Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series) (31 page)

She looked around at all of us,
checking for understanding. “I’ll follow loyalty,” she continued, “which means
I’ll follow Charlotte. So Lough, if something happens to her on your watch . .
. I will find you. And I will destroy you. Do we understand each other?” Her
eyes were hard.

Lough nodded solemnly. He knew
she was saying it more for her own benefit than for his.

“Charlotte, I’ll kill you too,”
she added.

I started to step forward, but
Keller held me back.

Rake nodded. “I second that. We
should respect that we all have dear ones, and we all want them taken care of.
I may like you, Lisabelle, and your friends too, but the Power of Five is
important to lots of paranormals. Don’t forget that an army of us did not show
up to hand Charlotte over to Malle. We still haven’t, because many of us
believe that her way is evil, and we won’t stand for it. We also think
Charlotte must be protected. Lots of us have a stake in this.”

“See, Rake thinks lots of paranormals
besides us want to keep Charlotte safe,” said Sip. She grabbed Lisabelle’s arm
and tugged. “Come on. I’m always telling you you’re too self-involved.”

“Let’s go,” I said to Lough,
giving my friends one last nod.

We raced away as demons came on.
For once I wasn’t going to worry about my friends. They would be fine, safe in
their dorms.

We hurried outside, but it was
slow going. Every student there was trying to get away through the one exit.

By the time we realized the
demons were herding us to the exit, it was too late. We came outside in a burst
of sparks and snarls. There, stretched out on the black sloping grass in front
of us were hellhounds, hundreds upon hundreds of hellhounds.

“Nice to see the demons and the
hellhounds work together so well,” Lough muttered as he pushed fellow students
aside. “We paranormals could learn something from that.”

“Don’t say that,” I said
breathlessly.

We fought our way through the
throng of students. Hellhounds were attacking in every direction. I saw black
bodies, red snarling eyes, and shining rings. Students who were nowhere near
ready to fight were forced to defend themselves.

In the darkness I saw fear
everywhere. Overhead, the moon was entirely covered by clouds, or maybe the
Nocturns had sent it away. Maybe they were just that powerful now.

“We have to get you to Astra,”
Lough panted. A hellhound made a great leap for him, but Lough caught the beast
in midair, a nightmare-like web wrapping around the black body and squeezing.

“Wow,” I breathed. “That’s, you
know, terrible and cool.”

“Don’t use your power,” he
cautioned, his eyes intent on his captive. “Let me get us out of here.” Sweat
had already appeared on his forehead and he wiped it away with an impatient
movement.

“Why not?” I demanded. “I should
be defending us the same as you.”

“We might need the Power of Five
before this night is over,” he said tiredly. “We have no idea how the
hellhounds overran the campus, and the night is young.”

He did have a point. I was so
intent on blaming the Sign of Six that nothing else had crossed my mind.

I looked back for my friends, but
they were already lost in a sea of faces. “They’re trying to kill us all,”
Betsy Butter yelled, racing frantically past us. She had been through a lot
last semester, and judging by her crazy expression she was breaking under the
pressure.

“Betsy, STOP,” I yelled, but it
was too late. She ran headlong into a trio of hungry hellhounds.

“I’ll get her,” Lough cried.
Betsy screamed as the nearest hellhound attacked. Lough tried to get there
quickly, but there were too many bodies between him and the fallen angel.

The hellhounds growled in hunger.

Betsy tried to push the first
hellhound away, but in response the thing just plunged black teeth deep into
her shoulder and started to rip her flesh away.

Lough sent another one of his
webs to keep the hellhounds off the girl. Betsy continued to scream, but her
bleeding stopped almost instantly. It must be nice being a fallen angel, I
thought.

“Let’s go,” said Lough, turning
back to me once he knew that Betsy could get up and run on her own. She stood
shakily, her pretty dress covered in blood and slime and black hair. It was a
gruesome sight.

“No,” cried Betsy. “You have to
help me. You can’t leave me here to be devoured by these beasts.”

“Betsy, you’re a fallen angel and
you can fly. Get going!” Lough said with exasperation. I felt the heat of the
battle burning against my back. “We have other problems.”

And with that, we ran.

I didn’t stop to look behind me.

“I feel like a coward,” I said,
once we could see Astra. “I’m running away.”

“You’re hunkering down and doing
the smart thing until it’s safe,” said Lough, not looking at me. Instead he
looked to the sky. “I’m really glad the dragons aren’t on anyone’s side. Having
stuff dive bombing and attacking us from the air would really suck right about
now.”

“The demons can fly,” I pointed
out, sorry to burst his bubble.

“Yeah, but not like the dragons.
I hope you get a chance to see them in action,” he said reverently. “Anyway,
let’s get you safe.”

I was probably lucky I lived in
Astra. If the professors and Public’s defenses didn’t deal with the demons,
they would probably come looking for me, but then I had Astra’s own defenses,
and although I was a high-value target, I had a feeling that the demons, who
were far stupider than Malle or the Nocturns, would go where there were
students in large numbers. Any of the other dorms would do, but Astra would be
quietly empty.

We reached Astra’s front door.
There were no lights on inside. Martha apparently hadn’t felt the need, and I
had no idea where my dorm mother was. Except, of course, she wasn’t my dorm
mother. We had no idea who she really was.

In all the confusion, what we
hadn’t talked about again was Martha. But even in the middle of a demon attack,
I couldn’t help but be amazed that I had put up with her all semester and it
had turned out she wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. I wondered
who she really was - maybe some lost paranormal who wanted a warm place to stay?
For a fleeting second I thought she might be my mother, but I pushed that
thought away. I would know my mother, and Martha was nothing like her.

