Read Online Ash (The Elemental Series, Book 6) by Shannon Mayer - Free Book Online

helped Cassava in all her plans.
    I cleared my mind and thought of him, but all I could see was the Eyrie.
    “Damn you, Granite.”
    “Granite?” Peta twisted to look me in the face. I told her of him, and his part in Cassava’s plans, but that had been a long time ago. When we’d first gone after Lark.
    I stared at the globe, as sweat ran down my body. Where was he?
    Still, the Eyrie persisted in my mind. Could Granite be there?
    It was all I had to go on, and there was no more time to think about it as the door rattled and the wood cracked.
    The decision made, I reached out and touched the globe, adjusting it until a narrow valley in the Himalayan Mountains drew close to me.
    “Peta, hang on.”
    She dropped her head and tucked her face under my chin. “Ready.”
    I reached up and touched the valley with one finger while with the other hand I twisted the armband. Behind us, the door shattered open, the splinters flying to either side of me as I was sucked through the globe.
    There was a moment or two of complete peace, silence like that spot between dreaming and wakefulness where you aren’t sure that you are even real, the place where you wonder if your body is even a tangible thing or if you are completely made of thought, of spirit and intangible matter. There were stories of people being lost to Traveling, of becoming addicted to the feeling, and I could see why.
    My ears popped, light bloomed around us, and Peta and I were spit out of the air.
    I gasped at the instant cold, and then we were falling. Down the side of a mountain we tumbled, the snow cushioning us. She shifted into her snow leopard form and stopped her slide but I continued to roll.
    I headed straight for the edge of a cliff. I scrambled, doing all I could to dig my hands and feet into something that would slow me. I managed to spin around so I was going feet first, and I stared back up at the streak of blood I left in the snow behind me. The snow was too soft to use as a grip.
    I called up the earth under the snow, but it was too far down to help me, and I wasn’t strong enough to pull on it. I wasn’t Lark, I couldn’t draw the earth like she could.
    “Peta!”
    “Hang on, I’m coming!”
    She raced down the snow, leaping fifty feet with each stride, but it was going to be close.
    I held my hand up as my legs shot out into open air.
    With a last jump, she landed and grabbed my hand in her mouth, stopping my flat-out race down the mountain.
    “You know, I think you like the drama of the last-second rescue,” I breathed out. I put my free hand into the snow and she helped me away from the open overhang. I turned and took a look back.
    My heart pounded as I stared at the abyss below. As far as I could see, there was no bottom. No end to the fall that I had no doubt would have killed me.
    “Peta . . .”
    She snorted. “Drama of the last second? I’m good, Ash, but even I’m not that good. I almost didn’t . . .” She flexed her shoulders and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. You’re on this side of the mountain, as am I.”
    We made our way up the slope, away from the loose snow. I rubbed a hand over my bare arms and looked around. The snow was cold, but it was summer, so the depth of the chill wouldn’t kill me.
    At least I had that going for me.
    Peta sat and stared out at the mountains around us. “I suppose you had a reason for bringing us here? You said Granite, but you also said Cassava. Which is it?”
    “Both, I think.” I couldn’t shake the sense that Granite was here too. Something I’d never shared with anyone . . . a trait I had that had bubbled up during my training had given me the title of being one of the best.
    Latent Tracking abilities had shown up in me. Not to the depth of a true Tracker . . . but I could often get a generalized area for those I knew well. Granite, I knew very well. Cassava . . . I knew her better than I wanted to.
    “Cassava was buried here in the rubble of the Eyrie when she faced