Elemental Dawn (Paranormal Public) (13 page)

“It is certainly not the
humanity,” said Sip, her fists in balls at her sides. “If someone doesn’t do
something, I will. I can’t stand by and watch this.”

Lisabelle moved then, but it
wasn’t to get down. Instead, she took two steps behind me, and came around to
stand on the other side of her roommate. I saw her take Sip’s arm in a
vise-like grip. Sip’s eyes widened in surprise.

“We will be watching a lot of
this in the months and years to come,” Lisabelle murmured. “It will get worse
before it gets better. This isn’t being done to punish some stupid child who
couldn’t behave herself. This is to show the rest of us that we are powerless.”

“We aren’t, though,” Sip seethed.
“Someone could do something. Maybe not us, but someone.”

I looked around the room and saw
the darkness mages watching with glee. Many of the other paranormals studied
the floor. Those who still held their heads high had fear etched all over their
faces.

Against all the darkness mages
massed together we couldn’t do much without heavy casualties, and none of the
other paranormals appeared to want to take the risk.

The puppy thrashed, trying to get
loose from Daisy. Faci watched for a moment as if he read an ancient text or
studied an important manuscript, all scholarly attention. Then he pulled his
fist back and punched the dog in the gut.

At this the puppy passed out. It
didn’t even react except to give a sort of shake as Daisy threw it across the
room. The paranormals cried out and scrambled to get out of the way.

“Alright, enough,” said a strong
and clear voice. To my surprise it came from a vampire. She was young, probably
not even as old as Dirr, but she held her shoulders back and her eyes glinted
with confidence. Her fists were balled at her sides. I almost cheered, but I
saw Dacer’s stricken expression and refrained.

“It is never enough,” Daisy
hissed. Her red skin, covered with sores like her brother’s, oozed a little in
her fury. “She must learn her lesson.” Daisy pointed at the little blond girl
huddled in the corner, her face still obscured in her arms.

“She didn’t mean to get in your
way,” the vampire girl said. “Attacking an innocent puppy to teach her a lesson
does no good.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,”
Daisy snarled. “How dare you question me?”

“Who do you think you are,
anyway?” the vampire girl asked quietly. “You’re just a Starter at Public.
You’re not a great mage, you’re not one of the senior paranormals, you’re not
elemental. You are nothing important.”

It took me a second to realize
that the vampire girl had included me on that list, and another second to
register that Daisy was flying across the room at the other girl.

“I can’t just stand by anymore,”
I said, and started climbing down the ladder.

“Yes!” Sip stamped her foot in
glee. “Right behind you,” she said eagerly. I felt her follow at my back.

“And once again Lisabelle tries
to be the voice of reason and gets dragged into a mess anyway,” my darkness
friend sighed gustily as she followed us down. I avoided Dacer’s gaze as we
went past him. If no one else was going to do anything, I had to. There was no
way I was going to sit by and watch Daisy beat on a puppy and a couple of girls
who had not yet learned how to defend themselves. My ring pulsed with
excitement. The magics flowing around us were almost overwhelming.

But I had forgotten about Faci.
He was waiting for us at the bottom of the ladder, his sunken eyes turned in
our direction and his nonexistent mouth twisted upward in what could only be
described as a smile.

“Ah, I was hoping you would
come,” he said. “You resisted longer than I thought you would, very do-gooder
of you,” he said, his voice light for a man’s, almost feminine.

“Here we are,” I said, pretending
to be cheery. “Sorry, don’t think we’ve met.”

Faci shrugged. “No, I go to
school abroad, at least for now, and you do not associate with my kind.”

“What kind is that?” I asked,
thinking that I was friends with his princess.

“The smart kind,” he sneered,
staring at Sip and Lisabelle.

“Oh, please,” said Lisabelle.
“You’re just jealous that we have eyes and a face and you have holes.”

Any color left in Faci’s face
disappeared. “You have no idea who you’re crossing,” he snarled.

