elemental 07 - lonely hunger (6 page)

“What do you think about this Leigh person?” Aiden asked her. He knew that Aira had been thinking about the spy—the woman who had approached Dylan and told him outright that she was reporting back to her family about himself and Aira. She had kept her thoughts largely to herself—which was strange, considering how closely bonded they were. But Aiden knew that part of what was keeping Aira up at night was worry over whether there was something there—whether Dylan was becoming a weak link in their team due to his reliance on his judgment of the earth-aligned elemental. 

“Well,” Aira said, gesturing for him to finish off the last of the potion Dylan had brewed for him. “If she’s not directly involved—and so far it doesn’t seem like it, but you never know—then there’s something about her that this group wants. She knows something, or has something.” Aira twisted her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger slowly. “Months ago, I would have said that I trust Dylan’s judgment completely.” 

Aiden smiled wryly.

“Yeah. Of the three of us, he’s definitely the most stable. He doesn’t seem easy to sway; but I wonder what it is about this woman that blew him away so much.” Aiden couldn’t quite resist the urge to reach out and lay his hand on Aira’s knee. He felt the whisper-fine flow of her energy seeping into him, bolstering and improving the efforts of the potion. He smiled to himself at the familiar sensation; the cell he had been in—the one designed to keep Oriel contained—had been misery for him, and he thought back to their interrogation of Alex, the way that Aira had somehow managed to hold herself upright in spite of both the vibrations of earth-aligned materials and the poison working away at her.

“It’s pretty clear that he’s partial to her,” Aira agreed. She hesitated a moment. “Do you think…could she be like Dolores and Alex were—at least originally? They certainly put some kind of voodoo on both of us.” Aiden considered it.

“Dylan said that she refused to sleep with him, that she said she’d just come into her full powers as an elemental. If she was trying to get an ‘in’ then she would have gone for it, wouldn’t she?” Aira shrugged. “I guess anything’s possible. But for right now the evidence is not exactly stacked against her.”

“I guess you’re right,” Aira said. “Do you want anything to get the taste of that out of your mouth? If we can’t do anything until we’re able to break through the tracking block, I might as well be useful somehow.” Aiden laughed.

“Dylan might want something to eat, too,” Aiden pointed out. He handed Aira the mug that had held the potion his brother made him and sat back; he was only slightly less inclined to sit and wait than the woman he had married. Aira went into the kitchen and he listened idly as she began to work on something—smells of onions and garlic came to him, along with cooking meat and spices, after a few minutes. He had no idea what she was making, but it would almost certainly be delicious. Aiden let his mind drift; it was rare that he had nothing to do, and he tried to appreciate the novelty of it, but it grated at his need to be active.

Dylan’s situation was troubling him. From almost the moment that he had told Aiden and Aira about the spy at their wedding, Dylan had been eager to vindicate the woman. When the search started for the elementals involved in the attack on the hotel, and it became clear that Leigh was missing, Aira had told Dylan firmly that if she was willing to admit to being a spy, she might be much more than that. The attack had shaken Aira more than Aiden had seen anything affect her in the time that he had known her. When she had been in contention to become the ruler of her element, and had been under attack, it had been easy for her to shrug off the threat. But the fact that these people were willing to attack other air elementals just to get at her—that innocents had died simply because a group of earth and fire elementals didn’t like the way she was conducting her rule—had been so much bigger. “I can’t stand the fact that I know they’ll probably attack again,” Aira had said. “If we can’t find them and start dismantling their little group, then they’ll relax and plan their next attack.”

At first Aiden had mostly been consumed with annoyance that the attack had necessitated putting all of his plans with Aira on hold; it was a petty reaction, he knew. But he had been looking forward to the time away from politics and power, a few weeks where he could spend all the time he wanted with Aira without worrying about the next crisis to come up. He wanted more than just the passionate sex that the small vacation offered; he wanted the chance to cement his relationship with her beyond their mutual interests and the bond that tied them together. He wanted to talk about their future. But the attack, in the middle of the night, before they had even been able to board their plane to get to the secluded location they had booked, meant that any conversation they might have about their future was put on indefinite hold. They had been in crisis mode ever since, waiting for another attack. It had been less than a week. The group could target more air elementals at any moment.

