Hungry Earth (Elemental Book 2) (12 page)

She frowned at us, but turned to her roommates, one
who was a wolf shifter and one who was a witch that I had in two of my classes.
“Will you two give us some privacy?” she asked. The girls nodded, stood from
their desks, and walked past us. “You know about Cooper?” She went over to her
chair and sat down.

“We’re not accusing you of anything, we just want to
know what you saw,” I said.

Darwin sat in one of the other black office chairs
and rolled it up next to her. Had he been able to touch her, he would have
taken her hand or put his on her arm in comfort. “What did you see?” he asked.
I shut the door.

“Cooper wanted to talk to me. He knew that the
synthetic blood had a calming effect, and he was worried that when he was away
from the school and the synthetic blood, he would become overly aggressive. He
wanted to see if I could control his mood. I could, but before I could leave…
he died.”

“Who killed him?”

“The room became dark. It was the shadows. The
shadows were reaching for him. I saw a face in the dark, like a man’s face, but
it wasn’t solid. The face studied me and Cooper, then disappeared. The shadows
wrapped around Cooper and just… took his life.” She was about to start crying.
Darwin pulled the cuffs of his dark blue hoodie over his hand and patted her
hand.

I pushed the remaining seat up next to hers and sat
down. “Would you mind if I had a look in your head?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Darwin assured her.

She nodded. “You can.”

I let my power out again and wrapped my mind around
hers. She was startled by the sensation, but welcoming. Her thoughts were clear
and easy to read. She was compassionate, selfless, and a healer by nature. I
thought of the vampire and the scene immediately unfolded.

From Amelia’s perspective, I saw her enter Cooper’s
room and sit down across from him on a chair. “Are you sure you want this?” she
asked him. He nodded. Her power was a natural ability of her kind, not one that
a wizard could learn or even describe well. She wanted him to feel calm and her
power pushed that into him. It wasn’t actually much different from what I did.

I felt his fear of being out of control and the
relief that replaced it. When she dissolved her power over him, he sighed. “You
should work with vampires permanently,” he said. “There are some of us who love
to give into the predator nature, but most of us want to be accepted in the
paranormal community. Stephen is very good at teaching us to control our
aggressive natures, but controlling it is a lot more difficult than fighting
it.”

Amelia noticed the shadows spread slowly from the
dark corners and crevices of the room. “I will help if I can, but my father is
not big on trusting outsiders.” Although it made her skin crawl, she tried to
ignore the shadows. Even without the instincts I had, she knew something was
wrong.

“What the hell?!” Cooper grabbed her arm and pushed
her towards the door.

Right behind the chair she had been sitting in, the
shadows were taking a three-dimensional, fog-like quality. Worse, there was a
shape taking form
in
the shadowy fog. It was a face with stone-gray
skin, glowing yellow eyes, and no hair. Its eyes focused on Amelia before
turning to the vampire.

Shadows spread across the floor, reaching out for
Cooper. “Get off the floor,” he told her, climbing onto his bed.

Amelia glanced at the chair, but she would have had
to cross the shadows to get to it. She was backed into a corner. The shadows
reached out from the crack between the mattress and wall. It was like light
couldn’t penetrate the darkness. The shadows engulfed Cooper quickly and he
convulsed, but never made a sound.

It was over as quickly as it had begun; Cooper was
dead and the shadows retreated, leaving Amelia alive and terrified. I let go of
Amelia’s mind.

*          *          *

“Did you find out who killed him?”

I shook my head. “I don’t recognize the face that was
in the shadows. There is something going on, though. Whoever the killer is this
time, he’s not making students do his dirty work. We need to go back and have a
look around.”

“Why?” Darwin asked. “Shouldn’t we just tell Hunt and
let him deal with it?”

My job was to get information, to investigate, not to
battle wizards who could use shadows to kill people. I shook my head. “We have
nothing concrete to tell the headmaster. We’ll do some more digging.”

“Alright,” Darwin said, standing. “I mean, it wasn’t
like I planned to live all that long anyway.”

