elemental 07 - lonely hunger (5 page)

Aira shrugged.

“I mean, I suppose we can pit two rulers against each other, but the elders have put me on the trail of a group of earth and fire elementals who were responsible for killing five air elementals and injuring many more.” Dylan glanced away from a moment as he felt Aira’s persuasive ability intensifying, her energy cracking in the air around them, reaching out to push at the other man’s mind. “Let me speak with Oriel Peters.” The man hesitated only a moment longer as the compulsion came over him. 

“She’s in Room 548,” the man said almost absently. Dylan suppressed the snort that threatened to disturb the subtle spell that Aira had woven around the man in an instant. Dylan wondered just how the process would go; Aiden would be just as incapacitated as Oriel was by the water energy vibrating around them in the cell. Aira and he would be capable of still exercising their abilities—Dylan even more so than Aira, with the strengthening influence of the water-aligned materials.

They strode quickly through the halls of the holding facility. “What are we going to do about Aiden?” Dylan asked quietly as they made their way to Oriel’s cell. Aira paused—but only for a moment. 

“We will have to get through it as best as we can,” she said, glancing at Aiden with a flicker of concern. “You should be able to at least ask her questions, right?” Aiden licked his lips and then nodded. Dylan wondered just how capable his brother would be.

They came to the room and stopped outside of it. “Dylan, you’re going to be the point person in this,” Aira said lowly. Dylan could feel the water-aligned energy flowing on the other side of the door, almost calling to him, almost intoxicating. He wondered just how much stronger his abilities would be in the room. Aira took a deep breath and turned the key in the door, slipping it back into her pocket in an instant. She turned the knob and Dylan felt the rush of elementally-aligned energy flowing through him as the door opened, strengthening him, amplifying his abilities. Aiden faltered as the three of them walked into the room; Dylan saw Aira reach out and touch his hand, and knew that she was bolstering him just as he had bolstered her in the cell they had found Alex in.

“Aira,” Oriel said from the bunk. “Fancy meeting you here.” 

Oriel’s gaze flicked over to Aiden. 

“How do you like the ambiance here, traitor?” 

Aiden raised an eyebrow.

“How am I a traitor?” 

“You’re fire-aligned like I am. You took up with the biggest enemy to our kind and even married her.” 

Aiden rolled his eyes.

“Aira is an air elemental. By her very nature she’s not an enemy to our kind.” Oriel sat up. Dylan took in the sight of her: there were telltale signs of her confinement in the watery cell that were easy to read. Every moment in the suppressing atmosphere sapped more of her elemental energies, pushing down her ability to fight. He knew that because of her grandfather’s status as an elemental ruler she was occasionally let out of the cell—particularly for a prisoner who had been held for so long, it would be a huge benefit to re-stoke her elemental energies outside. 

“The only reason you haven’t come up as an unstable is because you’re bonded with her,” Oriel said, almost snarling. She had lost weight in her confinement, the skin on her face was paler and her eyes had a washed-out look. “If you had stayed out of it and just let her die, we’d have a much more amenable ruler of air, and my grandfather’s authority would still be firmly in place.” 

Aira sighed, stirring the air in the room to a quick breeze.

“Oriel, you were on the wrong side of that fight. I am no threat to your grandfather.” 

Dylan felt the power blossoming inside of him, an onrushing torrent that he could barely control.

“Aira has done more to protect unstable talents and keep them safe than anyone else has for a century,” he said, feeling a flash of resentment towards Oriel’s priorities. 

“What brings you here, anyway?” Oriel glanced between the three of them. “Is it time for my fate to be decided?” 

Dylan took a deep breath. He wondered if this was what it would feel like when he came into his abilities fully on his upcoming birthday. No wonder Aira had been so agitated; if it was anything like this, Dylan wasn’t sure that he would be able to maintain his own stability.

“We need to talk to you about an attack,” Aiden said, reaching out and putting his hand on Aira’s shoulder. “It won’t do you any good to try and hedge—even if I can’t do anything about it, you know Aira’s fine and Dylan can practically obliterate you right now.” 

