Spark of Fire Read online

  Spark of Fire

  The Academy of Elements 1

  Kat Adams

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Wrath of Wind

  More Adams Family

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Rob Emmett - Fire

  Another day, another extraction.

  But this one was different.

  It wasn’t the fact I had to leave Clearwater Academy during midterms to rescue yet another elemental who’d just come into her powers before she did something to expose our world. It wasn’t that the Council sent me ahead of the rest of my squad to babysit her, watch her from the shadows, until I had the green light to extract her from this non-elemental world. It wasn’t even the fact I was now freezing my ass off in Montana in the dead of winter, trudging through powdery snow that filled my boots and numbed my toes as I followed her to some Nelem science center.

  It was who I came to extract.

  Or, more specifically, what she was. To me. To the rest of my squad. I knew the instant I saw the powerful, striking elemental that she was the one we’d been searching for, the one who’d finally complete our circle. With her thick auburn waves that fell just past her shoulders, arresting hazel eyes, and a killer smile that robbed me of my sanity every time I saw it, she had the blood boiling in my veins. It had nothing to do with the primary element burning inside me. My fire kept me running hot, but this was more. She was more.

  Katy Reed was famous in her own right thanks to her lineage—a lineage she knew nothing about—and I jumped at the chance to lead her security detail. Now, as I kept watch over this woman I wanted more than my next breath, debating breaking protocol just for the chance to see that smile up close, I had to fight the urge to walk up to her, pull her into my arms, and see if she tasted as good as she looked.

  That gesture would probably earn me a knee to the balls and a trip to the infirmary when she used one of her elements to protect herself. Knowing my luck, it’d be the one element I didn’t have the power to control. Getting attacked by earth could kill my ability to call my elements and, if she hit me hard enough, could kill me. Period.

  So I’d continue to wait in the shadows for the rest of my squad, watching her, wanting her, wishing I could control this wave of heat that rushed inside me and settled in my groin, hardening my cock and keeping me in a constant state of arousal. Lust burned in my veins at the anticipation of taking those soft, full lips and consuming her the way she’d already consumed my soul.

  Being a fire elemental was both a blessing and a curse. I had the power to call fire, control it as easily as a Nelem controlled it with the click of a lighter. I could also call water and air, but fire energized me, as every elemental’s primary element did.

  And, like my element, it also kept me restless, unpredictable when I got heated up. I was a hothead with the shortest fuse on the planet. You looked at me wrong and I wanted to break your face. I needed Katy to keep me centered, to ground me. Only she had the power to do that. She just didn’t know it yet.

  She sat at the fountain gracing the lobby of the Missoula Science Center, her gaze down, her shoulders sagging. Why? What had her so sad? My heart pulled at the sight. People walked all around the lobby, looking at the open exhibits, some in line to pay the entrance fee, not one of them noticing her as she hid behind a veil of lustrous red hair. Oh, but I did.

  As I watched her sketch something on a pad she carried around like a shield, I couldn’t help but wonder… What was she shielding herself from? Why hide her true self in that webcomic she created a few years back? The biggest question I had bouncing around inside my skull was why hadn’t her powers manifested yet? I came into mine when I was seventeen and had had six years to work on my control. Katy was almost twenty-one and hadn’t shown any signs of being an elemental.

  But I knew. I felt the power of her calls, smelled her savory scent, even from the other side of the crowded science center lobby. Every elemental had a distinctive smell to their calls. Some were sweet. Others were putrid and repelled opposite callers. Katy’s, however, was delicious and made my mouth water. It was like the strongest pheromone, luring me to her.

  She suddenly glanced in my direction, and our gazes locked. The connection slammed into me, nearly knocking me back, it was so strong. My entire body tensed, making it uncomfortable as my cock pressed against the zipper of my jeans. I didn’t look away, and neither did she. Could she sense me too? Judging by the way her pretty hazel gaze widened, she sensed me, all right. It wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for, but I’d take it. At least she knew of my existence now.

  I offered her a slight smile in the hopes she’d do the same. Instead, she narrowed her gaze into a frown before turning from me.

  So much for first impressions.

  I was about to disobey a direct order and approach, explain who I was, why I was here, when her watcher slipped into the shadows behind me. She’d been the one watching over Katy, protecting her, up to this point. After this extraction, that’d be my job, mine and my team’s.

  “Where are the others?” she asked softly, barely above a whisper. “I specifically requested a quad squad for her security detail. We need all four elements covered.”

  “They’ll be along,” I said, equally as quietly, continuing to watch over my soon-to-be charge. “I’m a trio. I got this.”

  “And she’s a Reed,” she fired back. “You know what that means.”

  Yes, I knew exactly what that meant. She had powers beyond any of our comprehension. Powers yet to manifest. Powers that could save—or destroy—entire worlds. “Have there been any signs of movement?”

