Elemental Darkness (Paranormal Public Series) (24 page)

I could hear the cheers of the crowd as I darted toward the woods, barely thinking about why I was doing it. I just ran, my legs pumping and my lungs gasping for air. Turning a corner, I skidded to a halt.

Standing in front of me were three pixies. I knew two of them - they were on the same Tactical Team - but I had rarely seen the third before. The first two had their bags of pixie dust out, while the third was twirling something that looked a lot like a green wand. It was probably a spellbinder, a nasty piece of paranormal equipment meant to inflict lots of pain in a small amount of time.

“Hi, Charlotte,” said the one with the spellbinder, smiling. He was a sophomore, and he had a reputation for violence and arguments. He had painted more of the Long Building than the rest of the students combined.

He raised the spellbinder, and I was frantically trying to think of a way to neutralize it in a hurry when I felt a tug on my arm. Then Jackle was there, pulling me away.

“Come on,” he insisted gruffly. “You can’t be the first one out.”

We ran.

I heard footsteps pounding after us and voices yelling in anger, and the tug on my arm became more insistent.

“It would make sense if I were the first,” I argued. “The whole school wants me dead and my teammates left me.”

“We didn’t leave you,” said Jackle. “This is all meant to assist in cross-paranormal relations.”

“That’s going so well,” I said, as dryly as I possibly could.

Jackle gave me one quick smile over his shoulder.

The campus had been opened up for this event, and the opportunities for spectating had been spread out as much as possible. Stadium seating had been set up in various places along the big field and the hill. The screens that hadn’t been used since Dash during my Starter semester were now up and running, and now I could see that many of the magical devices were showing Jackle and me as we fled from the pixies.

Great, so much for blending in.

“See,” I said, pointing. “They’re telling the other teams right where I am. We don’t have a chance.”

Jackle halted, tacitly acknowledging that I was right. Ahead of us there were at least three Tactical teams, just waiting for us to get near enough for an attack. If we kept on the way we were going, we were doomed. What we really needed was to get lost amongst the buildings of Public, but there were too many students scattered around for us to have any chance of accomplishing that.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I can die.”

Jackle glared at me. “First of all, did you not say that I don’t like to lose? Second of all, they don’t just want to kill you in the game, they want to kill you dead. Are you really going to let that happen? The great Charlotte Rollins, the only elemental, didn’t die fighting demons, she died fighting some stupid sophomore pixie with a magical toy?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” I grumbled.

The rest of our team was nowhere to be seen. I glanced behind me and saw that the three pixies who were chasing us were just coming up behind us. Jackle and I were surrounded, and they were closing in fast.

“This is just a game,” I whispered to myself. “This is just a game. My fellow students are not going to kill me.” I glanced at each of them and I had a hard time believing my own words.

The fear of war with demons had turned many of the students hard, and they wanted someone to blame. Lisabelle was the likely target, and her friends were next. Besides that, as the only elemental I bore a lot of the responsibility, in their minds, for the demon attacks.

“Enough of this,” I heard Dacer cry. He was watching on one of the magical screens. I turned my head for a second - long enough to see him sitting with the other professors, including Zervos and Erikson, with Caid nearby - before I snapped back to attention. None of the adults except Dacer cared that my team had left me exposed. Daisy wouldn’t get so much as a talking to for deserting me.

And in the moment, e
ven that split second of indecision had been too long.

One of the pixies behind me lunged and sprinkled his dust into the air. It went from the color of green grass to the deep green of pine needles as it congealed into one point.

I threw my weight toward Jackle, knocking him out of the way just as the pixie arrow zoomed past us.

“Ooff.” I slammed into the ground with a thud.

“Where’s the rest of our team?” Jackle panted.

“Who cares,” I said, standing up.

The day was clear and cool, the sky cloudless. Well, I could fix that. I waited a breath, letting them all come closer, and as I waited I called to my ring.

Ever since I had found out that this wasn’t the ring that was meant for me it had felt a little strange on my finger, heavier than it had seemed before, and slower to react to my commands. But it would still do the trick against a bunch of sophomores and juniors.

At first I called to the clouds and the water, asking for rain. They didn’t gather instantly, but they came, dropping down from high in the sky and rushing over distances. The sky darkened from blue to gray.

