The Chilling Change Of Air (Elemental Awakening, Book 3)

by Nicola Claire

  "Nico, would you take first watch?" Theo asked, his lips brushing against the skin of my forehead as he spoke, as though he couldn't pull himself away further to speak. "I need to take care of Cassandra."

  "Of course," Nico murmured, shifting to stand.

  "I'll keep you company," Sonya offered. "I can't very well protect everyone like you guys can, but I can help you stay awake."

  No one had the heart to tell her they were well capable of avoiding sleep if they so chose. Nico nodded with a smile and headed towards the lopsided door on the shed. Sonya followed behind him with a kind of avid focus on the way his butt moved in his jeans. I couldn't help smiling.

  "I'll take second shift," Isadora offered, and my smile vanished at hearing her voice. "Wake me in four hours," she ordered Nico, who offered a salute and slipped into the night.

  "I can..." my brother started.

  "No," Theo broke in. "Aktor after Isadora, and by then we should all be awake anyway."

  Nobody argued, he'd been using that voice. Not that it was unusual seeing Theo take command of a room. He was a natural born leader and even if he wasn't a prince of Pyrkagia I was sure everyone would want to follow him.

  I knew I did and it had absolutely nothing to do with a crown.

  With two people out of the shed it seemed that much bigger. Isadora got up and moved closer to the door, being the next on duty it made sense. It also added another layer of security, not that it wouldn't take much to blow the walls over on this thing. It was leaning precariously, but somehow still remaining upright. Managing to keep the drizzle out that still fell and the wind that buffeted the sides from seeping in.

  "I placed a blanket in the corner," Aktor whispered and when Theo lifted his head to look at the man, I realised he was whispering to him. "Why don't you settle Miss Eden in back there. She needs rest more than any of us right now."

  "Good idea," Theo murmured, shifting so he could scoop me up and carry me to the back of the space.

  Whatever had been in here before had been cleaned out. Well most of it had, there was a stack of cardboard boxes flattened on the floor, where the blanket sat waiting. And a few shelves still held miscellaneous gardening equipment, but mainly they'd cleared it out so everyone could fit inside.

  Theo gently lay me down and began to tuck the blanket in around me. Before I could think better of it, my hand came out to still him. Bright hazel eyes lifted to mine.

  "Join me," I whispered. I needed to be held. "There's room enough for two."

  He hesitated, then nodded. "Of course," he offered, and slid under the blanket, warming the length of my side.

  I rolled over immediately and forced him to lift his arm and wrap it around me, while I rested my sore head on his chest. I was so damn tired.

  And scared. I don't think I had ever been as scared as I was right now.

  This was big. Huge. World altering. And not just my world.

  "It will be OK," Theo murmured, his chest rising and falling rhythmically with his steady breaths. It felt so right. "It won't look nearly as bad in the morning."

  Soft murmurs sounded out from the other end of the shed as everyone settled down for some much needed sleep. Aktor had said I was the one in most need of rest, but I argued that point silently. We all looked shattered. A type of fatigue that was borne of devastating knowledge. If Genesis was as bad as its aliases made it out to be, then things were pretty freaking grim. And we all knew it.

  "I think I spoke to Aetheros," I whispered so quietly only Theo would hear.

  "Casey," he sighed, understanding of my unconscious state registering in his pained tone.

  "I think he's as lost as we are," I added. I'm not sure why I felt that, but his booming calls of Oh, my Aether in my head had something to do with it.

  "Oraia, we'll find an answer. We have to."

  "How did he let it get this bad?" I asked. Why hadn't Aetheros stepped in before the imbalance was so drastically tipped in one favour?

  Theo was quiet for a long time, but I knew he hadn't fallen asleep. Too much tension resounded throughout his body. Too much awareness thrummed through mine not to be sure.

  "We are to blame," he said softly, but I didn't miss the guilt and shame he carried at those words. "For centuries we turned our backs on him. Alienated ourselves. Became too set in our individual branch ways."

  Oh, my Aether. The power of his voice in my mind had hidden the true agony of his words.

