Firestorm

I dared to stand. “The Salamanders have missing children too. Someone is killing them.”

He shook his massive head, the horns that swept over his neck shimmering from side to side. “Sucked into the lava?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Then they are not dead. It is how our children were taken too. I feel their hearts beating yet. Come to my nest, and perhaps we can find them, Spirit Walker.” He backed up, his body disappearing into the hole he’d created.

Around me it felt as though a collective breath was released and silence reigned for a few seconds longer before several voices at once broke out.

“How did she stop him?”

“What did they say?”

“Why didn’t the queen kill the wyrm?”

I turned slowly, meeting Fiametta’s gaze. Her emotions were not written on her face like others.

Fiametta lifted a hand. “Larkspur. You are the half breed bastard child that Basileus has kept hidden from the rest of us. Correct? You are Ulani’s child.” The unspoken question was, are you a Spirit Walker?

No point in denying the truth now. “Yes.” I didn’t take my eyes from Maggie.

“Then we will discuss this once we are outside the mountain. For now I will trust you, not only with my home, but with my families’ lives,” the queen said, as she gave Maggie a look that stopped her in her tracks.

Fiametta turned and looked at her people. “We will exit through the main entrance, and once outside I will send some of my Enders to deal with the wyrms and the lava.”

No one argued with her, not even the Enders. I slipped back to where I’d deposited the two kids and went to scoop them up. They smiled, reaching for me, but I was pushed away, shoved hard enough from the side that I went to my knees. A big man, his red hair shorn close to his head and enough muscles on his arms to fill out three men’s sleeves glared down at me.

“Don’t touch them, you filthy wyrm lover.”

He picked the kids up, their eyes wide as they stared back at me, and strode away. The Salamanders flowed around me as if I were an island in a stream. They stared at me, the coldness of their eyes like ice against my skin.

Peta found me, her charge gone from her back. “They took her from me too,” she said before I could ask.

Ash waited for us, his arms also empty. “Me, too.”

“Guilty by association,” I murmured, as I pushed myself to my feet. Peta snorted and shook her body, shrinking to her housecat form. I held my arms out and she leapt up to me.

“You can carry me.”

Laughing softly, I placed her on my shoulder. “Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

Falling into step beside me, Ash shook his head. “This seems too easy. Whoever is doing this, blocking them from their element wouldn’t just let them out.”

“You think it’s a trap?”

He nodded. “I’m sure of it.”

Walking at the back of the long line of Salamanders, I did a head count. Fewer than five hundred souls, and that was counting the injured being carried. A trap for five hundred people . . . if they couldn’t get out of the mountain, and they were blocked from their abilities, what would happen when the lava reached them?

They’d all die.

The line stopped moving and I held back, standing ten feet behind the last Salamander.

Peta sat up straight on my shoulder, looking over everyone’s head. “Why aren’t they moving?”

I shrugged. “Maybe Ash is right and the door is stuck.” The words popped out of me, and the Salamanders closest to us turned back to stare at me. Worm shit, I had to learn to keep my mouth shut. Peta stood up, her front paws on top of my head.

“I think that’s exactly what has happened. You need to get up there, you two.”

Reluctantly I pushed my way forward through the crowd. Easily enough, they parted around Ash and me as though we were diseased.

The front of the crowd was Maggie, Fiametta, and Cactus who was shaking his head almost violently.

“I can’t reach that side of my powers, my queen. I’m sorry,” Cactus said. Fiametta’s frame shook and at first I thought perhaps she was angry. It was only when I saw her face that I realized she was crying.

The queen of fire, hard as all the granite in the world was crying.

Fiametta saw me, her blue eyes shimmering with tears. “And you two, can you open the mountain?”

Ash stepped forward first, laying his hands on the large black door. I knew what lay outside, an orchard of cherry trees forever in blossom with the heat of the mountain. Ash’s arms showed nothing, no lines of power, no traces of green. He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Now, my turn. I stepped forward reaching for the power of the earth even as it slid away from me. Teeth gritted, I put my hands on the door and bowed my head.

Voices behind me rippled over my ears. What’s she doing? Does she really think we would trust her? Their words were the fuel I needed, the anger at their distrust flowed through me and I reached for my connection to the earth. The power flared and I pushed it into the door, spreading it wide with a grinding screech.

I let go of the door and it immediately began to swing closed. Grabbing hold of my power once more I drove it into the door a second time. Sweat broke out on my head as I held it. In front of me were the cherry trees, the scent of their blossoms blowing into the tunnel along with a few loose petals that scattered around my feet.

“Hurry, get them through!” I yelled. Peta clung to me, her nose in my ear.