As beautiful as it all was, my sight narrowed on the man who’d brought me here.
Talan stood to one side of the rushing water, a book open in his hands. Dark hair and blue-violet eyes, and his height made him stand out in all the elemental families. As a Spirit Walker, an elemental who could only use Spirit, he was something of an anomaly and one of only a few of that line left. He snapped the book shut, holding it loosely in one hand as he smiled at me. “I see you decided to join us finally.”
Us. Who the hell was he talking about?
Not that it mattered.
I took my spear from my hip and twisted it once, connecting the two halves before I swung it around and pointed the tip at him. “I’m leaving. You can either show me the way out and we remain on good terms or you can make me force it from you. I doubt that will leave us friends.”
He tipped his head to one side and gave a sad—fake sad, I should say—smile. “Even after all you’ve seen? You cannot fight me, Lark, and we both know that. And you aren’t leaving, either. You came to train, so that is what you will do. Pamela was only a minor diversion.” He spoke again as if I was a child he could bluster into staying.
Think again, asshole. I may have even muttered that under my breath because Peta winked back at me. Or maybe she picked it up from my mind, our connection such that she often did.
I snorted. “You think you can stop me from leaving? I asked nicely, Talan. Remember that when you are on the end of my spear.” I flicked the tip of the weapon at him.
He spread his hands wide. “Go ahead and try, then. Again.”
I flushed. He was right, of course; I’d tried to fight him and lost. But I wouldn’t give up, not that easily. And now, I was more prepared. I knew how strong he was in Spirit.
The lies in my own head would have astounded me any other time, but they were all I had left to me. The belief that I could get away from him was the only thing keeping me from losing my mind. Because if I was trapped, even in a beautiful space, it was no different than an oubliette. Trapped and unable to use my power. A cold sweat broke out down the length of my spine.
“Easy, Lark,” Peta whispered, pressing her body against my calf. “You are not alone. I am with you.”
Talan went on. “If you can force my hand, then you will obviously not need training, and I will let you go. Happily.” His smile said otherwise, though, and I didn’t trust his words.
Peta snorted. “She is stronger than even you know, Talan. You underestimate her.” A bluff, she was bluffing and we both knew it.
He shrugged. “Then she can prove it. Use your power, child of the earth. Show me that you’ve got the balls to take me, as the humans would say.”
I didn’t hesitate, but reached for my connection to the earth. I could pull myself through the rock, make both Peta and me slide through as if it were water, using it to find a way out. A trick that as far as I knew, no other earth elemental could pull off.
“Peta, come to me.” I held a hand out to her. I wasn’t going to face Talan. He wouldn’t play fair. He’d use Spirit. And I’d end up flat on the floor or worse. I would get us out of here, and then we’d find Shazer.
I was banking that he was still outside somewhere, waiting for us at the top of the waterfall where Talan dropped him into unconsciousness.
She turned and leapt into my arms. I fed the power of the earth through my body and hers, prepping us both, making us one with the element of my soul.
“I hate this part,” she muttered. “I always get dirt up my nose.”
I tightened my hold on her and let the power trickle through to my feet, urged the earth to welcome me home… and nothing happened. I didn’t slide into the ground as I had so many times before. I frowned and pulled harder on my connection to the earth. Talan wasn’t blocking me exactly, but he was doing something worse. He was letting me reach my strength but then blocking me from doing anything with it. A perfect storm of frustration welled up in my chest.
He watched me, his eyes carefully neutral. “Are you ready to admit you need to be trained? Strength is not everything, Lark.”
I could barely contain the fury that grew in my heart. I’d been here before. I’d been held in an oubliette and cut off from the earth and my loved ones. I’d been blocked from my power for years by Cassava who’d wanted me to believe I was weak and useless. I would not do this again.
Peta leapt from my arms. “Talan, you are holding her prisoner?”
“I am saving the world. And she is a part of that.” He spoke as calmly as if she’d just asked him what he’d like in his tea.
“Bullshit. This is a game to you.” I spun my spear around. “A game with rules of your own making that change as you see fit. There is more than one way to force your hand.”
His eyes widened and he laughed at me. Not a soft laugh, but a full-bellied laugh that did nothing to calm my growing rage. “You would fight me?”
“If you aren’t a chickenshit who uses Spirit to win a fair fight. Yes, then, I would fight you.”
His eyes narrowed. “I am no coward.”
Strike a point for me. I now had a button to push on him.
I answered by leaping toward him, knowing I would need the element of surprise. I swung my spear out in a wide arc. I held the haft at the very end so my reach with the blade was farther yet. The weapon cut through the tumbling water first and I twisted my wrist to bring it down toward his thigh. I didn’t want to kill him, only maim him so I could break his concentration and his hold on me, and then Peta and I could escape.
He sidestepped my spear blade easily. Dancing back a few feet, he tucked his toe under something and kicked it up into his hands. A spear, just like mine, from the long wooden haft to the curved and sharpened blade at the end. We’d sparred once, but that had been light and easy, with no real effort put in on my part. He might be good.
But I was better.
