Dark Possession - Aja James Page 0,94
hold on to him for support. Likely both.
Where she touched him, he felt the sizzle and sparks that he always felt with her, even through his clothes. Her touch recharged him like a short burst of electricity, but it wouldn’t last long.
He closed his eyes and concentrated all of his strength and power lower in his body, closer to the ground, forcing his will into the rocks beneath his feet, into the mountain itself.
He’d lost his powers when he turned his back on Ashlu. He’d broken a Bond that wasn’t made to be broken. But he knew now that it was also a Bond that was never meant to be forged to begin with. In the process, he’d sacrificed the undiluted, raw purity of his power.
It had been easy to make the mountain obey him when he’d been a Pure Elemental. It had taken all of his strength to make it his weapon when he defeated the Eagle King as a Dark Elemental. Since then, even while he was still Mated to Ashlu, his powers, while prodigious and terrifying, had never been the same. Until ultimately, he lost it completely. And the most he could do was cheap parlor tricks like any other barely competent telekinetic.
But with Eveline’s hand on him, holding onto him, he felt the resurgence of his old strength. Like a shot of pure lightning through his veins.
And the mountain answered his call.
Distantly, he was aware of the Eagle King dispatching another fighter jet, but sustaining too many injuries to keep flight, crashing down to earth in a tangle of feathers and limbs.
Eveline clutched him tighter, shouting something to Ramses that he couldn’t hear.
He opened his eyes and looked down at her, into those clear, blue-gray gems that had captivated him from the first.
A multitude of emotions traveled across her lovely, fae-like features in a split second. He understood some of them—fear, regret, sadness, courage, stubbornness, pride…
And something else. Something soft yet determined. Bold and rebellious.
Primal and Possessive.
It made his heart pound, though he didn’t know what it meant. It felt as if a firestorm was blazing within his heart of stone, the flames throbbing and flaring, cracking the hard shell.
And then it made his heart soar, this feeling that Eveline speared into him, as if it would burst right out of his chest.
Ramses raised his face to the skies, clenched his fists and roared.
The mountain roared with him, shooting a geyser of red-hot lava from the center of the crater, engulfing the enemy jets and everything around them in molten flames.
*** *** *** ***
“Ten F-22 Raptors down the tube. I’ve already created an evidence trail citing a routine training gone wrong. The unexpected volcano eruption destroys all proof of foul play. The U.S. military will want recompense for the jets and personnel. I’ve initiated the wiring of funds.”
“A drop in the bucket,” Medusa said with a dismissive wave of her long-nailed hand.
“Pull up the footage again, this time with ground view, slow-motion.”
Her tech master did as she requested with nimble clicks of his fingers.
“Fascinating,” she murmured, staring fixedly at the Dark King’s last stand before he and the Pure Ones’ Seer were engulfed in flames and all of the video feeds cut out to static.
“Can’t you fix the imaging with direct satellite surveillance?”
“The afterburn and ashes cloud and distort all video feeds,” tech replied, pulling up aerial satellite images on two different monitors while the rest showed various angles of images triangulated from the ground.
True to his word, only mushrooming dark clouds could be seen on the screens that didn’t show static; the extreme heat from the volcano blast distorted all thermal imagery as well.
“I’ve never even heard of an Elemental as strong as he seems to be. I thought I had already possessed the strongest Elemental in the world—my Enlil,” she murmured almost to herself.
More fool you, the voice in her head taunted.
Silence, bitch!
You can call me all the names you want. Doesn’t change the fact that you made a mistake. First, in assuming that Lord Wind is unique in his Elemental powers. Second, in losing him.
“Shut up,” Medusa gritted.
“What?” the tech master started, thinking she was talking to him.
“Not you. Carry on. Once the video feeds are reestablished, alert me. Meanwhile, I have plans to make.”
She left the tech center and took the lift that carried her into the bowels of her fortress, several hundred feet below ground.
If that demonstration of power is any indication, the Dark King could be the strongest Earth Elemental