Elemental Awakened by Helen Scott
8
Dresden
Tessa was still asleep on the couch, which made sense, given the fact that she’d taken more than a small bump from the car that hit her. Something about the fact that they just drove off made me want to track them down and teach them a lesson. I wasn’t the vengeful type normally, so the thought was unsettling to say the least.
Finn and Griff were both agitated, and Finn had barely been able to scrape together the magic he needed to heal her up so that we weren’t as concerned about her going to the hospital. If her injuries had been more serious, then we wouldn’t have had another choice. We were fortunate that it was just bad bruising and a broken nose. If she’d broken a rib or one of her legs, then she’d be sleeping in a hospital bed right now instead of on our couch.
I knew Finn was watching me like a hawk, so I was trying to be on my best behavior. The guy was seriously protective over this human girl. I didn’t completely understand it if I was honest.
There was a sense of…something about her. Finn still claimed it was magic, but I wasn’t so sure.
Part of me wondered if he’d just finally lost it and his brain was being consumed by the biological needs that he’d denied himself for so long. He was the only one of us that hadn’t indulged even once since we’d been here. Even I had endured a few outings with human females just to get it out of my system, though listening to the drivel that passed through their minds was almost enough to drive me mad.
Being here, surrounded by people who didn’t know that there was someone like me among them, someone who was able to read their thoughts, was challenging to say the least. I heard every last detail if I wanted to, since no one knew how to shield their thoughts or that they may as well be screaming everything they were thinking at me.
Tessa was the only one that had held even the slightest interest for Finn and I wouldn’t begrudge him that, but that didn’t mean that she was the key. I was too jaded to believe that we would be that lucky, that we would be the team that found her.
Plus, I didn’t particularly want to. Even though I didn’t want to be here anymore, that didn’t mean that I didn’t want to save my people from the inevitable extinction that was hurtling toward them or save the caretakers from whatever it was that was happening to them. That being said, returning to our own realms only meant separating from the brothers I’d been training and living with for most of my life.
We would be expected to return to our own people, and that meant leaving each other behind to reintegrate back into our respective societies. Just the thought of it made me angry.
As though she subconsciously sensed my anger, I felt Tessa’s dreams shift from the nothingness of her unconscious mind to snatches of what I thought were memory or maybe fears.
Dragons. Hospitals. Pain. Heat. More dragons. The eyes of the distorted watching her in the darkness.
It was all there for me to pluck out and examine if I so chose, but I hated invading people’s privacy, so I tried to ignore the thoughts and images she was projecting.
She could see caretakers, or dragons as she called them, I had no doubt about that. I could see them in her dreams, but that didn’t mean she was the key. We were always told that it was probably an object of some kind. Why would it be a person? Why would centuries of scholars be wrong?
I pulled up the computer that Kai had put together for us. It wasn’t like a human computer, more like Finn’s watch. Kai had built in a function to scan for any traces of magic, which would lead us to both distorted and caretakers. It was almost something we did unconsciously, the same way humans checked their social media apps.
The last thing I’d expected was for us to get a ping right around our house.
“Uh, guys? We’ve got some activity less than a block away,” I said quietly so I didn’t disturb Tessa.
“Let’s go,” Griff said as he jumped up out of the chair, the need for a fight clear as day on his face.
I nodded at him, then looked at our other roommate and said, “Finn, stay here and keep an eye on her. Text us if we need to take her to the hospital or something.”
If Kai were here, I was sure he’d come with us too, but he’d been out tracking down some clues he thought he’d found all day and now it was turning into all night too. Part of me wondered if those so-called clues wore a skirt and stiletto heels. The man got more ass than the rest of us combined. The good thing was he and Griff were just about equally ruthless, so we rarely needed both of them during a fight.
I snagged the jacket I’d thrown over the armchair and the two of us headed out. As we approached the end of the block that was closest to our place where I’d seen the alert, I realized it was just outside Tessa’s apartment.
What she’d been seeing in her dreams wasn’t just baseless fear, if the two people lingering on the other side of the street were anything to go by. It seemed that she was actually being watched by distorted. The idea made me uncomfortable, like they knew something we didn’t. I wasn’t even sure how they all communicated, let alone how they’d picked up on the fact that she could see caretakers.
My guess was it was something to do with the distorted Finn and I had caught attacking her.
Either way, we were going to rid the human realm of these two souls that had no right to be here. Distorted weren’t just any travelers, like myself and my brothers-in-arms, they were ones that had used twisted magic to get here, that had sacrificed their bodies to possess a human in an effort to thwart us finding the key.