  The cry for help.

  "I don't know if I can do this," I admitted, feeling utterly sick to my stomach.

  Theo didn't ask what, he just kissed the top of my head. He also didn't offer an answer.

  This was too much. Way too much. A world teetering on the brink of extinction. And one small woman with not enough strength to steady it.

  I didn't know what I was meant to do. I didn't know how to stop this. I felt so impotent in my inability to see a positive outcome to all of this.

  I felt so damn lost.

  "I'm so scared," I whispered, my lips trembling, my body shaking and tears starting to sting my eyes.

  "Shhh," Theo whispered, slipping down further in our makeshift bed. "Shhh, Oraia. Shhh."

  Then his lips brushed my cheek, my jaw, the corner of my mouth.

  "You are not alone," he whispered, hot breath mingling with my own.

  A statement, a promise, that meant more than it should have. Not an answer as such, although it felt like one to me.

  "Theo," I breathed, asking for something I couldn't even put into words.

  "Kiss me, Casey," he urged, pulling my body gently beneath his larger frame. "Make me remember."

  A tear slid out as I opened my lips to his searching tongue and let him kiss the fears and worries and doubts and aches away.

  I let him kiss me until I was flying and heat warmed our little corner of the shed.

  I let him kiss me until it didn't register that this kiss was with a man who couldn't remember the me from the past year.

  I let him kiss me until nothing existed but us, right then, his lips on mine, his warmth invading my body, my heart, my soul.

  I let him kiss me until I was sure I couldn't survive without this Theo as much as I didn't want to survive without my Theo.

  I just let him kiss me. My Theo... this Theo.

  Theo.

  And only then did I truly kiss him back.

  Chapter 12

  Can You Hear Me?

  It wasn't quite as bad as we'd feared.

  But it was bad enough.

  Some buildings had survived, most hadn't. Water mains had broken, sewage was seeping up from beneath the ground, liquefaction was making other areas impassable.

  But unlike any earthquake I had ever heard of before there were no aftershocks. No ongoing tremors to set your teeth on edge. Just a heavy pall of expectancy; when would the next big shake occur?

  Of course we knew it wasn't your average earthquake, but something deeply rooted in the imbalance of the Elements. Something inherent in the survival of this world. I hesitate to use the word magical, but what are Stoicheio if not a type of magic?

  The crux of the problem, though, was how to right it.

  The immediacy of our situation, however, made that question fade to the back of our minds.

  "There are a lot of dead," Nico commented quietly to my side. "We should help them."

  Theo, Nico, Isadora, Mark and myself stood on top of Oriental Bay cliffs and looked out over downtown Wellington. The CBD was a skeleton of jagged concrete, twisted metal, shattered glass, and rib-like rebar covered in the blood of those who were lost.

  God, was the rest of the country like this? The world? We'd still not been able to tune into the Civil Defence station, but Aktor was attempting to establish communications via Fire back at home right now. But if Pyrkagia were in as much of a mess as we were, answering a knock in the flames of your hearth - if it still stood - was not a top priority.

  We'd find out soon. But I wasn't sure if t
he answer would be helpful.

  "Order needs to be established," Mark added.

  "The humans will have their own system to handle a disaster like this," Isadora commented.

  "So, we shouldn't concern ourselves, is that right?" I snapped.

  "Do you not think we have enough on our plate already?" she asked archly.

  The fact that she was right was irrelevant. The look of devastation and heartache and loss and fear on the faces of those who walked in tattered clothes with dust covered faces and hollow eyes was all I could see.

  I ached. And it was so much worse than any ache I'd felt before.

  These were my people, even if I wasn't human anymore.

  Aether, sounded out inside my head. Oh, my Aether.

  I couldn't tell if that was an agreement from Aetheros or a fabrication of my mind. Or just one of my missing Stoicheio trying to remind me I was not who I used to be and that I should focus on what mattered right now.

  And what mattered, aside from trying to re-establish contact with our Elements somehow, was making sure we had enough provisions to survive.

