Air: The Elementals Book Two

by L. B. Gilbert

  She inhaled deeply and winced. Breathing was painful. She might have bruised or cracked a few ribs with that move. Pausing for a second, she kicked the murderous shitpile of fur that used to be a Gibson brother—Matt. She recognized him now.

  Spinning on her heel Mara turned to find Logan facing Bishop. He was still pressed against the boulder, but now he was surrounded by debris. Rocks and fallen logs littered the space in between the two of them. Logan raised her arm, and another much bigger log whistled through the air. It followed the motion of her hands, hurtling toward Bishop like a ballistic missile.

  Sure that she was about to see Bishop, who’d she’d always thought of as an uncle, smashed to a paste, Mara had to force her eyes to stay open. She had to see this though for Sammy and her brother.

  But the log stopped short, rebounding on a barrier she could see for a split second when the log made contact before glancing off.

  The iridescent oily glow of the bubble protection faded as soon as the log stopped touching it. Bishop was crouching in front of the boulder, his hands up to shield his face. When the log was deflected, he put his hands down and looked at her and Logan, a half-mad light in his eyes.

  The asshole laughed. “He said this thing was good, but this is beyond anything I ever imagined.” He straightened, letting loose another deep chuckle that made her blood boil.

  “Let me kill him,” she hissed at Logan.

  “Except you can’t,” Bishop shouted. The smirk on his face made her want to smash his face in.

  “Why in the world are you doing this?” she asked, her composure cracking unexpectedly.

  Bishop had been her father’s best friend for years. He had taught her how to ride a bike and bought her dolls when her father had given her baseball mitts and toy cars.

  He shook his head. “Your father should have listened to me… about so many things. The goddamned fucking Averys and Malcolm being his third. Yogi would have won the challenge for third if he’d been given a little more time to prepare.”

  What the fuck kind of answer was that? Those pissant complaints couldn’t be the reason for all of this! “But what about Sammy? Your own son. How could you do that to him?”

  “He didn’t die! The staff doesn’t kill—not unless you want it to. I just needed a smaller test subject to perfect my technique. I didn’t think he was going to get so sick. Your brother didn’t. And after, I was going to put the wolf back. Or someone else’s. That’s the beauty of the staff. You can just pluck and take, mix and match.”

  “Actually, that’s not how the staff works at all,” Logan said. “Not even close, and definitely not if a non-Elemental is wielding it.” She paused and turned to Mara. “Can you smell him?”

  Mara shook herself, letting go of her anger long enough to think. She was standing downwind from Bishop and hadn’t even noticed. “No, I don’t,” she whispered.

  “His aura is red and blue, normal for a Were. There’s no stain of murder.”

  How was that possible? He had killed Malcolm.

  “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Bishop shouted, his face contorting. “I won’t let you ignore me!”

  “Except you are here…” Logan muttered as if she were talking to herself. “You have no scent, but you give off heat and have an aura. Not like the nothing man, but so similar.”

  “What the hell are you talking about now?” Mara asked, her voice louder than she intended.

  “He’s protected,” Logan clarified, turning to her. “A barrier enchantment stronger than any I’ve ever seen. We can’t touch him.”

  Across the way, Bishop cackled. “And so I’ve won?” More laughter doubled him back over again.

  I used to love that laugh, Mara thought in disgust. It was a deep, rich baritone, rather similar to her father’s. Red-hot rage bubbled up her throat.

  “What the fuck are you going to do?” she yelled. “Wait us out? Are you going stand there all fucking day until you starve?”

  That wasn’t good enough. This man had tried to kill her brother, had torn the pack apart. His betrayal cut her to the bone, and it would destroy her father.

  “I guess so,” Bishop said nonplussed, his amusement dropping away. He turned to the crushed, incapacitated cars. “Or I can start running into the woods and just keep going…”

  He looked down at the bag in his hand. “These spells were supposed to kill you both. The number-one rule was leave no witnesses behind. Guess I’ll have to settle for just killing Mara.”

