CHAPTER 3
Shazer slammed into the ground and he sunk into the surface, enveloped by the soil and rocks I’d softened.
My efforts were not enough. The snap of bones, of Shazer’s legs being crushed beneath him, his cry of pain. Above us the Sylphs said nothing, and I knew why.
Shazer was a legend to them, the horse that could fly.
And they’d just broken him, sending him to the ground in a heap of broken bones and wings.
I leapt from his back and crouched by his head. “I can heal you.”
His eyes were glazed with pain and furious anger. “I know. But kick their asses first, would you?”
I kissed him on the nose. “Done. Peta, stay with him.”
She bobbed her head, but I was already turning from them to face the Sylphs. Talan’s pull on me had not lessened; if anything, it was stronger.
But my anger was enough to dampen it so I could deal with them. I hoped.
I faced them, anchoring my feet into the earth. “You want to explain this?” I gestured at Shazer. “Or should I just kill you both and be done with it?”
“Destroyer, you are harboring an enemy of the queen. A witch child who plotted with Raven to kill our beloved leader.” The first Sylph was one I knew. His long white hair and frosty blue eyes marked him clearly, even if I hadn’t known him. I’d met him when I’d last been to the Eyrie. Ryk floated down until he was ten feet above the ground. Not only a Sylph, but an Ender for his people. His white leathers were immaculate, almost shining in the light.
To be fair, though, his attitude was a better marker of who he was and what family he came from than anything else. A sneer rippled over his lips as he literally stared down his nose at us.
“There is no one here besides myself and my two familiars. So, you have attacked without provocation,” I crossed my arms, “which is enough to piss me off and reply in kind, sending you and your friend into the bowels of the earth.”
His eyes didn’t waver. “I saw her with you. I saw you pick her up from the badlands.”
I shrugged. “She’s not with me now.”
“Where did she go? Tell us and we’ll let you be in peace,” the second Sylph—one I had not met yet—said. I raised both eyebrows, unable to stop the laughter that flowed past my lips.
I flicked a hand at him and beneath his feet the earth opened a wide black hole that kept deepening as I spoke. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“You would threaten us?” The second Sylph spoke with such incredulity that I knew he had no idea who I was.
“I am the Destroyer,” I said softly. “I will do whatever the hell I want and damn the consequences.” The ground rumbled in response as if in agreement with me.
Ryk shook his head. “You cannot make us go in there.”
I snapped my fingers and vines shot up out of the ground at the speed of a flash of lightning. I twisted my fingers and the vines wrapped around the Sylphs and yanked them into the open hole in the space of only a few heartbeats.
“Well, imagine that,” I muttered as I buried them up to their necks in dirt and rocks. “I did manage to get you into the hole.”
The younger Sylph screamed at me and the wind picked up.
But of course, that was not the problem I would truly face. Ryk pulled the air from my lungs, a surefire way to stop me. If I wasn’t ready for it.
Still connected to the earth, I beckoned it to swallow them whole. They disappeared into the earth with a single gulp as though the ground were belching after a large meal. They would not die; they would be able to get out eventually. But it would keep them busy for a few days at least.
“Ha!” Shazer yelled, his voice cracking. “Take that, flyboys!”
I turned with a small smile, though it slipped at the sight of his broken legs. He’d pushed himself up out of the ground. Both front legs had bones poking through the skin, blood pooling around his body. “Shit, they really did a number on you, my friend.” I ran toward him, sliding to a stop as I dropped to my knees. I put my hands on his body and called on Spirit to help me. The power was such a different flavor than my connection with the earth, which felt like a warm blanket, a steady grounding that made me feel whole.
Spirit was the dancing of lightning on my nerve endings, a sense that I could do anything, that I could change the world if I gave in to the power. So seductive, like a vision of all I could be. I wove the power through Shazer’s body, healing his wounds, putting the bones in place one at a time. He passed out near the end, but I kept my hands on him.
It was the first time I’d ever been inside someone else’s head while I knew for a fact they were being manipulated by Spirit.
“What are you doing?” Peta pushed against my hands, but I kept them tight to Shazer’s hide.
“I think… I think I can break Talan’s hold on him.”
I closed my eyes and let my connection to Spirit lead me. The power coursed through me and into Shazer in a continual loop that opened his mind to me. I skimmed through his memories, doing my best not to look because I wasn’t there to intrude. I only wanted to find what Talan had done.
Faint, pulsing tremors of pink shimmered, pulling me forward, deeper and deeper into Shazer’s mind until I was no longer able to discern his mind from my own. I let out a sigh as I sunk further into the soft pulsing power.
Someone was calling me.
Someone was screaming my name.
