Chapter 36: Forged in Blood: Chapter 34

I sit on the edge of the bed and watch Axl, completely helpless in the face of his pain. All of our pain, because Xavier and I feel the same bone-deep, soul-aching despair that he’s feeling right now. I rub a hand over his hip, and he shivers, his blank eyes staring through me.

“What the fuck’s an elementai, Kai?” Xavier growls. “You’ve heard of these things before?”

When we first came to Montridge and I met other vampires, I was obsessed with the ancient magic. Then I met Osiris, a young wolf who was in Alexandros’s class and shared my love of the subject. He and I would pore over old texts the professor would borrow from the faculty library. But then Osiris graduated and left me behind. The pain overshadowed my interest, and then I found other things to dedicate my time to. “Yeah, but like I said, I thought they were a myth.”

Xavier paces from one end of the room to the other, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his sweatpants. “But now you know they’re not. So what the fuck are they? Why are they so powerful?”

“From what I recall, they don’t channel magic, they create it from nothing.” Xavier stares at me blankly. “You know how witches and demons channel magic from the elements?”

His brows pinch together like he’s deep in thought, which is a rare occurrence. “Yeah, like fire and water and shit?”

I arch one eyebrow. “Not shit, no. That would be fucking gross.”

He snarls. “You know what I fucking mean, Kai.”

A smirk tugs at the corner of my mouth. “Yeah, like fire and water and shit. Well, an elementai doesn’t need any of those things. They can make magic from nothing. An elementai with mastery over fire could be in a vacuum and still summon fire.”

His frown deepens. “So how does that make them so powerful? We don’t live in a fucking vacuum.”

I shake my head. “I know that, numbnuts, I was just trying to explain.”

He flops onto the sofa and tosses a cushion at my head. “Explain better.”

“It’s not only fire, it’s the magic that comes with fire. They can access magic anywhere. Without spells or incantations. It’s hard to explain, and I can’t recall everything I read.”

He pulls a face. “Still don’t get it. So she can make fire or air or water or whatever. Still doesn’t mean she’s this all-powerful being.”

“Yeah, well, I guess it’s complicated. But legend has it that they were so feared by all other magical creatures, including vampires, that they were wiped out hundreds of years ago. Before you and I were even born.”

Xavier snorts. “If these beings were so powerful, how the fuck did they manage to get themselves killed? Why didn’t they just wipe everyone else out?”

I swallow, thinking of the sweet girl with the pink hair we didn’t know until less than two months ago. “Because elementai are inherently good. They don’t use their powers for war or vengeance. It was a calculated strike, and by the time the genocide was underway, there were too few elementai left to make a stand. They were all wiped out. Every last one of them.”

“And now Ophelia is here, and she’s one of them?”

It’s unbelievable, yet it explains everything. “According to the professor, and when have you ever known him to be wrong about anything?”

“But he said elementai were vital for the survival of our species. Why would the vampires help wipe them out if that were true?”

I shake my head and shrug. “I dunno.”

“I guess we’ll wait and see if Ophelia is one of these things and hope she can cure our boy.” He nods toward Axl.

I take in the sight of him once more, unwilling to consider what it would mean if we lost him. I swallow down the lump of despair that sticks in my throat. “Yeah. Let’s hope so.”

Resting my hand on Axl’s leg, I tell him that help is coming and he’s going to be okay, but he goes on staring through me, teeth chattering, and mutters something I don’t quite catch. Something about fire and blood. His mind is closed off to me, so I can’t tell what delusions are running through his brain. But I continue to feel his anguish and his desperate need for Ophelia.