Elemental Flame (The Eldritch Files Book 4) Read online

  Prescott looked like she'd stuck a lemon in her mouth. She pursed her lips and nodded to the officer who tipped his hat at me and left the shop. "Sorry to disturb you. But just so you know, if Miss Devonshire doesn't appear in the next twenty-four hours, I will have a warrant to search the premises."

  I stepped forward before she turned to go. "Captain…any word on what happened to Detective Holliard?"

  She looked confused. "Happened?"

  "Yes. He's missing."

  "No he's not. He filed a notice with me on Valentine's Day, effective immediately. He's not missing. He went to Baltimore."

  What? I blinked a few times. I knew why I was suddenly a bit emotional. It was easier to believe the detective had just gone out of state to get away from me and my Arcane than to believe he was a Dragon and in trouble.

  "Miss Hawthorne, are you all right?"

  "No…I mean yes. I will be," I wiped at my eyes. "So he handed you this notice personally?"

  "No. It was on my desk the next morning with an address to send his last check. I tried calling him but there was no answer," she clasped her hands in front of her. "I must admit, your reaction is as strange as Tulose's had been. He looked like I'd hit him in the stomach," she pointed at me. "That's what you look like. Good afternoon, Miss Hawthorne."

  I watched her leave and followed just behind her. I locked the door and pulled down the shades Crwys had installed for a bit of privacy. Turning the sign to closed, I headed back through the break room door with Grey at my heels and found Kyle waiting for me by the table. He had a bag in his hand. "You don't look so good."

  I told him what Prescott said about the missing persons report.

  He looked as weirded out as I felt. "Who would report her missing? You don't think it was Dionysus do you?"

  "It might be." I moved to the stairs leading up to my apartment. The door was open so I went in and grabbed the leather jacket tossed on the couch. I paused when I caught the smell of Crwys on it. It was his jacket. I buried my face in it and inhaled as deeply as I could. Something gnawed at me, in the center of my stomach. It was anxiety; a deep longing that hadn't been there before. When I thought he'd left me that gnawing had been laced with anger, but now that anger was directed at myself.

  Was he in pain as Kathy said? Had he been in pain since the moment he vanished? I'd been holed up in a cabin for two days, making my own little pity party with my Elementals and the man I wanted to profess undying love for had been suffering.

  Sweet Lady, I needed to get a hold of myself and stop being a whiny Witch. I had my power back, and I had an extra kick if I wanted it. The Arcane, every time I used it, it felt stronger. Crwys believed my Elementals held the Arcane in check like a dam. And when they were gone, it built up strength and lodged itself in the mark on my chest, which I now kept covered.

  What I'd noticed in those woods as I practiced with the Elementals, was that even though the voice wasn't as vocal anymore, the power was still there, just below the surface. Waiting. Watching. Ready to strike.

  "Sam?" Kyle called up.

  We'll find him, Sam-Sam.

  I took comfort in my mother's voice as I slipped the jacket on. I grabbed my pistols from out of my bag, checked their ammo and slipped them into the back of my jeans. With a glance around the main living room, I spotted my cell phone on the kitchen table where I'd left it before heading to the cabin. There was less than fifteen percent battery life left and over a hundred texts and voice messages.

  Whoops.

  I grabbed the charger and headed down the stairs.

  After locking up, we piled into my Jeep where I hooked my phone up and handed it to Kyle. "Type the address off this card into my navigator, then start going through my texts and emails. If anything looks odd, tell me."

  Relegated to the back this time, Grey made herself as comfortable as possible as we drove around town.

  "You going to tell me what the Dragon fantasy thing is all about?"

  I glanced at Kyle. "You sure you wanna know?"

  "I don't like going in blind."

  "Remember how my dex always claimed to not know what Crwys was?"

  "Yeah."

  "And remember how he said he was a Drachen when we first met?"

  "Yeah…but I thought he was kidding." His eyes widened and I could see his jaw drop out of the corner of my eye. "He was serious?"

  I nodded.

  "Crwys is a…"

  "You can say it. It's not like saying Voldemort."

