Page 16 of The Elementalist (Four Elements #1)
The Greasers
“Can I help you gentlemen?” I asked, pleasant enough, despite my heart beating somewhere up near my throat. Breathing, let alone swallowing, had become difficult.
“We’re looking for a private dick,” said the dark-haired bad boy. He emphasized the word dick.
The taller guy grinned, and asked, “Are you Max Long?”
Good cop, bad cop. Or maybe good vampire, bad vampire?
The smell of death had grown stronger with the door open, and it was obvious from whom or what the smell came from them. Indeed, the pair stank as if they’d just returned from robbing a grave. Maybe they had.
“You got him,” I said, and tried not to gag. “How can I help you?”
“We’d like to discuss some... business with you,” said Hollywood. “May we come in?”
I recalled Michael’s further instruction about never inviting a vampire in—or even someone who might be a vampire. Michael’s exact words had been: “Get into the habit of not inviting anyone suspicious in.”
But these two punks weren’t the only cocky assholes around.
I stepped back and motioned with a hand, indicating that they should come in.
I hoped this gesture didn’t qualify as an official invite.
Must not have been, because neither of the men moved.
My heart pounded in my ears. This was all so. .. unreal. Crazy, crazy, crazy.
“I can hear your heart beating,” said the bad boy. He leaned a shoulder casually against the doorframe. “Nervous?”
“Should I be?”
“We’re just here to talk,” said the taller one, smiling warmly... or trying to. It looked creepy as hell. “Maybe you could invite us in?”
I motioned again. “No one’s stopping you.”
He smiled. I smiled. The bad boy didn’t smile. Neither moved.
“So it’s true. You two really are vampires,” I said, stunned. I mean, just because I was dealing with weird shit, didn’t entirely mean I was ready to accept the existence of vampires. Or even believe in them. But here they were... two of them, in the flesh... the very pale flesh.
“And why would you say a crazy thing like that?” asked the taller one.
“Because you can’t step through my doorway unless I invite you in.”
“Someone’s been watching a little too much TV,” said the shorter one.
They looked remarkably handsome. Either could’ve been movie stars. Both seemed in their twenties, the shorter one toward the older end. What their real ages were, I hadn’t a clue.
The bad boy leveled a terrifying cold stare at me. “We should just kill him now.”
“Ignore him,” said the taller of the two to me, trying to smile warmly but failing. “My associate is a bit of a… well, psychopath.”
“You say the sweetest things,” replied the other.
I swallowed. Never had I seen such a lack of empathy. Mostly in the smaller one. The taller one wasn’t too far off. Both were cold-blooded killers, of that much I felt certain.
“What are your names?” I asked. Truth was, I had asked around in town, but no one seemed to remember these two, which I found odd. “What’s it hurt to tell me since, you know, you’re gonna kill me and all?”
The psychopath appeared amused.
The tall one smiled broadly, showing a lot of teeth. I noted they were level teeth. As in, no pointy canines. “I’m Piper and this is Derek.”
“So you guys partner up like cops?” I asked, trying to buy time.
Other than my crash course in vampires last night, I knew next to nothing about the social structure of vampires.
For all I knew, they often came in twos, although I doubted that.
After all, Bad Boy had been alone when he came a-knockin’ the other night.
And Hollywood had been alone at the bar, watching my little air raid display.
Derek gave me a half smirk. “I like him. Too bad we have to kill him.”
“He jokes,” said Piper. “Ignore him.”
Ignore him I did. “Do either of you have any information about the two people who were killed last week?”
“I wouldn’t say I have much useful information.” Derek crossed his arms over his chest, “but they were certainly delicious.”
“You killed them?”
He shrugged. “It’s kinda what I do.”
Hearing his total disregard for human life sent a chill through me. His reaction made it ten times worse: The bastard enjoyed making me feel uncomfortable. A plague on the Earth indeed.
The tall guy pulled a gun, his movements so fast his hand blurred into a smear. “Well, now that the cat’s out of the bag, maybe we should conclude our business. I expected there was a chance you would not let us in. Luckily, a bullet isn’t beholden to the same irritating rules.”
“Kill him, brother,” said Derek. “Fuck the warning, and fuck him.”
The taller vampire nodded and lifted the gun. Something flickered inside me and I reflexively raised my hands an instant before he pulled the trigger. White energy coalesced around the front end of the .45.
A muted whump came from the gun, loud, but nowhere near as loud as a gunshot ought to be.
I stared for an instant in bewildered shock at a bullet trapped within a thick coating of ice that had frozen over the tip of the barrel.
Out of nowhere, a sense of rage took me—a deep-seated aversion to these creatures’ mere existence.
The back end of the gun glowed brilliant orange, melting in Piper’s hand.
Turned out I didn’t just create fire... but could make heat necessary for the fire.
And I could do so quickly. Same with water.
I didn’t merely summon it via rainclouds, I could summon it from the air around me.
.. and control the temperature of it as well. Neat tricks, both.
The tall vampire yelped and dropped the gun, his fingers on fire. While I hadn’t made open flame by intent, vampires appeared rather prone to combustion. He waved his hand so fast it again blurred, and the fire went out.
A glint of metal flashed from Derek’s belt.
I thrust my left hand at him in a stopping motion as he went to throw a knife at me.
More white energy streamed forth, coalescing into a large block of ice that froze the knife to his fingers.
He grunted, struggling to hold up the weight of an icy sphere large enough to completely engulf the giant hunting knife.
A normal human of his build wouldn’t have been able to lift it one handed, but he managed it, albeit with difficulty.
He stared at it. I stared, too. Unreal. Wait, no…
Awesome. But that exhilaration blossomed into fury once more.
These two would no doubt go on killing innocent people, perhaps forevermore.
Of course, I didn’t want to burn down my house.
The instant the intent formed in my mind, a light rain wet the floor in the hall, which I promptly froze into an ice sheet.
“What the hell...” said Derek, grabbing Piper, who still clutched his burned hand to his chest in pain.
I raised both arms, calling a gale that blasted them off their feet and sent them rocketing down the hall like a pair of limp bobsleds.
They crashed into the radiator at the far end, six apartments away.
Derek slammed into the wall hard enough that the ice ball broke away from his hand, the knife still stuck inside.
They scrambled upright and ran for the steps that led to the outside door.
The ice on the floor evaporated to fog in response to my desire.
I followed them, not entirely sure what to do next.
By the time I rushed down the stairs to the sidewalk, they’d gone a fair way down the street, so I extended my right arm and summoned lightning.
Two shafts of electricity connected my fingertips to their backs with an instantaneous crackle and a boom that flung them both off their feet and sent them sliding on their chests.
Derek went face first into a tree while Piper struck a parked car.
The pair bounced right back up, both smoking, and took off at a superhumanly fast sprint.
I didn’t quite trust my skill at the moment to chase them into a potential ambush, nor did I want to put on too much of a magic show.
The last thing I needed was fame. The people of Shadow Pines would lose their damn minds if I kept doing magic out in the open.
Piper, with the burned hand, appeared the most freaked out by what I’d done. So much so, he kept looking back over his shoulder at me—and crashed into a tree.
I couldn’t help but laugh at them.
That lightning bolt should have been enough to knock the crap out of them. The last time I’d called a bolt that big while training with Michael, it had split a dead tree in half.
I made my way back upstairs, still chuckling when I closed my door.
Those two vamps had murder in their eyes. Had I been anyone less than what I was—an Elementalist apparently—I would be dead, shot through the heart... or worse if I had actually invited them in.
My case took a turn for the strange, but at least I’d found the ones responsible for the deaths. Both of them were killers, no monsters.
They enjoyed killing.