  The handgun was in his hand, his finger on the trigger faster than Mara could blink. She threw herself to the side, registering Logan in front of her a split second before she hit the ground, the wind a deafening roar in her sensitive ears.

  Mara twisted onto her back, her mouth falling open when she saw what the Air Elemental was doing.

  Logan was protecting her front, a huge cyclone emanating from her hands. Bullets changed trajectory, separating and flying past on either side of them—except one. Somehow, she had missed it. It struck Logan, grazing her skin and leaving a deep furrow in her upper arm.

  She tsked and looked down at the wound. “Not normal bullets, are they?”

  Bishop gave Logan a hapless shrug Mara would have found charming under other circumstances. Then he raised the gun and fired again. The thin click was followed by another and another. Heaving a sigh of relief that the gun was empty, Mara got to her feet.

  “There’s more where that came from,” Bishop said with a shrug. He gestured to the shed. “The good news is, if you can bleed, you can die. So don’t mind me, I’m going to grab a few more magazines. It’s not like you can do anything to stop me.”

  He pushed himself away from the boulder and started walking in the direction of the shed. Furious, Mara lunged at him, but Logan checked her momentum with one hand. The Elemental’s head cocked to the side, her face colder than any Arctic peak.

  “It’s still my turn.”

  Her eyes… They were a glacial blue with no irises. A shiver ran down Mara’s spine. Suddenly, she was more afraid of Logan than of anything Bishop could do.

  A blast of air whipped her hard in the face, almost knocking her to the ground. Eyes watering, she could no longer see Logan, but she could hear her. The wind hurtled away from her with a shriek that threatened to burst her eardrums.

  In her mind’s eye, it was no longer Logan, but the dragon at the top of that fucking staff leaping in pursuit. The vicious beast had been given life in the wind, and it was savaging the barrier protecting Bishop. It hit the surface over and over again like a cobra striking.

  With the wind focused away from her, Mara was able to turn around and watch the assault by partially shielding her eyes. Each time Logan pounded the surface, she could see the glowing surface of the shell for a split second.

  Bishop kept trying to bat her away like she was some sort of kamikaze bird he could wave off. But the attack was relentless. After a minute, she couldn’t even see Bishop in the flurry. It was as if Logan had made the wind solid—a battering ram made of Mother Nature’s primordial rage and power.

  Eyes burning, Mara watched the onslaught with fisted hands. There was a crack, almost like shattering glass. Whipping her head back, she saw Logan standing over Bishop, who was now sitting on the ground. Between them was the thin layer of the barrier, a threadlike network visible to the naked eye because Logan’s hands were touching it.

  “Won’t do any good,” Bishop wheezed. “It’s supposed to withstand a nuclear blast…”

  He didn’t seem as confident now. Unnoticed by the two, Mara sidled closer.

  “That doesn’t really matter, does it?” Logan asked him softly. She stroked the bubble with an almost loving gesture.

  “I don’t understand,” Mara whispered, moving behind them.

  Logan turned to her, those winter-blue eyes meeting her green ones. “Then watch. You will.”

  The leaking hiss like air escaping a tire didn’t even register at first. Not until Bisho
p was red in the face. His eyes looked bloodshot, and his chest was moving in a shallow rise and fall… He was suffocating. Logan was drawing the air out from the cracks in the shield.

  The rage burning in Mara started to cool. Reaching out, she put her hands on Logan, but she stopped short of pulling her away.

  Wolves were fighters. Even their worst enemy didn’t deserve this. Weres should die on their feet.

  But Mara didn’t say so. As long as she was unable to wrap her hands around the fucker’s throat, she had to let Logan finish.

  Trembling, she bit her tongue and waited, wide-eyed, for it to be over. She stood vigil until Bishop slumped over. She would have kept standing there forever if Logan hadn’t bent to snatch the bag he held—the barrier was gone.

