Well, time had just run out.
She picked up the book she’d been reading, fingering the embossed leather cover, but he couldn’t make out the words because it was written in an unfamiliar language.
“Jordan betrayed us,” she said after a long pause. “We assume he was being blackmailed. He stole from this archive and left, then he took his own life.”
“Fuck,” Daniel muttered. That was some heavy shit. He’d known the man was dead, but he’d assumed he’d been killed in some sort of long-ago Supernatural battle or something. “When did this all happen?”
“We buried him a few weeks before I met you the second time.”
His stomach dropped a few inches. When he’d started hunting her, the man had still been alive. “That recently?”
Swallowing, she nodded. “I’m not sure why Gia was so worked up. We know that Jordan was guilty now. He apologized in his suicide note.”
Christ. This was getting worse and worse. Daniel flipped the recording on again. “It sounds as if he’s reading a shopping list. Is there anything in the background your magic ears can pick up?”
Serin touched her ears self-consciously. “I don’t hear anything of significance.”
Frowning, he took the phone back. It didn’t sound like Jordan had been under duress. If anything, the well-modulated voice sounded bored, as if he were performing a chore.
Daniel flipped back to the electronic copy of Sandy’s report. He zoomed on the text listing the second recording, the one that had been complete but garbled. The time stamp the message was received was noted before the message, but there was another at the end.
“That’s it.” He held up the phone. After squinting at the screen, she shrugged. “Look at the timestamps on the audio file.”
“What about it?”
“Them, what about them.” He pointed to the one at the bottom. “The creation date of the recording is here, too, which means it was sent as an audio file they downloaded.
“Yes, and?”
“The creation date was three days after our second meeting. Jordan recorded this after you buried him.”
Daniel heaved another shovel of dirt out of the square hole.
“Can you explain why I’m digging up the grave when you’re the one with magic powers?”
Serin was pacing like a caged animal at the graveside, squeezing her fist reflexively. “Mainly because you grabbed the only shovel and started digging.”
She put something in her pocket before reaching out. “Give it here and I’ll finish.”
Regarding her thoughtfully, he used the shovel handle as a prop. “Why don’t you just flood the hole and bring it to the surface?”
“Because we don’t want to alert everyone on the island. This is the home of most of the world’s Water talents. My mother is only one of them. Half the elders and their families would be able to sense the movement of that much water moving outside the island’s normal rhythm.”
She continued to hold out her hand. Reluctantly, he handed the shovel over. With no hesitation, she hopped into the hole and took over.
He climbed out, marveling at her speed and strength. “So why is there only one shovel in the village?”
“We don’t farm, not as you know it. The island’s food crops don’t require that much intervention. We scatter seeds, and they simply grow unaided.”
Daniel thought about the neat clusters of maize and tomato plants he’d passed earlier. It didn’t bear the hallmarks of mechanical plantation. Nothing square, no neat rows. Nevertheless, there had appeared to be some organization—spirals, circles, and ovals, irregular shapes that made the most of the open space and varied terrain. It was crazy to think they could just drop seeds and those patterns would appear.
He’d never been religious. The grandmother who raised him had been Catholic, but he’d only done lip service by begrudgingly attending service on Sundays. Once she passed away, he’d stopped going. Later, he’d seen too much ugliness in his chosen career to believe in the God the priests had lectured about from their pulpits. But if he had seen this island back then, he would have fallen to his knees in worship.
No wonder the elders spent half of every day at the temple.
“Daniel.”
Giving himself a little shake, he turned back to find Serin staring at him, holding out the shovel expectantly. He whistled. In his short minute of introspection, she’d uncovered a rectangular stone slab.
“Is he in a bloody sarcophagus?”
“His uncle chose a plain wooden box, but he requested the stone be overlaid to protect it from the seismic activity of the island. The land shifts more than you would think.”
She leaned down and pried the slab up on one end, lifting it up and out as if it were a painted Styrofoam movie prop.
He peered down at the coffin. The lid was roughly carved of one piece of thick wood. Kneeling, Serin touched the lid.
“Who made the coffin?”
“The island’s carpenters. This is made of Ash. It’s one of the trees with magical properties. It can absorb or repel spells depending on the preparation. This has been charmed to repel them.”
He hopped down to join her. “I’ll do this. You get up.”
Serin didn’t move, a mutinous expression on her beautiful face. Daniel would be damned if he let her open the box, though. After a brief standoff, she relented and climbed out of the hole, standing at the edge.
Daniel leaned down and tried the lid, but it held fast. He reached for the shovel lying at the edge of the grave, then wedged the cutting edge just under the lid. It took a minute, but he managed to pry it open, breaking the seal with a hiss.
He tossed the shovel aside and yanked on the lid, revealing a perfectly preserved body. “I thought it was going to be empty.”
The man lying in state was wearing an intricately embroidered robe. He was perfect—his face, his hair, the hands neatly folded on his chest. He reminded Daniel of a Hollywood bit player, the talentless hacks so pretty they could skate by on looks alone.
“Why doesn’t he seem dead?” Even if he’d been embalmed, there should have been a noticeable amount of decay by now.
