Hungry Earth (Elemental Book 2) (15 page)

“How did he kill her? Was it magic? Did he shift into
anything?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t remember it until you
shot me. He shot my mother. I remember I was sitting in a pool of her blood.
This reminded me of it,” she said, waving in a general gesture at the
destruction.

“Do you want me to try to see it?” I asked.

She shook her head violently. “I don’t want to see
it.”

“I just need to see the person who killed them.” She
shook her head. Someone handed me a glass of water, which I tried to offer
Astrid, but she wouldn’t take it. “We need to get out of here. I can drop you
back off at Stephen’s coven.”

“No, I’m not going back until I find and destroy the
one who killed my friends.” The shock was fading and strength bled into her
expression. “They were in the same coven as me, which made them the closest
ones I had to siblings. That’s why you’re here, right?”

“Yes. Let’s go.”

“I can go with you?”

“Yeah, but we have to hurry.” The sun was going to be
up within an hour. We got to the front door before Clara found me.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

I passed her and headed for the car. I was wrong
about having an hour; the sky was already beginning to lighten. “Get in the
car,” I said. “Where is the closest motel?”

“A couple of blocks from here,” Astrid said.

She gave me the directions and I pulled into the
cheap little motel. I parked in the closest spot to the door, left the car on,
and ran inside. The man behind the counter was sitting in a chair reading a
magazine. When I approached the desk, he looked at me, blinked, and gaped. “I
need a room.” I was covered in water, blood, and plaster.

“Um… we’re full up,” he said.

“There aren’t that many cars out front. You have to
have something.”

“Well… check-in isn’t until–”

“I will pay for a week’s worth. I need a key now.”

“I might have a room, but I’ll call the cops if there
is any suspicious behavior. It’s five hundred for a week.”

I knew he was padding the bill, but I didn’t have
time to argue about it. I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and handed
over my debit card. He took his dear sweet time and I had to sign way too many
pages promising not to damage anything. When he finally handed me the key, I
rushed back to the SUV and drove around to the other side of the complex, where
I parked right in front of the room. The tip of the sun was visible over the
horizon.

I turned off the engine and unlocked the room. As
soon as the door was open, Clara and Astrid ran from the SUV, ducking, and
burst into the room. I shut the door and then pulled the blackout curtains over
the white lace curtains on the window.

Suddenly, I was yanked off my feet and tossed onto
the king-sized bed. Clara was on top of me before I could ask what she was
doing. When she kissed me, I forgot to push her away. She was desperate and
hurried, on the verge of a panic, but she was a damn good kisser. Instantly, my
body was ready for more.

She broke the kiss and her lips traveled to my
throat. Between gentle sucking and licking, I felt her fangs scrape my skin
lightly. The reasonable part of me wanted to shove her off. The rest of me was
stuck on the fact that I hadn’t been with anyone since Regina. She sat up,
putting pressure on my groin. Her hair was mussed and she panted. She leaned
back down, going in for the bite… and was gone.

I barely saw Astrid move in the dark, but she
collided with Clara and I was abruptly alone on the bed. Astrid and Clara faced
off. When Clara tried to get back to the bed, Astrid hissed at her, and they
bared their fangs at each other. Although Clara was a little taller, Astrid was
faster from what I had seen. Clara circled the bed, but Astrid wouldn’t let her
gain an inch. When they were on the other side of the bed, I rolled off, ran to
the window, and buried my fists in the curtains. “I’m tearing these off in five
seconds!” I yelled. “Five… four… three…” They both ran for the bathroom and
shut themselves in. I left the blackout curtains alone, flopped down on the bed,
and was asleep in seconds.

*          *          *

Fire spread across the carpet, destroying everything
it could catch until it met blood. A baby girl, only about a year old, was
sitting in a pool of her mother’s blood. She was dressed in a tiny white
t-shirt, which was soaking up the blood in splotches like a tie-dye design. She
didn’t cry even as the air filled with smoke.

