Broken Elements (3 page)

Simon lightly tapped my shoulder with his fingertips. “That’s a lovely story, and I’m sure not biased in the slightest, but you’ve only begun. Continue, please. I’d like to get to the point where I talk about me.”

I pulled myself from my reverie and returned to the tale I knew so well. “The humans and animals were beautiful and varied, and the original creatures found them remarkable in their way. They did not mind that they ate the earth’s plants and chopped down the trees for wood, for they had worked for many years to create a vibrant and thriving world. The humans were few, and they believed the world could withstand many of their kind. The creatures did not foresee the speed with which the humans would spread or how much they would take from the earth. In despair, they watched their world slowly recede. The originals’ homes eroded as the humans took just a little bit more and then a little bit more. Some chose not to fight at all, and they simply disappeared, moving far from any human settlement. Occasionally, one might hear whispers about these original creatures, rumors that they live still, moving deeper and deeper into the wilds each year, though centuries have passed since any have been seen. Those that remained joined with the humans, hoping to share some of their magic and tie the people to the land they were slowly destroying.” I looked back at Simon. His head was tilted back and his eyes closed, but he was still awake. When he made no move to begin telling his story, I continued.

“After years of silent observation, the originals found it surprisingly easy to assume human shape and move among them. As now, beautiful women had power, and it was not difficult to lead the human men to their beds. The men’s seed quickened in their wombs, and as the children grew, the women whispered to their bellies, speaking all the secrets of land and water. By remaining in human form and carrying human children, they found humanity imprinted on their bodies. They were unable to return to their original forms and were forever stuck between their world and the human world. Though they mourned their loss, they found comfort in their children, who possessed a magic nearly as pure as that of their mothers. In this way, the first elementals were born, many thousands of years ago.”

“So far, that matches the stories I have heard, though perhaps more mystical than is altogether necessary,” said Simon. “I would hear just a bit more.”

I was beginning to feel like I was the entertainment for this leg of the trip, but I didn’t really mind. I always found these stories beautiful and oddly comforting, and I could see they had the same effect on Sera. Besides, it beat arguing about music.

“To the mothers’ surprise, they found themselves unwilling to part from their children and return to the old way of life. Perhaps they thought their newfound humanity had corrupted them too much, or simply felt they now belonged with the humans. Their children were taught to respect the land and water, but with time and many generations of children, those lessons were forgotten. The descendants of the first creatures lost their connection to the elements, and with it their connection to our magic. In so doing, they also lost their longevity. Few of these children living today know what they are, and they possess a mere fraction of the original magic. But some mothers chose to raise their children in the old way, and so we call those that follow their path the old ones. The old ones tell our stories so that we do not forget. We remember that, beneath our flesh and bones, we are land and water and magic.” I stopped speaking, and the car was silent. Sera did not speak, but when I glanced toward her, I saw that her fingers were emitting small sparks, the magic eager to play.

Simon finally opened his eyes. “I let you go on a bit long, but I liked hearing that. Of course, you only know half the story.”

Finally, it was his turn. I was a little nervous to hear his version of events. After all, it’s somewhat disconcerting to reevaluate your entire origin story. “Right, then. Spill. Where do baby shifters come from?”

Without rising to my bait, Simon looked me directly in the eye and asked, “Have you never wondered what happened to the fathers?”

He sat back as if his point was made. I wasn’t that impressed, mainly because I had no idea what that point was. “What fathers?”

“That story you just told, the original creatures all took a female shape, yes?”

“Of course. Being female is the best way to get pregnant, or so I’ve heard.”

He looked disappointed at my obstinacy. Obviously, he hadn’t known me long enough to just take it as a given. “Are you deliberately being dense, or are you a little bit slow?”

“I’ve asked myself that same question for many years,” Sera helpfully said. “Hold on to your garters, Ade, because this is about to mess with your understanding of the world.”

“Some of the creatures did not disappear into the wilderness or become human females. Some became animals. Male animals.”

I stared at him, waiting for him to continue. He said nothing more, obviously thinking his explanation complete. “But there has to be more to the story. If they could procreate as males, why didn’t they do so as humans? The animals represented no threat to our way of life. We had no need to join with them.”