This man, who resembled a male model with his thick dark hair and chiseled features, appeared as if he’d just laid down for a nap. Even his cheeks, which were much lighter in color than Daniel’s own dusky skin, had a natural pink flush.
He turned to Serin, uncertain what to do next. She stared down at the body.
“It can’t have been empty,” she explained, her eyes fixed to the man’s face. “My parents were here when John brought the body from Jordan’s family home. The elders said prayers over his corpse in the temple.”
“Is that why he looks so…alive?”
“No. Our prayers are for a speedy journey to the afterlife. Since we don’t traditionally bury bodies, we left the remaining burial rituals to John, his uncle and only family member.”
Daniel absorbed that for a moment, a little chill trickling down his spine as he remembered his least favorite stories from church.
“When I was little, the priests taught us about the saints—there is a whole list of them whose bodies supposedly didn’t decay. He called them the Incorruptibles,” he said, unable to tear his eyes away from the unnaturally pristine corpse.
Serin huffed out what almost sounded like a laugh. “Jordan isn’t a saint by any definition.”
O-kay. “Where is his home?”
“I believe it’s in upstate New York.”
Daniel glanced up. “You believe?”
“I never visited. He wanted to show it to me just after we bonded, but I had a very big case fall into my lap. After I was done, I asked to go, but he had changed his mind. He decided he would rather join me on my next case. That’s when he began to travel with me.”
Daniel murmured something unintelligible, wondering if he should apologize for digging up her ex-husband. What the hell was the protocol here?
Serin gracefully slid do
wn next to him. She balanced her feet on the edge of the coffin, kneeling close to the face.
“Um, Serin…” He blinked, grabbing his shirtfront.
Now that she was next to him, he could feel her emotions like a wave of cold. It wasn’t his imagination. She was literally cold, the air around her crystalizing like a winter’s night.
I should never have started this. He was an asshole. Yes, digging her ex up had been her idea, but Daniel should have stopped her. He would have if he’d known this was going to happen. Daniel put his hand on her shoulder, intending to nudge her.
It was a mistake. The biting cold swept up his arm. Flinching, he snatched his hand back, ready to argue with her. They had to close the box. Sure the corpse looked weird, but it might be because the guy’s uncle had cast some weird preservation spell.
Suddenly, Serin leaned forward and put both her hands on the corpse’s face. A hazy ripple of fog passed over it. When she let go, the fog dissolved, revealing a face that was completely different from the one they’d first uncovered.
Daniel staggered, nearly falling over on the body. “Fucking hell. It’s not him.”
Serin glanced at him over her shoulder. Her eyes could have frozen hell. “No, it’s not.”
“Uh…do you recognize this guy?”
She shook her head, raising her fingers and rubbing them together. “It’s a spell, one of the most sophisticated I’ve ever seen—something that combines stasis and a glamour.”
“A glamour like Loki does?” Daniel asked. He peered around, half-expecting to see the fae trickster coming down the hill.
“Fae glamours are unique to their species. They fade when the body dies. And this person is definitely dead. The question is, did Jordan kill him and leave the body for John to find or did John deceive us, too?”
Having a mystery to solve made Daniel feel better. “I don’t know, but we can figure it out. Let’s start by finding out who this guy is.”
Daniel held up the phone, then snapped a few flash pictures of the man’s face, but after the first one, a strange shadow crept over it. Sensing something off, he slowly lifted his eyes to see what was obscuring the moonlight when Serin grabbed his arm.
“Get up!”
Together, they scrambled out of the grave as tendrils of black broke through the body like a hundred tentacles reaching out for them.
28
The counter-spell wasn’t working. Serin grabbed one of the tendrils trying to climb her leg like a snake. Her skin sizzled as if it were coated in acid. Reflexively, she let go, but the damn thing dragged her back into the grave, wrapping around her so tightly it cut off her circulation.
With a wrench, she peeled it off, starting another spell at the same time. It had no effect. Instead, more tentacles wrapped around her legs and waist, holding her fast in the hole.
Serin let go, shifting to her water form to jump out of the hellish pit. She reformed at the edge, shouting, “Get Diana! She’s with Alec in the archive.”
She pushed Daniel as the tendrils lashed out of the hole, trying to grab him as well. Despite the burn, she grasped the wiggling tentacles. Daniel hesitated, leaning down as if to grab it.
“No! You can’t touch it. It’ll kill you. Go now.”
With one last tortured glance back, he turned and ran in the direction of the archives.
Serin shifted again, fighting the tendrils back into the grave while muttering counter-spell after counter-spell. Nothing worked. The best she could do was contain them and hope the island’s inherent magic would help.
Smoke began to rise from the grave as the writhing mass grew exponentially, burning through the wooden box with a roar. It sounded like an animal or the monster of a science fiction horror movie that had escaped the confines of the screen. Whenever it touched the soil, its acid burned, eating the life inside.
The curse was laying waste to the earth itself, killing millions of microorganisms and nutrients with every squirm and smack.
