Elemental Light (Paranormal Public Book 9) (15 page)

Rose had a point. The oggles didn’t exactly have a lot of powers.

I nodded. Now it wasn’t just the four of us traveling. We had a whole village to protect.

With a ripping sound and a flash of black, our discussion was cut short, and Rose cried out and tried to spin around to meet the leaping hellhound. There were hellhounds all around us, powerful jaws snapping, red eyes burning in the darkness.

Rose’s foot caught as she spun, and she stumbled. The hellhound saw its opportunity and moved in for the kill.

A flash of silver, another whizzing through the air, and I saw a blade glide in a graceful downward arch. The sword blade slammed into the head of the hellhound, and its burning eyes
went wide before its head slid sideways and fell to the ground. The body burst into ash when it hit.

Callum didn’t waste time getting congratulations from us. Hungry for more, he wiped his sword and headed toward the bend in the road with hellhounds converging on him. His eyes were cold.

The battle moved forward, a strange dance of calculated ferocity. We now formed a ring around Lough, who had closed his eyes and started to dream. Sip had disappeared into her werewolf form after ordering me to wait. I was the only one whose power could stretch to fight all the hellhounds coming at us, and she wanted me at full strength for the next wave of the attack.  She didn’t have to explain that, she knew I didn’t agree and I knew she didn’t care.

The other oggles grew in confidence as Callum fought in front of us. He dodged and attacked so effectively that no hellhound got close enough to even scratch him, while he was able to cut them down as they attacked. The only other swordsman I’d seen who was nearly as good was Vital, and since he was a world champion fighter, that spoke volumes for Callum’s abilities.

Some of the oggles grabbed hellhounds right out of the air, or body-slammed them into the ground. The oggles were much bigger than even the biggest hellhound, and the demon creatures were hopelessly outclassed.

I slammed my body sideways as an arrow flew past me. The second wave of the attack was starting.

Demons poured out from the trees around us in every direction. Rose set her shoulders and draw a second sword, a grim look on her face. In front, Sip and Gargoile flanked Callum, whose sword remained in constant motion, his feet moving in a perfectly choreographed dance. A dead demon here, a chopped hellhound there. Callum pushed forward and swung back, and I spared the briefest thought to wonder where he had learned to fight. But I didn’t have time to worry about it now.

“Fall back,” Rose called. The fear in her voice cut me as sharply as Callum’s sword would have. “Fall back!”

But there was nowhere to fall back to. The demons were overrunning us. For every one we cut down, more replaced it.

“My turn,” I whispered. Razor stood stock still, as if he knew I was doing something important. My ring blazed along with the power coursing through me, lighting the darkness with
rainbow beams of magic that streamed outward. Earth, air, wind, and fire slammed into the demons, easily rolling over them. I pushed them forward further, looking for the source of the attack, and I could no longer see my friends in front of me. I was lost in a vortex of earth and water, fire and wind.

But then my powers, which I had just been reveling in, fed back to my real self. My eyes had been closed as I sat on Razor, so I could only feel it at first without seeing it as I rocketed into a black wall of still marble. It was the smoothest surface and the most slippery slope into instant darkness that I had ever experienced. I felt my body shake with the impact as all the power of the elemental ring was eaten alive by an inky night.

I gasped and fought to break free, to remember anything before or anything after the overwhelming need to disappear and die. But there was nothing. There was no power that could pull me free. I fought to get away as I felt more demons pour out from every direction, but I couldn’t move. My struggle ended where it begun, with smooth black marble.

The last conscious thought that flitted through my mind was the realization that someone was laughing.

Chapter
Thirteen

“Wake up,” came Sip’s urgent voice. My head pounded as if I’d knocked it against concrete, and my eyes refused to open.

Something strong-smelling, and by strong I mean horrible, was wafted under my nose. I coughed. My eyes popped open as they begun to water, and through the tearing I looked at my small friend.

She was kneeling over me, looking anxious. I could see a ring of oggles around us.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We have no idea,” said Rose, her brow creased with worry. “You just started to tumble off the horse. Tugs caught you and laid you down. There’s a darkness around the bend, but it hasn’t come our way. Yet. You’ve only been out for a few seconds.”

Oggles exchanged worried glances as Sip helped me sit up.

“Where’s Lough?”

“Dreaming a shield in front of us,” said Sip grimly. “I’m sure it won’t hold up against whatever’s over there, but he’s doing his best to give you time. Now, get it together and be useful.”

I took a deep breath, then another. On top of the throbbing of my head, my chest hurt. It was as if each individual rib was cracked, and I felt a sharp stabbing pain when I tried to breathe.

“It’s Faci,” I said to Sip, keeping my voice low. “It was definitely him over on the other side. I don’t
. . . I don’t know what he’s using to defend himself. It’s not darkness, but it’s mixed with darkness . . . It was very powerful.”

I took another shaky breath.

“What does he want?” Sip demanded. “Can’t he see we’re busy?”

“Who is this Faci?”

“Faci Decimatar,” I said. “He’s a Rapier vampire, but he’s gone over to darkness . . . he’s . . .”

“Crazy?” Sip supplied helpfully.

“Yeah,” I said. “He is that.”

“His mother killed herself, or his father killed his mother,” said Sip. “His father has since remarried, of course. Lucky lady.”

I wondered what those family dinners were like. Well, who was I kidding, they probably didn’t have any. Anyhow, this wasn’t the time to muse on irrelevancies.

“I don’t think he wanted to run into us any more than we wanted to run into him,” I said. “I felt something, right before I blacked out. It wasn’t all darkness in front of us, there was something else, some other paranormal power. I think he has prisoners.”

