Elemental Dawn (Paranormal Public) (2 page)

“Ricky,” I said. “I’m going to
walk you home, then Lisabelle and I are going to get some dinner. After that
we’ll be back.”

“But we were going to have dinner
together,” he complained. “Why can’t I come?”

“Because we are talking about
makeup and boys,” said Lisabelle dryly. “Stuff you have no interest in.”

“You’re lying,” said Ricky. “You
aren’t wearing any makeup and you obviously have never had a boyfriend.”

Before Lisabelle could reply he
stalked off. I started to follow, but then I realized that Lisabelle was still
standing there, stock still.

“Lisabelle?” I asked.

“Mouthy little thing, isn’t he?”
she asked thoughtfully, frowning. “Hum.”

I stared at my friend. She looked
lost in thought, and she wasn't really paying attention, either to me or to her
surroundings.

“He knows I’ve never dated,” she
mused, starting to follow me when I made an impatient noise deep in my throat.
“Little children are fascinating.”

“I’m not that little,” Ricky
yelled from up ahead. “Sheesh. How many times do I have to repeat myself to be
heard?”

“Little enough,” Lisabelle yelled
back.

“This is going to be a long
evening,” I muttered as I fell into step next to the darkness mage.

Once Ricky was safely at home,
still grumbling about not being let into our secret conversation, Lisabelle and
I headed back to the cafe I had worked at before I left for Paranormal Public.
The clouds were becoming thicker and darker, holding the promise of snow in
their pillowy depths. Darkness had now fallen, and the only lights were the
street lamps dotting our way, but somehow I was not scared. As far as things
that went bump in the night went, Lisabelle was about as bad as they come, and
she was on my side.

“So, spill,” I said, the instant
we were out of earshot from my house. “What’s going on?”

Lisabelle shook her head. “All
our friends are fine - except for Lanca.”

“She’s hurt?” I cried.
“Lisabelle, how could you wait to tell me? You should have pulled me away
immediately.”

“No,” said Lisabelle quickly,
rubbing her forehead and looking off into the distance. It hit me with a
prickle of worry that this was one of the few times my friend had ever looked
tired. Usually she was a rock, but now there were dark circles under her eyes.
“Her father was murdered. The Vampire King is dead.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, my
heart squeezing for my friend. I was so upset that I couldn’t think of anything
more intelligent to say than, “What?”

As we walked Lisabelle told me
what had happened. The king’s party of vampires had been ambushed by demons. In
all the turmoil of the last few years, it had been the first attack on an
important senior paranormal, and it would inevitably be the start of a war with
the demons.

“King Daemon is dead?” I said
again and again, as if somehow, if I just kept saying it, eventually Lisabelle
would tell me that no, he wasn’t, she had just made the whole thing up for some
as yet unexplained reason, and to stop being an idiot.

“The darkness is forming,” she
said ominously, kicking a pebble out of her way. “They are no longer an
unorganized group. President Malle has brought them together as one and they
are starting to fight like it. They are power hungry, and they’re not going to
stop until all the paranormals who oppose them are eliminated.”

“How could they kill King
Daemon?” I said, my stomach in knots. “I thought he was protected.”

I hated to admit it, but I was
really worried about my own family’s protection. I felt safe enough on my own;
I was becoming practiced at fighting off the darkness when it attacked me. But
Ricky. . . .

“Don’t worry about your little
mongrel of a brother,” Lisabelle advised. “King Daemon was careless, or
overconfident, I’m not sure which, and Lanca is in no condition to talk about
it.”

“Lanca,” I breathed. “We have to
go to her. Why aren’t you there now?”

“Because preparing for a coronation
is stressful enough without your friends coming in and demanding attention of
their own,” said Lisabelle.

I stared at my friend. She had
said so many shocking things in the past few minutes that I had stopped
reacting, but this was another shocking thing I hadn’t thought of.

“Coronation?” I had a terrible
feeling I already knew what that meant.

“Princess Lanca,” said Lisabelle,
saying it anyway, “is her father’s heir. She will now inherit the Blood
Throne.”

“Which means she’ll now be a
target for demons?” I breathed, feeling so sorry for my friend.

Lisabelle growled in frustration.
“She’s already been a target for demons. This will just intensify the
situation, and if she doesn’t go haring off on her own with vampires she can’t
trust, it won’t be an issue.”

“What do you mean vampires she
can’t trust?” I asked.

“Her father was traveling with a
small party of trusted advisors. He thought it would be safer to go with a
small group, so as to be less noticeable. Demons look for large signatures of
power in much the same way that they look for elemental magic, and he thought
that if the group generated only a small signature, he had less chance of
getting caught. One of the advisors was not as well known to him as he should
have been, the brother of a friend. He led the demons to King Daemon. There
were hundreds of them. His party never had a chance. The worst part is that he
was coming from visiting Dirr.

I shook my head in disbelief.
“Isn’t there someone to advise Lanca? Isn’t she too young to take on the responsibility
of the throne?”

Lisabelle waved her hand at me
impatiently, as if I had asked the stupidest question in the world. “First of
all, that’s not how it works. The heir is the heir. Second of all, Lanca is
twenty-two. She is a college graduate, brilliant and beloved by the vampires.
There really is no second choice. She is ready.”

“But what about her life?” I
breathed. “Didn’t she want to travel? Have boyfriends and a family?”

Princess Lanca’s dating life had
always been the talk of Public. She never dated anyone there, instead spending
time with glamour vampire princes from Europe. At the time of her graduation,
though, she had been single. Now I wondered how she would ever find a vampire
willing to take on the burden of being her soulless mate.

