Elemental Awakened by Helen Scott
16
Dresden
As we climbed the stairs toward Tessa’s apartment, I was filled with mixed feelings. Finn had told a little of what had happened when he got home, but I knew he was holding back. Every time I tried to take a peek in his head and figure out what had happened, I was bombarded with sensations and images of him and Tessa together.
The thoughts and images shouldn’t have bothered me. After all, I’d only asked her out on a date to prove to myself that she wasn’t the key, but then all of my preconceived notions about her got turned on their head and I was left feeling…confused.
“Find her?” an angry male voice rumbled.
“Nah, she must have left,” a calmer male voice replied.
In true Griffin fashion, he snuck in through the door that was ajar without making a sound. We knew we had at least two opponents, possibly more, and we knew Tessa was likely hiding somewhere in her apartment. Our main objective was to get her out safely, but when I slipped in behind Griff and saw their eyes, I knew we were dealing with more distorted.
“Can I help you boys with something?” Griff’s voice crackled with power as it rolled toward the attackers, who were standing around like idiots. It reminded me strangely of wood snapping and popping on a fire.
“Doesn’t look like their type of place, does it?” I added, letting my own voice flow out toward the three men like a summer breeze, easy and carefree, though I tried to add a touch of malice. I didn’t want them to think they’d be able to get out of this, not without going through us first.
“Think you’re so much better than us because you have your own bodies, don’t you? You’re still demons, and the humans will never accept you as equal. Ours is the only way to have control over this realm.” The angry one was getting riled up all over again. His dark hair and young appearance were belied by the jaded tone of his voice. Whoever had possessed this young man’s body was much older than he seemed.
“Come on, you can either go home, or we can kill you. It’s your choice. We aren’t here to debate the ethics of the fifth realm or human beings with you. You’ve broken the accords and now you need to return to whichever realm you came from.” Finn’s voice carried forward between us like the roar of the ocean, and I felt Tessa’s mind and heart leap with hope. She was definitely still in here, I just didn’t know where.
We all knew that Finn was lying—we wouldn’t let them go home. He only said that to get them to drop their guard, make them think that we were more open to what they were doing than we actually were. The reality was that there was nothing more despicable to the four of us—though Kai wasn’t actually with us—than the dark, twisted magic the distorted used to get to the human realm.
It was murder, there was nothing else to call it. Their spirits or souls or whatever took over another person’s body, and when that body couldn’t handle it anymore, it disintegrated. There was a small chance that if they got back to their original realm, they might be able to save their soul, but that meant traveling to one of the other realms while in a human, which was challenging to say the least.
My brothers and I were different. We came here legitimately, with magic authorized by the leaders of the four realms. These were our bodies, no one had to die for us to be here. We worked our asses off for it, but that was it.
I reined my thoughts back in just in time for the man who’d sounded angry to charge us. His two buddies followed suit. Fighting one on one was easy for me. I could see the movements before they happened, which let me react and avoid it all for the most part. Fighting in a group was like standing in a crowd with everyone yelling opposing directions, punch, kick, throw, left, right, down, at least until I could narrow my focus to my opponent.
A punch caught my jaw and snapped my head to the side. I rebounded and ducked under the cross that followed the jab. The three distorted would be trying to get out of here using as little energy as possible. Based off the way they were moving, they had fight training, and as I rammed my shoulder into the stomach of the guy who’d just punched me, I lifted him off his feet and threw him over my shoulder.
His body smacked against the ground as he landed, and the air seemed to burst from his chest. I let a tendril of my magic out and wrapped the air around his face, making it spin around him so fast that he couldn’t actually draw breath. His chest heaved as he tried and failed to breathe.
It was only when one of his buddies knocked into me and threw off my concentration that my magic failed, allowing the asshole to breathe once more. Using magic in this realm was hard for me. My psychic abilities were passive for the most part, so they weren’t impacted, but using air as a weapon like I could at home? That was definitely challenging.
Finn and his opponent were trading blows, while Griff was chasing his around the room like a wild animal. The guy was on another level when it came to fighting. As his target’s eyes began to glow though, I knew that he was not only trying to keep the distorted from Tessa, but also force him to burn out.
