Excerpt: Elementals

He piled the wood in to a perfect tee-pee shape and she refrained from asking if he had ever been Boy Scout. Truthfully, she didn’t really want to know. The less she knew about him the better for her.
When he was finished he held out his hand and she walked over to him. He turned her gently to face the pile of wood. He guided her hand, palm down, over the top. Now...call the fire.
She held her hand over the wood and strained. But she could not seem to make fire come to her. Sweat beaded on her brow and her arm was hurting from the strain. Perspiration was running down her neck and down the front of her blouse.

“Concentrate,” Ian growled at her.
“I am,” she gritted through her teeth.
“No, you’re holding back! Concentrate!” His voice was pounding in her head. “Visualize, feel the fire, see it bursting the branches in flames!”
She screamed from the pain. And a flash of lightening bolted down and struck the pile of wood, knocking both of them down on the ground. Where the wood had been struck a little flame danced.
Red faced and weak, “Does that count?”
Ian helped her up and put her hand back over where the flame struggled to stay alive. As her palm came to rest over the flame it seemed to jump to life and double in size. Ian walked around the pit and picked up the wood where it had been blown all over the place. After he had made a rotation around the flame he came to stand behind her again.
“Now, make the fire spread,” his voice was soft and cajoling.
Jayne felt the fire connected with other of her abilities and it was then that she realized that power contained within fire was the most destructive, it was also the one that took from here energy instead of feeding from it. She made the flame grow and shrink, then it spread, she caused it to make designs. When it would hit the rocks where no wood was it would go out.
“You cannot make it burn, unless it has something to burn. It’s a natural law and you cannot break any natural laws with your skills, ever. But you will be surprised to find out how much you will be able to bend the natural laws. Sometimes it will almost feel like you have broken a law.”
“Stop talking in my head, you’re giving me a head ache.”
“Fine,” he grunted.
“Now, I want you to think about using the wind to blow some of the limbs and branches over near the fire.”
As she did she started to see what he meant about bending the laws. She used some of her other powers to cause a path for the fire, guiding it with her mind. She didn’t purposely start to guide the fire toward the car but all of a sudden it became a direction she wanted to take it in. The fire moved quickly with her assistance, just as it got within inches from the car a blinding light ripped through her body and caused her drop like a stone she could not reach out to any of the elements and she was so weak she couldn’t open her eyes. Black swallowed her.