Dirty (JUST BREATHE Ephemera Book 3) (3 page)

Smack! Pop!

“You deserve this, you dirty little whore …”

Broken bones. Broken heart. Broken soul.

For a millisecond, her resolve faltered, cutting off the flow of Earth climbing and invigorating her body.

Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to take on Tyson.

A crack split open the dark, organic carpet underfoot, driving a slow-growing wedge between her and Neena.

No! Jetta needed Neena close. Her new friend was her only comfort aside from the Earth rooted to her soul. And she couldn’t fight Tyson alone. She hesitated.

Neena’s chin lifted, her expression oddly calm. Accepting. Jetta reached across the divide for her.

Lowering her hands to her sides, Neena refused. “Face your fear, and grind it into submission.”

Tyson was seconds away.

Jetta’s hands trembled like the world around her. “I can’t.”

“You must.” Neena closed her eyes and raised her arms, palms up. She spoke quiet words that Jetta couldn’t decipher.

The Earth buckled. Jetta lost her balance but kept herself vertical. Barely. Deep breaths. A massive outcropping of rock folded and pushed upward on Neena’s side of the crevasse. When the mountain rose, Neena fell.

Jetta’s heart hitched.

“Meet your maker, the goddess Terra.” Neena’s parting words reverberated through the air on her way into the Earth’s depths. Peace conquered the woman’s face as Earth swallowed her into its belly. For a split second, Jetta thought she felt Neena’s hand caress her chin.

Her heart tripped back to life. She turned to look for Tyson, and her cheek intercepted the punch of his flaming fist. Her body spun with the impact, and hair blazed in a fan around her head. She dropped to her stomach, dangerously close to the lip of the lurching crevasse, and patted out the fire on the dirt.

Vibrations rattled her bones. Laughter climbed her back. Heat mocked her.

She was going to die. Just like Neena.

She tried to push herself up, but fear—
Fire
—kept her on hands and knees.

You blamed your faulty heart for your weakness, but the only reason it failed was because you
believed
you were weak.

Who was that? She glanced around in search of the deep but feminine voice.

Tyson’s boot crashed her spine. The resulting
crunch
and loss of feeling in her legs told her he’d broken it. Jetta’s shattered body crumbled to the ground. The thunderous groans barreling from the gash in the Earth became deafening. Tyson’s feet straddled her sides, and he dropped his ass to the saddle of her lower back.

Jetta felt no pain, only shame.

Tyson cackled hysterically and bucked as if riding her like a bronco. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, hot breath burning her skin. “Dirty whore. I got you back where you belong. Beneath me.”

That was all it took. She kicked open the gate of uncertainty and invited Terra in.

Magical, vinelike tendrils of brown dust wove into and over her exposed skin, caressing, swaddling her like an infant in her mother’s arms. The cool safety of the Element infused her with healing energy. Motor neurons and sensory axons in the severed spinal cord knitted together, stronger than ever before. Vertebrae hardened into steel. Sensation spread down her back to legs and feet. Liquid iron congealed into solid muscle.

“Never.” Imbued with superhuman strength, Jetta sunk her palms into that beautiful, life-giving Earth. She thrust her body upward, propelling Tyson through the air like a cannonball.

Jetta bounded to her feet, looked at her hands, and flexed her digits. God, the power within overwhelmed her. The high consumed her all the way to her soul. The energy continued flowing, a shockwave growing exponentially with each passing second. She gritted her teeth. Fought the urge to control the uncontrollable.

Give yourself to Terra,
Neena’s voice whispered in the recesses of her mind.
Surrender.

Thirty feet away, Tyson snarled and crawled toward her on wobbly hands and knees. Fire lit the sharp lines of his face, but so did a hint of dread.

The Earth-shaking force of Terra now permanently rooted to her DNA, she embraced the newfound strength and trudged slowly toward Tyson, ensuring he had plenty of time to fear for his life on her way over.

The ground grumbled its approval.