Aiden’s thoughts jumped from his feeling of resentment for the deprived opportunity to have Aira completely and totally to himself and back onto his brother. Aira was right that it was strange for Dylan to have been so heavily impressed with anyone he encountered. Dylan had always been the cool-headed one of the three of them. He had been able to mostly see through Alex and Dolores from the beginning, though he had reserved judgment to make sure of his impression. He had the ability to read people, much more than Aira could; the watery energy that made up his brother’s essence gave him a natural telempathy, a perceptive quality that led less-stable water elementals to manipulate others. Dylan was not easily swayed, not easily tricked into throwing his allegiance with someone. The fact that Leigh had apparently managed to convince him that she was not the type of person who would participate in such an attack—in spite of her allegiances, in spite of her connection to extremists who very much wanted Aira out of the way—was a profound change in his younger brother.

Dylan also was coming into his inheritance soon. Aiden had seen it in him when the three of them had been in Oriel’s cell. The power from the water-aligned materials that had nearly dragged Aiden down had surged through Dylan the way that elemental energy eventually would. Dylan was no Lorene—no devastating force of nature terrifying almost from birth thanks to the high amount of power coursing through him—but he would be potent when he came into his abilities. It was also clear to Aiden that Dylan was lonely. It had been clear to him for months; when he had joked to Aira about finding a hot maid of honor to partner Dylan in the ceremonies, he had been thinking of the way that Dylan looked at him and Aira together.

It was plain as day to Aiden that Dylan needed someone in his life. There were few truly, dangerously unstable water elementals; of the four affiliations, water had the merits of both the mercurial alignment of air and the steady presence of earth—it was mutable but not fickle, the members of the element were emotional, sometimes tempestuous, but easily calmed, readily stabilized. There were few among the members of the element who were ever in danger of coming under threat from the elders. Before Lorene had found her mate and settled into the responsibilities of the rule of her element, she presented a powerful worry to the elders. But Dylan didn’t just need a partner to balance out the possibilities of a tempest within him, or even to help him manage the power surges that came along with his transition into a fully-fledged elemental. He needed someone who could be with him just as another human being. While Aiden and Aira worked consciously not to exclude Dylan, there were aspects of their relationship that—for obvious reasons—Dylan simply couldn’t be part of. Moments when they had to be alone together. And all that was left to Dylan was to amuse himself, where before Aira had come into their lives, Aiden and Dylan had been nearly inseparable; not just brothers but friends. 

Was Dylan’s judgment clouded by his loneliness, or was there more to Leigh than he and Aira knew? There had been so many people at the wedding, and so many more at the reception, that it was impossible for Aiden to say whether or not he had even met the woman who Dylan had spoken to. All any of them knew was what Leigh had told Dylan: that her family had finagled an invitation and sent her to render a verdict on himself and Aira and their pairing together, that she was candid about the fact that she was there to observe and form an opinion about what their relationship meant to the wider world of elementals, and that she had refused to sleep with Dylan—though Dylan had admitted that he was more than willing to sleep with her, her status as a spy notwithstanding. Dylan had told them that Leigh said she had cousins who were extremists; that Aiden was almost as much of a target as Aira was—which was strange to him. Oriel had implied too that among her group he was considered persona non grata. 

“Dylan! Come out of your room and eat something!” Aiden’s ruminations dissolved at the sound of Aira’s voice. He shook his head. They weren’t likely to know the full situation until they managed to track down at least one of the members of the group, or at the very least, Leigh. Whether or not Dylan was wrong in his judgment that the earth elemental was uninvolved in the attack, the fact that she was being held somewhere—and likely by the same people who were the masterminds of the earthquake and fire—meant that she had to know something. 

