The Elementals Collection Read online

  With a disgusted shake of her head, Diana extended her hand to the fire. His eyes widened as the flames leapt to her hand. She smiled at him as she held it, cradling it in her palm like a treasure. He edged away.

  “Well, Donald, you’re disappointing me. I’ve been looking for you for a long time and, frankly, I expected more.”

  “How the fuck do you know my—”

  Diana raised the fire to triple its size, directing the rush of air to throw the larger man into the wall. In a split second, she had her free hand around his neck. With one arm, she smoothly lifted him off the ground.

  His eyes bulged, and his face turned a dark shade of red as he choked. Diana smiled coldly when panic seized him and he kicked helplessly in the air.

  “You didn’t honestly think you were the scariest thing walking this Earth, did you?” Diana whispered.

  “Angel?” he wheezed as she released her grip on his throat a fraction.

  “Not quite,” she said with a twist of her lips before hardening her expression as the fire built up inside her.

  Donald looked into her eyes, and as they changed, opened his mouth wide and screamed. Tired of having to touch him, Diana brought her other hand up and released the fire directly into his gaping mouth. His screaming was strangled as he clawed at his throat in a vain attempt to stop the flames. But it was running inside of him then, burning everything into ash from the inside out.

  Diana finally let go and backed away as the flames consumed his torso. She stared down at the burning body, weariness rising as the adrenaline of the kill faded away. Sighing, she stirred the burning embers with the tip of her steel-toed boot.

  She’d waited longer than usual to bring this one down. She could have just killed him as soon as she got to town, but she’d decided to wait, to snare him with his own trap. It seemed like poetic justice. She’d wanted revenge for all of those girls he’d hunted down and killed as if they were nothing.

  Closing her eyes, she saw their faces in her mind. His victims faces were usually too battered to be recognizable to their loved ones, their bodies torn and broken. Like the two youngest who’d been living on the streets. He had kept those two the longest. . .and they suffered the most. That was why she’d put it off, letting him see her, desire her for almost a week and half.

  It was too long for one predator, as Gia had gently reminded her last night.

  I did take too long, Diana thought as the rush of vengeance faded and the dissatisfaction took over again. She watched the flames do their work, much faster than a normal fire would act on a body.

  She used to live for this. The satisfaction used to last longer. If they were all this clean, this clear, it would be better. Punishing the guilty was what she was built for. Unfortunately, it seemed like more and more of these monsters kept turning up. Like the heads of a Hydra, she cut one down and two more sprung up in their place.

  She waited for the fire to consume the last of the body, tossing the note she’d left for Donald on the dying flames. A few of his earliest victims had been taunted by notes just like it. They had found them in their homes and their workplaces, places they thought were safe until he proved otherwise. Satisfaction flared briefly again.

  When there were only ashes left, Diana gathered her coat and made her way to the front door of the warehouse. There was no need to sneak out of the hole she’d made back in the alley. She walked into the darkness and closed the door behind her.

  Walking past the shabby buildings and storefronts, she inhaled the cool night air. It was moist and heavy, but the overcast sky held no hint of a coming storm.

  Too bad I can’t make it rain at will. She always liked how it smelled after it rained.

  Diana wrinkled her nose, silently acknowledging that she preferred firepower to water. Always had.

  2

  Diana unlocked the door to the apartment. She put her take-out on the table, one of the few pieces of furniture in the apartment.

  Furnished apartments never had much of anything except for a used feeling in the air. She stripped off her uniform, the standard cargo pants and black tank she always wore with combat boots, and showered quickly. After pulling on clean clothes, she wrapped a fuzzy knit scarf from her pack around her shoulders.

  The scarf was the one indulgence she carried with her from place to place. Gia had made it for her. Diana always waited till she was done with a case to take it out, unwilling to have it on as she did her work. It was like a reward after she finished a job.

  Sighing, she looked around the bare room, glad she would be leaving it behind at first light. She was heading back to the east coast. Back to Boston.

  And that was where this empty feeling started. After I took Katie home.

  She pushed the thought away and pulled the candle on the bedside table closer. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she called the fire with a flick of her finger. The wick on the candle flared to life, and she focused on the flame. Reaching out with her mind, she sent the image of the flame into the aether.

  Though each of the Mother Nature’s agents represented a distinct element, they were all bound together by the fifth, aether, which enabled them to communicate with each other. It didn’t matter where in the world they were. All they had to do was commune with their element. In Diana’s case, she simply lit a candle. No one ever questioned why a woman had so many candles.

  Diana could feel the other three Elementals waiting through the aether. She winced slightly. It had been while since she’d talked to all of them as a group. She hadn’t wanted them to gang up on her to move on from this case. But that also meant she hadn’t heard how their missions were going, either.

  “It’s done,” she said aloud.

  “Good,” Gia, the Earth Elemental, responded over the aether link. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Diana lied.

  “Are you sure?” Serin, the Water Elemental, chimed in.

