Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series) (33 page)

I still kept calling winds until
I felt my powers starting to wane, then I let myself come back to my senses
slowly. I had pressed my hands, palms downward, into the ground, as if they
were pressing the winds down onto the fires.

I wasn’t sure what Martha had
attacked me with, but I saw no evidence of damage around me. To my relief, I
also didn’t see any demons. Carefully I tried to stand, but for the second time
tonight my legs wouldn’t take my weight. I sat back down and looked around. I
had landed in a part of campus that didn’t have a very good view of the other
dorms, but I couldn’t smell smoke and there were no fires lighting the night
sky. Far away somewhere I still heard the sounds of battle, which meant that
the professors hadn’t entirely dealt with the demons, but at least the dorms
were safe.

My back also hurt from where I
had pressed it so hard back into the tree. Before I could try to stand again I
heard the flapping of winds. I slumped back against the tree. I had stopped the
bombs from detonating and killing everyone, but now there was no way I had the
energy to defend myself if what I heard approaching was a demon. My friends
were safe, and that was all I had it in me to accomplish for the time being.

“Charlotte?” Keller’s frantic
voice reached my ears.

I sat up and winced. “Keller!” I
cried. “You’re alive?”

A dark shape came down from
overhead and Keller landed gently next to me. He was still wearing his suit
from the gala and his blue eyes were frantic. His dark hair was messy from
flying, and it got even messier when I tangled my fingers in it.

He pulled me into his lap and
kissed me soundly. It was a good thing I was sitting, because the kiss he gave
me would have made my knees weak at the best of times. For a while, I just sat
there on his lap. I knew he was healing me with his touch, and I let him. I was
so tired I didn’t mind taking some of his strength.

“You’re getting your suit dirty,”
I whispered, pulling away.

“What suit?” he muttered and
pulled me back to him.

When he finally pulled away
himself, I said, “What suit indeed?”

He grinned. “You were hurt,” he
said. “Your wrists and ankles. What happened?” I couldn’t see his face very
well under the tree where even the moon couldn’t shine, but I could hear the
fear in his voice.

“I’ll explain everything later,”
I said. “Right now we have to get to -”

“Sip and Lisabelle,” he said.
“Yeah, somehow I knew that.”

“Want me to carry you?” he said.

I shook my head, showing him the
mask that was sitting in my lap.

His eyes widened, but he didn’t
say anything. His powerful legs propelled him into the air as his dark wings
unfurled. I put the mask on and instantly felt the wind rushing around me. I
turned my face up to the moon that was no longer covered by clouds.

“Where are they?” Keller said.
“They aren’t in Astra?”

“I think they’re at Oliva’s
house,” I said. “But I’m not sure I know how to get there from here.”

“I do,” said Keller, and he sped
off with me right behind him. I felt perfect. Keller had healed me so that even
the little scrapes and bruises from daily life were gone. I felt like I had
slept for days.

“You okay?” Keller called over
his shoulder. He dodged some birds that were flying in the opposite direction.

I nodded and gave him a thumbs
up, and he turned his attention back to leading us to Oliva’s.

The president of Public’s house
was dark. Frowning, we landed outside the massive gardens. Strewn in front of
the gates were the bodies of hellhounds. I couldn’t tell how they died, other
than that it was gruesome enough to make me flinch and look away. Keller’s face
was grim. The hellhounds looked like they had been suffocated, which had Martha
written all over it.

“Are there more demons around, do
you think?” I whispered.

He shook his head. “They aren’t
really known for stealth. If they were here and they saw you show up, we would
be seeing them.”

I nodded.

“Can you use a Contact Stone?”
Keller said to me.

I shook my head. “Martha.”

He looked at me like I was crazy.

“Your dorm mother?” he said, his
face filled with confusion.

“Not exactly,” I said dryly.

“Can we get in?” he asked,
turning his attention to the gate.

I walked up to it and pushed. It
swung open.

This was bad. Caid’s guards
should be protecting the entrance from demons, but there weren’t even any
demons.

Keller tugged at my arm, silently
directing me to go in behind him. I didn’t argue. We both knew the gate should
have been locked.

It was still fully dark, but the
sun must have been on its way to rising; that much time had surely gone by
since the attack on the gala. From somewhere else around campus I could smell
smoke, and for the first time that night I wondered if the demons were winning.
Martha must have killed the hellhounds that had been waiting outside of Oliva’s
house, hoping Caid would show up, but then my friends should have tried to
escape, and I knew they hadn’t.

With that thought, all the worry
that I had just pushed away by stopping the explosions came rushing back into
my mind. But I forced myself to stay calm. They were fine. Surely my friends
were fine.

Oliva’s gardens did not look like
I remembered them. As a powerful pixie, he brought a lot of magic with plants
to his job, and his gardens had been extensive and beautiful. Now, many of the
flowers were wilted and dying. Some lay right in the path that we walked on, as
if they had risen up to try and stop an attack and been cut down.

Oliva’s back porch was black and
charred, the stairs burned away.

There was still no sign of a
living paranormal, but at least there were no more bodies, not even of demons.
Unfortunately, that suggested that it hadn’t been the demons that had breached
the walls, it had been something worse.

“Do you think your friends are in
there?” Keller whispered, pausing in front of what used to be Oliva’s back
steps.

I pointed to the porch, my
stomach churning, and nodded.

There were Caid’s bodyguards. I
had decided that they were pixies, and now they were dead pixies.

I shoved away a flashing vision
of Cale’s dead body. He had just started his training, he certainly wasn’t in
charge of the president’s protection, and he was not lying dead in front of me
at this very moment. Nevertheless, sadness threatened to overwhelm my control.

