Dark Currents: Elementals, Book 1 Read online

  It’s not every day a woman faces down the bitch who owns her man’s soul.

  Elementals, Book 1

  Xia is sick and tired of having her ass served to her every bloody night. Exhausted, she soldiers on, working the Scottish dream beat alone, seeking to identify those who plot to awaken Aqua, one of the four slumbering elements. Should Aqua fully open her eyes, she won’t be happy until she picks her teeth with the bones of the last human on earth.

  When an assassin tags Xia, her new guardian arrives—a seal shifter linked to the very element she fears. Adam is certain that Markos, Xia’s boss and sometimes lover, is putting her in unnecessary danger. But Xia has tasted the inhuman cruelty that is Aqua and will do anything to stop her, even relive a terrifying, perilous spell.

  Now that Adam has been assigned to protect her witchy spirit wanderings, Xia has to trust him. It isn’t his power or ability she’s uneasy about, but the fact he’ll have to take all the pain meant for her.

  Then the Chamber ruthlessly deploys Xia and Adam in a dangerous ritual. Adam can protect her body and defend her mind…but nothing can safeguard her from the backlash of the world-changing knowledge she discovers.

  Warning: This adventure is blatantly Scottish and dives into save-the-world sex with two of the hunkiest magical men you’ll ever meet.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Dark Currents

  Copyright © 2010 by Mima

  ISBN: 978-1-60928-155-7

  Edited by Anne Scott

  Cover by Kanaxa

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: August 2010

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Dark Currents

  Mima

  Dedication

  To Lisa

  Author’s Note

  Any geographic errors in my description of Scotland are mine, or artistic license. The author highly recommends a visit to the Isle of Skye, accessed via the ferry at Mallaig.

  Your Guide to the Magical World

  Advocate: the manager of a group of morphi, often an elemental. Typically also in charge of any ramparts assigned to the morphi.

  Anchor: the magic user who holds on to the morphi’s psyche while they perform the subsumation ritual. The anchor’s responsibility is to help the morphi re-form to as close to their former self as possible.

  Astral Plane: a psychic construct for the magical world where a soul can travel freely. Damage taken there can be reflected in the physical world. Also called the etheric plane.

  Chamber: the judicial body of all magic-using races whose purpose is to monitor the magic in the world in order to keep the elements asleep. Most magicals accept the necessity of the Chamber, even if they do not contribute to it.

  Dragon: a reptilian race of magic users with the power to shapeshift.

  Dreamer Witch: magic users genetically capable of attuning themselves to the elements and riding their unconscious, sleeping minds.

  Dreamtime: The time when light fills the sky but the sun is not in it. It is when an element’s consciousness is closest to our magical reality, and can be sensed through ritual magic.

  Elemental: a magical with an affinity for an element, who also is aware of them. Elementals are strongly solitary and do not like to work together. They can be any kind of magical race. This mutual awareness makes the elemental stronger than others of his or her race.

  Elements: one of four conscious ancient entities that rule the natural world and strongly influence the magical one. Air, named Aer, and earth, named Terra, are androgynous. Water is feminine and named Aqua. Fire is masculine and named Ignis. Ideally, they should all be in a resting state.

  Gloaming: a Scottish term for extended twilight, a geographical trick of their high latitude.

  Morphi: a Chamber-appointed magical assigned to psychically work the dreamtime in order to spy on the elements’ dreams and, through them, criminal magicals who are trying to rouse them. Usually a dreamer witch.

  Lord and Lady: the two halves of the deity worshipped by a wide range of magicals.

  Magical: any race of magic users relegated by humans to religion or mythology, but very much alive and involved in the world. Angels, elves, orcs, werewolves and lamia are all examples. Their existence is known of by many humans, since many of the magicals are not particularly interested in hiding their nature, but they are not publicly acknowledged except by small communities. They can be any nationality.

  Minotaur: a bull-related race of magic users, appearing human from the knee up.

  Night Watch: the emergency service of the Chamber.

  Selkie: a seal-related race of magic users, they can shapeshift with the use of a seal skin.

  Rampart: a psychic magical who guards a morphi against any astral attack or tracking while he or she is working during the dreamtime.

  Sprite: a fairy-like race of magic users, they are extremely tough.

  Subsumation: a ritual where a morphi travels so far into an element’s consciousness she becomes part of it, cut free of her own psyche. It is a rare ritual, with the potential for death or mind-wipe. Also called the ghosting or the sinking, it is used only during times of dire need, when an element’s intentions need to be determined.

  Watcher: a Chamber-designated secret soldier, used as bodyguard, assassin or spy.

  Wendigo: a magical whose body is humanoid-hawk, an Algonquin race of magic users.

  Chapter One

  Xia was an expert on dreams. It was safe to say fewer than a dozen souls on the planet had more knowledge than she. Clawing her way across the sweaty, plaid sheets, she choked, body trembling. Her mind tumbled but already her training kicked in. She gasped in one raspy breath. Flashback, she realized. Not real.