  Kyle put his hand on the dashboard. "Crwys Holliard is a Dragon?"

  "Mmhmm. Levi confirmed it. And I think Kathy is having her first visions as a Seer like your aunt. She's been having dreams about him. That the Dragon is in pain and that the princess has to rescue him."

  He made a rude noise. "You are no princess."

  I ignored that. "But if anything she said is true, and remember it's filtered through a child's eyes, then I'm going to find him."

  He didn't look at my phone. I didn't think he would, not after having that bomb dropped in his lap. "How…how is that even possible? Dragons are like…huge!"

  Yeah. "As far as we know. I don't have the answers, but I have a lot of suspicions. So are you with me?"

  "I gotta see this. Can I tell Jack?"

  "I thought you two had a fight."

  "Honestly, I'm not sure if we did or didn't. That might have been part of Cordelia's magic. But if we did, once I tell him the cop is a Dragon, he'll totally forget the fight."

  "Not right now. Let's find Crwys's apartment first."

  The navigator took me south of New Orleans to the ninth ward and into an abandoned industrial park. I drove carefully through debris-covered roads with cracked and heavily potholed streets. I cringed to think that boy was driving his Mustang through this every day.

  We arrived at our destination and I was happy it was in the daylight. The place was a huge warehouse. Three sets of tiny windows went straight up, even though most of those panes of glass were broken or completely missing. The outside still carried the faint impression of a refrigerator ad. I couldn't quite make out the brand, but the building, once I parked the Jeep next to it, was massive.

  "Okay so…I can see a Dragon living in there," Kyle said with his face smashed against the windshield. "Space is definitely a selling point for the large and winged."

  SIX

  Grey got out on the driver's side and I locked the door. Kyle was looking at the pothole ridden asphalt parking lot around us.

  "Hey, does Crwys's car leak oil?"

  "It's an old car. They all leak oil. Why?" I moved around the front of the Jeep as I adjusted my pistols. Didn't want them sticking into my back. A few inches from his foot were several oil spots. Some were old and some were new. "Looks like someone parked a car here repeatedly. You got your stuff?"

  "In the bag."

  We moved to the front door. It was a steel piece of work with a keypad to the right and a silver handle. I grabbed the handle and tugged. Locked.

  Kyle pulled his phone out and thumbed the front. After a few seconds, "Google boy…got a keypad here at Crwys's warehouse…yeah, warehouse. Need it opened." He held the phone in front of the keypad and took a picture of it before he returned the phone to his ear and waited. After a full minute there was a click and the door popped open.

  "It's nice having a Cyber Witch around," I muttered as I pulled the right hand pistol from my back. It had the name The Lord on it, where the other was called The Lady. They didn't shoot magic, per se, but they did guarantee I would hit what I shot at. As long as it had a corporeal body.

  I moved in front, weapon in front of me. The safety wasn't off yet. I didn't sense anything but Arcane. It was everywhere and made the whole place a red glittery mess.

  Once inside, I lowered the gun and the two of us stood in stunned silence as we looked up. If there had been floors in the building, they'd been removed a while ago. The building was a straight shot to a metal rafter ceiling. The floor was polis
hed up and someone had laid down hardwood in the far right corner. I walked toward it and the kitchen appliances along the brick wall.

  "You think this is where he…" Kyle began and his voice echoed off the walls. "You know."

  "Stretched his wings?" I sighed and looked inside the fridge. There was still power but it was empty. All of the cupboards were empty. No old cereal boxes, no utensils, not even dishes. Whoever cleaned out the place did a thorough job. I tucked my pistol back into my jeans. "Go ahead and set up. I'll Call."

  Grey sniffed around and found a nice place by one of the center beams. She didn't say much, just kept a calm hum in my head, a constant reminder she was there.

  We picked a spot in the middle of the place and Kyle opened his bag. He handed me four white candles. Using my phone's compass app, I placed a candle in each of the four quarters in the space of the warehouse and lit each one. As they lit, my Elemental corresponding with that direction appeared and I thanked them for coming.

