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

  Chapter 5

  Shhh

  I have suffered much since I awoke in a pit full of dirt.

  I have been vilified, ostracised, and cast out.

  I have been tortured, poisoned and experimented on in a mad scientist's lab whilst still conscious.

  I have been dragged from my home, fought for another, made to kill in order to protect those I consider mine.

  I have discovered my once-thought kind and trustworthy grandfather was in fact a member of a cult that was obsessed with Elemental powers not natural to humans.

  I have found out I am a god's answer to a fate not yet determined but thought to be the very worst.

  I have loved and lost that love.

  And I was through with it all.

  As Theo's body moulded to mine, and a moan escaped his lips, while Fire swelled between us, his and mine, I pulled on the Earth. And felt its ever present reply.

  We are yours. Do as you wish. Take from us, Aether. Yours.

  The ground beneath that exquisite mansion rumbled. The house shook. I could hear Aktor and Isadora yelling at Sonya to get out. The glass in the window frames rattled and then just gave up the ghost and shattered.

  Rain poured in, soaking us where we stood. Drenching us, but not quenching the Fire. It burned. We burned. It raged to an inferno between us. I could smell the burned Aubusson carpet. I could feel the flames lick up my body, my clothes turning to ash at my sides.

  Theo's hands replaced them.

  Remember me! I shouted inside my head. This is us! I yelled.

  But a part of me knew. He was acting on instinct, nothing more. His feeding had been interrupted between Isadora and himself, and I'd been presented on a singed platter for him to taste.

  Theo's Stoicheio wrapped around mine in a poor imitation of a Thisavros bonding. Nothing like the real thing. Hollow. Weak. Fake.

  I started to struggle in his hold, his lips still firmly pressed to mine, his tongue halfway down my throat, his hands; one fisted in my hair holding me still, the other cupping my butt cheek and thigh, pulling me hard against his erection.

  The wind had started to howl, the curtains billowing horizontal to the floor now. The rain sharp splinters of ice digging into feverish skin.

  "I will have you," Theo growled against my lips. "You want this too."

  I did. I did want it. Skin on skin. Theo around me, with me, inside me. But not like this.

  I tried to speak, but my back had hit the wall beside the still raging fireplace, a picture next to my head falling to the floor from the impact our bodies made. The walls swayed, the ground rolled, the house screeched in denial, but I knew it was no good. Resistance was futile.

  This house and anyone in it would be buried if I didn't stop this now.

  Was it me? Was I causing this?

  Stop! I yelled to Earth, Fire, Air and Water. Stop! I ordered, but all I heard was the groan of trees outside, the roar of flames around me, the whistle of the wind and the sharp rat-a-tat-tat of rain on any available surface.

  We cannot, several different voices replied. We cannot, they repeated at different resonances. We cannot, they cried with force enough to make me moan from the pain that took up residence inside my head.

  My vision began to blur, my limbs became weak. But not Theo. Whatever was weakening me was not affecting him. His hands roamed down my body, lifting me off my feet and wrapping my legs around his waist.

  No! Not like this. Please, no!

  I felt him ready to enter.

  A single tear rolled down my cheek.

  Not like this, my mind whispered desperately. He'll never forgive himself, my heart and soul cried out.

  A bright white light filled the room, so blinding it even made Theo pause. His head pulled back, his chest pulled away, just our groins aligned but no closer.

  "What the hell?" he said, suddenly aware of the state of the room, who was in his arms and just how close we were to being crushed in rubble.

  His wide golden eyes glanced down at my scorched but obviously naked body, held aloft by his grip on my rear. I saw the second he realised what was about to transpire. I waited for the anger to be directed at me. But it didn't come. His eyes had stilled on my wet cheeks.

  Then the light expanded, rushed around us in a tornado of lightning bright flashes, ozone wafted on the electrified air. Theo's dark hair rose off his head, I could feel mine doing the same.

  "What's happening?" he asked, his words sounding like static, as he removed my legs from his waist but somehow managed to pull me closer, not push me further away with that move.

  "I...I don't know," I stammered, but I was thinking that maybe I did.

  The wind picked up, although all I could see before me was Theo and the blinding white light that surrounded us, and all I could hear was his harsh breaths mixed with mine.

  Where to, Aether? a new voice sounded in my head. High-pitched and chilling, not deep and steady like the Earth, or playful and teasing like Fire. This one froze me, then ran cold fingers down my spine. Where to, Aether? it repeated.

  I shook my head.

  "What is it?" Theo demanded.

  "Aeras," I whispered and the voice inside my head sighed, changing from chilling to calming in one breath.

  Aether, where to?

  So many things swept through my head. The look on Theo's handsome face, so close and yet still so closed off. The sound of a building about to break. The façade I'd seen earlier, driving through those gates towards the sleek mansion on top of the hill. The grass lawns, the trees.

  The Moreton Bay Fig.

  The more I thought about the gnarled, exposed roots of the tree, the one outside as well as the one in a book I used to own and the one that had appeared in my first dream visit from Gramps, the more it crystallised in my mind.

  So be it, whispered Air.