We had no idea what these guys had been up to prior to this moment, so we never knew how much energy a distorted had to play with, but if one of them was close to burnout, then I was willing to bet that the others were as well. It was just a matter of time. I sidestepped a punch that my guy was throwing and landed my own hit in his ribs.
I heard a crack and knew from the way he doubled over that I’d done some damage. A few punches later, and I saw that his eyes were starting to glow. I just needed to push him a little more, and I’d get him to burn out.
The fights that were going on around me seemed to become quieter, and as I glanced over my shoulder, I realized why. Griff’s opponent was now a pile of ash on the floor. Finn’s was starting to go too. Just as I’d suspected, the three of them were somewhat aligned with each other in terms of how much energy they had to spend.
A foot connected with my ribs, and I grunted, turning back to the man who was about to burn out. “You fucking prick. You think the realms will ever stabilize while there are the different types of magic?” the guy demanded.
“I’m not willing to let millions of people die because I’m too scared to try,” I growled back in a low voice. I hoped Tessa wasn’t listening, because I wasn’t sure how I’d explain this conversation if she was. It was too much for her right now. From what I’d managed to glean from Finn, he’d made it clear that magic was real but that was it.
“You’ll get everyone killed instead. If we can’t come together as one, then we’ll all fall apart and the whole world will be snuffed out because of your arrogance.” He spat the words at me as though each one were a weapon. I wasn’t sure which realm he came from, but I had to think it was my own or maybe Kai’s, given his lack of fighting skills. While those of us that trained were usually skilled fighters, the ones who stayed behind, who were radicalized by the leaders of the movement that created the distorted, were not.
I snapped my fist out, and it connected with his nose, the crunch letting me know I had a millisecond to step back before blood was pouring from his face. I just managed to miss being splattered by some as he backed up, moving as far away from me as he could get, until he was pressed up against the wall, cupping his nose and the blood that was falling from it.
“I can’t get out,” he mumbled. They told me I’d be able to get out. Why can’t I get out?
His panicked thoughts showed me exactly the kind of lies the one realm movement had been spreading. His eyes began to glow in earnest then, and the fire began consuming his body from within as his heart sped and his mind raced. No one thought of things like that as physical activity, but it was. Every single thing our bodies did and every thought we had took energy, which the distorted didn’t have a lot of. As they started to panic and their hearts raced and their thoughts ran in circles, it was as good as if I was fighting with him. In this instance, it had been what pushed him over the edge.
Now that it was just the three of us in the room, I mentally reached out, listening for Tessa. Please let it be Finn and his roommates that survived. She repeated the phrase over and over again like a prayer.
It let me know where she was, and though I wanted to check on her, I wasn’t sure she wanted to see me, so I just pointed to the bathroom. Griff was closest, so he ducked in the door. I heard him call her dove, and it startled me.
It was a term of endearment with his people, since the white dove symbolized the peace and harmony found at the center of the flame. Not only that, but they were associated with the goddess of love, beauty, sex, and war. They considered their goddess to be the queen of all the gods and goddesses. For him to call her that meant that he’d already formed a much stronger attachment to her than I’d thought.
So had Finn.
The two of them were already devoted to her and fully believed that she was the key. I believed now as well, and I couldn’t deny the pull I felt toward her. Yes, the date had been to prove that she wasn’t the key, but the truth was that I’d also wanted to spend time with her. I hadn’t wanted her to leave. She was a puzzle I wanted to solve, and part of me, the part I’d thought I’d locked away, would be happy to spend the rest of my life doing so. I was still surprised that after our initial encounter, I was interested in her. I’d thought I’d pushed that feeling aside, but it was still there, like streaks on a windshield after driving through a storm.
It was silly really. After all, none of us really knew her and she definitely didn’t know us, yet there were already bonds there and we were already attached to one another. I couldn’t help but wonder if Kai felt anything similar. Tessa was attracted to all of us, I knew that. Between the thoughts she had about Finn, Griff, and myself, and seeing her reaction to Kai when she first met him, it was a curious thing.
Was she as attached to us, or at least as attached to Finn and Griff as they were to her? Would she tear the four of us apart because she felt like she had to pick one? Would we fight over her? There were so many questions and not enough answers. My mind spun with them, but the thought that pounded against my skull over and over again was whether or not she was okay. Had the distorted managed to get their hands on her before we got here?