I saw her through someone’s eyes, but there were no
mirrors to see whose. If it was the one who killed her parents, why would he
leave her alive? She looked up at me with huge brown eyes and raised her arms
to be picked up.

*          *          *

The perverted side of me realized very quickly that I
was in bed with two women.
Not just in bed with…
they were wrapped
around me. Then the human side of me reminded the rest of me that I was
actually trapped between two blood suckers.

I opened my eyes. The room was typical of all motels;
between the stained white walls, the stained brown carpet, and the stained
flower-patterned blankets, it was obvious sanitary measures had not been taken
to uphold this place. The television was the only thing that looked even
remotely clean, especially since the wooden dresser it was sitting on was
covered in gum.

Astrid sighed in her sleep and brought her leg up
slightly. Since her thigh was currently wedged between my legs, it made me
gasp. Her hot breath fanned across my neck, which was uncomfortable in a
different way. I sat up, waking both vampires.

“Why are you not in the bathroom?” I asked sharply
before they could fully wake.

Astrid rubbed her eyes. “The floor was hard.” She
rolled over and went back to sleep.

“And you were much warmer,” Clara said, stroking her
fingers down my back.

I got out of the bed like it was on fire. “No way. I
would rather curl up between a couple of pythons than two vampires.”

“You’re a bitch in the mornings,” she said, turning
to face the window.

According to the clock on the table, we had another
three hours before sunset. “Both of you get up. We need to figure out our next
step.” They both moaned and otherwise ignored me. I went to the little
kitchenette beside the bathroom and started the small coffee pot with one of
the two sample packs. Once it was brewing, I took two plastic cups into the
bathroom, filled them with water, returned to the room, and splashed them on
Astrid and Clara.

Astrid fell off the bed onto the floor while Clara
jumped up with a shriek. “Why would you do that?!” she asked.

“If I have to work with you, you’re at least going to
hear the plan. Besides, I haven’t forgiven you for last night.”

“I’m hungry and I wasn’t thinking clearly. What can
we possibly figure out before we can go investigate? I guess we could randomly
call people on the phone and ask if they know something, but since there is
only one phone, I’m pretty sure you could have done that without waking us up.”

“What have you found?” I asked Astrid, ignoring
Clara’s further irate rambles.

“I know it’s more than one person killing these
people, because there are multiple scents. They might be working for one
person, though.”

Not another one
. “If we can find one of these
people, we can track them. Actually, if we can get close enough, I can snoop
around in his brain and find out who is behind this.” They both shuddered at my
choice of words.

“I can thrall someone into telling me; you don’t have
to invade their mind,” Clara said.

I nodded. “That would be better,” I lied. I knew my
way was more thorough, but the looks they were both giving me made me hesitate.
They were staring at me like I was a psychopath.

Like I was John Cross.

“As soon as the sun goes down, you two split up and
try to find someone involved. I’m going back to the club to see if I can find a
witness. If you find something, we’ll meet back here.”

“How will we find you?” Clara asked.

I let my magic out gently to communicate, like I had
a thousand times before. I felt Astrid’s mind easily because I was still
connected to her. Clara was surprisingly human to me. Unlike Astrid, Clara had
nothing to regret, no history of abuse, and no disturbed thoughts. Clara was
nurtured by her father and respected by her coven, so she knew her place in
life and had a solid code of ethics that vampires in covens were taught. She
never killed anyone.

“Can you talk back?”
I asked. Animals
couldn’t, obviously, but Darwin and Remy had learned to when I spoke to them.

Instead of words, I received an image of the motel
door. “Get out of my head,” she said. “I will try to send you an image if I
find anything. Stay out of my mind otherwise. It’s too personal.”

I nodded. I knew I had to fight it; that I couldn’t
let this ability turn me into John. “We’ll just use it for communication then.
I will try to stay out of your head, but we can communicate without me reading
your mind. Now, both of you get in the bathroom for a minute so I can leave.”

