An Elemental Tail (8 page)

Sharp-edged cold replaced the initial upset.
This crime was specific. The thief knew exactly what he was looking
for. Isla opened her eyes and looked around her room again. Nik
wouldn’t steal her drawings.

She picked up her empty satchel and placed
the scattered pencils back into the pocket, then hung the bag over
the back of the chair. It was her proof of attendance that had been
stolen, and only one person stood to gain from the theft.

Zachary Gardner.

****

Jealousy and anger tore through Nik’s sleep
like a shark shredding meat, snatching and swallowing every chunk
whole. Nik gripped the sides of his bed, crippled by the venom of
the emotions. Not even Greta had been this bitter, and he’d lived
with her poisonous grip on his tail for twenty years until she’d
taken a musket ball in the back. These feelings didn’t belong to
Isla. They clung to skin like oil and coated him in raw hatred.

He’d tasted these toxic emotions before, when
Gardner had touched his tail in Isla’s class. Now Gardner was
running his greedy hands over every page. He had to get the book
back for Isla, and for himself.

Nik rolled out of bed, pushing down the slick
slime settling in his stomach. He tossed on some clothes and left
his hotel. Drizzle dampened his shirt. He ignored it, moving
quickly down the street. This time of night, most people had gone
home. Traffic moved past, unhindered by daytime congestion. He
hailed a passing cab and gave an address about fifteen minutes
away.

He’d made it his business to know where
Gardner lived when he’d promised to help Isla. He wasn’t as
trusting as she was. While he believed the dean wanted to help and
truth would prevail, he also believed Gardner would stop at nothing
to take Isla down. Especially now that she’d started an
investigation that would ruin his teaching career.

Nik gazed out the taxi’s window; his breath
fogged the glass as he tried to stay calm on the backseat. The
streets gleamed in the rain, slick and black as the cabbie wove
through the night. After five minutes he gave up trying to be
relaxed. He drummed his fingers against his thigh as he tried not
to think about his tail in Gardner’s hands and failed. Repulsion
caressed his skin every time Gardner pawed at the pages of the
book.

His skin pulled tight. Then burning ripped
down his back. A strip of skin was torn from his body. He gasped,
his back arching as raw flesh was left exposed to the air. He held
in the scream that lodged in his throat like a burr. The bastard
was ripping out pages.

The cabbie looked back, the whites of his
eyes too visible in the rear view mirror.

“Keep driving. I’m fine,” Nik said through
gritted teeth. Anger and adrenaline kept him awake when pain
should’ve offered unconscious oblivion. Warmth blossomed on his
back as blood seeped into his black shirt.

The cab ride was taking too long. He’d never
thought he’d be destroyed by someone pulling apart the book. Would
he die or just be maimed? How much skin could he live without?

As the next strip of flesh was pulled from
his side, he clamped his jaw closed. His body jerked. He was being
flayed with his own skin. The metallic scent of his blood hung in
the air and his breath came in short pants. Each one pulled the
open wounds on his back.

The taxi stopped. Nik waited a moment,
wanting to be sure Gardner was home. His link to his tail
reverberated in a desperate cry for help. His instinct hadn’t
failed him. He thrust a handful of bills at the driver and got out.
His shirt clung to his back, glued to his body by blood. Rain
poured over him, washing but not healing his wounds.

He didn’t wait for the cab to pull away. He
took out his cell phone and called 9-1-1 as he walked up to the
front door. If Gardner tore the book to pieces and he died, he
wanted the police to be there to witness the destruction of
evidence. Nik gave the address and hung up. He tried the door
handle. Locked.

Since he wasn’t going to announce himself by
knocking, he let himself through the side gate. The back door was
also locked, but it opened when coerced with the lock pick he kept
in his wallet. He hadn’t spent four hundred years as a human and
not learned anything about survival, for too long his life had
depended on his ability to break out of, or into, buildings. The
skill had also helped when he was searching for the book in
peoples’ private collections.

He closed the door with barely a click. Water
steamed off his clothes and heat licked his skin as if he were near
a fire, drying the rain residue. A howl of rage directed Nik to the
front of the house. He moved silently over the wood floor to where
Gardner kneeled in front of the fireplace, poking at the pages he’d
ripped from the book. But they remained whole and unburned.

