The Elementals Collection

by L. B. Gilbert

  Voices came from the back corner of the apartment, but she wasn’t concerned with the vamp and his servant right now. Turning away from the voices she crossed the central living area. Instinct guided her to the room at the end of the hallway off the living room. The door swung wide on silent hinges.

  Toys were neatly arranged in shelves, and unlike the furniture in the living room, most of it looked fairly new. The bed had sheets with the Cars characters.

  It was the room of a happy and well-loved little boy. Diana sat on the bed and closed her eyes, holding a stuffed cartoon turtle. She focused her mind, searching through the signatures of the people who’d been in this room. Alec and a human who was probably his servant were the last. Farther back in time there was another human man. Presumably Pedro, the father. She went further back, trying to find the last time the boy was in this room.

  There you are. And not alone. A woman had been in this room. This was where the boy had been taken from. Was it a babysitter? She didn’t think so. The boy didn’t seem to know this woman. She could see the scene playing in reverse as the woman knelt by the bed, trying to coax the little boy-shape into taking her hand.

  Diana went back as far as she could to see if the woman had been there before, but whatever images she could retrieve were too unclear. She turned toward the door, not really surprised to find Alec standing there.

  “What is the boy’s name?” she asked.

  “Elias,” he said evenly, pronouncing it with a Mexican accent. “When did you get here? I didn’t hear you come in.”

  But you still knew I was here. Hmm.

  She shrugged. “I came early. I wanted to see his room alone. How is the father?” she asked, rising from the bed.

  “The same, I think. He recognizes me now. But he still doesn’t respond well to strangers,” Alec said by way of warning. “Do you want me to bring him in here?”

  “No. This may be too much for him,” she said, gesturing to the room.

  “Can you use any of the little boy’s possessions to find him? I had a witch scry with some of his toys as aids, but they didn’t get anything,” he said.

  “No. It doesn’t work that way. Children aren’t traceable. The innocent aren’t. Is the father in the kitchen?”

  “Yes. We sometimes have to remind him to eat. He’s…not improving.”

  “Let’s go,” she said, waving him in front of her.

  She followed him out through the bright sunny living room, its warm and inviting atmosphere striking a discordant note to the grim mood.

  Alec pushed open a cream-colored swinging door, revealing an equally pleasant sunlit kitchen. It was cheerful and welcoming despite the second-hand furniture and chipped paint on the windowsill. Inside was a short and stocky muscular man wearing a tracksuit. He was in his late thirties or early forties with salt and pepper hair. Daniel, presumably.

  He was leaning over a dark little man with a heavily lined face and vacant expression sitting at the kitchen table. Daniel looked up as they entered and shifted to one side to give them room. He wasn’t what she expected.

  Most vampires picked their human servants for their looks, and they almost always dressed nearly as well as their employers. It was a point of pride with vamps. Their servants were a reflection of themselves, and image was everything. She would bet good money that his mother’s servant Dietrich wouldn’t be caught dead in a tracksuit.

  Diana turned her attention to the room and the man who had so clearly loved his son. There were signs of the boy here, too. Child-sized cups and plates with cartoon designs. But they were dirty and shoved to the side of the counter. The regular plates were clean and put away, but a cartoon cup was lying on the floor in the corner unnoticed. The rest of the room was clean. Only the things that had belonged to his son were soiled. It was like Pedro couldn’t see them anymore. She was glad Daniel had been wise enough to leave things be.

  It had to be a black spell. Only strong black magic would be able to wipe a person from another’s memory. The effort to wipe a child from his father’s mind had to be herculean. Parental bonds were usually the strongest, though there were always exceptions.

  Alec stepped toward Pedro. He leaned down, placing a reassuring hand on the unresponsive man’s shoulder. “I have a visitor for you, Pedro.” He gestured to Diana standing behind him. “Her name is. . .”

  She scowled at him, but Alec didn’t blink.

  “It’s Diana,” she said grudgingly.

  He rewarded her with a dazzling smile and turned to Pedro. “Pedro, this is Diana. She’s here to help,” he said confidently.

  “Wait outside,” she said, piqued that he’d gotten her name out of her.

  Alec gave her a resigned look but left with Daniel without protest. Diana knelt at Pedro’s side. He didn’t turn to look at her. Reaching out, she took his hand. He turned in her direction with eyes that couldn’t focus.

  Then he started to scream.

  9

  Alec and Daniel rushed back into the room, but Diana waved them away. She caught Pedro’s flailing hands with one of hers and used the other to tilt Pedro’s head toward her, forcing eye contact.

  The second his bloodshot brown eyes met her clear green ones, he stopped struggling and quieted down. From the corner of her eye, she saw Alec and Daniel exchanging a look, but she ignored them and waited until they slipped back out of the kitchen before closing her eyes, focusing on the spell surrounding Pedro.

  It was like an octopus—its sticky tendrils threaded in and out of Pedro’s aura with a tenacious hold. It wasn’t strictly a witch’s spell. Traces of something else were weaved into the fabric. She’d never seen anything like it.

