Dark Waters (Elemental Book 1) (11 page)

God, my life has gotten weird these last few
weeks.

As if summoned by my desire to find him, I walked
right into his lab, which was not nearly as far into the building as it was
before.

Yes, the rooms change.

The man was pouring liquids into a beaker… without
touching them. Small bottles levitated around the room, placing themselves on
the shelves or pouring into larger jars, beakers, or test tubes. Bunsen burners
were not used here; instead, there were small cauldrons with fires burning on
nothing. The wizard himself was flipping through a book… which he also wasn’t
touching. His hands were busy holding the biggest, ugliest, mangiest cat I had
ever seen in my life.

The cat-like bag of fur and claws was gray… sort of…
and had one light blue eye, one gold eye. A scar ran down its nose and it was
missing clumps of his dingy gray hair. In fact, it looked like the cat’s fur
was gray from age. I would not try to communicate with that rat trap; I didn’t
want the rabid beast anywhere near my mind. It probably had mad cow disease.

“Come on in, Devon. What have you brought for me?” he
asked, not looking at me. He had cut his hair and shaved, so he looked a lot
more like a scientist and less like a survivor of a plane crash who had to live
alone on a deserted island for ten years.

I held out the bag regretfully because it felt like I
was using him. A small glass jar flew to me, so I poured the water out of the
bag and into the jar. “I was down by the lake. A… source… informed me that the
lake was being poisoned.”

“Yes, the kappa… poor little guys. I will find your
poison.” He took a long looked around the room. “Still missing,” he said
ambiguously.

“What’s missing?” I asked.

He finally turned to me. “Don’t you have detention
right now?”

I looked at my watch and cursed. Right before I could
duck out the door, I realized I was being ridiculously rude. “What is your
name?” I asked.

“Andrew Martin. Most people call me Doc, or weirdo,
or don’t-touch-that.”

“Thank you for helping me with this, Dr. Martin.”

He shrugged and started turning away. “You helped me.
No other student here is even powerful enough to have broken the curse.”

I froze on my way out the door and turned to him.
“What? That wasn’t magic. I just picked up the glass---” I found myself unable
to say another word as he leveled his steady gaze on me.

“You underestimate your power, Devon Sanders. Only a
wizard could have even seen the syrus. Only a
powerful
wizard could have
touched it. Good night, Devon.” With that, he dismissed me by turning away.
Shaken, I headed to the
Magic in Everyday Life
classroom in a daze.

How could I be a wizard? My parents were human. I
never showed signs of magic…
That wasn’t true. My instincts were too
intuitive, too accurate. I could talk with animals the way no one could have
understood. Sometimes when I was mad, like when Regina was having one of her
screaming fits over not having enough money for her gambling, drinking, or
smoking addictions, something would explode. When I was happy, people always
found themselves with good luck when they were around me.

And then, there was the scene in the bathroom.

I arrived at the classroom, not even thinking twice
about the fact that the door was open. There was no light, which I thought was
odd right before my instincts fired up. Something was wrong. I wasn’t in
danger, but something was definitely wrong. I pulled my lighter out of my
pocket, flicked it on, and held it out to see. Unable to make out much, I
headed towards the front of the room to open the window curtains.

Nearly in reach of the thick drapes, I tripped and
barely managed to catch myself on the edge of the desk. I dropped my lighter.

Instead of immediately getting on my knees to find
the lighter, I first tried to feel it with my shoe. Of course, that was
useless, so I knelt carefully and searched cautiously with my hands. My right
hand landed in something cold and sticky, which made me groan.
Someone must
have spilled soda or something.
I finally realized my lighter was right
between my knees, so I picked it up and flicked it with my left hand. The metal
wheel was hot and it was awkward using my left hand, but I accomplished it.

The breath froze in my lungs.

It wasn’t soda all over my hand.

I looked farther into the dark room at what I had
tripped over. Professor Hans was lying dead on the floor, his eyes open and
frozen in horror and two distinct punctures in his throat.

