Dark Waters (Elemental Book 1) (6 page)

“V. K. Knight.”

“Yes. Vincent Kingston Knight. Have you heard his
name before?”

I shook my head. “Why would I have?”

“I trust Mr. Knight to deal with this situation, and
you are what he gave me. Thus, I will trust you to do your job and to keep any
information you find away from the wizard council. I need to know if one of my
teachers or students has betrayed me. Find the culprit, find the proof, and I
will do the rest.”

“And I’m supposed to do this while pretending to be a
wizard? How am I supposed to keep that up when I am expected to learn magic in
class?” I didn’t like the look in his eyes, but I couldn’t figure out why.

“I have made sure you were placed into classes where
you would not be required to do magic. If students believe you are a human,
someone would get word out to the council and they will investigate my school.
An investigation from the wizard council is the last thing I want.”

“Are you saying you have something to hide?”

“Apparently, you were not properly briefed on this
assignment. The council sees human knowledge of us as a worst-case scenario. If
anyone reports you as a human, the council will kill you.”

Yeah, five thousand a week is not enough
.

I was ten when my family
moved from a high-rise Florida condo to an old brownstone in a small town of
Rhode Island. I resented the house because I knew we moved so my father could
work more. I resented him because I was moved away from my friends. That was
the extent of my logic when I was ten.

While my parents were unpacking the car in the rain,
all I could think was that the house was creepy. It was the middle unit of
three, three stories tall, with five windows just on the front. The dark gray
concrete steps that led to the door were tracked and covered in leaves. The
building itself was dark red brick, similar to the color of blood. Although the
door was the same dark red color, the frame around it was stark white. Three
black metal numbers on our door identified our unit from its two neighbors, and
the middle number was hanging down. As I studied the building, I felt like it
was watching me right back.

For the first week, I had trouble sleeping due to a
strange sound coming from next door. It seemed odd to me because when I played
outside during the day, I never saw a person in that unit. Their lights were
never on and their car never left the curb.

One night, when I was woken by a slopping sound that
reminded me of a mop hitting the kitchen tiles, I sat up and listened. I never
heard words spoken, even at night, so it came as a shock to me when I heard a
young girl’s voice. Because her words were foreign and softened by the thin
walls, it took me a few minutes to realize that she was singing. I knocked on
the wall. The singing stopped and it was silent for a moment.

Then, finally, there was a soft, hesitant knocking on
the wall.

Excited, I knocked back and was rewarded with a
bolder rapping. I got up from my bed, shivering from the cold and wide awake
with enthusiasm. I knocked again at the foot of the bed. The knocking followed,
so I moved further down the wall until we reached the window. I didn’t have a
balcony, merely a metal shelf that extended from my window that would hold
plants… and the weight of a ten-year-old boy.

I opened my window, braced myself with the old wooden
frame, and pulled myself out until only my legs were inside. It was cold, the
wind was harsh, and I was on the third floor. Had the metal flowerbed snapped,
I would have died that night.

Instead, it held, and the window beside mine opened.
The girl, about my age, was not very pretty. She wore a plain white nightgown
and had long, dark brown hair and deep brown eyes. She was too thin, too pale,
and had an aura about her that I understood even then. There was no joy or hope
in her eyes. This girl knew only loneliness and abuse. She was afraid of me,
even as curiosity drove her to lean out of the window.

I smiled because Mom had said my smile made people
happy. Even though my instincts demanded that I went back inside, I knew she
needed a friend as much as I did. “I’m Devon,” I said.

She gave me a hesitant smile back. “I’m Astrid.”

*          *          *

I was out of breath, startled from my sleep as my
past tried to claw its way into the present. The sensation of being watched
prickled hairs on the back of my neck. Moonlight spilled into the room through
the window, revealing that both my roommates were asleep and we were alone. Too
afraid of the nightmares that sleep promised to unfold, I climbed down from my
bed, picked up my lighter from the desk, and lit the lantern.

There was a manila envelope on my desk with no
address or name. I opened it to find a small clump of pictures and my second
check for five thousand. Getting the hint, I carefully examined the pictures.
There were no people, dead or alive, in the photos. Instead, they consisted of
letters. Someone had spread out some letters in a dim room and took pictures.

Not with a cellphone, I could tell that much.

