If she wanted to divide it—safely—all she had to do was find the right frequency.
In the end, it was easy. The frequency was hers, the same one she used to break rock and bend the earth to her will on any normal day. Gia rolled her hands over the stone. When she removed them, there were four equal spheres.
Well, at least She hadn’t made it difficult. Not physically, at any rate.
Serin picked up a sphere. It flared and then quieted, pulsing gently.
“I think it likes you,” Daniel muttered.
“It has adapted.” The internal resonance pattern had altered slightly, tuning itself to Serin’s special frequency, the reverb of the aether she used to manipulate water.
“All right, so how do I do this?” she asked, looking to Gia for guidance.
“Wait. It’s still too big for Diana,” Alec protested.
Connell was overcome by a sudden coughing fit. Everyone but Logan glared at him until he turned his back, his shoulders shaking until he composed himself enough to rejoin the conversation.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Diana said, reaching out. Alec caught her hand, expression heart-wrenching.
“What if it were more than four pieces?” Daniel interjected quickly. “Would we explode if we had a piece inside us?”
“Uh… I have no clue,” Gia admitted. “Probably not.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Serin eyed her mate with concern.
“Why not? We’ve established that I can tap into your powers.”
“Wait, you can do what?” Connell asked.
At the same time, Alec made his own surprised exclamation.
“Anyway,” Daniel continued, ignoring the interruption. “That rock should be just as happy in me as it will be in you because we vibe on the same wavelength now, right?”
“Only one way to find out.” Gia took one sphere. With careful effort, she pinched it in two.
Daniel stepped in front of Serin, spreading his arms wide. “Okay, hit me.”
“It might actually be best if it were Serin first,” she said, handing her sister the two stones.
“Okay, how do I do this?” the Water Elemental asked.
“This is a bit complicated,” Gia began.
“We don’t have time for complicated,” Daniel said, plucking a stone out of Serin’s hand. At first, Gia though he was going to try to absorb it on his own, but he was simply making sure Serin was only holding one before he slammed his mate’s hand across his own chest.
Serin’s eyes widened. Her hand was flat across his rib cage. Daniel’s neck corded, but he instantly relaxed when Serin removed her hand. “That felt weird.”
“Are you all right? Do you feel it inside you?”
He shook his head. “It’s like nothing is there.”
“My turn.” Serin gripped the second stone in her hands. The sphere dissolved with a shimmer that ran up her arm, dissipating with a ripple of iridescence that reminded Gia of the sun setting over her favorite lake.
Logan and Connell were next. Gia pinched the remaining stones down their middles, and they each took one piece inside. Like Serin, both the Air Elemental and the shifter shimmered slightly.
Gia took her eighth next. The stone melted into her, attaching itself to her bones with barely a whisper.
There were three stones left.
Salvador met her eyes. “I understand if you don’t trust me enough for this. I can—”
Gia took a stone, unceremoniously slamming it into his chest. Gasping, he bent over.
She winced. “Sorry, that was a tad harder than I intended.”
He waved her concern away. “Not a problem,” he wheezed, managing to look inordinately pleased to be in pain.
“I should have asked first—you can’t go off with it. I’m afraid it can’t leave my side.” She held her breath as she waited for his response.
Salvador stared at her blankly for a second then broke out in a huge grin. “That won’t be a problem.”
A tight little knot inside her relaxed and she gave him a nod. There was a lot more to say…compromises would have to be made but that conversation would have to wait.
When Diana took the final two stones, Alec sucked in a ragged breath, holding her hands when she tried to press it against her ribs.
“Can we just hold off until the baby is born?” he asked, staying her hand.
Diana regarded him for a moment before nodding slowly. “What should we do with the extra in the meantime? Even an eighth could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands.”
The vampire held his arms out just like Daniel had. “Put it in me. It’s not like I’m using my organs. There’s room in there.”
“If you insist,” Diana said with a laugh. She pressed one stone in, then the other. This time, the shimmer reaction was much stronger.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Logan crowed, nearly beside herself. “He looks just like those sparkly vampires in that movie.”
Gia watched as the vampire stared down at his hands. Logan was right. He resembled something straight out of Twilight.
Alec raised his head, his face the picture of distress. “Please tell me this isn’t permanent.”
Gia couldn’t answer him. She was laughing too hard.
36
Should I try to kidnap one?
John stared at the blinking cursor on his tablet, trying to think of a scenario where he could grab one of the remaining Elementals and still live to tell the tale.
He couldn’t. Taking Gia by surprise had been a wonderful stroke of luck, but he didn’t think he would be so fortunate a second time. Even without witnesses to the actual event, the others would adapt. They would be wary of him now, and John knew one underestimated an Elemental at his own peril.
Since serendipity was not a solid battle plan, he had to come up with something else. It was time for some out-of-the-box thinking. He’d always excelled at that.
Setting his tablet down, he clapped his hands and stood. The door of his office led to a small gangway. Branching off to the left were stairs to the ground level of the vast one-room warehouse.