  It was clear that the spell was failing, too. From what she could tell, it was supposed to remove specific memories and nothing more. But it was killing Pedro, cracking his aura like weeds could break up concrete. Or it would if she didn’t remove it.

  With a deep breath that did nothing to relieve the weight on her shoulders, she took hold of the spell and started peeling it back from his body, slowly working each individual tentacle away as carefully as she could. She didn’t want to damage what was left of Pedro’s aura.

  It took a long time.

  When she was done, she gathered the remnants of the spell in her hands, pulling it up and away from Pedro. He slumped over slightly as he was released, and she stood, staring down at her hands for a second. A black oily substance covered them, one that a normal person couldn’t see. It squirmed and stretched toward her like a living thing trying to find a new host. But she was outside its reach. Unnerved, she called the fire and burned it away.

  “Was that it? The black spell?” Alec was in the doorway again.

  So much for Elementals and witches being the only ones to sense spells. . .

  “Do you actually see it or simply feel it?” he asked, the curiosity clear in his voice.

  “Do you see it or just feel it?” she countered, not really comfortable revealing any details about herself.

  “I. . .feel spells. But not the way you seem to. Not as a tangible thing I can hold or touch,” Alec replied.

  Well, so much for keeping secrets around observant bloodsuckers.

  When she didn’t elaborate, he gave up on an answer and instead asked, “Will he be better now?”

  Pedro was unconscious now, slumped in his chair with most of his weight on the table.

  “I’m not a healer, Alec,” Diana replied as she checked Pedro’s vital signs. “The spell was killing him. I had to remove it. But he won’t be the same. The damage to his psyche was extensive. He will start remembering what he lost. But probably not everything.”

  For a long moment, Alec looked at her.

  “What?” she asked stiffly. The way he stared at her was really starting to get on her nerves.

  “Thanks for doing whatever you could,” he said simply.

  She ignored him and turned to Pedro. “He’ll sleep for hours.”

  “Daniel will stay w
ith him,” he said.

  She simply humphed in response, but couldn’t help thinking that any normal vamp would wash their hands of it now, reparations made. Most would weasel their way out of anything that smacked of responsibility.

  Daniel came back from the living room and walked to Pedro, who was now sprawled across the table. He checked for a pulse. Diana gave him a reproving look, and the stocky man grinned at her sheepishly, revealing several good teeth and a few gold ones.

  Weird ass choice for a vampire servant. Daniel picked up Pedro easily and walked back out of the kitchen.

  “Where did you find Daniel?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

  “He’s from Brooklyn, a former mobster but pretty low level,” Alec said.

  Diana lifted an eyebrow.

  “He was too decent to get very far up in the organization. I gave him a better alternative,” Alec said, answering her unasked question.

  Diana pursed her lips and cocked a hip. “Do your parents know about him?”

  Alec smiled slightly and said, “I think you already know the answer. He doesn’t fit with the general image of a coven’s servus. But he is loyal, and I have several servants outside the coven hierarchy. It’s not uncommon.”

  Diana’s only response was to lift the other eyebrow for a moment before her face turned serious. “I’ll be back tomorrow to talk with Pedro once he’s rested. You don’t need to be here if Daniel agrees to watch him. Consider your debt paid.”

  Alex stiffened. “My house’s debt will not be paid until the children are found.” His voice was firm. “Even if they are no longer among the living. I will help you search for them.”

  It sounded more like a command than an offer.

  Diana bristled. “That’s taking your responsibility a bit far. And we don’t let outsiders into our investigations,” she said in a cold, flat voice.

  He gave her a little smile. “You sound like a soldier,” he replied in a softer voice.

  “I am a soldier.”

  “Well, I’m a scholar of some renown. I’ve done a lot of research on black rites. I could be helpful,” Alec added.

  Diana narrowed her eyes, shifting her body weight so that her position was a touch more menacing. “And just why do you know so much about black magic?”

  “It’s not what you think. I’ve studied black circles because I’ve run into them before. Well, truthfully, it was one wannabe circle and a genuine one. But afterwards I worked up a summary of them, something akin to an anthropological study,” he continued. “You’ve already noted that this circle seems to operate outside normal bounds. I could offer some useful insights.”

  Diana tried to take the offer seriously. She knew plenty about the top magic families. Probably a lot more than he did, but they weren’t dealing with someone familiar. Which meant her target hadn’t grown up in one of the families trained in the history and proper use of magic.

  Someone who had grown up with that background wouldn’t have done that to Pedro. The spell was powerful but clumsy. It only partly worked because of the raw power behind it—not the finesse and skill with which it had been applied.

  The spellcaster could be someone who had been banished from one of the family circles early in their training. Or it could be a remnant—one of those humans who was spontaneously able to work magic. They were usually so distantly related to a magical line that the family itself was unaware of the connection. Otherwise they were required to monitor them according to the rules of the covenant. One of those remnants could have pieced together some twisted version of spell craft through trial and error. There were enough books filled with half-truths about magic that had leaked into the human world.

  “A wannabe circle?” she asked eventually.

