Page 23 of The Elementalist (Four Elements #1)

Reinforcements… Almost

I ran up the stairs, both forgetting entirely about the ice I’d covered them with and also not affected by it.

Interesting… I’m walking on ice and not sliding because I don’t want to.

Crystal enjoyed no such relationship with slipperiness.

She does, however, evidently have claws—which she used to hold on to the wall and banister.

And yeah, something was definitely switched in me.

This girl’s fingernails have become four-inch daggers and seeing it didn’t freak me out at all.

She still looked like an angel who’d gotten into a deadly situation way over her head, only the nervous fear I saw in her wide eyes wasn’t actual fear.

It came purely from me interpreting her normal appearance that way.

Nothing about her body language said she had the least bit of fear.

If anything, it said she’s pissed at me for leaving the ice on the stairs.

She did have a point there. If we needed to make a quick exit, going face-first down the stairs would be inconvenient.

I dispelled the inch-thick layer into fog.

She emitted a nearly inaudible sigh of thanks.

When I reached the top, the glow from her will-o-wisp lights let me see a fair distance into the corridor.

Predictably for a boarding house, it had a ton of doors.

The second and third floor are likely all bedrooms. Though, a portion of the third floor could be a full apartment for the owner.

This place ceased operating as a boarding house before I was born.

Soft thumping came from the ceiling along with murmuring voices too faint to make out words.

Sounded like people on the third floor. An eerie mist hovered above the dark blue carpet leading down the second floor hall, the smell of rotting meat so strong I could scarcely take a breath without gagging.

Following the sound, I continued up to the third floor.

When I’d reached about three-quarters of the way to the top, Crystal appeared out of thin air on the stairs in front of me, once again in her birthday suit.

A loud click of teeth came from behind me.

I whirled around and jumped at the sight of a vampire hugging her empty shirt, having chomped down on nothing.

Before I could even think ‘burn it,’ Crystal tore a four-foot-long piece of banister off and threw it over my shoulder like a spear, piercing the vampire’s chest and pinning him to the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

“Ooh!” She fumed and stomped—putting her foot through the old step. She had the grace and reflexes to not fall over, or even stumble, or even look like she hadn’t expected it to break out from under her. “That is so rude. Grabbing a lady from behind like that.”

The vampire hung from the banister pinning him to the wall, gripping it in both hands and struggling to pull it loose.

Her shot had dipped too low to hit him in the heart, but it didn’t seem like he’d be going anywhere soon.

Not bothering to wait and see if he could free himself, I did the only reasonable thing a guy could do in this situation.

I lit him on fire.

Crystal scooted past me to retrieve her clothes, which lay draped on the stairs. “He came out of nowhere and grabbed me from behind.”

“The mist on the second floor,” I muttered. “He’d been waiting to ambush us.”

“Oh, dammit. I don’t even know why I’m bothering to get dressed again.”

“Because people don’t walk around in their birthday suits.”

“I should just move to Wales and prance around the forests. My ancestors had the right idea.”

“So stay naked. You won’t hear me complaining.”

She smirked. “I can’t. You’ll die, right?”

“Is that what they mean by ‘drop dead gorgeous’?”

That got a laugh out of her. “Close, you silly goose. You’ll be staring at me and a vampire will rip your head off.”

“You know, that whole ‘so scared she jumped out of her clothes’ thing is supposed to be a joke.”

“For your information…” She pointed at me, bra hanging from her hand. “I was not scared. Jumping up the stairs was the best way for me to get out of being grabbed.”

“Didn’t you say something about your blood being poisonous to them? Why not let him bite you and learn the error of his ways the hard way?”

She slipped into her bra and shirt blurrily fast. “Because, then I’d have a bite wound. Unlike vampires, I don’t magically heal in ten seconds.”

“Oh.”

Crystal swiped her jeans off the floor and put them on. “Takes me more like an hour.”

“Oh, is that all.” There might have been sarcasm in my voice.

“And being bitten still hurts, smarty pants. A lot.” She sat to put her sneakers on.

