Ash (The Elemental Series, Book 6)

by Shannon Mayer

  “Friend, I don’t like this prank,” he mumbled into the complete darkness.

  I couldn’t help smiling, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “It’s not a prank. I need to rest after facing those two elementals and I’m not sure where to go next.” I closed my eyes and truly let myself feel the injuries that had been inflicted. Several broken ribs, a crack somewhere in my spine, two or three additional vertebrae had been damaged, and I was covered in bruises from the soles of my feet to my temples. Not to mention the amount of power I’d pulled through the earth had completely drained me. Channeling that much energy was . . . something I’d never done, and I still didn’t have a good reason why I’d been able to call that much of the earth’s power.

  “Sleep for a bit, Norm.”

  Our combined body heat warmed the small space and it wasn’t long before I fell asleep. Fitful and filled with dreams, the only good thing was that it allowed me to rest a little. Until the last dream approached me from the distance, as though it were wary of even making itself known to me.

  Peta was there, in the fog of my mind, and her normally bright green eyes were full of torment. “Ash, do not come for me. Do not tell Lark. It’s a trap.”

  “I know.”

  She shook her head slowly as if it pained her. “Then you must stay away. There is more than you or I realized at stake. Stay away. Do not come for Cassava. Leave me.”

  “And then she will kill you,” I said, doing my best to reach for her. Peta shied from me, but not without effort. With each step, I saw more injuries. Her tail had been broken, she had huge wounds in her sides, her fur fell in clumps as she spoke.

  “My death for your life, for Lark’s life. It is as it should be. I am a familiar,” she said. “You must not come.”

  “You are more than that, Peta.” I managed to get a hand on the fur around her neck and pull her tightly to me. She relaxed for a moment and then she pulled away suddenly.

  “I must go and you must promise me that you will not follow. If she has us both, then she will have a sure hold on Lark. If she only has me, then you can convince Lark not to fall to her.”

  I blinked and the dream faded, but the haunting pain in Peta’s eyes did not. “I am not leaving you to her.”

  Norm grunted and shifted his body, but a snort and a soft rumble from him told me he was still asleep. In the complete darkness, I sat thinking about Peta. Thinking about how she’d been able to contact me.

  I was no fool.

  I knew who was behind it.

  Raven. He was the only one who could use Spirit, the only one who could force Peta to say what she said, as well as enable her to come to me in a dream. “Damn you, Raven.”

  I shifted my weight so I could place both hands flat on the floor of our small cave.

  The earth all around me warmed, as though it was happy to have me there, happy to have me in her embrace. What I felt, though, was the calm beyond the earth, that the storm had subsided.

  I dug my fingers into the ground a little and wriggled them, encouraging the rock to open and allow us to leave.

  Nothing happened.

  I wasn’t worried, not at first. I adjusted my stance so my hands were right over the opening I’d created only hours before.

  Pressing my skin to the rock, I beckoned it carefully to open.

  Again, there was not even a flicker of a response. “Mother goddess, what is happening?”

  I hadn’t really expected an answer.

  Child, you have helped us wake as had your mate. So we wish to speak with you while your companion sleeps.

  I swallowed hard past the sudden desert in my mouth. “Who are you?”

  Do you not know? Can you not feel the truth in who we are?

  I’d have said the mother goddess, but the word “we” stuck out. “No, I don’t want to guess. I don’t like games.”

  But you are playing one, aren’t you? The world has shifted and changed. The old powers are awakening, Ash of the Rim. The old powers like the one you felt fire your blood as you faced the Sylph.

  A chill swept down my spine, making my breath catch in my throat. “That doesn’t make it a game.”

  Not to you, but to others it is a game. The Destroyer must be protected at all costs. The world yet has need of her strength, of the power only she can find, and you will help her find that power.

  “Are you telling me not to go after Peta?”

  There was silence long enough that I thought perhaps we were done. That whatever entity I spoke with, be it the mother goddess or some other creature, had fallen silent again.

