by D. N. Hoxa
Here goes nothing, I said to myself and closed my eyes, concentrating on the air.
“Relax your muscles,” Grandmother said. “Relax your mind. Focus.”
Sure, I could focus. Air. Focus on the air. I took a deep breath. I felt the layer around me prickle my skin softly. It was there, but it was nothing. Just invisible, silent air. How could I picture it except for the nothing that it was? I breathed in and felt the air running down my throat and into my lungs. Then it dissolved. Nothing. I tried to hear it or feel more of it than I did normally, and I tried for a good few minutes.
“It’s not working,” I finally said. Obviously. Impatience had grown into a giant monster inside me.
“You are not really trying. Think of air, Star. Feel it around you,” she insisted.
I exhaled loudly. This was such a waste of time. I tried my best to concentrate hard, harder than I already was. I stood very still, breathing slowly. I pictured it around me again, this time as a matter, not as nothing. I could feel it like a layer all around us. I breathed in through my mouth and exhaled through my nose. I felt it, this time thick, thicker than the way it always felt. It embraced me on every side, like it was keeping me standing up and straight. It was there like never before. I even gave it a nice, pale violet color.
Maybe they were right. Maybe McGraw had really put a block on me because what I was feeling now was something I’d never felt before.
I tried to reach for the air with both my hands in front of me. I could hear it move around me, slowly, gently, solid. It moved around my fingers. I’d never felt it so strongly before. I took my time and the calmness it gave me, before I remembered what I was supposed to do.
Bend it to my will.
Ridiculous, but I tried.
I tried to make it turn and blow a little to where the Elders were sitting. I pictured it, willed it to gather slowly, but as soon as it started to form, it dissolved again. It was so peaceful. I relaxed like I hadn’t in a very long while. I felt it touch my face, my hair. I heard it whisper in my ear, but it wouldn’t move. I stood like that, playing with it, feeling it caress and relax me, but it never moved. A smile tugged at my lips because the vibe of the air on my skin was tickling me. It was so pleasant. I pictured it gathered in front of me, I pictured a small tornado right in the middle of the room. How cool would that be?
But the air wouldn’t listen, no matter how hard I tried to talk it into it. And after a few minutes, something else caught my senses. I stopped breathing and listened carefully.
Water. I could hear water humming from somewhere in the room. I’d never felt it so alive and moving before. A glass. There was a glass filled with water at the far end of the left side of the room. It wasn’t there before, I was certain of it. It hummed silently in its place. It seemed so relaxing. I called it to me, as strange as that might sound. I heard it mumble like it was waking up from a lazy sleep, answering my call. I felt it float in the air, slowly, and then it was in my hands, on the tips of my fingers, moving like it was right there, and I could actually touch it.
It was the most divine feeling I’d ever felt. I pictured it on my hands, wet, fresh and cold. I willed it to play with me, with my fingers. I heard it humming and making that wet noise it made when pouring down. It circled around my left hand and then around my fingers, until it stopped on my palm. It filled me with a sense of clarity and peace.
“Star?” I heard Aaron’s voice. As my eyes slowly opened, my hand in front of me was all I saw.
My left palm was in front of me and in the center of it was a small ball of water the size of a ping pong. It was floating on air like it didn’t have a care in the world. It just stood there, the water circling around itself an inch above my palm. For a second, panic filled me, chasing away all the peace that was there a second ago. I pulled my hands behind me and backed away a couple of steps, completely shocked. The water fell on the floor, wetting the carpet in front of my feet.
Oh. My. God.
I looked around. Everyone was watching me with wonder in their eyes. With hope. Aaron was smiling his devilish smile, showing me all of his teeth.
“Wonderful,” Grandmother breathed.
“How…how is that possible?” I whispered, searching for an alternative in my head. I could have been hallucinating. The Elders could have fooled me. I was in the Fifth Dimension after all. Illusions could fool anyone about anything.
But their faces held nothing but hope. I looked at my hands, then at the wet carpet. I was probably losing my freaking mind, but I could feel it. Could hear it. I could even taste it on my tongue, the water. The water that I’d controlled.
“There’s your proof,” the beer belly man said, grinning, and he slowly walked back to his seat.
I looked at the wet brown carpet again. Convinced was a strong word, and I was still not sure, but I had seen—I’d felt what I did. Felt the air and the water. I sure as hell couldn’t deny that.
Grandmother stood up. She was shorter than I thought she would be but strangely even more intimidating than the beer belly man. It was something about the way the green of her eyes changed.
She came forward, approaching me with small steps. She reached behind her neck, and the next second she was holding a golden chain on her palm. She handed it to me.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The necklace had a small golden chamomile flower outlined by white stones, while in the middle of it stood a red one in shape of a tear. I stared at it for a few seconds and wanted nothing more than to place it around my neck. But I couldn’t accept something like that. I stepped back.
“No. I couldn’t.” It was too much.
She smiled. “Yes, you can. It will keep the spell of tracking off you. They won’t be able to track you while you have this on.”
