“Now even the fallen angels are tired of you,” said Lisabelle, as Sip looked around. “Shocking.”
Chapter Four
“It’s ridiculous that we have to sneak around,” Sip complained, picking bits of dirt out of her hair and ignoring Lisabelle. “What sort of student has to break into school?”
“Deviants? Miscreants?” Lisabelle offered. “Take your pick.”
“You mean the sort of people you would feel at home with?” Sip asked, coming to stand between us and looking out on the now-dark lawn of Public.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now we head into the catacombs,” said Sip. “We need to get to Airlee and Astra. According to my research, the catacombs should get us close to Airlee. Getting to Astra will be significantly more difficult.”
“Are we going to look for other students?” I said, still wondering where they were. It was strange to be returning to campus in such a dramatic fashion.
“Hopefully we’ll find out what’s going on when we get to Airlee,” said Sip, her voice uneasy and her eyes troubled.
“Yes, I do hope to run into other students. It’s my greatest joy - socializing,” said Lisabelle.
“Yes, crazy that more than three paranormals attend a college. Imagine,” said Sip, just as dryly.
“Let’s go,” I said, turning my back on the place of our attack.
We padded along silently. I wished we had time to visit the Museum - at least to make sure everything was alright - but after we dashed across the open field, who knew how long we had before someone came looking. At least we were now practiced at moving silently.
I knew exactly where to go: to an old door in the back of a room filled with junk. Dacer had warned me to stay away from it, because the Slime Dwellers - and other things in the catacombs - had decided that the room was theirs.
Unlike the spacious and beautiful Museum itself, this was just a storage space, a neglected room where everything was old and falling apart. At the far end of the space was the entrance to the catacombs. I knew, because I had come up that way once, in what I had hoped would be my only venture into the ground below the Long Building.
My hands felt tired and stiff as I reached for the old door handle. Rust and cold metal greeted my touch and my ring made a tiny scraping sound as I turned my wrist.
The door creaked as I pulled it up. It didn’t feel entirely attached to its hinges anymore. The smell of dust that hadn’t moved in years hit my nostrils and I coughed.
Behind me, Lisabelle stepped forward, brushing so close to me that our shoulders touched. She pushed her sleeve up, revealing the snaking wand tattoo she had inscribed onto her arm last semester, much to Sip’s anger and dismay.
A black light flickered and snaked out of her arm, illuminating the old and broken furniture surrounding us.
Sip, who had wanted to follow behind and watch our backs, let Lisabelle guide her through the door, and once she had slipped through, Lisabelle closed it. The old wood ground and scraped closed again, blocking out the small amount of light that had shone through it from the storage room. Now the only illumination was a black glow coming from Lisabelle.
“Let’s go,” she murmured, now leading us through the back door, which was even more rickety than the one we had just come through. Lisabelle moved carefully. The stairway that it led to was made of thin and steep stone steps, leading down and down. I tried to take comfort in the fact that I wasn’t tripping and falling down like I had the other time I had entered the catacombs, but the cold air and the smell of wet dirt blasting into my face was hardly reassuring. We descended a dizzying number of stairs, until I was sure we had missed the catacombs entirely.
Lisabelle reached the base of the stairs with a splash.
“Oh no,” Sip groaned. “I will not walk in water. Gross.”
“I’ve always thought of you as walking on water,” said Lisabelle with amusement. I snorted. “Don’t worry, it’s just a puddle. Step around.” Lisabelle increased her dark light and helped us move to the side.
We walked and walked. The catacombs were large, but we followed an old passageway, with the rock foundation of the Long Building on either side of us. Every so often we passed more black pools of water or old, broken-down crates. The constant sound of dripping water followed us as we went carefully forward. Lisabelle’s light flickered, creating rushing and distorted shadows on the rock walls.
“What was this used for?” Lisabelle wondered.
“Storage mostly,” said Sip knowledgeably. “I can give you a couple of books about it that you won’t bother to read.”
