The Elementalists

by C Sharp

  “No, dude,” said Stan, bringing a hand in front of his eyes. “And aren’t we totally on public property right now? You’re not exactly cops?”

  Stan flinched as weasel-eyes stepped toward him to take a deep sniff. Stan reeked of marijuana. “Actually, it’s private property all the way up to the road, if you wish to check public records,” he answered with a self-satisfied expression. “But if you’d like me to call the police, I’m happy to make that happen…if that’s what you think would be best for you?”

  “That’s enough, Mr. Fitz,” said Richard Roberts as he and his chief of security, Mr. Duncan, walked up the hill holding Stan’s camera. Mr. Fitz lowered the flashlight and took a step back. Richard Roberts was wearing a bespoke hunting vest and a cashmere outdoorsman cap. He walked by Chloe and Stan to stop before Kirin.

  “You’re Professor Liou’s boy, aren’t you?” he asked. “Kirin, isn’t it?”

  Kirin nodded and met his chilly gaze without faltering.

  “Did you enjoy your trip to China?”

  “I did, thank you,” Kirin answered, giving him nothing.

  Mr. Roberts smiled. “I wonder, do you have the same passion for myth and monsters as your father?”

  “No, not particularly,” Kirin admitted.

  “And yet here you are, out searching for flying monsters on a Saturday night with a couple of underclassmen,” Mr. Roberts pushed.

  Kirin gave Chloe a quick glance, and their eyes met across Stan for only a moment. He looked back to Roberts. “Flying monsters?” Kirin raised an eyebrow. “I’m here to get a video of ALIENS stealing cattle.”

  Chloe couldn’t wholly suppress the pesky smirk that tugged at the corners of her lips. I think I’m in love.

  Mr. Roberts motioned to the camera beside him. “Mr. Duncan here says that there’s nothing on the tape but a woman’s forty-fifth birthday party.”

  “That would be Mother,” Stan spoke up with his hand shooting into the air. “I hung up the streamers myself,” he declared proudly.

  The walkie-talkie crackled again. “This is Air 1—the signal is holding steady at the quarry—we’re moving in.”

  Mr. Roberts and Mr. Duncan exchanged a look before Mr. Roberts turned back toward Chloe. “We keep meeting like this, Miss McClellan… I wonder, why did you think to come to this field tonight?”

  Chloe swallowed hard. “My mom always said that you had the best cows in the state; I figured it was only a matter of time before the Cow Thief came for them.” She forced all the fake excitement she could muster into her voice. “Do you mean that a cow was actually taken here?”

  Mr. Roberts frowned at her. “It would seem that the finest bull in the state is missing.”

  The walkie-talkie chimed again. “This is Air 1—I’ve got a visual on the signal.”

  The whole security team straightened as Roberts snapped his fingers at Brent. “This is Car 4—go for description,” said Brent.

  Chloe’s heart was pounding in her chest as the static continued for a long moment. Come on, Uktena, get out of there!

  Stan’s leg was shaking nervously.

  “This is Air 1—I’ve got the back half of the cow perched on the edge of the quarry—no sign of what took it.”

  Roberts walked over and motioned frenetically for the walkie-talkie as Brent handed it over and stepped back. “Go again, Air 1—you’ve got what of the cow?”

  “It’s just the back half, sir—its legs, tail, and haunches—the rest of it is gone,” responded the tinny voice.

  Even through the darkness, Chloe could see that Mr. Roberts’s normally red face was getting significantly redder. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

  There was a pause before the response. “Richard, it’s me,” said the voice of Dr. Markson over the walkie-talkie. “It’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen—it looks like your bull has been bitten clean in half with one bite.”

  “And where did you implant the tracking devices?” Roberts asked stonily.

  “In its back right haunches—it’s still here transmitting,” said Markson with a hint of reverence.

  Chloe choked back a laugh and wondered if the dragon really could hear her thoughts. Nicely done, Uktena! Now keep out of sight until these helicopters give up and turn around. She immediately received a sensory rush of contentment, and for a moment, she tasted the oddly pleasing flavor of blood in her mouth. But just as abruptly as it had come over her, the agreeable alien presence dissipated with a shudder, and she found herself unmoved from her own continuing predicament.