When she reached the Fyre Elemental, Jetta paused. She made a show of rolling her shoulders, savoring the thickness, the density, the sheer weight of power she now possessed.

“I will never bow to you.” A quick snap of her folded fingers cracked her knuckles. Smiling, she squatted beside Tyson and yanked his head back by the hair, exposing his throat. His lips trembled as he met her eyes. The red glow dimmed to orange. “And you will never harm another person again. Today I met my maker. May you do the same.”

With zero effort, she flicked the back of his head. His face struck the hard-packed Earth. A loud crunch followed, and Tyson flailed. With her bare foot, she ground her mud-encrusted toes into his nape and slowly exerted pressure. “Look who’s dirty now, Tyson.”

The intense heat under his skin had little effect on her. She felt no emotion other than dull satisfaction as his Fire burned away, leaching into the dust.

Earth’s angry rumbles eased as if appeased by Jetta’s offering. When the ground stopped quaking, so did Tyson. A final breath wheezed from his lungs, and his demonic red spirit swirled skyward in a rush of flame. His body caved in on itself, dried up, crumbled to ash, smudging Jetta’s feet with the earthly remains of his blackened soul. She kicked at the dying embers, scattering the jerk to the winds.

Good riddance.

She surveyed the ruins. Stillness. Devastation. This hadn’t been a mere earthquake. Neena had somehow called upon the goddess Terra, opened a door into this world, and invited her in. By doing so, some of the goddess had entered Jetta as well.

She was an Erthe Elemental now. Like Neena.

Poor Neena. Jetta wandered over to the fresh wound splitting the land into two mismatched hunks and searched its guts for her friend. No sign of her body. But she’d been an Elemental. Maybe her muddy remains went home to the Earth like Tyson’s had returned to Fire. Jetta tugged up two fistfuls of scrub and dirt and let the loam crumble between her fingers.

Why did Neena have to die? Tyson was a rapist and murderer who deserved what he got, but Neena had a good soul. A good heart.

Jetta glanced down at her chest and rubbed the hard muscle over her own heart. Her pecs and abs were huge. Biceps bulged like a female prizefighter’s. Her thighs were each nearly the size of the waist she
used
to have. She’d grown at least four inches taller, maybe more. What the hell? Aftershocks pounded realizations through her.

You can’t go back to your old life. If anyone sees you beefed up like a wrestler on steroids, they’ll freak out. No one will believe what happened—not even Mom.

For so long, she’d searched for something in life to give her meaning, justification for existing. Up until now, she thought it was her job as a veterinarian—helping those who couldn’t help themselves.

Dawning clarity filled in the rest of the picture. She was still meant to help, but not just animals anymore. People too. Victims of all shapes, sizes, and species.

Jetta closed her fist tightly and smiled as her biceps bounced in reply. Maybe in some weird way, Tyson had given her the gift of determination. And Neena had most certainly given her gifts of physical and mental fortitude. Neena and her little cup of hawthorn extract hadn’t just saved her life. They’d transformed her from a victim into a survivor.

Solid resolve fueled her mind, body, and soul. This was right. Jetta knew what she had to do.

J
une 30

I
n the dead of night
, Jetta slung an overstuffed backpack containing her most treasured possessions over her shoulder and opened the back door of her house. Shrouded in the darkness of the new moon, a shaggy-haired man in his early fifties stood on the welcome mat, inside the yellow and black police tape no one was supposed to cross.

Shit.

“Jetta Briggs?”

Jetta shot her gaze through the cover of blackness, hoping like hell this guy—whoever he was—had come alone. If she had to, she’d knock him out, but if he had buddies, things could get … messy.

“Nope, I’m just a friend.”

“No?” The man crossed the threshold and pushed past her. “You sure look like Jetta.” He snapped a newspaper from under his arm and flashed yesterday’s front page—with her picture on it. The headline read, “Local veterinarian disappears.”

Sighing, Jetta shut the door and faced him. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but—”

“Name’s Jack.” He held out his right hand to shake, his calm, steely eyes hard as diamonds. “Jack Weaver.”

