Page 17 of The Elementalist (Four Elements #1)

Killers

The vampires rattled me.

I did some research using some websites not available to the general public.

In order to access them, one needed to sign up and pay a subscription fee as well as send proof of access, like my PI license, or a valid law-enforcement ID.

As far as I could tell, no record existed of men named Derek and Piper being born anywhere in this area.

Of course, their names had to be false, but they’d been using them for a while at least. I found a man named Piper Burroughs registered as the owner of a handful of cars, and he owned an old boarding house a little ways outside of town.

I knew of the place, but had never gone there.

It sat mostly hidden behind a thick wall of shrubs and trees, and of course it had been the subject of countless scary stories.

I sat back and rubbed my face. So that’s where the town’s vampires lived.

Well, at least two of them. Michael had made it clear that nature wouldn’t have summoned an elemental unless there was a real problem afoot.

More than likely, I’d have to deal with more than only those two vamps, and possibly other creatures, like werewolves.

If I saw an actual werewolf running in the woods.

.. yeah, I think I would freak. Please let those be fake.

Vampires I can handle. I had seen the pretty boy face of vampires.

I could handle the vampires, I think. I’d certainly handled them well enough tonight, but I expected them to regroup and come out swinging. Hopefully, I would be ready for them.

I went further back in time, a deep dive into the database and resources. Piper had purchased the home... wow, twenty years ago. And neither one of them looked much older than their mid-twenties.

“They really are vampires,” I whispered. “Freakin’ a.”

I went back further, but found no additional evidence of them.

I suspected these two likely changed their names often, as well as changed towns.

After twenty years here, they were likely getting ready to move on again.

That could explain the recent surge of attacks.

If they’re planning to leave the area, why restrain themselves?

Go crazy for a while, have fun, then vanish.

I’d seen them often throughout the years, but never paid much attention to how little their appearance had changed.

Funny how the brain worked. I suspected they might somehow change the way they looked, too, when they decided to reinvent themselves and relocate.

Anything to keep people off balance. And if someone suspected anything, or asked them about their anti-aging regime, that someone probably ended up dead.

.. or missing. I was willing to bet that huge boarding house of theirs contained more than a few skeletons in its closets, and not metaphorical ones.

That place likely held the answers to the many deaths and missing persons cases that plagued this town.

I drummed my fingers for a while, lost in thought, and finally shut off my computer. With any luck, I wouldn’t suffer a nocturnal visit from an uninvited vampire. I should be able to get a decent night’s sleep.

Should being the operative word...

***

The next day, I returned to the woods, standing not too far away from where Dana Bradbury-Hayden and her husband had been killed.

I had seen the face of the killer, and he’d shown no remorse.

No humanity. If anything, he had the look of a hunter proud of a kill.

I told myself they merely looked like humans.

Both were killers through and through, especially the smaller one, Derek.

Piper, I still had a few doubts about. Then again, he had pulled the gun on me; worse, he had pulled the trigger.

Yup, he’d had every intention of killing me.

Still, I didn’t get a psychopath vibe from him.

Trying to shoot me had been self-preservation.

Still, I suspected taking human life didn’t exactly keep him up at night—or keep him up during the day… whatever.

No doubt they’d killed many people throughout the years, and I’d wound up on their hit list.

Well, I wasn’t just anyone now, was I?

Nature had seen to that. Nature had given me an edge.

Then again, Nature had also put a big target on my back, too.

“Thanks, Nature,” I said and threw a rock over the cliff into the churning pool of water far below.

Those two were... evil. I could feel it wafting off them like a stink so bad it made the air blurry. Literally, in fact. I definitely smelled it. And yet, I had seen them associating with others in town. In particular, the college girls. I hoped to God they weren’t dating them.

Creeps.

Had they compelled their girlfriends? Could vampires love?

From what I had seen standing outside my apartment.

.. the answer was a resounding no. Then again, where had that fury that overwhelmed me come from?

Yes, my life had been threatened—casually and wantonly—but shouldn’t I have been more worried than angry?

