Ash (The Elemental Series, Book 6) (13 page)

The other . . . I put a hand over one imprint. The foot was as big as mine, which meant whoever was helping Cassava was over six feet. Not Raven then. I frowned.

There was no blood, which surprised me. Why wouldn’t Peta have fought? That didn’t make any sense.

Stranger yet was the fact that except for the area that was trampled down, there were no footsteps leading away. As if they’d all just disappeared into thin air. I knew Raven could manage that trick, bending the Veil with Spirit. But he wasn’t here, I was sure of it. Could it be a Sylph helping them? That was possible, but somehow I doubted it. There were few left in any of the families that would help Cassava. She’d caused too much grief, and death.

The clues were not helping me.

I rubbed a hand over my face. “Okay, Norm. On to the prank.”

He grabbed me and swung me over his back. I grabbed around his neck and he took off like a shot out of a cannon.

As he ran, I mulled over what I’d seen, but no matter how I tried to piece it together, I couldn’t make it make sense, and that worried me. Was I losing my mind? Cassava had used Spirit on me while she’d been the queen. And the more Spirit was used on a person, the more their mind broke under the strain of that manipulation. I swallowed hard. No. I wasn’t losing it. Maybe I would at some point, but not here, not now.

Lark needed me to hold it together, if nothing else.

Ahead of us, the trails came to a divergence, branching in four directions. Norm slowed and blew out a big breath that fogged the air. “Which way are we going?”

I knew we needed a bigger town, one that had enough technology that we could find potential areas where Cassava was hunkering down. Preferably a town where I had a hidden Ender stash.

“West. Head for the humans’ big city.”

He grunted. “I don’t like that city. It’s too noisy.”

He had a point. The city could be a real problem for him. “Do the humans see you as a Yeti?”

“Oh, heck no. They just see a big human with a lot of hair.”

I had to hope he was right and that we could slip through unnoticed. Because in a city like New Delhi, there were bound to be a few supernatural creatures looking for trouble.

But as it was not only the closest major city, but one I’d been in before, it was our best shot to get what we needed and get back on the hunt for Cassava, Granite, and Peta as fast as possible.

Norm settled into a ground-eating run that made the mountains seemingly flash by in a blur of white and rock. He paused for a break only once and ate a bunch of snow, happily munching on it. “It won’t fill me up, but it will keep my belly busy,” he explained, even though I didn’t ask.

I stretched my legs and wandered across the plateau he’d come to a stop on. The softest meow snapped my head around. About ten feet above me, peering over the ledge, was a tiny snow leopard kitten.

Blue eyes instead of Peta’s green ones blinked down at me. Maybe one day that kitten would be taken as a familiar, but I doubted it. Peta was one of a kind.

“Oh, a kitty,” Norm breathed out. He moved past me and held his hand out to the kitten, taking her gently into his cupped hands.

“Norm. That’s not a good idea. That kitten has a mother somewhere around here.” I had no desire to injure or kill a snow leopard of any kind.

Even as I spoke there was a low rumbling growl above our heads. “Norm. Put her back.”

“It’s all right,” he said softly, his voice full of . . . reverence. “It’s all right.”

I glanced at him. The kitten was stretching her nose up to touch his, and a soft purr rolled out of her tiny body.

“Snow leopards are sacred, you know. One of them is going to help save the world one day.”

An absolute chill cascaded over me. “What?”

Norm didn’t look at me as he spoke. “They are sacred, and they trust Yeti. We are their protectors now from the humans. They killed so many of them, you know.”

I flicked my eyes back to the ledge, shocked to see the mother leopard peering down at us. Her ears flicked forward and she licked her lips once, but otherwise didn’t move.

“Put the kitten back, Norm.” Not to say that I didn’t trust him, but again . . . I didn’t want to add to the problems I had on my list.

“Okay. Bye, little heart.” He squished the kitten to his mouth and she batted his cheek. He lifted her up over his head and placed her next to the mother. Then patted the mother on the head with one big mitt. “Good kitty.”

The two cats backed away, leaving me staring at nothing.

I did the same, backing away from the ledge. “I didn’t know about . . . that.”

Norm smiled. “I like kitties.”

That might work in my favor. “You know the friend I’m trying to help is a snow leopard. She was taken by a . . . very bad woman.”

The big Yeti gasped. “That’s very not good.” He threw his head back and let out a long, warbling cry. The sound echoed through the mountains, bouncing off the crags and peaks. “There. My family knows to look out for her now.”

His words were a small consolation that I was moving so slowly to rescue Peta. Even though I knew there was no way I could move faster, all I wanted was to pull her away from that bitch who held her against her will. How long before Cassava decided to kill Peta? To take out her revenge on Lark’s familiar? My guts churned with sudden fear, knowing Lark’s banishment would be nothing to her if she lost Peta.