I wasn’t in shock over the
body; I had seen enough of them to know that some people on this world were
really sick. It wasn’t the death or the blood but the resemblance to the scene
that replayed in my head almost every night. I could almost hear the sirens
blaring.

And that damn wolf.

I realized with a start that a huge black wolf stood
right in front of me, staring at me. Mrs. Ashcraft, Remington, and Hunt were in
the room and the body of Professor Hans was covered with a sheet. Remington and
Mrs. Ashcraft were arguing. It was a power struggle between the deputy
principal and the headmaster’s daughter.

“You can’t expel him without proof,” Remington said.

“He was found with the body and is clearly in a state
of shock over what he did. He must have been humiliated when Professor Hans gave
him detention and just snapped.”

“He wasn’t found
with
the body; he found my
father and told him about the body.”

I did?
I didn’t remember leaving the room.
Then again, I didn’t remember sitting in a chair. Mrs. Ashcraft was trying to
expel me, which was definitely a step up from how I thought she was going to
try to get me out of her way. It was then that I realized I didn’t want out. If
what Dr. Martin said was true, then I was a wizard. I had to know how. I
wanted
to know what that meant for me.

When the wolf advanced on me, I froze, for my
instincts stopped me from trying to communicate with him. He pressed his muzzle
against my throat and sniffed deeply, causing me to shudder. Images of Seda
invaded my mind, her thick, coarse black fur matted and sticky with blood.
Before I could try to push him away, the wolf backed off and shifted into Alpha
Flagstone.

“He is innocent,” he said, glaring at me as if he
didn’t like that deduction.

“This is obviously a vampire attack,” Remington said,
handing him a robe to cover himself with. “Somehow, they must have gotten past
the defenses. We should take this to the council.”

They got past the defenses because someone let
them in.

“If the council hears of this, they will call a war
on the vampires. Nobody knows for sure that the wizards will win,” Mrs.
Ashcraft argued.

“Rebecca is right,” Hunt said. His tone was slow and
steady, full of authority and kindness. “We ultimately want peace between all,
which includes vampires.”

Whether I was a wizard or not, this paranormal
community was part of my world. And vampires would never be invited in.

*          *          *

I started meeting Astrid outside every night, as soon
as the sun was gone. She said she had a skin condition and couldn’t be out in
the sunlight. We would usually go to the woods and play with Seda, but
sometimes we would explore the city.

Astrid once took me to a building that was abandoned
and unlocked. We made it our clubhouse and played in it three or four nights a
week. Each night, we climbed to the roof and sat on the ledge for hours,
watching the city and the people. It was like we were gods peering down on
them; we were above it all.

My mother loved me, but she was strict and preferred
to work than to come home. My father was great when he wasn’t drinking… but the
only time he wasn’t drinking was when he was at work. Astrid listened to me. I
would talk for hours about what life was like, at least through the eyes of a
ten-year-old.

I had to write a short story in class once, so I
shared it with Astrid. It was about Astrid and me being taken to another world
like Peter Pan, except it was an amazing world of wizards and dragons. It ended
with us growing up and getting married. I was shy about the last part, but
Astrid just smiled and corrected some of my spelling. When my teacher at school
asked me who Astrid was, I told her Astrid was made up, because I wanted to
keep my friend for myself.

After that, Astrid wrote a story for me. It started
out with a baby watching a man and woman being torn to bits. The baby’s crib broke
as the woman was thrown against it and the baby was found later by cops,
sitting in a pool of blood, but not crying. The baby then grew to be Astrid and
she met a boy her own age, who would never make fun of her for being too quiet
or demand to see her during the day. In her story, they also went to another
world with magic, but it was a world where there was no sun, so she and the boy
could play whenever they wanted to.

Only later, when I was lying in bed, did I finally
realize the man and woman in her story were her parents.