They used radical methods to get here and had even more radical views. None of which I agreed with, since their goals would cost millions of lives to achieve.
I glanced at Griff, who had an almost feral look on his face, and watched as the man took off toward the pair of distorted. His graceful lope turned from something slow and easy into a freight train that couldn’t and wouldn’t be stopped.
At the last moment, they seemed to realize he was approaching, but it was too late. He launched himself into the air and landed on one of them like a panther, his fist connecting with the guy’s face and producing a sickening crunch that I knew meant the guy’s nose was broken.
His buddy tried to run, but I wasn’t about to let that happen and turned what had been a slow jog into a sprint before I tackled him to the ground. The two of us landed on the concrete sidewalk with a hard thud that I knew would leave a bruise on my knee, where I was supporting my weight.
I sent out a wave of negative energy, something that would repel any humans in the area, make them look away and not want to head in this direction. It was one of the few tricks I had in this realm. It was a useful one though, as it gave us the ability to do our jobs without worrying about humans barging in or, even worse, getting caught up with the police. We had some fake documents like driver’s licenses, but a small amount of digging would show that it was all fake.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” I growled out as I punched my target in the ribs. Personally, I hated going for the face. When the nose broke, there was always so much blood, and I didn’t want to mess with that. All we needed to do was make them use up enough energy that they would burn out.
I could hear the sound of a fist connecting with flesh and the steady growl of Griff as he beat the ever-loving hell out of his target. Mine I was letting struggle just a little. In my experience, it helped them burn up faster than if they were just lying there taking a beating. Griff had some aggression to get out though, so I would leave him to it.
The man that I was currently wrestling with gave a shove and managed to knock me to the side. I rolled with it, literally, and the two of us ended by the street. Somehow, I was still underneath him, which was not the position I wanted to be in.
Before I could do much of anything, Griff was there, hauling the guy off me. His eyes were wild with the adrenaline of the fight, and I knew I wouldn’t get a look in with the guy I had been fighting now. I hadn’t even noticed that the first distorted had burned out, since I’d been concentrating on my fight with my opponent. The pile of ash off to one side told me exactly what I’d missed though.
I watched as Griff demolished the other distorted and felt a pang of grief for the person whose life they’d stolen. It wasn’t just that they gave up their bodies that was abhorrent, but the fact that they killed whoever the host was once they took up residence in the human body. The magic allowed the spirit or soul of the distorted to override the pathways in the brain that made that person who they were, while also giving the distorted access to that person’s memories and skills.
There was no other option than for the distorted to burn out though.
They couldn’t leave that body and return to their previous one, and most of the time, they couldn’t even leave that body to find a different host, though occasionally, depending on how powerful the distorted was, they could find a secondary host once the first burned out. The whole process was cruel, dark, and unnecessary, but it told us exactly how devoted to their cause they were.
One realm, with magic, that they ruled—that was what they wanted.
It didn’t matter that millions of people would die in the process, that the other realms would cease to exist. They wanted the survivors to all be one people, which most of us with any rational thought realized wouldn’t happen. We’d all separate into our different cultures and claim out own territories, and who knew how many humans would die in the process.
I sighed and pulled my thoughts back from the dark spiral I was lost in. Griff was standing and looked as though he were alight with energy from the fight. He grinned at me with blood spattered over his face.
“Let’s get back before Finn wakes Tessa up and tells her everything,” I said.
The two of us set off, knowing that the piles of ash would be nothing but dust in the wind soon enough, their human forms and personalities, their souls, completely erased from existence.
“I need to shower. Again,” Griff grumbled.
“Was it at least a decent fight?” I asked as I shoved my hands in my pockets.
“Better than the distorted from earlier. He could barely even throw a punch without burning out.” The words came out more callous than he’d intended. It was partially a self-defense mechanism, I knew that, I could see it in his mind, even if he didn’t acknowledge it himself. We all had our coping mechanisms, and for Griff, it was thinking of the distorted as less than human. They were just parasites to him, which made sense to a degree.
“Well, I’m glad you got that out of your system for a little while,” I replied. I hoped that it meant he wouldn’t go seeking out violence. We didn’t have the money for bail, and that was just coming from the fact that I was the one that kept track of our finances. We were running short on time and money, neither of which were infinite. My only question was would we find the key first or run out of money? Returning home empty-handed and with a complete team was often seen as a sign of failure, like we weren’t trying hard enough if someone didn’t die. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice any of my brothers-in-arms just for a last-ditch effort at finding the key though. Either we went back as a team, or we didn’t go back at all.