Past experience had taught me to never trust magical objects. They always messed up in one way or another. But then again, I didn’t think I’d ever met anyone more powerful than the woman standing next to me. She didn’t look like someone who would mess up a spell in an object, especially not in an object as beautiful as that necklace.
Slowly, I reached for it and took it from her palm, mesmerized. I placed it on my chest and locked the chain behind my neck. When it fell on my skin, it felt warm, comforting. Grandmother smiled.
In the next second, we were standing in Aaron’s living room again.
19
——————————
A knock on the door woke me the next day. I slept in Aaron’s bedroom after a nasty fight. Correct me if I’m wrong, but every guy in the world would offer his bedroom to a girl who was sleeping at his place, right? But, no, not Aaron. I had to fight him for the bedroom and then shut the door in his face when he wouldn’t stop talking. I even opened his wardrobe and took one of his black shirts with a faded picture of Metallica on it. I liked it. It smelled like him. Like summer, tangerine and that scent almost all men had.
I opened the bedroom door and regretted it immediately. My morning hair was always a mess. It was always tangled because it was so long. Aaron on the other hand was freshly dressed in a dark blue shirt and jeans like he’d just showered, his cut lip clean. That was not possible because I’d locked the door. He couldn’t have gotten to the bathroom. In which case, I had no idea how to feel…
“Are you wearing my shirt?” He looked down at it, shocked. Thank God the shirt was long enough to cover my thighs.
“Good morning to you, too,” I said with a roll of my eyes and slipped into the bathroom, but not before I noticed him checking out my legs.
I washed the mascara and eyeliner off my cheeks and combed my hair down. I had no idea where my hairband was, so I had to let it hang loose. I wore the same clothes from the night before, all torn and dirty. Disgusting. I was going to have to return to the hotel for my things. My gut hurt but not too much compared to the pain I felt the night before. Apparently, my rib wasn’t broken. A nasty purple bruise covered the better part of my belly, but it would
heal. My head throbbed only a little, but my arm still stung. I’d have to get it cleaned and bandaged soon.
I found Aaron on his laptop. There was a plate with two pieces of French bread and fried eggs on it, and a glass of orange juice on the table.
“You need to eat,” Aaron said, never taking his eyes off his laptop. And that was fine by me. I could ignore him just as he was ignoring me.
“Thank you,” I said after swallowing the last drop of the delicious juice. He just nodded, his lips pressed together.
I didn’t have the time to deal with him. My family needed me and…shit.
I finally knew what I was. An Elemental.
It hit me like a hammer in the face. I could control the elements. I could control air, water, earth and fire. A large freaking brick in my stomach. What the hell was I supposed to do with all of that?
I stood up, unable to contain my nerves and the strange, numb aching in my belly. I needed to do something.
“I’m going to go back to the hotel to get my things.” That that would be the best way to spend the day and hopefully spend some energy.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Aaron said, but he didn’t try to stop me.
Instead, he looked down at my dirty clothes. Idiot. I followed through with my plan and ignored him.
“They would never send someone for me in public. They know I don’t give a shit about where I kill. Besides, if they wanted me dead, they could have come for me already, while I was sleeping in your bedroom.”
They didn’t. No, the Council wanted something from me. Otherwise, they’d have killed me already. They wouldn’t have bothered to take my family.
Still, I was sure they wouldn’t send people after me in public. I’d been in trouble before about it. I didn’t mind killing on the streets, clubs or even shopping malls. On more than one occasion that left the Council to deal with the police and the special department in the CIA or FBI or whoever that knew about us and dealt with the supernaturals. I was sure they already knew where I was. They were so arrogant that they would want me to go to them.
Just in case, I’d packed Bob and my other knives in my boots.
“Well, you do need clothes,” Aaron said, wrinkling his nose.
I stared at him. Such an ass!
“Always so smooth with the ladies?”
“Do you see a lady here?”
“Nope. Just the Elemental and some guy with blue eyes,” I said, grinning. Red pinched his cheeks.
“Well, then, there’s your answer,” he mumbled, and when I opened the door to leave, he followed me. I raised a brow in question.
“You think I’d let you go all by yourself?” He headed for the stairway without waiting for me.
Well, yeah. I kind of did.
“You think I’ll run away?”
I followed him. I hated that I always ended up following him. I rushed my steps to get in front. A childish thing to do, but it made me feel a bit better.
“Yes, I do.” He showed me the keys to his Porsche. “And we’ll get there faster if we drive.”
I didn’t like it one bit, but he had every right not to trust me. Knowing how to piss him off already, I just grinned and said nothing.
The traffic was a mess, of course. I hated waiting at the red light. He would turn to look at me every now and then, as if making sure I was still there. I kept my eyes on my side though, restless. So much time was being wasted.
The night before, after the meeting with the Elders, Aaron and I had planned to leave at sunset for the closest RR Base. It seemed to be somewhere in the New Jersey Alpines. It was a forest, with only a couple of houses in the area. Their Base was underground because, in order to hide from the Council, it was easier to put an invisibility spell on a level below the surface. Someone would come to pick us up by twilight with a chopper. They had better resources than I thought.
I was going through my own plan and playing every detail in my head when I heard Aaron giggling. I caught him shaking his head.