No, I had to be wrong about Cassava. If she’d wanted to kill Peta, she could have done it right there on the mountainside. There had been no blood on the snow.

Cassava had a reason why she took Peta—more than the obvious to hurt Lark—and I had no doubt it had to do with drawing Lark to her. But instead she would get me, she had to know that. So what was her end game? I crouched and pressed my hand into the ground at my feet as if the answer could be found there.

What did Cassava have to gain by killing Peta and me? Really, the answer was nothing. Our deaths would only electrify Lark into action, bringing about Cassava’s downfall all the sooner. There had to be something more than our deaths, then.

Hostages
.

The word slid through me and the truth of it hit me hard. If Cassava held both Peta and me, she could manipulate Lark to do her bidding. Cassava was using Peta as bait for me, as Raven had done the same thing to Lark to draw her into a fight.

Like mother, like son.

“Shit.”

Even knowing that, I was going to walk right into Cassava’s trap. There was no way I could just leave Peta with her. And no way I was going to tell Lark. I scrubbed my hands over my face, anger and frustration flowing through me like a wave of lava.

“Norm, are you rested enough to keep going?” I called over my shoulder. The Yeti stood and gave me what I thought might be a thumbs-up, but it was hard to tell when he only had three fingers.

“Ready.”

I walked to him and he grabbed my arm, slinging me onto his back. Any harder and my arm would’ve come out of its socket, but I said nothing. For now, the Yeti was a boon and I was glad of his speed.

“Hang on,” he said, and I grabbed a good handful of his long floating hair.

He leapt forward, letting out a long mournful cry as he ran. The howl was somewhere between that of a wolf and the rushing of a storm as it screamed, high-pitched and wavering through the trees. The sound echoed through the mountain air and was repeated back to us from somewhere in the distance. A call of his family to him maybe, saying goodbye.

I only hoped it wasn’t the last time he’d set foot in the mountains.

ew Delhi, with a Yeti at my side in the crush of summer heat. I had to shake my head several times as I dodged the elbows and carts that pushed close around us, because even I couldn’t believe the situation I was in. Norm, though, was happy as could be, just trucking along, occasionally waving to the odd person.

I, on the other hand, was doing my best not to panic about Peta. I kept moving forward, one foot in front of the other, head down. Once I’d realized Cassava had set a trap with bait I wouldn’t be able to turn away from, there was nothing to do but keep moving. The only upside of the situation was that, at least, I would not be surprised when the trap was sprung. My plan
,
of course, was to spring the trap before I was in it.

The last time I’d been in New Delhi, I’d worked with one of the local supernaturals and had been lucky enough to call him friend. But that had been close to fifty years before, and the chances he was still residing in the city were slim. Not because he would be dead, but because he moved around a lot.

As a healer, he went wherever he was needed. I hoped he would be in the city, but really, it wasn’t fully necessary. I had access to his home at all times because I’d helped him create it.

Carved into the side of a rock bluff, the back half of the house was a veritable fortress that I’d created out of the earth for him. That had been the price I’d had to pay to have not only his trust and help as I needed it but in order to leave a stash of weapons, clothes, human money and identification in his home.

That had been during a time where I’d been chasing after a band of young elementals. They had been on a wild spree as they traversed the world and caused a fair bit of chaos. It was one of the few times the four families worked together, sending their Enders out in squads of four to bring the idiots under control. They’d set up in India, according to their leader, because there were so many humans, they thought they could hide unnoticed.

I snorted to myself, thinking about how they’d begged for mercy, blubbering and wetting themselves. We’d sent them all home to be punished by their leaders.

Behind me, Norm snorted too. “What’s funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. I was just thinking about something.”

He stomped along with me, and once again I was struck by how the humans
’
eyes just slid over him. Like he was as normal as them. They were moon-blind, not wanting to see the monsters in the dark. That was what my mother had told me once.

Whoa. Where had that come from? I hadn’t thought of my mother . . . for longer than I cared to consider or remember.

For a moment, I could see her, the soft smile on her lips. The golden glow of her eyes so like mine, the touch of her hand on my cheek as she whispered to me that the dark held nothing to fear.
“Be strong, my sweet boy, I see great things for you. You are a going to be a brave warrior of the earth. Never doubt it.”
Then the screaming within the smoke as our home burned, my mother and siblings within it, and the hands that held me back, holding me away from rushing into the flames. “
It is not your time to burn. Not yet. Not yet.”
The words had been there, in my ear, and I’d fought them. “Let me go.”