  "Come on," I encouraged. "Let's do this."

  Mark came with Theo and me in the only SUV that had been on our property and survived. Isadora and Nico had to settle for the town-car that had collected them all from the airport. The state of the first rubble strewn hurdle to block our path on the wet, mucky street led me to believe they'd be ditching that car and moving on foot before they got too much further from our base.

  There was some organisation here, though. Large bulldozers shifting debris to the side of the road. The odd reflective jerkin clad policeman directing the public to shelters throughout the neighbourhoods. Schools, apparently, were your best shot at finding any help. Human nature recovering as best it could. But the closer we came to the centre of town the more obvious it was that some were just out for themselves.

  Survival of the fittest saw a group of young men manhandle an elderly gentleman and steal away the grocery bag he'd managed to claim for himself. Another corner showed hard looking miscreants, leaning back against broken store fronts, smoking cigarettes and scaring off anyone who walked too close to their new abode. When the shop was stripped bare, they'd move on.

  Filth and disorder everywhere. Tempers flared. A gun being fired sounded out. And then the wail of the sirens of overtaxed authorities as they rushed to another crime scene.

  "We do this quickly," Theo announced into the stunned and mortified silence in the car. "In and out, no delays."

  Both Mark and I nodded, unable to make a sound.

  It broke my heart. Not just the destruction of a once proud city. But the cruelty that grew up from the wasteland left from such brutal trauma. There was some hope, in the efforts those with earth moving equipment were attempting. In the consoling words of a policeman to a bedraggled couple standing next to a crushed car. But we should have all risen above our baser desires at a time like this. Where was our collective humanity when a child stood unobserved on the corner of the street wailing for its mother and no one heeded its cry?

  It broke my heart.

  "Casey," Theo said, capturing my attention again. "You'll slip into the driver's side and keep the car running, doors locked. Mark and I will enter the stores. If we don't come out within ten minutes you move on. If someone hassles you, blast the horn and don't stop until we arrive. If we don't arrive within one minute after you activate the horn you move on. Understood?"

  No. I did not understand this. I did not comprehend how this could happen. No.

  "Cassandra," he pushed, more gently. "Say you understand.

  I sucked in a shaking breath of air and nodded.

  "It will be fine," he lied.

  Baseball bats. There was a group of men carrying baseball bats. Why were they carrying baseball bats?

  "This one will do," Theo announced, pulling the car to a stop next to a pile of rubble, but within sight of a supermarket.

  "Ready?" he asked.

  Mark grunted and exited the car, Theo reached over and gripped my hand.

  "Hey," he encouraged. "Ten minutes, that's all."

  I nodded. Lips numb. Heart thundering inside my chest.

  "Lock the doors," he said, brushing his lips against mine.

  I followed his command, knowing my eyes were too big in my head when they met his on the other side of the windshield.

  Of all the things to level me incompetent, to steal my courage so completely I could barely function at all, it was human behaviour at a time of crisis that did it.

  I kept telling myself there was hope in amongst the horror. Someone picking up a dropped tin of spaghetti and handing it back to a mother of four. The child had been found, on the street corner, but not by a family member by the looks the twenty-something chap was throwing up and down the street frantically searching for someone else to take over care of what was probably an orphan now.

  But the shoving and shouting at the entrance to a grocers. The threat of violence that hung on the air around the petrol station across the road. The car horns blasting and sirens wailing and alarms going off set a tone of heightened danger and brought sickening reality to everyone's lives.

  I should have been stronger than this. I'd been through so much, survived so much. And yet as I watched that group of five teenagers get ever closer with their bats I knew nothing had prepared me for this.

  I'd been able to explain so much away because "they" had not been human. Athanatos are dangerous beings. Ancient and knowledgable in every cruel and vicious act there has ever been. Able to survive centuries by hardening their minds and hearts. Not human. Not even close.

  And yet here were the monsters. Standing next to the saints. Two sides of humanity that had probably always existed but I'd only just noticed today. Not everyone is good. There is right and wrong in every society. Virtue and dishonesty. Love and hate. Kindness and meanness. Respect and dishonour.

