Elemental Fire (6 page)

“Not if Public has been
compromised,” Lisabelle warned, her voice ominous.

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly
good explanation,” said Sip, “that does not involve demons or death or anything
awful. No WAY the Nocturns have Public.”

“Dove was involved, so by
definition it involves something awful.”

“At least it wasn’t Zervos,” I
said. “Where is he, anyway? Did he return to Public or no?”

“He and Dacer were still at Locke
when we left,” said Sip. “Theoretically they were coming back soon, but Princ-,
I mean Queen Lanca needs all the vampire help she can get, and since so few are
trustworthy, Dacer and Zervos stayed.”

“How is Queen Lanca dealing with
Dirr’s death?” I asked Lisabelle. My darkness friend had spent more time with
Lanca before we had departed, and Faci too. But Faci had refused to say a word.
He had simply sat in his cell, his hands bound tightly in front of him and his
pale face a mixture of hatred and amusement. Lanca and Lisabelle had tried
questioning him, and Lanca had tried more drastic measures that neither Sip nor
I had wanted to watch, but nothing had worked. Faci remained impassive.

Lisabelle’s face was unreadable
when she said, after a long pause, “Not well. Her mission in life has become to
eradicate the darkness threat.”

“It must be difficult, given that
she now wields so much darkness herself,” Sip murmured. “I’ve always thought
the same about you, Lisabelle.”

Lisabelle shrugged. “It wasn’t
supposed to be this way. You have to work to become all evil. No being is
entirely bad on his or her own. I’m not all bad, although I know sometimes Sip
would beg to differ, but Malle has pushed the darkness over the edge into chaos
and death.”

“But Lisabelle, if you have so
much darkness, how do you stay light at all?”

Lisabelle sighed in frustration.
She could have made a joke, but she didn’t. “I just said, light and dark go
together. It’s not supposed to be entirely one or the other.”

“Then how do you explain Camilla?
Or Zervos?”

“You can’t win ’em all,” said
Lisabelle sharply. “Besides, I need to practice being mean. I’d rather practice
on Camilla than on you.”

Sip brandished her index finger
at Lisabelle’s back. “You are never going to be all dark, Lisabelle Verlans. No
matter how hard you try.”

“It might worry you how little I
have to try sometimes,” Lisabelle breathed.

“Why haven’t we run into any
Slime Dwellers?” I asked, hoping to change the subject. I had spent our walk
looking furtively around, scared that the red eyes would appear, and I was still
so absorbed in looking around for them that I banged nose first, with no
warning, into something rock hard.

Rubbing my bruised facial feature
I said, “Ouch! Lisabelle, you have sharp shoulders.”

“And a sharp tongue,” said Sip
from behind me. With her werewolf reflexes, she had stopped in time.

“And a sharp wit,” I added.

Then Sip brought us back to
business. “Here we are,” she said. “That took long enough.”

Sip had told us to look for a
circular wheel on the wall and here it was, etched in the stone, with shots of
brilliant color showing through the grime and dust that covered it.

It marked the door that we were
looking for, and the anxiety that had been growing in my heart with each step
we took suddenly started to ebb. Sometimes it’s worse to anticipate the enemy
than to actually meet him, and I had wanted nothing more than to get out of the
catacombs since the moment we had come through the door from the storage room.
Sip’s announcement that we had made it sent shockwaves of relief coursing
through me.

“Let’s go,” I said, making a
beeline for the door.

I pulled it open and hurried up
the stairs. The suspense had spiraled into a crescendo, and not seeing a Slime
Dweller or any other threatening thing had, paradoxically, only made my nerves
worse.

I could hear Sip and Lisabelle
behind me as I took the stairs two at a time. Even as the chill breeze coming
from behind me pushed at my back, I was relieved to leave the inky black of the
catacombs.

“Not a fan of the catacombs?” Sip
called. “We have to go back through this way.”

