“We can’t find her.” A tall blonde stepped forward, concern evident as she thinned her lips. “The signal is right here, but she’s not.”
A man with huge arms covered in tattooed wards popped in and did a quick visual sweep with a steely gaze, surveying the situation. He set his hard jaw as he regarded all the members of the patrol who’d been summoned here. “Listen up. We’ve got a job to do, and that’s to hunt down the dark elementals that triggered the ECAD. The fact we’ve got one of our own out there does not change the situation. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the elementals all replied.
“Pair up. No one patrols alone. Which one of you is the new guy?” He swung his attention to Rob as my fire elemental stepped forward. “What’s your primary?”
“Fire. I can also control air and water.”
“Presley,” the man barked. A pretty redhead broke from the crowd. “You’re with the new guy.”
“Fire is her weakest element,” I offered, forcing my focus on finding Stace and not the fact my boyfriend had just been partnered up with an auburn-haired beauty. “Whoever attacked her may have used fire.”
He acknowledged my statement with a curt nod but kept his attention on the members of the patrol. “Teleport around these woods. Status checks every ten. Go!”
“What can I do?” Clay asked from behind me.
“Are you a member of the patrol?”
“Hell yeah, I am,” he lied. I fought the urge to protest, not wanting two of my boyfriends running around the woods hunting for the dark elementals who’d attacked Stace. “I’m air and can also control fire.”
“Stick with us.”
“Us?” I asked.
“You’re the prophecy.” It didn’t come out as a question. He studied me, then Clay, then back to me. “Why are you here?”
“Stace is my friend.”
“She’s my friend too, but that’s not why I’m here. We all have a job to do. Yours is to stop the darkness from taking over our world. Mine was to lead this patrol, but now that you’re here, my job is to protect you.”
“What?” I didn’t like that. At all. I could protect myself, thank you very much. My safety didn’t trump Stace’s. “What about finding her?”
“The needs of one doesn’t outweigh the needs of many.”
Brenda had said the same thing at my extraction. No way was I going to let Stace die because this patrol focused on hunting the dark elementals instead of saving the good one. I walked up to him, refusing to be intimidated by his size—which was huge and…intimidating. “Look, dude. Stace is out there. You can either help me find her or you can stay out of my way while I do it without you. Got it, Hulk?”
He narrowed that steely glare and brought his hands to his large hips. “Then what are we waiting for?”
Whew. I didn’t know what I would have done had he fought me on this.
“The name’s Brooks. It’s not Hulk. It’s definitely not dude.”
“And I’m Katy, not prophecy.”
“Clay Williams.” He inserted himself into the tense, growly introductions. “I like sunsets and long walks on the beach.”
Brooks threw him a baffled yet hard glare. Everything about this enormous guy was hard.
Wait. That came out wrong.
We searched every inch of the woods for what seemed like hours, calling her name, looking for anything out of place. Brooks kept checking his ECAD, using it as a locator device, but just as we landed right on top of the blinking dot, it disappeared and reappeared somewhere else. It was like the battle teleported in and out, in and out.
“Montana,” Clay said tensely when we hit another blinking dot, only for it to disappear. He held out his hand, palm down. “You feel that?”
I didn’t even realize my neck hairs were tingling with the prickle of a call until I purposely focused on it. “Yeah. What is that?”
“The echo of a battle.” Brooks turned in a circle, his arms out. “I feel it too. It’s one of the things we eliminate when we clean the scene after a battle. We can’t get to them all, unfortunately, so if Nelems pick up on the feeling, they write it off as a variety of things. Feeling someone watching them. Their instincts kicking in. Whatever. But it’s really the residuals of elements being forced to fight each other. There was definitely a battle here.”
“We have to find her.” Even if it took us the rest of the night and calling in the elemental search and rescue. We had to. That was the only option.
We searched for another hour and still didn’t see anything. Suddenly, my neck hairs went into a frenzy, and the smell of burnt human hair mixed with burnt rubber and maybe even a little rotten copper pipes was so strong, I coughed as it burned my throat. Thick tension settled around us and sent the alarms sounding inside my head. Clay and I exchanged looks and didn’t need to say anything, both knowing the other noticed the sudden change in the atmosphere.
Brooks immediately skidded to a stop as he glanced behind me. “What is that?”
Clay and I whipped around, responding in unison, “Fuck me.”
Fog, dark and ominous, rolled in fast, turning day into night as it blocked out the light. My hand began to throb, and I didn’t have to look at it to know it had started to glow again. As the fog closed in around us, my skin burned, the source stemming from my palm.
“He’s here,” I whispered and braced myself for the imminent attack. The wave of burnt hair mixed with death slammed into me, and I almost gagged as the fog swallowed us. Just as before, the mist made it impossible to see. It was so thick, it even muted the noise. “Clay?”
“Right behind you,” he said and placed his back against mine before grabbing my hand.
Brooks appeared and grabbed my other hand, then Clay’s. “We don’t let
