I jerked my hands to my side. I’d been reaching for her. Because . . . well, I thought I’d be able to hold her.
“Sorry. I just thought orange tabbies were boys.”
Her tail swished violently side to side. “No. Not always.”
I pushed to my feet and she skittered back further as though . . . “I’m not going to kick you,” I said. “What happened to you? You’re a familiar, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be immune to the lava like a Salamander?”
“Are you not an elemental?” Her ears slowly came forward, though her eyes were still narrowed.
“I am not,” I said.
Behind us, a belch of lava bubbled up, gulping and spluttering like an old man eating dinner at high speed.
She puffed up, her tiny body fluffing like she’d had her fur dried in a windstorm. “The queen made the lava dangerous to us all. I was caught in it and . . . I was left behind to burn.”
“Did you not have someone you were tied to?” That was how I understood it to happen. A familiar was gifted to an elemental, but only once the elemental was shown to be worthy. Apparently, it had to do with how strong the elemental was.
She shook her head. “No, I am too young yet. And there were none strong enough.”
“Oh.”
Her ears flicked. “Why did you heal me? The other elementals have passed over me several times, despite my cries.”
Another piece of my heart broke for her. “How long were you here?”
“Weeks, I think; the mother goddess has kept me alive, though I wished I could die.” She shook her head. “I ask again, why did you heal me?”
She was persistent, I’d give her that. “Because I could.” Much as the mother goddess might have told me someone needed my help, I would have done it anyway.
My cloak fluttered around my legs, whipped to the side and then, acting as a sail, actually pushed me toward the edge of the Pit. I stumbled, dropped to my knees and looked into the sky.
Two Sylphs floated toward me. Oh dear. The peachy orange kitten hissed. “Those ones threw things at me, laughed as the rocks made me stumble on my stubs.”
They had thrown rocks at an injured animal, one that had been crying out for their help? Nope, that was a pile of stinking shite if I ever saw it. If there was one thing I’d known even before Rylee had become my mentor, it was this.
Stand against the bullies and don’t let them get away with their shitty actions.
I stood up, and anchored myself to the ground by calling the earth up around my feet. Power raced through every synapse, every nerve ending, and pooled at the tips of my fingers.
Sylphs were dangerous, and once they realized I was fighting them, I’d have no chance. But . . . they didn’t know what I was.
I would have one shot at this.
“What are you doing?” A tiny set of claws sunk into the back of my calf.
I flinched but didn’t look back. “I’m making sure they know that—”
“Their deaths won’t make anything better. I don’t know what you are, but if you think you can take on a Sylph, then you must be strong. But this fight isn’t worth it.”
Her claws dug deeper. “You healed me. Is that not enough?”
“And if they would do it to you, would they not do it to someone else?” I did turn then even as the wind around us picked up.
Her icy blue eyes locked on mine and there was a click inside my brain, like a piece of me opened. Emotions that were not my own, thoughts I’d never had, and fears I’d never experienced slammed through me like a tidal wave.
“Holy shit.” I breathed the words, shock making it a struggle to speak.
Unless I was wrong, and I wasn’t sure that I was . . . I’d just gotten a familiar of my very own.
CHAPTER 7
I STOOD ON THE hardened lava flows of the Pit and stared at the furball that was now my own. Witches did not have familiars, contrary to the humans’ beliefs. So to say this was surprising was a bit of an understatement. Was I ready to take on the responsibility of another life?
The revelation didn’t have long to sink in. A hard wind buffeted me, swept me into the air and spun me around and around so fast my arms and legs were flung outward with the power of it. Like being spun on a carnival ride that had been set on crazy fast, the centrifugal force was so strong, I couldn’t fight it. I struggled to see. The images were there and gone so quickly, they blurred and almost felt like I wasn’t moving—like those crazy flip books I’d had as a kid. I turned the pages so fast the images blurred and looked like they were moving. Only this was the reverse; I was the one moving. The two Sylphs laughed as they spun me, faster and faster.
Bullies, they were bullies, and I wasn’t taking this shit. They brought me closer, so they were just outside my reach.
“Look at her face! She’s going to puke!”
From somewhere below me, the cat screeched, “Put her down!”
“Ah, look, the pussy cat thinks she’s going to help? What do you want? You think you can actually do anything? You can’t even shift! Stupid cat, it’s no wonder you were left behind!”
The words were a blur along with the world. My stomach rolled, I fought the urge, but there was no use. I puked and lost whatever food was in my belly. The vomit spewed out, and I was sped through it, the warmth and stinking wet chunks slapping my face, the smell making my stomach tighten again in anticipation. The Sylphs kept laughing. Kept poking at me.
I was caught. My magic would do the same thing as my vomit. It would be caught in the spin and hit me.
I closed my eyes, but that was no better. With my arms spread-eagled, the pressure of the wind was on my lower back. It was only then I realized I wasn’t vertical, but horizontal on my back. That was how they were keeping me from doing anything.
I only had one thing left to me.
Rylee’s sword. If I could pull it out, I might have a chance. There was power in it, that much I knew.