They did, but not without Clara grumbling about it. I
walked back to the club since it wasn’t far and I wanted to leave the SUV for
Astrid or Clara. When I got there, several cops were gathered in front along
with what looked like the majority of the staff members.

I ignored the cops and approached Drake. “Do you have
any enemies?” I asked. The kind of hate I heard in the perpetrator’s head was
personal.

“I have many enemies.”

“Great. Let me guess; no one saw anything.”

“If they did, they didn’t stick around.”

A cop was making his way over, undoubtedly to
question me, but my instincts were tingling. I turned and headed into the crowd
of people. I assumed they were employees because one of them was the bouncer.
Instead of using my power to read his mind, I stopped in front of him. “Did you
see anything?”

He shook his head. “Are you the one who stopped the
explosions?”

“Frankie, don’t get involved,” one of the women in
the group said. She was a shifter, and the orange-blond hair made me think she
was possibly a lion.

I ignored her. “If you know something, you could
prevent it from happening again by telling me,” I said. Whether I was right or
not, I was allowed to say that because I wasn’t a police officer.

“There were two red-headed women. I got bad vibes
from them, but I didn’t have a good reason not to let them in.”

“You’re a bouncer; it’s your job to keep people who
give off bad vibes out of the club. Was there anything in particular they did
that made you think of them?”

“They left with a few guys the first night I saw
them. Just before they could get in their car, a red Crossfire convertible, a
cat attacked one of the women. I remember because this cat was fucking ugly.
Real mangy looking. He chewed up one of the girls’ ear and she freaked out over
her missing earing instead of the blood gushing down her neck.”

That damn cat.
“I can work with that. Thank
you.” I walked away, feeling a little proud that I didn’t have to control his
mind.
Why was Cooper killed by the shadows and the warehouse attacked with
bombs. For that matter, why would someone who could kill with shadows turn
around and use explosives? Perhaps they are not connected. Perhaps two people
randomly hate vampires and want to kill them…

That made me wonder why I wasn’t already everyone
else’s number-one suspect. Whoever killed Cooper was extremely powerful,
whereas whoever set the bombs relied on force over accuracy. I wanted to get
out my notebook and write everything down, but I had forgotten it at the
school.

I left the crowd before any cop could stop and
question me and was halfway back to the motel before I ducked into an alley.
Focusing on the mind full of hate, I released my power to flow freely and find
the person who caused the destruction. Hate was not a good emotion to focus on,
for my mind was tugged towards many people nearby who were angry about one thing
or another.

Soon, I found the distinct mind I had encountered the
night before. Determining spatial direction and distance was the hard part, so
I let my instincts guide me. I wandered aimlessly out of the alley and started
down a neighborhood street, focusing on the hate-filled mind.

I felt Clara’s mind try to connect with mine and I
received the image of the motel door. After hesitating for a moment, I
continued down the road.
“I’ll be there soon, but I need to check this out.”
It didn’t take long for me to realize I was actually getting further away from
the person I was after, but my instincts were relentless; I
had
to see
what they were leading me to.

About ten minutes later, I came upon a house. A
person could call it peaceful, but I could feel the horrors that took place
behind those walls. It was bright yellow with white accents, two stories, with
a wraparound porch, and had lacy white curtains in the windows. While the house
was older with original everything, the yard was well-kept with garden flowers
that encroached on the porch in a colorful swarm. The image was solidified by
the white picket fence.

It looked like something a grandmother in Alabama or
Georgia would have.

I went around the back to make sure there wasn’t an
attack dog waiting in the yard. The grass was longer and the fence didn’t go
all the way back, so I cautiously approached the house and peered into one of
the back windows. It was a perfectly decent guest room. There was absolutely
nothing suspicious, but I found myself checking the window anyway.
Locked
.

I couldn’t pick a window lock… at least not without
magic. I placed my hands on the glass and visualized the two latches that would
be on the windows.
Focus
. I focused on the solid latches. They would be
white or metal.
Visualize
. I imagined them turning. They would stick
because they were old, but I was a wizard; I was stronger than the lock.