Elemental Light (Paranormal Public Book 9) (13 page)

“Umm, hi,” said Lough, stepping between me and the oggle and bracing his shoulders as if for battle.

“If you’re looking for the other two attackers, they’re this way,” said the oggle. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to get to them, though. We’ve strung them up. And you’re next.”

“Strung them up by which end?” Lough demanded. Feet were fine, neck
. . . not so much.

“You let them go,” I said, stepping up next to Lough. “They’re friends and they weren’t attacking anyone.”

The oggle shook its shaggy head. “Werewolves,” he said. “They can’t be trusted, especially purple-eyed werewolves. Besides, friends of you, but not me, and who are you but another attacker?”

“Yes, a certain eye color makes them so much more dangerous,” Lough drawled.

The oggle glared.

“Do we look like we’re attacking anyone?” I demanded.

The oggle gave me a look that said he was at least considering the question of whether I had a good point. He was not impressed with my threatening presence, but hey, no one had ever been.

“What are you doing in these parts? You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“Neither should you,” I pointed out, glad that Lough had told me this wasn’t oggle territory.

The oggle’s big, bushy eyebrows came down in a frown. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Take us to our friends, show us they’re okay, and then we’ll tell you,” I said firmly, squinting up at the giant.

The oggle appeared to consider this. “You don’t have a leg to stand on and yet you make demands,” he said thoughtfully. “You are either very brave or very foolish. Even with both legs, for that matter; they are scrawny.”

“Actually, it’s a combination,” said Lough. “It depends on the day.”

The oggle didn’t know what to make of this, so he just pointed the way Lough had come. “You two first,” he said.

“Before we go,” said Lough, stepping up to the oggle, who eyed him warily, “I’m Lough.” The dream giver extended his hand and waited. The oggle looked surprised only for a moment before reaching out and grasping my friend’s hand. I saw Lough wince and wondered about the grip.

“I’m Callum,” he said. Then he turned to stare at me.

“This is my friend Charlotte,” said Lough, waving to me. “She gets testy without Sip.”

“Who is Sip?” Callum asked as we started to walk, me in front.

“The purple-eyed werewolf,” Lough explained.

“Savages,” Callum said fiercely.

“Hey, easy,” said Lough. “Those are my friends, and they are not savages.”

“They look like savages,” Callum muttered. I glanced back to see him hunch his shoulders grudgingly.

“I guess it all depends on perspective,” said Lough.

We didn’t have far to walk. The dense brush and the hot air were making me tired, but I forced myself to concentrate on getting Sip back.

“Why did you take them, anyway?” Lough asked.

“It was a hellhound cage,” the oggle explained. “The big one walked right into it and the little one had a conniption. After that we just wanted to shut them up.”

“You should talk to my friend Lisabelle,” I said over my shoulder. “She’s been trying to get Sip to be quiet for years. Noooo luck.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” demanded a voice in front of us.

Suddenly we were surrounded by lots of oggles. Most were dressed like Callum, in button downs and vests. The women wore dresses and were just as hairy as the men, only shorter. There were way more than six of them.

“I found friends,” Callum said.

“We send you to investigate a noise and you keep coming back with paranormals,” said the man who had first spoken. He was older than Callum, with white hair and a pipe. Callum reminded me vaguely of Sigil, while this man reminded me more of Zervos, not a flattering comparison for the latter.

Callum shrugged. “You can’t expect me not to talk to fellow travelers. Besides, they say they’re friends of the werewolves.” Callum kicked his boot through the pine-blanketed forest floor as if he was bored.

“All the more reason not to bring them here,” the older man said, his eyes bulging. “Sometimes you go too far.”

“No, Halston, sometimes you do,” said a woman, elbowing her way forward. She held a rather large pitchfork as if she was ready to spear something, or someone. “We shouldn’t have taken those two prisoner to begin with. Of course they were with others who would come looking for them.”

“I don’t care what you say, Rose,” Halston sputtered. “They shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should we,” said Rose, “but we are and they are and we might as well make the best of it, and I hate to break it to you, but it’s not like you’re a master kidnapper. Who wants to fight with elementals and Airlees anyway?”

Fearful mutterings and gasps went up among the gathered oggles.

“Who said anything about fighting with elementals and Airlees?” Halston asked dangerously. “Especially with all the tales we’ve been hearing out of Public. Changing ring colors and the like! It’s ridiculous.”

I wondered if he was referring to Lisabelle’s Black Ring or something else, but I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant because the oggles were in the heat of discussion.

Rose shook her head as if she was talking to a simpleton. Maybe she was. “Look at their rings,” she said, pointing at us. “And that’s what werewolves are, or didn’t you know that? You weren’t brought up in no cave, so don’t go acting like you were.”

I sighed as I watched the oggles argue. Meanwhile, Lough was looking around, not even trying to hide the fact that he wanted to find Sip. I had a feeling Sip and Gargoile were being held at the back of the camp, and we were still gathered in the front. It seemed like maybe things were going to be okay, but I thought it was safer to let the oggles fight it out for a little while longer before intervening. Maybe intervening wouldn’t turn out to be necessary.

“Very well,” said Halston, continuing to glare. “Let me just say, this is what happens when women run things.” With that the oggle stormed through the crowd and away.

Rose stepped forward and extended her large hand. “You’ll have to forgive my husband,” she said. “He forgot to drink his happy tea this morning.”

“I’ll make him some tea,” Sip yelled from somewhere nearby.

I smiled and shook Rose’s hand. Her skin felt soft, and unlike Callum she didn’t have a death grip.

“Please, let’s go let your friends out. I’m very sorry about what happened. They just showed up, and at first we thought they were hellhounds.” Her eyes looked haunted as she added, “And we’ve seen enough of those recently.”