“What?” I asked, trying to figure out what amused him. Was it my dirty clothes? Or worse, did I smell? I sniffed silently at my shirt. Nothing, just my deodorant.
“Nothing.” He pulled his lips inside his mouth to try and stop. I ignored him and tried to go back to my planning. He giggled again.
I turned to face him without speaking, arms crossed in front of my chest.
“I just can’t believe you’re still alive, that’s all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The way you spoke to the elders. I mean, you called Grandmother lady. I don’t think anybody has ever spoken to them that way before. Ever.”
“Well, she is a lady, isn’t she?” I still wasn’t seeing what entertained him so much he couldn’t stop giggling. “What is she, anyway? What are they, the Elders?”
“Grandmother is a fairy. She used to be the Seelie Queen before the Council took over and dethroned her. They think she’s dead,” Aaron said.
My breath caught in my throat. Queen? “Wait. Are you saying that she’s…she’s Tytania?” I asked, feeling like someone kicked me in the gut on the bruised part of it. He just nodded.“Holy shit!” The way I’d spoken to a Fairy Queen. To the Fairy Queen. Tytania was the most ruthless fairy to have made it in the history book, ever.
“Holy shit, indeed,” Aaron said, still smiling.
“Isn’t she supposed to be, you know, young and beautiful?”
The fey, at least the ones I’d seen, were achingly beautiful. Their skin glowed. Literally.
“That’s her doing us all a favor. They say only a few can handle her true form,” Aaron explained.
“Oh.”
That made sense. The fey used glamour to mask their appearances. They were pretty damn good at it, too. I swallowed hard as I remembered all the words I’d spit at her just a few hours ago, and they kept replaying in my mind over and over again, against my will. Every word came back to me, and I was glad I was still breathing. Aaron was absolutely right to laugh at my still being alive. You didn’t talk like I’d talked to a fairy and live to tell the tale. Certainly not a former Fairy Queen.
Aaron was contagious. Soon, I was laughing with him. It felt good to let go like that for a second, despite the situation. I never did that anymore, at least not without the intention of annoying others, but that wasn’t fun, wasn’t real laughing. Why I was laughing with Aaron out of all people, I wasn’t sure.
Just as I suspected, nobody stopped me or tried to kill me when I went inside my hotel room for my things. I even took the time to shower, clean the vampire bites on my arm and my thigh, and put some bandages on them. I tied my hair and put some mascara on before I checked out of the room.
Aaron was waiting for me in his car. He didn’t look happy that he had to wait for almost two hours for me. I didn’t want to piss him off by rubbing it in his face so I just smiled.
“So, who’s picking us up?” I asked on our way back to the apartment. We still had three more hours to kill.
“Jack. A friend of mine. Vampire,” Aaron said.
“Tell me about the other Elders.” I was curious about them and I also needed to keep myself distracted until we reached Lyndor.
“There’s Eleanor, the vampire. She was also in power before Samayan took over. She actually turned him a millennia or so ago. He was her second in command. Then, there’s Arlo, a were-lion,” Aaron said without missing a beat. “The one with gray hair. The one with the long hair is Stephan, a Russian warlock. The most powerful of his kind. He does what you referred to last night as sparkly magic.”
He giggled again.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m sorry, do you have a problem with my vocabulary?” I liked to express myself in the simplest way possible. There was nothing wrong with that.
He kept on giggling, shaking his head. He was so frustrating, yet I fought to stop the smile that was threatening to spread on my face.
Let it go, Star. Soon you’ll leave and you will ne
ver see him again, I told myself.
“You’re nothing like the Raven people think you are, that’s all.”
I wasn’t sure he meant that in a good way. That stupid name froze the blood in my veins. God, I hated it so much. It did nothing but remind me of all the killing I’d done for the Council. It reminded me of the monster I really was.
“You call me that one more time,” I warned.
“And what?” He was amused.
“And I swear to God I will break your forehead on that wheel.” I said. And I would, I definitely would if he made fun of me one more time. I wouldn’t care that he was driving.
“I’m not afraid of you, Star.” He spit my name like a disease.
The idiot. Didn’t he know who I was? I grabbed his wrist, tightened my grip so much that I could see his fingers shaking, loosening up around the wheel. I looked at him right in the eye.
“Do not provoke me, Aaron. My temper is very bad. I lose it very quickly.”
I hoped for his sake that he’d know when enough was enough. I didn’t want to hit him, but I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation if he mocked me again. I let go of his hand, and he turned to the road. Good for him. It didn’t take long for him to clear his throat.
“Where was I?” He continued like nothing happened, like I hadn’t just threatened him. Somehow, that made me feel even worse about myself. “Oh right, Stephan. Like I said he is a warlock, and he can bring down an entire neighborhood with his lightning power.”
Lightning. He could produce actual lightning. I’d never met a warlock who could do that before. I’d heard of tasers, sure, but the electricity they produced wasn’t much. In fact, I’d been electrified by one four years ago, while she was visiting me in the hospital. She could transport electricity into my body, but only by touch.
Which reminded me:
“Why were you after me four years ago in Philadelphia?”