Firestorm

“Hurry up, Dirt Girl. If you don’t want to be found here, then we have to leave.” She ran ahead of me and nudged the door open with her face. I tightened my grip on the torch and took one last look back into the room. I only had to prove the Enders didn’t die as a result of my spear. Injured? Yes, that much I would admit to, but no longer did I feel the weight of their deaths. The papers proved I was not their killer.

Peta ran ahead of me, the tip of her tail a flashing white spot in the darkness. The torch burnt lower, the heat scorching my hand as I took another turn. “Peta, how much farther?”

“A few minutes.”

“We aren’t going to make it.” The torch took that moment to burn my hand, sizzling the skin and forcing me to drop it. The glowing embers littered the floor and Peta ran back to me.

“Looks like we’re sleeping here,” I said.

“No, we can’t. If they find you out of Smoke and Brand’s home, it is the excuse they will use to throw you into jail next to Ash.” Peta spoke quickly and I let out a groan.

I crouched beside her, her green eyes glowing in the last of the light. “Could you find your way out now that we are this close?”

“Yes, but I must be on the ground to smell.”

I nodded and the last of the embers burned out dropping us into a total and complete darkness that was not comfortable in the least. “Call out to me, Peta. I’ll follow your voice.”

“Got it. This way.” Her voice echoed to me and I took a few steps forward, my hand on the wall for guidance. I came to an opening, and I grasped the edge of it.

“Peta?”

“This way, Larkspur.” Her voice came from the right and I turned, following her instructions. Turn after turn and ten minutes turned into fifteen. I paused at the next intersection. “Peta, how much farther?”

There was no response and I swallowed hard. “Peta?”

A low rumbling laugh echoed through the darkness. “So easy to deceive, little Larkspur. So easy to lead astray. Your familiar is already out of the tunnels and here you are, lost deep within the Pit.”

I flattened my back against the wall and slid away from the intersection. “Who are you?”

“You don’t recognize me? You should.”

My eyes strained in the darkness, seeing things that weren’t there, flashes of light that were just my mind trying to fill in the utter black. Immediately I thought of the tiny cloaked figure. Twice now I’d seen her and the voice was similar enough, that it could have been her. Or maybe someone cloaking themselves just like her. Smoke said there were two specters. Was I meeting the second?

“No, I don’t recognize you. But then, I rarely waste my time with tricksters,” I said as I slid away from the intersection, back the way I’d come.

“Oh, I am not a trickster, but I do know who killed those Enders. You want to know that secret, don’t you?” Damn it, the voice was everywhere, in front to the left and the right. But that was impossible.

Unless maybe it was someone from the supernatural world; a warlock maybe, or worse yet, a demon. I’d not dealt with the supernatural world, but I’d learned about it as part of my schooling. The power of the elemental world ran in the supernatural bloodlines, giving them abilities they should not have.

I clung to the stone, a low spiral of fear keeping me far away from the anger I needed to tap into my powers. “Are you an elemental?”

“Yes, of course, dear Larkspur. Why would you ask that? Ahh, you think me supernatural in nature. Good guess, but that isn’t what you face.”

That left only one possibility: he had to be a Spirit user. There was no other answer to the way I felt, the way I’d heard Peta calling me the wrong way, farther into the tunnels. It was a trick Cassava used when she wore the pink diamond, a stone that gave her the powers of a Spirit user.

There was no way this trickster knew I had that same element running through my veins. I reached out for the part of me that held Spirit and clung to it, wrapping it around me. The warmth sunk through my soul and the fear and confusion slipped away. Holding my breath, I dropped to my knees. If I couldn’t see him, then I doubted he could see me. At least that was what I was hoping for.

Spirit didn’t require me to be angry to tap into it, not like my powers that were connected to the earth. But that didn’t mean Spirit was much help either since I didn’t know what I was doing with it most times.

Crawling on my hands and knees, I tried to sense where he was, the way I’d felt Fiametta earlier in the day. Like a wolf scenting its prey, I crept forward. An image smashed into my skull of Griffin in full wolf form as he loped through the forest, his nose raised to the wind. My skin crawled as if the cool breeze actually coursed along my body.

“Whatever are you doing, dear Larkspur? I smell the Rim as if I stood under the redwoods.” His voice was no longer confident, but had an edge of irritation to it.

But better yet, his voice no longer rebounded and his words echoed from the left. Pushing myself to the tips of my toes and creeping across the floor on my hands and toe tips, I approached him. A sudden pulse of his heart through the ground below froze me in place.

“Larkspur. Come out now,” he snapped and a flicker of power danced over my skin. I realized he was trying to compel me with Spirit. A grin spread over my lips and I was sure that if he could see it, he would run for his life.

Whoever this was, I was going to catch him and shake him ‘til he spilled his secrets. I scurried forward, my back hunched and my steps silent. The sound of his breathing, the sound of his heart beating was loud in my ears. I leapt toward him, a howl on my lips as Griffin’s wolf spirit seemed to channel through me.