Furious Flames (Elemental Book 3) (29 page)

I could feel him circling me, no doubt calculating
the exact speed and angle to attack at. My instincts warned me it was coming. I
swung the sword. I knew he could dodge it easily, but I hoped it would buy me a
few seconds to come up with another plan.
Anything
.

Then, just as fast as Henry, Darwin attacked, but it
wasn’t me he tackled. Henry’s camouflage faded when Darwin landed on top of
him. The wolf was smaller, but he was big enough that Henry landed on his back
several feet away from the impact of the wolf’s initial attack. The jaguar
struck like a snake, missing only because of the wolf’s smaller size and
impressive agility. Darwin tried to bite the jaguar’s throat, only to retreat
with deep scratches down his chest.

This was Gale’s plan. He couldn’t control Darwin’s
mind, so he used Darwin’s dominant wolf nature. He made Henry attack me knowing
that Darwin’s wolf would defend me, resulting in them trying to kill each
other.

I tried again to use my powers. Nothing happened.

I struck at Gale with the sword again, but it wasn’t
the force field that stopped me this time. Astrid appeared right in front of
me, causing me stop the swing by driving the sword down into the rocks. “Hello,
Devon,” she said. She had a certain grin when she was thinking dark thoughts. I
had recognized it for what it was when we were kids, but it was somehow worse
in the light of day.

“It’s daylight.” Her skin didn’t blemish. In fact,
she was gorgeous.

“So?” She knew.

She knew why she could be out in daylight. “Get out
of my way.” I shot her before and I would shoot her again if she hurt someone I
cared about, but not when she was under someone else’s control.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Devon.”

“Bring me that sword,” Gale barked.

I started to draw the sword back when pain shot all
the way up to my shoulder. The sword fell and Astrid picked it up calmly.
Henry, whose teeth were deep into my arm, slammed me to the ground with a
simple jerk of his head. Getting thrashed around by an invisible cat was not a
story I planned to share.

I barely got my left arm up in time to block his
teeth from sinking into my throat. Fortunately, he didn’t have his saber fangs,
because I couldn’t imagine I would fare well against those. A startled shout
made even Henry pause. It was almost amusing that my blood wasn’t invisible as
it dripped from his unseen mouth.

Darwin had shifted back into his person form at some
point, still with red hair and eyes, and was struggling to help Addie again. He
wasn’t the one who had shouted. Henry let me go and we both turned to see Gale.
The sword was at his feet and his right hand blackened before disintegrating into
ash. The shock and horror on his face was comedic.

He scrambled to pull the amulet out of his shirt and
clutched it desperately. “Heal!” The lost limb did not obey.

Astrid sighed and rolled her eyes. “Let me do it.”
She took the amulet from his hand, snapping the chain around his neck, and I
instantly felt my power return to me. Henry appeared and shifted back into his
person form.

“What are you waiting for?! Heal it!” Gale shrieked.

Astrid frowned thoughtfully. “You know, I could do
that, but it seems I’ve been under the control of a lot of men lately. I’m
going to have to think about it for a while.”

“You traitor!”

Astrid laughed. “That I am. Did you really think any
amount of magic in this world would make me betray Devon?”

“You brought me the amulet!”

“I gave you the rope to hang yourself with. If you
had any sense at all, you would have run as far away as you could to build your
strength and gather an army the moment I gave you the amulet. I knew better,
though. That’s why you were Felicity’s pet and then Krechea’s pet after her.”

Infuriated, he lunged at her, ready to die trying to
wrestle the amulet away. She threw the amulet to Darwin and vanished.

“No!” Henry yelled as Darwin caught it. At that
moment, something very subtle about Darwin changed. It wasn’t enough to point
it out, but it made my skin crawl. Everything fell silent, as if the birds were
holding their breaths. Even the wind stilled.

The bands around Addie’s neck, wrists, and ankles
disintegrated and then she disappeared. When I tried to stand, Henry pushed me
back down. He was staring at Darwin like a goldfish that just met a shark.
“What’s wrong?” I didn’t know if he saw something I didn’t, but I trusted
Darwin.