Simon stretched across the back seat, leaning his head against the window and bracing his feet against the back of my seat. After taking several moments either to make himself comfortable, or to be certain he had my full attention—I suspected both—he decided I was in a state of sufficient suspense for him to continue. “We now know that elemental magic is matriarchal, though no one can say why. Perhaps it is as you say, and the mothers whisper their secrets to their children, though that seems more fanciful than probable. However, we did not always know this, and at first the originals assumed both male and female shapes. Once the females were pregnant, they remained in their human form. The men who shifted into human males had no reason to remain in that form. While they would undoubtedly have impregnated more females if they tried long and hard enough—”

Sera snickered. “Well, there’s your problem. They needed to be long and hard if they were trying to have magic babies.” I was not going to smile at that. I was not. I turned my face to the window to hide my grin.

“—the children that were born showed no signs of magical ability, and the original fathers did not choose to linger with the humans.”

While I was surprised to hear this footnote from a story I thought I knew in great detail, it still didn’t explain why there was a half-man, half-cat taking up Sera’s entire back seat. Unless... “Wait. Are you telling me that they decided to have sex with animals, instead?”

Sera laughed at my shocked tone, as the pieces finally clicked together for me. I suspected my face held a badly-concealed look of pure horror. Great-grandma had been right, after all. “Like I’ve always said, Ade—men can be dogs. In this case, quite literally.”

“There is no need to be so puritanical. At the time, having sex with humans was as far beneath the originals as sleeping with animals. I am sure they did not make the same distinctions we would today. But after copulating with humans, it seems those who assumed a masculine shape rather enjoyed the process. They were reluctant to give it up altogether. For their needs, animals must have seemed superior to humans in many ways. They did not talk. They did not expect the originals to linger after the completion of the act. And, most importantly, shifter magic isn’t matriarchal, though, again, no one knows why. And in this way, the first shifters were born.”

I didn’t miss the way he parroted my own words back to me. This was his origin story, just as the other was mine. His was just a little more... icky. And still possessing a few plot holes. “But you’re a human! At least some of the time.”

“Of course. The originals had first formed themselves as men, and that memory lived through their seed. We are animal and human, and we are also magic.”

“How is your magic still so strong? It’s been thousands of years since those first pairings, and yet you still change easily.”

He shook his head. “Our magic is not strong. It is simple. Unlike you elementals, whose power is directly linked to the amount of magic in your veins, we do not possess power. We possess an ability, which seems to be coded into our very DNA. Shifters can do one thing: change into an animal and change into a human, and retain reasonably solid memories of their time in the other form. That is it.”

It was going to take me a while to work through all this. Sera hadn’t been kidding about my understanding of the world being shaken up a bit. I felt like a scientist discovering a new species. A really bad scientist who was still a little squicked out by the idea of originals having sex with animals. “Wait. Are you telling me that one of the originals, one of my long-distant ancestors, screwed a house cat?” The thought was simultaneously horrifying and hilarious.

Simon was less amused. “Of course not. They roamed the forests, plains and mountains. There are all sorts of small mountain cats spread throughout the world. Certainly, over many thousands of years, my ancestors bred with smaller cats until they looked no different than the typical house cat.” If he’d been in cat form, I suspected that the hair on his neck would be standing on end and his tail would be puffed up to make him look as large as possible. I appeared to have blundered onto a sensitive subject.

“We’re sure you’re a big tough beast. Oh yes you are. A big tough beast,” Sera said, looking in the rearview mirror. Simon hissed a little, but it was half-hearted. Sera teased everyone. It was part of her charm, such as it was.

“So, now you know. And get used to it, fast, because there’s another shifter waiting for us in Truckee. And trust me, he won’t take well to being called an abomination or a freak of nature.”

“Are shifters that common?” I asked. Simon’s elegant shrug seemed to indicate they were common enough. “Then how did we manage to attend four years of university in a magically-drenched location without learning about them at the time?”

Now that story time was apparently over, Sera returned the music to top volume. “For that, I offer the same explanation I have for every stupid-ass thing we did at college,” she said, voice raised to be heard over Joe Strummer’s guitar.

“What’s that?”

“We were drunk.” Hard to argue with that basic truth. “Plus, shifters don’t tend to advertise their existence, even to elementals. Apparently, we don’t have a great track record of not behaving like assholes.”