“Thanks,” said Lisabelle. “I’d appreciate that.”
“How do you know we’re going in the right direction?” I asked. Sip then launched into a complicated explanation about directions and how she, as a werewolf, always knew where she was going. By the time she was done I was sorry I had asked.
“What are you trying to get out of Astra?” Lisabelle asked me. “The Mirror Arcane?”
“I’m not sure I should move it,” I said, voicing a fear that had been bothering me all day. “I feel like the only place it’s truly safe is Astra.”
“Not if Public has been compromised,” Lisabelle warned, her voice ominous.
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation,” said Sip, “that does not involve demons or death or anything awful. No WAY the Nocturns have Public.”
“Dove was involved, so by definition it involves something awful.”
“At least it wasn’t Zervos,” I said. “Where is he, anyway? Did he return to Public or no?”
“He and Dacer were still at Locke when we left,” said Sip. “Theoretically they were coming back soon, but Princ-, I mean Queen Lanca needs all the vampire help she can get, and since so few are trustworthy, Dacer and Zervos stayed.”
“How is Queen Lanca dealing with Dirr’s death?” I asked Lisabelle. My darkness friend had spent more time with Lanca before we had departed, and Faci too. But Faci had refused to say a word. He had simply sat in his cell, his hands bound tightly in front of him and his pale face a mixture of hatred and amusement. Lanca and Lisabelle had tried questioning him, and Lanca had tried more drastic measures that neither Sip nor I had wanted to watch, but nothing had worked. Faci remained impassive.
Lisabelle’s face was unreadable when she said, after a long pause, “Not well. Her mission in life has become to eradicate the darkness threat.”
“It must be difficult, given that she now wields so much darkness herself,” Sip murmured. “I’ve always thought the same about you, Lisabelle.”
Lisabelle shrugged. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You have to work to become all evil. No being is entirely bad on his or her own. I’m not all bad, although I know sometimes Sip would beg to differ, but Malle has pushed the darkness over the edge into chaos and death.”
“But Lisabelle, if you have so much darkness, how do you stay light at all?”
Lisabelle sighed in frustration. She could have made a joke, but she didn’t. “I just said, light and dark go together. It’s not supposed to be entirely one or the other.”
“Then how do you explain Camilla? Or Zervos?”
“You can’t win ’em all,” said Lisabelle sharply. “Besides, I need to practice being mean. I’d rather practice on Camilla than on you.”
Sip brandished her index finger at Lisabelle’s back. “You are never going to be all dark, Lisabelle Verlans. No matter how hard you try.”
“It might worry you how little I have to try sometimes,” Lisabelle breathed.
“Why haven’t we run into any Slime Dwellers?” I asked, hoping to change the subject. I had spent our walk looking furtively around, scared that the red eyes would appear, and I was still so absorbed in looking around for them that I banged nose first, with no warning, into something rock hard.
Rubbing my bruised facial feature I said, “Ouch! Lisabelle, you have sharp shoulders.”
“And a sharp tongue,”
said Sip from behind me. With her werewolf reflexes, she had stopped in time.
“And a sharp wit,” I added.
Then Sip brought us back to business. “Here we are,” she said. “That took long enough.”
Sip had told us to look for a circular wheel on the wall and here it was, etched in the stone, with shots of brilliant color showing through the grime and dust that covered it.
It marked the door that we were looking for, and the anxiety that had been growing in my heart with each step we took suddenly started to ebb. Sometimes it’s worse to anticipate the enemy than to actually meet him, and I had wanted nothing more than to get out of the catacombs since the moment we had come through the door from the storage room. Sip’s announcement that we had made it sent shockwaves of relief coursing through me.
“Let’s go,” I said, making a beeline for the door.
I pulled it open and hurried up the stairs. The suspense had spiraled into a crescendo, and not seeing a Slime Dweller or any other threatening thing had, paradoxically, only made my nerves worse.