“Darwin is the last person we want to have the
amulet,” he said, slowly and softly as if he didn’t want Darwin noticing us.
“That was why I never told you where it was.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he knows how to use it.”

Darwin grinned. My instincts warned me to keep my
mouth shut.

Gale wasn’t as wise. “What are you going to do?” he
asked.

“I’m glad you asked,” Darwin said. His voice was
deeper and his accent was completely gone. “Let’s see… I could tear out all
your organs and make you eat them until you die a very gory death. I always
thought that would be interesting to know; how many of what organs you could
eat. I could string you up and slit your throat like a pig, since you loved
doing that with your victims. I could put you in a dark box and make you relive
their deaths for all of eternity.”

“You knew he would go completely insane if he got the
amulet?” I whispered to Henry. He nodded. “Then why the hell did you suggest he
use it to pass his test?”

“I knew he was not a throwback and I hoped a fake
amulet would give him confidence. He never touched the real one before. If he
takes your power with the amulet, he can use your visions and mind control… he
could take the magic from every person on Earth at once.”

Darwin was still detailing all of his gory options.
“Of course, that wouldn’t save your current victims. It may be Krechea’s power
that you used to kill them, but you are still the one that must die. How to do
it, though… This is too good an opportunity to spoil. I could take the powers
of everyone in this school and make you and the wizard council suffer. I could
even make a game of it; I could leave you without magic, money, or memories and
send the council to hunt you down like a rabbit. The council member who kills
you will get to live in a dungeon cell while the others are all killed. I could
make them compete, and the losing member will die horribly.”

“Darwin–” Henry clamped his hand over my mouth to
shut me up.

Darwin’s eyes met Henry’s and he glared. “Go away,
Henry. You’re not important.”

Henry collapsed. Panicked, I checked for a pulse. He
was just unconscious. “Henry is our friend.”

Darwin shrugged. “That doesn’t make him important.”

“Don’t kill Gale.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t need you either,
Devon, so you should mind how you speak to me.”

“Oh, trust me, I am.” I stood. “But I know that when
you let go of the amulet, you’re going to wake up and be the Darwin I know. The
same one who organized a student rally to ban butter and margarine from the
kitchen.”

“It didn’t work.”

“But you didn’t care, because you got everyone
working for a cause. If you kill Gale, that will be with you forever. Every
life you take will weigh on your soul for eternity. Every time you hear of a
death, every time someone’s face shows guilt, every time you close your eyes to
sleep, you’ll think about it.”

“So?”

“Let me do it.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because I’ll still be able to look myself in the
mirror in the mornings. I already killed John.” I didn’t want to be the one to
kill Gale, but I didn’t want Darwin to bear that burden.

“You’d really do it to save me from it?” he asked
thoughtfully. “Alright then. He ran off the second you spoke.”

I turned to see that Gale was gone. “Shit.”

“No worries. He’s got no magic.” Darwin made a
gesture of spreading something with his arms and the trees in a straight line
were flattened. A moment later, I heard Gale’s screams. He flew through the air
as if carried by a giant and landed hard in front of me. I picked up my sword,
which was no longer on fire.

“This feels like I’m cheating.”

“It won’t for long. I don’t want to retain his power,
so I’m going to lock it in the amulet, but I have to do it before you kill him.
He won’t have his magic, but I won’t be able to hold him down for you.”

“I’ll be quick.” Gale stopped screaming, though his
face was red from the pain and the exertion of his failed escape. As I stood
over him and pointed the sword at his chest, he calmed down. “I thought you
would beg for mercy,” I said.

It felt too easy, like this was a trap. Like this was
Gale’s plan all along. I tried to think how killing him could possibly help
him. Felicity, dead or alive, wouldn’t want him dead. Krechea wouldn’t want him
dead if they were working together. I knew something was wrong.

“Kill him now,” Darwin said. Many more people were
going to die if I didn’t kill him.

Gale smirked. “You won this battle, but I won the
war.”

“You’re dead.”

“So are you.”

I slid the blade into his chest. It was the only way
to save the students. Guilt tried to claw its way into me. As he died, still
grinning, I felt dread. Dread quickly gave way to pain. It was like a weight on
my chest so heavy I couldn’t breathe.

