Elemental Light (Paranormal Public Book 9) (38 page)

When she turned to face me, a dark shadow passed over her face and her eyes were hooded. “I’ll be there soon enough,” she said, trailing her hand along the back of the chair that Sip had grumpily occupied the night before. After a pause, as if she was choosing her words carefully, she said, “Tell me, Charlotte,” she said, “how do you see all of this ending?”

With the demons eradicated and Vampire Locke returned to Queen Lanca and any demon or darkness mage who ever killed any of my friends or threatened Ricky burned in ripping hot flames?

“I have every hope that General Goffer is still operational and will save us,” I said, trying very hard not to sound like I knew my words were ridiculous.

“But you are the last elemental, and the Mirror Arcane, darkness and light’s one last chance, is in your possession. Can you handle the weight of it?”

“It’s not that heavy,” I said. “I do pushups sometimes.”

I didn’t actually do pushups.

Professor Erikson’s eyes flared and her mouth pressed into a thin line. “You’ve always had a mouth on you.”

Don’t we all.

“I tried to tell Keller that you weren’t right for him, tried and tried, but somehow you used your powers to bewitch him.”

“First of all,” I
said, anger boiling through me, “Keller and I are both adults. He’s not even at Public anymore. Second of all, who I date is none of your business. Lastly, the powers I use are far more complex than mere bewitching.”

I glared at her and she glared back. Had she really come here to tell me yet again to stay away from her prize
d nephew? Wouldn’t you think that if we still couldn’t stay away from each other, no matter how hard we’d tried, it was time to give it up?

“You know how it is when you’re feeling motivated to accomplish something, and you just decide to accomplish everything together? One motivation makes you more motivated for another motivation?” I was ranting. I could see on her face that she thought I was ranting, but I just didn’t care. I couldn’t take it at that point, or ever again.
“I’m motivated to stop darkness and marry Keller. Everything else be damned.”

What I expected to happen after that I’m not sure, but what did happen startled me beyond words. I had mostly just said it to annoy her. I’d barely thought about marriage, but now that I’d said it I couldn’t go back.

A dark silence settled over Astra Dorm, and along with the darkness came total quiet. The silence pressed in on me until it felt suffocating, like a humid heat that made it hard to breathe. The air was still, and so was Professor Erikson. Her features changed and became like one of the black vampire masks Professor Dacer worked so hard to take care of. She seemed to grow in front of me, and the designs on her white robes almost glowed.

I’d made the mistake of leaving the curtains pulled back, and now I saw a sweeping darkness outside them: the silent motion of a thousand demons and hybrids, all of them flying around outside Astra
Dorm. Flickers of red eyes passed the windows as the darkness hordes blotted out any trace of the moon. The only illumination was the fireplace I kept going with my elemental powers.

I stared at Professor Erikson, her face an angry mask.

“Tell me,” I whispered, “is this really all because your nephew, not even your son, made the wrong choice in a mate, according to you?”

“You,” she said, her voice suddenly raspy with anger, “have never thought about anything but yourself. You couldn’t hope to understand anything about the paranormal world when your own is so small. Keller cannot marry an elemental. His line must be continued, and it must be pure. The elementals are better off having been left to die out. We thought you had. Now you’ve come to ruin my family. MY family. He will make a different choice. She will be a fallen angel from one of the respected houses.”

“Like Mark Doblan’s house, you mean? Something like that?” I asked. “Wasn’t he a respected fallen angel? Wasn’t his brother on the High Council? And now he makes hybrids for darkness?”

I wasn’t sure why I bothered arguing with her, probably because it mattered so much to me that I have Keller to look forward to, and also because a little part of me was still worried that this woman would ruin that.

A beat against the window distracted me and I screamed. My window, every window, was filled with hybrids, the sickly-looking half-hellhounds, with their half-ripped black wings beating and their red and black eyes staring in at us. I swallowed hard as I stared at all the evil I ever hoped to see.

Astra Dorm was surrounded by demons, and in a few minutes we were expected to walk out into all of that to maintain relations
. . . What a joke. It was going to be a slaughter.

I looked back at Keller’s aunt, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the darkness and smiling.

Chapter
Thirty-Six

A tap on the door broke the spell; one second there were hybrids in the window and the next second they were gone. The lights came back on and Professor Erikson’s features softened. As Dacer came in without waiting for me to answer, I vaguely wondered if it had all been a dream. His face tightened as soon as he opened the door and glanced from me to Professor Erikson.

“Charlotte,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

Professor Dacer was dressed even more flamboyantly than usual. As he had explained it to me a long time ago, vampires never wore interesting attire, but he aimed to fix that by refusing to wear any of the Cruor ceremonial clothing.

Instead of black, he wore several shades of red, from cherry to maroon, with touches of flaming orange thrown in for emphasis. His cape looked like two licks of deep red flame, and he wore a robe over maroon pants. His hat was large and fancy, with flames licking upward, and he’d used charcoal to give himself cat’s eyes, only in red. His nails looked like talons and his shoes looked like red wooden sabots from Holland, with intricate designs etched on them in gold. He wore a heavy gold chain that I’d never seen before, with a ruby th
at matched his mother’s ring. I decided it must be a family heirloom. He smiled brightly at me, as if he didn’t look like he belonged in a fireplace.

I nodded
back, and without a look at Keller’s aunt I hurried to the door. I spared the window one glance, but all I saw was a hanging, grayish moon.

I scurried past my professor as Dacer continued to hold the door for Professor Erikson.

“I’d like to talk to Charlotte in the ballroom,” said Professor Dacer.

Professor Erikson didn’t appear to want to linger. As Dacer watched her leave, he shook his head.

“If only we had time to worry about all the stupid people in the world,” he muttered.