I wanted only to stay where I was.
Forever.
A trap, someone was saying it was a trap, that I was caught in a trap. The panic in her voice brought my attention around. There was pain, a sharp pain like knives cutting into my hands. I clenched them against the attack.
The bond that held me to someone else tugged on me, pulling me out of Shazer’s mind.
Peta. Her name filtered through my thoughts, giving me something to hang onto as I slowly emerged from whatever it was that held me tightly.
Gasping, I fell away from Shazer’s smooth white hide. Peta was on my chest in a flash, her nose on mine while I struggled to breathe. “Lark, your heart stopped.”
“No.” I coughed and sat up. That couldn’t be. Wouldn’t I have felt it? Then again, there was that sensation of floating. Shit.
“Yes, it did. You stopped breathing and then your heart stopped. I’m sorry about your hands, but I…” She shook her head, then swatted my cheek with a paw, no claws. “Why do you keep doing this to me? One of these days my heart is going to be the one to stop.”
“Don’t say that,” I whispered. Losing Peta would be the end of me, and I didn’t like even joking about it.
I looked down at my hands, the slow burning pain of her claws having dug at my skin finally catching up with me. “I’m sorry. I thought I could break Talan’s hold on him.”
Just saying the Spirit Walker’s name was enough to force me to my feet and stumble in the direction he waited, my legs moving without my command. Damn him. My fists clenched and blood dripped to the ground even as the wounds healed. “Peta, I’m sorry, but if I get a chance, I’m going to kill him.”
She had been his familiar long before me. Talan had been her first charge, and she’d loved him the most prior to me. He’d been the one she would have died for.
“I know.” Her words were soft. “He has changed. He is not the boy I knew when I was young. I will stand with you, Lark.”
Her words eased the fear that had been hovering in me: that she would hate me if I went through with it. “Of course, that’s assuming I can even get close to him.”
She jogged to catch up to me. “Wait, are we just leaving Shazer?”
“I can’t stop my feet,” I said. “He’ll catch up to us. Talan has the same control on him.”
Peta let out a low snarl. “Damn. And he knew I would come with you.”
I tried to slow my feet but it was no good. “Maybe that is the key, Peta. Maybe you should go—”
“No. You need me more now than ever. If anyone can help you stop Talan from whatever this is, it will be me.”
“I thought he was going to train me.” I shook my head as I spoke. “I thought… I thought he was going to help me learn how to stop Viv.”
“To set a trap like that in Shazer’s mind, though, that is beyond the pale,” Peta muttered. I agreed, but it changed nothing. My body was not my own, and no matter how I battered at the hold Spirit had on me, I could do nothing.
Sweat dripped from me as I walked, as I struggled to push Talan’s bands of control off my mind.
We walked for an hour before the beat of a huge set of wings turned me around. I kept walking as Shazer swept down for me. Peta and I leapt at the same time and the three of us were together again.
“Kept you moving, did he?” Shazer asked.
Peta filled him in on what happened when I tried to break Talan’s hold on his mind. The Pegasus shook his head. “So, it’s war between him and us, then?”
My shoulders slumped. Another betrayal, another lost friend. The names circled through my mind. Cactus. Raven. Rylee, though I was the one to betray her. I doubted she would let me explain before she pulled her swords on me. Heart clenching strangely, I added Talan to the list. Why would it bother me, that he too, ended up betraying me?
“So it seems.”
We flew for another two hours before our destination came into view. A rock face that rose high into the sky, and at the top stood Talan waiting for us. The pull on my body to go to him did not lessen.
“Bastard,” I muttered.
“My name,” Shazer muttered back.
I couldn’t help the laugh. The Bastard had been Shazer’s name before I’d found him. “Right, sorry. Then he can be asshole.”
Peta snickered. “We shouldn’t be laughing about this, but I agree. Asshole he is.”
The thing was, I knew why it was funny. We were trapped by him, and yet we were trapped together.
We would face him together, and we would win together. So even in the darkest of hours, we would not be alone. I put a hand on Shazer’s neck. “I wish you were truly my familiar, so you could—”
“Feel what’s going on in your head? I can guess. I was quite the ladies’ man.” He winked back at me and I laughed softly.
“Thank you. Whatever happens, thank you.”
It felt like a goodbye to me, and I didn’t like that, but I went with it. Life could throw a curveball when you least expected it and I had a feeling this was going to be one of those times. I took a big breath and gave a nod. “Into the storm, my friends. Into the storm.”
Shazer tucked his wings and we dropped from the sky, heading straight for Talan as I reached for my connection to the earth.
I was going to let the world swallow him whole.
See if he could Spirit his way out of that.