Many of the words in the letters would have been hard
enough to make out had I actually held the letters in my hand. What I could
decipher was basically a list of crimes that were committed by vampires. As I
read through them, page after page, I started to feel anxious. This was calling
for an all-out war on vampires. The reasons for it were stupid; they were
things that humans, wizards, and anyone else could be accused of.

The last letter was just a list of names. It was a
hit list of vampires.

Let the wizards kill them all.

*          *          *

Laws of Magic: Circle One
was considered
boring by my classmates. As a private investigator, I assumed it was all about
wizard laws, but I was wrong. The classroom was small and dark with a low
ceiling and no windows. Alpha Flagstone was the shifter who was on the school
board. After a slight glare at me when I entered, which he graced everyone else
with as well, he otherwise ignored me. He didn’t have an assistant, a
whiteboard, a desk, or a book. He just talked.

“The first law of magic is the Law of Knowledge.
Understanding brings control; the more that is known about a subject, the
easier it is to exercise control over it. It sounds obvious to some of you, but
too many people overlook this. We have too many accidents in this school
because students do magic without knowing enough about what they’re doing to
control it.” He looked right at me. “Knowledge is power.” We spent the
remainder of class discussing this as a group.

After class, I was following my map, glancing up only
enough to prevent myself from bumping into anyone or taking a wrong turn, when
my instincts demanded that I move. I stepped to my left just in time to avoid
getting struck by a fireball.

“Devon, help!” Darwin begged, diving behind me. The
man who chased after him was seething.

“What did you do?” I asked my roommate.

“Nothing! I just grabbed the wrong pencil!”

The man approaching was not a shifter. He was young,
eighteen if his looks could be trusted. His, short, spiky white hair made me
think he was fae, though I knew nothing about the different types of the
paranormal beings.

“He shot me!” the man yelled, halting in front of me.

“It wasn’t me! I couldn’t even if I wanted to!”

I believed Darwin when he told me that he was not
dominant like the stereotypical wolf shifter. If anything, it seemed to me like
he was too friendly. He was clumsy, perhaps, but not spiteful. “An eye for an
eye will only make the whole world blind. Let it go and Darwin will make it up
to you.”

The man studied me for a moment, sizing me up. “He’d
better,” he said before turning and walking away. From the rumors I had heard
about the fae kind, they were peaceful unless their territory or tribes were
threatened.

“Thanks, mate. He just flipped out over nothing.”

“Uh-huh.” There were several students watching the
commotion, but it wasn’t until I walked past the black-haired woman that I
sensed her. Without a thought, I turned and shoved her into the wall. People
shouted, tried to get out of the way, or tried to pull me off the woman.

“What did she do?” Darwin asked.

“Vampire,” was the only word I had to say.

Everyone backed away from us and several students ran
for help. Three students shifted into large gray wolves, but they only growled
at the vampire without doing anything to help. Anger welled inside me until I
felt heat and pressure build in my chest. The image of blood splattering the
floors and walls filled my head until the pressure released and the girl
vanished.

I fell against the wall and my head throbbed with a
sudden migraine. “What happened to her?” I asked.

Students were looking at me with wide eyes and no one
said anything until Alpha Flagstone and Professor Roswell showed up. “What
happened? Someone said there was a vampire,” Professor Roswell said.

“Devon kicked the vampire’s butt!” one of the
students shouted.

“Did the vampire attack anyone?” Alpha Flagstone
growled as he glanced around, probably looking for blood or injured students.

“No… She was just there.” Now that the adrenaline was
fading, my actions seemed a little irrational.

The three male wolf shifters changed back into their
human forms… naked, of course. Not one of them even tried to shield themselves
from the eyes of the dozen women gathered around.

“How did you know she was a vampire? And where is
she?” Alpha Flagstone asked doubtfully.

“I know a vampire when I see one. I can… sense them.”

“Devon can also control the minds of animals!” Darwin
added helpfully.

This was getting way out of control fast. “I didn’t
do anything to the vampire, I’m…”
I’m not a wizard.
“She just
disappeared.”

The professor looked even more suspicious at my
words. I could see the wolf in him trying to communicate, trying to tell him
something wasn’t right about me, but the man was too strong to lose control of
his wolf like that.