I could hear Sip and Lisabelle behind me as I took the stairs two at a time. Even as the chill breeze coming from behind me pushed at my back, I was relieved to leave the inky black of the catacombs.
“Not a fan of the catacombs?” Sip called. “We have to go back through this way.”
“It’s better than having knives pour down on our heads.”
“At least knives are creative,” I said. I got to the top door and shoved. “Where are we going to come out?” I panted. I put my shoulder down and shoved harder against the door. I felt the scrape of the wood through the fabric of my jacket, but the door didn’t budge.
“We’re going to come out in the maintenance shed next to Airlee,” said Sip proudly.
“There’s a maintenance shed next to Airlee?” Lisabelle asked, coming up to stand on my left.
“I’ll add a map to those books you aren’t going to read,” Sip muttered darkly.
“On three,” said Lisabelle to me, and we attacked the door together. It still refused to budge.
“Okay, on three again,” I gritted out, my teeth clenched.
Again we both pushed, and again it wouldn’t move.
“Nope,” said Lisabelle. “There’s something blocking it from the other side.”
Sip sniffed. “Do you smell that?” she asked. I could barely see her in the dim light, but I could just make out her head turning to look behind us, back down the inky stairwell the way we had come.
“I smell old wood and your sweat,” said Lisabelle, but her tone said that she wasn’t totally sure herself. I sniffed the air, but my sense of smell was nowhere near as good as a werewolf’s.
“It smells kind of like fire,” said Sip tensely. “So much burning.”
“Neither of us smells anything,” Lisabelle told her harshly. “We’re a little busy trying to get us out of here.”
“It’s a door,” said Sip. “How hard can it be to open?”
I sniffed the air again. “I smell it too,” I said. “The fire.”
Lisabelle paused mid-shove. She was preparing to use magic, which was a bad idea, because with magic we ran the risk of attracting attention that we didn’t want.
“I smell it now,” I whispered.
Faintly wafting through the air was the smell of smoke, and I had started to feel faint licks of heat touch my face and breeze past.
“So, about that door,” said Sip. She moved to stand between us, adding her shoulder to ours, but it was still no use. Sip coughed and pulled back, but Lisabelle didn’t let her go far.
“Get that door open,” Lisabelle commanded. “Or whatever is burning down there will incinerate us as well.”
The heat on my back was starting to pulse, making my shoulder blades hot. I glanced back. There was a faint orange glow coming from the base of the stairs, and the distant crackle of fire combined with our harsh breathing made an ominous duet.
“Charlotte, I’m going to blast it,” Lisabelle choked out before breaking off in a fit of coughing. The smoke was now so thick around us that I could barely see, and my lungs were filling with soot.
“No,” Sip hissed. “You can’t. They’ll hear.”
“They must already know,” Lisabelle shot back. Her eyes were red and bloodshot. “Why do you think the catacombs are burning?”
“I guess we might need a different escape route,” I said. “I have an idea.”
Wood was earth, right? Whatever was on the other side of the door was likely wood. An old table or set of chairs. Something. I called to my powers. I felt the mingled earthy brown, cool gray, hot red, and icy blue flow through my veins. They came together perfectly now, the textures melting seamlessly into one power source.
“Any time now,” Lisabelle gritted out. I had been so occupied combining the strands of my magic that I had forgotten about the real fire behind us. I opened my eyes to stinging, and quickly ordered my magic outward. Then I heard a blast, as Lisabelle cried out and everything went black.
Chapter Five
Sip curled into my side and whimpered. Her powers could do little against fire and locked doors; her best defense was her snarl. I slammed my powers backward and forward at the same time. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to do something or we were going to die there.
I felt the push against the fire and tasted the tangy salt of my own blood as I bit the inside of my lip in concentration. This was not a normal fire. It was laced with magic, but it moved so fast I couldn’t pinpoint what type of magic it was, only that it would be very hard to stop.
I pushed against the door, one . . . last . . . time . . . dropping my shoulder and putting my earth powers into my force.