“She’ll be fine,” said Lisabelle.
“Boys are overrated. You are dating one of the only decent ones.”

“Lough is decent,” I said.

“Humph,” said Lisabelle.

“How eloquent.”

Lisabelle’s face was stony. “The
point is that tomorrow you and I head to Sip’s, and from there we go to the
coronation,” she said. “All of that has to happen before winter break ends.”

We paused the conversation only
to order our drinks, and once we had them we found an empty table in the
corner.

“Poor Lanca,” I said sadly, as we
slid into a booth at the coffee shop. I wrapped my shaky hands around my hot
chocolate, searching for comfort from the warmth, but I was beginning to feel
cold inside, deep in my bones, and it was not a cold that felt likely to go
away any time soon.

“There’s more,” said Lisabelle.

“Oh good,” I said. “I don’t
suppose it’s good news.”

“Nope,” said Lisabelle, frowning
into her mug. She had coffee, black, of course, and she was staring at it as if
there were answers in the dark liquid.

“President Malle is starting to
make demands.”

“You mean other than for all
paranormals to hand over the elemental and roll over and die?”

“Yes,” Lisabelle sniffed. “The
demons’ power has grown exponentially. Now that they have their own council,
complete with darkness mages, for all practical purposes their power is
unlimited.”

“What about vampires?” I asked,
taking a long sip of hot chocolate. “Why did they go after King Daemon if
vampires are the only paranormals not on their side that have darkness magic?”

“I’m not on their side,” Lisabelle
pointed out, her face tight.

I reached a hand across the table
and touched my friend. At first she flinched away, but I held firm.
“Lisabelle,” I whispered. “Love keeps us all anchored to sanity. It’s our moor
in the throes of a storm, our light when the rain comes down. You are no
different in that. I know what you are and who you are. You can be as gruff as
you want with Sip and me and it won’t change the fact that I will love you
until the day I die.”

Lisabelle looked up, a smile
playing over her lips. “Yes, well, don’t go getting all mushy on me. All we’re
talking about is your death and the end of the paranormal races. Not serious or
anything.”

I gave her a small smile. It was
all I could muster at her sarcasm. My heart still ached for my friend.

“Lanca’s mother died young,
didn’t she?” I asked, thinking that now Lanca had no parent to turn to.

“Yes,” said Lisabelle, nodding.
“Childbirth. King Daemon never got over it. He never married again.”

“It just makes it all the more
important that we are there for her,” I mused. “Whatever she needs.”

“I think right now she needs for
paranormal alliances to hold.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if the demons have
formed a Council while the paranormals are fighting, we’re in trouble.”

I glanced out at the dark sky.
The blackness enveloping the street lights and the coldness inside of me grew.

“If only we had seen the end of
it,” I murmured thoughtfully.

Lisabelle carefully sipped her
coffee.

“We haven’t seen the beginning.”

Lisabelle stayed at my house that
night. Ricky was beside himself with shock and spent the evening walking around
and staring at my strange friend. Lisabelle was careful not to do any magic or
wear a short-sleeved shirt. My stepfather was away for the night, which was
just as well, because I hated to think what would have happened if he had met
Lisabelle. He planned on coming back just in time to miss my departure in the
morning, which was fine with me.

Before we went to bed Lisabelle
showed me a proclamation she had brought with her. If I hadn’t known how
serious the situation was before this, I did now. Reading it turned my blood
cold.

“All the Public students got
this,” she explained. “It’s from the Committee, but I told Oliva I’d deliver
yours so that your stepdad wouldn’t see it.”

I snorted. “No one needed to
worry. He treats my mail like it’s a pile of burning coals. He would never read
it.”

“Fine,” said Lisabelle. “Well,
here’s some bedtime reading for you.” She handed me a sheet of paper that she
pulled out of a black folder. It was a very deep green, with lettering in
blazing silver. The coloring was the mark of the pixies, which meant that Oliva
himself had sent it out.

To Those
Whom it May Concern:

It has
come to the attention of the Committee that outside the walls of Public there
is growing unrest. The Demons have formed their own Council, of which President
Malle is the head. If this is news to any of you, then you need to spend more
time with your Tabble.

Times are
changing and the world is dangerous.

As the
Committee in charge not only of your education, but also of your well-being, we
felt that it was our duty to send out this word of caution.

The
Demons are attacking all small parties traveling alone. Public transportation
used by humans is no longer safe. We urge all paranormals to employ other
methods of getting around. Flying is obviously the best mode of travel at this
time. The broom is of course a favorite for those who are not pixies or
vampires or fallen angels and cannot fly on their own. Airlee students in
particular are urged to travel in groups, since in the air paranormals are less
vulnerable to attack.

We beg
you to take care. You cannot assume your own safety, or that other paranormals
will come to your rescue. For your reading pleasure we are enclosing a diagram
of current governmental entities that you may contact in the event that you are
attacked by demons. Please contact such agencies with care. They are busy.
Senior paranormals are working around the clock for your safety.

The
Paranormal Police are hiring, and several Public students have put their
education on hold to attend classes at the police academy. We applaud your
sacrifice.

For those
of you returning to Public, we look forward to seeing you again soon. The usual
security precautions for entering the campus have been reinforced, and they
should be effective as methods of entrance to Public. Again, we urge care.

Yours,
The Committee.

I read the note three times, then
turned to a sheet of paper that had been in the folder along with it. This
sheet was white. I was glad that Oliva had gone to the trouble of enlightening
us about paranormal government. I felt sure that his summary would clarify some
of the questions I’d been having about who was in charge of dealing with the
demons, because as nearly as I could see, the paranormals had left it up to a
bunch of Starters in college.