Serin turned her eyes inward, looking past the writhing mass underneath it. She gasped, fear and dread overriding her control. Sweat broke out over her skin as she traced the path of the tendrils down—its path marked by the death of the bacterial and fungal flora that made the soil of the island so plentiful and rich.
The mass was burrowing deeper, the toxic feelers growing as they lashed out. They had buried Jordan at the heart of the island. From here, it could radiate out, spreading to every end of the sacred landmass.
Breaking the glamour spell had triggered it. Jordan hadn’t killed himself. It had been a trap the whole time.
“Serin!” Diana was running down the hill with Alec at her heels. Daniel was some distance behind them, followed by other islanders she couldn’t identify.
Serin reformed, snatching up the shovel and swinging it at a flapping tentacle. “The body was cursed. We have to burn it.”
She lifted her hand, muttering the spell that would allow her to borrow some of her sister’s ability.
As a senior Elemental, Serin could borrow the other Elementals’ talents to varying degrees. Fire and Air were relatively easy. To some degree, she could shift the Earth as well, although her control over the latter wasn’t as precise.
The ability to wield Fire was only strengthened in Diana’s presence. Serin ignited her right hand.
The oily, acidic tendril reared back as if it could sense the flames. She threw it down, hitting the tentacle. The pop and sizzle were faint. The smell of burning oil and tar confirmed she hit it, but there was no measurable damage.
A much-larger blast of fire joined hers. Diana was there, directing her flames at the monstrous tentacles.
The smoke was different now. It stung Serin’s eyes. She called a little of Logan’s power, drawing on her sister’s mastery of the winds to blow the poisonous fumes out to sea.
The blackened mass in the pit was smaller now, but its size was deceptive.
“No, damn it. The curse is burrowing deeper,” she called to Diana.
She could feel the moisture wicking away as the soil under her feet died.
The spell had a life of its own. It behaved like a primitive animal, shying away from the dangerous fire and racing under the surface like fungal hypha on steroids.
Diana cast her magic deeper, trying to burn it from under the ground, but this was T’Kaieri. She couldn’t make her fire talent work under the soil surface. There wasn’t enough oxygen there to feed the flames.
Her sister broke off, her face white as a sheet. “I can’t follow it.”
“I know,” Serin breathed in a low voice.
“Can you redirect the lava from under the volcano?”
Serin spun around to see Alec helping Daniel to his feet. Their efforts were destabilizing the ground around them.
“I don’t think so, not without breaking up the island.”
She and Diana stared at each other. Images of Pompeii as it fell flitted behind Serin’s eyes. This is not the myth of Atlantis brought to life. That was not how it was going to end.
Serin shook her head violently. “This is on me. I’ll use my power to collect it, drag it out into the open.” She hesitated.
Diana grabbed her hand. “What is it?”
Serin took a shaky break. “It’s going so fast. The longest tendrils are only a few miles from the beach. I don’t know what will happen if they reach the island’s borders.”
Something told her the spell wouldn’t end there. Ice formed in her gut as her mind rapidly calculated possibilities.
“I need the ocean.” She turned to the men and the rapidly gathering crowd. “I have to flood this part of the island. Go find the infirm and your young. Taken them to the high ground at the bluffs. I will do my best to keep the water away from your homes, but I may not be able to. Go now!”
Alec pulled at Daniel, dragging him away. Behind them, the crowd dispersed with shouts.
Her ears were filled with snatches of prayers. The islanders were begging the Mother f
or mercy. But help wouldn’t come from their goddess. That was why Serin was here.
She extended her arms out in supplication, pictured the beach, and called the rolling waves.
All was silent save for a faint crashing sound. Moments later, the water burst into view on her right, running down into the valley, a furious flash food. The mass and volume forced its way, carving a deep path for itself. But this was more like a raw wound. T’Kaieri would bear the scar for centuries or more. If it survived.
Diana became distinctly more nervous as the water rushed down around them. To the untrained eye, it was an undisciplined and uncontrolled flood. Serin relaxed as it splashed down, leaving her in a circle of dry land.
Her head was already pounding. This was nothing like diverting a river or manipulating a pool of water. Even calling down a storm was easier than this. “I’m going to dig it out. Be ready to call your hottest fire.”
She let go, joining the torrent of water lapping at her feet. For a moment, it was glorious. She could feel the ocean’s joy as they joined as one. It bubbled and frothed in celebration, the way it always did when she let it consume her.
This was the feeling Marina felt when she let go to become one with the sea. The echoes of Serin’s long-departed sisters could be heard in the roar.
Warmth touched her as the water splashed around Diana’s feet. It sizzled, which told her that her sister was heating up, getting ready.
Serin stopped hesitating. She let the ocean water flood into the open grave, following it down like a speeding train.
Her body seeped into the soil, letting her follow the path of death and destruction. Her heart ached at the damage done to life of the island.
The beast of a spell reacted to her presence. It shed something like a skin, releasing a foul sludge as if it were melting, polluting the water. She could feel its noxious will, a primitive intelligence, trying to wrestle control. It wanted to take over the water—to use it to spread the poison farther and faster.
Water: The Elementals Book Three Page 21