  Coughing shook her. A body could be slow to strip off the mind’s tricks. And a morphi, a Chamber-trained dreamer witch, knew that invisible magic killed just as surely as physical steel. With another rasping breath, she wrestled her pounding heart. It’s been twenty years since I survived Aqua’s mind. I’m in Scotland. I’m Xia.

  Brushing her long, tangled auburn hair from her hot face, her fingertips grazed wet cheeks. Cursing her own weakness, she scrambled to scrub her face dry. I’m not drowning in my own bed. Lady take it, she knew better than to lounge half-awake, even well after dawn. A morphi’s magic worked in the twilight hours of half-light, but with so many years of missions, she had plenty of nasty memories. Her dreams were stronger than most, and her nightmares… Well there were instances where morphi went insane overnight. She’d been so cozy, so lazy, and her subconscious had slipped her a zinger.

  She rolled to the edge of the bed and curled her mauve-painted toenails into the bland, sturdy beige carpeting of her rental cottage. Her shoulders still heaved with deep breaths. She’d been here for a frustrating month. If it were a normal assignment, failure to glean information out of her dreamlike elemental patrols would piss her off. But when the assignment was this personal, this momentous, this dire… Her fingers clenched so tight around the edge of th
e mattress she threatened to puncture the sheets.

  She surged to her feet and stormed to her closet, rifling roughly through the hangers. Some psycho nutjob in the magical community was trying to wake Aqua up. Was succeeding. Xia was one of a very few who knew from the inside just how joyous it would make that bitch to drown the world. A huntress’s hunger to find the guilty gnawed in Xia’s gut. Stupid magicals were trying to upset the balance of the sleeping four elements and she was going to stop them. Despite the stench of fear-sweat still drying on her skin, she chafed at having to wait until later that evening to dive into her patrol again, seeking along the edges of the elements’ dreams for answers. She was a soldier for the Chamber, the powerful magicals dedicated to maintaining the four elements’ unconscious state. Working despite emotion was second nature.

  Xia stared at the meager choices hanging before her. The limited wardrobe was typical. When you travelled as much as she did, your luggage was your apartment. She pulled out a cream V-neck tee, a moss-green peasant skirt, and Aunt Natty’s hand-knitted brown sweater. Despite it being July, Scottish mornings on the Atlantic coast were usually cool. Perhaps today she’d try to get online to do some girl-time shopping. A few new outfits were called for, to shake off the funk.

  This morning’s flashback was the icing on the cake. She was going to get more aggressive. After all, lying low and dogged persistence weren’t getting her anywhere. Last night, once again, Aqua had sensed her on patrol and sent some piranhas. Being a psychic chew-toy hurt. The most optimistic view of her failure could be that she was at least keeping Aqua amused.

  In the kitchen, she fired up the laptop and the countertop electric kettle. In the bathroom, she went through her morning sequence, thankful for the good skin her witch genes blessed her with even at the young age of 116. In the middle of brushing, she found herself humming “da roof, da roof, da roof is on fire”. Spitting her toothpaste in the sink, Xia stared at the faint bruises beneath her gray eyes, making her passably pretty face more pale than usual and her freckles more stark. What was with the fire songs that kept popping into her head the last few days?

  “Try not to act any crazier than you already are, Xia. Keep it together or they’ll put you back with a counselor.” She glared sternly at herself and rinsed her mouth.

  She’d fought hard to piece herself back together after she’d Returned. Very few witches suffered the subsumation ritual into an element’s dreaming consciousness, and not all of those emerged whole. She was lucky. Xia wasn’t about to descend into desperate paranoia again.

  She had a new thought about what her brain was trying to tell her with the recent fire songs. Markos. Wiping her face with the barely damp cloth to avoid pure water on her face, a coping mechanism Dr. Smith had taught her, she moved into the kitchen, looking for her cell. She’d only put the pattern of odd songs together yesterday and didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of the obvious.

  Markos was her boss of eighty-six years, officially titled an advocate. He’d occasionally been her partner, and even her lover. He was a massive, sexy minotaur in his prime…and also an Ignis elemental. She never thought of Markos without also feeling warm, inside and out. He was a good friend, most of the time. When he wasn’t being an irritating bull, a chauvinist Greek or a secretive boss. Xia wasn’t outright prescient, being a dreamer witch, but she did tend to get hunches.

  Sure enough, a text from Markos was waiting.

  New assignment. Pick up package at post. I’m sorry.

  After staring at the message for a full minute, she deleted it with cold fingers. So. They wanted to send her back inside another element. The situation had reached critical and the Chamber was ready to sacrifice a few morphi, ordering them to subsume themselves into one of the four sleeping elements. She picked up the washcloth off the floor, where it had fallen. That bastard. He could have called, told her in person. But he’d been cowardly. She knew this wasn’t his choice, so she wouldn’t blame him. The order came from above. But he’d handed her a nightmare in a mere text message, which hurt.

  If she’d managed to dream anything in the past month, gotten any decent information, would this new assignment still have arrived? If she managed to pull something out of the ether tonight, wringing Aqua’s neck for her secrets, could she get out of this order? What about a protest to insist someone else be assigned? After all, it had taken two years for her to be cleared for duty after she’d Returned last time. Yet apparently they were going to send her back, deep inside an alien mind.