“An attack? Oh, was your stupid wedding interrupted or something?” Oriel’s eyes flashed with glee and Dylan decided that he had no real interest in playing it safe—in working up to more intense forms of coercion. He strode quickly across the room, murmuring the beginnings of a spell. Oriel didn’t have the energy to try and evade him; she shifted on the bed but didn’t get up, even as his hand descended on her shoulder. 

Her elemental essence was at a low ebb—Dylan felt the dim remainder of her energy simmering. He closed his eyes and let the emotional force wash through him and into her. She couldn’t fight him; even if she hadn’t been incapacitated by the long confinement in a water-aligned cell, the power that flowed in Dylan’s body from proximity to such strongly water-oriented materials would have made it difficult for her to avoid the influence of his magic. He impressed the pain, fear, and anxiety of the air elementals who were subject to the attack on Oriel’s mind. 

The woman cried out, trying to push his hand away, struggling half-heartedly against the hold of his magic. Dylan opened his eyes. “People died, Oriel. People who had nothing to do with your petty argument with Aira.” Aira came up next to him and Dylan withdrew slightly, keeping a light touch on Oriel’s mind. Instead of flowing emotion through, he opened up his own mind, taking in the confusing welter of emotion that filled her.

“Oriel, tell me everything you know. Who you know is involved, where they’re hiding, and every bit of information behind the group you’re with.” Dylan could feel the push of Aira’s mind, her energy mingling with his into a wallop of persuasion that a person with twice Oriel’s strength would have been unable to avoid. Oriel fought—she struggled on the bed, trying to shake her head even as the compulsion took hold. Dylan almost felt bad for the woman; she was writhing with discomfort, though the magic he and Aira were subjecting her to was not inherently painful. 

“I’ve been out of it for months,” Oriel said, panting slightly. “I knew they were planning some big gesture to get at you through your element, but I didn’t know for sure what.” Dylan intensified the feelings of anxiety and fear, pain and sadness, channeling them through his mind while being careful not to let them infringe on his own state. It was difficult—he wouldn’t be able to hold it forever—but he was willing to take the risk. Oriel’s eyes watered and she began to cry softly. 

“Who is it? Who’s involved?” Aira’s voice was firm, and Dylan once more felt the push of her greater will, her ability to compel, reaching out and subverting Oriel. 

“There’s a dozen of them,” Oriel said between gasps. “They have some other people underneath—but they’re earth and fire elementals. The earth elementals are out for you because they want to have control more in their hands. The fire elementals think you’re going to follow in Lorene’s footsteps. They don’t want you—they want another ruler for air.”

“Who is it?” Aira repeated. Dylan intensified the emotions running through him and into Oriel.

“Seraphina Williams,” Oriel said, the words coming out of her lips as if they were being ripped from her brain. “Aidan Willis. Dharithri Patil and Tenchi Mizuno, Hestia Adolfo and Bridget Wake.” Oriel was shivering—her lips were starting to turn purple from cold and fatigue as Dylan’s watery energy washed through her, carrying fear and pain, as she struggled against the compulsion that Aira had put on her. “Aelwyd Connolly. Jared Leichner, Annaliese Rogers.” Oriel shook her head again, trying to pull away from them as she gasped for breath, drowning in the atmosphere that Dylan and Aira had combined to create. “Those are the most important ones. Stop—stop, please. I can’t take anymore.”

Aira stepped back and Dylan followed suit, letting his hand fall away from Oriel’s shoulder as the woman shivered. “Is there anyone in the group named Leigh?” he asked. He had to know; the impressions he had gotten suggested that Leigh wasn’t part of the group herself—but he had to know, needed some hope beyond the ephemera of his other senses. Oriel looked at him in confusion, coming out of the depths of the spell that gripped her.

“I don’t think so,” she said. Dylan opened his awareness to its broadest possible band, searching through Oriel’s mind. She wasn’t lying—the compulsion that Aira had put on her had made it impossible for her to lie about the names she had given, and she wasn’t lying now. 

“Where are they?” Aiden asked, and Dylan realized he had almost forgotten his brother in the room. It was not a good place for him to be, and when Dylan glanced at his older brother, he saw that Aiden was barely holding himself up.

Oriel shook her head, trying to fight the lingering compulsion that she felt from Dylan’s and Aira’s combined efforts. Dylan turned his attention back onto the woman; they would need to get out of the room soon—Aiden wouldn’t be able to withstand the effects of so much water energy for much longer. 