In truth, I didn’t scare easily… and I might’ve possessed the sort of courage that transcended simple bravery and went into the realm of foolishness.

A good trait for a PI. Timid people didn’t do well in this job.

I get threatened often. Maybe not to my face, and maybe not so blatantly with a gun, but that wasn’t my first death threat.

So, what had triggered my reaction? Hard to say, but in that moment, I felt a true hatred for these things.

I wanted to do much worse than zap their asses with lightning.

.. I wanted to strangle the life out of them…

except, of course, they were immortal. Guess I’ll need to use fire.

And I’m not a killer, dammit. No matter how much I wanted to do away with those two cocky bastards.

But, I had to keep telling myself that I dealt with the undead.

They only looked like people. Any humanity they may once have had died an unknown time ago when whatever fiend who turned them did it.

Or maybe they’d been psychos in life. I had no idea if simply becoming a vampire could transform a normal person into a heartless killer or if it only worsened what already existed.

My fury had to be part of the change that had come over me.

Michael warned me about it, and I saw the evidence of it.

If a death threat alone wouldn’t get me to wage a private war against these two immortal greasers, then my irrational hatred for them would.

That, and thinking about the people they’ve murdered—and would kill in the future.

The best explanation I could come up with involved something of a ‘matter/antimatter’ reaction between the Nature energy inside me and the dark energy that comprised vampires.

But some part of hunting them down and killing them in their coffins struck me as wrong.

Assuming, of course, they actually slept in coffins.

Michael hadn’t said anything about it. Fair chance the coffin thing was pure Hollywood.

It sounded too silly to be plausible. Then again, the ‘can’t come inside unless invited’ sounded silly, and it proved true.

Still, I had a suspicion they’d spare me the moral conundrum of having to decide if I wanted to destroy them.

They would likely come gunning for me sooner or later.

Although Michael and I had trained the other night—and I suspected the full extent of my power was still unknown even to me—I felt I’d need weeks if not months of training to take on these two.

Sure, I had gotten the upper hand on them last night, but they knew what I was capable of now and wouldn’t make the mistake of casually strolling up to ‘chat’ again.

I had shown my hand... and had given them a taste of my power.

If they had any way to prepare themselves for our next meeting, I’m sure they’d be ready for it.

Next time, they wouldn’t walk up and knock on my door—they’d be jumping out at me from a dark alley.

“Did you see how fast he drew that gun?” I asked myself, staring down into the churning water. “Had he not been so chatty, I might not have had time to manipulate the elements.”

That’s how I explained what I did: I thought of myself as manipulating the elements. I didn’t know how the hell I did so, but I did. My intent became a matter of fact. If I wanted something to happen, it happened within reason. Nature appeared to be listening to me and doing what I asked it to.

“You and nature are one, Max.” Michael tried to convince me of that over and over. “There are even some who claim that you are the incarnation of nature itself. Its physical manifestation.”

“No,” I had said. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m just me, as I had been for twenty-eight years.”

Of course, Michael only shrugged and gave me that ‘silly mortal’ look. Although as far as I knew, he was not immortal. At least, I didn’t think so.

What did I know of fighting bloodthirsty immortals? Not much, if anything. Only what Michael told me. Great, I’d trusted my destiny to a middle-aged blogger who looked like Jerry Seinfeld’s neurotic friend. The only thing I knew for sure is that blood would spill.

To ensure it wasn’t mine, I decided to come out here, in the quiet of the woods, and practice my connection with the elements more, trying every possible way I could think of to manipulate things.

After all, creating the thunderbolts had occurred to me on a whim, and it had worked out perfectly.

Well, not so much. The vampires kept on running.

Now, I made it rain, hail, snow… I threw lightning from my hands, chucked fireballs, made sheets of flame form in the air, and even opened pits in the Earth the size of swimming pools by commanding the dirt and rock to move and flow like liquid. Hmm...

What else could I do?

As the day wore on, I continued practicing my form of strange Nature magic, knowing I faced a high likelihood of needing it soon.

Very soon.