone. It looks like he was killed just for being a shifter.”
This was very not good. The killer had always seemed like a deranged, extreme version of an elemental supremacist, so opposed to relationships with humans that he chose to remove the human from the equation altogether. Ten years ago, many humans died before we stopped him—or thought we had. This time, our killer seemed to have expanded that deadly prejudice to include shifters.
In a horrible way, it made sense. My relatives would believe that shifters were perversions, the unholy offspring of acts of bestiality. The prejudice went so deep that even those who knew about them—as I was sure some of my relatives must—preferred to claim they were mythological rather than admit to their mere existence. It wouldn’t take much for a psychopath to decide that shifters deserved to live no more than the humans who were close to us.
I thought about the beast currently throwing deck furniture through the forest. “Mac—he’s the other shifter, isn’t he?”
“Yes. I don’t think he knew the guy who died very well, but he knew his brother, and he’s furious that someone would dare to take out shifters. It sometimes takes him a while to calm down.” That was an understatement.
“What animal does he shift into?”
“He needs to tell you himself. Shifter etiquette.”
Fair enough. Of all people, I could hardly complain about someone’s desire for secrecy. So long as he didn’t turn into an enormous spider, I wasn’t too bothered. “What happens now?”
“Now, we wait, at least for a bit. Brian needs to get his butt over here, and I’m waiting for my father to call to get his opinion on these latest events. Then, we’ll talk and figure out our game plan.” She laughed, a harsh humorless sound. “Plus, we should probably wait for Mac to stop scaring all the small forest animals.”
I rolled my eyes at that. At the moment, despite years of actively avoiding conversation, a calm and reasoned discussion sounded like the perfect solution. It would bring a bit of order to what felt like an ongoing series of chaotic events. In less than a day, I’d been all but kidnapped by the former best friend I was supposed to hate, though it was turning out I didn’t hate her quite as much as I wanted to. I’d had to rewrite my entire knowledge of how the magical races were born, discovered that elementals weren’t the only magical beings, and faced a millennia-old prejudice about those formerly mythological creatures. I’d had to leave my home behind, with no idea when I was going to return. I’d been forced to stay up past midnight and then awakened by a shifter of debatable mental stability.
So far, it had not been an especially promising twenty-four hours, and I was ready for a little order. I couldn’t make Brian move faster, and I couldn’t convince Sera’s father to pick up the phone any sooner, but I could surely do something about the bellowing giant on the back deck.
I turned on my heel and marched up the stairs to the front deck. I could hear Sera behind me, suggesting that perhaps this wasn’t the best idea, but I was on a mission. Peace and calm would be mine, dammit. Either that, or the rampaging giant would knock me out, and at least I’d have the peace and calm of the unconscious.
I walked through the living room and pushed the sliding glass door open, letting myself quietly onto the back deck. Mac was no longer throwing objects into the trees, mainly because there was nothing left to throw. In the distance, I could see several pieces of deck furniture strewn across the ground and over the roof of an Airstream trailer. A chaise longue dangled from a branch a hundred feet away. At the moment, Mac was crouched by the fire pit, grunting and sweating as he attempted to lift the metal frame bolted to the deck. The wood was already creaking; in a few more minutes, he’d have the entire thing loose and flying through the trees. He had removed his flannel shirt, stripping down to a plain white T-shirt. Despite the early morning chill, he was still covered in a light sheen of sweat.
“You’re kidding me,” I muttered softly to myself. Not quite soft enough, because Mac whipped his head toward me, fierce eyes locking directly on me. I didn’t want to, but I shivered. Only a complete fool would be unafraid in the face of such raw anger. Of course, while I may not be a complete fool, I was at least a partial one, because I continued talking. “Dude. Impulse control.”
His anger slowly turned to incredulity as he looked at me. The moment seemed to last forever as he stared, unmoving and unblinking. I wondered if this was how prey felt, caught in those deep brown eyes, knowing that escape was an impossibility. Any direction I moved, he would be there faster.