  Logan turned his pockets inside out and opened his shirt. There was a charm of some kind hanging from his neck. She broke the leather strap with a flick of her wrist and threw that in the bag as well.

  “Is he dead?” her father asked from somewhere behind them.

  Mara whirled around. The chief had arrived. Just behind him was her brother, being propped up by Derrick and another Were named Max. Connell’s shirt was open over a chest wrapped in bandages. In the distance, other cars were approaching, pulling off the road in a steady stream, parking anywhere they could.

  “No,” Logan said distantly, her attention on the contents of the bag she had confiscated.

  “He’s not?” Mara asked in surprise.

  “Weres police their own,” Logan said flatly, turning around, her eyes still in that freaky pupil-less state.

  When she saw Connell, the cold, forbidding expression disappeared, and her eyes shifted back to their normal light brown shade. “Connell, you should be in the hospital,” she shouted.

  She marched up to him, finger wagging, presumably to read him the riot act. Connell ignored the scolding digit, using his good arm to cup the back of her head and pull her in for a long kiss.

  Logan waited a few beats before self-consciously pushing him away. “Hospital,” she hissed.

  Connell looked over her head. Derrick and the others were pulling Bishop to his feet.

  “After,” he said softly.

  It looked like she was going to argue, but she nodded. “I have to search his house.”

  “What about his son?” someone asked.

  Yogi was starting to come around too. A few soldiers had helped him up, but they held onto him by both arms. Mara shook her head at the same time as Logan.

  “His children weren’t a part of it,” she said.

  “And who’s that?” Derrick asked, pointing to the Gibson brother she had killed.

  Mara told them, her attention fixed on Logan.

  The Elemental had stopped in front of Yogi. She spoke to him in a low tone. Yogi shook his head, but she put a hand on his arm. “You don’t want to watch,” she whispered.

  There was an excruciating minute of silence as Yogi stared at his father.

  Bishop was on his feet, head lolling. The end wouldn’t come until he was fully aware and able to defend himself.

  Yogi shook his head again, his palm out in a broken gesture that could have been disbelief or grief. Then he turned away, letting Logan lead him away.

  44

  Nearly an hour passed before Connell crossed the threshold of Bishop’s house. He entered through the kitchen. Yogi was sitting at the wooden kitchen table, a mug of tea in front of him. He was staring sightlessly at the side of the refrigerator, his eyes disturbingly blank.

  “Hey, man,” Connell said quietly.

  Yogi looked up at him. “Oh. Hey.” He looked around and seemed startled to see the tea in front of him. Mechanically, he picked it up and took a sip. “It’s cold.”

  “Maybe you should make yourself another one,” Connell said. His friend’s disconnected expression was starting to unnerve him.

  “I didn’t make it.”

  Connell reached out and took the mug. He popped it into the microwave for a minute before putting it back in front of him. Unsure what to do, he excused himself and went to find Logan. Maybe she would know what to do with Yogi.

  He found her in the dining room. Scattered across the table was an assortment of weapons, vials, jars, and statuettes. For a second, the image of her dancing on top of the table in that house in Provence flashed across his mind, and he smiled softly.

  “Are you one of those tea-cures-whatever-ails-you kind of people?” he asked.

  Logan looked up at him and shrugged. “It’s what my aunt Mai does whenever my mom or I are upset. I also called your dad’s house. The number was on the refrigerator.”

  “What for?”

  “I was looking for Salome. Yogi should be with his family right now.”

  What’s left of it, he thought with a pang in his chest.

  “Is it over?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Bishop was dead.

  Logan narrowed her eyes at him. “It better not have been you. You’re in no shape for that.”

  “No, it wasn’t me. I wanted to. Well, no, that’s not right. I didn’t want someone else to have to do it, but some of my ribs are still cracked. It was Mara. Dad…well, he just couldn’t, so she did it for him. One lunge and it was over.”

  He thought about Bishop in those last moments, surrounded by a circle of Weres who had passed judgment on him. “I think he meant to stand there and take it, but he moved at the last. He tried to defend himself. But he was too slow for her.”