  We do not know what path is right for you, Ash. Only that you will choose the right path. You must, as there is no other way we will all survive.

  I rubbed a hand over my face and let out a slow breath. “I will protect the Destroyer. With my own life, if I must. But you never told me who you are.”

  We are all around you. We are the fire in your blood, the water in your veins, the earth of your body, the air of your breath, the spirit that powers it all.

  The voice did fall silent then, not that there was much I could say to it after that. There was no way to answer an announcement that sounded like they were the mother goddess, but more.

  Much more.

  I put my hands on the rock again and pushed with all I had, a sudden fear of being trapped overcoming me. I fell out of the small cave, the rock crumbling around me easily, and into what felt like brilliant white sunlight to my night-darkened eyes. I rolled to the side and crouched, covering my eyes as they slowly adjusted. My heart rate slowed, telling me the fear had been more than a little real.

  From within the small cave came a snorting grumble and then Norm stepped out, his big blue-green eyes blinking against the sun. Of course, he was used to the very brightest of days, living where the sun rebounded off the brilliant white snow of the Himalayas.

  “Where are we going now, friend? That prank wasn’t very good.” He shook his head and scrunched up his mouth. “And can we eat? I’d like to eat.”

  Eyes still stinging a bit with the light, I stood and led the way down the thin edge of the beach. The waves on our right were sloshing happily as if they hadn’t been trying to kill us only hours earlier.

  Norm jogged to catch up to me but said nothing. He looked around us, frowning and smelling the air.

  I kept the hood of my cloak up, and my eyes forward. Ahead of us, I could see a pathway cut into the cliff that would allow us to climb to the top. An hour later, that’s where we were, and an hour after that, we found ourselves in a downtrodden pub that looked like it had been hammered hard by the hurricane, yet it still stood.

  We ordered food and went to the furthest corner of the pub. Norm seemed to understand this was serious business and kept his mouth shut. Our food was brought to us, but I kept my eyes glued to the small TV above the bar.

  The few humans in the pub muttered about the fairies causing the hurricane. Norm nudged me and snickered. “Not fairies, Sylphs.”

  I glared at him and he stuffed a meat pie into his mouth, chewing solemnly as he tried to speak around the mouthful. “Sorry.”

  I ended up with splatters of flaky pastry on my face from him. I wiped it away and dug into my own food as I kept an ear and half an eye on the TV. Finally, the world news came on, or I suppose what passed for world news.

  As it stood, the hurricane had killed eleven people in the flooding around Dublin. I shook my head at the waste of life, that the banished Sylph and Undine had been able to go that far with their rampage. But it could have been worse if they’d not been stopped. Much worse.

  That information, though, was not what I was looking for. I needed another sign, something that showed where the world was off kilter and wobbling because of Cassava’s presence. The anchor spoke about a few things I took note of, a few fires burning in southern Italy, but they’d already been tamped down.

  The announcer cleared his throat and blinked at the papers in front of him before he went
on. “Vrancea, Romania, has been experiencing some low-grade earthquakes. Though there is no evidence of anything more damaging on its way, the number of quakes and their positioning have scientists wondering if there is a previously undiscovered fault line.”

  Bullseye.

  There it was, that was what I was waiting for. I wiped at my face and stood, tossing some of the American money onto the table to pay for our meal. “Norm, time to go.”

  The Yeti shoved the last of his food into his mouth and grabbed my scraps too before he slid out from around the table. “You know where to go?”

  I nodded as I strode from the small pub. There were whispers from the humans as we left, wondering about the odd pair and how they were dressed. For a moment, I wondered what they saw when they looked at the Yeti. Just a tall man in a white coat?

  Or did their eyes dart away, fearing that they might be seeing things in their alcohol-induced stupors?

  I reached for the chakram that would cut through the Veil. Strapped to my side, I’d not thought to look for it before now.