Fighting the centrifugal pull, I reached for the handle. It felt as though I were being held down by ten men, the strength of the spinning was so great. But the handle was there and if I was going to survive this, I had to get it.
I screamed as I forced my arm up, my fingers seeking the only thing that might save me.
“Ohh, look at her crying now!”
I wasn’t crying. I was pissed.
Anger pulsed through me and gave me the strength to move those last few inches to grasp the handle of the sword. I tightened my fingers around it and then stopped fighting the spin that trapped me tightly.
The pull of the spinning took control of my arm and jerked it outward once more. Only this time, I clung to the sword with everything I had in me. The blade was two and a half feet long at least. With the first spin, the honed and sharpened tip cut through the two Sylphs like a razor through silk. I was let go, and the momentum of my spinning sent me in a deadly spiral to the ground.
I hit hard, and the wind was knocked out of me. I lay on the blackened earth and stared up at the sky. The world still spun and danced in front of my eyes and I rolled to the side and heaved, though there was nothing left in me. I couldn’t stop the reflex.
“Keep breathing, it will pass.” A cold nose touched my cheek and then was gone. I shivered and forced myself to sit up, wiping some of the chunks off my face and out of my hair. My vision narrowed to tiny black dots and I closed my eyes. That was a bit better.
I drew in breath after breath as I fought the intense nausea. It was like nothing I’d experienced. Carefully, I opened one eye and then the other. Things were almost normal, and I pushed to my feet, wobbled, and used the sword to balance myself. I still had vomit in my hair and all over my face and clothes, but I would deal with that later.
Unsteady as I was, I walked to where the Sylphs lay. Their bright white leathers were a beacon on the stripped and barren earth. The cat sniffed at their feet.
She turned and looked over her shoulder at me. “You killed them.”
I h
urried, stumbled over a rock and then I stood over them. The sword had cut through both their bellies, all the way to their spines. Here and there, I could see the ground behind them, even through the blood. I took a step back. I’d killed before, and like this, it had always been in defense.
Except for Liam.
I stumbled back further as the feel of the sword in my hand merged with the feel of the dagger as I plunged it into Liam’s heart. Did it matter that he’d come back, that we’d both done what we’d felt we’d had to? Yes and no.
I still dreamed of killing him, woke sobbing when he asked me why I often found myself pulling away from my family for fear of hurting them to that depth again. Was that why I was really here? Is that why I’d left Rylee and the others? I didn’t know.
Somewhere along the way I fell to my knees, sobs wracking my body. Not for the Sylphs, maybe not even for Liam.
A part of my mind whispered the truth I’d defied time and again, a truth I did not want to be true.
I was a child, forced into a war that was not my own. A child asked to do things no child should be. I covered my face with my hands and curled down until I was nothing but a ball of tears and shuddering sobs.
Even now. Raven asked me to face the Sylphs and the Pit for his own gain, not caring that it might cost me more than my life. I clung to my own legs and rocked, unable to break past the moment. I’d killed the Sylphs, their blood on my hands. Did it matter they deserved it, that they would have killed me?
Yes and no.
Always the answer was yes and no.
A tiny weight settled onto my upper back. Warmth from a small body spread from the cat—my familiar—to me and slowly the shudders and sobs eased. I breathed in the smell of the charred ground.
“Sometimes, you have to be broken fully before you can heal.” She kneaded her paws into my back, no claws involved. Like a miniature massage.
“I need to stand,” I said.
“Then stand.”
I didn’t argue that she would fall off, so I once more pushed to my feet. She hung from my back for a moment and then shimmied up until she sat on my left shoulder. “Seems we are bound. They call me Oka.”
A thread of excitement bled through to me from her. I tried to give her a smile.
“I’m Pamela. Look, I’m sorry you are bound to me. I am not even an elemental.”
She shrugged. “Probably no elemental would want me. The Sylphs spoke truth. I can’t even shift.”
I blew out a breath. So I’d been handed a weak familiar. I wasn’t going to complain; I’d never expected anything really on this journey.
“Peta likes to sit on shoulders, too. Are all the familiar cats like that?” We both knew I was changing the subject from my breakdown to something safer.
“Peta?” Her mouth hung open. “She’s a legend, you know.”
I blinked at her, focusing on what she was saying. “Really?”
“Yes.” She tightened her hold on my shoulder. “She’s my hero.”
That explained the shoulder thing.
I took a step toward the Pit. “I have to go in there. I have to get to the library.”
“Oh, the hidden one?” Her ears perked right up and her eyes went round, dilating with excitement.
I gave her a smile, though it was an effort. “If it’s hidden, how do you know about it?”
She ducked her head and wouldn’t make eye contact with me. “I might have followed Peta around. I’d heard a lot of stories about her, how all her charges died. But my trainer told me differently. She said Peta was the greatest of all the familiars and that I should do as she did.”
I forced myself to look at the bodies of the Sylphs again. Even at a distance, their white leathers made them stand out and would alert others to their death. That would do no good. I raised a hand and beckoned the earth. It opened and drew them down like a beast swallowing hunks of meat in a single gulp. The imagery was too strong.
I cleared my throat and turned my back on the spot they’d lain. “I have to go in.”
