elemental 05 - inferno (3 page)

“So you may not know what the situation is for sure,” Aira said, reaching for her soap and a wash cloth. “But what do you suspect Alex did?” 

Dylan shrugged. “I think there’s something to the poison he gave you that’s making it linger.” He licked his lips, glancing away from Aira and then meeting her gaze. “It’s also possible that the lingering water energy in you, from your grandmother, is helping your body retain the earth energy.” 

Aira lathered the soap and started slowly rubbing the washcloth all over her upper body. It felt good to get clean; she would have preferred a shower, but she would have to wait until she could actually stand on her own. For now, the bath was safer.

“How does that work?” She asked, wrinkling her brow as she slid back down into the water to rinse the suds from her chest and arms. 

Dylan made a face, twisting his lips and looking at her with sympathy in his eyes. “Earth and water energies combine well. Water dissolves earth from a magical perspective, so there’s a possibility the poison was meant to kill you outright and your grandmother’s energy diluted it, but water also holds onto earth, absorbs it.” 

Aira considered that explanation. It made sense; she brought her feet up out of the water and scrubbed them, moving up to her legs meditatively. She hated having to do everything so slowly—she wished she could move with her usual brisk pace, but she also knew she would exhaust herself if she did.

“So we need to get the water energy out of me,” she said. 

Dylan nodded slowly. “I think so. I just don’t know how we do that.” Aira sighed and submerged her face and head in the water fully, closing her eyes. She came up and Dylan handed her the shampoo bottle from the other side of the bath. 

“I don’t have any control over my abilities, Dylan. I don’t know how we’re going to do everything we need to do in the next three days.” 

Dylan gave her a sympathetic smile. “You’ve been through difficult things before. You’ll get through this. We’ll figure out what’s going on, and we’ll get you well again.” Aira began to lather her hair, trying not to wonder what Aiden was doing with his time. He had said he was going to finally get a shower, since she was in decent enough shape and under supervision. 

The weakness from the poison was easily noticeably and barely held at bay, the awareness of it brought Aira’s tired mind to settle on Alex with anger. What had he been thinking? She dunked herself back under the water to rinse her hair, her resentment growing with every moment she thought about what he had done to her. She was determined that no matter what else happened, she was going to make sure he died.

Aira finished her bath and Dylan helped her out of the water, wrapping a towel around her and guiding her into her bedroom. She managed to dry off and pull on some clothes before sitting down at her desk while she slowly pulled a comb through her hair. Aira sighed, feeling the fatigue deep in her bones, a lethargy worse than any illness she’d ever experienced. Her anger at Alex was simmering in her blood, keeping her alert in a way that Dylan’s potion couldn’t manage. 

“You should eat something, and drink some more potion,” Dylan said, watching her closely. 

Aira nodded. “I feel like we need to hurry up and get to the place they’re keeping Alex at and beat the crap out of him until he tells us everything.” 

Dylan chuckled. “Well, that makes two votes for beating the crap out of him.” 

Aira stood slowly, putting the comb down and twisting her hair into a bun that she confined to the base of her skull with an elastic. She raised an eyebrow. “Who’s the other?” she asked. 

Dylan smiled slightly. “If you don’t kill Alex, Aiden will. He might not even give you a chance to, in fact.” 

Aira rolled her eyes. “He’d ruin his life if he did that. As much as I’m sure Aiden is angry, I can’t imagine him being so lost to his own self-interest to do that.” 

Dylan gave her a long, steady look. “I think you underestimate just how much Aiden is professionally and personally offended by what Alex did.” Aira would have asked him to clarify the remark, but Dylan stood quickly, offering her his arm. “Let’s get some food in you,” he said cheerfully, leading her out of her bedroom.

Aiden was sitting at the kitchen bar, his hair wild from being tousled dry, and Aira noticed he had taken time to shave too. There was something strange about him; Aira shook the half-formed thought off and moved to sit down as Dylan went to the fridge. 

“What do you feel like eating?” he asked her, looking over his shoulder. 

Aira shrugged.