  Mr. Roberts paced angrily. Mr. Fitz was licking his lips. Brent was playing at being a statue. Chloe risked another glance at Kirin as he motioned with his head toward his car.

  Chloe nodded and cleared her throat. “I’m really sorry about your cow. I wish that we could’ve helped out with our video, but we really have to be getting home now,” she suggested to all.

  Mr. Roberts clutched the walkie-talkie like he was trying to break it and turned his chilly attention on her. He regarded her the way a lion in a zoo looks at little kids that taunt it from the other side of the glass. But he regained his humorless smile as he walked back toward them and his predatory gaze refocused on Kirin. “Be sure to mention to your father that you ran into me, would you?” he said. “And remind him that we’ll expect to see his presentation on the cauldron by the end of the week.”

  He motioned toward Kirin’s Jeep with a dismissive wave and then turned his gaze on Stan. “And you should make sure to drive safely, Mr. Strakowski. I’ll have Dr. Markson check in with your father later just to make sure you got home okay.”

  Stan dropped his shoulders, frowned, and nodded, and this time Richard Roberts smiled in earnest. He focused back on Chloe. “Speaking of fathers, how is your father doing, Miss McClellan? I feel like I haven’t seen him for years.”

  Chloe was trembling as she met his cold stare.

  “You’re starting to remind me of him, you know,” he baited.

  “What do you know about my father?” she hissed.

  “I know that he liked to start trouble.” He leaned in close to whisper, “And I know that he isn’t around to cause trouble anymore.”

  A tear fell down Chloe’s cheek as the scream she tried to unleash caught in her throat. Mr. Roberts turned his back on her and stepped away to hand the walkie-talkie back to Brent with a nod. “Mr. Meeks, make sure the young lady gets home safely, and let her mother know that we’re becoming increasingly concerned about her daughter’s propensity for trespassing on private property with…questionable chaperones and worrisome motives.” He flashed his artificially whitened teeth. “I believe you know where she lives, don’t you?”

  Brent nodded.

  Kirin took a step forward. “I’ll drive her home,” he declared, giving voice where Chloe could not.

  Mr. Roberts looked over his shoulder and shook his head. “No, no, that’s quite all right. You must be exhausted from all your travels, and I’m sure you’re going to want to rise early to help your grandmother settle into her new home.”

  Somehow the simple mention of Kirin’s grandmother seemed like a veiled threat. Kirin recoiled with nothing more to say as Mr. Roberts and his security team loaded back into their vehicles. Doors slammed and engines revved a moment later, leaving only Brent Meeks standing before the three high school kids with an expectant look on his infuriating face.

  “This is Air 1—nothing else on the sweep of the area—bring in the documentation and clean-up teams—Dr. Markson wants saliva samples.” Brent met Chloe’s furious gaze and scrambled to turn down the volume on his walkie-talkie. He was clearly as uncomfortable with his boss’s orders as Chloe was. He sighed and waved her over. “Come on, Chloe, let’s go.”

  Chloe bit her bottom lip in a failed attempt to keep it from trembling.

  But Kirin stepped in front of Brent as if he wasn’t even there and touched Chloe’s shoulder with an instantly calming effect. “Are you all right?” he asked.


  He made her want to be strong. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she lied.

  “Are you really gonna go with him, or do you need me to make a stink? Cause I’ll go big if you want me to!” he said with absolute conviction.

  “No, there’s no reason for both of us to get re-grounded…again,” whispered Chloe with an appreciative smile. “Thanks for coming out and playing along.”

  Kirin had to fight back a yawn. “Are you kidding me? I don’t think there’s another person alive who could have kept me up this late.”

  “Hey, they took the tape!” hollered Stan, ruining the moment. The video camera tape slot was open and empty in his hand.