One day, I couldn’t go more than a few minutes
without thinking of Astrid. I was actually an hour early to meet her outside,
but she arrived a minute after the sun set, as always. She smiled when she saw
me. “Happy birthday,” she said.

“How did you know?” Even my parents had forgotten.

“You were thinking about it today.”

I frowned. “You know what I was thinking?” She nodded
and I knew I wasn’t going to get any kind of explanation. Astrid was weird in
that way, just like me. Whereas I once hated my peculiarity, it was something
special we had in common. It no longer needed an explanation, as if the
connection and friendship would be gone if we asked questions.

We went to play with Seda that night. The pup was
getting big and always wanted to roughhouse. Whenever I tried to pet her, she
tried to chew on my fingers. Astrid told me she wasn’t a dog and I had to be
dominant with her. Astrid always had better control over the wolf.

It was confusing to me when I watched my friend teach
the wolf to hunt. They would disappear into the woods and come back covered in
blood. Sometimes, Seda would stare at me until I met her eyes and then I would
see the blood and guts of her tearing into her prey… from her own eyes. I could
feel her enjoyment in the kill and her desire for the taste of blood.

I started devising a plan to get rid of Seda.

*          *          *

I kept my head down for the rest of the week and was
careful not to be late for a single class. My priority was to determine if I
was in fact a wizard. Unfortunately, I was in classes which didn’t require the
use of magic.

I thought that my potions class merely called for
mixing ingredients, but that wasn’t so. I had to put my
intention
behind
the concoction. After nearly two weeks of learning about the ingredients, the
first thing we made was a sleeping potion, which Professor Langril tested in a
beaker with several drops of red liquid. If the potion turned purple, it was
good. If it turned any other color, it was bad.

Mine turned green.

Over the weekend, I spent every minute memorizing the
correspondences of water. The investigation was pushed aside. At about three in
the morning on Monday, I woke with the feeling of being watched. I opened my
eyes to see Dr. Martin’s cat sitting beside my head on my pillow.

I jerked away, but was careful not to fall out of bed
again. Instead, I hit my head on the ceiling when I sat up. The cat glared at
me. Given the choice between defending my bed from the mangy beast or retreat,
I climbed down the ladder like the bed was on fire.

The cat stood, stretched… and vanished.

After a moment, I noticed an envelope on my desk with
my name on it. I opened it to find a letter and a check inside. I forced myself
to address the letter first:

Dear Devon Sanders,

Congratulations on discovering your skills as a
wizard. I would assume that you are wondering if it is real, and how it is
possible. I assure you that it is. The book you will find on your desk was
written by one of the most power wizards ever to exist, and can help you in
your studies.

Remember; knowledge is power. That being the case,
books are among the greatest weapons on Earth. Arm yourself.

Best Wishes,

V. K. Knight

The check was a reminder that I had work to do. “What
book?” I asked aloud as I set down the letter… and did a double take… because
there was now a book on the table where there wasn’t one before. I mean, I know
there wasn’t one there a moment before. No way. I restrained myself from making
strange sounds. Forcibly.

It was not the type of book one could easily
overlook, as it was a huge, ancient, leather bound thing. There was no title on
the cover. I picked it up and opened it at random, about a third of the way
through.

The pages appeared to be made of very thin, tough
parchment, and were filled with a main body of writing and odd drawings,
surrounded with margins crowded with notes, all in a spidery script. There were
mathematical formulas and descriptions of bizarre apparatuses of unknown usage.
And it all looked so old.

As I attempted to read bits and pieces from the book,
I found myself becoming rather lightheaded and dizzy, but I didn’t want to
stop. The book went far deeper than anything I would learn at the school and
most of it was too far beyond me. This was the scientific and mathematical side
of magic, which was absolutely foreign to me at first. The strange part was,
the more I read, the more I seemed to understand.

“Devon.” A hand waved in front of my face, snapping
me back into reality. I looked up from the book to see both Henry and Darwin
giving me worried stares. “You’re going to be late for class,” Darwin said.