“I know that I should eat but I don’t really feel hungry,” Aira replied, trying not to look at Aiden again. Something about his energy, about his presence, was so attractive to her—more than it had been since they had slept together. Aira took a deep breath as covertly as possible, trying to get rid of the feeling. She had to stay focused. 

“Make her some scrambled eggs and toast,” Aiden suggested. He glanced at Aira. “Trust me, you’ll enjoy this.” Aira glanced from Aiden to Dylan, confused. She realized that Dylan had never made her scrambled eggs in the entire time she’d known him. 

“You’re still going on about that?” Dylan said with pretend exasperation. He retrieved eggs from the fridge and moved to the stove. 

Aiden snickered.

“Okay, so what am I missing here?” Aira asked, looking at both men. 

Dylan sighed though he was still smiling.

“When we were teenagers, we were trying to make breakfast for our mom, and it…well, it was interesting,” Dylan explained. 

“Dylan nearly burned the eggs,” Aiden added.

“But I didn’t burn them. They were still perfectly edible.” 

Aira found herself smiling in spite of her fatigue and weakness.

“Remember, bro: milk in the eggs
before
you put them in the pan.” 

Dylan made a growling sound and moved to the fridge, opening the door and reaching for the carton of milk. Aiden laughed. 

“Dylan tried to pour the milk into the eggs when they were already cooking because he’d forgotten it.”

“Shut up.” Dylan tried to sound mad though Aira saw his shoulders shaking with laughter. Soon the kitchen was full of the aroma of eggs and toast cooking and moments later Aira had a huge plate of breakfast in front of her. She realized abruptly that she had no idea what time of day it even was.

“I probably should have asked this before but, what time is it?” she asked. 

Dylan, digging a fork into his own eggs, smiled.

“It’s about noon. There’s plenty of time left in the day to get to where the elders are holding Alex and drag the information out of him.” 

Aira nodded and began to eat. 

C
HAPTER
3

TENSION FILLED EVERY SPACE IN the car as they made their way to the location where Alex was being held. Aiden was full of rage and Aira’s energy was volatile, barely reined in by her will and an extra dose of Dylan’s potion. Dylan could feel the car shuddering, barely kept on track by Aiden’s efforts as the wind battered it while they drove along the Interstate. Dylan wasn’t sure whether he should try to relax the tension in the vehicle or let it stand as it was. 

“What do we know, if anything?” Aira asked abruptly, turning her attention from the scenery outside to Dylan. 

He shrugged. “We know the poison Alex used had to have come from someone else—someone who could tolerate earth-aligned materials. He couldn’t have made it; it would have poisoned him in the process.” Dylan had been giving the situation more thought. Their initial focus had been on taking care of Aira, trying to rouse her from the grip of whatever Alex had given her. She had rattled off some of the ingredients—the ones Alex had told her about—before succumbing to the poison, but the combination used, on its own, didn’t explain why it was lingering in her system.

Aiden and Dylan had differing theories as to why that was the case. Aiden thought there had to have been magic incorporated in the potion—that it likely had a delay on its effects or a magical element that changed the potency. But that didn’t make sense to Dylan; why would Alex want Aira incapacitated but not dead? She couldn’t possibly save his life if she were taken out of contention, and poisoning her had brought about his downfall. Dylan was convinced that there was more at play in the poison but that its lingering effects were brought about by the secondary energy Aira had taken on from her grandmother.

He considered the strange incident of when he had come home from getting the items he had needed to make the counter-potion. Aiden had been fast asleep, pressed against Aira on the couch. Something about that contact had done something for Aira, starting the process of bringing her out of the depths of the poison, something the two doses of his potion had managed to improve upon. Even at that, Dylan wasn’t sure how much longer Aira would be able to keep going. The strengthening brew wasn’t a specific cure for the poison in her system. Full of air-aligned ingredients, combined in such a way to balance the unstable nature of air energy, the potion could improve Aira’s strength and her energy, but it couldn’t expel the poison itself, as evidenced by the fact that she was still weak in spite of its influence. Dylan considered the fact that Aira was so unstable, so powerful, and yet not able to fully control herself when it came to her elemental alignment; he thought of the strong flow of energy between her and his brother—things he knew about both of them that he wasn’t sure either of them knew about themselves or each other.