“Of course we do,” said
Lisabelle. “Princess Lanca’s hanger-on.”

With a cry Faci lunged forward.
Lisabelle dodged him easily and came back to stand next to us. Faci didn’t come
on again, but his breathing was labored. Daisy hurried to stand next to her
partner in crime as both Dacer and Zervos came forward.

“I think we have seen enough for
one evening,” Zervos said, ignoring me altogether, which, I figured, was
probably for the best given that he hated me with a force that not even
Lisabelle, who was an expert on hate, understood.

“It is enough when I say it is
enough,” Daisy hissed. “You cannot cross all the darkness mages here.”

“Oh, just die,” said Sip
savagely, her eyes blazing.

Daisy reared back as if struck,
not used to such words from the small werewolf.

Zervos looked at the darkness
mages who surrounded us, standing silently.

“My guess is that they understand
what is at stake,” he said. “If this comes to a fight, yes, we will have losses,
but so will you, and who is willing to incur that damage over some stupid puppy
and the girl who couldn’t control him?”

“Leave them be,” said Castov, his
eyes hard.

“This is not their place,” said
Dacer, his tone conciliatory. “Children don’t punish other children for
mistakes. That is not the way of the paranormals.”

“Maybe the way of the paranormals
is changing,” Faci spat. “How dare you question me in my own home?”

“This is not your home,” said
Zervos, his tone harsh, although not as harsh as when he spoke to me. “This is
Princess Lanca’s home.”

Faci simply sneered. Obviously he
thought that there was no difference between the two.

“Get moving,” Dacer ordered in a
clipped voice.

Daisy’s lip curled. “Fine, that’s
fine. We were done here anyway.” She used her bloody hand to flip some of her
black hair out of her face, then turned to leave.

But Faci was not to be defeated
so easily. Without warning to react, I was slammed upward by a blow from his
fist. I kept flying until I struck something. With a snarl, Camilla pushed me
back into the center of the gathering. So, her upset over the dog didn’t extend
to me. She had shoved me with as much force as she could right back to Faci.

I tried to stop myself from
tumbling end over end through the air, but I had lost control.

In the distance I heard yelling.
Zervos and Dacer were furious. Faci was laughing, and Sip was keeping Lisabelle
from killing any of the darkness mages who were closing in.

I landed with a sickening thud
next to the prone puppy, who had awakened to whimper into the deafening silence
that had followed the attack on me.

The force of Faci’s blow had made
me bite my lip and I spat a little blood out of my mouth now, trying to avoid
looking at the injured dog next to me. I rolled away from it and got to my
knees. Instantly Sip and Lisabelle were on either side, helping me up. No one
else moved. Faci jerked out of Daisy’s hold. She must have grabbed him after he
attacked me, knowing that someone, Dacer, Sip, Lisabelle, would kill him if he
did any real harm to their friend.

Faci sprang away from her and
savagely headed for the small blond-haired girl, who still sat with her head in
her hands. But someone blocked his path. I realized that the massive vampire
who had grabbed the girl to begin with was familiar, although far bigger than
he had been the semester before. It was Rake, whom Sip routinely liked to tell
off when we were at school. He was a good enough sort as vampires went, and
despite his massive height, at least six four, and his massive shoulders and a
block for a head, he still managed to be overwhelmed by my tiny purple-eyed
friend. Now all he did was shake his head at Faci, who skidded to a halt,
unsure what to do with this new challenge.

Dacer stepped into the middle of
the floor and stood over the prone dog. The little girl darted around Rake and
raced to her pet. To my intense relief, others joined Dacer. With so many
paranormals standing in front of them, the darkness mages backed down,
muttering things like, “Wasn’t that entertaining anyway” and “Kids will be
kids.”

Sip and Lisabelle both shook with
rage. The blond-haired little girl was talking frantically to a fallen angel
who had hurried over to help her and her pet. She was insisting that she was
uninjured and that the pet was the one that needed the attention.