“It’s better than having knives
pour down on our heads.”

“At least knives are creative,” I
said. I got to the top door and shoved. “Where are we going to come out?” I
panted. I put my shoulder down and shoved harder against the door. I felt the
scrape of the wood through the fabric of my jacket, but the door didn’t budge.

“We’re going to come out in the
maintenance shed next to Airlee,” said Sip proudly.

“There’s a maintenance shed next
to Airlee?” Lisabelle asked, coming up to stand on my left.

“I’ll add a map to those books
you aren’t going to read,” Sip muttered darkly.

“On three,” said Lisabelle to me,
and we attacked the door together. It still refused to budge.

“Okay, on three again,” I gritted
out, my teeth clenched.

Again we both pushed, and again
it wouldn’t move.

“Nope,” said Lisabelle. “There’s
something blocking it from the other side.”

Sip sniffed. “Do you smell that?”
she asked. I could barely see her in the dim light, but I could just make out
her head turning to look behind us, back down the inky stairwell the way we had
come.

“I smell old wood and your
sweat,” said Lisabelle, but her tone said that she wasn’t totally sure herself.
I sniffed the air, but my sense of smell was nowhere near as good as a
werewolf’s.

“It smells kind of like fire,”
said Sip tensely. “So much burning.”

“Neither of us smells anything,”
Lisabelle told her harshly. “We’re a little busy trying to get us out of here.”

“It’s a door,” said Sip. “How
hard can it be to open?”

I sniffed the air again. “I smell
it too,” I said. “The fire.”

Lisabelle paused mid-shove. She
was preparing to use magic, which was a bad idea, because with magic we ran the
risk of attracting attention that we didn’t want.

“I smell it now,” I whispered.

Faintly wafting through the air
was the smell of smoke, and I had started to feel faint licks of heat touch my
face and breeze past.

“So, about that door,” said Sip.
She moved to stand between us, adding her shoulder to ours, but it was still no
use. Sip coughed and pulled back, but Lisabelle didn’t let her go far.

“Get that door open,” Lisabelle
commanded. “Or whatever is burning down there will incinerate us as well.”

The heat on my back was starting
to pulse, making my shoulder blades hot. I glanced back. There was a faint
orange glow coming from the base of the stairs, and the distant crackle of fire
combined with our harsh breathing made an ominous duet.

“Charlotte, I’m going to blast
it,” Lisabelle choked out before breaking off in a fit of coughing. The smoke
was now so thick around us that I could barely see, and my lungs were filling
with soot.

“No,” Sip hissed. “You can’t.
They’ll hear.”

“They must already know,”
Lisabelle shot back. Her eyes were red and bloodshot. “Why do you think the
catacombs are burning?”

“I guess we might need a
different escape route,” I said. “I have an idea.”

Wood was earth, right? Whatever
was on the other side of the door was likely wood. An old table or set of
chairs. Something. I called to my powers. I felt the mingled earthy brown, cool
gray, hot red, and icy blue flow through my veins. They came together perfectly
now, the textures melting seamlessly into one power source.

“Any time now,” Lisabelle gritted
out. I had been so occupied combining the strands of my magic that I had
forgotten about the real fire behind us. I opened my eyes to stinging, and
quickly ordered my magic outward. Then I heard a blast, as Lisabelle cried out
and everything went black.

Chapter Five

Sip curled into my side and
whimpered. Her powers could do little against fire and locked doors; her best
defense was her snarl. I slammed my powers backward and forward at the same
time. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to do something or we were
going to die there.

I felt the push against the fire
and tasted the tangy salt of my own blood as I bit the inside of my lip in
concentration. This was not a normal fire. It was laced with magic, but it
moved so fast I couldn’t pinpoint what type of magic it was, only that it would
be very hard to stop.

I pushed against the door, one .
. . last . . . time . . . dropping my shoulder and putting my earth powers into
my force.

It worked.