Another pixie arrow came whizzing past me, but I sidestepped it easily. I wasn’t so lucky with the third one. But it didn’t matter if it hit me, it only mattered if it knocked me out.

The arrow slammed into my shoulder and I staggered, instantly dizzy and disoriented. I heard Jackle yell, joined by other voices.

Just in time I remembered what Sigil had told me about fire. I had the hardest time with it of any of the four elements, because I usually needed it to exist nearby already before I could make use of it. There would be no fire to call on during Tactical, but now it didn’t matter, because I now knew that I could pull it from deep in the ground. It would be difficult, and I’d be tired afterward, but at least I’d be able to make my point.

The rain was now threatening, the wind whipping around me. The stands of watching paranormals had fallen silent. I wondered what Dacer was thinking.

I fell to my knees, the effects of the arrow hampering me more quickly than I had expected. I took a deep breath and fought the spreading numbness, which tingled until my whole arm felt like it was on fire. I was losing feeling on one side, and it was getting progressively harder to breathe. It felt as if I had fallen asleep on my arm and the blood was just returning, only instead of the tingling getting better it was getting worse. I fought ever harder to breathe as my arm swelled and spasmed.

I needed a fallen angel, but my fallen angel teammate wasn’t going to take the time to help me.

Refusing to worry about passing out from a pixie attack, I pulled in as deep a breath as I could, and I called the fire.
Beneath me the ground grew hot; it was working. I pulled more of my strength into the magical power that coursed through my veins. Fear had made me strong. I saw my attackers, not just the three pixies, but the ones in front of us as well, take a step back and stare at their feet. Good. They wouldn’t be able to stand there much longer.

“She’s heating the ground,” cried the pixie who had shot the arrow. “Stop her!”

“That arrow should have knocked her out before this,” cried one of his companions. “She’s still standing. Kind of.”

“Hey, stop him!” cried the third pixie angrily. I felt a cool hand on my shoulder and looked up into the kind eyes of Darrow. He wasn’t on my team, but he’d gotten through Jackle’s and my defenses. At first that surprised me, but it shouldn’t have; up to then I had merely been trying to scare them away with hot ground, and a fallen angel would have ways of dealing with something so obvious.

I gasped when I felt an easing of the tingling, which had started to become unbearable.

“Hang on,” said Darrow. “It’s actually simple magic.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect anything complicated from that bunch,” I said through gritted teeth. Darrow smiled a little, but all his concentration was in his hands. His ring blazed silver and white, and I felt better immediately. My vision cleared and my arm started to come back to normal.

Darrow shifted and I frowned. “The ground,” he murmured. “If I was anything but a fallen angel, it’d be burning my feet.”

“Oh,” I said. “I know an advanced pyrotechnics professor.”

“Okay,” said Darrow, clearly not understanding in the least, but accepting that I knew what I was talking about.

“Time for phase two,” I said, and at that moment I let go of the heat in the ground. Darrow instantly looked relieved.

The clouds, which were nearly black and had long ago blotted out the sun, were ready to burst with rain. As soon as I let the heat in the ground go, the paranormals came sprinting forward.

I didn’t see anything except the attack. I felt Darrow release my arm, which was no longer tingling. The dizziness that had been swirling around me was also gone, and with my newfound steadiness I got to my feet. Darrow stepped back and I quickly turned my attention away from him in the urgency of the moment.

I released the rain and used the wind to help it along. I was careful to avoid the stands and to keep my onslaught confined to a specific location, just as Professor Erikson was teaching us. In this case, I concentrated on the area surrounding me that the students were trying to penetrate.

“They’re still going to get through,” Darrow yelled over the whipping wind.

“If they want to lose their skin, sure,” I cried back. “It’s their choice.”

Darrow looked grim, but he stopped arguing with me.

I was right. The students tried to run through the barrier, but they couldn’t. As an added benefit, none of them had any experience in fighting either elementals or this type of magic, which meant that their useless defenses collapsed under the slamming water, while Darrow, Jackle, and I remained dry.

“We have to get out of here,” Jackle cried.

I nodded. “How do you propose we do that?”