“I don’t want to go,” Amelia said.

“You don’t have to. You have helped us enough and we
really appreciate it.”

Darwin and I left and headed to the castle. Henry
joined us as we passed the dining room. His shirt was ruffled and he was almost
glaring, obviously exasperated with the women who were hitting on him.

To my surprised, Professor Anderson was the one
guarding the underground level. Since I was of the opinion that this professor
was a bigoted bastard, I had no moral problem with controlling his mind. Hiding
around the corner from him, it was easy to reach out my power for his
consciousness.

As my control wrapped around his mind, I felt his
thoughts. He was not as bad as I had believed; his anger towards vampires was
all based on fear instilled in him by his parents since he could remember. His
entire family hunted vampires for sport, but he wanted to work with kids.
Unfortunately for him, Hunt didn’t trust him enough to hire him at the
children’s school.

“Go take a nap,”
I told him, pushing
exhaustion at him. Apparently, my sense of lethargy was strong, because he
immediately wavered before stumbling off down the hall.

“That’s so cool, yo,” Darwin whispered.

We easily made it through the door and down the steps
without getting caught. Fortunately, all of the torches were lit and we didn’t
encounter any search parties.

“I thought they were searching this place,” Henry
commented.

“Yeah, they are.”

“There is no one down here but us.”

“No, you’re wrong,” Darwin argued. “The temperature
is off. It’s about six degrees too hot. If you don’t believe me, I can explain
the mineral comp–”

“No, no, we trust you,” Henry said quickly.

Dr. Martin wasn’t in the infirmary when we arrived,
so we headed for the morgue. The door was unlocked, fortunately. Since there
was no light, I pulled the penlight out of my pock and entered. Light from no
visible source filled the room, so I put my penlight away and studied the only
body in the room. Cooper was lying on the table, white as the sheet his body
was covered with.

“He wasn’t like that before, was he?” Henry asked,
referring to the vampire’s paleness.

“No. He’s been drained of blood,” Darwin said. “This
happened after we saw him. Is this natural because he’s a vampire?”

“Don’t ask me; I’ve never
successfully
killed
a vampire,” I said. “Do you smell anything odd?” I asked Henry.

He shook his head. “Not particularly. I smell the
lingering scents of other vampire students as well as Dr. Martin, but nothing
unusual. Although I might be able to pick out something in my jaguar form, it
isn’t worth the risk.”

Darwin scoffed. “Revealing your invisible cat isn’t
worth finding a murderer?”

The shifter scowled at him. “I am not always
invisible. That is only one of my many abilities that make me good at what I
do. If I shift, I will not have control over my jaguar, and I might kill both
of you.”

“Why?”

“Unlike with most shifters, my beast is not affected
by my humanity. In fact, he is rather infuriated by it. He will kill you
because he can. He doesn’t need a reason.”

“Maybe I can control it,” I said.

“If you invade my mind, you will see things you do
not want to see,” he warned. “And then my parents will kill you. That is, of
course, if my jaguar does not. I doubt you could control him.”

“You suck, bro,” Darwin informed him.

“I am aware that you dislike me. However, I still
consider you both my friends, and I would rather it stay that way. If you never
accept me, I cannot fault you, but this is who I am. I offend everyone and it
is not by choice.”

“That’s why you’re so formal and organized, right?”
Darwin asked. “Because you need to feel in control?”

“Yes.”

As they argued, I examined the dead vampire and found
no punctures, no cuts, and no bruising. It was the cleanest death I had ever
seen, including of those who died from natural causes. On the other hand, I
wasn’t a doctor.

“What would your parents say about you working around
the council?” I asked. I didn’t know why Henry allowed his parents so much
control over him, but I was starting to wonder whether they were overprotective
or monsters.

“They would tell me to do exactly what I am trying to
do; blend in.”

“This is you blending in?” Darwin asked. Henry nodded
and Darwin scoffed. He opened his mouth to say something when a loud roar shook
the underground floor. “It’s that thing that was chasing me!”

Henry growled. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t see it; we were too busy
running for our lives.”