Barely.

The three of us tumbled forward.
My energy spent, I couldn’t even catch myself as I fell.

Luckily, Lisabelle could. I felt
her strong arms wrap around me, and the wand tattooed into her arm dug into my
side and I gasped again, this time from the kiss of such powerful dark magic.

“Let’s keep it moving,
paranormals,” Lisabelle rasped in my ear. I coughed, keeping my eyes tightly
shut. I didn’t even have to wonder if Lisabelle had Sip. I was sure she had
grabbed the werewolf first.

Lisabelle hauled us to our feet
and dragged us through the door. I still hadn’t opened my eyes, so I couldn’t
see where we were going. With the last bit of my strength I kept the fire at
bay as we got out. On the other side of the open door it was now raging beyond
any control.

I heard Lisabelle bang against
something and felt the heat of her wand against my ribcage and the tug of her
arms as she kept us moving forward. The crunch of grass under my feet was a
welcome relief as cool air washed over my face. I couldn’t stay on my feet
another second.

I collapsed. Then I heard another
thud and assumed that Sip had done the same.

From somewhere above me I heard
Lisabelle panting, and a little way away I could still hear the roar of the
fire that had almost consumed us.

“You two okay?” Lisabelle said,
her voice sounding thick from coughing.

“I’m fine,” I croaked, and almost
giggled. I sounded like a frog.

“Yup,” Sip sighed. It sounded
like she was lying face first in the grass, pressing her skin against the cool
earth. I longed to do the same, but instead I forced myself to sit up and open
my eyes. There was no guarantee that just because we had escaped the fire, we
were safe.

I was in a familiar place, if not
seeing it from a familiar direction. Normally I walked up to Airlee from the
front, down the stone path that led right to the door, but we had come out of a
shed that was placed on the back right side of the building.

“It’s totally dark,” I said with
surprise. Not one light burned in Sip and Lisabelle’s dorm.

“Let’s get inside,” said
Lisabelle quietly. “Maybe there are some answers in there.”

We worried about moving quietly,
but as it turned out, there was no need. There was not another soul in sight.
Normally this late at night vampires would be floating around campus, the only
students still awake, but this time there were none. It was now the dead of
night, an early pre-dawn hour where everything was still black and nothing, not
even the wind, stirred.

“Do you think the barrier alerted
Dove and the others that there were intruders? And do you think they’ll know
it’s us?” I said to Sip.

The werewolf shrugged. “I’m sure
they saw it, but if they’re not here by now, maybe they just thought it was an
animal or something. There’s no way they’d let us get this far.”

“Someone tried to kill us in the
catacombs,” said Lisabelle. “It could have been them.”

Sip scoffed. “They would get in
SO much trouble.”

“It’s pretty obvious that more
and more paranormals are not worrying about that,” said Lisabelle dryly. My
darkness friend had a point.

“Would either of you even burn if
you were lit on fire?” Sip asked curiously. It was a strange question, and
something I had been wondering about myself. Unfortunately, the test to find
out was . . . hot.

“No,” said Lisabelle quietly.

“You know that for sure?” Sip
said with surprise.

“Yes,” said Lisabelle, and her
voice sounded distant, as if her mind was in a far-off place. “I’ll tell you
the story sometime.”

“Just another relaxing bedtime
story in the room of Sip and Lisabelle,” Sip said.

Lisabelle laughed softly. Knowing
I had to get up, I dragged myself to my feet, checking for burns or other
injuries. My shoulder throbbed and I had a feeling that when I looked at it
later I would see the skin rubbed raw, and possibly several splinters that had
made it through my clothing. My shirt and jeans were streaked with black soot
or dirt - I couldn’t be sure which - and my eyes still burned a little from the
smoke. Miraculously, I was otherwise unharmed.

Sip was in about the same shape.
She was glaring down at herself, smoothing out her shirt and rubbing dirt off
her sleeve.