The Elementals

 

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~About~

What do all magic users have in common?

Full of fire, their passion is nothing to be reckoned with.

Effortless as water, though they’ll wash away any opponent who steps in their path.

Unbreakable like wind, they have the potential to destroy cities.

One with nature, able to shatter the Earth you walk on without giving it a second thought.

Speaking to those on the other side, the misunderstood are some of the strongest of them all.

From thirteen authors comes a set filled with elemental witches and warlocks. Fans of dark paranormal tales, intrigue, suspense, and heat will devour these stories one by one.

Combine all of the elements and you’ll discover an anthology like you’ve never seen before.

~Excerpt~

From my story, Like Water to Stone: 

“Jesus H. Christ, Ashlyn. I don’t know what to do about you anymore,” he muttered and I turned my head blinking at him blearily. I was on my stomach, lying across my bed, and I felt like death.

“You didn’t just lose your sister,” I mumbled and he scoffed.

“Been there, done that, with my brother a few years back.”

“Your brother,” I muttered. “Not your twin.”

He dropped onto the edge of the mattress and I winced when it bounced me. Savage old man.

He sighed and dropped his forearms to the worn denim over his knees, clutching his hands together between them.

“I ain’t your daddy, girl.”

I barked a bitter laugh and said, “Thank fuck for that.”

He smirked, his gray grizzled cheeks bunching, deep and endearing smile lines bracketing his mouth. If I were older or he a little younger, I might have gone there but we just weren’t like that. He really was like some weird-ass father figure to me and I just couldn’t go there as a result.

Hatch was a bail bondsman and skip tracer by trade, and I was somehow his apprentice. Okay, maybe not somehow. I’d been a persistent bitch and had bugged the shit out of him to teach me the trade bringing my unique sort of . . . talents to the table as a bargaining chip.

I’d made both myself and Hatch a lot of money as a result.

“I know it hurts,” he said gently. “But what you’re doing right now? The self-destructive thing? Not going to let you do it, baby girl.”

He swatted me sharply on my exposed ass cheek where my undies rode up and I yipped sharply. It was when he did shit like that it was made abundantly clear he was so not my daddy. Ugh.

I pushed up into a sitting position with a groan as he went out into the rest of my shitty ass Boston apartment so I could get dressed. I winced and wished like hell for Miri’s hangover remi-tea, but that just brought a fresh wave of pain.

Fuck.

Today was just the day for it, eh?

My twin, Oaklyn, was dead. She’d died from cancer, and my circle sister Miri, the healer, should have seen it— but she didn’t. It wasn’t her fault but she blamed herself and Gwen, and older witch and a sort of mentor to Miri had told me and Blyn to give her space, give her time, and that she would contact us when she was ready.

Oaklyn had died, and the only pain worse than being severed from my twin was the fact our circle had disbanded and I’d been essentially cut off by Miri as well. I at least still had Blyn— sort of, but my circle sister of Air had her own problems and a super demanding job with the Boston police when she wasn’t on loan to the FBI.

Me? I had my own place fighting the good fight, but I couldn’t stand the reactive lifestyle of law enforcement. I preferred being a little more proactive when I could.

I mean, that’s where my talents lay.

While Blyn could see what was and what is, I had the talent of seeing what is and what could be . . .

Made me a prime candidate for bounty hunting and skip tracing. Was super handy when you could scry out what your quarry was currently doing and catch glimpses of where they were about to be.

Made it impossible for them to rabbit in a lot of instances. Hadn’t taken me long to get Hatch on board with my particular set of skills and his business, which was already pretty damn good, was booming, now.

He was as practical as a businessman could get, so I was having a moment as I dragged on last night’s jeans where I had to stop and wonder if he was here out of genuine concern or if it was more about protecting one of his more favorable money-making assets.

Witches of my caliber were few and far between. The Catholic church had been seeing to that shit for generations. Those of us left were the sons and daughters of the witches they couldn’t hang or burn. Fucking assholes.

I dragged my tight-fitting camisole style black tank over my head and discarded it in what I thought was the pile of dirty clothes on my floor. I went for the clean pile and found a sports bra, smelled it, winced, discarded it immediately, flung my cami onto the opposite pile where the sports bra came from, and rooted through the pile of darkness that rested beneath it.

 

Text Copyright © 2020 A.J. Downey DBA Timber Philips

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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