“Lovely,” said Sip. “Let’s just tell him to leave us alone and hand over any captives, and then we can both be on our way. Sounds simple.”

Rose was looking at Sip as if she’d never seen anything quite like her before. “I can’t decide if she should be studied, have a keeper, or rule the world,” the oggle muttered.

“Let’s get you standing,” said Rose, and she took my hands and pulled me to my feet. “We can get out of this, let me tell you.”

“Not without the prisoners,” I said. “We can’t just leave them with Faci.”

Rose gave me an exasperated look, like an irritated mother would give her errant child. “We have to get to the Circle before the meeting.”

“I know,” I said. “We will.” I just hoped I wasn’t talking foolishly. We still had time to reach the Circle, but not if we kept battling demons every few miles along the road.

“Can you talk to this Faci?” she asked. “Reason with him?”

I lifted half of my mouth in amusement. “Sure, we’re classmates, after all. I can appeal to our common ground.”

I walked past the oggles, who all stared at me as if they’d just realized I was insane, and made my slow way to Lough.

I clapped him on the shoulder and saw the corners of his mouth lift in the slightest smile.

I kept moving toward the barrier he’d created. The thing shimmered, much like I’d seen the Power of Five shimmer in front of me once upon a time.

I stopped before I moved through the barrier. The bend in the road didn’t look in any way out of the ordinary, but I knew that darkness was lurking on the other side of it.

My chest still hurt, but I forced myself to call out. “Faci, come on, Faci. I know you’re over there. I’d remember that cackle anywhere.”

I paused, and waited. After what felt like several minutes, a small, very ugly vampire appeared around the bend, and Faci Decimatar stopped about ten feet in front of me. He was dressed all in black, with his sunken eyes squinting and his nearly nonexistent lips pursed into a thin line. A
Black Ring glittered on his right hand.

“Well, elemental, there you are again,” said Faci, in a way I was pretty sure passed for his version of cheerful. “Following me?”

“Faci, of all the monopolies you could have had, why’d you pick crazy?”

Faci’s face clouded.

“You want something, don’t you? Insulting me is the way to get it, you think?”

“I thought you’d take it as a compliment,” I muttered.

“You thought you were invisible, and within a second of hitting my shield you were unconscious. Does that worry you at all?” Faci asked, a nasty smile replacing his frown. He stood confidently, without a worry in the world.

“It won’t happen again,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Bold words,” said Faci. “Let’s see how confident you are when we’re overrunning Astra and that place where your brother is hiding. What’s it called? Dunne ai Dorn?”

A strange cold ran through me, not like anything I had ever felt before. It was a cold on the inside, and it blew through me, settled in every nook and cranny of my body, permeated my muscles and bones, and stopped my blood.

“Touch Ricky . . .” I started, but Faci just laughed. The exact same laugh he’d given when I hit his protective shield.

“You, elemental, have overstepped your bounds again. Where are you headed, anyway?”

The realization that Faci could find out about the meeting at the Circle and warn the Nocturns spurred me to action.

“Do you have prisoners?” I asked. “I want them, or I’ll go back to using my power, and this time I won’t be nice about it.” I had used only my own power instead of going to the earth and attacking him with natural elements. I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Faci appeared thoughtful if maybe a little amused. We both knew I had no idea whether I could really best him in battle. “You know,” he mused, “I was never happy to have met you. It’s not like it could be any easier to kill you than it already is. No, I hated you from the first, but you’re just so gooood, so pure. You think every problem can and should be solved, but the problem is you’re always on the wrong side.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared. “Let me know when you start making sense,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

Faci’s smile was back. “I have prisoners. It was interesting, how we came across them and her family. They were making their way to safety, poor lambs.”

“Give the prisoners to me,” I said, “and be on your way. You don’t want a fight with me right now. Whatever else happens, we’ve come too far for you to just kill me.”

“Oh,” said Faci eagerly, as if he’d just heard a good joke. “Of course I wouldn’t kill you, because you’re right. I owe you to the Darkness Premier. She always get what she wants.”

My ears perked up, but I did my best to hide my interest. I didn’t want Faci to notice that this was the first hint I’d had of who the Darkness Premier was. Faci had said “she.”

“Wait an hour,” he said, starting to turn. “I’ll give you what you want.”

“No,” I said. “If we wait you’ll call an ambush and we’ll be finished.” Besides, we were due at the Circle. Gargoile had this secret organization with a secret leader he wanted me to meet.

Faci bit down on his lower lip and glowered at me.

“Fine,” he said, glancing behind him. “I’ll leave the cage. Come get it in five minutes, not before. I’m going to spell it, and I want a few minutes’ head start, just in case you have any idea of chasing after us.”

He didn’t wait for me to agree. Instead, he turned on his heel and spun away.

Had he said cage?

But I did as he ordered. There wasn’t really a choice in the matter. The vampire had given me the distinct impression that he was in a hurry, that he didn’t want to fight with me, he wanted to get away, right then. That was a first. Usually he was more than happy to stand there and try to kill me, and I wondered what had changed. What, or who, was he so desperate to reach?

Chapter Fourteen

Impatiently I looked back at Lough. He quirked his eyebrow at me and I shrugged. We both knew that Faci’s behavior was odd, but as long as he gave us his prisoners and was on his way, I wasn’t going to force a fight with him. We had bigger problems to worry about at the moment.

Sip came up to me and said, “It’s been five minutes. We doing this together?”

“Of course,” I said. Rose motioned that she’d stay with the other oggles.

“What’s Gargoile doing?” I asked.

Sip and I were walking slowly around the bend, with Lough following behind, walking carefully so that he could keep his protective dream in place. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.