Elemental Rivalry

  Elemental Rivalry

  (Paranormal Public, Book 13)

  by

  Maddy Edwards

  Copyright © 2016 by Maddy Edwards

  Cover Design © Broken Arrow Designs

  This novel is a work of fiction in which names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is completely coincidental.

  License Notes

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Contact Maddy Edwards

  Books by Maddy Edwards

  Prologue: A New Elemental

  Charlotte looked frustrated.

  “Keller and I had a fight,” she said.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Last names,” she moaned. I frowned. This didn’t sound terribly familiar.

  “Oh?” was my careful response.

  “Yeah, we can’t agree on which last name to give Vera,” she said, putting her head in her hands.

  “Oh,” I said again, only this time it meant something entirely different.

  She looked up at me through her fingers. “That’s the best you can do?” she demanded.

  “Maybe you should give me more information,” I said. This was always a good idea when my sister flummoxed me. If I could keep her talking, then I couldn’t talk myself into a corner!

  What did it matter anyway, I was an uncle! Vera was here!

  “She’s literally the girl in your dreams, but that doesn’t mean she’s the girl for you. Only you can decide who to love, Ricky. They will both stand by your side, but love makes everything richer, the colors, the work of life, the air. Everything is warmed and filled and warmed again when you truly love. Sometimes the path is easy. I know I’m not the best one to be offering advice, since I found my heartsweet early and my love never wavered, but that isn’t everyone’s path. Saying you have a right to love is like saying you have a right to breathe. They are both a part of you. No one can take them away.”

  The voice sounded a lot like Keller’s, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I awoke in a cold sweat in my bed in Astra. My whole body was shivering and my sheets felt wet. They were also undone at one corner from my tossing and turning, but despite the confusion, one thing was clear as glass in my mind. I had to tell Lisabelle about the Lough dream.

  I picked up my pillow and gave in to my frustrations by pounding it into submission. Then I let out a gusty sigh, slammed myself back down into the bed, and closed my eyes. But sleep would not come. I rolled over and grabbed some reading material.

  Too much was happening.

  In the name of normalcy, the High Council was re-forming. The Tabble had gone crazy with announcements and pronouncements when this was decided, mostly because with Sip gone, many paranormals were fearful of what would come next.

  Sip Quest, although she was a controversial figure, was beloved throughout the paranormal world as our first president after the Nocturn War.

  Darkness was always just around the corner, and the great evil that was Lisabelle Verlans was ready to pounce at the least opportunity or, if you listened to some, no opportunity at all. We had to defend ourselves or die, was pretty much the message.

  I had heard about the re-formation of the council because Queen Lanca of the Rapier vampires was announced as one of the main advocates for the move.

  Unsurprisingly, it was rumored that she would sit on the council.

  To make matters worse, I knew that she and Charlotte still weren’t speaking. I didn’t even think she had been informed when Charlotte’s baby was born. I now had a pretty clear idea why they weren’t speaking now, and I didn’t like it. Old friends tearing apart old friends was depressing, especially when it came to someone I liked as well as I liked Queen Lanca and her consort-husband, Vital.

  Charlotte’s baby, my new relative, was named Vera. I was sworn to secrecy, since the name had not been officially announced yet, and the press would have a field day with the information when it got out.

  The Tabble knew something must be up – they had found out she was pregnant, after all – but without any clear definition of “elemental,” all their speculations were just a lot of nonsense, no matter how many experts were interviewed about what the pregnancy meant for the future of elementals. Even if Vera did turn out to be an elemental, she would bring the tally up to the staggering number of THREE of us. It was hardly more impressive than two.

  At least the reason behind Lanca’s fury was clearer to me now. I had figured out that she must think Lough was working for the Hunters. She had been livid when she showed up at Astra a while back for dinner, and I had to believe it was because she had gotten some idea of what he was up to.

  She had had the same suspicions when she confronted Lisabelle about Lough at Lisabelle and Sip’s Compound, a.k.a. Neon Mountain. I was pretty sure Lough was in command of vampires, a development that Lanca, as what you might call a professional vampire – she was vampire royalty, after all – must inevitably resent.

  Lisabelle was the part of the equation that I just couldn’t understand. She must know what Lough was doing, in fact she must be condoning it if not actively encouraging it. But she hadn’t told anyone else, and she hadn’t tried to stop him. I was sure that the question on everyone’s mind, especially Lanca’s, was: How could Lisabelle support the Hunters when they were doing everything within their power to take down the paranormal world as we knew it?

  Then again, if Lanca thought Lough was working for the Hunters, I myself would do well to examine the assumptions I was making.

