A Time To Kill (Elemental Rage Book 1) (16 page)

The door opened. 
Raven and Mindy were back.  Wayne deftly switched the conversation, “Would you
girls want to stay the night? We have guest rooms.”

Raven answered
before Claire could beg, “No, thank you.  We need to get back.”

He would have said
something more, but Mindy tugged on Raven’s hand. She cupped a hand over
Raven’s ear and whispered something.

With a nod, Raven
told Wayne, “We need to leave by six o’clock.”

During dinner Wayne
overheard Raven whisper to Claire that Bertha had called while they were in the
bathroom. Bertha was stuck in Denver for at least another week. Someone had
tried to break into her sister’s house and she couldn’t leave until her cousin arrived.
Raven hissed, “She told me to get out of here. Now. And that’s what we’re going
to do.”

Claire whispered
back, “This is the safest place we could be, especially considering the
vampires. Did you tell her about Jade?”

Raven’s eyes met
Wayne’s. They exchanged a long and unyielding stare, neither willing to turn
away.  Wayne refused to let her think he could hear them.  She just shook her
head quickly and whispered back, “No way. She’d flip and come right away even
though things aren’t settled there.  We leave after dinner.”   

Wayne ushered the
girls into the kitchen. He got exactly what he needed from Claire.

~~ Mindy ~~

Mindy hated Wayne,
detested the little chapel, and wanted to leave as soon as she could. The only
problem was that Raven and Claire wanted to stay and eat.  She shrank away from
the priests.  She wanted to kick Wayne, but that would mean touching him, and
she wasn’t about to do that.

She didn’t know
how to say how urgent their job there was.  Raven kept the bottle hidden in her
pocket.  Claire fawned over Wayne.  It was just another thing Mindy didn’t
understand. 

Mindy wouldn’t
come near the dinner table until Wayne and Jack were out of the way. They liked
to be conveniently close, pull out a chair and then put a hand on Claire’s
shoulder or pet her head as if she were a dog.  He wasn’t as much like that
with Raven, but he still bumped into her once when they were both reaching for
the potatoes. 

They called her
over, but she shook her head.  Wayne figured it out. When he realized that she
wouldn’t eat unless he and Jack were gone, he waved Jack away and they
retreated to the kitchen.

Claire was
furious.  She scolded Mindy while she slapped potatoes on the plate for her,
“Why can’t you learn to interact with people? You do realize that you’re going
to be completely alone someday.”

Mindy climbed onto
her chair and ate her potatoes and beef with a wary eye on the door.  Being
alone didn’t sound too bad. She didn’t even listen to most of what Claire
said.  Sometimes a thought crossed her mind, something that needed attention,
but the potatoes tasted good, and the priests were staying in the kitchen where
they belonged.

Claire grabbed the
pitcher of ice water at the edge of the table and poured a glass.  Mindy
remembered.  She said, “Pure water.”

In no mood to make
nice, Claire grabbed Mindy’s glass, dumped it halfway and shoved it back in
front of her, “I like those guys.  We might never see them again.”

Mindy knew she
shouldn’t say ‘good’ at the thought of never seeing them again so she just
nodded. She had to keep water in her thoughts.  Water was next. It was
important.

“Water,” Mindy
said again.

Claire slapped a
hand to her forehead, “I just
gave
you water. Raven, I’m going to kill
her. I seriously can’t help myself.”

It was a poor
choice of words.  Claire had said it a million times before, but she’d never
almost killed her little sister before either.  Blanching, she said, “I didn’t
mean it.  I’m sorry.”

Raven said, “Just
finish eating and let’s get out of here. Mindy, we’ll figure out the water
later, okay?”

“Okay.”

Wayne overheard
Raven and Claire talking.  Mindy knew it.

Mindy hoped they
would have later.  The priests in the next room were whispering about her,
about her and Claire and Raven.  Earth said they wanted to keep the girls. 

Mindy didn’t want
to be kept.

