Elemental Dawn (Paranormal Public) (8 page)

“Yes,” I called back, starting to
run. Side by side Sip’s parents sat, looking dazed but alive. I slid to a stop
next to them. Helen’s wild eyes locked onto mine and her hands, covered in mud
and soot, clutched at me.

“Sip?” she asked, her voice
raspy.

“Fine,” I said, nodding
reassuringly. “We’re all fine.”

“Thank the wolves,” Sip’s mother
breathed. She glanced at her husband, who was not in much better condition than
his wife. His arms were scraped and bleeding and there was a streak of dirt
running down his face.

“Doblan?” he demanded, his voice
harsh.

“Can’t find him,” I said.
“Doblan’s gone.”

Mr. Quest nodded. He didn’t look
surprised.

“We can’t stay here,” he said
tiredly. “They’ll come back.”

“You know what hit us?” Lisabelle
asked, she and Sip having found their way to us. Sip collapsed into her
mother’s arms as they both sobbed their relief. I watched for a second, then
turned back to Hyder.

I didn’t have a mother who
worried about me.

I just had a mother I missed.

“Help me up?” Hyder asked.
Lisabelle and I moved to help him, while Sip and Mrs. Quest stayed on the
ground.

“A demon hit us,” he said grimly.
“Or several. The protections that kept the demons down for all these years and
away from public areas that paranormals frequent, like roads, are failing.”

This was the first I had heard of
it.

“What are you talking about?” I
asked, glancing at Lisabelle. For once she looked equally puzzled. I had become
used to her knowing what was going on before anyone else, as if she had a tenth
sense.

“I mean that all the protections
are based in The Power of Five,” said Hyder, surveying what used to be the
family car. “And those protections have now not been reinforced in a long time.
Unfortunately, the senior paranormals do not even view that as one of the major
problems facing us at this point.”

Lisabelle was silent, but I
needed clarification.

“But paranormals are in even more
danger, because of me?” It wasn’t enough that whoever was with me had to deal
with almost being murdered.

“It isn’t your fault,” said Hyder
quickly. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“How is it not my fault? Why
haven’t they asked me to help?” I demanded, getting angry. As far as I was
concerned, we had been attacked tonight because paranormals kept trying to
coddle me.

“I don’t need to be coddled,” I
insisted.

“What makes you think you’re
strong enough?” This time it was Lisabelle who was arguing with me. Her chin
was set in a mulish line. “You think it’s no big deal to enact The Power over
all the land? Hours and hours of travel time?” She was staring at me, her face
grave, but her eyes pleading. “You can’t just put yourself at risk like that.”

“Yeah,” I said. “See what I mean?
Coddled. And if someone would help me search for my mother maybe I would not
feel so badly about this.”

Lisabelle recoiled as if I had
struck her, but I didn’t care; I was angry all over again, just as I had been
back at the house.

I needed time to think about all
the emotions coursing through me, so I stomped away from the little group and
watched from the sidelines while Hyder and Lisabelle examined the wreckage.

We had very little time to waste,
but they wanted to look at what kind of damage the demon had done and maybe
figure out exactly which type had attacked us. I had a feeling it was a Demon
of Knight, since they were the most powerful. It wasn’t easy to avoid detection
by two senior paranormals and Lisabelle, but they hadn’t felt anything coming
until it was too late.

Something buzzed in my pocket and
I realized I still had the Quests’ Contact Stone from the night before. I
wasn’t going to answer it, but then I saw a familiar shining and realized it
was Keller calling.

Relief washed over me as I looked
into his worried face. Just looking at him helped me relax.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“On the way to the coronation,” I
said, smiling despite what was going on around me. “You’re going to be there,
right?”

“I’m already here,” he said,
sighing.

He leaned forward, his keen blue
eyes searching. “Why does it look like you’re outside?”

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Just a
little death and destruction.”

His eyes widened and I flinched.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“When will you get here?” he
asked. “Are you safe? Is Lisabelle with you?”

“She is,” I said, glancing over
to where Hyder and Lisabelle were still examining the car. Mrs. Quest and Sip
had joined them and they were all talking and pointing.

“I should go,” I said. “It won’t
be long, just a couple of hours now. We had to change our plans a little bit,
but we’re fine. Have you seen Lanca?”

Keller grimaced. “Only from a
distance. She’s pretty harried at this point.”

I nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

He smiled. “Can’t wait.”

Once I signed off the Contact
Stone I felt better, almost forgetting what I had been angry about. I hurried
back to my friends.

“What was it?” I asked.

Not looking at me but staring
hard at something on the ground that only he could see, Hyder said, “My guess
is a Demon of Knight. They like battle and head-on collisions, part of where
they got their name.”

“And Doblan?”

 “It looks like he exited the car
here,” said Hyder, pointing to the back. “As the demon hit he jumped and
rolled.” We followed Hyder around to the back of the car as he pointed to what
he explained were tracks. Personally it just looked like dirt to me, but Hyder
was a former paranormal military officer from back when we had a paranormal
military, and I trusted what he said.

“Then the trail disappears,
here,” he said, pointing a couple of feet behind the car.

“Did the Knight take him?”
Lisabelle asked, fascinated. I could see that, like her uncle Risper, Lisabelle
might have a future in tracking.

“No,” said Hyder darkly. “I
believe there was more than one. They could have done more damage than they
did.”

“Do you mean that this was a
warning?” I asked. “They weren’t actually trying to kill us?”

Hyder glanced at his wife. “I’m
sure they wouldn’t have minded if a couple of us had died, but no, I don’t
think they were trying to kill you. Not tonight.”