“That kind of time doesn’t exist,” I said. “But she isn’t stupid, and that’s the problem. I hate it when smart, capable paranormals make decisions based on fear.”

“If they based their decisions on rational thinking they couldn’t hide behind tradition,” said Dacer. “Many traditions no longer make sense, but they’re comforting.”

“We need more than tradition to be comforted,” I said. “Have you seen Sip?”

“She was speaking with Sigil very earnestly a little while ago,” said Dacer, quirking an eyebrow at me. “I feel almost certain that she knows something I don’t, and I’m fine with that. I just want you to know that my mother and I always have your back.”

“Thank you,” I said, sighing. “I would tell you if I could.”

“This night has felt like a conclusion for a long time,” said Dacer as we made our way down the stairs. “There’s something climactic about the combination of Lisabelle failing and the great turning that we seem to be facing tonight.”

“I told Professor Erikson that my goal was to eradicate the demons,” I said.

Professor Dacer looked at me sharply. “Surely you know that will never happen,” he said. “It is not for us to destroy the balance of light and darkness any more than it is for them to destroy us. We, unlike them, must remember that.”

I threw up my hands. “But if not that, then what? Create great big pens to keep them in? That doesn’t work. They don’t stay in hell, they come and try to destroy us. They want the world, half of it was never enough for them. They kill everything in their path. There is no other answer than death.”

“I’m not saying that if you’re threatened you do not defend yourself,” said Dacer, shaking his head. “I’m merely saying that I expect more from you than I do from them, because you have a good heart and they never did. You cannot destroy every demon any more than they can destroy every paranormal.”

“They’re doing a mighty fine job trying,” I said.

Dacer took a deep breath. “Here’s the ballroom.” He started to open the door, but he stopped when he realized that I wasn’t behind him. Glancing back, he raised his perfectly manicured and at the moment frost-tipped eyebrows at me.

“I’m not sure we should go in,” I said. “This place is surrounded by demons, and those windows
. . .”

The massive windows in the ballroom would be covered with demons, and they would see me take the Mirror Arcane. Would we even make it out of Astra’s front door after that?

“Do you have your crown?” Dacer asked. I hadn’t had time to put it on, but it comforted me that Dacer thought it held so much power.

“Yes,” I said. I felt its weight in my pocket and was reassured.

“Good,” he said, stepping toward me and adjusting the knot at my throat so that it was centered. “May I suggest you put it on?”

“Why?” I asked, pulling the metal-and-pearl-covered crown out of my robe and holding it in my hands.

“Because it’ll look cool,” said Dacer with a slight smile. “That’s the only reason ever to wear anything.”

“Oh, I thought it was a good idea to dress practically for w
hatever you were doing that day - going running, put on running shoes, that sort of thing,” I said. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

“You’re welcome,” said Dacer with a touch of a smile.

He put his hand on the door, then waited to open it until I’d laid the crown on my head. When I felt its weight on my hair, I knew I didn’t have to worry that it would fall off, no matter what I did. I guessed it was a royal elemental thing.

Dacer nodded to me and swung the door open wide.

Everything happened at once. There were demons pressed against the window, just like there were upstairs. But because the ballroom was on the first floor and creepy evil didn’t require wings to get near the windows, there were hellhounds as well. When Dacer opened the door, a great pawing, barking, growling, and howling broke out at the windows. The noise was deafening as the darkness pressed in.

But just as I stepped into the massive room, light and color burst out everywhere. The crown vibrated with power as I moved forward, and a burst of light - blues, pinks, yellows, reds, greens, even oranges – exploded outward from my head. I gasped as Astra’s old magic rose up to greet me, with all the objects in the case I had cleaned freshman year shining brightly.

In front of me, Dacer turned to smile. His face reflected the lights in my crown.

“Magic is the best accessory,” he said with a wave of his hand.

“It’s like a disco room,” I said, and then my breath caught. The elemental throne gleamed. Behind it was the Mirror Arcane.

I moved slowly. The demons had gone silent; many of them had left.

Darkness no longer troubled me as I went to claim what was mine. From Queen Ashray to me, elemental royalty had walked through this room. We had never faltered; even if we had nearly died out, we would not lose. I would not let my friends or my ancestors down. I would not let Ricky down. As Keller had said, if I had to be brave, I would.

I went to claim what was mine.

Once Dacer had flung open
the door of Astra and I took a step outside, I glanced back at the grand stone building with its five towers. Queen Ashray had helped found Paranormal Public, and the building that she had made the center of the elemental world was touted as the oldest on campus. Four of the towers were green, blue, red, and white for earth, air, fire, and water. The last was black. The building was beautiful, even with a canopy of demons hanging over our heads. The stones looked silvery, but they were etched in white, as if a paranormal had taken a paintbrush to them. We had left lights on in the upper floors to signify that we would return. I took a deep breath and fought tears. Darkness might call to darkness, but to me Astra would always be light.

You know that saying about the stars forming a canopy? It was like that, with a million stars shining down on us, but as if someone had taken a paintbrush covered in black paint and spattered it over the canvas. White winked out, but a hundred hybrids, black even in moonlight, swung, danced, and flapped overhead.

What I had forgotten, closed inside Astra, was the smell. I hadn’t remembered how bad hybrids smelled, or maybe it was the demons. My nostrils flared and I felt sick to my stomach as a stench worse than rotting food, more like burned flesh, met my nose. I tried to breathe through my mouth, but the air tasted like ash.

“What happened here?” I whispered. “Public looks nothing like what I remember.”

“We spelled the windows,” said Duchess Leonie. “None of us wanted to watch what the demons were really doing. They spent today destroying the most visible area of Public, turning it into a sort of carpet for our walk to the Black Ring Ceremony. We couldn’t entirely cover it up, of course, but through Astra’s windows we made it appear far better than it actually was.”