“Are you okay?” Lisabelle asked
me, but her eyes were cast upward, where Camilla still floated overhead,
smirking.

“Oh, I’m fine,” I said, dusting
myself off.

“Good,” said Lisabelle, her eyes
scanning the area for potential threats.

“Let’s get out of here,” said
Sip.

“What are we even doing here?” I
asked. “Last I knew we were sleeping.”

“Castov has the power to summon
the visitors at Locke,” said Lanca. “He wanted us all to see how his son dealt
with insults to his honor . . . like from small children. Just walk back to
your rooms and go to sleep. There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”

The breakfast room was already
emptying. I sighed, feeling bone tired. “She doesn’t have to tell me twice,”
said Lisabelle. “Summoning spells indeed.” But somehow I knew I would never
erase the image of the bloody puppy from my mind.

I don’t know how long I slept,
but I habitually opposed anything that tried to wake me up even in normal
times. At Astra, Mrs. Swan would only wake me when she knew I had an early
class (something I generally tried to avoid) and I hadn’t appeared downstairs
for breakfast early enough.

“Get up,” came Sip’s familiar
voice. I felt a shove at my shoulder and rolled away from her.

“More hummumdgud,” I grumbled
into my pillow. “Go away.”

“I’ll get Lisabelle,” she
threatened, half jokingly.

“I’m not afraid of her,” I said
bravely into my pillow.

“That’s because I like you,” came
Lisabelle’s groggy voice from somewhere nearby. We each had a separate bedroom,
sharing a common living room and bathroom, so if Lisabelle was in my room it
meant that she was also wide awake.

I rolled back toward Sip’s voice
and opened my eyes to glare at her.

“Well, if both of you are up then
I guess I should get up too, but this better be good,” I warned.

“Oh, it is,” said Sip. “And you
would be more ferocious if your hair were not in your eyes.”

“What is it, then?” I demanded.

Sip handed me a Tabble. I hadn’t
looked at one at all during break, because I had gotten tired of hearing what a
horrible paranormal I was in rants written by a paranormal who had never met
me. The Tabble in Sip’s hand was bone white and looked brand new. In fact,
everything in our rooms was brand new and very nice.

“Is all of Locke this cool?” I
asked in wonder.

“No,” said Lisabelle. “This is
the new wing. It was just renovated. I think Lanca had to fight to stick us
here, because we’re just students, but it’s close to her own personal rooms and
I think she also feels like there’s less chance of bugs.”

“Oh, no,” said Sip. “We were too
distracted last night to check for them. Lisabelle?”

I frowned. Distracted was not the
term I would use to describe Faci’s effect on all of us. For Faci himself I
would use a term like dangerous. Or crazy.

Our darkness friend nodded. “I’m
still tired,” she said. “I could use a little help?” I nodded and Lisabelle
came to sit on the bed next to me. Before the three of us joined hands
Lisabelle shoved her sleeves up, revealing the long black tattoo that snaked up
her arm.

Deep within me I felt my magic
rise with glee. Except for that brief moment after the accident on the way to
Locke, I had not used it at all over break, because my elemental powers called
so strongly to the demons, but now that I was “safe” at Locke I felt comfortable
dipping into the warm pool of power that I always felt flowing comfortingly
through my veins.

“Pity you don’t have a ring,” Sip
muttered, her eyes still closed. I opened my eyes a crack to see Lisabelle’s
smirk.

I had only seen her “wand” a handful
of times. Last semester Sip had called me to Airlee in a panic when Lisabelle
had tattooed her wand into her flesh, so that she would never be without it.
She had kept it hidden, mostly - as she explained - because she had no
intention of telling any other darkness mage how to do it.

“What did Risper say when he saw
that?” I murmured.

Lisabelle shrugged. “He hasn’t
seen it yet. It will probably be a while.”