Dylan’s bedroom door opened and he peeked out his head, looking sleepy. “I may have found what we need,” he said with a tired smile. Aiden watched his brother walk into the living room, a large, ancient-looking tome in his hand. Aira carried a platter of food to the coffee table: hamburgers skillet-fried with mushroom-onion gravy and rice, with a side of steamed broccoli. 

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” Aira told them both, putting plates out. They were—all three of them—seemingly running on nothing but coffee, beer, and potions concocted by Dylan.
Only a little while longer,
Aiden told himself firmly.
Once we have this situation under control, we can relax for a little while. And get some healthier habits.
He needed to talk to Aira about starting a family; but that would have to wait, just like everything else was waiting. Aiden stood and went into the kitchen to fix himself a cup of coffee.

CHAPTER SIX

DYLAN RAN HIS FINGERS THROUGH his hair as he settled into his seat, breathing in the scent of delicious food and coffee. The book he had been consulting was open to the relevant page and sat in his lap. Dylan sighed and put the book down carefully on a side table, reaching for a plate. He was ravenously hungry—Aira couldn’t possibly have timed the meal better. It was strange to him that after all the power that had flowed through him in Oriel’s cell, he was feeling utterly drained, exhausted, even. The potent energy coursing through his veins had begun to ebb almost as soon as they left the room—which he had expected. But it got worse as they got farther and farther away from the building that housed the elemental prisoners; and Dylan’s attempts to mine the information provided by Lorene’s obsessive desire to compile all possible lore and magic in one place had only deepened his fatigue.

“Once we get this crisis under control,” Aira said, sinking down to sit on the floor in front of the coffee table, “we need to work on some healthier life choices.” She cut into her hamburger patty with a fork, bringing a bite to her mouth and carefully chewing the hot meat. 

“Little or no sleep, constant dependence on coffee to stay on top alert or beer to relax, along with potions; I’d say we’re pushing it,” Dylan said agreeably. “But we may be turning the corner on this. I may have figured out how we can track them down.”

“Good,” Aira said. “We could use a break in this. What have you got?” Dylan glanced down at the book, eating a few bites of hamburger and rice. 

“Okay. So it’s going to require all of us.” Dylan sipped at the coffee that Aiden had brought into the living room. He would need a few hours’ rest before he could try out the idea that he had discovered—but he was so tired that the caffeine wouldn’t get in the way of that. “I can potentially reach Leigh, but it’s pretty far, and it’s not going to be a strong enough connection. If we combine to reach her, we may be able to get a really good lock on where she is. It’s difficult to pull off—we’re going to all have to be at the very top of our game—but if we can combine, I can get a lock on her energy, no matter what blocks are up.”

“Do we know if they’re all with her?” Aira asked. Dylan shrugged.

“Right now, I think the priority is to find out who is holding her and where they’re at. The rest of it can fall into place once we have whoever is holding her in custody. Also, with this tactic we will, theoretically at least, be able to track down the rest of the group if they’re not all there.”

“But it’s going to require us to be on the very top of our game.” Aira looked at Aiden. “Does the book mention how we combine?” 

Dylan nodded.

“It details it very vividly. I have a good idea of what we’re going to need to do to accomplish it. I’ll re-read it, but we’re going to need to all get some sleep, recharge a bit, and then we can do this.” The book was written in the language of the water elementals—it was unreadable for both Aiden and Aira. 

“Adding the energies of air and fire to the innate abilities possessed by water elementals bolsters the reach and increases the precision of tracking. Air elementals have inherent capabilities at finding the lost, travel, and divination. Fire increases the power of other elements—an important function in this variety of magic. The three elements combined can combat any block, particularly when they are wielded by very strongly aligned elementals.”
There was some set-up required, but Dylan knew that it was more than possible.

Aiden cleared the dishes when everyone had finished eating and Dylan glanced at Aira. “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly. Aira shrugged.

“I just want this to be over, so we can all get on with our lives. I don’t want this to turn into another big war between elementals. I want to nip it in the bud, get these people in custody before they attack someone else.”