Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(6)

Her eyes widened. "You can't break his hold on you?"

I shrugged. "I'm not trying, right now. But I believe he is stronger than me, so it will be a full-on fight when I do attempt to throw his hold."

Pamela's eyebrows dropped, so far they nearly touched between her eyes. "I can Ride Spirit away from here. But I can only take one other person besides Oka."

Confusion slid through me again. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh." She blinked up at me. "Riding Spirit, it's a way to travel to any place. Or any person. You just," she waved a hand around in a circular motion, "ride it."

Irritation flowed through me but I schooled my face so she did not see it. That didn't mean Peta didn't pick up on it through our bond.

Peta cleared her throat. "Can you be more specific than that, Pamela?"

The young witch shook her head. "You just take hold of Spirit and feed it into your body and then think of where you want to go. Or who you want to go to."

Around us the wind shifted, stopping our conversation. The sudden gust blew from the east and snapped our hair around us, tangling the ends. Shazer fought the wind, his wings beating hard to keep us from going off course.

"Shit, this is not natural." He spit the words out the side of his mouth.

"I didn't think so." I twisted around, doing my best to get a bead on who was controlling the wind. A Sylph, no doubt.

But why would a Sylph be here, of all places, and why were they coming after me?

"They're here for me," Pamela said. "I helped Raven escape them. I helped him … "

"Escape me," I breathed out, remembering him disappearing at my feet on the floor of the Eyrie. I'd had him right there, and then he was gone before I could drive home the final blow. I didn't have to ask why she'd saved him.

Raven was her father, and Pamela had a heart that loved too deeply. She had saved him from me.

A sob caught in her throat. "I have to go. If I'm gone, they'll follow me. If you need me, look to the north."

She tightened her hold on her familiar, and lines of pink flowed over her body, bending and twisting in on her, and then she was gone before I could say anything, before I could even grasp what she'd done. It was the exact trick Raven and Talan used to move around. 

A gift of Spirit.

But there was no time to take it in. At that moment, I had bigger problems to deal with than figuring out how to jump using Spirit.

"Lark, they're still coming," Shazer called out.

"Of course they are. They don't know she's gone." I slid forward, readjusting my seat on his back. The pull to Talan was intensifying, drawing me even though I knew it was going to be a fight.

"Can you stop?" I asked him.

"I'm going to try. Talan's pull is strong." He grunted as he slowed his wings so we were treading air.

"I'm going to chat with them, see if I can talk them down," I said.

Peta snorted. "Like that's going to work. They'll think you're with Pamela and Raven."

I sighed, knowing she was probably right. Sylphs were not known for their ability to forgive, or recognize that there were more points in a story than their own. Even so, I would try.

The Sylphs were sweeping in behind the battering ram of the wind that pushed and shoved at us. "Lark, I have to land, or they're going to break my wings," Shazer yelled over the blast of air.

"Do it!"

He tucked his wings in tightly and we dropped from the sky like the horse-sized stone we were. Peta screeched. "Some warning would be nice, nag!"

Her claws dug in hard to the leather shoulders of my vest, but I reached up and put a hand over her back anyway. I could hold on with my legs well enough for myself, but I knew the Sylphs would not save Peta if she fell.

The ground swept up toward us for the second time that day and I held my breath, waiting for that last second lurch that would be Shazer's wings snapping out and catching us.

It never came.

The wind hammered down on us from above.

"They've pinned my wings!" Shazer screamed.

The ground was closer, closer. I reached out to it, softening it, hoping it would be enough. The image in my mind was all too clear.

Shazer hitting the ground, all four legs snapping, his body being crushed under its own weight as it hit the unforgiving stone. I couldn't let that happen.

I put all I had into the earth, calling it, easing it until it was near liquid.

It was the best I could do.

I could only hope it would be enough. "Hang on, this is going to be a rough one," I yelled over the wind, my words sweeping away from me.

The split seconds stretched and the ground reared up. Shazer tucked his legs to minimize the impact.

And then we hit and the world turned inside out.