Dark Waters (Elemental Book 1) (23 page)

“John Cross,”
she said.

“I know. We’re going to get you out of there, but
we need some way to find out where you are. How long was the drive from the
school to your location?”

“I woke up here.”

“Have you seen anyone other than John Cross?”

“No.”

Using Adesra’s boost to my power, I spread my magic
outward from her location. I felt John’s mind, which was closed and radiated
dark power. There were others, though. There were people on the street corner
and in the house next door. Hundreds of images flickered through my mind per
second. Most of them were useless, but a few made me stop. There was a school.
Three people near Remy saw an elementary school with the name displayed in huge
letters across the front of it. I was a private investigator; I knew how to
track a business by its name. However, in this case, I didn’t need to.

I recognized the school.

Remy was in my apartment complex.

Adesra was gone when I opened
my eyes, as was the cat. What confused me was that every inch of my desk was
covered in chalk sticks. The cat had to have stolen every damn piece of chalk
in the school and left it on my desk.

Hint much?

The cat obviously knew something I didn’t, so I stuck
a couple of sticks in my pocket. I knew the sleeping enchantment Adesra used
over my roommates only lasted for as long as she was in the room, so I snuck
out silently. I trusted my friends, but I wouldn’t risk their lives in this.

I am a private investigator, this is what I do.

I entered the main doors of the castle and walked
down to the end of the hallway, focusing on finding Hunt, just like normal.
Instead of finding his office, I turned the corner of the hall and the lights
went out. Too late, my instincts screamed of danger.

In the silent darkness, I felt something press
against my consciousness. Unlike with Astrid, Remy, Darwin, or any of the
animals I connected with, this was not a peaceful interaction. This was someone
much more powerful than me who wanted to destroy my mind.

I reached into my pocket to find my lighter or
penlight, both of which I always kept on me. Instead, I felt something small and
thin and with a strange bout of curiosity, I pulled it out. Chalk.
That damn
cat. Why chalk? A gun would be so much better.

As the force grew stronger, I saw exactly who I was
dealing with. Memories, almost video clips, invaded my mind like a slasher
movie. This man was a seasoned murderer, but that was only the tip of one sick
iceberg.

He was twelve when he committed his first murder. I
saw him sitting in class, listening to his teacher and imagining doing vulgar
things to her. Every twelve-year-old boy had some strange stray thought here or
there, but this was so far outside the norm it wasn’t even human. He wanted to
rape her. He wanted to hear her scream and taste her blood as he kissed her. As
lust flowed through him, he imagined drugging her, dragging her into the
basement of his old house, killing her, and then raping her again.

He was powerful; he knew then that he could kill
everyone in the school in just a few minutes. He wanted to, but his father
wouldn’t let him. The only thing holding him back in the middle of class was his
fear of his father. I saw him in John’s mind. His father was a huge man,
especially from the eyes of a twelve-year-old. His father was also a
tremendously powerful wizard and threatened him within an inch of his life if
he ever gave the family secret away.

But John was clever and patient. Extremely patient.

He couldn’t match his father in a battle of magic,
but he had no mother, so he did the cooking. Since he was ten, he poisoned his
father slowly until the man passed away when John was twelve. The very next
day, he did to his teacher what he had been fantasizing for months.

It was a spiral after that. He never wanted
prostitutes; he felt a wizard was too good for that. He wanted women of class
and education. When he was eighteen, he learned to control people with his mind
and he started going for women with families. He got a thrill out of not just
taking a life, but destroying as many lives as he could with it. He would
seduce women with his power and then kill them when they were no longer useful
to him.

With age, he only grew worse. Whereas other people
would go out to see a movie for entertainment, he would sit on his porch and
make a stranger step out in front of a car. He became a member of the council
because, as clever as he was, he was exceedingly nosey. He wanted to know what
everyone was doing and meddle with them in some way.

Chalk.
I felt the smooth texture in my hand. I
had to use it.