Chapter 13

~~ Jade ~~

Jade floated above
her body feeling a strange sense of peace.  She decided she must be dead.  The
floating thing was exactly what all of the near-death experiencers talked
about. She could see her body below. At least the vampire hadn’t attacked anyone
else. Watching her own body stumble through the woods struck Jade as
ridiculous. The sun would be up soon.  The forest was becoming lighter and
lighter.

Surely there
must be a way to get back in there and take control.

She focused her
efforts on the back of her head, thinking that if she could just crawl back
into her mind, she could expel the beast. Thought became action, and Jade found
herself cowering under a twilight morning.  The beast’s hunger now belonged to
her. The beast’s fear owned her.

Morning would
break soon, and that would be the death of her.  Even sharing her body with a
raging animal did not make Jade suicidal.  She loved life in all of its variety
and splendor—watching the chickadees flit from bush to bush, the deer roaming
across the fields, swimming, playing basketball, singing songs with Raven and
Claire when they drove to town to go clothes shopping.

She tore her way
into a hole under a giant fallen and decaying cedar. With subtle amusement,
Jade realized that there were bugs in the dirt, that her hands touched spider
webs, but the beast was frightened, and Jade’s squeamish emotions had hardened
into something else.  After the hole was dug, she dragged thick and heavy pine
branches to make a cover.

Even with the
sliver of dawn on the horizon, Jade’s eyes ached. She feared that they were on
fire, that she would turn to dust and miss everything. Hurrying into her hole,
she crawled in, curling up and dragging the pine boughs to cover the entrance. 
It was a tight fit with all manner of creepy-crawlies in the wood and soil
surrounding her, but Jade’s sole focus was the sun.

The sun terrified
the beast and by extension Jade.  In all of the stories, vampires longed for
the sun, but Jade now knew the truth.  Her vampire self hated the light,
detested the heat, and enjoyed the cool shadows and darkness. She could feel,
even underground, the power of the sun, the inferno that waited if she changed
her mind and came out to get some fresh air.

Jade didn’t think
about her life or about what it meant that she was a vampire.  The beast was
too hungry, too powerful.  She didn’t think much of anything, only how hungry
she felt, and how everything smelled so different.

~~ Amy ~~

Amy, matron of the
Gray family, awoke in a queen-sized bed in an elegant room.  The painting
across from the bed was of a Victorian house and a garden in the Impressionist
style with colors that blended and melted into one another.  Her mouth felt
like someone made her swallow a fistful of salt. 

She pushed the
covers aside.  She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn during the
kidnapping. That gave her some sense of relief.  She couldn’t abide the thought
of a stranger dressing her. She found her shoes on the floor beside the bed
with socks tucked inside.  The action was oddly thoughtful.

The room was
decorated in peach and gold with lamps and tables that reminded Amy of a hotel
suite. The lights hanging on the wall were in gold sconces that could have been
antiques from an earlier time, but for the light bulbs.

Investigating the
room from top to bottom, Amy searched for some clue about where she had been
taken. There were no scribble pads with the hotel’s name emblazoned across the
top and no phone, but there were windows and curtains.  Amy pulled the curtain
back to find woods in the distance. Otherwise, she seemed to be on some estate.
There was a lovely fountain in a perfectly manicured rose garden, and a single unpaved
road that curled through the trees winding across the front of the mansion as
if the landowner provided valet parking.

The estate was
secluded.

 Amy listened at
the door for a long moment, trying to hear if someone waited on the other
side.  She didn’t dare talk to Air yet.  Some Keepers were sensitive to such
things. Others could trap an element, a brutally painful thing to the Elemental
who cared for that element. When she didn’t hear anything, she pushed the door
open. She could only use the Elements for the smaller tasks.

Every board on the
floor seemed to creak.  The floor was polished wood, burnished to a gleam.  It
was empty except for a few elegant paintings with their purple and pink flowers
in fields of green and gold. A door opened behind her. Amy spun on her heel.

There was no one
there.