  “No, but I feel it. The darkness is getting closer. We have to get her to Clearwater before they find her.”

  I couldn’t agree more and drew a breath to respond when the scent of another elemental’s presence caught in my senses. I lifted my chin and inhaled sharply, stiffening when that scent hit me, stronger than before. The watcher was right. The dark elementals were closer than any of us had realized. When I picked up a second scent, I doubled up my fists.

  Shit, we were already too late.

  “Time to move,” I growled. Fuck protocol. If we didn’t do something to protect her, we’d lose a lot more than a single elemental.

  We’d lose the one destined to save our world.

  1

  Eyes were the windows to the soul. Wasn’t that the saying? What if someone didn’t have a soul? Would the eyes be dark? Cruel? Bottomless?

  I pondered that thought. People with no soul to guide them, wandering aimlessly in pursuit of whatever it was that soulless people pursued, totally oblivious to the world around them. I glanced across the lobby of the Missoula Science Center, at all the people wandering aimlessly, and laughed to myself.

  Maybe not soulless, but definitely oblivious.

  They had no idea of the world around them. Or more accurately, of the other world around them, at least the one I knew. Okay, I didn’t really know the other world, but I knew of the other world, at least of its e
xistence.

  It was the world I wished I belonged in.

  Since I was nine years old and first learned of the elemental world when my mom began talking to me about it, I’d wanted to be a part of it. Humans with the ability to call the elements? Control them? Where did I sign up?

  But, alas, I was not one of the chosen ones. Only those with the actual ability to control an element were called to join the elite group of elementals that made up that incredible world. I was one month away from retiring my fake ID and would have definitely showed my powers by now if I had them. Superpowers, if you asked me. Having the ability to call an element was definitely super. Hell, I’d take any powers. Telekinesis. Mind control. Time travel. Shape-shifting wouldn’t suck. I didn’t know if any of those powers actually existed, but if they did, I’d be happy with just one of them.

  I’d even settle for something lower on the coolness scale. Premonition. Glowing. Even the ability to perform a simple spell. I’d dabbled in the craft and had actually gotten a pencil to move about an inch. No, I didn’t worship the devil or any of his demon disciples. I’d only turned to spells out of desperation. My powers were weak at best, if getting a tree to drop its leaves at an alarming rate counted as a power. Then again, it’d been fall and in the middle of a windstorm, so there was that.

  Anyway, when full powers were a no-show, I had no choice but to dabble. I wanted powers so bad, I was willing to do anything—even spend an entire summer mastering a spell that moved a pencil a whole inch.

  Alert the media.

  I’d come to the science center to write a paper for my physics class, so of course that was the last thing on my mind. Instead, I played with ideas to use in my webcomic. I stared at the sketch pad in my hands, debating how to draw the eyes of the faceless villain. Soulless voids so black, they consumed the light. We were talking all-consuming, like a black hole. He was there whenever I closed my eyes. It was why I hated the dark, even on the edge of twenty-one.

  So why not breathe life into the darkness that had been torturing me the last six years, give or take? It seemed like a good idea at the time when I’d created a webcomic for the singular purpose of killing off the villain. I’d even given him a name—Onyx—black, like his soul. Or lack of. I’d created a kickass heroine who, well, kicked ass and always stopped the bad guy in the end. Amethyst was everything I wasn’t. Beautiful. Confident. Powerful. Pitting her against Onyx was the ultimate good versus evil. Good always prevailed.

  Or so the story went.

  As much as I wanted to kill Onyx and end the comic, be rid of the nightmares once and for all, I couldn’t. If I did, I’d also kill Amethyst. I refused to lose someone else important to me, not when I had any control over it this time.

  I ran my fingers over the shadow I’d used to hide Onyx’s face since his inception. It mocked me, daring me to finally put a face to the stranger haunting my dreams. Well, fine. Maybe then I could finally kill him off in the comic and be rid of the asshole for good. There were always other bad guys out there. I swept my hair behind my ear and chewed on my bottom lip as I deliberated my dilemma.

  Feeling the weight of someone watching me, I glanced up and caught sight of a man with short dark hair and an even darker scowl shadowed by a brooding brow. He riveted his attention on me, caressing me, piercing into my very being. Those broad shoulders took up some serious space. When our gazes snagged, a shiver of pleasure washed up my spine and warmed my skin, which was a very weird reaction to catching a stranger staring at you. A gorgeous stranger, but a stranger nonetheless.

  I turned from him to get a grip on my reaction. What the actual what was that? I didn’t have overwhelming reactions that tingled my lady bits when I saw a guy. I didn’t go all wobbly in the knees at the sight of a beautiful man completely focused on me. I just didn’t, dammit.