“So, another shifter? You think it’s going to take four people this time around?”

“It’s going to take a complete department, but we all know the local police aren’t up to something like this. So, we’re doing their job for them. And it’s six people, not four.”

Six people. This morning I hadn’t seen a single living soul other than my mail carrier and the owner of the local market in over a month. Now, I was part of a team, some of whom were occasionally furry. I calculated my odds of escape when we hit Redding. They didn’t look good.

Sera caught my panicked expression. “Don’t you listen to me? I told you I was getting the band back together.” Though the sun was starting to dip low over the horizon, she dropped a pair of sunglasses over her eyes and grinned at me, even as she drove me toward a seemingly inevitable nervous breakdown.

Chapter 3

It was well past midnight when we finally arrived in
Truckee
. It was a weeknight, and the old California mining town
appeared
to be sound asleep and wholly indifferent to our arrival. Sera turned onto highway 89 and drove several miles south of town before getting off the highway and heading toward the river. We passed one dark house after another before she finally pulled into a long driveway, just wide enough for a single car. The dirt road gave way to gravel, and we slowly drew to a stop. I stumbled from the car, muscles tight and complaining after the long drive.

Yawning and blinking to clear my sleep-muddled mind, I caught my first sight of my temporary home. A large, sturdy A-frame house stood nestled among the trees on an impressive parcel of land. It was constructed of dark wood and plainly built, but after nine hours of driving, it looked like a palace to me. There didn’t appear to be any neighbors within hollering distance, and I could pick out the unmistakable power coming from the Truckee River just behind the house. My opinion of my lodgings improved considerably.

“Just point me in the direction of my bedroom and do not disturb me for the next ten hours, please,” I said. I lugged my bag up the steps, yawning the whole way. I was a morning person and hadn’t been awake past nine-thirty p.m. in many years. I wasn’t convinced that I liked this time of night anymore. Unwilling to wait for Sera to join me with the keys, I tried the knob and was pleased to find it unlocked. Sure, she might have questionable security standards worth reevaluating with a serial killer on the loose, but at least I didn’t have to wait an extra minute to go to bed. “Upstairs?” I shouted back to her, pointing my finger upwards in illustration.

She nodded, and I immediately moved toward the spiral staircase just visible in the moonlight pouring through the downstairs windows, not bothering to turn on any lights. I was so focused on my goal that I completely failed to notice the wall that appeared out of nowhere.

Staggering backwards, I struggled to right myself and found, to my surprise, that the wall was helping stabilize me. I inspected the obstruction in my path. It turned out to resemble not so much a wall as a mountain. A mostly human-shaped mountain, at that. “It’s alive,” I muttered.

The mountain snorted and removed his hands from my upper arms. “No one has tried to install bolts in my neck yet, but yes, it’s alive.”

I felt that I should make some sort of apology for inadvertently comparing him to a mad scientist’s pet creation, but found that my exhausted brain wasn’t concerned with conversational pleasantries. “Who are you? More to the point, why are you standing between me and my bed?”

“Hey, Mac,” said Sera, finally making her way into the house with Simon. “What’s going on?”

“Heard your car pulling in and wanted to see if you needed any help unloading. Some of you seem to need more help than others.” He glanced toward me, and though I could barely make out his face in the dim light, I was almost certain he was laughing at me.

“You know Simon, right? And this is Aidan, freshly liberated from central Oregon. I told you about her, remember?” In the dark, I felt him turn to study me but was unable to make out his expression. In the morning, I’d quiz Sera about what parts of our past she’d chosen to share.

“I’ll introduce myself tomorrow, when there’s a chance she might remember it. Night, all.” With that, the mountain removed himself from my path and walked outside, closing the door behind him. I grunted something intended to sound like “good night” in Sera and Simon’s general direction and clambered up the stairs. An open door on my left led to an empty bedroom. The queen bed was neatly made, covered with a large plaid bedspread. I managed to kick off my shoes and slide between the sheets. A moment later, I was asleep and blissfully unaware that a dead body was being found just down the road.