He sat in a coffee shop, pretending to read a book.
Instead, he enjoyed preying on the unsuspecting customers. A young couple… They
were happy. The man was about to propose to her because this was where they
met. The girl was pregnant and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.
John pushed lust into the man, not for his girlfriend but for the waitress… and
other women they knew. The man decided right there not to give her the ring and
instead to have an affair. John pushed suspicion into the woman that would
spiral into a burning hate whether she found out about the affair or not.

This was just playing around for John.

Spiders.
The image of the book and a page of
sigils broke through my visions of John’s life, but it was gone a second later.

A woman walked into the grocery store. She shook with
tremors; a dealer was outside. She had kicked heroine when she got pregnant and
now she had a baby at home. It was nothing more than the garage apartment of a
hesitant friend, but it was a roof over their heads. She needed a job so she
could build a life for her child. Unfortunately, she was being hunted.

John stopped her, blocking her path and putting his
hand on her shoulder. She looked up into his eyes, startled, and froze. Without
a word between them, she turned and walked outside to find the dealer.

His greatest pride was in the orphanage he burned
down. I saw blood and tears, heard numerous women scream in pain and fear. He
used magic to make people kill themselves and each other. He fed on the fear of
men and women when they found themselves standing over the bodies of dead loved
ones.

Sigils appeared in my mind again and I felt myself
crouch in the dark.

From John’s hands and mind, I felt how a knife sliced
through skin, which was more delicate than steak. I tasted blood and heard the
whimpers of exhausted women who knew they were about to die.

I was drawing something on the floor. The sigils
became clearer, as if they were glowing in white on the ground and I was just
drawing over them.

I felt John’s anger. He wanted me to stop, but my
hand was steady.
“Stop,”
his voice was firm. I wanted to, but my hand
wasn’t listening.

Heather Anne was choking, reaching out for help. Mrs.
Ashcraft was screaming as Henry tore out her throat. There was blood
everywhere. I was kneeling in blood, smeared in it. Blood was drying on my
neck, jaw, even under my eyes.

Faster
. I wrote the sigils faster than I could
see them. They were in my head. That damn book was in my head. As I wrote them
in a circle around me, John’s hold over me was weakening.

I was kneeling in blood again, but I leaned over and
wrote them with my fingers in the blood. This I could manage because the sigils
were protecting my mind. The more I let them in, the more I forced him out.

John was angry. He didn’t like losing. He had a
friend he was able to hide his true self from. This man was kind, but he was
good at cards. John wanted to play him once, thinking that his powers would
give him an advantage in gambling. He was right, but he wasn’t good enough to
begin with and his friend was a pro. John killed his friend that night, just
for winning the game.

I felt his power start to crumble even as my hands
suddenly stung. He was trying to stop me. I pushed on through the pain as my
hand shook. The last sigil. It was slower, difficult to even hold the chalk in
my hand. I slowly, deliberately forced myself to move the chalk.

When the last stroke was done, his presence vanished
and I found myself in Hunt’s office. The chalk was broken in my fist, which was
covered in burns. I had surrounded myself with the symbols I saw in the book
and forgot about.

In my left hand was a dagger I neither recognized nor
remembered retrieving. John had tried to make me kill someone, but the knife
was clean. There was no one else in the room, which was probably the only
reason John hadn’t succeeded. The fireplace crackled with a soothing fire and
provided enough light to the room that I didn’t feel like John was going to
suddenly gain control of me again.

Of course, when did light ever really keep the
monsters away? The real monsters came out in the day. I stood, shakily, and set
the dagger down on the desk. I found myself leaving the circle to enter Hunt’s
study. It wasn’t by someone else’s control… It was more like I was being
called. Hunt’s iron bowl sat harmlessly on the table. I went to it and saw a
silver liquid, very much like mercury, swirling inside the bowl. When I stood
over it, I saw my reflection in it. The strange substance slowly calmed until
it looked like a mirror, only it wasn’t my face that began to take shape.

Blue fire obscured the surface of the vessel before I
could make out the identity.

“You should be more careful with magic you do not
understand.”

I turned, my heart beating a thousand miles a minute
as Vincent appeared barely a foot away from me. Startled, I took a step back
until I bumped into the table. Naturally, I turned to steady the bowl, only to
find it was gone.

“Be wary of those you call upon, for if you can see
the dark ones, they can see you.”