Fire salamanders scuttled around the edges of
the pages, unable to keep a footing on what had once been his skin.
One saw him and puffed up its neck frill in a show of aggression.
Its yellow tongue darted out as it hissed; then it flicked the page
onto the brick hearth in disgust. They knew him for what he was. A
Water Elemental.

“Water defeats fire,” Nik said, his hands
curled by his side. The urge to kill Gardner was tempered by
thoughts of Isla. She wouldn’t want anyone to die.

Gardner spun. “You.”

“You’re destroying evidence.” Or at least
trying to.

On the logs lay a bent metal spiral and
thick, peeling cinders. They were all that remained of Isla’s other
sketchbook. Anger burned hotter than any flame made by man. He was
too late to save the rest of her work.

“She’s going to ruin my career.” Gardner
tossed the whole book, what used to be Nik’s tail, into the
fire.

The crimson leather flared brilliant blue in
the heat. Nik’s skin tightened as if he was sunburned. He had to
get the book out of the fire—water would eventually evaporate in
fire’s glare. The salamanders didn’t offer to help. They laughed
the dry crackle humans mistook for the sound of burning wood. Why
would they help him? Fire and water were enemies at best.

“You did that on your own.” Nik moved closer
to his tail.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Mr. Gardner lifted the
poker and waved it at Nik, a mad glint in his eyes.

Nik stepped back with his hands raised as
though he meant no harm. Fire may not kill him, but a metal spike
through the chest would.

“No one has ever refused me. I saw the
sketches. She’s sleeping with you. A nobody. Throwing her
scholarship away.”

Nik smiled, understanding the bitterness that
had flowed from the man’s touch. Jealousy. “You became a lecturer
because you never made it as an artist. Tell me, do you always prey
on the most talented?”

Mr. Gardner jabbed the poker at Nik.

He danced back, taunting Gardner away from
the fire. “You’ve spent your life destroying others. How does it
feel?”

“Why should they keep their dream alive when
mine died? I won’t be brought down by trailer trash. That’s what
she is. Did she tell you, or did she lie?” He stalked toward Nik.
“Get out of my house before I call the police.”

“I’ve already done it.” At the edge of Nik’s
hearing sirens began singing. “I want the book. It belongs to
Isla.”

Nik circled closer to the fireplace.

“Like hell.” Gardner moved to protect the
fire that had so far refused to gobble up the leather book.

A salamander leaped onto Gardner’s leg and
raced up his pants, scorching fabric and skin as it went. A hiss of
excitement slipped past the salamander’s lipless mouth. The teacher
swatted at his leg, yelling obscenities, but he never caught the
fire Elemental. Fire and water may not mix, but Elementals always
sided with each other over humans. What humans called Mother Nature
was just Elementals arguing about who was the most powerful. No one
had won yet.

Nik used the distraction to dive for the
fire. He snatched up his tail and the loose pages of skin out of
the flames. They were hot like midday desert sand in his hand, but
undamaged.

The book was his. For the first time in four
centuries, he held the tail of his corporeal water body. He could
return to the sea. Be water, or swim as a mer again. He was
free.

Joy flooded his system, wiping away the pain
of missing skin until it was nothing more than a pale shadow.

Nothing happened.

Gardner yelled and raised the poker in a blow
that would land on Nik’s head and crush his skull. Nik rolled, and
the metal sparked on the tiled hearth where he’d been only a
heartbeat before.

Water.

He needed water. The thought consumed him, an
urge he had to obey.

The way to the kitchen and the back door was
blocked by a singed and enraged Gardner. But there was more water
in the house. He could feel the ebb and swell in the pipes. Nik ran
upstairs. Heavy footsteps pounded behind him, the poker smashing
against the floor behind his heels. The sirens urged him faster. He
had to be out of the house before the police arrived.

Nik darted into the bathroom and turned on
the shower but didn’t get in. He looked at the red-faced Gardner
then back at the water. His thoughts jumbled around the need to be
whole. He was cornered. The only escape was down the drain.

Isla would lose her book.

“Get out, you thieving bastard.” The metal
poker hit the glass shower screen. It shattered but remained in
place, held together by the safety film.