  Brent straightened and tried to look official. “Sorry for the inconvenience. It will be mailed back to you on Monday,” he stated like he was reading from a cue card.

  “You can’t just take peoples’ stuff,” Stan protested meekly.

  Brent sized him up and turned back to Chloe. “Let’s go.”

  She gave a nod to Stan that spoke of unfinished business, and he flashed the biggest, toothiest grin she’d ever seen in response. Then she turned to Kirin and tried to think of something cool to say. “Thank you…and sorry,” was all she came up with.

  Kirin just looked at her with an odd intensity behind his tired gaze. As she turned to begin her slow perp walk to the black SUV, he reached out without warning and pulled her back. She looked down at the firm grip on her wrist just as he stepped into her with a deep kiss. The tang of his faintly salty lips found hers as she shut her eyes and leaned into him—he tasted like a summer at the beach, like the ocean and lip balm. He reminded her of vacations at the Delaware shore when she was younger, when her father had still been there and her mother had laughed all the time. She felt like she was vibrating as his tongue rubbed against hers, and she wished in that moment that it would never stop.

  But he pulled apart from her gently and gave her a sheepish smile. “I didn’t plan to do that,” he admitted.

  Chloe was still trembling. “I don’t mind.”

  He leaned in close again to whisper in her ear, and she felt the warmth of his breath on her neck. “I don’t know what you’re up to here tonight, but I want to know more.”

  “Okay…but I have to warn you, it could get pretty weird,” she whispered back.

  He let her wrist go and stepped away as his easy smile returned for the first time that night. “I’m counting on it.”

  Brent coughed behind them, and Chloe remembered only then that they weren’t alone. She glanced over to Stan, who was still smiling like an idiot. He gave her the thumbs-up, and this time Chloe bit her lip to keep from squealing with glee.

  She turned toward Brent and the waiting SUV to keep herself from doing something truly embarrassing. As she started to walk again, she prayed for some excuse to turn back around and start kissing Kirin again. Keep it together! Don’t freak out!

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” said Kirin to her back with an unfortunate sense of finality.

  She turned around with the best cool smile she could muster. “I hope I’ll still have a phone to answer.”

  • • •

  Neither Chloe nor Brent had said a word since they’d gotten in the car. Chloe was content to ride out the rest of the journey staring out the window in silence. The fences, trees, and fields flashed by in a blur, but she kept her eyes on the sky, searching for movement as her mind vacillated between anger and elation.

  She replayed the kiss over and over—the feeling of his body pressing against her and the undeniable rightness of his lips. It felt like a litter of rambunctious mice were alternately roughhousing and fighting in her stomach. She’d spent the last seven years trying to manage every aspect of her life, but Kirin made her want to lose control.

  She wanted to roll down the window and scream out at the night, but she caught Brent’s smug expression in the rearview mirror and stifled the impulse. Her high spirits plummeted in an instant as Mr. Roberts’s cruel words came back to her. The angry mice took over.

  Chloe wanted revenge. She would make them pay for what they’d done to her pond, and she would make them tell her whatever it was that they’d done to her father. She never really believed that Ray McClellan had gone insane. Chloe had always held out hope that maybe her father had left for a very good reason…

  She stared at the rectangle of Brent’s stupid face in the mirror and imagined what he’d look like if Uktena swooped down from the clouds and plucked the SUV from the road: his eyes wide and his mouth agape in a noiseless scream as he tried to squeeze himself onto the floor beneath the steering wheel.

  What would that power feel like? She fantasized about landing on the roof of the Daedalus Group headquarters, firing bolts of lightning from her gaping, fanged mouth and crushing brick and steel with heavy curving claws. It felt like there was an open current of electricity in her belly, and she wanted to release its potential for destruction. How dare these wicked men drive me from my home and hunt me across the skies. They will break beneath my fury!

  Chloe shivered, and again it was only the reflection of a pouting little girl staring back at her in the window.

  “I know you don’t like me, Chloe,” said Brent as he met her gaze in the mirror for a moment. “But I really care about your mother.”

  “Cheating on her with a married woman was kind of a funny way to show it.”

