Page 32 of The Elementalist
I shrugged. “I don’t write the rules, but makes a kind of sense to me.”
“Of course it would to you. You’re like, nature personified.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But if something were to stop the beating of an undead heart, exposure to something once deeply connected to the earth mother should do the trick.”
“But the wood is dead, too.”
“But it was once connected to the earth itself, and undoubtedly infused with light energy.”
“So, would a thorn from a rose bush kill a vamp, then?”
“Doubtful, but it would do serious harm. No, I’m sensing trees are essential. Their sheer size and deep roots go far in retaining the earth energy to put one of those suckers down.”
She giggled at ‘suckers,’ then added, “You’re forgetting that normal people can’t simply run around town with a shotgunwithout being arrested. Or make wooden bullets for that matter. Stakes might still be the best option… but you are far better equipped to deal with them. And no, I didn’t know that about you at all when I hired you.”
Again, I rubbed my chin in thought. “You do bring up a good point in that those two should probably be dealt with in a fairly permanent manner. Can’t help but feel a bit strange about it though. It’s never been in me to just kill someone like that.”
“For one thing, they’re not ‘someones.’ They’re ‘somethings.’ Vampires are already dead. You wouldn’t be killing anything, just making an already-dead corpse stop walking around. For another thing, they want to kill you and won’t stop until they do.”
“And… if I do anything other than put them down, I’ll spend the rest of my life looking over my damn shoulder for the next ambush.”
“That too.” She held up a finger, wide-eyed. “Just remember they’re killers, Max. How many innocent lives have they taken besides Dana’s and Luke’s? How many more innocent lives will they take in the future?”
“Fine.” I squeezed both hands on the steering wheel, gripping it tight to bleed off angst at what felt like making myself into the judge, jury, and executioner. The girl did have a good point though. Piper and Derek had already died,weredangerous killers, and did want my ass on a morgue slab on the sooner side of later. “What kind of fallout do you think will happen if I get rid of these two?”
She pursed her lips in thought. “That would mostly depend on which family they’re working for, assuming one is pulling their strings. If they did attack Dana at random, there won’t be any repercussions at all short of whatever vampire friends they may have wanting to settle the score. But, it isn’t as though the others would magically know what happened to Derek andPiper—not to mention, those two don’t seem the type to make friends.”
I chuckled. “No shit. Are all vampires as psycho as they are?”
Crystal glanced over at me with an apologetic expression. “I don’t know. Father started sending me to school in Ironside when I was a junior. When I turned eighteen, they kicked me out and I had to live there, too. For whatever reason, the vampires don’t go to Ironside too often. As a younger girl, I occasionally saw one in the house, but kept my distance. They didn’t pay much attention to me either, likely because Fey blood is toxic to them.”
“That’s handy. How toxic are we talking here? Drop dead from a drop or ‘sketchy Mexican restaurant’ toxic?”
She furrowed her eyebrows at me for a second, then evidently decided to ignore my stupid joke. “If one were to bite me, their fangs would most likely disintegrate before they could pull them out.”
“Ouch. So your blood is basically like acid to them.”
“So I have been told. I’ve not seen proof of it.” She pointed at me. “And don’t get any funny ideas about… about making succubus hand grenades.”
I raised my hands as if in surrender. “Not even going there. You might notbeinnocent, but you look it. Wouldn’t dream of doing anything that would get you hurt, least of all using you or your blood as a weapon.”
“Aww.” She batted her eyelashes at me. “You are so cute.”
“Right… so, how do we do this?”
She gestured at the ignition. “Why not find them and simply light them on fire.”
“That sounds too simple.”
“Lighting things on fire is a simple way to solve problems. Sometimes, the barbarian approach is the best.”
Merely thinking about the way Derek grinned whenconfessing that he’d murdered Dana set off a wave of anger inside me, which I’m sure came from the elemental power I’d been given. Perhaps I’d become a ‘creature’ as well, diametrically opposed to vampires. Nature was full of powerful opposing forces: light and dark, life and death, efficiency and government.
The part of my psyche that recoiled at the idea of walking up and simply ending someone had been chewing on the facts of this case. Yeah, those two hadn’t been human in a long time. They sure as hellsmelledlike dead bodies. They’d murdered Dana and her husband as casually as an out-of-town hiker tossing an apple core into the forest. They’d surely murder again. And again.
So, yeah. I had to put a stop to that. Suppose that’s what Michael meant when he told me the universe gave me this power for a reason. And, I even had an idea of where to look.
That old boarding house. I’d lay fair odds I’d find them there.