The problem with this sort of defense was that as much as it kept others out, it also kept us in.

Jackle had an answer, though. “Throw the water back at them. Instead of calling it straight down, make it attack them. A few seconds should be enough to let us get away.”

I didn’t hesitate. With just a little wind I redirected the water.

“Now!” Jackle cried.

The three of us ran. Our flight from our Tactical opponents gave me a new appreciation for Sip, Lough, and Lisabelle, and even for Trafton and Rake. Darrow and Jackle were protecting me, but it wasn’t comfortable or smooth. They nearly collided with each other, prompting a mutual glare. Trying to ignore them, I took a deep breath and used the last bit of wind I had to throw the water in the faces of any pursuers that might have tried to stick with us.

Unfortunately for us, we had now reached the foot of the hill, and we had to start climbing. It slowed us down, and by the time we got to the top Darrow was breathing hard.

“I need to return to my team,” he said. “I’m already in trouble.”

“Come on,” said Jackle, reaching to grab my arm again. But this time I pulled it away from him.

“Pretty sure I just proved I can take care of myself,” I said. “You follow me this time.”

We hurried to the nearest end of the Long Building, mostly because I was so familiar with it. Since the game had started I hadn’t seen Sip or Lough, and I wondered if they were already close to finding the Key of Light with its protective White Ring. I also wondered where Daisy and Camilla had gotten to, since I hadn’t seen them either.

“They shouldn’t have left you,” Jackle panted. “Do they want to lose? What were they thinking?”

“They were being smart,” I said. “They forced me to expose some of my strengths while keeping me busy as they looked for the hidden Key. They knew I wouldn’t go quietly. They want that Key for something.”

“There’s no way they’d know you would beat all those paranormals,” Jackle argued.

I shrugged. I was pretty sure that’s exactly what they’d hoped for.

Just then a voice boomed, “Just enough.” The sound reverberated over the rolling fields, up the hill, and amongst the campus buildings. It was Oliva, calling a halt for the day. After my little rain attack stunt the sun was shiningly brightly again, though so much time had gone by that night would soon fall and it would be dinner time.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw the three pixies cresting the hill. They were all soaking wet. I tried not to smirk.

“Careful,” I said. “Maybe next time you go out you should take an umbrella.”

The pixie hurled the spellbinder into the dirt as Jackle guffawed.

We had won, for now. But I wondered what sort of victory it was when winning was merely not dying at the hands of pure evil.

Dinner that night was a little different from what it had been in recent weeks. Sip, Lough, and I were sitting by ourselves discussing Tactical, but the room was charged with energy. I knew various paranormals were angry that I had attacked them, specifically the pixies.

“I’m SO sorry,” said Sip, her purple eyes wide.

“For what?” I asked, taking another bite of chicken pot pie.

“For leaving you,” said Sip, scandalized. “I’m so sorry.”

“You can’t do everything all the time,” Lough pointed out gruffly. He hadn’t apologized for disappearing, but I didn’t expect him to. As a dream giver he had almost as big a target on his back as I did.

“I can try,” said Sip hotly. “What do you care, anyway?”

“You think we can do everything for everyone, and we just can’t,” said Lough darkly.

Sip tossed her hair and ignored him. “Whatever.”

Lough moved his food around on his plate and avoided eye contact, but I could tell he was bothered about something.

“No one found the Key, or we could have heard about it, right?” I said. “Why do you think Oliva wants it?”

“Like everyone’s saying,” said Sip, shrugging. “For Caid.”

I shook my head. “There’s more to it than that,” I whispered. “There has to be.”

Sip looked skeptical, but she didn’t argue with me. Instead, she changed the subject.

“I’m shocked that Darrow came to help you,” she said. “He’s not even on your team.”

“It helps cross-paranormal relations,” I said dryly. “You should at least be glad of that.”

I was still frustrated that Sip didn’t seem to care about the Key, but I in a way I understood. She had a lot on her plate with her thesis work, to say nothing of our regular course work, her public writing, and her involvement in the Sign of Six.

I grabbed another piece of pie and stood up. “I need to get back to Astra,” I said. I wanted to keep looking for more pictures of the elemental royal family.