She looked at it but didn’t accept. “Okay, Jack, Jack Weaver. You’re gonna need to get lost.” Jetta flexed her arms for clarification.

“Seems like
you’re
the one who needs to get lost. I can help with that.” He braced his feet shoulder width apart, crossed his arms over his chest, and half grinned.

“No offense, but you don’t know anything about me. It’d be in your best interest to forget you ever saw me and leave. Now.” She gestured to the door with her chin.

Jack rocked back on his heels and balanced there for a moment. He pressed his lips together and began circling her. “Jetta Briggs. Veterinarian. Dating Officer Tyson Garvey—at least you
were
until he tried to kill you in his patrol car and left you for dead in Joshua Tree National Park on June 20th.”

He paused his pacing for a moment, stroked his scraggly salt-and-pepper beard, and continued. “Did Neena tell you he was a Fyre Elemental?”

Jetta exhaled long and hard. This guy knew way too much. She didn’t relish the thought of hurting him, but it looked like she’d have to. The snaps of her cracking knuckles filled the silence.

Jack’s amused expression didn’t falter. “Did she tell you
why
Tyson wanted you dead?”

The words lashed her in the face like the sting of a snapped rubber band.

What? He had a
reason
? She’d just assumed her ex-boyfriend was a psycho Fyre looking to get off on someone else’s terror in the heat of the moment. Premeditation had never occurred to her.

Then again, Tyson had come back to finish her off. He must’ve gotten wind she’d survived the attack in his car and returned to put her in the ground for once and for all. Well, she’d found her way into the ground, all right.

She tore her gaze away from Jack and worried her lip between a thumb and index finger. So, it wasn’t a random rape/attempted murder. What the hell would have prompted a Fyre to come after
her
? She was nobody. A fledgling Erthe. Nothing special.

Jack’s arched brow reminded her she hadn’t replied to his question.

“No, Neena didn’t tell me his reason.”

A smirk grabbed hold of Jack’s face and lit it up with a barrage of mischievous fireworks. “Oh, it’s a doozy.”

“That’s a hell of a way to string a girl along.”

Jack patted the back of her arm. Warm coolness and heavy lightness seeped into her pores. She recognized some of her Earth in his touch, but she sensed Tyson’s Fire there too. And the Air she’d grown to despise. And Water she had yet to taste.

Goosebumps dusted her flesh. “What are you? An Elemental?”

“Nope.”

“What, then?”

“I’m your salvation, baby.” The glint in his eye proved he believed it. And the rainbow of energy rippling through the hand resting on her shoulder confirmed it.

She had planned on hopping a bus and getting off wherever the Earth and her instincts told her to go. She wanted to leave the dirty shame of her pre-Erthe Elemental origins behind and build a future, like Neena had said. Leaving Landers, California would be a purification—a transcendence of sorts.

But this Jack guy knew about Elementals. Maybe he could help her ferret out other Fyres like Tyson and prevent them from hurting innocents. She could leave the emotional dirt behind in favor of a muddy new life filled with a new set of beautiful complications.

Jack was her ticket out of here.

She sucked in a deep breath. Looked like her plans had made an unexpected course change. Again.

“Come with me, Jetta. I have a proposition for you.” Jack’s calm but direct gaze shook loose her remaining doubts.

Her hawthorn-hardened heart told her to trust him.

So she did.

She smiled as tingles of excitement raced up her spine, and the rich smell of Earth beckoned to her from outside. “Okay. But call me Jet. Jet Hawthorne.”

K
endall Grey is
the self-appointed past, present, and future president of the Authors Behaving Badly Club. A whale warrior and indie freedom fighter, she spends summers in the corner (usually with a dunce cap on her head) and winters hunched at the peak of Mt. Trouble, fiery pens of fury (complete with invisible ink) flying across the pages. She has a big set of cajones, and she’s not afraid to use them. In her spare time, Kendall speaks your mind so you don’t have to.

Kendall lives off a dirt road near Atlanta, Georgia, but don’t hold that against her.

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