  It had been bloody, but over quickly. No one would ever doubt Mara’s lethal skills again.

  “Did he say anything more about why he did it?”

  Connell’s lip curled. “It wasn’t much of an explanation.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He grumbled about the Averys and a few others we didn’t realize he had issues with—including Malcolm and me. Apparently, he really hated that his son had been passed over to be third, even though Yogi didn’t care. Yogi never took the challenge to be third seriously. He only made it in the first place to please him.”

  He broke off and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm. “And he said…”

  “What?”

  “Bishop said that it’s better to be a king of a pile of rubble than buried under it.”

  Logan scowled. “I don’t like the sound of that,” she said.

  “Neither do I.”

  “What is all this?” he asked, gesturing to the table.

  “Contraband.”

  He picked up a knife. It was a combat-issue Seal Pup with a serrated edge. “Are they all magical?”

  She nodded.

  “Why would anyone bespell a tactical knife?”

  “I assume they wanted to adapt it for ritual use, the same as this antique dagger,” she said, indicating a dull-looking blade with an ornately carved hilt.

  Moving to the left, she picked up a mason jar from a small box. “This is the most significant thing here.”

  “A jam jar?” he asked, leaning over to take a sniff.

  “That’s what it was. Now it’s a receptacle to hold magic. I think it was meant to store your wolf. Yours or Sammy’s. But Bishop failed to capture it.” She paused, setting the glass jar down on the table. “There are two others here.”

  She held up the box. Two jars were nestled inside, but there were four spaces.

  The implication of that sunk in. “So one is missing.”

  “Yeah, I assume it’s the one he used for Malcolm’s wolf.”

  Connell sat down heavily on one of the dining room chairs. “So he succeeded,” he rasped.

  “I guess third time’s a charm,” she grumbled. “He seemed to think he could put wolves back as well as take them away. Maybe he thought he could put Malcolm’s wolf into Sammy, but it’s not here.”

  “Any idea where is it?”

  Logan lips compressed, her eyes growing distant. “Not in this house. It’s possible he traded it for the rest of this stuff. And maybe a lot more that
we haven’t found yet.” She paused. “Did he ever challenge your father for leadership?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t a real challenge.”

  She frowned. “Because your father was too strong?”

  He shook his head. “No, I mean Bishop didn’t try to draw blood. It was just for show. We do stuff like that sometimes, when we don’t agree with the alpha’s decisions and want everyone to know it. Bishop was protesting letting the Averys into the pack.”

  “So it was more like having his objection noted? Did he fight your dad on other issues?”

  He nodded. “But so do a lot of people. Wolves like to argue. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for a pack this size. I…I just don’t get what he was trying to accomplish with that staff.”

  “I may have some ideas… In my opinion, Bishop was just getting started. I think he was planning to take a lot more wolves, and then start mixing and matching them as he saw fit.”

  “How the fuck would that help him?”

  Logan cocked her head, staring into space. “What if he thought he could put your wolf in Yogi or your dad’s in himself? The strongest, more dominant wolf always wins a challenge right? Then he’d be chief and he could do whatever the hell he wanted. The possibilities are endless when you think you have an all-powerful magic staff at your disposal to right all your imagined wrongs.”

  “Fuck,” he growled, planting his hands flat in front of him.

  “It’s worse than that.”

  Connell’s head snapped up. Logan sounded a little scared, and suddenly, that was the worst thing that had happened all day.

  “What is it?”

  Logan sighed. “Bishop was using a spell to hide in plain sight. My sister Diana ran into a similar one not so long ago. From the stuff left in some of these vials, I think this spell was based on that one.”

  Connell fingered the tactical knife. “Makes sense. We know someone else involved gave him all this stuff. So now we know who it is. That’s good news.”

  “It would be, but there’s a problem. Those witches are already dead.”

  He grunted, relieved. “So Bishop got this spell from them before they died.”