  Ignoring the sensation to run into his arms, wrap my legs around him, and talk about the first thing that popped up, I went back to sketching. I always felt better when I lost myself in my drawings. It didn’t take me long to draw in the eyes and shade them just right. I decided to up the creep factor and add a scar bisecting the right side of his face. Bad guys always had scars on their faces. I blinked at the eerie image once I’d finished. Goose bumps raced over my skin, lifting my arm hairs.

  Holy fartnarker.

  Onyx stared up at me from the page, his eyes threatening, sharklike orbs, burrowing into my subconscious. It was the kind of stare that immediately put a person on edge. I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d seen it before. I was a good artist, but I wasn’t that good. I couldn’t conjure up an amazing rendition of some dude’s demon face without ever seeing it. It was like my nightmare had come to life.

  God, please don’t let that be my superpower.

  The nightmares started after losing my mom. Well, I didn’t actually lose her. She left. There was a big difference between the two. One was accidental. One was done entirely on purpose. Not willing to reopen that wound, I ignored the twist in my stomach and set my sketch pad aside.

  I glanced up and caught the guy watching me. Again. If I were braver, I’d walk up to him and introduce myself as his future ex-girlfriend. Guys didn’t really stick around once they got to know me. I was weird. I got it. I didn’t need them always using that as a reason to ghost me.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t that brave. Instead, I’d just sneak away and spend the rest of the day in the safety of my room at home. My dad was rarely home anymore, so I pretty much had the house to myself. I’d give it a few more minutes in case the beautiful stranger did something more than stare. Like, I don’t know, actually talk to me instead of heating me from the inside out from the intensity of that dark gaze.

  Maybe I’d practice some new spells in the meantime. Anything was better than waiting for the dude to do more than watch me. Or worse, for someone from Missoula City University to approach and ask to buddy up on the assignment the professor gave us at the beginning of the week. Like half the MCU class I’d seen wandering around since the science center was part of the university and free to students, I’d waited until the day the paper was due before starting it.

  Now here I was, scrambling to fill the page with points on a topic I didn’t understand. What the hell did physics have to do with the weather? Atmospheric physics? That was a thing?

  Clearly, I wasn’t the only one to pick up on the professor’s comment about the weather exhibit at the science center and how it held all the answers. I’d been coming here after class for days and still hadn’t come up with anything more than a sketch of Onyx to add to the next webisode of the comic.

  As others mindlessly shuffled around the exhibits, I sat at the elevated pond in the center of the lobby and people watched. The pretty girls with flocks of boys surrounding them like bees to a hive. The group of smokers trying to sneak away for a quick cigarette. The loners like me off to the side, waiting for inspiration to hit while trying not to be noticed.

  Speaking of trying not to be noticed… I searched where I’d seen the beautiful stranger and deflated with disappointment. He was gone. Well, fine. One less ex-boyfriend in my future. I pivoted on the bench circling the fountain inside the lobby and studied the coins in the water. Some shiny, some dull, and others in between, they pretty much summed up the students at MCU. Or any school, for that matter. The shiny ones caught everyone’s attention, while the dull ones were the first to be overlooked. Like me.

  I was a dull penny. Or at least I tried to be. I wasn’t very popular. It wasn’t like my social calendar was bursting at the seams. It was all by design. I preferred isolation over cliques. It was easier than having to explain all the weird things that happened around me.

  A slight breeze lifted my hair from my neck, which made no sense since I was inside. Was there a window open? It felt good and cooled the sweat collecting on my forehead due to the ridiculous temperature in the lobby. It was February in Montana, for Christ’s sake. There were mountains of snow outside. This stifling heat made me stick
y and uncomfortable. Knowing my luck, I’d end up with sweat stains.

  I had nothing memorable about me, from my boring red hair hiding my boring features, to my boring body that was taking its own sweet time developing. I was a girl on the verge of twenty-one but stuck with the figure of a fourteen-year-old. I might be invisible to the students of MCU, but they’d definitely notice something like sweat stains.

  I pulled off my sweater and shoved it into my bag. Why was it suddenly so damn hot in here? I willed a cool breeze to invade the oppressive heat inside the building.

  And then…it cooled, just like that.

  A rush of chills danced across my skin like ants with sharp pins for dancing shoes. I scratched at the uncomfortable feeling teasing my neck and thought back to the guy in the shadows, wishing he was still there. For reasons I couldn’t even begin to explain, I felt better having him watching me, which made no sense. I didn’t know him from the creepy dude who’d been staring at a group of teenage girls for the past two hours, and yet, I wanted to.

  I glanced around the lobby, searching for the beautiful stranger. Instead, I caught someone else watching me. It took me a second to process who it was. My mouth fell open when it clicked.

  Shit. It was my superpower.

  Onyx, exactly as I’d drawn him, stared right at me. Well, sort of. His face was shadowed, as I’d pictured him—drawn him—for the comic. Until now. Shock held me prisoner, paralyzing my muscles. My breath hitched and froze in my lungs. He couldn’t be real. I’d just drawn him.