Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(7)

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?