It worked.
Barely.
The three of us tumbled forward. My energy spent, I couldn’t even catch myself as I fell.
Luckily, Lisabelle could. I felt her strong arms wrap around me, and the wand tattooed into her arm dug into my side and I gasped again, this time from the kiss of such powerful dark magic.
“Let’s keep it moving, paranormals,” Lisabelle rasped in my ear. I coughed, keeping my eyes tightly shut. I didn’t even have to wonder if Lisabelle had Sip. I was sure she had grabbed the werewolf first.
Lisabelle hauled us to our feet and dragged us through the door. I still hadn’t opened my eyes, so I couldn’t see where we were going. With the last bit of my strength I kept the fire at bay as we got out. On the other side of the open door it was now raging beyond any control.
I heard Lisabelle bang against something and felt the heat of her wand against my ribcage and the tug of her arms as she kept us moving forward. The crunch of grass under my feet was a welcome relief as cool air washed over my face. I couldn’t stay on my feet another second.
I collapsed. Then I heard another thud and assumed that Sip had done the same.
From somewhere above me I heard Lisabelle panting, and a little way away I could still hear the roar of the fire that had almost consumed us.
“You two okay?” Lisabelle said, her voice sounding thick from coughing.
“I’m fine,” I croaked, and almost giggled. I sounded like a frog.
“Yup,” Sip sighed. It sounded like she was lying face first in the grass, pressing her skin against the cool earth. I longed to do the same, but instead I forced myself to sit up and open my eyes. There was no guarantee that just because we had escaped the fire, we were safe.
I was in a familiar place, if not seeing it from a familiar direction. Normally I walked up to Airlee from the front, down the stone path that led right to the door, but we had come out of a shed that was placed on the back right side of the building.
“It’s totally dark,” I said with surprise. Not one light burned in Sip and Lisabelle’s dorm.
“Let’s get inside,” said Lisabelle quietly. “Maybe there are some answers in there.”
We worried about moving quietly, but as it turned out, there was no need. There was not a
nother soul in sight. Normally this late at night vampires would be floating around campus, the only students still awake, but this time there were none. It was now the dead of night, an early pre-dawn hour where everything was still black and nothing, not even the wind, stirred.
“Do you think the barrier alerted Dove and the others that there were intruders? And do you think they’ll know it’s us?” I said to Sip.
The werewolf shrugged. “I’m sure they saw it, but if they’re not here by now, maybe they just thought it was an animal or something. There’s no way they’d let us get this far.”
“Someone tried to kill us in the catacombs,” said Lisabelle. “It could have been them.”
Sip scoffed. “They would get in SO much trouble.”
“It’s pretty obvious that more and more paranormals are not worrying about that,” said Lisabelle dryly. My darkness friend had a point.
“Would either of you even burn if you were lit on fire?” Sip asked curiously. It was a strange question, and something I had been wondering about myself. Unfortunately, the test to find out was . . . hot.
“No,” said Lisabelle quietly.
“You know that for sure?” Sip said with surprise.
“Yes,” said Lisabelle, and her voice sounded distant, as if her mind was in a far-off place. “I’ll tell you the story sometime.”
“Just another relaxing bedtime story in the room of Sip and Lisabelle,” Sip said.
Lisabelle laughed softly. Knowing I had to get up, I dragged myself to my feet, checking for burns or other injuries. My shoulder throbbed and I had a feeling that when I looked at it later I would see the skin rubbed raw, and possibly several splinters that had made it through my clothing. My shirt and jeans were streaked with black soot or dirt - I couldn’t be sure which - and my eyes still burned a little from the smoke. Miraculously, I was otherwise unharmed.
Sip was in about the same shape. She was glaring down at herself, smoothing out her shirt and rubbing dirt off her sleeve.
“Any time now,” said Lisabelle. She had moved in front of us, heading for the locked back entrance of Airlee.
Elemental Fire (Paranormal Public Series) Page 4