I was sweating when I collapsed in the rocks,
clutching my chest from the deep pain and unable to breathe. I saw Darwin panic
as darkness clouded my vision, but I couldn’t hear him.

Gale was right.

I
woke. Considering I knew for a fact that I had died on the battle field, that
was quite an accomplishment. The pain in my head was only surpassed by the pain
in my chest, but I opened my eyes. Fortunately, it wasn’t very bright.

I was in an office at the school, in a hospital bed
with an IV in me. There was a desk, a few chairs, a fireplace, and a couch.
Darwin was asleep on the couch, Henry was sitting on the floor in his jaguar
form, and Vincent was in one of the chairs by the fireplace. My sword was on
the desk, looking no different than any non-magical sword.

I tried to sit up, but the tightness in my chest was
too strong. I gave up when nausea threatened to make me black out again.
Although I had no dreams, I could tell that I had slept for too long. It felt
like I came too close to never opening my eyes again. I patted my chest,
confused as to why it felt so tight when I didn’t have a bandage around it, and
felt something metal. I lifted the talisman so that I didn’t have to contort
myself to see it.

It was a gold scorpion, about an inch long.

“Don’t take it off,” Vincent said.

I let it go. “What happened? I thought I was dead.”

“You were. We got you back, only for you to die
again.” His tone was somber, as if he had just gone through the most stressful
thing he had ever experienced and now he was just drained.

“How did I die? He didn’t touch me.”

“Officially, it was a massive heart attack. He didn’t
need to touch you; he had your blood.”

“He must have been waiting to use it until he got the
amulet. In the end, I think he just wanted me dead. So I’m okay now?” He shook
his head and stared into the fire. “What do you mean ‘no’? I’m alive.”

“There is no cure for what he did.”

“But it was contagion magic. The magic should have
died with him! Would you look at me?! I’m not dead!” Sharp pain stabbed me in
the chest and made me gasp for breath. He did look at me for about two seconds
before looking at Darwin instead.

“Your heart is damaged beyond what healing magic can
do. That pendant contains the strongest healing magic any of us know. If you
take it off, you will have a few minutes at the most. Even with it, your life
will be much shorter.”

“How long?”

“How long exactly depends on how easy you take it.”

“How long?” I asked again. Instead of answering, he
stood up and left.

“Fifteen to twenty years if you’re careful,” Darwin
said.

I closed my eyes, not allowing any panic in. Or at
least I tried. “I can do a lot in fifteen to twenty years. Who knows, maybe
they’ll find a cure by then. How was he able to do magic if you took his magic
with the amulet?”

He didn’t answer, so I looked at him. His blue eyes
were bloodshot and full of unshed tears. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It
couldn’t have been… he must have gotten magic from something else.”

“From Krechea,” I said, nodding.

“Magic doesn’t work that way. You can’t just give
your magic to someone. The amulet is an anomaly.”

“No, but you can share it with your familiar.” I
smirked when I saw the confusion on his face. “Gale was Krechea’s familiar.
That’s how Krechea’s shadow walkers had the power to possess the students and
why Gale gave them commands.”

“How did you get that from Gale saying he knew
Krechea?”

“It was Vincent’s book. Ghost wasn’t Vincent’s first
familiar. Gale wasn’t Krechea’s first, either. There was a bunch of things,
though. How long has it been?”

“You were critical for two days. You’ve been
unconscious for two weeks. None of your professors are going to flunk you; they
all know you saved everyone. You could pretty much not show up to any class for
the rest of the semester and most of them would give you honors.”

“Where is Astrid?”

“She never returned.”

I maneuvered my legs over the side of the bed and sat
up slowly.

Darwin was instantly on my right, ready to catch me
with his gloved hands if I fell. “You shouldn’t be sitting up!” he said.

“Then I really shouldn’t be walking.” I stood,
wobbled, and had to grab onto the side of the bed to keep from falling. Henry
growled, but he wasn’t challenging me; he was asking if I wanted help. I was glad
to see his fangs had almost completely grown back in. “You and I need to talk,
but it can wait.” I realized I was wearing a hospital gown. “Seriously?”