  First: that my dream was real. I had seen Lough commanding a Hunter. That the situation in the dream was true, and further, that Lisabelle must know it was true – those were two pretty big leaps. Maybe Lough was double-crossing more than one faction, if that was possible.

  Second: that Lough and the vampire were in fact Hunters.

  Third: that Lanca knew about all of it.

  The idea that Lanca would know about the old vampire with the black beard that I had seen in my dream wasn’t that surprising. She had her finger on the pulse of a lot of darkness, which was what the black markets thrived on. In that light, it wasn’t far-fetched to assume that she knew this particular vampire. They probably ran in the same circles, in fact. Given how old he was a
nd what he had done to design Public, he wasn’t an obscure figure. Lanca knew him, I was sure of it.

  Then I had to ask myself: What if Lanca herself was a Hunter? Levels of ridiculousness rising. Bury my face further in the pillow.

  Lanca probably wasn’t entirely sure what was happening and didn’t want to believe that Lough would turn to the Hunters. I felt certain that the conversation I had overheard between Charlotte and Lanca – a serious clash between two powerful women who had been dear friends up to now – hadn’t helped the situation.

  None of this made me feel any better. Lanca had always been part of Charlotte’s inner inner circle. She probably knew things about my sister, and had certainly seen battles and fights between senior paranormals during the Nocturn war with her, that I would never know about. Lanca and Lough had never been close themselves, but still, they too had been friends.

  Despite all that history, a large rift had formed, and now all those old friendships appeared to be crumbling. What had once been a solid rock had been hammered through the middle and splintered into several smaller pieces. No longer a strong, single unit, the old friends had fragmented. They were weaker without each other, of that I was sure.

  Having wandered off into a reverie, I dragged my attention back and resumed scanning the Tabble. The article about the High Council named the other members, and though I didn’t recognize them, I wasn’t expecting to read anything as interesting as what I had just learned

  In the back page of the same issue, though, I ran across another story tidbit. This one brought a smile to my face. It was unexpected, and surprisingly amusing.

  There was still no sign of the fugitive Risper.

  Well, of course there wasn’t. He wasn’t going to be caught by a bunch of amateurs, he was far too good for that.

  His game was becoming clearer to me, but I wasn’t sure how he expected to pull it off. He was a famous thief with the alias of Elam, and of course there were a number of artifacts that needed stealing, so I assumed he was on the job.

  But even if Risper/Elam was the paranormal to do it, how would he manage to steal the artifacts without having to give them over to the Hunters? On the other hand, guarding against his attack would be nearly impossible at a place like Public, which was already struggling in the wake of the Nocturn War.

  What we really needed was to find Lisabelle Verlans something to do. If we could just get her a job, a position somewhere, where she could feel useful, even vital, and the other paranormals could see her doing that job, that would, I believed, be the most helpful thing that could happen.

  In light of that belief, I hoped that the dangerous game Risper was playing was one he could keep a handle on, because if he couldn’t, there was no telling what would come next.

  Chapter One

  A special election was scheduled for the week leading up to my return to Paranormal Public for my second year of college. The powers that be had put it off for a long time, in the hopes of I don’t know what, but eventually it had become clear that Judge Yeast was about to become President Yeast.

  Only senior paranormals were allowed to vote, so I didn’t follow the lead-in to the election too closely, because all I felt when I thought about Sip and Lisabelle and where they were now was rage.

  Mostly, I tried not to think about what a new president meant for the likelihood that Sip was coming back.

  I did know that once the elections were over I would feel like I could finally get on with my life. The summer had been frustrating, but it had also brought opportunities I hadn’t expected. Annoyingly, I had made no progress in finding the objects on the Counter Wheel. I was busy with my internship and often gone from Public over those warm months, so there had been no chance to look for it on campus. Anyhow, when I wasn’t working I was tired.

  Also, I would have thought that having all the other students gone would make my search easier, but it was really the opposite. Given that I was the only one around, there was no one to draw attention away from me, and it was harder to sneak around. Everywhere I went I was greeted by grounds crew. I would smile and nod and return to Astra, any plans to search a part of Public that I wasn’t familiar with thwarted once more.

  At least the residents of Surround seemed to have calmed down in their treatment of Public students. As the buildings they were working on grew, they appeared to feel more and more like the place was theirs; they didn’t have to worry about us anymore. So at least as the summer wore on I could walk around the town more freely.

  When I went to Surround I mostly avoided one area, the now defunct TP office. I couldn’t get the nightmare out of my head, and anyhow, there was no part of me that wanted a reminder of what had happened there.