As soon as she jumped to her feet, I continued into the hallway upstairs.

Out of habit, I drew my .44. It wouldn’t kill a vampire, but it should at least have enough punch to stagger one for a few seconds.

Enough to buy me time to start a fire. Crystal grabbed another two pieces of banister, each about a foot long, and used her claws to sharpen them into points, flicking wood shavings off the tips like she peeled carrots… with her finger.

Wow, sexy and badass.

Grunting came from the third door on the left. I stepped up to it, steeled myself, and burst in all cop-style, giant revolver raised in both hands.

The room contained two twin beds, one against the wall on either side, both with people in shredded college sweatshirts and jeans tied down by thin chain and padlocks around each wrist and ankle.

The girl on the left lifted her head off the pillow to stare at me with faintly glowing eyes.

Barely twenty if even that, she looked like death warmed over.

The boy on the other bed, around the same age, had a football player’s jersey on and didn’t appear fully conscious.

He, too, had pronounced grey in his skin, though his eyes didn’t light up—they didn’t even focus.

Straight in front of me, a skinny blonde cheerleader type in a peach shift dress, barefoot, sat chained by the neck to an ancient freestanding radiator.

She still had the color of a living person to her, though quite a bit of blood had soaked into the shoulders of her dress.

“Help!” shouted the blonde. “Please let me out of here.”

I eyed the two on the beds… and started raising my hands, fireballs already forming.

“Wait.” Crystal grasped my arm. “They’re not fully gone yet.”

“Huh?”

“They’re still tied down. That means they haven’t turned completely. It’s not permanent until they’ve fed for the first time. If we destroy the vampire who gave them the three bites before they drink, they should recover.”

“Should. What if they don’t?”

“Then we’ll… figure something out. Not all vampires are like Derek and Piper, ya know.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Right on cue, another vampire emerged from a doorway about thirty feet farther down the hall—and pointed an AR-15 at us.

I summoned a thick slab of stone in front of me as a shield and tossed a fireball around it.

Crystal whirled around and threw one of her stakes.

The vamp with the rifle fired, the report deafening in the closed confines of the hallway.

My stone barrier withstood the bullets, even if the floor under it emitted scary cracking noises at the weight.

My first fireball missed, but made him flinch enough that I had time to concentrate on igniting the air around him.

A squishy thump came from behind me at the same moment the AR-15 vampire burst into flames.

I peered back past Crystal at a female vampire a bit older looking than the others I’d seen so far, laying inert on the floor about twelve feet away with a stake embedded in her chest, twitching like a fish out of water.

She went still after a few seconds and dried out into a pile of clothing and grey powder.

“You gotta get us out of here,” said the girl chained to the bed. “They’re gonna kill us.”

I swiveled to face her, but before I could think of what to do, another woman screamed in terror from down the hall. “Hold that thought.” I pointed at her. “Be back in a moment.”

“No! Don’t leave us here!” shouted the girl while struggling.

“Hey!” yelled Radiator Girl, running to the end of her leash. “Don’t go!”

Yeah, walking away from three kidnap victims might’ve been a dick move.

Ask Justine. I’m good at pulling dick moves.

Though, she tended to call me an asshole more than a dick.

Anyway, I didn’t quite trust that those three were as harmless as they claimed.

At least not yet. I suspected it would’ve been more of a dick move to get close enough for them to kill me, thus condemning them to undeath.

In the hallway, I stopped a few steps from the door the scream came from and hurled a conjured rock at it. Not too big a rock, only the size of a watermelon. Plenty big enough to take the door out. The instant it smashed its way into the room, a flurry of gunfire erupted from within.

“Shit!” shouted Piper.

Since I’m sure they could hear me even if I whispered, I glanced at Crystal with a look I hoped she read as ‘if we step into that doorway, we’re going to be riddled with bullets.’

She turned invisible for a second, then reappeared, pointing at her eyes, then at the wall. Oh, damn. That’s right. She said the vampires could still see her. Hmm. This blew.

I blinked.

Blew…

Idea!