CHAPTER 5
Talan’s spear cut through the air at a speed that shocked me. I swept my weapon up and caught his blade on mine—barely in time to keep it from slicing into my calf. The steel on steel screeched as we pulled back and reassessed one another. Talan didn’t hesitate for more than a few seconds in his attack, and once he started in on me, he didn’t slow. This wasn’t like the fight before when I’d been in the Deep. No, he’d been holding back then but had made it look like he was doing all he could.
He truly was an asshole.
We circled the central funnel of water, trading blows back and forth, and each move left me another half second behind until I was barely fending him off. In desperation, I turned my spear around and drove the wooden haft into his middle, stealing the breath from him and driving him back a few feet. I should have pressed my advantage but I couldn’t. I needed to breathe and pull myself together. Sweat poured down my face and trickled along my spine and arms, and I tried again to reach for my element in the hopes the blow would have broken Talan’s concentration.
No such luck, my elements slid through me like water through fingers. I couldn’t hold either Spirit or Earth even with him winded.
Talan stood, one hand on his belly. His eyes were not full of anger at all as I’d thought they would be. If anything, I would have said he was laughing at me. “Are you ready to concede?” He spat off to one side.
I glared at him. “Let me go. I won’t stop trying to free myself, no matter how much stronger you are than me. You will never be able to let your guard down.”
“Nope, can’t do that. But it’s nice to know you are seeing you can’t win.” He winked and I glared at him wishing I could pummel him with rocks.
Without another word, he came at me again, forcing me to back up even while I tried to push him away. We used our spears as staffs, the hafts slamming into one another, shuddering under each blow. It was a true test of strength as we pitted our body weights and muscle against each other. Twice he caught my fingers with the staff with a hard, quick rap, making them numb, but I held on through the sharp p
ain. If I let go of the spear, I would be done.
I would not be done until he let me go.
We slammed our spears together, and he reached across and twisted his arms to one side which brought me in close, my arms locked between the two hafts.
“Do you yield?”
His face was right in mine and I answered by swinging my head down, catching his nose with the top of my skull. There was a satisfying crunch of cartilage that made me smile as I reached for my element again.
Nothing, his concentration hadn’t slipped an inch.
He stumbled back and my arms were released from the spears.
Talan grunted and blinked as the blood ran down his nose. I kicked out with my right foot, intending to hit him in the chest and send him flying backward. I had to press my advantage now because I realized the only way to get him to release his hold on me was to knock him out.
When I was in midair, he caught my foot and twisted it hard, spinning me to the side so I faced down as I fell belly first onto the stone floor. He jerked my leg upward and turned my ankle farther so my foot nearly touched the back of my head as he pressed a foot on my lower back. I tried to look over my shoulder, but he put so much pressure on me, I could barely move. Shit, I could barely breathe past the crushing pressure. I scrabbled at the rock with my hands, reaching once more for my connection to the earth and again getting nothing back.
“I’ll ask again, do you yield, Larkspur of the Rim?”
That burning anger in me had not abated. “Fuck you, asshole!”
“Oh, that’s not nice.” He laughed the words. “Your choice then.”
He bore down on my leg and spine, nearly bending me in half, my joints and bones creaking. I screamed, the pain in my lower back was like a thousand blunt-ended spears jammed in me all at once. I gritted my teeth against the pain, refused to give in.
“Peta!”
“No. She is not in this fight; this is between you and me. You need to know you are not stronger than me,” Talan said.
What he didn’t understand was that Peta was me, that she was part of my strength and heart. Besides, he had no say over my familiar. She was mine, not his. Possessiveness like I’d never known swept over me as I called her again. “Peta!”
There was a blur of white and gray and then the pressure on my leg was gone. I rolled to my back and Talan stood over me. Peta was flat out on the floor, her eyes closed and her body still. She’d stopped him, but at what cost? Had he killed her?
Fear lanced me as no weapon ever could have.
“She’s going to be pissed when she wakes up.” Talan shook his head. “I didn’t want that.”
Relief was slow as his words sank in. He’d knocked her out, not killed her.
I pushed to my feet but my leg and back screamed they would not bear my weight, and I stood hunched like an old woman who’d been packing baskets of rocks all her life to and from the fields. I took a limping step toward him. He held up his hand.
“I will let you go, Lark, eventually. I’m not keeping you here forever to act as my sex slave.” He grinned and a part of my brain knew he was trying to make me laugh, trying to make me like him, which only made me angrier. This was not a laughing matter; lives were on the line. The lives of people I loved.
I glared at him, hating what I had to ask next. Hating that I could not fight my way out of here. “When will you let me go, exactly?”
He bent and touched Peta on the head and her body shifted down to her smaller housecat form. He scooped her up and handed her to me, careful not to touch me. I tucked her into the crook of one arm. My spear was across the room, and I knew the way my body was reacting to the pain, I would have no chance at getting it. Humiliation burned through me. How long had it been since I’d been beaten in a physical fight? I couldn’t remember the last time.
“Are you going to answer me?”
Talan sighed. “We are on a time crunch, Lark. So yes, I am going to let you go. No, I don’t know when, other than we need you to learn as fast as you can so I can let you go and know you won’t be killed before you do what you must.”