  Given that Eighellie was off at spy training and Keegan was living in a tree, I didn’t have many people to talk to that summer. Keegan had also charged me with checking on his treehouse whenever I was on campus, and to make sure no hooligans went up there while he was gone.

  Who he defined as a hooligan was never entirely clear, but it didn’t seem to matter, because whenever I went to check on it, the place looked as boarded up as ever.

  Mostly, I didn’t want to think about Lough’s face when he stepped out of the shadows and the vampire called him Master.

  My only consistent summer correspondent was unexpected: my fellow student, Greek Harrison. The fallen angel had started writing to me about a week after we had all dispersed for the summer. I was so shocked, I had to triple check the address to make sure he hadn’t really meant to send the letter to someone else. Once I was sure he meant Ricky Rollins, I tore open his letter. He wrote:

  Hey Ricky, I hope the summer’s treating you well. I’m at home with my family, interning with my dad’s healing practice. It’s interesting, but he’s concerned by the lack of patients. Anyway, I wanted to write, because I thought the Lightmares needed a strong showing going into the fall, I mean with Cornerstone, and I knew you were just the man to talk to about it. I think there are a lot of improvements we can make. Maybe we weren’t good like during your sister’s years when her team destroyed everyone at Tactical, but I think we could still do fine. I’m writing to you because I know you are a serious competitor.

  I thought about messaging Averett, but I didn’t think the vampires would appreciate her getting mail from a fallen angel. I figured since you don’t have other elementals to get upset with you, except for your sister, who married a fallen angel, I could write to you . . .

  So his first message went. At first I was taken aback that he had contacted me, but then I asked myself: Why shouldn’t Greek and I communicate? I wanted to win Cornerstone just as much as he did, and the best way to do that was to be prepared, even over-prepared, so prepared the other teams wouldn’t know what hit them. Last semester we hadn’t been the most prepared team, but that could change. All it would take was a little work.

  Greek and I sent letters back and forth all summer. He was big on using a team strategy in Cornerstone, while I didn’t think that would work as well as relying on some of our individual strengths. After his initial explanation of how he was spending his summer, he didn’t say much about what he was doing, and he didn’t say anything more about his family. I stayed in the same vein and kept quiet about mine.

  It was strange to read Averett’s name after the conversation we had had at the pond late last semester. She hadn’t come out and said anything explicit, but I thought Keegan and Eighellie might have been right about her having feelings for me, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Some of what I felt was guilt, I was clear on that, because I liked Averett, but I knew I was supposed to feel a certain way about a love, and I didn’t feel that way about her.

  Charlotte felt that way about Keller, and he about her. Sometimes they still looked at each other as if some ancient and inexplicable magic had created something so wonderful they couldn’t believe their luck. Lisabelle could often be found gagging in the background when that happened, the pale skin of her face scrun
ched into unimpressed lines.

  I wasn’t sure I would ever feel that way about anyone. The way Eighellie looked at Keegan when he wasn’t paying attention was a lot like the way Charlotte and Keller looked at each other. But a look that seemed to say “I’d enjoy nothing more than to run my fingers softly through your hair” was not something I had ever wanted to give anyone.

  On the other side of the coin there was Keegan, who took obliviousness to a new level. He never talked about Eighellie in romantic terms, a fact that I would never tell her. It was as if he didn’t even realize she was a real girl.

  So much for love.

  The only truly interesting thing that had happened over the summer, and it happened in the forest, was that I was nearly kidnapped.

  Like most towns that grow up fast and have a lot of paranormals coming into them, Surround had some good parts of town and some not so good parts. The influx of paranormals meant that there wasn’t enough housing or jobs to support the number of werewolves, pixies, and the like who wanted to live there.

  Basically, the section of town that faced Paranormal Public was the good part of Surround. The part that wasn’t so good was on the side where we all arrived in town from other places. Given that this neighborhood faced the road, rough characters didn’t have very far to travel before they could settle in. One corner of Surround was in the woods, and a bunch of tent-like structures had been set up between and in large trees, kind of like lesser versions of Keegan’s treehouse. It was there, in such makeshift dwellings, that a lot of strange characters resided.

  One man had tattoos of deranged pixies all up his arms, while there was a woman who had a bird living in her hair.

  I made a point never to go over there or even look in that direction if I could help it. There were a lot more of them than there were of me.

  Still, I couldn’t control the timing of when these ruffians emerged from their part of town into the normally quieter neighborhoods. Southern Surround residents tended to glare at them; everyone was fearful of what they might do.