The door was open.
It hadn’t been. Amy was certain that she was not alone, but the hall was
completely empty. She stepped toward the open door, and thought of the stories
Lawrence had told her.  The Keepers all had their own gifts from the Universe. 
Some were the grim reapers, ferrying dead souls from this life to the next.
Others saw the future or the past. It was said that at least two or three
Keepers in a generation could go completely invisible.

Amy thought she
had just found a Keeper that could.

Amy closed her
eyes, asking if it was safe for an Element to join her. It was Fire who
answered, not Amy’s closest Element.  She had always been a little afraid of Fire. 
She was a capricious being with the capacity to do great harm in a very short
amount of time. Still, Fire showed her the heat of the man moving toward her
now.  He crept up on her with each step carefully placed on the creaky floor.

Scanning the room
for a weapon, it was Fire who offered herself. Fire, the Element who had killed
her husband. Amy swallowed hard, reaching for the Element she least trusted.
Amy shrunk from Fire’s need to consume.  An image of the invisible man flaming
flickered in her mind, smoke curling from his hair, and Fire’s vicious need for
Amy to allow it, to encourage it, to guide it. 

Amy had something
else in mind.  She sent Fire to the sole of the man’s shoes, holding the Element
back. 

Through Fire’s
vision, Amy watched as the man leapt back with a startled gurgle, hopping on
his feet.  When that didn’t work, he stepped on the heel of his shoe to pull it
off.  The shoe was smoldering, a small curl of smoke rising from the Nike
swirl. Amy cut Fire off, hard.

Fire raged in
Amy’s mind, a temper tantrum worthy of an Element, but Amy refused to budge. 
She’d only asked for a slight warming of the man’s feet.  If the shoe was hot
enough to smoke, he’d sustained burns she hadn’t meant to inflict on him.

“I’m sorry,” Amy
said.

“You can see me?” The
veil suddenly dropped.  Amy’s mouth dropped open. “Tony?”

He was the best
man at her wedding, her husband’s closest friend.  She couldn’t even begin to
process the shock and betrayal at his presence at her kidnapping. Tony pulled
off the second shoe, “Is this how…uh…?”

Tony stopped
talking.

It was probably a
good thing. 

Both Fire and Amy
wanted to turn him into a column of flame and a pile of ash before he even
finished that sentence. Through sheer strength of will, Amy held Fire back. She
needed to sit down but there was nowhere in the hall to sit. She stared at Tony
in shock, “You think I killed Lawrence? It was your goons, his own people who
killed him.”

“We’re peaceful. 
We didn’t do it.” Tony put his hand under her arm, as if realizing she was
barely standing on her own strength, “The tranquilizer can have some after effects.”

“Peaceful.  So you
think kidnapping is the act of a peaceful group?  Or do you justify everything
because I’m your so-called enemy?” Amy wanted to tear her arm away from Tony,
but there was a perverse relief in his presence.  He would know the real
truth.  He would know why they killed her husband. He would know why they
kidnapped her.

“We didn’t start
this fight, Amy. You weren’t injured, which is more than I can say for others
who have tangled with Elementals. I still have blisters on my feet to prove
it.”  Tony led Amy down the hall and a flight of stairs. He had left his shoes
behind and was padding along in his socks. His fingers tightened as they
approached the landing.

Tony sounded
defensive. 

Well, he should
.
Amy thought.

“You betrayed me.
You were my husband’s best friend. I thought they had killed you, too, and yet here
you are,” Amy tore her arm out of his grasp.  She decided she’d rather stumble
to the ground then take help from Tony. At first his grip felt warm and
welcome, but she felt the anger in his words, the justification for his own
evil actions.

“Lawrence died in
a fire, and you just proved yourself more than capable of having done it,” Tony
broke, raw emotion blending with a tough bitterness.

“He was the love
of my life. What do you think happened?  He was stabbed while two of my
daughters watched. The Death Keepers thought I had their precious gift and made
their move, and it cost me Lawrence. That’s on you. You and them,” Amy spit out
the words.  It was a relief after hiding for so long to have a place to vent
her pain, her anger.  Fire licked along her arms, seeking its own outlet, but
Amy ignored it.  Fire needed a strong hand. She wouldn’t give in.