“I’ll go in first,” said Lough
when we got to Astra. I had stopped bothering to argue.

He opened the door to darkness.
Following him in, I reached over and turned on the nearest hall lamp, throwing
Astra into dim light and shadows.

“Lough, you should go,” I said.
“I’ll be fine. Go and wait it out with Sip and Lisabelle.”

Lough turned to leave, but
because I was watching him instead of thinking I had to be on the alert in my
own home, I saw the danger too late. Martha, her hair in a perfect bun and her
eyes emotionless, had a vase raised high above her head. The woman was much
stronger than she looked. That vase was old and heavy and Martha swung it with
ease.

Before I even had a chance to
scream, she brought it down to smash on the back of Lough’s skull.

My friend crumpled heavily to the
floor, a little dark liquid pooling around his ears.

I stared at Martha. Remarkably,
she still held the vase and she was obviously very far from harmless.

“Your turn,” she said menacingly,
swinging the vase a second time and aiming right for my head.

I woke up with my jaw throbbing.
I was in a sitting position, not lying down like I was sure I wanted to be. At
first I didn’t open my eyes, hoping that the pain would just go away. I had a
fleeting thought that Sip would be running out of her healing salve soon if I
kept this up.

I wanted to moan or groan, but
that would involve moving. I was just about to pass out again from the pain
when something cold and soothing was gently pressed to my jaw.

I opened one of my eyes.

I was in the Astra kitchen and it
was still dark outside. The only light was from the fireplace, but even that
was burning low at this point. I was seated on one of the chairs next to the
kitchen table, with my wrists and ankles bound with some sort of black rope. I
tugged against my bonds. Nothing happened. Growing more panicked I tugged
again, but they were secure. I was tied up, with no apparent possibility of
escape.

“Oh, don’t bother with those,
dear,” came Martha’s maddeningly calm voice. She was sitting very close to me,
holding a cold compress to my hurt face. Her eyes were grave. “It’s for your
own protection.”

“I feel really protected,” I
said.

“Public is in danger and I have
to protect it,” said Martha, with that air she had of implying that everything
she said should be obvious. “I am protecting Public. Someday you will
understand that.”

“Where’s Lough?” I asked. My eyes
scanned the kitchen, but I didn’t see the dream giver.

Martha shrugged. “He was too big
for me to move, so I just left him where he fell.”

When she saw me start to struggle
she shushed me. “He’ll be fine,” she said without a shred of concern. “I
think.”

“You aren’t supposed to be here,”
I said. “I don’t have a dorm mother, so who are you and why have you been
living in Astra all semester?” Moving my jaw sent pain radiating down my body.

“I am Public’s protector and
savior,” said Martha, her eyes grave. “The paranormals need to understand that
they’re putting my Public in danger.”

“Your Public?” I said. The cold
compress was helping, and it was a little easier to talk, but I was still tied
up in my own home while demons attacked my friends. Fear threatened to consume
me, but I told myself to keep a clear head and try to find a way out of there.

“Yes, of course. I’ve set
explosions up in every dorm and in some of the other key buildings as well.
We’re going to start fresh,” she said cheerfully.

“You know that demons are
attacking your precious Public even as we sit here and chat?” I asked icily.

“Like I said,” Martha told me,
not looking the least bit surprised, “we’re going to start fresh.”

Something in what she had just
said gave me pause. “Wait, what explosions? Demons don’t set explosions . . .
the library was you, wasn’t it? Not demons?” Fear trickled down my spine and
made me shiver.

“It was not demons,” said Martha.
“The demons aren’t that talented. But I am.”

I groaned. “Why on earth would
you attack the school you supposedly love?”

Martha’s eyes flashed. “Because
those stupid paranormal brats weren’t taking care of it. A Nocturn as
president, Ultimate Tacticals that weakened the structure of my beloved home,
and demons running wild. It’s a shame. Paranormals everywhere should be
ashamed.” She drew herself up, glaring furiously at me as if it was all somehow
my fault.

“You could’ve killed someone!” I
cried, then stopped. My jaw hurt so much I wished it would fall off. In pain, I
sucked air in through my teeth and glared at my attacker. She didn’t notice my
fury, or she just didn’t care.

Her gaze sharpened. “It was a
means to an end. I needed to be in paranormal form so that I could move around
the campus and study its inner workings. Astra was the perfect base from which
to do that. No other paranormals around, and no supervision.”

“Dacer said you weren’t supposed
to be here.”

“I told every paranormal I came
across a different story,” Martha bragged. “I told you I was your dorm mother,
I told the librarians I worked in the dining hall. . . .”

And Public had been in such an
uproar that no one had thought to challenge her.

“And what about the baking?”

“What’s wrong with my baking?”
she huffed. She glanced at the fire, her eyes turning orange. “I have to go
now,” she said. “Bombs to detonate and buildings to level. My sweet, sweet
Public.” She removed the ice pack from my cheek and I flinched.

I had never heard anyone describe
buildings as sweet.

“Wait,” I called after her. She
was nearly to the door.

She turned halfway around, so
that I was looking at her profile. My heart was pounding and I had to think
fast.

“The explosions will detonate
simultaneously, so I’ll be a busy lady tonight,” she said. Then she smiled at
me as if she couldn’t contain her delight, and my heart sank. Whatever Martha
was, she had become so twisted that she no longer understood she would hurt
paranormals, or even that hurting them was evil.

“You can’t detonate yet,” I said
desperately, feeling a bit of blood trickle down the side of my lip. “The
demons attacked at Oliva’s gala, and all the students went back to their dorms.
You’ll kill everyone if you attack now.”

The glint in her eyes made me go
cold, but I waited for her response.