elemental 07 - lonely hunger Read Online Free PDF

she had needed to during the contention for the rule of her element. It was trickier for fire elementals; they had no real benefits with the natural world that could cover them. 
    The earth elementals had a spell that could cause upheavals in the land around them, obscuring their hiding spot. Dylan, Aiden, and Aira hadn’t been called upon often to chase down earth elementals—they hadn’t been exposed to that trick as yet, because it required, according to the book, a fairly advanced knowledge of the elements. Water elementals were considered the gold standard of trackers—water was everywhere on the planet, part and parcel of the ecosystem, even in the desert. That thought led him to believe—though he hadn’t yet told Aira and Aiden—that he might be able to find the assailants hiding out in desert territory.
    But to find Leigh—if she was indeed with the people who had committed the attack on the hotel—would require a lot more strength than Dylan had tapped into during his life. The desert, if the group was hiding out there, had very little water for Dylan to tap into, to trace his consciousness and push his energy through to locate anyone. If he could locate Leigh on her own—based on the fine trace that he had in mind, the brief acquaintance he had with her energy, potent though it had been—then he could at least know where she was. Even if she wasn’t with the group, Dylan wanted to find her. If she wasn’t with them—either as a prisoner or hostage or as one of the attackers—her disappearance was still jarring. 
    Dylan closed his eyes, opening up his awareness, pushing his energy out of the car and projecting it gradually through the world around him. As he approached the point when he would come fully into his abilities—when he reached his next birthday—Dylan was finding it easier and easier to tap into the energy that was welling up inside of him. He knew that the most difficult phases were still to come; after watching Aira and Aiden separately going through the power surges that came before the apex, Dylan was wary. But as the energy built up inside of him, suffusing his body, it was becoming easier to do the things he needed to do. Dylan felt his way through the world, seeking Leigh’s energy, focusing on the tiny fragment that he knew belonged to her. He called the imprint of her energy to mind, the feeling of her essence that he had gotten when they had kissed at the wedding. 
    Dylan breathed in slowly and deeply, and the atmosphere in the car fell away. Leigh’s energy had been so familiar to him even when they had just started kissing—an odd kind of echo, hot and cold all at once. He remembered the taste of her lips, the way she smelled like apples and honey. He had looked into her mind only briefly, but the feeling of something solid, something deep and rich, had stood out to him even before the disaster that had happened. Dylan sought out the imprint, the impression he had had of her mind, her energy. He couldn’t project his thoughts to her unless they were close to each other, let them flow through her mind; but at a distance he couldn’t project them. He was a passive receptor, directing his focus so that he could filter through the flotsam. 
    Dylan almost started in his seat as he felt the ripple of energy wash through him. It was Leigh. Dylan focused down again, not wanting to lose the faint trace. He breathed in. She was in distress, he could tell; she was anxious. He tasted the emotions flowing through her—feeling them filtering through his mind inconsistently. She was anxious, and in a little bit of pain. Dylan almost smiled to himself as he felt her flare up in anger. As the connection wavered and strengthened, waxing and waning between them, Dylan tried to get a sense of the distance. She wasn’t outside of the US—that much Dylan could tell. It wasn’t so far away that he could lose her at any instant just from distance; the tenuousness of their connection was