My stomach tightened. What Hyder
had said was almost worse than the alternative, because it meant that the
demons knew enough to toy with us.

“I feel like a mouse heading into
a pen of cats,” said Sip. “And I really hate cats.”

“We will just to have to find
something bigger to fight them off,” said Lisabelle.

“Like what?” Sip asked.

“I don’t know,” said Lisabelle,
lifting her shoulders. “We’ll think of something.”

“In the meantime we have to be
careful. This whole visit is a bad idea, but we’ll make the best of it. Once we’re
there Charlotte will have more protection, and after the ceremony she’ll be
headed to Public.” I couldn’t mistake the relief in Hyder’s voice at the
thought of getting rid of me, nor could I blame him. I wouldn’t have been
surprised if by the time the demons were defeated I had no friends left, or was
dead.

“Can we fly now?” Lisabelle
asked, all too calmly.

Hyder looked at Lisabelle in
wonder, and I had a feeling that this was the first time he had understood his
only daughter’s friendship with this strange and powerful darkness mage.

“Yes,” he said. “I rather think
that’s a good idea.”

Lisabelle nodded once and
conjured brooms for the two of us. The next thing I knew I was following her
into the night sky, as three furry bodies followed us on the ground.

I had no idea how to fly. It
wasn’t something most elementals took to, preferring other means of fast
transportation like wind riding, ground rolling, and the obvious water surfing.
But those options weren’t available to me when I was traveling in mixed
paranormal company.

As the three Quests transformed
into their werewolf form, Lisabelle helped me out with the broom.

“You’re a natural,” I said,
staring at her.

“Ha,” said Lisabelle. “This is
how I spent my youth. Soaring. Drove my mother crazy with worry, so of course I
did it as much as possible. She doesn’t know the half the stuff I’ve done.”

“Don’t tell me, either,” Sip’s
voice called up to us. We were about twenty feet off the ground, floating.
Lisabelle was trying to make sure I could fly well enough not to die, but
basically I was just going to have to ride on just behind her broom and hold on
for dear life.

“Damn werewolves and their
exceptional hearing,” Lisabelle growled.

“Feel free to call me exceptional
anytime,” said Sip. “I always appreciate honesty, especially from someone who
has such a distant relationship with the truth.”

“Hold onto at all costs,”
Lisabelle ordered. “Do NOT let go. I don’t care what happens. You hold on.
You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t like heights,” I said.

“And I don’t like people. Tough,”
said Lisabelle without sympathy. “If I can manage to co-exist with others you
can fly for an hour and a half to Lanca and that other certain someone you were
talking to a little while ago.”

I blushed. I hadn’t realized that
she had known, but of course she had.

We didn’t speak for the rest of
the trip. For an all too brief few hours, flying was enough.

“Watch the wind,” Lisabelle
ordered as we soared higher and higher. “It’s no longer just friendly skies.”

Vampire Locke wasn’t what I
expected. Never having seen a picture, I expected a kind of black castle, but
it was far worse and more intimidating than that.

It was a black mountain, with
scraggly trees, looking dead and burned, dotting the surface. Unlike Cruor dorm
at Public, which somehow retained a tiny bit of charm and decency, Vampire
Locke looked dead and abandoned, as if it belonged with the demons in the
darkness.

If I ever forgot that vampires
were linked to evil, the image of Locke from the air would remind me of it. It
was nothing but darkness; any light that hit it, the black surfaces ate alive.
Lanca’s sect, the Rapiers, commanded Locke. It made me wonder why the vampires
were on the paranormals’ side at all.

“Impressive, right?” Lisabelle
asked. “It has never been breached. Ever. In the entire history of vampires,
which I grant you is as long as it can be, there has never been an attack that
made it past the walls.”

“The walls of the mountain?” I
asked, clarifying as I stared at the black rock.

“Yes,” said Lisabelle, yelling
over the roar of the wind.

“And now we’ve invited the enemy
in,” I said into her ear.

I saw her nod once. “Well,
darkness mages anyway.” She grinned. “We’re not all so bad.”

I smiled so she knew I didn’t
mean her. Lisabelle had grown up separate from other darkness mages, because
even for darkness mages her family was weird. But now that the darkness mages
were following President Malle in droves, there was yet another wedge between
Lisabelle and others of her kind.

I just hoped the wedge was big
enough. For all our sakes.

“Will Lough be there?” Lisabelle
asked as we started to spiral downward.

“I think so,” I said, feeling a
bit better at the thought of our red-cheeked friend. “He wouldn’t want to miss
being there for Lanca.”

“Even though Lanca scares him?”

“He hides it well,” I said. “He
hides several things well.”

Lisabelle made a grunting noise,
but didn’t respond.

As we got closer to the ground I
saw three dots racing along under us. The Quests had kept up. I had never seen
werewolves run so fast.

We landed with a thud at the base
of a dead tree. The Quests had already gathered around and changed form.

“We don’t have any of our stuff,”
said Sip sadly. “I really liked the outfit I had planned for the coronation.”

“Yeah, shucks, who would be
grateful for just being alive when they had lost their outfits,” Lisabelle
drawled.

“I’m very tired,” said Helen, no
longer even reacting to Lisabelle’s sarcasm. “Let’s get inside before something
else goes horribly wrong. I have never wanted a shower so badly in my life.”

“Standing out here for a long
period of time is a terrible idea,” I observed, thinking of the Demon of
Knight. “How do we get inside?”

“Here,” came a familiar voice.

I was so shocked that at first I
didn’t react to seeing Princess Lanca float toward us, seemingly out of
nowhere.