She led the way through the camp, and I noted how clean and orderly everything was and how oggles peered at us out of their tents. I listened for Sip’s voice again, but she was silent.

We passed a massive fire, where what looked like a giant pig was roasting. Lough and Callum still followed, but the other oggles had busied themselves with camp tasks. The camp wasn’t very big, the oggles were all just very close together.

“We don’t have a leader,” Rose explained. “We just have elders, but we decide everything by vote. I’m afraid we’ll have to vote on you four, but first let’s get you together.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, not after Halston’s reaction to our coming into their camp, but I’d worry about that when the time came.

“Sip, Gargoile!” I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my friends. They were no longer in a cage, or in werewolf form. Instead, they were each hanging upside down, having been tied to by their feet to the branch of a tree. Sip’s hair hung upside down in blond spikes. Her face was bright red, and Gargoile’s wasn’t much better.

“Hello,” said Sip, who was struggling against her bonds as she watched us draw near. “Sorry to get you into this, but we thought it was better than hurting anyone.”

Rose snorted. “Like you could, dearie.”

Sip glared, but mercifully she knew enough to keep quiet.

Rose set her pitchfork down and went around to stand beneath Sip, who swung gently from her branch.

“Now, if we untie you, you aren’t going to bite us, are you?”

“Not unless provoked,” Sip muttered.

When Rose didn’t move, Sip let out a gusty sigh. “No, I’m not going to attack you.”

“Very well,” said Rose, and she busied herself cutting Sip down, while Callum went to do the same for Gargoile.

Once both of our friends were free, Sip sprang to her feet and threw her arms around me.

“Sorry for wasting all that time,” she said. “I didn’t know what happened, and then suddenly we were in the air and they wouldn’t listen.”

She glared at Rose, who ignored her.

“Now, we vote,” said Rose, wasting no time. “Come back to the fire. We always do it by fire, so if the vote doesn’t go your way we can cook you instantly.”

“Wait, WHAT?” Lough cried.

Rose threw back her head and belly-chuckled. “Just kidding.”

Callum smiled and shook his head as if he was dealing with a beloved but slightly temperamental pet.

All the oggles seemed to expect the gathering that ensued, because men, women, and children were all sitting around the fire, though at a safe enough distance so that the strongest heat didn’t reach them.

“Now you have a chance to explain yourself,” Rose told us. “Once you finish, we review options, and then we vote on the best one.”

“Do we get any input in the options you come up with?” I asked. I didn’t want “eating the paranormals” to be on the table.

“No,” said Rose, “but don’t worry, we only eat pig meat.” She gave me another grin as she ushered the four of us forward to sit together on a log. “You also need a speaker.”

“I’ll do it,” said Lough. “I need to be useful for something.”

He hadn’t wanted to go to Vampire Locke, but he also didn’t like the feeling that he wasn’t contributing. The other three of us sat and watched as he stood forward to talk.

I knew instantly that Lough had released some of his dream power, creating a happier environment for these oggles than they would otherwise feel. It took a great deal of skill to release just a smidgen of dream power, so Lough was clearly still improving in his control.

“My name’s Lough, and I’m a dream giver,” he said, and the first round of murmurs went around the circle of oggles. “I’m a senior at Paranormal Public University.” More murmurs. I could see that the oggles were impressed and very curious. They had gone from boredom to rapt attention in two sentences.

“I’m traveling with my friends” - Lough pointed to us - “to reach the Circle.” More interest from the oggles. “We left Queen Lanca of the Rapier vampires this morning and we hope to reach the paranormal council by nightfall. Well, maybe a little later now.”

“What do you want with the council?” one oggle cried out. “What have they ever done to help?” I could see these oggles didn’t believe in Caid’s government any more than Sip did. It’s a wonder they had tied her up; they might not have if they had waited to talk politics first. Fat chance of that, I thought, in these dangerous times.

“Charlotte wants to take her rightful place on the council and try to fix some of the mess we’re in,” Lough explained. “To do that she has to reach the Circle in time for the vote.”

They all looked curiously at me and I wanted to shrink away from all the eyes, but I couldn’t let myself fade into the background. Instead, I jutted my chin outward. I couldn’t demand respect from a bunch of senior paranormals if this bunch scared me.

“She’s too young to have a place on the council,” Halston said, glaring at me as smoke curled out of his pipe.

“For once I must agree with my husband,” said Rose, eyeing me. “She’s just a baby.”

“That baby is the last elemental,” said Lough, “and she
will
take a place on the council.”

It was a bold statement, especially given that we still had to explain Gargoile’s role in all of this.

Complete silence fell over the watching oggles as Lough’s words sank in. It hadn’t surprised me that they had heard of Public or the Circle; they were displaced from their homes, after all, so they had some experience with the troubled times we lived in. But I felt a strange sense of wonder that they knew of me as the last elemental.

Just then one of the children stood up and toddled over to me. She had a tuft of blond hair and big blue eyes the color of the ocean on a windy day.

“Charlotte Rollins?” she asked.

I nodded, feeling strange. I was basically never around children, and I could only wonder: What does one do with them?

“Nice to meet you.” And she smiled at me. She had a bracelet on her arm that I was reasonably sure had started out blue, but through traveling and playing in the dirt and sand it had taken on a brownish tint. She took it off and held it out to me.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I said quietly. The little girl wouldn’t return to her mother until I put the bracelet on. Once I did, she stuck her thumb in her mouth and toddled away. My heart clenched. That little girl should have a home to grow up in, and I wanted to make that wish come true.

“When you stop sucking up to children I’ll continue,” said Lough out of the side of his mouth. I winked up at him.