  By the time I finished, my Gnome, Sylph, Salamander and Undine were present and watching. Kyle set out his small cauldron, a green candle and a yellow candle, matches and a small tin. We watched as he set the small charcoals in the cauldron on fire and once they burned red, the Hedge Witch opened the tin and sprinkled powdered incense on the charcoals.

  A plume of purple smoke engulfed Kyle immediately and I felt a slight pressure in the air. The smoke continued to grow until it filled out the entirety of the warehouse's interior. As the air turned a light pastel purple, I started seeing images in the mist. Movement all around me. "Is there a way to slow it down?"

  And on cue the movements did slow and then reversed. A quick look at Kyle and I could see his eyes squeezed tight in concentration and his hands moving in front of him. Kyle was manipulating the herbs he'd used in the incense, directing the spell. This was magic that I just couldn't do.

  My Undine made flapping noises as she did rolls in the air, speeding toward a group of shadows near the kitchen. I followed her with my Gnome close at my side, her axe at the ready. I stood in the center of the kitchen and watched as Kyle let the events roll forward. There had been a bed in the left corner, several shelves and a chest of drawers. Shadowy figures moved about with gestures, though I couldn't hear them. They packed things into large bags and made their way in and out of the warehouse.

  This continued for several minutes before the purple mist faded and the images disappeared.

  I jogged back over to Kyle who flopped onto his back and lay sprawled out. "Hey, you okay?"

  "Yeah. A few of those herbs give me a headache."

  "I could see shadows and people moving, but that's all they were. Shadows. No faces. No features. I couldn't even tell if they were male or female."

  "That's why I got a headache. There was a concealment spell cast. So whoever they are, they used magic. And it's not Arcane Magic, it's our magic."

  "What?" I looked at the now empty warehouse. "Witches?"

  "It wasn't Magicians. And they didn't want to be seen. So they moved Crwys's things out of here under a cloak. If so many days hadn't passed, I might have been able to push through their block. But it's just been too long. The images aren't fresh anymore."

  He did very good. His power's growing Sam. Just like Ivan's and yours.

  Yeah…only their power had a natural progression. Mine had an Arcane booster in tow.

  "It's okay." I started toward the candles and gathered them up, dismissing my Elementals with thanks. When I reached the candle by the door I paused and stepped outside. A quick look around and I came back in and handed Kyle the candles as he packed everything but the hot cauldron. "So…where did Crwys get his mail?"

  "I don't know. A P.O. box?"

  "Prescott said she got a resignation letter from him with a note saying where to send his last check."

  "What does his mail have to do with anything?" He handed me the bag, and with oven mitts carried the small cauldron out the front door. He dumped it onto some concrete and then scattered the smoldering ashes. I summoned my Undine and she happily squeezed some water from a few muddy puddles and put the charcoals out. Once finished, she disappeared.

  "Prescott didn't see Crwys put the letter on her desk. I don't think he resigned at all. Levi's sure of it. So what if the person that took him or is hurting him put the letter there so no one would look for him, and added in the address to deliver the check."

  "Possibly," Kyle rubbed the goatee on his chin. "Sam…why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why do all this? I mean, I doubt anyone but Levi knew he was a Dragon. Come on. Even I'm having a hard time swallowing it, though it does sort of explain his ifrit-like powers."

  "Ifrit?"

  "Fire devil. Fire beast," he shrugged. "Why go through this much trouble to make sure no one would go looking for him, to the point where even you thought he dumped you?"

  "I don't have an answer to that."

  "I do. Someone wanted him and they want to keep him. They don't want anyone rescuing him. We know they're Witches. We just have to find out what coven discovered his secret. But what has me a little worried is…what kind of people have the power to kidnap a Dragon and hold it?"

  Yeah. My thoughts exactly. Successfully kidnapping, and somehow containing, what I'd always thought to be one of the largest and most powerful mythical creatures in fantasy is a feat in and of itself. I wasn't sure whether to be afraid of the actual Dragon or the ones who could catch it. I doubted they were Witches. Why would Witches take a Dragon? Unless they took him for some other purpose and they didn't know he's a Dragon? And if he is a Dragon—what in the world could actually hold him? I didn't see Crwys Holliard going quiet in the night for anybody. I voiced that question aloud as we packed up the Jeep.