  Gia and Serin were the two most senior Elementals. Both had been in service of the mother for years. In Gia’s case, centuries.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Diana said. “But it will be good to get out of here. I don’t like the kind of cold they have here. Cold should not be humid.”

  “Wait till you get back to Boston,” Logan said. “In summer, it’s a pit.”

  Logan was the youngest Air Elemental in history. Gia considered her a prodigy, but Diana had decided not to hold that against her. And now she loved her. They all did.

  “You lucked out before, not having to go there at this time of year. You’ll miss Canada then,” Logan continued.

  “Should I skip the car and fly into your namesake this time?” Diana asked.

  “How many times do I have to tell you I am not named after the airport!” she huffed, making Diana smile.

  Logan had taken to her Elemental inheritance with alacrity, but she was still very young and easy to needle.

  “We know, sweetie,” Serin said. “Di’s just winding you up. I have to get going. I have to head south for another disturbance.”

  “Any idea what’s going down?” Logan asked eagerly.

  In both age and experience, she was the youngest, and was still keen to learn everything she could about their missions.

  “No real details yet,” Serin supplied, “but there’s a center. San Juan de Abajo, a small village on the coast near Vallarta.”

  Logan sighed. “You always get the best locations. Sometimes I wish I was Water.”

  “No, you don’t,” Serin said, a smile clear in her voice. “You would miss getting to whip up winds and storms and knocking guys three times your size on their butt.”

  “Hey, those guys were asking for it,” Logan grumbled. “And they lived. Like they were supposed to.”

  With only four of them actively working at any one time, even some of the most knowledgeable magic practitioners didn’t believe in Elementals. Sometimes a good scare was enough to straighten people out. And for those beginning to stray into the darker shades of magi
c, a good thrashing early on was easier and more effective.

  Logan’s last case was one of their preemptive attempts to stop such a situation from developing. She’d delivered a smack down worthy of a WWF wrestler, with a harsh reminder to stay within the parameters of the covenant.

  The Mother had bound every Supernatural with a set of guidelines that over time had become known as the covenant. It was essentially a promise not to abuse the gift of magic she had given them. The covenant bound all Supernaturals to act only within certain boundaries. And of all the Otherkind races the Elementals policed, it was the witches that most often strayed outside those lines.

  Logan had delivered her message to the witches in style, but there had been a running argument since that their youngest sister might be a teensy bit reckless. Her “warning” had landed several of the male witches in the hospital. The junior Elemental tried to manipulate her ability in ways that taxed her level of skill and control.

  “Yeah, just be careful with the blow-back,” Serin said.

  Logan’s blasts did sometimes get away from her.

  “Okay, mom,” Logan said, but she didn’t sound annoyed.

  They all knew Serin couldn’t help but mother them.

  “Well, I need to get going,” Serin said. “I’ll keep you posted on the situation once I know what is going on. Good luck in Boston, Di.”

  They could feel her withdrawal along the aether as she departed.

  “I should go, too,” Gia said. “I have some tracking to do tonight.”

  “Be careful,” Diana couldn’t help saying, even though she knew it was unnecessary.

  Gia was the senior Elemental—the strongest and perhaps the wisest. But Diana always worried about her. It was Gia who had found Diana and told her she was an Elemental and at the back of her mind she feared Gia would disappear on her one day the way her own mother had.

  “I always am,” Gia assured her. “And…if you need to talk about anything at all, just call. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Gia withdrew.

  “Finally!” Logan breathed once she was gone. “I thought they were never going to go.”

  “So you heard something?” Diana asked, her heart sinking slightly.

  “There are whispers in the wind about the little girl.” Logan’s voice was sympathetic.

  It was one of the benefits to being the Air Elemental. The wind sometimes whispered useful things in your ear, but it wasn’t exactly a reliable source of information. The echoes and fragments Logan heard were open to interpretation. But this time she sounded sure.

  “What do you hear?” Diana felt both vindicated and chilled.

  “Not too much, other than you were right. Katie’s gone missing. . .again. No one has seen her in the last few weeks.”

  “What does the mother say?”

  “She’s missing now, too. But the little girl disappeared first. None of their acquaintances seem to know where they are, but they think the mother went in search of the little one.”

  “Any ideas of where to start looking?”

  “There is a lead, but tread carefully on this one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, the winds speak of vampires.”

  Well crap, Diana thought.

  Diana lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Logan’s warning gave her a bad feeling about Boston. Not about the case of corporate malfeasance she’d been sent to investigate. But the other case, the one both Serin and Gia had said was over.

  It had to be freaking vampires. Ugh. It was more than enough to keep her awake.

  Little Katie should have been safe. Diana had made sure. Last year, she’d been sent on a monster hunt, much like the one she’d just finished. It was ironic that the ones she and her sisters called monsters were, more often than not, the completely human ones.

  Diana sighed and shifted in bed. Sometimes the Supernaturals were far easier to stomach. At least one knew what to expect from them.