The muscles in my jaw ticked and jumped. But before I could say anything, he went on.
“You think you’re the best fighter out there, and you’re not. I think this little exercise has shown you that, yes? There is always someone better, someone faster, someone stronger.”
Peta lifted her head, shaking it slowly as she came around. She let out a hiss before she spoke. “You think chastising her like a child is going to win her over to your side? That treating her with condescension will make her want to learn from you?”
Talan stared at us both. “No. You are correct, Peta, and that is not what is happening here. I am not chastising her. I am pointing out the obvious. Things you both already know but are choosing not to see.”
I would have spun on my heel and left him there if I could have, but I could barely move. The pain in my body was not letting up and I didn’t understand why. Elementals healed fast, but it was as if my body was healing human-slow, and even worse, the pain was growing. It didn’t make sense, not at first.
I blinked several times as the realization dawned on me. “You’re keeping my pain levels up, aren’t you?”
His violet eyes hardened ever so slightly. “Yes, that is one of the things you need to learn to do. Your enemies can’t fight you if pain cripples them. I am going to teach you how to keep them hurting. It’s ugly, but necessary, and part of that lesson is feeling it yourself, knowing where your breaking point is.” He rolled his shoulders.
Peta shook her head. “Talan, you are not giving her any reason to want to stay. You hurt her, you humiliate her, you knock me out and you have imprisoned us both. There is no reason not to keep fighting to find a way out, you idiot.”
I was glad she spoke because I was struggling just to breathe past the shuddering pain in my body. The last time I’d hurt this badly was when I’d still been blocked from my connection to the earth, when every time I tried to use it, I was slammed with an agony that threw me to the ground.
Worm shit and green sticks. That was partly what Cassava had done to me—she hadn’t just blocked me from my power, she’d made the pain too. The realization nearly took me to my knees. I wanted to ask him if he’d trained her too, if he was the source of Cassava’s abilities. I didn’t get a chance because he answered Peta.
“All right, I will give you more incentive to willingly stay with me to train.”
He turned to the water pouring through the ceiling and passed his hand through it. Slowly, the water darkened, multiple colors spreading and painting a picture of a place I knew very well.
“The Rim… how is that possible.” I limped forward, my anger with him momentarily forgotten under what I was seeing. The images wavered and danced with the rushing water, but it was my home.
And it was in utter chaos, people were running, fists were flying. Elementals were on the ground, flat out, while others fought over them. “What the hell is happening?”
I touched the figure of my sister, Belladonna, as she stood in front of not one group of people, but two. The Salamanders—fire elementals— had come to live in the Rim after their home in the Pit had been destroyed. By the look on my sister’s face, things were not going as planned, though I’d been gone less than a day. Her hands were above her head, and even though her betrothed—Flint—who was the new king of the Salamanders, stood with her, the elementals around them were obviously agitated. Flint had his mouth open and clearly yelling, but I could hear nothing.
Behind them both, fire erupted in the trees. Flint spun and the fire was gone, and then the images faded into water again.
“That is not incentive to stay, but to leave!” I wanted to yell at him, but big breaths in and out were too hard.
He said nothing, only raised his hand again in the water. This time the image was that of the Deep. All around the pristine city circled human warships. Finley stood in front of them, her hands raise
d, her face grim.
“She’s going to kill them,” I whispered and again put my hand into the water as if I could stop her.
Talan ran his hand into the stream, and again, the image changed. The Eyrie this time, the glittering silver and gold spires reaching through the low-hanging clouds. No snow on the ground, and there should have been this time of year.
Samara, Queen of the Sylphs, stood with a small child in her arms, openly weeping. But she was alone.
“Where are all the Sylphs?” I stared, unable to comprehend what the hell was going on. I didn’t even look at Talan now. I just stared at the water waiting for him to change the scene. And change it did.
An explosion rocked a human city and flames shot into the air along with bodies, vehicles, and debris. Again and again, the city was hammered with bombs dropped from high above. I stepped back, shaking my head slowly. “These are lies.”
“No. They aren’t.”
The sadness in his voice turned me to face Talan. The sorrow on his face was clear as a summer’s sky.
“This is not happening,” I whispered.
“It is. And it is why you must train, Lark. Time is slipping away; the world is coming apart at the seams and you must be ready to mend it.”
Already my mind raced with possibilities. Where would I go first? Belladonna and Flint could probably hold down the Rim, but Samara needed to be protected if all her people had left her… the question there was why? Or had she sent them away? Then there was Finley… if she started a war with the humans, what then? Fear and the need to get moving flickered through me.
I was not created to stand still when others suffered.
I lifted my eyes to Talan’s, hating that I had to let him win. “How long before the worst happens, then? How long do I have to train?”
“That is the problem,” he said. “I don’t know exactly. We could have a few days, a week, or even a month. Hell, we could have a year before things truly shatter. But because I don’t know, we need to act as though we have only weeks at best. Because it could very well be less. It could be mere hours.”
elemental 07 - destroyer Page 4
