The Stars Afire: An Elemental Mysteries Anthology Read online

  “Wrestling?”

  “I suppose some people might call it that.”

  “You’re right. He hasn’t had a good jiujitsu match in ages. We should research facilities in the neighborhood. There have to be some options.”

  “Jiujitsu.” Chloe smiled. “Sure. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “Yes, you’re very smart for a human.”

  “Well, I’m glad one of us is.”

  Tenzin bit her lip to keep from laughing. She wasn’t as clueless about the tension between her and Ben as they all liked to think.

  She just didn’t know what she wanted to do about it yet.

  He lived most of his life at night. He slept when the sun was at its zenith and came to life with the stars. If workmen filled the house, he sometimes took refuge in the library, sleeping in a dark corner on the pallet Tenzin used for meditating. When he was tired, he slept, and it could be anywhere in the loft that had become home to the strange little family of human, vampire, and whatever hybrid Ben had become.

  He was in the library that night, searching for more information on a medieval Russian icon. Though Chloe had gone to sleep, Ben remained awake. He was lithe and silent, his body trained to move in ways that avoided attention. Tenzin watched him from her perch in the sheltered loft he’d designed with her in mind. It was sun safe no matter the hour of the day. It was plain but spacious. Most importantly, only Tenzin had access to it.

  Though Ben occasionally dragged a ladder over if he was feeling ornery.

  He wasn’t particularly tall for a modern human, though he was far larger than Tenzin. His features were a blend of the blood that had made him, half from the Old World and half from the New. His human father had been Puerto Rican. His mother, Lebanese. The blood of every continent flowed in his veins.

  But his eyes—those dark, watchful eyes—came from the vampire who had made him the man he was.

  Ben moved silently in the library, opening one reference book after another, jumping between his laptop computer and the books. He was following a trail of some kind, slowly narrowing his search area.

  He had become a fine hunter.

  It was an odd thing, Tenzin thought as she watched him, to see the slow transformation of a novice. Ben had never been a child to her. She’d met him when he was a teenager who looked no older than she did, but he had never been a child. Life had taught him early that fate was not kind to the young.

  While he remained human, he would grow older every year. Unlike Tenzin, whose face hadn’t changed in five millennia, Ben’s features became more rugged. His beard grew thicker. His expression more solemn.

  While he remained human…

  “I don’t want it, Tiny. You know I don’t. I’m too familiar with vampire life to idealize immortality.”

  He knew nothing.

  “Promise me.”

  Tenzin had made many promises over the years. She’d broken most of them.

  She spotted the map that he’d been avoiding for a year. It was sitting in a clear plastic sleeve on the edge of a bookshelf.

  Tenzin cocked her head and thought about the map to the rumored treasure of the famed privateer Miguel Enríquez, about an island still ravaged by a hurricane, and about an old woman who carried Ben’s last true link to the human world.

  “I don’t want it.”

  And yet…

  He lived most of his life at night. He slept when the sun was at its zenith and came to life with the stars.

  Are you truly human anymore, my Benjamin?

  Tenzin flew down to him, grabbing the map from the bookshelf before she sat next to him on the table.

  Ben looked up from his computer and spotted what she was holding. “Not this again.”

  “It’s been a year.”

  His expression was carefully neutral. “And we only got a letter back from the island a couple of months ago.”

  “We didn’t need to wait for a letter. You know that.”

  “We did. Giovanni—”

  “This isn’t about protocol, Benjamin.” She put the map in front of him and bent down. “This isn’t about appeasing the current vampire in charge of—”

  “Three, actually. There are three vampires in charge of Puerto Rico.”

  She kept talking and ignored the way the Spanish name rolled off his tongue. Ben was annoyingly attractive when he spoke Spanish. “This is about you avoiding your past. Avoiding a place that might still have some hold on you.”

  “You think so?” His eyes were heated. “Don’t pretend this is about me. I didn’t take this map. I wanted nothing to do with it. You wanted to hunt pirate treasure, Tenzin. You didn’t care what the island had been through or what conditions people were living in.”

  “Yes, I wanted to find the treasure. Other people are not my problem. The chaos directly after the hurricane would have cloaked our movements. And there was almost no electricity. You know I love that.”

  Ben closed his eyes. “Could you at least pretend to care?”

  “Why? I thought this wasn’t about your family, Ben. Why would I care about strangers?”

  He had no answer for that.

  “You care,” she said. “And that’s fine. Your caring doesn’t bother me. Maybe when we go down, you can do more than send anonymous money to your grandmother. But all I care about is following this map and finding treasure. You are delaying for personal reasons that don’t have anything to do with business.”

  He opened his eyes and glared at her. “Fine. You want to hunt pirate treasure, we’ll hunt. But we’re doing this in a respectful way, and we’re not charging down there without an introduction.”

  .“Excellent.” She sat up. “Then you’ll be happy to know I made a date for you and Novia to have drinks tomorrow night.”

  Why was Spanish so effective? She even found it attractive when he was cursing.

  Blood Apprentice will be available in Winter 2018 at all major retailers in e-book, paperback, and audio.

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  About the Author

  ELIZABETH HUNTER is a USA Today and international best-selling author of romance, contemporary fantasy, and paranormal mystery. Based in Central California, she travels extensively to write fantasy fiction exploring world mythologies, history, and the universal bonds of love, friendship, and family. She has published over thirty works of fiction and sold over a million books worldwide. She is the author of Love Stories on 7th and Main, the Elemental Legacy series, the Irin Chronicles, the Cambio Springs Mysteries, and other works of fiction.

  ElizabethHunterWrites.com

  Also by Elizabeth Hunter

  The Elemental Mysteries

  A Hidden Fire

  This Same Earth

  The Force of Wind

  A Fall of Water

  The Stars Afire

  The Elemental World

  Building From Ashes

  Waterlocked (novella)

  Blood and Sand

  The Bronze Blade (novella)

  The Scarlet Deep

  Beneath a Waning Moon (novella)

  A Stone-Kissed Sea

  The Elemental Legacy

  Shadows and Gold

  Imitation and Alchemy

  Omens and Artifacts

  Midnight Labyrinth

  Blood Apprentice (Winter 2019)

  The Irin Chronicles

  The Scribe

  The Singer

 
The Secret

  The Staff and the Blade

  The Silent

  The Storm

  The Seeker

  The Cambio Springs Series

  Long Ride Home (short story)

  Shifting Dreams

  Five Mornings (short story)

  Desert Bound

  Waking Hearts

  Contemporary Romance

  The Genius and the Muse

  7th and Main

  INK

  HOOKED (Winter 2019)

  Linx & Bogie Mysteries

  A Ghost in the Glamour

  A Bogie in the Boat