“Dark ones?”

“Where is Remington?”

“How do you know I found her location?” A loud purr
sounded behind me and I felt Ghost nudge his head under my stinging hand.
“Figures. And that book you gave me?”

“I knew you would need protection against John. The
book can teach you more than the words on the pages if you know how to listen.
Thus, by reading it, you learned to control your powers better and you have
learned protect your mind to a certain extent.”

“Remy is in my apartment complex.”

“Then we must hurry before he moves her.”

“But I live ten hours away.”

“We can go through the shadow pass.”

“No, we cannot,” Hunt said from the doorway. “Devon
has never killed anyone.”

Vincent peered at me with something akin to
disapproval. “I see no other choice then. April will have to drive.”

Hunt sighed. “We will die before we get there.”

*          *          *

A drive through back roads could be considered a
relaxing activity. Nightshade made it terrifying.

My nerves had been hardened after working for nearly
ten years as a private investigator, so I wasn’t squeamish by any means. When
we had to get on the highway and the professor weaved past other cars like they
were parked, I leaned forward and peeked at the speedometer. The stick was as
far as it went at one hundred sixty miles an hour.

I spent the rest of the trip with my hands over my
eyes.

Nightshade laughed as I gave her directions to my
apartment as slowly as I could, hoping that would make her slow down. “We’ll be
in a school zone after that turn---”

I was cut off as the professor slammed on the break.
After a moment in which I didn’t hear any screaming, I opened my eyes. We
weren’t actually stopped; it had just felt like it since we were going
twenty-five miles an hour instead of a hundred.

“Sorry, but I’m not speeding when there are kids
around,” she explained.

A few minutes later, we arrived at my apartment
building. It was an older structure, four stories, and made of sturdy brick.
Since it was in a decent location and there were no holes in the wall, no room
was available for more than a week. Hell, there was a waiting list for my unit.
I thought it looked like a brick cube with holes in it for the windows.

“Um… nice place…” Nightshade lied as she pulled into
my normal parking space.

“Yeah, yeah. How do we do this?” We all got out of
the SUV.

“Does this building have a basement?” Hunt asked.

“I don’t think so. I mean, it might, but I’ve never
seen it.”

“If there is a basement, that’s where she would be,”
Vincent said. “If there isn’t, then you will find him where the electricity is
faulty. I will wait out here.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I cannot fight John, so I would just get in the
way.”

“Why can’t you fight him?”

He unbuttoned the top button of his black shirt and
pulled the flap down to reveal a jagged scar over his heart. “Because my
brother and I were cursed by our father so that we could never fight each
other. If I attack him, I die. If he attacks me, he dies.”

“You have different last names.”

“I changed my name to our mother’s maiden name after
our father died.”

“Let’s go,” Hunt insisted.

The entranceway of the building was a covered
two-by-four concrete porch raised half a foot off the ground. It was better
than nothing, but it wasn’t high enough or wide enough, so it was often covered
in water or snow. Still, it was somewhat welcoming with a flower pot of some
red flowers to the right. The door was dark green, which I always thought
looked pleasant with the brick walls. Instead of a doorbell, there was a buzzer
box to the different apartment rooms. I got out my key and opened the door,
mindful of the creaking.

To my dismay, the office light was on. The office was
to the immediate left of the door with a large window so no one could sneak in
or out. It was a little after midnight, so the manager shouldn’t have been in
there.

I waved my hand at the others to stop them and then
ducked down to sneak under the window. Nightshade rolled her eyes and crawled
behind me. Hunt smirked like I was being ridiculous, but he followed suit. Once
past the window, we walked normally to the staircase at the end of the hall. Fortunately,
I was only on the second floor. As we reached the second floor, the manager
came around the corner.
Shit.

Kate was a sweet woman in her late forties with
short, cream-blond hair that was just starting to turn gray and light green
eyes. Her face was pleasant without being particularly attractive and she had
laugh lines around her mouth. She was about five-four and on the verge of being
too thin. She smiled widely when she saw me and moved immediately to hug me. I
hugged her back.

“Devon, I’m glad you’re back. How’s your mother?” she
asked.