  The leather strap was broken, sheared at some point in the tussle with the two banished elementals. “Mother goddess, no.”

  I spun and stared back the way we came. Would I be able to find it? I closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my hands into them. For the first time, anxiety flowed through my body, the fear that I would not be able to accomplish the task in front of me. That I would fail Lark as I’d failed her when her mother and brother were killed. That I’d lose Peta on my watch too.

  “NO.” The word exploded out of me in a rush of emotion and sheer denial.

  I would not fail her, no matter the cost. No matter the time it took, I would do this right. I spun on my heel and broke into a run back toward the cliffs.

  CHAPTER 11

  ll the way back to the cave where we’d rested, I thought that I’d dropped the circular blade, that it had come loose on its own. Not once did I think it could have been taken from me.

  More the fool was I for thinking that no one else had a stake in the game that had been laid out at my feet.

  I rounded an outcropping in the cliff at top speed, my cloak fluttering out around me and a few splatters of rain hitting my face. Norm ran behind me, doing his best to keep up.

  The scene in front of me made me slide to a stop.

  Crouched in the water was a man I didn’t know, except that I could see he was an elemental. He had dark hair that was cropped short, and he wore the clothes of a human, but I didn’t think he was human, not for a second. He held the chakram up, while his back was still to me. At first, I thought it was Raven, but he was too big. And Raven didn’t have the build of a fighter.

  This elemental did. Even if he was hiding as a human.

  “Missing something?” he asked.

  I had a sword and dagger free of their sheaths before my cloak had time to even settle around me.

  “Drop it,” I said.

  “Well, that’s rather rude, considering I took it from an Undine who’d been banished.” He stood and slowly turned to face me.

  I supposed some women would find him handsome. His eyes were a blue that bordered on violet, and his mouth seemed prone to smiling. But under that, I saw the truth.

  He was a survivor, someone who’d learned to fight in order to live. In every movement of his body, the twitch of muscles and the way his eyes seemed to watch everything and nothing, I knew he was no pansy ass.

  Which only meant one thing at the moment, and that was that I would be keeping my weapons up. “The blade is mine. I thank you for removing it from the Undine, but I want it back.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “You don’t even want to introduce yourself?”

  I frowned. “No.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Well, I do. I think we are going to have to deal with one another at some point, you know.”

  The words didn’t make any sense. Not really. Surprising me, he flipped the chakram toward me, and it buried into the ground about three feet in front of me. I didn’t move toward it.

  “Why would I have to deal with you exactly?”

  “I’m glad you asked . . . Ash.” He smiled. I did not.

  The only explanation for him knowing who I was . . . for how he’d sent the second Undine away without a fight . . . was that he was a Spirit user. Like Lark. Like Raven. Like Cassava had been when she’d held the pink diamond. I flicked my eyes quickly to his hands but saw no diamond.

  “Ah, good. You understand what I am then. You’re a quick study.” He nodded. “My name is Talan.”

  Norm walked out before I could stop him and clapped a hand on Talan’s shoulder. “I’m Norm, and we,” he pointed a thick finger at me, “are going to pull a great prank.”

  Talan laughed, but I still didn’t relax my stance. I didn’t trust him. That he was here at this moment told me he’d been following me. In my world, in my experience, I did not believe in coincidences of this magnitude. He was looking for me.

  But why?

  “What do you want?” I took a step, and then another, until I was standing almost on top of the circular blade. If I had to move fast, I wanted it close.

  “I want to discuss someone. I want to ask you about Larkspur.”

  Hearing her name on his lips sent a chill through me as surely as if I’d been tossed back into the raging ocean. “Why?”

  “Because she is like me. She can use Spirit and . . . that intrigues me.”

  I did not like the sparkle in his eye when he spoke about her. Every instinct in me told me to run him through now before he tried to steal her away from me. That thought alone made me pause and I shook my head. Jealousy was not my game, it never had been. Not even while Cactus chased Lark, using his childhood connection to her to press his advantage.