  Making her tea with extra honey, Xia inhaled above the mug. Stilling her mind, she found control in the nonmagical ritual of morning tea. The first sip braced her and the cheerful print of Highland Terrier puppies over the sink reminded her of the innocence that existed out there, clueless. I am a morphi. This is what I signed on to do, and now it’s what I am. I follow the Chamber’s orders. Quit being weak, or the elements will own you. She took another swallow and almost believed her pep talk.

  She checked her email, sent the same depressingly empty report on last night’s patrol, and glanced at the headlines. Her gaze caught on one and she glared at it, anger firing in her blood at her failure to find answers. Malaysia Mauled by Mega Monsoon.

  Oh yes, Xia was born a dreamer witch. But she’d chosen to become a morphi, a spy dedicated to keeping the Four in balance and asleep. She had her reasons why. Their names had been Mom and Dad. That didn’t explain the pride with which she’d trained, or the extra reserve of will she fed on to twist inside an element’s dream. I’m a damn fine morphi. I am a powerful guardian of the planet, working to defend all life. I’ve done it before and I can do it again.

  Xia pulled on her sweater and took her white wicker basket off the counter. Pausing at the door, she smiled at the giant straw hat hanging there. It was much too stylish to be called a sombrero, but it had been made in Mexico. A bright blue ribbon threaded around the base and through the brim, so it could be tied on firmly. She put it on, feeling her sister’s warmth from across the planet.

  Under the carport waited the Schwinn, her pride and joy. When it had become clear after the first week that this was going to be a long placement, she’d had it shipped from Glasgow. The paint glittered bright royal purple, the handle grips were sunshine yellow, and the seat was contoured white leather. She’d added the wicker basket herself. Once she got it started, it felt like she could pedal all day, and sometimes she did take lovely daytrips through the winding country roads near Mallaig, on this western Atlantic shore of Scotland.

  Taking a deep breath of the clean air, she enjoyed the fact she couldn’t smell the ocean this morning. Enough. It was time to get on with the day. She set off down the cottage’s unpaved lane. She kept her mind determinedly blank of what waited in the package at the post, blank of thoughts of Aqua, or Ignis for that matter. Navel-gazing was a useless activity unless you were trying to prove to a shrink you weren’t crazy, and Xia was over that.

  When she came into the village, she parked her bike behind a board papered with local advertisements. Stopping first at the grocery, she chatted with Anne, the sweet owner who’d been so friendly to her. She picked up a sausage pasty for lunch. She chatted with Mr. Branough, dozing on the bench outside the post, with his border collie Rougher sleeping across his feet.

  She chatted with the postmaster, asking his opinion of Talisker’s gold label and agreeing with him that it was their best. She took the small, innocent white envelope being held for her without looking at it, and kept her smile fixed in place. Focusing on the envelope made the sight out the old wooden doorframe that much more of a shock.

  Time stopped. Her blood ran cold. Macgregor the goat was eating her hat.

  “You beast!” Xia rushed out of the post office flapping her mail.

  The goat remained unmoved, standing planted on the sidewalk, munching with contented, circular jaw strokes.

  Xia snatched her sweater off her bike’s handlebars and beat it on the rump. “No! Bad goat!”

>   He started, dropped the straw hat, trampled over it, and clambered up onto a fieldstone wall.

  Xia picked up the bedraggled hat and wiped goat spit off it with a grimace. “This is Scotland. You’re supposed to be a fluffy, grass-loving sheep, not a goat.” She forlornly dusted the wide brim, now containing a missing arc.

  The goat flicked his tail at her. If she were a Christian, she’d say its slitted eyes looked demonic. But she’d met cuter demons. Better behaved ones too. This wretched creature was more of an orc.

  “Ah, now. There’s a shame. Macgregor would eat the pope’s hat, he would.” Elderly Mr. Branough still sat on the bench against the gray stone wall of the tiny post office. He had on a flat tweed hat, a tweed sport coat over an ivory wool fisherman’s sweater, oiled leather pants, and tall rubber boots. If he looked any more like a stereotypical British country gentleman, some tourist would come along and put him in a scrapbook. He thumped his cane. “Young rascal.” His devoted old border collie lifted his head, looked at his master, and lay down again with a groan.

  “Oh, Mr. Branough. My sister gave me this hat. It came all the way from Mexico.”

  “Aye, well, take it to the missus. She’ll put some pretty plaid across that bit missing and make it right.”

  Scotland was a land of misty, rolling glens of heather. It was ruins on craggy cliff tops. It was little thatched cottages with roses along the whitewashed walls. But it was also incessant wind, clouds of midges, and people who were brutally matter-of-fact practical. Xia loved it all, except Macgregor.

  “I’m that sorry, lass. I was dozing with Rougher, here. Such a bonnie day.”

  Xia put the damaged straw hat on her head with a sigh, tying the ribbon under her chin. “That’s all right, Mr. Branough. You weren’t tasked with guarding my things. Enjoy the sun.”