My favorite time of day is that hour just before dawn, when it feels as if some old god has pressed pause on the entire world. The night animals have crawled back into their chilly dens, and the birds have yet to begin singing their praise of the approaching sun. Few humans have emerged from the warm cocoons of their beds, and the sounds of their voices and the growling of cars is several hours away. In that time just before dawn, the only sounds I might hear are the crash of ocean waves, the gentle lapping of a lake against the shore or, as now, the steady rush of river water passing over rocks. There is no more peaceful moment in the entire day. This is why the roaring that seemed to shake the very foundation of the house was so wholly unexpected, coming as it did at six-thirty a.m.

This particular morning, I was still in bed, sleeping off our late arrival the night before. I had slept so deeply that I hadn’t managed to change position during the night, let alone undress myself. I woke in a panic, still half-asleep and disoriented. I staggered out of bed, desperately scanning for burglars, fires, or rodents of unusual size before my conscious brain even knew it was awake.

The room appeared empty, unburnt, and still in possession of all my belongings. Just as I began to breathe again and my heart assumed a rhythm less likely to rip a hole through my chest, the roar once again tore through the house. It was a howl of pure, unadulterated rage. It was the type of sound that would cause any sane person to cower in a closet and wait for it to pass. Naturally, I walked straight toward it.

Turning around the spiral stairs on my way downstairs, I saw that others were already awake, drawn by the primal screams still reverberating through the house. Say what you will about A-frame houses, they have great acoustics. Simon sat cross-legged on the dining table. His pose was casual, but his eyes darted around the room, taking everything in.

A familiar looking woman sat in a chair next to him, and it took me several long moments to recognize her. Years before, Vivian had been pretty in a clean-cut, J. Crew model sort of way. She had also been extremely shy, spending far more time in front of her computer than she ever did interacting with other elementals. We knew her, the way we knew every elemental at our small college, but neither of us would have called her a friend.

She was still as lovely as she had been then, with her hazel eyes and dark, poreless skin, but she was no longer the neat and tidy overachiever I remembered. Her previously straightened hair now formed small dreadlocks that fell to the center of her back. Her jeans were soft and well-worn, and over her Henley she wore a T-shirt that read “My Marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.” Several years of education at a liberal arts college had apparently paid off. She offered me a hesitant smile, but before I could greet her, another roar, this time accompanied by a crashing sound, resonated through the house.

Sera stood in the kitchen, bracing herself on her elbows against the breakfast bar and looking outside with a worried look on her face. I followed her gaze and saw the source of all the noise standing on the back deck: the mountain from last night was in a frenzy, grabbing bits of firewood from the pile and chucking them with terrifying force into the forest. Wherever they hit, bits of bark flew from the trees, and several branches cracked and fell under his fury.

His back was to us, his attention wholly focused on the destruction he was causing. I made my way to Sera and cocked a silent eyebrow at her in inquiry. Her mouth twisted in answer, enough to tell me something very bad had happened. If the somber tone of the room and the shouting giant hadn’t made that clear, Sera’s serious expression drove the point home. I tilted my head toward the front door. She nodded and followed me outside.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Vivian just arrived with some bad news. As you can see, Mac is currently reacting to that news.”

“Is Vivian part of the band this time?”

She nodded. “Yes. She remembered what happened before and put the pieces together even faster than I did. She broke up with her girlfriend when she figured out what was going on, because she didn’t want to risk her life, but she’s none too happy about it. She wants someone to pay.”

“Can she really help us? She’s pretty low-level, isn’t she?”

“With earth, yes. With technology? She’s a freaking goddess. Vivian is a bona fide computer genius, and you know how hard that is to find among elementals.”

It was rare. We were an adaptable race, but we rarely learned more than the bare minimum, knowing it was only a matter of time before the next technological wave hit and we would need to start all over again.

“What’s today’s news?”

“There’s been another death. A guy named Mark, not too far from here. The police think he was killed a couple weeks ago, but the body was only found last night. You remember that Brian’s uncle is part of the local police force? He heard about it an hour ago, when they discovered the body.”

“Brian’s still here? Is he in the band, too?” Considering Sera had just told me that someone had been murdered, I shouldn’t have felt so happy to hear my old friend would be joining us. I schooled my features into a more appropriate expression of concern. “Same MO?” There it was again, the mouth twist. Something was definitely off. “Sera?”