“I think we should do so again.”

We left the morgue and made it up to the ground floor
without any problems. Obviously, there was no one trying to find a monster so
that the vampires could move underground. Thus, I had to wonder if Hunt knew
exactly what was down there and chose not to do anything about it.

When we got to the room, Ghost was clawing up my
pillow. “No!” I shouted, releasing my power instinctively. I didn’t try to
connect with his mind, I just pushed the command at him.

The cat hissed, Darwin groaned, and Henry growled.
Heat built up in my chest and the image of fire from my dream came to mind. I
raised my hand, focusing the heat towards the cat and away from my roommates. It
was red fire that shot at the cat, who vanished a split second before my magic
could reach him. The fire hit the wall and charred it before fading.

“Did you do something to piss him off?” Darwin asked,
pulling down my shredded pillow.

I took it from him and retrieved the small book. “No,
he was after this.” I handed it to him. “Can you read this?”

He flipped through a couple of pages. “This is mostly
German. I can read it, but it’s not a novel so much as a small grimoire. It has
designs for trapped rooms and magical traps. Ew.”

“What?”

“He has a trap he designed using fae blood.” He
flipped through the front and back. “There’s no author named, but he’s talking
about building a castle.”

“Heinrich Baldauf.”

“That would be my guess. Let me read it and I’ll tell
you what is important.”

“Okay. You do that, I’m going to go tell Hunt that we
found the witness and what I saw.”

“What should I do?” Henry asked.

I tried to think of something, but I didn’t know
exactly what he was really good at. After spending four months as his roommate,
I only knew was that he had more secrets than Vincent or Hunt.

“Go with Devon in case Kale or someone else in the
council tries to stop him,” Darwin suggested.

Henry and I left. Since it was around three in the
morning, we didn’t run into anyone still awake in the dorms, but there was a
group of seven vampires standing around smoking outside the castle main doors.
My instincts warned me of danger, but it wasn’t immediate, sort of like I was
swimming in a tank with sharks. Although they could kill me if they wanted to,
I wasn’t really in danger unless I pissed them off. 

Henry growled and two of the bigger guys growled
back. It wasn’t an “I want to fight” growl so much as, “I will stand my
ground.” One of them dropped his cigarette and mashed it with his boot.
“Remember me?” he asked.

I didn’t know that many vampires. “You’re the one who
attacked me last semester.”

“Rebecca wanted peace with the vampires.” His voice
wasn’t a mixture of a hiss and a growl like the time he threatened me in the
courtyard. He was about my height and build with a Cuban descent. He wore a
black leather jacket over his navy blue shirt and black jeans.

“She wanted control and she wanted to use you to get
it,” I corrected. “Hunt does want peace for all.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to think so. I’m Nicholas
Grigore. We know Jackson didn’t kill any vampire. Find Cooper’s murderer,
Devon, and you’ll have our backup.”

“I’m working on it.” He nodded and his friends spread
apart to let us through.

“I didn’t know vampires smoked,” Henry commented.

The man shrugged. “Why not? It doesn’t damage us like
it does humans and it’s something to do. It’s mostly just a habit for those of
us who were born human. It also dulls the taste of that nasty synthetic blood
the doc has us on.”

Focusing on finding Hunt, we arrived at his office a
few minutes later, but he wasn’t there. His desk was covered in books and
letters and I didn’t see anything unusual. In his library, however, his iron
bowl was on the table. Silver liquid that greatly resembled mercury swirled
inside.
Danger.

“What is that?” Henry asked.

“I don’t know, but I think it’s some kind of
communication device, because I have seen Hunt talking into it.”

“You wizards are weird. Shifters can use cell phones.
Have you heard anyone speaking back?”

“No.” I considered the swirling substance without
getting close to it. My sense of danger grew until my skin crawled, but I
couldn’t bring myself to turn away. I wanted to know what it was.

When I took a step closer, blue fire lit the surface
and the danger faded. Henry suddenly growled and shoved me towards the door. He
stood between me and Hunt, who appeared from the dark corner right beside where
I had been.