“You said that.” She patted my chin with one paw, drawing my eyes to her. “I’m going with you. That’s my job now, you know.”
There was something about her I couldn’t deny. “You’re still a kitten, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Same as you. Doesn’t mean we can’t do more than others expect.”
Her words, so simple, grounded me.
Time to pull things together, time to make this happen. There were people I loved waiting on me. I pushed the past behind me where it belonged. Maybe one day I would deal with it, but today was not that day.
Oka crouched on my shoulder and tightened her hold on me. “Pamela. Let’s show them what we can do.”
We.
I liked that more than I would have said out loud, but by the sudden purring that rumbled from the tiny orange cat on my shoulder, Oka felt my pleasure.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
I stared down the slope that led into the Pit. It reminded me of a movie I’d seen once, only that pit had tentacles reaching out that were attached to a monster that would eat someone. I swallowed hard. Nothing to say there wouldn’t be tentacles waiting for us at some point. That didn’t make me feel any better.
“Just go. Better to move now, I think.” Oka spoke right in my ear, her claws digging in tighter.
Carefully, I started down the slope. There was no way I’d be able to make it standing up, which meant in seconds, I was on my butt, sliding downward at a speed I couldn’t stop. As far as I could tell, there was no bottom to this Pit. I held up one hand as I slid—harder than it sounds—and called up a bloom of witch light. The light scattered the darkness as we slid faster and faster, the sloping sides causing the speed to increase with each inch we traveled. I dug in my heels in an effort to slow our descent. A burst of steam shot up below us like the breath from a beast, and my imagination went wild.
Surely at the bottom there would be a creature hovering at the edges, waiting to devour us as we slid right into its maw.
I lost control of the witch light as my fear took hold of me. I spun backward as one heel caught a rock and twisted me around so I was looking up in the direction we’d come. A last glimpse of the sky far above us and then I was tumbling over and over. I tucked my arms around my head and Oka slid away from me with a screech.
The slope went from a sharp angle to purely vertical from one tumble to the next and the only thing I could do was hope we weren’t far from the bottom.
That I wouldn’t die when I hit the ground.
Launched into open air, there was a strange sensation of floating. The darkness enveloped me fully and then it slowly faded and a bright orange glow filled my vision as I rolled in the air. I stared at the lava as I flew toward it. The only thing I thought was the spell book in my carry-all. I grabbed the leather pouch and wrenched it from my side, flinging it out in a last desperate effort. At least someone might find it and know this was where I died.
There was no chance to stop my fall, no way to avoid the lava. There was only a split second to wonder if it would hurt. To wonder just how effective the mother goddess’s touch was on my body.
And then I plunged into the brilliant pulsing blood of the earth. I kept my mouth and eyes clamped shut and a part of my brain scoffed. As if that was going to save me. Instinctively though, even knowing that I would die before I made it clear, I fought for the surface. The lava was thick, not like water at all, and it pulled at me. I couldn’t tell which way was up.
But it didn’t burn.
Hell, it didn’t even hurt. Maybe that was because it covered me all at once?
Even with that, I had to move. I was running out of air. Stroke after stroke, I fought the tide and as my lungs begged me to take a breath, I broke the surface.
Lava dripped off my face, down my cheeks, and off the edge of my chin. The closest thing I could equate the sensation to was swimming through warm mud. The glow of the lava lit up the
hollow I’d landed in. I spun in a slow circle.
“Oka?”
“I’m here. The lava is no longer hurting me. You either?” she called from farther down the winding path of lava. I made my way to the side of the stream and pulled myself out. Fully expecting to have all my clothes eaten off, I looked down, shocked to see that not everything had been removed. The sheath and sword were still strapped to me.
“Made by an elemental, wasn’t it?” Oka trotted over to me.
I nodded. “An elemental friend made them both.”
“That would do it. Well, let’s find you some clothes. It will be cold in the tunnels here, despite the lava.”
I bent and picked up the leather carry-all. I peered inside. The spell book was still there. I breathed out a sigh of relief.
With no more than that, Oka led me away, chattering as she did. “Things were pretty crazy when it all went down. The mountain fell in on itself, but it looks like there are still some rooms left untouched. Disasters are always like that from what I understand.”
I wasn’t sure she was right, but I kept my words to myself. My skin prickled with the cold air and I rubbed at my arms. Clothes of any kind would be welcome. As we left the cavern with the lava, the darkness encroached again. I held up my hand and created two balls of witch light. I sent one a little ahead of Oka and kept the other nearer to me.
The little cat wove her way through the tunnels with an ease born of a lifetime of familiarity. “You said you were a kitten. How old are you exactly?” I asked.
She didn’t look back. “Sixteen of your human years.”
“So you don’t age like a normal cat then?”
She shook her head. “No. Peta was the only one taken at a young age. Or maybe that’s just what was done back then. Now we are still taken young but then trained for years before we are even put into the potential pool for familiars.”
“At what age does that normally happen?”
They stopped at an intersection. “Does it matter?”
“Maybe.” I didn’t know why I was pushing this. Was it because I wanted to know if I’d been handed a familiar because no one else wanted her?
Pamela (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 3) Page 6
