Dead and Dusted by Lily Webb (most recommended books .TXT) 📗

realized that, without Kade’s quick thinking, the oread probably would’ve ripped me to ribbons. “Well, thanks,” I said, but Kade never got to answer because the oread fell to its knees and started wailing in a pitch so high that it threatened to split my eardrums. As the creature continued to screech, a powerful pulse of magic shot from it, making all the hair on my body stand on end, and somewhere in the distance, a floor-shaking crack thundered, followed by an all-too-familiar rumble that shook dust from the ceiling.

“What in Lilith’s name is it doing?!” Kade shouted over all the noise from outside, but I ignored him and ran to the nearest window on the third-floor landing. The rumbling increased as I ran, and I stopped breathing when I reached the glass and saw a spitting, roiling wave of snow cascading down from the peak of Mount Starcrest — right toward Kindred Spirits.

“It caused an avalanche!” I screamed as the oread’s words repeated in my brain: Nature must cleanse itself of those who don’t belong. The oread was going to kill everyone and everything in Starfall Valley, just to reset things back to their “natural” order. Leland and his team of explorers had brought this revenge on us all, a revenge I’d seen coming for more than a week in my dreams, but now that it was actually happening, I didn’t have a clue how to stop it.

“Selena!” Aunt Blair bellowed as she burst out of the stairs on the opposite side of the third-floor landing, followed by Flora, Thorn, Jadis, Brady, and all of Leland’s remaining security guards. Everyone who had a wand had drawn them, but Blair tucked hers away as she ran to me. “What’s going on?” she shouted over the oread’s wails, which showed no sign of stopping.

“It’s the oread!” Flora answered. “It shook loose an avalanche!” she shouted, pointing at the window behind me.

Blair’s eyes locked on mine. “Selena, your dreams…” she trailed.

Thorn dashed to my side to throw his arms around me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but we have to figure out how to make the oread stop this!” I shouted and glanced at the creature in its cage, screeching without ever stopping to take a breath while the world rumbled and the wall of snow and debris from the mountain drew closer.

I didn’t know exactly how much time we had before the avalanche buried everything, but I knew it wasn’t long. Still, as I racked my brain trying to think of something, anything, I could do, I came up with nothing — until I remembered the tooth in my pocket, and something the oread’s sister had said in my vision.

Without stopping to think twice, I pulled the tooth from my pocket and dashed back to the elevator to kneel in front of the oread. “Morea!” I shouted, using the oread’s name, but it didn’t seem to register since it kept right on screaming, so I stuck the tooth through the bars of the grate and tried again. “MOREA!”

The screaming abruptly stopped as Morea focused on her sister’s tooth in my hand. “Aleina,” Morea mumbled her sister’s name and reached for the tooth.

“You have to maintain balance, Morea,” I said, and Morea’s frigid eyes shot to mine.

“You… How did you…?” Morea asked dreamily, as if in a trance.

“I heard your sister say it, Morea, just before you lost her. Aleina wouldn’t want this — any of this. Please, stop it,” I said and stole a glance over my shoulder at the window, from which all I could see was white. The edge of the avalanche was almost here, which meant the ski resort higher up the mountain must have already gotten swallowed.

“These people you see behind me, all of them, I love them as much as you loved your sister, and I don’t want to lose any of them. They’re all from Nature, just like you and Aleina. Please, Morea, make the avalanche stop. You’re the only one who can,” I begged as the rumbling in the inn grew so severe that I could barely keep the sight of the oread in my focus as she took her sister’s tooth from me…

… And as soon as the stone left my fingers, the rumbling stopped, and the avalanche vanished as if it were never there. Silence, sweet silence, washed over me, and I jumped up into Thorn’s waiting arms and dissolved into tears as I realized I’d gotten through to Morea — and that, in the end, it was her fallen sister who’d saved us all.

Chapter 13

“Aleina…” Morea sobbed in the elevator as she clutched her sister’s tooth, and I realized it was probably the only piece of her sister that Morea had left. “I have gone so far astray.”

All the others seemed to want to stay as far away from Morea as possible — and I couldn’t blame them for being afraid of the oread after what she’d done to Leland and Zadie, not to mention attempting to bury us all in an avalanche — but something urged me to keep our connection going.

So, I approached the grate. “Morea,” I whispered, but the oread didn’t seem to register my voice. She couldn’t take her glacial eyes off the tooth she clutched in her clawed hands, as if staring at it and willing her sister back to life would make it happen. “Morea,” I tried again, and this time the oread’s eyes shot up to mine. As if waking from a trance, she blinked several times and looked around at her surroundings. “Thank you for calling off the storm.”

Morea pushed herself to her feet and approached the elevator’s grate. Thorn put his hand on my shoulder and tried to pull me away, to maintain some level of distance from the oread, but I resisted him. “You knew my sister?” Morea asked as her eyes searched my face.

“Not exactly,” I answered. “I saw her in a vision.”

“A vision…?” Morea trailed