  Alec took the chair Pedro had just vacated, while Diana leaned on the counter, arms crossed below her chest.

  “It was the first one, close to two centuries ago. The village elders of this little town in southern England had acquired these fake spell books. They thought they could summon a demon to do their bidding and give them riches.”

  “What did you do?” Diana asked.

  “I. . .um. . .I pretended to be the demon,” he said, grimacing minutely.

  Diana burst out laughing before she could stop herself. The vampire blushed. A real honest-to-god blush.

  “I know it was pretty silly. I was still relatively young, on the Grand Tour with some friends. I stumbled across this group by chance and decided to teach them a lesson,” he said, sitting up a little straighter.

  “How?” she asked, still amused but trying to hide it.

  “Scared them straight basically. I made them do silly rituals involving nudity. They were all middle-aged and rather portly. They ran around in the woods naked to commune with the dark forces. I also made them give away their money to the poor.”

  “Wasn’t that supposed to be the other way around?”

  “Yes, but I convinced them that the spirits would multiply a thousand fold whatever they gave away. None of the poor children in that town starved that year.” His smile faded slightly. “I learned a few had died the year before. The crops were blighted. And those rich bastards let them go hungry.”

  Alec’s expression became grim and forbidding, and for the first time, she could see him for the truly powerful vampire scion that he was.

  “So what did you do to them in the end?” Diana was careful to keep an even expression to avoid betraying her curiosity.

  “I bankrupted them. I tricked and threatened, and they did as my demon alter ego demanded. Then I exposed them to the town as devil worshipers by pretending to be the devil myself. One of my friends helped me with a costume and some special effects,” he said, his eyes lightening in remembrance. “After that, we got the hell out of there, with the only genuine spell book they had. I didn’t think they deserved to keep it. It’s still part of my collection. No one has ever tried to claim it,” he said.

  “And the genuine circle?” she asked.

  His expression shifted from serious to apprehensive. “That was almost a hundred years later. And it wasn’t an accident that I found it. I met a warlock, a scholar in Prague with whom I had a lot in common. He must have known I was a vampire. I thought he was simply a normal warlock at first. My radar has gotten a lot better since then. It took me months of correspondence and a few meetings before I realized he was a black magic practitioner.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I had begun to suspect he was hiding something, but I didn’t know what it was. I had traveled to visit him that winter. He was excited to have another scholar visit. He welcomed me into his home, and at the end of my stay, he invited me to observe a secret rite, unbeknownst to the rest of his circle. I hid in the upper story of this old manor house at the edge of town until the members of the circle came in and did their rite. That’s when I realized what he was.”

  “What did you think of him before that?” she asked, curious about his impression of the man before he revealed his dark secret.

  He pursed his lips and lifted a shoulder. “He was my friend, a fellow scholar. But what I saw that night changed everything. I cut off contact and left town. I was still trying to decide what to do when I got word that he and his circle had been killed in a terrible storm.”

  Ah yes. The previous Air Elemental’s handiwork.

  Alec gave her a steady look. “That’s when I found out that your kind wasn’t a myth.”

  “Is that right?” Her tone made it clear that it wasn’t a question.

  He nodded. “I had to go back and find out what happened—if the circle had done something that caused a major accident or if they were taken out by something worse. Everyone knew the myths about your kind. I needed to know if their deaths were of their own doing or. . .an execution.”

  Diana stared at him impassively.

  “It wasn’t you, was it? With the storm. I figured it was an Air Elemental,” he said, leaning forward slightly.


  “That was a billion years ago. How old do you think I am?” Diana said with a frown.

  But it wasn’t because she was insulted. It was because Alec knew too much. Elementals were not immortal. It was one reason their enemies found the courage to sometimes defy them. But what wasn’t commonly known was that they could be very long lived. As long as they were in service to the Mother, they didn’t age. When they were ready to move on or settle down aging resumed and they lived far quieter lives. Most. . .not all.

  In any case, Diana was only a decade off her age in appearance. Vampires also enjoyed a suspended period of aging but after eight or so centuries they aged slowly but steadily. Some even made it to a millennium.

  “You look very young, but that means little. Take myself for example. Do I look two hundred and fifty-six years old?” he asked with a wave at himself.

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  Alec paused, his face falling a little.

  “Oh.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at his disappointment. “I’m an Elemental in service to the Mother. I can tell how old a vampire is. Part of the job,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Of course it is. . .that makes sense. You would totally be able to do that,” he said, clearing his throat as he rose.

  “And no, it wasn’t me in Prague. Or any of the current Elementals. Just in case you were itching to avenge your friend,” Diana warned quietly.

  Alec scowled, offended. “I wouldn’t do that. I know what he was and what he was doing. Avenging someone like him would be wrong.” He walked to the swinging door to the living room and pushed it open. “And I still want to help you.”

  She followed him out of the kitchen, trying to decide what to do with him. For a vampire, he wasn’t so bad. But there were aspects of this case she needed to handle on her own.

  “Maybe sometime. . .in the next century,” Diana said with what was, for her, surprising diplomacy before heading for the door.