  Then the light blazed, and the wind whipped and the cool wet feel of grass met my toes. I looked down and saw a tree root, my eyes followed it until they came to the tree. The light dissipated, the wind calmed, and that ozone smell wafted away on a now non-existent breeze.

  But it still rained.

  "What the fuck was that?" Theo demanded, looking down at me with shock and I was thinking horror on his face.

  "Aeras," I repeated.

  "Yes," he said, stepping away, putting space between us, taking his body heat, but not the heat of his gaze. His eyes roamed hungrily over my completely nude body. I couldn't look at his. It hurt too much. Because although I saw appreciation in his look, there was still no recognition.

  I was a naked woman before a Pyrkagia prince, one who was still hungry.

  I covered my breasts with crossed arms as Isadora, Nico, Aktor and Sonya came running over. They all stopped as one, taking in the sight of our unclothed forms.

  "Did we miss the party?" Nico asked, as Aktor removed his shirt quietly and walked over to me holding it out.

  I could have kissed him.

  Nico reluctantly did the same for Theo, whose eyes still hadn't left my body, this time concentrating on my naked thighs.

  "What the hell happened?" Isadora demanded, taking a step toward Theo and being cut off by Nico. They glared at each other, but she didn't push forward, taking the silent threat at face value.

  "Are you all right?" Sonya asked. "One hell of a storm," she added, as though she needed to hear it said aloud.

  "You know better than that, Miss Marin," Aktor said softly.

  Sonya's shoulders slumped. "It just looked like a crazy-arsed storm to me," she muttered.

  "Hey," Nico chided softly, moving to wrap an arm around her shoulders. She stiffened but didn't move away. "At least you can't be fooled now. You'll always question your environment. That's got to be good, right? More awareness."

  "More awareness of the crazy-arsed things that are happening," she muttered, but smiled when Nico rolled his eyes.

  "Are you all right, Miss Eden?" Aktor asked pointedly.

  "A bit singed," I whi
spered, feeling the heat still from Theo's gaze. Why wouldn't he look away?

  "I gather things got out of hand," Aktor said conversationally, as I brushed a lank wet strand of hair out of my eyes.

  I glanced at the house and before Theo could answer that revealing statement said, "I think it's safe to go back inside." The house looked sound, a few windows broken, some more cracked, but at least it had a roof over it to ward off this persistent rain.

  "And how would you know that, Cassandra?" Theo asked, and then utterly stilled. The look of confusion and mortification on his face was almost humorous. He had absolutely no idea where that name had come from obviously.

  And didn't that just suck?

  I let a long suffering breath of air out on a sigh and he broke his statue like appearance to raise one solitary eyebrow at me.

  "We'll do this inside," I said, not waiting to hear any arguments, but starting for the front steps. "I don't know about you lot," I added, not looking back. "But this morning I woke up with my lungs missing and a butcher's excuse for sewing down the front of my chest, I need to sit down. And I'm sick of this freaking rain!" I added on a shout.

  Suddenly I was spun around and Theo's long elegant fingers were unbuttoning my shirt.

  "Hey!" I managed, as Aktor walked past saying, "I'd let him, he's just realised you almost died."

  "Why should he care?" Sonya accused, but looked pale and shaken as she too slid past.

  Followed by a frowning Isadora being shoved ahead of a smiling Nico, who offered me a wink.

  "You've healed," Theo whispered, and my head shook slowly as my body slumped and it just seemed too damn hard.

  "Only physically," I managed to whisper.

  A hand came up and cupped my cheek. It took effort to raise my eyes to his.

  Yep, still searching for something to recognise, but now doused in a hell of a lot of sadness and confusion and heartache.

  This was hurting him too, and he didn't know why.

  "Why can't I remember?" he whispered. "I feel this..." He lowered his face, bringing his forehead against mine in the most intimate action he had performed with me so far.

  Forget what just happened in the bedroom, this here meant something. That did not.

  "Why do I feel this still, if I can't remember?" he rasped.

  "What exactly do you feel?" I pressed. Honesty. We needed honesty if we were to move forward.

  Hell, what were we moving forward to? It couldn't be as good as what we'd had.

  "This longing," he murmured. "A need I don't understand." He laughed unhappily then, and pulled his forehead away, breaking the moment.

  His hand fell from my cheek, but he didn't step back. He looked down at me as I redid the buttons on Aktor's shirt, my fingers fumbling from exhaustion and the knowledge that the world was just so unfair.

  "You're attractive," he suddenly said.

  "But I'm not your type," I finished for him. "I know." My eyes came back up to his face.

  "You're really my Thisavros?" he asked, but I'm not sure he wanted an answer.

  "Was," I said anyway, and pushed past him to enter the house.

  I dragged my feet up the stairs ignoring the voices I could hear in what had to be the direction of the kitchen. I couldn't face them now. Aktor's calm knowledge that things would be as they were one day, when I really didn't believe that anymore. Nico's smug smile that would assume things were progressing nicely, when I had never been so lost as I was right now. Sonya's confusion and pain on my behalf. Isadora's anger and altogether bitchiness. No, I couldn't face it.