“She had on a strong perfume, but I could tell she
was a bloodsucker when I shifted,” one of the wolf shifters said.

Standing at six-four, about two hundred forty pounds,
with short, medium brown hair and steel-gray eyes, he was a cowboy if I ever
saw one. My instincts screamed that he was a hunter, but it wasn’t me he was
threatening.

He glared at Alpha Flagstone. “Aren’t you supposed to
be keeping that kind of scum out of here?” he asked with a southern accent.

The older wolf narrowed his eyes. “You will watch
your tone, pup. Keep challenging me and I will send you back to your mother in
a shoe box.”

“Why do you get to be the alpha if you need your
students to fight vampires for you?”

“I have been playing this game of life a lot longer
than you have.” The other two wolves, not nearly as large as their friend,
glanced nervously between Alpha Flagstone and his challenger for a moment.
Deciding they were safer betting on the older wolf, they both went to
Flagstone’s side.

Although the professor was actually a fair amount
smaller in muscle mass than his challenger, he struck me as much more
dangerous. He was the same height as the younger man, and since I hadn’t seen
the professor shift, I couldn’t be sure how they compared in wolf form. There
was absolutely no fear in him and his posture was familiar in a primal way; he
was ready at any instant to attack.

Still snarling, the younger wolf finally lowered his
eyes in submission.

“I will talk to you later about the vampire, Sanders.
Get to class,” Flagstone said.

I nodded and turned. Everyone reluctantly moved on,
but they were whispering to each other. Even though I was confused as to what
actually happened, I knew rumors could make my job a nightmare. I sighed and
headed to class.

Magic in Everyday Life
took place in a medium
sized room with seats that were set up in rows like in a lecture hall. The
walls were deep, dark blue, sponge-painted stone. The ceiling was vaulted with
a skylight. Unfortunately, the person who built the classroom above us was an
idiot.

When I took the closest seat to the door, which was
becoming my M.O., Darwin sat next to me. I took the time to notice that he was
wearing another hoodie. “Am I in the wrong class?” I asked him, about to pull
out my map.

“No, mate, this class is for wizards and fae. I don’t
know why I’m here, though. I can’t do any decent magic.”

“What does it take to be considered decent magic?
What can you do?”

He blushed and turned to face the front. “I’ll show
you later.”

Okay, that’s not weird or anything
.

After a moment, he turned back and pointed at me with
a pencil. “But, I will tell you…” He trailed off as he noticed the pencil in
his hand. “Oh, crap. This ain’t my pencil.”

I reached for the pencil, but he dropped it and
flinched as far away as his seat would let him. I froze, shocked, because I
knew the look of fear on his face. His eyes were clinched closed and his hands
were tucked against his chest.

I studied his hands, but I couldn’t see his wrists
beneath his cuffs. “Who hurt you?” I asked. I was surprised by the anger in my
voice. I had seen abused children act this way when they thought they did
something wrong and were about to get hit for it. Darwin wasn’t a child, but he
had obviously not been properly socialized. There was something very innocent
about him, like with a child, and the idea that he was so afraid didn’t sit
well with me. Of course, knowing what his reaction indicated, anger was the
absolute worst response I could have showed him.

“Nobody,” he said quickly. He opened his eyes when he
realized I wouldn’t hurt him. “I just don’t like to be touched.”

Professor Hans was everything I thought a wizard
would look like. Appearing to be around seventy, he had long white hair, a long
white beard, and light blue eyes. His black wizard robe had a burn mark on the
left cuff. The suspicious stain on his dark gray cardigan was a display of
carelessness. This class, like the title suggested, was all about using magic effectively
and secretly in our chosen professions. I almost wished it did me any good.

“Some of you have already started on your chosen
profession, some of you are here because you do not know what to do with your
life, and some of you believe magic is exciting. Someone give me an example of
how your life can revolve around magic.”

After a moment, a woman in the front raised her hand.
“You can be a teacher in magic,” she answered.

“That is a fair answer. Is teaching what you want to
do?”

She shook her head slowly, as if afraid of offending
him. “I want to be a doctor.”

“How can you be a doctor when your magic makes the
electronic equipment blow out? You have two choices; stick to being a healer in
the paranormal community, or give up magic to work in the human world.”