The Chilling Change Of Air (Elemental Awakening, Book 3) (18 page)

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 shattered 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.

Oh, it was still raining. I hadn't even noticed.

"Are you ill?" he asked, concern marring his handsome, but equally wet face.

I wasn't ill. I was just waking up to reality.

"Did you get everything we need?" I asked.

He grunted, an unamused sound, as Mark slipped out of the store before a large group of military looking men rounded the corner and started ordering everyone back from the shop frontage, taking over control of the street from the civilians. Who, in the end, hadn't done that bad a job.

"We have to fix this," I added, when he didn't answer my question.

"What,
Oraia
? Where do you need fixing?"

I tried to laugh. It didn't work.

"This," I said instead. "Everything."

"Is she all right?" Mark asked, pulling his overflowing trolley up against the side of the car as well.

"I'm not sure," Theo answered, proceeding to check me over physically with his hands. "Load the car, before anyone decides it'd be easy to take ours than battle inside that store," Theo ordered, his eyes on my face, my body, wherever his hands currently were.

"I'm fine," I murmured.

"You don't look fine. What happened?"

"Humanity fought back."

"Excuse me?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

"This is our world now," I added, looking over his shoulder and watching the men in fatigues line up the thugs with bats while holding big looking guns. The guns won. "We need to fix it."

"Casey," he said softly. "We'll fix it."

"Do you know how?" I asked, hopefully, my eyes coming back to his.

"
Oraia,
you need to rest." Not an answer I had expected nor wanted. Not an answer at all.

But he'd missed the point anyway. I wasn't tired. I wasn't suffering from shock. My eyes were wide open. My heart beating steady within my chest. The ache I felt a backdrop to the need to
fix this
.

"I'm fine," I said with conviction, pushing up from the ground and forcing him to move back or be knocked over.

"You are?" he asked sceptically.

"I've got no idea how to, but I do know we have to fix this."

"So you keep saying," he said slowly and softly, looking at me as though he thought I might have lost the plot.

And as I watched the scene of forced order assert itself across the street and the looks on the faces of the survivors of this first round of Genesis - and yes, I was sure this was only the first - change from fear and loss and confusion, to a hope laced still with shock, I realised it would be an easy assumption to make. That I might have lost the plot.

But with that change in atmosphere on the streets of a Wellington inner city suburb, in the rubble left by the destructive force of an Elemental world gone out of whack, I also knew that hope was a powerful force. Offering direction, absorbing misery, reinforcing the need to survive.

And most of all, bringing out a strength that some would not have known they possessed, but found the will to dig deep enough to find it inside.

Just like I did, sitting in the dirt and muck of a broken road, leaning against an SUV in the rain.

"In the car," Theo instructed softly. His attention on my face leading me to believe he still didn't think I had recovered yet.

And maybe recovered was too complete a word to use for how I felt. I certainly couldn't stop the images of that young weeping child or the frightened impotent pensioner from flashing through my mind. But I did feel a shift within me. A monumental type of change within my soul.

As Theo slipped into the rear of the car taking me with him, letting Mark drive the vehicle back to the house, I looked into his hazel eyes and realised that there were levels of immediacy. I'd already acknowledged that this Theo was, in a way, my Theo too. That to have one, I could survive without the other. In addition, I was aware that reconnecting with our Elements was more important than even that. Than me and Theo. Than having my
Thisavros
back.

And finally, I acknowledged that nothing was more significant, more paramount than fixing what was wrong in this world. For me. For Theo. For
Athanatos
, Humans and yes, even the Alchemists. Because we all had a right to survive, and we all had a right to exist in a healthy world.

Can you hear me?
I asked all my
Stoicheio,
even those I hadn't yet come to possess, whilst making sure I didn't actually reach for them.