Elemental Earth (Paranormal Public) (7 page)

My heart squeezed. Where was
Keller?

I had a split second’s view
upward through the mass of darkness, and there, high above our carriage, were
four demons fighting a winged fallen angel. My next breath came easier at the
thought that Keller was alright, but then I felt taloned fingers grip my arm
and I yelped.

Lisabelle looked at me, her eyes
burning. “If one of us doesn’t do something, we’re all dead.”

Fear beat at my temples. I knew
she was right.

My ring was pulsing and ready to
fight. It knew we were in a battle to the death.

“Alright then,” I muttered.

I summoned the winds, and they
came at my call. I was careful not to disrupt Keller or Marcus, who were using
those same winds, somewhere above us, to fight. I didn’t want to get in the
way, or worse, put them in any more danger than they were already facing.

The winds came to me from below,
and as they slammed upward our demon was forced to slow. I called more wind. I
was comfortable with the winds, and it was easy for me to reach them.

“Once more,” I heard Lisabelle
cry.

“Brilliant,” Kia breathed next to
me. I was too caught up in what I was doing to see. “I thought we were done for
sure.”

“We’re slowing down,” Lisabelle
yelled. “I’ll deal with the fire.”

At some point we would have to
talk about the fact that Lisabelle’s body could absorb fire like osmosis, but
right now probably wasn’t the time.

If we saved ourselves, we still
had to save Sip.

“We aren’t slowing down fast
enough,” Kia screamed. I opened my eyes. She was right. The ground was rushing
up to meet us at a sickening speed. The demon pulling us seemed determined to
get us there, and it was clear that if he succeeded, we were going to die.

Frantically, I called more air
and shoved it at the demon. It veered and jerked, sending our flaming carriage
bouncing through the air. Kia came flying into me; she wasn’t strong enough to
hold on as the carriage was thrown in one direction and then another. Almost
everything around us was burning anyway, and our situation was now dire.

I grabbed Kia’s arm and planted
my feet as firmly as I could.

“Sit down,” Lisabelle cried.
“Keep your balance.”

I pulled Kia down with me.

We were almost to the ground, but
now we had slowed down enough so that I no longer felt like I was about to
throw up.

“Are you alright?”

The former committee member was
floating outside our carriage. Never in my life did I think I’d be happy to
hear Dove’s voice, but I had just proved myself wrong.

“I didn’t know vampires could
float so high,” I yelled to him. His eyes sparked. His clothes were burned and
his hair was tilting at all angles, but he didn’t look injured.

“Ms. Rollins, now is not the time
to be surprised that you do not know everything,” he answered back. “Are you
alright? Where is Ms. Quest?”

Kia rolled her eyes at me. It
stunned me that the pixie was actually nice.

“We’re fine,” I said. “Sip went
to fight a Demon of Knight. Can you help her?”

I pointed upward. We could see
nothing in the sky around us but demons. There was something strange about the
way they were flying, but I didn’t have time to figure it out right now.

“I have to help you,” Dove yelled
to me. “You’re what’s important.”

“No,” I said firmly. “We’ll be
fine. Get Sip. I can’t fight if I don’t know she’s okay.”

Dove hesitated, but only for a
split second. Just as he was about to say something more, one of the demons
streaked past us, then another, with a furious-looking Zervos chasing after
them. A vampire in attack mode was a scary thing to behold, and Zervos was
probably scary when he was sleeping.

Watching his fellow chaperone
somehow decided Dove. The vampire straightened his shoulders and looked at me
with calm, determined eyes.

“Can you give me a lift?” Dove
yelled as he floated closer. At first I didn’t know what he was talking about,
but then I realized he wanted the wind. I called a special gust just for him
and sent it up. As he took the current and sped upward he gave a sharp kick to
the head of the demon that was pulling us. The thing slowed even more.

“We’re going to hit,” said
Lisabelle. My attention came back to the inside of our carriage and I saw with
amazement that while I had been dealing with Dove, she had dealt with the
flames.

“The impact will kill us,” Kia
cried, scrabbling next to me like a frantic mouse.

“Can you get us into the air?”
Lisabelle asked me. I nodded. There weren’t a lot of winds left, but there
might just be enough.

Luckily it didn’t take much; the
winds were confused by the battle and wanted to help. I just tumbled out, using
the winds to pull Kia and Lisabelle out after me.

For a brief second we soared. The
air rushed around us, cool from the winter but warmed from flowing over so many
burning demons. Kia screamed, and Lisabelle and I each grabbed one of her arms
to steady her, but she continued to scream.

At first I thought she was
screaming because we were randomly flying through the air, but that only lasted
a few seconds before I heard the crash of what was left of the carriage. The
demon had plowed both itself and the carriage right into the ground.

I managed to get the gusts to
move us just far enough away from the wreckage so that we didn’t land on the
rubble.

Glancing down calmed me. It was
like a sea of green trees, some topped with a light dusting of snow. At least
if we fell there would be something to break our fall.

“Ground incoming,” Lisabelle
yelled hoarsely. The words were barely out of her mouth when we slammed into
the earth. I had thought it would hurt, but it didn’t. The dirt, grass, and
roots should have been frozen solid, but it felt more like we had landed on a
soft mattress.

For a second I just lay there,
but I knew I didn’t have the luxury of time. We were on open ground, making us
a far easier target than when we had been in the air.

I pushed myself up until I was
kneeling. Lisabelle was already standing, while Kia lay on her back. The small
pixie was petrified. She was staring up at the sky, her eyes wide, her long
hair splayed around her.

“Demons,” she muttered over and
over, worrying her hands together. “So many demons.”