Darwin handed me a white t-shirt and dark blue pajama
bottoms. “We were more concerned with your heart than your clothes. Nobody
thought you would jump out of bed and go flashing people already.”

I was able to dress myself unaided, but it was slow
and painful. When I made it out the door, Henry was right beside me in case I
needed help. I figured he was staying in his cat form so he didn’t have to
speak.

“Is Addison okay?” I asked. He nodded. “Was that
knife wound a problem?” He shook he head. “There should be a therapist on
campus.” He nodded.

I made it okay to Langril’s classroom, where he was
sitting with his feet up on his desk. “Where is Astrid?”

“Where is my ball?”

“Darwin, go get the red ball off my desk,” I said.

He glared at Langril. “If you take a step towards
Devon, Henry will make sure you never see any of your balls again.”

The jaguar huffed in agreement. Langril just smirked.

“You could have gotten the ball on your own,” I said,
sitting down in the seat next to the door. Henry stayed right beside me like a
guard dog. I wondered what the jaguar would look like with a spiked collar.

Langril shrugged. “I thought you would try to
blackmail me for it and I didn’t want to deprive you of that.”

“It was Astrid you saved in that alleyway, right? The
baby?”

“Yes.”

“The man Astrid called her grandfather wasn’t her
grandfather, right?”

“Right.”

“Who was he?”

“Ceyax. He was Krechea’s familiar.”

Darwin returned then with the red foam ball, which he
gave to me. “Where is Astrid?” I asked again. He held out his hand. After a
moment of hesitation, I tossed it to him.

“She’s smart. You two have a very strong mental
connection, to the point where you were sharing memories. The memories
themselves were brought on by you using the amulet. Any object that power is
going to affect you mentally, including your repressed memories. I’ve been
helping both of you since you were children because I had a use for you. That
included giving her my blood to weaken Krechea’s control over her.”

“How are you tied into this?”

“Grab a chair and come closer.”

Accustomed to his peculiar behavior, I did as he
asked without arguing. I set my chair in front of his desk and sat. Darwin sat
on my left and Henry sat on my right. Langril put his feet down and leaned
forward at his desk. A circle of fire formed around us, about eight feet in
diameter. The fire was blue.

“I am probably the most powerful wizard of Dothra, so
of course I had enemies.”

“I explained the other worlds and stuff to Henry when
you were in the coma, but not the personal stuff,” Darwin told me.

Langril rolled his eyes at the interruption and
continued. “I discovered that my followers, through the proper training in
magic, could be summoned to this world. My followers were called soul guards—
at least in English. At a certain age, a wizard of Dothra could dedicate
themselves to my teachings. Once I felt they were ready, they could be summoned
by a human wizard to make a contract.”

“Human wizard?”

“All wizards of Earth are diluted with human blood,
so yes; you’re all humans to me. Dothra is a very dark and dangerous place. For
me, it is quite the paradise. However, not all my people are cut out for the
harsh world. Andrew, for example, would never have survived there.”

“What kind of contract?”

“It depends on what the human wizard wanted. Most of
them want protection. Once the contract was agreed upon, my follower became
their soul guard. The soul guard would protect their human wizard with all
their power, if that was what the contract called for. When the human does die,
however, the human’s soul is pulled into Dothra, were it feeds our realm and
gives more power to the wizards of Dothra. The soul guard, in turn, is free to
live their life on Earth.”

“Oh, shit.” My roommates both looked at me. “Felicity
was Gale’s soul guard, wasn’t she?” I asked. Langril nodded. “Then that means
when I killed Gale, I released her soul on Earth?”

“That depends. Krechea took her from Gale, which
technically would have broken their contract. It is possible that he would
claim her soul for himself. However, you are correct. If he lets her go, she
has a free passage to Earth.”

“Is that what happened with you? You made a
contract?”

“Not quite. I was summoned by Baldauf and he did want
my protection. Towards the end of the contract, however, he wanted me to take
his key instead of his soul. I agreed.”

“It’s a choice then? The wizard doesn’t have to go to
Dothra?”

