Free Windburn (The Elemental Series #4) by Shannon Mayer

The last time I’d actively used it, I wiped out my own sister’s mind.
    But I could see the lines of Spirit in Giselle already made, road maps through her mind and heart created by another elemental. I followed them, allowing Spirit to calm her heart, and show her she was loved. Show her I would do my best to protect her.
    Around us, the air crackled with static electricity, sharp against my skin and hair. The light dimmed until there was nothing but a pinprick around Giselle and me.
    “Lark! I can’t see you!” Cactus sounded far off in the distance, even though he was not even on the other side of the room.
    I ignored him as the air pressed in tightly, squeezing us as though it were now a constrictor. Giselle gasped, her thin arms clinging to me.
    “Peta, help me!” I could barely get the words out, the crushing darkness forced me to my knees. Giselle trembled as I tried to keep her from whatever was attacking us.
    My familiar put her nose tight against my ear and even then her voice was tinny and small. “Use Spirit, you have to. Your heart against the darkness here, it is the only thing that will protect her.”
    “I don’t want to hurt her.” I couldn’t control Spirit, I had no idea what I was doing. There had to be another way around this.
    Giselle cried out and was yanked from my hands, her body sucked into the shadows that encompassed us. I shot to my feet. No choice. There was no choice if I were to save her. I opened myself to Spirit and it flared inside my heart, pulsing like it had a life of its own.
    I held my arms out to the side and the darkness shrank from my fingertips. Two steps forward and Giselle was there, huddled on the floor at the foot of the stairs. The shadows writhed around her, diving into her body and back out as she jerked and moaned.
    “Please.” Her mouth made the word but there was no sound. Cactus may have burned the grimoire, but the spirits that resided in it . . . they needed to be burned as surely as the pages they encompassed.
    “You have to let them into you, Lark,” Peta said. “I saw my other charge do this once. Let them in, then destroy them with Spirit.”
    The spirits laughed and slowly pulled away from Giselle. Giselle flung herself back, away from the spinning sparkles that gathered into a pulsating orb. How bad could a bunch of fae-looking sparkles be?
    “ YEs. LeT Us iN. HAhahAHa .” They called out as tendrils of the spirits lashed at me, their voices rising and falling in a spine-tingling cadence.
    Well, that was reassuring. I let go of my hold on my element and tipped my head back. “Come on, then, let’s see if you like tangling with someone your own size.”
    The innocuous sparkling orb slammed into me so hard it picked me up off the floor. A hair-raising screech exploded out of Peta. I closed my eyes as my body was spun around. This was not a fight of the flesh, I didn’t need to see where I was going.
    My feet touched the floor again and I went to my knees. The darkness . . . it blinked up at me from inside my head, like we were standing face to face. A child not much older than Giselle grinned with sharpened teeth and eyes of solid black like a night of no moon. “You should never have let me in. The girl fought me and you saw how she did as I wanted. She would even fight you, though she had no desire to do so. And here you are, letting me in. You are not stronger than me. You are useless.”
    Useless. The word wrapped around my throat like a noose, cutting off my life as surely as a woven rope. She grinned at me, her sharpened teeth flashing. “Words. They have such power over those weak of heart.”
    No. I would not let this happen.
    I lurched forward, tackling her to the ground. She screeched and flailed at me, the darkness tightening further over my entire body. I clung to her. We would all die if I didn’t do something—fast. I opened myself to Spirit and the girl stiffened under me.
    “No. He was to be the last! There was not supposed