Keller pulled me close,
redirecting my gaze.

Moving as quietly as possible, we
snuck into the house. Even together we were no match for Martha, and we just
had to hope that she was too busy with whatever she was doing - just not
killing my friends - to notice that we were there.

Oliva’s place was covered in
plants, but he had only a little furniture. All of his floors were wood, and
the large windows let in a little moonlight. No damage had been done to the
inside of the house, and there was even what looked like leftover dinner on the
table. From somewhere below I heard a weird sort of clicking sound, but
otherwise the house was silent.

“Do you think he has a basement?”
I whispered to Keller. The fallen angel nodded and we started to search. As in
so many houses, the door to the basement was through the kitchen.

This time I insisted on going
first. I knew Martha better than Keller did, and however weird it seemed, her
previous actions suggested that no matter how many other students she did away
with, for some reason she didn’t want me dead.

I crept down the stairs, but it
was hard to be quiet. There were definitely voices, and I was pretty sure I
recognized them. They got louder as I got closer. Hopefully the talking would
drown out my footsteps.

As I got close to the bottom of
the stairs I saw Martha standing in front of a group of paranormals, all of
whom I recognized. Caid, Oliva, Dacer, Lisabelle, and Sip were all seated on
the floor, tied together.

Sip had a cut on her cheek and
Caid had a black eye. Dacer’s hat was gone and his eye makeup was streaked, but
he was otherwise fine. Lisabelle just looked furious, and I couldn’t read
Oliva’s expression.

Standing in front of them was
Martha.

She was ranting about the
protection of Public.

But my friends couldn’t keep the
surprise from their faces, and there was only one thing I could think of to do.

With a cry I threw myself at
Martha’s back.

She wasn’t expecting it, which
was good news, because at the sound of my footstep on the stone floor of the
basement she turned and blasted power in every direction. I called to my ring,
but it had already gathered whatever powers I had left. The powers of earth,
air, fire, and water poured through me and into my skin. I felt saturated to
the point of bursting, but I needed the protection, and since I wasn’t a fallen
angel and didn’t have healing powers, for myself or others, this was all I
could do. I wrapped myself in a cloak of power and hoped it was enough.

Martha sent a direct blast into
my chest.

I saw Dacer flash to his feet.

Then I stumbled, knocking into
her, and disappeared again into the dark unconscious.

“Wake up, wake up!” It was Sip’s
voice, and she was slapping me lightly in the face as I came awake. “Who sleeps
at a time like this?”

“You’re so ornery,” said
Lisabelle. My friends’ voices sounded distant and foggy and I didn’t want to
move.

“Do I have to get up?” I mumbled,
trying to turn over and at the same time cover my ears with my arm. Strong
fingers gently kept me on my back.

“Yes, you do,” came Lisabelle’s
voice. “We need to know what’s going on and we need to know who your dorm
mother really is and we need to know why she’s an insanely powerful wizard who
spends her time baking chocolate chip cookies. Dacer thinks he has a theory,
but he is so raving mad at the moment that no one’s really listening to him.
Then, on top of all that, Sip wants to take us somewhere.

“Sip is more than welcome to take
us somewhere,” I said. “So long as by somewhere she means a shower.”

“You can shower,” said Sip. “They
will wait.”

I had no idea what that meant and
I didn’t care. Instead, I did what my friends asked and opened my eyes. I felt
dizzy, and what I could see was more like a set of vague shapes than actual
people. Sip took my hand and put a glass in it.

“Drink,” she ordered me. “Keller
put healing powers on it.”

I drank. To my surprise it didn’t
taste terrible. Usually this stuff tasted like the seaweed Ricky had tricked me
into eating on our last family vacation, but this tasted more like lemons, lots
of lemons. It burned down my throat and set fire to my tired limbs.

When I was finished I looked
expectantly at my friends. I felt better. Not as much better as when Keller had
healed me after the first time I stopped Martha, but good enough to get up and
walk around. “Shower? Explanation? How long have I been out?”

“Just a couple of hours,” said
Sip. “They spent most of the time arguing.”

Sip tipped her head and I
realized I was in Oliva’s living room, only now the lights were on. We could
see the kitchen from here, where Oliva, Caid, Dacer, Zervos, and Erikson were
sitting around a table. There might have been a couple more senior paranormals
there that I couldn’t see.

“Keller wanted to transport you
to Astra, but his aunt wouldn’t let him,” explained Lisabelle. “She said there
were still demons.”

“There can’t be that many demons
if they’re all here,” I said, nodding toward the kitchen.

“No,” said Lisabelle with
admiration. “Martha took care of most of them. Violent little protector when
she wants to be.”

“Remind you of anyone else you
know?” Sip asked, batting her eyelashes.

Lisabelle tapped her chin with
her index finger. “Nope, not really.”

Sip scowled.

“They’re interrogating Martha
now,” said Lisabelle. “They wanted us to leave when you woke up.”

“Which is just fine with us,”
said Sip. “They won’t even tell us who else is alright. What about Lough, in
fact; do you know where he is?”

“I’ll tell you on the way,” I
said, realizing with some urgency that Lough had now been alone in Astra for
hours, if indeed he was still there. First things first, though, so I asked,
“Where’s Keller?”

“He went back to help out at
Airlee. A blast went off there after we left,” said Sip, her eyes worried.

“I know,” I said grimly. “I saw
Nolan.”

“Oh, you did?” Sip sounded
relieved. “How did he help?”

“He told me where you were,” I
said.