The building was a recent purchase, something made under one of his many aliases. His enterprise required space and privacy. No doubt the commercial real estate agent thought he was storing toxic waste here, but the premium he’d been paid would ensure his silence.
With satisfaction, John stared down at the rows of bright green barrels, but it only took a second for his enthusiasm to dim. Having so much of his potion on hand was like being all dressed up with nowhere to go.
He’d been searching for a way to Her for years. Decades, truthfully. Few of his contacts in the Supernatural world had known of the forgotten paths, and those who did hadn’t had a clue where to find one. Those Supes who might have had a prayer of such deep knowledge—the old witch houses and the Fae—they had shut him out. Repeatedly.
His fist tightened at the rail. That rejection would be their undoing. When he was done, all those self-satisfied Supes would be completely irrelevant. He just needed to figure out how to make a big splash because his plan B, trying to inject the liquid into the earth’s core blindly, clearly wasn’t going to work. Too haphazard.
John lifted his brows. His warehouse was on the outskirts of a large city. He could always introduce his concoction into the local water supply. Titrate it just so in the right amounts, and only the weakest of humans would be affected.
But the Supes? Their numbers would be devastated.
To make his effort worthwhile, it would have to be more than one city. How many could he hit without arousing suspicion?
The idea itself was simple. A municipality’s water supply was surprisingly vulnerable, but knowing when and where to drop his additive required extensive research and proper preparation. He had to hit the Supernaturals were it hurt.
But John was a consummate scholar. He had always excelled in his studies.
37
Daniel couldn’t believe his ears. He mo
tioned to Alec, who sat across the room at the wide oak table with a pile of books in front of him. “Was there an old guy with him?” he asked. “He would appear to be on the wrong end of his fifties, paunchy and bald?”
It had been weeks since the summit on the hill—at least, that was what he called it.
They were in Minneapolis at one of the vampire’s many apartments. He and Serin had met up with the Fire Elemental and her mate after discovering their parallel investigations had brought them within a couple of hundred miles of each other. They had met up at the posh penthouse to regroup and share notes, but the ladies had taken off to ‘do a circuit,’ which usually meant going to find random bad guys to beat up. It was an Elemental’s preferred method of blowing off steam.
Alec was on his feet now, but Daniel forestalled him when he started to ask a question.
His man at Homeland hadn’t had good news. “No one by that description,” Lester said. “The guys were local talent, and not the brightest bulbs either. Honestly, they’re just stupid kids pretending to be criminals. For fuck’s sake, they were hired off Craigslist. I know Bioterrorism wasn’t something on your list of weird things to search for, but there is a bunch of green goo—a barrel of it—and goo was on your list.”
“Hold the evidence and the kids, and do it quietly,” Daniel said, widely waving at the vampire. “I’m flying in ASAP with some consultants.”
He hung up, prepared to launch into an explanation, but Alec held up a hand, typing furiously with the other.
The vamp tapped his ear. “I heard everything. I’m pinging the girls and having the jet fueled.”
Daniel blinked. “You have a jet?”
“I have a few. Where are we headed?”
“Some no-name town in Colorado,” he replied, switching his phone to the map application to find the nearest airport.
He glanced up to find the vampire watching him intently.
“Where in Colorado?”
Gia kept her distance when the wolves opened the barrels.
“Be careful not to touch it,” Douglas Maitland growled at his men.
The instructions were a bit redundant, given that his wolves were in full hazmat gear. But she appreciated his concern for his people—and how he was reining in his temper at this attempt to poison his pack’s water supply.
She had thought he was more subtle than this. And less suicidal.
How had the alchemist found out about this well? Given the high concentration of shifters in the area, the Maitland compound and surrounding area were, by necessity, on the municipal grid, but what wasn’t common knowledge was they used two different wells as their primary water sources. One was very close to the main house. That one was too close to the inner sanctum, but the other was just inside the woods. Their existence and exact location weren’t public knowledge.
Daniel, their most experienced interrogator, had already spoken to the kids who were supposed to dump the barrels in the water purification plant, followed by the well. The pair hadn’t known who hired them, taking half the cash up front. They’d also been under strict instructions to wait for the last day of the month, but a video game tournament had conflicted, so they’d decided it wouldn’t hurt to do it early.
The three industrial-sized barrels of toxin were proof of how badly she had underestimated their adversary’s manufacturing capacity.
I should have known better. It would have taken a vast amount to rig up the sprinkler system the way he had in the castle ruins.
“I had no idea John could make this much,” Gia muttered, rubbing her head. She didn’t get headaches often, but her entire brain felt tight.
“I had no idea he had such brass balls,” Diana replied with a snort. “I definitely didn’t have this on my John-is-a-tool bingo card. Imagine thinking he could take on Douglas’ wolves.”
“You give him too much credit. He sent minions to do his dirty work, sneaking poison like this—it was a cowardly act.”
“But one with consequences,” Diana argued. “He has to know the Colorado pack won’t let this stand. There won’t be anywhere he can hide after this.”