  A child molester, a very prolific one, had taken Katie. He liked to keep his little girls for a long time, letting them get used to him. And once he’d earned their trust, he would strip it away, abusing them to the point of catatonia. Diana could still see Katie’s haunted eyes, the light starting to bleed out of them. Diana remembered that look well. It happened to children who’d learned in the worst possible way that adults weren’t always there to protect them.

  Something inside Diana had broken after that case. The Mother had charged their kind with punishing those so evil they shifted the balance to the dark. But that was the crux of the matter. There had to be a dark side.

  An Elemental wasn’t a savior. They could track a killer to the ends of the Earth, but they didn’t have the ability to identify a potential victim. The best they could do was track those peripherally involved in their cases. But that was only if they were among one of the Supernatural races. It didn’t work with humans. Not unless they had done something bad enough to mark themselves.

  Diana was sick of her inability to save the innocent. Intellectually, she knew she made a difference to the future victims a killer would’ve taken, but it had been cold comfort when she’d found that little girl.

  There had been too many others that she hadn’t been able to save.

  Katie’s mother, Brenda, had been so relieved to get her baby back. She had sworn she would never let the little girl out of her sight ever again. And Diana had believed her. The little girl’s father hadn’t been in the picture, only an aunt who had been very quiet in her presence. At the time, Diana had chalked it up to the FBI badge she flashed at them when she took Katie home. It was a useful tool in cases like those, when an Elemental had to mix with humans.

  Diana shifted on the lumpy mattress and gave up rehashing the past, focusing on her plans instead. She would have to go inside the Boston vampire coven blind. She had no idea what connection they had to Katie’s latest disappearance, but she knew enough about them to expect trouble.

  The Broussards were the oldest and most powerful clan of vampires in the new world. They even outstripped most of the clans in the old world these days.

  Normally she had no scruples over busting in and knocking heads, but the Mother hadn’t exactly sanctioned this investigation. Her kind were supposed to be the clean-up crew.

  Well, not this time, she decided.

  And really, a little head busting is often the most effective approach.

  3

  Boston was hot and sticky.

  Too sticky, Diana thought. She loved hot weather but hated the humidity. It felt as if she was swimming through the crowded Boston Gardens.

  Am I near that Cheers bar? A drink would have been welcome.

  Well, maybe next time. On impulse, she stopped for a piece of fried dough. She gobbled it down and ordered a second without a shred of remorse. Maintaining her firepower at optimum levels required consuming high quantities of calories. And she was going to need it tonight. In fact, she was going to have to add a few bread bowls of clam chowder at Faneuil Hall in the name of preparedness.

  A couple of hours later, Diana was loitering in Louisburg Square’s fenced-in park. She had spent the afternoon trying to track down Brenda, Katie’s mom. But there had been no trace of her, and Diana wasn’t willing to drop her current lead to hunt her down. Especially if Katie wasn’t with her.

  From her vantage point in the park, Diana could see the coven’s townhouse. Most of the family homes in this area had been converted to apartments and condos, but the huge house was inhabited solely by the coven. Members often chose to take lodgings outside of the coven house, but many still chose to live inside with their brothers and sisters.

  She would never understand why vampires and Weres chose to live piled on top of each other like that. Didn’t they find themselves as insufferable as she did?

  Apparently not, since they all vied to stay close to one another.

  Even young vampires were irritating as shit. They made the mistake of believing their ow
n hype, always dressing lavishly, throwing endless parties and employing humans to serve them in daylight. And the human servants delighted in their domestic drudgery! Though most of them did it for the status, a few really believed they would be made vampires if they succeeded in pleasing their masters.

  On rare occasions, a human with some sensitivity to magic was turned, but it didn’t happen often enough to justify the years of servitude.

  It was enough of a challenge to turn a human from one of the vampire lineages. It took an amazingly skilled practitioner to wrap magic around a normal person and mold them into their own image. Of course, vampires didn’t see it that way. To them, turning a human was a mystical act of creation unique to their kind. They couldn’t see the parallels to the other groups of Supernaturals because it contradicted their mythos. And to vamps that was all that really mattered.

  Vampires could breed a potential vampire the normal way, but only in the days before they turned. While still mostly human, a member of a vampiric line could mate to produce children. But they didn’t do so as frequently as Weres and humans. And not all of their children were capable of being turned, a detail she was grateful for. More vampires meant more headaches for her.

  Diana sighed and headed out of the square. Later that night would be a more appropriate time to visit the coven house. She needed to question its members about Katie’s disappearance, and it would be better to do it before they dispersed to the city’s Underlife, the network of shops and nightclubs that passed for civilization to Supernaturals.

  She was almost out of the square when a prickling awareness at the back of her neck made her pause. Diana was being watched, and not by some stray human.

  Despite the fact vampires didn’t come out in daylight, she pulled her hood up and moved back to casually walk around the square. There was no one in sight that could have gotten her spidey senses tingling like that. And given the bright sunlight, it couldn’t be a vampire.