  He focused on the road for a long moment. “I messed up; I know that,” he admitted. “But when you get older, you’ll see that things aren’t as cut-and-dry as they are in high school.”

  Chloe laughed cruelly. What I wouldn’t give for cut-and-dry! She willed lasers to shoot out of her eyes at the back of his head…nothing. “My mom deserves a whole lot better than that.”

  Brent held his gaze on the road.

  “Yes, she does,” he muttered as he started to look a little red in the face. “And I wish I could be the one to give it to her,” he added with the hint of glassy sheen in his eyes.

  Chloe hadn’t been prepared to discover that Brent was capable of real emotion, and she couldn’t think of her normal biting response.

  He filled the silence. “But even if I can’t be that guy for her, I can still do what I can to keep her from getting hurt.” He looked up, and this time it was Chloe who had to look away. “All she really cares about is you, you know, and if anything happened to you, it would destroy her. So I’m telling you now, as a friend—whatever it is you’re up to, you need to stop messing with the Daedalus Group.”

  Chloe hadn’t been expecting that either.

  Brent slowed the vehicle along a flat stretch of road and edged into the grass on the side before coming to a full stop. He turned around and commanded her attention. “These guys are in big business with some very serious people, and they don’t play nice. You need to stay out of their way or they can make your and your mother’s life very difficult.”

  Chloe shrank back in her seat. “What did they do to my father?”

  Brent turned back around and eased the car back onto the road. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I’ve only been there for two months, but it’s a really great job for me, and I don’t get paid to ask questions,” he said defensively. “And you shouldn’t either!”

  “I’m a fifteen-year-old girl; what can they do?”

  “This isn’t some game, Chloe. I’m talking government contracts and huge sums of money. That guy I work for, Mr. Duncan—he used to be special forces. And another guy in my group was some kind of mercenary in Iraq, and all of them seem to be scared of the money man who’s coming from D.C. in a couple weeks… I’m telling you, you and your friends need to stay out of this!”

  Chloe had been rendered mute as the black SUV pulled into the McClellan family driveway and came to a stop beside the barn. Chloe could see her mom through the living room window as she moved through the kitchen with a teapot. Brent couldn’t take his eyes off her as Audrey noticed the bright headlights in the driveway. Chloe put her hand
on the door handle to leave, but stopped herself before she opened it.

  “If they’re so bad, then why do you work for them?” she challenged.

  “It’s like I said: nothing is cut-and-dry anymore.”

  “Whatever,” she blurted as she opened the door and flooded the car’s interior with light just as Audrey came to the window and squinted out at them.

  “You don’t like me and that’s okay,” called Brent. “Honestly, I don’t particularly like you either,” he admitted. “But I still love Audrey, and I don’t want anything to happen to you for her sake.”

  Even from a hundred feet off, she could tell that her mom wasn’t happy.

  “Do us all a favor and focus on your schoolwork like you used to,” he said as he switched the SUV into reverse.

  “If only life could be that simple,” she muttered before slamming the door. His infuriating face was finally blocked out behind tinted windows as the SUV reversed out of the driveway and sped off down the road toward the pond. The red glow of the taillights dipped over the rise of the hill, like two fiery eyes retreating through the darkness.

  Chloe turned and glared at the side of the barn, listening for some sign of the creature that lurked within. It was utterly quiet, not even the creaking of old boards or the scurry of mice. But then, as she closed her eyes, it almost seemed like the barn itself was breathing… Chloe was filled with the feeling of contented slumber, and in that moment, her eyelids became heavy. She yawned just as Audrey opened the screen door with the squeak of hinges.

  She held the door open with her heel and crossed her arms, waiting with the telltale pursing of her lips that Chloe knew so well. “Why did Brent just drop you off at 11 p.m. in a Daedalus Group car?”

  Chloe chose not to answer as she started to shuffle toward the maternal fury with her head down.

  “And where is all of my meat?” Audrey added.

  Please, just let me keep my phone! Please, let Kirin call me tomorrow!