There were complicated problems at play, Dylan reminded himself that they needed to solve one problem before they worked on the bigger ones. Get Aira well and then he would have plenty of time to sort out the situation between his brother and her. If they couldn’t get her well enough to perform the next phase of her trials so that she had a fighting chance to become the ruler of her element, then it wouldn’t matter what he understood or knew about the two of them. 

“So, since we know Alex can’t be acting alone,” Aiden said, merging into a lane with faster-moving cars, “One of the things we need to figure out is who he’s working with—and why they wanted you dead.” 

Dylan nodded, and Aira shrugged.

“Seems like everyone wants me either dead or married to them,” she said in a resigned tone. 

Dylan grimaced, relaxing back in his seat. The poison was affecting her psyche as well as her body and elemental energy. Aira had been—for the entire time he had known her at least—optimistic in a certain way; not always bubbly, but determined and self-willed. Since she had come out of the semi-coma she had been in, she had been plagued by doubts. This new mentality was slowing her down, depressing her mind; the poison was making it harder for her to take positive action she could feel confident in. She needed to be cured of the residual poison generally before it drove Aira insane. It was bad enough that she had a kind of inherent instability to her nature; making it worse with the poison was a recipe for disaster. Dylan’s brotherly feeling toward Aira made the thought of her being put to death too much for him to tolerate.

*

They arrived at the location where the elders were holding Alex not far from the courthouse that they were using for conducting the trials for the new ruler of air elementals—but this place was much more heavily guarded. Dylan was affected by the power resonating in the building as he, Aiden, and Aira approached it. He knew it might be difficult to get Alex alone; they would have to make some kind of arrangement. Aira had taken another dose of the potion and Dylan could see her struggling to regain control over the wind blowing through the trees, focusing her mind on her abilities and essential energy. He remembered her doubt when it came to her usefulness in getting information out of Alex; she wasn’t sure she was capable of using any of her abilities at all—even the most useful one, her ability to compel. But having her there nonetheless wasn’t an option. He and Aiden couldn’t exactly leave her alone in the apartment, and they might both be needed to get the right information out of their target. Aira gestured for Dylan and Aiden to fall in behind her; she had come up with the strategy to use.

“I’m here to speak with Alex,” Aira said to the men guarding the entrance of the building. “I am sure if you ask someone, you’ll find that there’s no reason to bar me—I’m supposed to be executing him in a couple of days.” The men glanced at each other and one of them reached out with his mind—Dylan recognized the abstract look on his face—to communicate with someone telepathically. Dylan mentally applauded the council for having telepathic guards. It was a shrewd move overall; radios could be interfered with, phones could be broken, but short of killing a person or knocking them unconscious, you couldn’t block their telepathy.

Dylan had a small amount of the ability—he could perceive emotions and thoughts from others, thanks to the inheritance of his water energies. To a smaller degree, with people he knew very well—such as his brother—he could communicate basic impulses but not language. Aiden had suggested that if Dylan and Aira could put their separate elementally-aligned talents together, they would make a formidable telepathic team. They had never had a chance to try it, with things as unsettled as they had been—and if they didn’t get through this, they never would. 

“You’re Aira. Who are these two?” Aira glanced casually at Dylan and Aiden and shrugged.

“They’re my bodyguards. My grandmother instituted them shortly before I came into my full abilities, and they’re continuing to serve me while I stand in contention.” The guard nodded curtly to his partner, and they stepped aside, allowing the three to pass through the entrance. Relief washed over Dylan, but at the same time he was more tense than he had been before. Had they been denied entrance into the building, that would have been an end to it, but now they would have to find Alex’s holding cell and interrogate him without anyone else finding out what they were doing. They turned a corner down the hall and Aira stopped him. 

“Give me another dose of the potion,” she said urgently. Dylan looked at her sharply. She shouldn’t need the potion yet—she had been able to walk just fine, no sign of fatigue or weakness on her.