“Tell us,” Aira said firmly, and Oriel shuddered under Dylan’s hand as the intense, deep compulsion took hold of her. She closed her eyes and Dylan sensed her trying to fight it, saw her pressing her lips together as if to hold the information in as tears continued to stream down her cheeks. Dylan intensified the sadness, the pain that he knew the elementals in the hotel had felt. Oriel gasped, her skin paling even more.

“They’re out west,” Oriel said dully. “In the desert somewhere. I’ve never been there. I think it’s in Nevada.” She opened her eyes, and Dylan was shocked at how hazed over they were, the shuddering sobs that worked through the woman. He shook his head. He had a feeling—based on his impressions, on what he knew about the possibilities of blocking tracking among elementals—that the desert would be the place for them to seek the group. But they would need something more definite than simply ‘the desert.’ They would have to find a way to break the spell that was keeping them from tracking the group. That was not a task for the current situation, though—they needed to get out.

“That’s all we’re going to get out of her,” Dylan said to Aira. “We need to leave.” Aira looked at Aiden and Dylan saw the concern blooming on her face. She closed the distance between them and put her hands in her mate’s. For a brief moment, Dylan could almost resent the two of them for their closeness, for the ability they had to bolster each other. But he didn’t have any need for another person’s strength—not right now. Dylan was almost anxious from the sheer volume of energy flowing into him from around the room, the way that it surged through his own essence. 

They left the room and Dylan checked the door, making sure it was securely locked behind them. For just a moment, he felt guilty at how he had manipulated Oriel; she would likely continue crying and shivering for at least a few minutes after they had all left the building entirely—but she had had a hand in trying to kill Aira, and wasn’t even repentant for what she had done. Dylan couldn’t let himself feel too badly about the means that they had used to extract information from her. Nothing they had done would leave lasting harm.

“We need to find Leigh,” Dylan said. Aiden began to recover the farther they got from the cell, as the magic keeping Oriel trapped in the room dissipated, the effects palling with distance. “If she’s not part of the group, they’re holding her for a reason.” Aira glanced at Aiden and then looked at Dylan, hesitating just a moment before she nodded slowly.

“I’m inclined to agree with you. If she’s in their keeping and not part of their group, she might be in danger.” Dylan was relieved; he felt at least a little bit vindicated by the fact that Oriel hadn’t heard of Leigh—by what he had seen in his visions, and what he felt by instinct. But there was a deeper concern weighing his mind now: Why was the group who had targeted Aira holding another earth elemental captive?

CHAPTER FIVE

AIDEN SIPPED AT A SLIGHTLY bitter, spicy potion, feeling its effects filtering through his body as he lounged on the couch. When they had all returned from questioning Oriel, Dylan had immediately gotten to work concocting the brew, giving Aiden a look and silencing his protests with the firm comment that his energy had been sapped by the elemental magic surrounding Oriel—and he needed to amp up a little bit to complete his recovery. The potion had cinnamon, clove, orange and red pepper among its ingredients. Dylan had cautioned him to finish it while it was still hot; after the first taste, the feeling of strength returning to him, Aiden hadn’t needed much prompting to continue—though it tasted strange enough.

After making the potion, Dylan had retreated into his room, and Aiden and Aira took up their positions on the couch nearby, in the living room, waiting for whatever answers the water elemental was able to glean. “I hate waiting,” Aira said, fidgeting slightly next to him. Aiden smiled to himself; he was starting to feel the effects of the potion, his fiery essence coming back to the fore, filling him up. There was more than a small part of him that wanted nothing more than to fill the waiting time reacquainting himself with Aira’s body once again—but if they got started, he knew it would be difficult for them to keep from continuing on and on until they were both exhausted. 

“When are you going to talk to the families?” Aiden asked her, forcing himself to stay focused in spite of his impulses. Aira picked at imaginary lint on her jeans, her lips twisting. 

“I need to do that soon,” Aira said reluctantly. “But I want to wait until I have some kind of news to give them.” The families of the air elementals who had been killed or injured in the attack on the hotel they had been staying in would want to hear from the ruler of their element—would want to know that something was being done to avenge their family members’ pain.