  "That's something I'll have to do a bit of research on, or we can ask Google boy—"

  I was about to climb into the driver's side of the Jeep when Kyle stopped talking. His silence bothered me, so I looked over the top of the vehicle at him and saw the back of his dark head. He was looking at something across the littered parking area. "Kyle?"

  "Sshh…" he said but didn't turn to look at me. "We're not alone."

  Crap. I retrieved my right-hand pistol from the back of my jeans and leaned to the left, looking over the windshield to see if I could see what Kyle saw.

  Clouds gathered overhead. It had been a murky day, with rain threatening from the time I got on the road leaving the cabin. As I narrowed my eyes and searched the dilapidated and abandoned buildings across from us, I noticed the sky darkening. Rain was no longer a threat, but a reality. And something about it felt…

  Wrong. The air crackled with static. Charged with magic.

  Just past a few rusted oil drums something moved. I wished I had super seeing power at that moment, but whatever it was, it was still too far away. And it was small. Maybe the size of a Chihuahua. I held out my left hand and whispered the dex spell. The four directional pentagrams appeared, spun and then zeroed in on the movement.

  "Sweet Lord and Lady." I kept my voice down.

  "You see it?"

  "Yeah."

  "What is it?"

  "A Fetch."

  Fetches were little more than conjured energy in the Human World. The spell used to create them had an Arcane base. No one knew where the spell originated, and lots of Witches cursed its existence. It was a cheap and low energy expenditure of magic to create life. Fetches had no visible form. To combat that, a compulsion is built into the spell, telling the Fetch to clothe itself, and it did so using whatever material was handy. If a Fetch was made in the desert, it used sand. If made near the beach, it usually looked like a weird mixture of sand and water. And if someone built one in an abandoned industrial park, then of course, it was going to look like a walking piece of scrap metal.

  It moved from behind the cans when it realized we could see it. The thing had used a combination of scattered, crumpled concrete, bits of metal and glass and from this distance, the headl
ight of some kind of car or truck. It looked like a Cyclops, only it had the headlight in its belly. Fetches were programmed for one purpose and they wouldn't stop till that purpose was complete.

  But only the creator knew what that was.

  "Can't you just banish it?" Kyle said.

  "No. The magic's not from any of the Other Worlds. It's from here. It's local."

  "You mean it's Witch Magic?"

  I didn't have an answer.

  Sam. Grey was behind the Jeep, growling softly. There's more than one.

  SEVEN

  I looked to the right in her direction and spotted another movement in the middle of the path I drove in on. Another Fetch. Only this one wore car parts. A rusted muffler made up the main body, and the arms and legs were more or less pipes. A distributor sat on top like some weird robotic head.

  "Sam, I count four of them."

  I held the gun out in front of me as I moved to the front of the Jeep and pivoted. He was right. Besides Concrete Fetch and Muffler Fetch, two more were approaching as well. One was made up entirely of bottle caps and stood a good foot taller than the others. Beside Bottle Cap limped…

  Oh good Goddess.

  The fourth one had used a plastic two-liter of some beverage, the brand wrapping long gone. Then it decided to thread its body with any and every piece of wiring imaginable. The wiring stuck out in eight places, making it look like some freaky, messed up spider.

  "Kyle…you wouldn't happen to have the stuff to make that ward like you did outside of Circe's would you?" I spoke as I trained my gun on each one of them, pivoting as I tried to figure out which of the little nasties would attack first.

  "No," Kyle said. "That bag's in my car." He clapped his hands together and they ignited in magical flames, blue and yellow for Water and Air. He stomped his right foot as green flame appeared for Earth and then his left foot and red flame appeared for Fire. All the Elements were present for Kyle, but I knew his power to use them was limited without the aid of herbs or spells. He had maybe five shots total before his energy reserves would dry up.