“I don’t think he has any plans to hide at all. If these boys hadn’t been premature, we would have discovered that the month would have ended with a bigger bang.”
“You think he’s planning to hit more locations? Some sort of statement?”
She nodded. “Followed by a last stand.”
He’d have no choice. After attacking the wolves and Mother-knew-who-else, he would have to prepare for the end. And she knew better than anyone that a good defense was a good offense.
“Shit,” Diana muttered. “Where do we start?”
“Anyplace there are large concentrations of Supes. Minus the vampires. They wouldn’t drink the water. He will have figured out some other way of getting this crap to them.”
“Like an army with water pistols?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Diana twisted until she could see her, eyes wide. “Shit, really?”
“He’d want to do it up big. A battle—after our numbers are decimated—would be the biggest bang he could think of.”
“Well, shit.”
“Can you burn the liquid? Or will the fumes do us in?”
“As far as we know, they don’t have any effect,” Diana said. “So, we won’t need to keep our distance when I torch it.”
“Good.” Gia nodded, then sighed.
“What’s on your mind, toots?” Diana asked, studying her from the corner of her eye.
Gia sucked in her lip, chewing on it. It was a childhood habit she’d stopped doing long ago. “We got lucky this time. We owe this opportunity to Serin’s man Daniel and his human methods of investigation. For too long, we’ve depended on the Mother to determine when and where to act. But She’s not here to guide our hands anymore. In fact, I think we handicapped ourselves by following Her directives so blindly.”
Diana frowned. “That’s harsh. And inaccurate. We follow the shifts in the balance. By and large, it’s a method that still works.”
“It does, and it doesn’t. We’ve known the system is faulty for a while now. How else could John continue to hide from us?”
“Cause he’s a sneaky-ass alchemist using our own secrets against us?”
Gia pursed her lips. “Regardless, we have to start doing the legwork. Calling in favors among our people—in addition to checking human businesses like storage places and private security firms.”
“I hate mercs,” Diana grumbled. “I swear they get more ugh with every generation. Give me a good old-fashioned Hessian, Sleepy-Hollow-style, any day.”
“Bite your tongue,” Gia chided. “You’re not old enough to have fought a Hessian, so I’ll overlook your ignorance on this matter. The modern ones are much easier to deal with.”
“But as plentiful as fleas on a rat,” Diana pointed out. “And they’ll be armed with those toxin-tainted bullets.”
“Yeah, we’re going to have to think about some kind of deterrent for that. In the meantime, we need to search for spaces where John can make and store large volumes of his poison—storage units in manufacturing districts and the like. And start canvasing the modern-day mercenary companies. Humans sell those services out in the open these days. That should be to our advantage.”
“I’ll put Daniel and Alec on that,” her sister promised. “We’re going to need all hands on deck.”
Gia nodded, watching Salvador bend over one of the barrels.
“Maybe keep some of it?” he suggested, having overheard the entire exchange. “I’m also going to need access to Alec’s suppliers.”
“What are you thinking?”
Salvador scratched his nose, then took out a notepad. “It won’t be easy. With some help, I can work up more of the antidote I developed for you. Maybe we can even tweak it to make up a pre-inoculation that would confer immunity.”
Gia was intrigued. “You think that’s possible?”
“I
won’t know until I try,” he said, staring at the barrels. He touched a spot on his chest, right over where she’d shoved the trigger stone, and rubbed absently. It was his new favorite unconscious mannerism. “It will be a challenge. But consider me motivated.”
38
Douglas pulled on a shirt, then ran downstairs. He’d been shoring up the pack’s defenses last night. He had ended up crashing just after dawn, intending to get at least a few hours of shut-eye. However, knocking on the door had woken him after forty minutes, and he was not happy.
He tugged too hard, swearing when a button popped off his flannel shirt. It went rolling down the stairs ahead of him. Apparently, for once in his life, the house was empty of other wolves.
What the hell are they doing? There were at least half-a-dozen wolves in residence, including Mara, his daughter and fill-in enforcer while his son Connell was away.
Of all the days for her to get an early start—but then, that wasn’t generous of him. Mara was taking the pack’s security seriously, and he couldn’t fault her for that.
The pack had been readying for battle for days. The compound was heavily fortified, but once his wolves had discovered the incursion on the water supply, they had redoubled their efforts, going over every inch of their territory in search of weaknesses.
The warriors of his pack were getting ready. Once Diana and Gia had raised the possibility that this John character meant to raise an army against them, the Colorado Basin Pack had volunteered to stand at their back. Whatever he threw their way, they would be ready to tear down.
That so-called alchemist had struck at their home. For that reason alone, he deserved to die. But securing the compound came first. They had to be sure their children and more vulnerable members—those too young or too old to fight—would be protected in their absence.
The knock sounded again, and Douglas tried to tamp down his annoyance. They were in Defcon one, so whoever this was had passed their security checkpoints. Douglass knew it wasn’t one of his wolves. None would have knocked, which could only mean one thing. It was the witch.
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