I glanced up at the sky. If I had
been hoping to see Keller or Sip with Dove, I had another thing coming. All I
saw was demons. Dotted here and there were some of the other carriages, and my
fellow students, though besieged, were fighting back as best they could. Still,
I saw several carriages tumbling out of the sky.

“Why’d we land so softly?” I
asked Lisabelle. “What’d you do?”

The darkness mage had one black
streak of soot down her cheek, but as far as I could tell she was otherwise
unharmed. She glared at me. “Um, geez, I have no idea, Elemental.”

“That was me?” I demanded. “How?”

“Let’s add it to the list of
mysteries we have to figure out.”

Kia sat up. She looked white
beneath her green skin, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she had had a
heart attack right there.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
she said. “She’s an earth elemental too, right? The ground isn’t going to kill
its own.”

She examined herself closely,
checking for injuries. “We really did land on a mattress,” she breathed. “I
thought we were dead for sure.”

“Maybe you made the wrong friends
sophomore year,” said Lisabelle.

Kia grimaced. “Yes, well, that’s
certainly possible.” She gave heavy sigh. “As a matter of fact, if I had had
any idea what they were doing. . . .” She looked at us with helpless eyes. “I
never would have. . . .” She sighed again. “It’s probably too late for me now.”

“You ladies looking for us?” a
voice croaked from behind us.

The knot in my stomach, which I
had been paying no attention to until I heard Lough’s voice, finally started to
dissolve. I sprang to my feet, moving even faster than Lisabelle.

“Lough,” I cried, rushing to my
friend, who was emerging from the woods with Rake, Trafton, and Evan. None of
them was in great condition. Evan’s arm hung at an odd angle and Trafton was
bloody. Lough didn’t look injured, but he was covered in dirt and grass. Rake
had a long cut down his cheek and was walking with a limp.

I threw myself at Lough, who
opened his arms, caught me, and held me at a little distance.

“Careful,” he muttered. “My whole
body hurts. I might as well have gotten into a fight with Lisabelle years ago.
I don’t think I could feel worse.”

I drew back to look at him,
frowning. His eyes were feverish and there was sweat on his brow.

“What happened?” I demanded.
“How’d you survive the fall?”

“We dreamed the demon was back
home with his friends,” said Trafton. “Totally confused the thing.”

“I didn’t think dream givers were
any use at all,” said Rake. “I’m now prepared to revise my statement.”

“Thanks,” said Trafton dryly. He
ran his fingers through his blond hair, which at the moment was more of a
grayish color. They came back dirty.

Lough looked at Lisabelle. Kia,
who was standing nearby, hung back.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

Lisabelle nodded. “Course.”

Lough took in our surroundings.
We were in a clearing, but behind the guys was the forest from which they had
just emerged.

“Where’s Sip?” he asked.

I pointed upward, and Lough
sucked air in through his teeth.

“We sent Dove to help her,” I
said. “No way he fails.”

Lough gave one sharp nod. “We
have our own problems, anyway,” he said. And pointed.

Demons were coming in droves. More
than ten, and then more than twenty, they were converging on us rapidly.

“Shall we run?” Trafton asked.

Lisabelle shrugged. “I mean,
they’re going to die now or they’re going to die later. Seems like it’d be more
polite to kill them now.”

Trafton gave her a sharp grin. He
looked tired, but less so when he looked at Lisabelle.

“You might not be afraid, but
that’s a lot of demons coming at us,” he said.

“Run,” Kia cried, as she darted
for the trees.

“I guess we’re running,” said
Lough. “We should at least get to cover.”

We ran. Once we reached the trees
we’d be better able to defend ourselves.

And to fight.

The woods were thick, with the
branches hanging low from the weight of the snow and ice.

“This way,” said Lough, leading
us to the carriage they had landed in.

“What happened to the other
carriage?” I asked.

Lough shrugged. “It carried Faci,
Daisy, Camill,a and Dobrov, so probably nothing. Do you care?” He gave me a
sharp look and I shrugged. I did, in fact, care about Dobrov. I worried about
him and I wanted him to be alright. Lough had totally given up on him when he’d
gone back to Daisy, though, and I wasn’t about to argue the points of loyalty
now.

“So we’re missing Zervos, Keller,
Marcus, and Sip?” Trafton asked grimly.

“Zervos was fighting demons,”
said Lisabelle. “I bet he went to help Marcus and Keller.”

“It must have been a hard
landing,” I muttered when I saw the wreckage. Evan gave a whimper and I glanced
at his arm. Feeling my stomach lurch, I looked away. The vampire was pale and
swaying a little. Rake helped him to sit.

“Let’s form a circle,” said
Lisabelle. “Eyes out, backs in. No one break formation. The demons are going to
come, but we have the Power of Five. We should be able to form a protective
ring around ourselves and anyone else who can get to us. The demons shouldn’t
be able to get in.

“Ah, the Power of Five,” Kia
breathed. “Brilliant.”

“Don’t get excited yet,” said
Lisabelle. “You’re the only pixie we have.”

I wouldn’t have thought Kia could
get paler, but she did.

“There’s Zervos,” said Trafton,
pointing back the way we had come. Indeed, our Cruor professor was coming
toward us, and it was the first time the thought occurred had to me that he
might really be a demon. His eyes were blazing red with fury and there was
blood dripping from his mouth. He was running at full speed. Behind him I could
hear crashing.

“Think all that noise is demons?”
Trafton asked.

“Yes,” said Lisabelle. “I do.”

Trafton nodded grimly and planted
his feet more firmly. His hands were balled into fists at his sides.