I looked at the clock with shock; I had been reading
for nearly five hours. Then I glanced back at the book. I didn’t remember
anything I had read.

*          *          *

In potions, we had to pair up and redo the sleeping
potions, since none of us had managed it on our own. I was shocked when Becky
instantly claimed me as her partner, especially after I set her on fire. She
was a fairly quiet woman who never volunteered anything she didn’t have to. Her
straw-colored hair was always braided. Her eyes, a mix of dark brown and green,
were magnified by big, round glasses. After telling Professor Langril that I
had agreed to be her partner, she stood beside me without another word.

We worked well together; she gathered the ingredients
while I prepared the equipment, then I helped her chase down the scream-worm
when it somehow got into Mack’s jacket. I had no idea how the worm got loose,
since the damn thing wasn’t required in this potion.

In the cauldron, we combined a hundred milliliters of
hundred-proof vodka with fifty grams each of dried passionflower, valerian
root, chamomile, and skullcap. Then we tied a smoky quartz to a stick and
placed it on the cauldron.

“Sorry… I know the others can do more magic than me,”
Becky whispered.

I did notice that other two teams hung their crystals
suspended in midair with magic. I patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.
You just concentrate on putting your
intention
in it while I light it.”

As I said it, I patted my pocket and realized I had
forgotten my lighter. I sighed. There was no use in complaining or cursing my
idiocy. Instead, I crouched beside the cauldron and focused. I imagined fire;
the color, the flicker, the light, the smell of wood burning, and the heat. I
imagined heat from my memories flowing through my body out and into the sticks
and hay until it became so hot it caught on fire.

My head started to throb in pain, but I ignored it
and concentrated on heat. I thought of every kind of heat I knew of; hot
summers, fevers, sunburn, cooking accidents, and general burns. The heat spread
from my thoughts to my chest and slowly into the sticks and hay. It started
smoking.

A thought occurred to me that I could use figurative
heat, because magic was really just a mental exercise. So I imagined meeting
Remington at dusk that afternoon.

The sticks burst with flames.

I am a wizard.

After about ten minutes, we poured the contents of
the cauldron into a glass jar, tied mesh over the end, and held it upside down
over another jar. The mesh filtered out the dried ingredients and produced a
rich, tea-brown liquid. We then took a funnel and divided the potion into ten
glass dropper bottles.

Professor Langril tested one bottle from each team,
still looking for a perfect dark purple. Mack and Andy were first up with a
neon orange potion that, predictably, did nothing when the professor dripped
his testing solution in it. Jessica and Tali, who had a light brown potion,
were up next. When the professor added his dropper and shook it slightly, it
turned the lightest possible shade of purple.

“Well, you might possibly have a good ‘drowsiness’
potion if you ever need one,” Professor Langril said. “Maybe you could soothe
your baby to sleep with it.” Jessica blushed with embarrassment.

Professor Langril turned to us and Becky hesitantly
handed him a bottle of our potion. Tali smirked, excited to see us fail. The
professor put the drops in out bottle and shook it as he did the others.
Instantly, it turned a deep, dark purple.

“Perfect.”

*          *          *

I was early to meet Remington, so I tossed some
cucumbers to the kappa. The cook was starting to give me looks.

“You’re on time,” Remington observed, suddenly behind
me.

I turned and smiled as politely as I could manage.
She was the one who argued against expelling me, so I felt I owed her gratitude
at least. As long as I could keep her from going Rambo on me again. “I
studied,” I said.

“So, what time of day corresponds with water?”

“Dusk.” That was easy; we always met at dusk.

“Direction?”

“West.”

“Sense?”

“Taste and smell.”

“Quality?”

“Heavy and passive. It’s receptive. The magical tool
is a chalice or cauldron. Its color is blue. The basic nature is flowing,
purifying, healing, soothing, and loving. It is used in rituals of
purification, love, psychic awareness, dreams, sleep, peace, marriage, and
friendships.”