  "They are not who you think they are, sweetheart. There are good Athanatos and bad, like humans." My grandfather's words, reflected in humanity.

  I flicked my eyes back to the shop entrance. How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten already? I'd forgotten to check my watch when Theo and Mark had left. The bat wielding thugs were closer now. Almost to the store frontage that had been boarded up by the enterprising owner, but which would be useless against a baseball bat.

  My heart picked up speed, the malaise of shock was lifting, my fingers already curled around the door handle on the car door. Theo had said remain locked inside, but those bats could kill. Hadn't there been enough death already?

  Aether. Oh, my Aether.

  Yeah, we were all feeling the pain. This was wrong. The world was out of whack. Our immediate survival was imperative, but no less important than sorting out this mess and making the world healthy and safe again.

  An old lady got caught up in the middle of the group of thugs. One pushed her out of his personal space as though he had the rights to that little segment of the pavement. Another thrust her back when she lost her balance and landed against his side. A shoving match began and I found myself standing outside the vehicle, my feet in amongst stones and debris, my nose filled with the acrid stench of a city infrastructure on the brink of collapse.

  I reached for Air instinctively, ready to blast the hell out of the arseholes who picked on a defenceless pensioner. I had no way of knowing if I could wield my new Stoicheio with enough finesse to avoid hurting the old woman, but I had to try. Anything was better than the terror on her wrinkled face, the shock and confusion that accompanied it, the realisation that she could die.

  No! I clenched my fists, closed my eyes and tried to imagine a mini tornado twisting through their midst, picking off broken bits of building and flinging them out at each boy in that group, selectively hitting my targets and avoiding the lady who was still being buffeted from side to side.

  But when I called Aeras all I heard was a mournful cry, the wind whistling through the sh
attered windows of nearby structures, a mournful howl sounding out inside my suddenly splitting head.

  "Oh," I gasped, doubling over, clutching my temples and thinking regurgitated ouzo was about to be spilled.

  I blinked through tears of pain and watched two middle aged men tear into the group, throwing a punch here, a kick there, and basically fighting back against the bullies. Another woman rushed out from her hiding spot, to grip the arm of the old pensioner and pull her to safety, while yet another person shouted on the corner for the police, who must have been within hearing distance, because in seconds two uniformed cops came tearing around the corner batons raised, tasers out, intent in their eyes.

  I sunk down onto the road, back to the SUV and watched humanity come back from the edge of an abyss. Watched those beings without supernatural powers take control and right the wrong. Despite their lack of weapons, despite their lack of skills, despite their fear.

  There were good and bad souls in every race on earth. I had to believe the good would win over the evil. I had to believe that what I'd witnessed today was not an anomaly but the norm. I had to.

  But as my head stopped throbbing and the nausea from the pain subsided I felt a different kind of unease. A type of despondency that even hope witnessed could not completely wipe away. A type of panic the weight of responsibility did little to alleviate.

  This was our world now. Treacherous not only for me, but for every person in it. Human, Athanatos, even Alchemist. I realised, as I sat there panting through the after effects of what felt like a brain haemorrhage, that a war had begun. A race to balance the world, right the Elements, and save everyone. Every...one. Not just my group of friends. Not just the Pyrkagia, or the Aeras, or the Nero, or the Gi. Not just humans or Alchemists or Athanatos. Everyone.

  A type of calmness replaced the despondency and panic. A sort of conviction without a rudder, but still a goal to achieve. I didn't know how we'd do it, but I did know we had no choice. The alternative was too bleak.

  "Cassandra!" Theo yelled as he ran across the road pushing a shopping trolley before him and making me smile from the surreal and, I admit, slightly humorous sight. "What are you doing out of the car? Are you hurt?" he demanded, the trolley rolling to a stop against the car, landing a decent dent in the side panel which he didn't seem to care much about, as he crouched down in front of me and pushed wet hair from my eyes.