“My people
wouldn’t...maybe his attackers belonged to the Void,” Tony said.

He sounded so
thoughtful and puzzled that Amy broke into hysterical laughter that turned into
sobs. “He’s gone, and I’m hunted. My daughters are in danger. I’m telling you a
Death Keeper killed him.”

There was a
pause.  Tony said, “They want the gift.  Just return it and then the Void will
have a new focus, and so will we.”

The tears running
down Amy’s cheeks were for her daughters, all of them.  Tony reminded her of
Lawrence, and her husband’s death replayed in her mind, but it was for her
babies that she cried, for the loss of their innocence and the burden that they
must carry. She lied then, because it was the only thing that she could do to
protect her own, “I don’t have the gift.  I never did.”

The Universe gave
the gifts, but it was the Universe’s daughter, Diana, who asked the Gray women
to carry one more gift, one that they couldn’t use, one that they would never
keep for themselves, one that would cause them to be hunted and persecuted,
chased across continents.  Amy understood. 

The carrier of the
gift was burdened with the memories of the first.  The Universe didn’t always
properly judge the character of the recipient of certain gifts.  It gave freely
and abundantly to all, rewarding the recipient based on how often the gifts
were used. 

A Death Keeper in
ancient times, centuries before, had received the gift of Time.  The gift
passed from generation to generation, with always and only one person able to
use the gift, the ability to travel across centuries, to change patterns and
events.  A powerful gift coveted by many.

When Petrodus used
the gift, he did so with evil intent.  A delight in the wicked, a taste for
women, and a twisted personality led to carnage across the centuries. He found
one of Diana’s children, an Elemental beloved of Air. After taking her body, he
murdered her, hiding her in the grotto of a temple. Her sisters found her.

They cried out to
Diana, cried out for help.  She answered, stripping Petrodus of power and
shoving him into a prison built of Time and Space where not even the Death
Keepers who crossed dimensions could go. The gift of Time had to go to
someone.  Diana refused to return it to the Keepers. 

She gave it to one
of her daughters.  The sister of Petrodus’ last victim. Whoever carried the
gift of Time also carried the memory of the Elemental’s death at the hands of
Petrodus.  Emblazoned in their memory was the reason why only the Gray family
would carry Time, why they would protect it at all costs from the Keepers and
the Void…and anyone else who wanted to abuse it.

 Tony believed her
when she lied, when she told Tony she had no idea where the gift of Time was. 
She carried Time once. She had seen the evil that had been committed with it
before, and protected the gift with her life…and the life of one of her
daughters.  He said, “I’m sorry, Amy. Lawrence said you didn’t have it.  I just
thought he was blinded by love.”

Lawrence had
been.  Blinded by love.  That was how she kept the secret from him. By some
strange humor of the Universe, the Elementals often found themselves falling in
love with Keepers.

Tony spent most of
the day with Amy, showing her the estate as if she were his honored guest and
not a prisoner. He introduced her to other women who lived as
guests
at
his estate and then quickly hurried away before she could become more than a
passing acquaintance with any of them.  

Shortly before
dinner, his phone rang.  Excusing himself, he took the call.  When he returned,
his demeanor had changed.  He watched Amy more carefully.  He no longer trusted
her.  Not that Amy cared.  She no longer trusted him.  The cook had prepared
roast chicken with a side of green beans and potatoes.

Amy picked at her
food as they ate in silence. She felt betrayed for a second time when Tony
plunged a needle into her neck.  The world went fuzzy and then dark.

~~ Jade ~~

Jade spent hours
curled up in the dirt, fighting the beast for control of her mind. It was a
special kind of insanity. She knew she could disconnect again, fly to the top
of the world and watch while events unfolded beneath her. But then the vampires
would win.

She felt them now,
and she knew that they felt her presence like a beacon on a dark night. The
vampires had moved closer, two hundred and twenty-three of them.  Counting in
the darkened hole, Jade knew they were coming for her.