“No, it’s not a choice.” His grin was malevolent.
“Baldauf’s soul was given to Dothra and I got the key. I didn’t exactly want
word of the tower getting out, though. It isn’t very well hidden on Dothra. I
tried living here for a while but I found it dreadfully dull, so I returned
home.”

“Why wouldn’t Heather tell me what it was?”

“You have to make the terms of the deal without her
influence. You can basically ask for anything, and as much as you want of
anything, but the end result is the same. If she offers any suggestion, she
risks voiding the contract.”

“Go back to Krechea,” Darwin said. “How does he tie
into this?”

“He was trying to overthrow me. Since he lacked
power, he turned to blood sacrifice. Astrid was extremely powerful and
therefore targeted. Her parents were killed, but I saved her and brought her to
Earth.”

“Astrid is from Dothra? Her parents were demons
then?”

“Her mother was a vampire and her father was a wizard
of Dothra. They were a happy couple; so in love that I gagged every time I saw
them.”

“How did you get her out of the tower here if she
couldn’t use the shadow pass because she hadn’t killed anyone?”

“First of all, you can actually get to the tower
without the shadow pass if you know the way. Second, Logan and Vincent are
wrong about the fact that the person must have killed to enter it. I never
corrected them because I didn’t want them to try it. A person can cross through
the shadow pass even if they haven’t killed, but most of them are lost in it.
Those who make it through wish they hadn’t. Astrid was the exception because I
could hide her.”

“And Heather’s mother, Miranda?”

“She was one of those who wished she hadn’t made it.”
He rolled the ball between his hands. “Anyway, Krechea wasn’t happy that I
spoiled his plan, so he sent his familiar after me when I brought Miranda back
to Earth. It’s easy for someone to slip through unseen. I put Astrid in foster
care because I couldn’t babysit her forever. Ceyax took Astrid, pretending to
be her grandfather, and fed her his blood to create a bond between her and
Krechea. When you came into the picture, he tested the bond between you and
her.”

“He tortured her,” I said.

“He was trying to teach her to be the perfect little
killer that Krechea could use against me, because Krechea decided that if he
couldn’t have her power, he would use it. He succeeded. I dropped in here and
there to help when she was about to fail one of Ceyax’s tests. Had she failed,
he would have killed her. I also gave her my blood to weaken the bond. Then,
between my blood and her training, she snapped and she killed him.”

“As well as Joseph Sanders.”

He shrugged again. “Krechea found out about Heather
and planned to kill her in revenge. I arrived in time and he killed Miranda
instead. I gave up my followers and remained on Earth to protect Heather.
Krechea took my work and converted my followers into the shadow walkers. With
the fourth key lost, the barriers between the worlds are weakening, and Krechea
can use that to ‘ghost’ into this world. He wants all four keys, so he’s trying
to kill Logan, Vincent, and me. It takes all four keys to destroy the tower,
which is why Logan and Vincent want them all. I was willing to let them destroy
the tower until Heather was killed. Because of my blood in her and because she
was killed on Earth, her soul is in Dothra. It was fine at first, since she was
safe there, but then Krechea found out.”

“How did he–”

“Because you were talking about her. He can hear what
we say. Not all the time, but there’s no way to tell exactly when or how he’s
listening. He is still trying to use Heather, so I need to get her out. I never
knew why Astrid was useful to me, but I do now. You can save Astrid by saving
Heather.”

I stood, too angry to care that I was injured. “Where
is Astrid?”

“In Dothra. She pieced together the memories, the
lapses in time, and the scraps of information she could get from you. She
figured out that Krechea was controlling her, not Gale, and that he was after
you. Rather than let him make her kill you, she demanded to go after him
herself.”

“And you took her?!” My heartbeat sped faster and
faster, pain spread, and black spots formed in my eyes. I was on my knees and
panting a second later, which was extremely frustrating. The pity in his eyes
only made it worse.

“You can’t go after her. The paranormal world is a
game of manipulating, bribing, blackmailing, backstabbing, and conning. If you
don’t play to win, you become a pawn. The only way for you to save her is to
make a deal with Heather.” He stood and started for the door. As he walked
through the blue fire of the circle, it died. He tossed the ball in the air and
caught it.

“What is it with that ball?” I asked.