“With pleasure.” Nik let the loose pages fall
to the bathroom floor. It was all he could leave her. He could live
without that skin. Isla couldn’t. He stepped back into the stream
of water, the book clutched to his chest.

Drops hit his back. Then he was water,
falling to the tiles. Insubstantial. Able to take any form he
chose. The tides became his pulse. He heard the surf break in
Australia, an ice shelf plunge into the depths in Antarctica.
Sensations he’d missed flooded his being. He was water. And this
puny human had tried to stand in his way.

The rage he’d kept locked unfurled. He
couldn’t remember the cause, but it didn’t matter. He. Was.
Water.

“What the…” The man stepped into the
shower.

Water wrapped around Gardner like a shroud.
Liquid hands forced their way into his throat. Gardner coughed and
choked as he drowned. Air made no effort to save the man’s life as
his lungs filled with fatal fluid. Nik reveled in the power of the
oceans and the thrill of being Elemental.

Isla’s smile formed in Nik’s mind. He’d come
here for her. Killing Gardner wouldn’t help. Nik loosened his grip
so Gardner could breathe. The sirens were replaced with voices as
the police entered the house.

Gardner’s arms and legs thrashed as he tried
to escape the prison that was wrapped around him like a second
skin. Nik let him feel the pressure of the sea. Death was too quick
for this man, but he couldn’t remember why. There was a reason. A
woman, but her memory was buried beneath the longing to be
free.

Why was he here?

A police officer appeared in the doorway.
“Found him and some of the drawings.”

“No.” Gardner yelled, clawing at his skin
like he could peel the water off.

Nik slid away to rejoin the tide. The carcass
of humanity he’d worn and the memories he’d held were gone.

Isla was swimming through mud. She dressed
for work like she was going to her own funeral. The grind of work
and study was taking its toll. Her hand was no longer fluid as it
marked the paper, and her ideas had stopped flowing.

Her scholarship was safe. Mr. Gardner had
caved beneath the testimony of previous students, but she had
stalled. The images of diatoms were still pinned to her walls, but
the drawings were un-started because she couldn’t open the envelope
and face seeing her sketches of Nik again.

The police had returned the few drawings of
Nik that had been found on the floor in Mr. Gardner’s bathroom, but
the red leather book had been destroyed. The remains were never
found. Was it right to mourn a book? Probably not, but she had. It
had been easier than admitting she’d let herself fall for Nik.

Six months hadn’t eased the pain of Nik
leaving. He’d taken her heart with him when he had vanished without
a goodbye. She slumped on to the bed and slipped on her shoes. She
had truly meant nothing to him. A fling, and nothing more. Exactly
what she’d thought she’d wanted. But she remembered him. Remembered
every skin-shivering caress. Remembered the way she’d pushed him
away.

But she couldn’t stop and dwell on the
emptiness. She didn’t have time. Half-complete drawings lay in
piles around her room. Assignments waited to be started. Isla raked
her fingers through her hair. Her dream was killing her. She wanted
a night off to do nothing. No work, no study.

Everyone deserves a night off
.

Nik had been right about that. She picked up
the phone and for the first time in her life called in sick. She
didn’t get fired. Her boss just told her take care and get
better.

That easy.

Guilt chewed on her toes as she took off her
shoes. It felt like she was getting away with a crime. Someone
would know how selfish she was. Her mother would remind her. Isla
shut out her mother’s griping whine. She ignored the assignments
sitting on her desk, calling for her attention. No work. No study.
This time was a gift for herself.

It was Friday evening, twilight still at
least an hour away. She was going to go outside and enjoy it for a
change. She changed into jeans and sneakers and grabbed her satchel
with her sketchbook inside, almost as an afterthought. It wasn’t
beautiful, or unique, but it was hers.

Isla walked to the river, her bag bumping
against her hip. The air was heavy with unspent rain. The wind
tossed leaves and litter into the air. She sat on a bench and
watched the boats chug past on the gray water. Lights sparkled on
the surface like gold foil. She pulled out her sketchbook and
waited, pencil in hand, blank page in front of her, for a picture
to form, an idea to spark. Anything that would prove she hadn’t
lost her talent.