  “Stop messing with my head, Talan, or I’ll tell my friend Norm there to strangle you.” Norm grinned at me.

  Dutifully and with a speed that belied his size, Norm’s big hand went around Talan’s neck before the elemental could even blink. The Yeti was fast when he wanted to be. Good to know.

  “You want me to pop his head off?” Norm flexed his hand.

  Talan struggled and clung to Norm’s solid arm as his face turned red. The Yeti held him tightly enough to keep him from speaking.

  “No. Don’t pop his head off. He’s not a flower.”

  I put both swords away and picked up the circular blade, reattaching it to my belt. Norm held Talan easily and I realized something. Talan was letting him manhandle him. From where I stood, I could see the handle of a blade on Talan, well within his reach, just peeking out from behind him. But he didn’t go for it.

  Again, why? Why would he put himself in harm’s way?

  “Norm, let him down.”

  The Yeti did as I asked, and Talan gasped for breath. “Quite the grip on him.”

  I was done with this. “What game are you playing, Spirit Walker? I have no time for it, so either tell me or leave me to the task I have at hand.” I motioned for Norm to come back close to me. If I had to, I would make a leap through the Veil, away from this Talan and his ability to twist my mind. I’d had enough of that particular brand of worm shit while Cassava had been the queen. More than enough.

  “I . . .” He cleared his throat at the same time as he rubbed at it. “Not a game I set in motion, Ender. I am trying to see the pieces the same as you are. Cassava, Raven, Larkspur, you, and I. We are the puzzle pieces. The rest, I am not sure. If there even are any others.”

  His words rang true, and I knew in my gut it had nothing to do with Spirit being used on me. Or at least, I was hoping. Was Talan on our side? Or Cassava and Raven’s?

  If he’d wanted to kill me, I suspected he could have by simply setting Norm on me with a command and then come in for the final blow himself while I was busy fending off the Yeti. At least, that was what I would have done. And I could already see that Talan’s mind was that of a fighter. A warrior who did not sit on the sidelines.


  Even if he hid it behind a soft human exterior.

  “And what do you want to know of Larkspur?” I kept my voice even.

  “You love her.” It was a statement, not a question. I nodded.

  Talan cleared his throat and rubbed it one last time. “Then you and I are on the same side, Ash. I want to help her, but . . . she has to be ready to be taught. Willing to learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  “How to control Spirit, how to use it so she can do what she was born to do.”

  I didn’t like the way he was speaking. Like Lark was just a tool to him. “Why don’t you just go talk to her? She’s in the desert, alone. Perfect time to sit and chat.”

  Talan laughed and shook his head. “The world doesn’t work like that, Ender. There are traps set up around the desert for any foolish enough to try and see her. Traps set up by several of the elemental families, and not just her father. She can leave if she chooses to, but none can enter.”

  That surprised me, but then again, Lark had done damage in some way or another in all of the families. All to help them, but sometimes lancing a wound was more painful than the original injury.

  “She will want to learn,” I said. “When she trained as an Ender, she was single-minded in wanting to gain new skill sets. I don’t think you will have a problem with her.”

  His eyes widened. “You were her trainer?”

  I glanced away, thinking of Granite and his betrayal of our family. “One of them.”

  “And you fell in love with her?”

  I didn’t like his implication. “She’s not like that. I have known her for years.” I took a few steps back. “I have to go. Cassava . . . has taken a friend of mine.”

  Talan perked up. “Who?”

  For some reason, I held my tongue. “It does not matter, but if I do not go after her, I have no doubt Cassava will kill her.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Another woman?”

  I wanted to punch him, but I was old enough to know better. Even if the thought of his nose broken and bleeding under my fist made me smile. Talan smiled back, and it was as deadly as any Ender’s. “I wish you luck then in finding Cassava. She is a notorious snake once she goes to ground, coiling up and then waiting to strike at the last second.”