“It was suffocation by earth again, if that’s what you mean. The body was found at a campsite on the Nevada side. It looks like the recent storms buried it in snow, so no one found it for a while. There aren’t a lot of campers around in March. Besides, you know what it’s like in Tahoe. Lots of places where no one is around, no matter the time of year.”

I knew. In many ways, it was the perfect region for a killer to hide. Lots of isolated wilderness and quiet mountain cabins, lots of inclement weather that kept people inside, and a large transient population from the tourists and winter skiers. If we didn’t know where to look, the bastard could evade us for years.

“Was it another human involved with an elemental?”

“No.”

“But that’s always been his prey. Humans that interacted with us. He’s not just killing off random humans now, is he?” That would make our work a lot harder. There were a limited number of humans mingling with elementals in a small community like this, which made them fairly easy to identify and track. If every human was a target, we lost our strongest lead.

“Not random, no.” She ran a hand through her hair, pulling the curls off her face in an abrupt, frustrated gesture. “It was a shifter.”

I shook my head, not understanding. “A shifter involved with a human? Did the killer not know what he was?” After all, I hadn’t known shifters even existed twenty-four hours ago.

“He knew. Calvin—the first man killed, the one before Christopher—he was a shifter, too.” She shook her head. “We all thought it was just a coincidence, because he was also dating an ice. It fit the profile. Only Simon thought it was a targeted kill.”

“Why was he so sure?”

“Calvin had been driving home from a costume party. He’d been a lion, of all the ludicrous things, but had washed his face and taken off his mane and tail before driving home. When he was found, he had whiskers painted on his cheeks. We all assumed someone just made a mistake, that he didn’t leave the party with a clean face. But this latest kill wasn’t near any costume parties last night, and someone painted whiskers on his face, too.”

“That’s fucked up.” Sera nodded in agreement. “And worrying. Why’s he changing it up now? Why also target shifters who date elementals?”

“That’s the thing, Ade. This guy wasn’t dating anyone. It looks like he was killed just for being a shifter.”

This was very not good. The killer had always seemed like a deranged, extreme version of an elemental supremacist, so opposed to relationships with humans that he chose to remove the human from the equation altogether. Ten years ago, many humans died before we stopped him—or thought we had. This time, our killer seemed to have expanded that deadly prejudice to include shifters.

In a horrible way, it made sense. My relatives would believe that shifters were perversions, the unholy offspring of acts of bestiality. The prejudice went so deep that even those who knew about them—as I was sure some of my relatives must—preferred to claim they were mythological rather than admit to their mere existence. It wouldn’t take much for a psychopath to decide that shifters deserved to live no more than the humans who were close to us.

I thought about the beast currently throwing deck furniture through the forest. “Mac—he’s the other shifter, isn’t he?”

“Yes. I don’t think he knew the guy who died very well, but he knew his brother, and he’s furious that someone would dare to take out shifters. It sometimes takes him a while to calm down.” That was an understatement.

“What animal does he shift into?”

“He needs to tell you himself. Shifter etiquette.”

Fair enough. Of all people, I could hardly complain about someone’s desire for secrecy. So long as he didn’t turn into an enormous spider, I wasn’t too bothered. “What happens now?”

“Now, we wait, at least for a bit. Brian needs to get his butt over here, and I’m waiting for my father to call to get his opinion on these latest events. Then, we’ll talk and figure out our game plan.” She laughed, a harsh humorless sound. “Plus, we should probably wait for Mac to stop scaring all the small forest animals.”

I rolled my eyes at that. At the moment, despite years of actively avoiding conversation, a calm and reasoned discussion sounded like the perfect solution. It would bring a bit of order to what felt like an ongoing series of chaotic events. In less than a day, I’d been all but kidnapped by the former best friend I was supposed to hate, though it was turning out I didn’t hate her quite as much as I wanted to. I’d had to rewrite my entire knowledge of how the magical races were born, discovered that elementals weren’t the only magical beings, and faced a millennia-old prejudice about those formerly mythological creatures. I’d had to leave my home behind, with no idea when I was going to return. I’d been forced to stay up past midnight and then awakened by a shifter of debatable mental stability.

So far, it had not been an especially promising twenty-four hours, and I was ready for a little order. I couldn’t make Brian move faster, and I couldn’t convince Sera’s father to pick up the phone any sooner, but I could surely do something about the bellowing giant on the back deck.