Fortunately, I didn’t much care for the idea of running. I didn’t want to fight, either. I’m a talker, and a scowler, and I did both at that moment. Matching his stare with one of my own, I quietly told him, “If you remove that fire pit from the deck in freezing cold Lake Tahoe in the middle of March, Sera will immolate your ass and I will not put you out. Stand up, back the hell away from the deck, and go break your own shit. Leave ours alone. Or, better yet, calm the fuck down and come eat breakfast. I make pancakes that make a grown man cry. If you’re really nice, I’ll even let you crack the eggs.”
He didn’t say anything for a very long time. He only looked at me, considering. In that moment, I felt as if I was being assessed in a way no one had before. Then, suddenly, he was done. He stood up and shrugged. “Real maple syrup?”
I had no idea what was actually in the kitchen, but I saw no reason for reality to stand in the way of a snappy retort. “Of course. I’m not a heathen.” To my surprise, he smiled. I heard three people let out sighs of relief behind me. Apparently, they’d all had visions of me flying through the trees next.
Mac grabbed his flannel shirt and flung it over his shoulder, still too warm from his exertions to put it on. I watched him, slightly concerned about the way something hidden deep inside had thawed a little when he smiled. When he wasn’t standing in near darkness or throwing a hissy fit that would shame a two-year-old, I had to admit he was a really attractive man. His hair and eyes were both a rich brown, and his broad face seemed open and honest. I didn’t want to look at his body, lest I discover that he was a mountain worth climbing, but I couldn’t resist a small peek. Apparently, ten years of deliberate solitude hadn’t done my libido any favors, and it was more than ready to remedy the situation.
I immediately squashed that train of thought. Even if it had been a slightly more appropriate time, I had a long-standing policy against getting involved with men with anger management issues, and this little display proved that he really, really did not pass that personal litmus test. I snuck one last glance at his chest, then firmly put that idea out of my mind.
The cabin’s dining area held a long trestle table, perfectly suited for one of medieval Europe’s smaller banquet halls. No one was sitting at it. Instead, people hovered in the kitchen, crowding the bar, perching on counters and generally interfering with my pancake-making skills. It was much like a party in the way everyone migrated straight to the kitchen, except instead of frivolit
y and general good humor filling the room, an undeniable tinge of despair and paranoia pervaded the air.
It was a small kitchen, with limited counter space beyond one long, curving strip of counter that doubled as a breakfast bar. Sera had crammed four barstools around this, and currently Simon and Vivian occupied two of the seats. Mac leaned against the remaining section of counter behind me. With his large body taking up so much of the room, I was having undeniable personal space issues. I refused to let him know that, though, and concentrated on measuring and mixing the batter.
In truth, I was only an average pancake-maker, but I was hoping he wouldn’t figure out that I’d lured him back into the house under false pretenses. I was just happy to be inside. Our crisp, clear morning had devolved into wind and rain, the mountain weather as capricious as ever.
Sera was the only person not in the kitchen. From the breakfast bar, I could see into the living room, where she sat curled on the sofa, talking to her father on the phone. Josiah Blais had assisted us the last time, and I was relieved to know that he was still involved. Sometimes it helped to have the big guns on your side, and there were few bigger guns than Sera’s father.
The front door flung open, letting in a fair amount of rain and one thoroughly soaked elemental. “Where is she? Where is that no good, runaway, never-writes, never-phones, so-called friend of mine that I’m not really talking to?”
“Wouldn’t it be shorter to just call me Aidan?”
His blue eyes lit up when they landed on me. “Well, damn and double damn. They told me but I didn’t believe it. Is that really you, cousin? Are you really back?”
Despite the depressing tone of the morning thus far, I couldn’t help but grin. Sera had said he was arriving, but with everything else going on, the meaning hadn’t fully sunk in. Seeing Brian standing in the doorway, smiling that devil-may-care smile that had caused many a woman to ignore her parents’ well-intentioned warnings, I was suddenly, unquestionably glad to be there. “Aw, you knew I couldn’t stay away from you forever. Besides, I’ve been here hours by now. It’s about time you got yourself over here to greet me properly.”