  But the room assigned to me was a mess. Rain still pouring in through the shattered window. The fireplace a hissing bed of wet embers. The walls scorched, the bedspread ruined, the carpet soaked.

  I covered my face with my hands and let out a pitiful sob.

  Two hands landed on my shoulders and I was turned into a warm embrace.

  "I may not remember, but I know what I'm feeling can't be wrong," Theo whispered into my hair. "Give me time, Cassandra."

  I cried harder.

  And then he swept me up in his arms, tucking me under his chin and turned from the ruined room, stalking down the hallway. His foot pushed the door open on a smaller but no less luxurious bedroom, and proceeded to carry me towards the bed. A fire still flickered in the hearth, and as we passed it, it roared back to life. Happily flaring from a mere thought of Theo's, no doubt.

  I was too tired to throw Pyrkagia around, but I wasn't too tired to object to sharing a bed with a man who couldn't remember me.

  "I can't stay here," I protested, as he tucked me under the covers like a small child.

  "Shhh," was all he said, brushing my hair from my face and then moving back to the fireplace, staring blindly for a long while.

  I watched him, my body longing for something, that when given earlier I'd realised I couldn't accept. He was right there. Across the room from me. Mere feet away. And yet it might as well have been the ocean for all the distance that there still existed.

  "Go to sleep, Cassandra," he murmured, not looking up from the flames.

  I closed my eyes, felt the keen ache inside my chest, the pain as my heart was sliced to ribbons all over again.

  I could have him. I knew I could. All it would take was for me to get up out of this bed and walk over there. He wouldn't deny me. He wouldn't deny himself. His longing matched mine.

  But it was false. Or maybe just part of the whole. The attraction existed, but the love was no longer there.

  I rolled over onto my side, my back to the hearth. I ached in more than my chest now. I ached everywhere. When would this end? When?

  I'm not sure how long I lay there, how long he stood by the fireplace watching the flames, how long neither of us said anything but both of us knew the other was awake. I thought he'd leave, but maybe he was waiting for me to fall asleep first. I couldn't, as tired as I was, I just couldn't.

  God help me, I was in love with a man who didn't love me back. A man who had loved me once, told me he would always love me, no matter what.

  Tears leaked out of the sides of my closed eyelids as I thought back to Brazil and that moment in the shower, when Theo held me, comforted me, after being apart for so long, suffering so much, and then finding out I was more than just Gi.

  "However this plays out," he'd murmured against my lips, his hands smoothing down my back, over my arms. "I will always love you. No matter what comes next. I will always love you. Whatever you become. I will always love you."

  I couldn't stand this. It was tearing me up inside. I couldn't live with this depth of pain. I'd survived the Gi. I'd barely survived the Pyrkagia. I would not survive Theo Peters.

  The bed dipped at my side and hard arms wrapped around me, "Shhh," he whispered. "Shhh."

  I let him hold me, because I am weak.

  I let him comfort me in his embrace, because I couldn't find the strength to pull away.

  I let him pretend he still loved me, because the alternative was killing me slowly anyway.

  I fell asleep in the arms of my Thisavros but feeling a lifetime away.

  And woke up in a dream on a windswept hillside, my hair floating around me in a magical breeze, as my eyes met the sad blue of Gramps'.

  "Casey, sweetheart," he said in that familiar gruff voice. "My poor, sweet girl."

  There was no stopping the tears. Like the rain that poured down in the real world, but was strangely absent in this dreamscape, they kept coming, and coming, and coming, and coming.

  Until I was sure I would flood the world with my resounding grief.

  Chapter 6

  I Couldn't Stay

  The wind whipped his words away.

  "What?" I shouted.

  "Here," Gramps yelled back, indicating a natural shelter formed from the edge of a cliff that I hadn't noticed before. I was sure it had appeared out of nowhere.

  I followed behind him, noting how sprightly he was, how his blond hair only had a smattering of gr
ey. How at sixty, the age he was when I thought he'd died, he'd appeared fifteen years younger. And now he appeared even younger than that. I couldn't get my head around it. If this was a just a dream, then he could appear in any fashion.

  But I knew better now. I wasn't the naive granddaughter he left behind with a library full of books obscurely related to the Elements, and a memory full of stories to guide me like bread crumbs through a dangerous forest. I wasn't that girl anymore.

  I'd been through a bucket load of crap, which I sincerely thought might be because of this man. I felt my fists clench as we made it to the relative quiet of the sheltered cave. He turned slowly to look at me, a knowledge he'd always had present in those pale blue eyes. Eyes the exact same shade as mine.

  I'd grown to hate him recently. For all the lies. For faking his freaking death. But most of all, I'd begun to hate him because he'd clearly known what was going to happen to me and hadn't said a word before he left.

  "You've got some explaining to do," I said softly, my throat felt raw from all the crying. My skin too tight on my face. My heart too weary by far.

  "Yes," he agreed. "It's time."

  I sucked in a fortifying breath of air and sat myself down on the dirt floor beside the cliff face. My grandfather followed, making the move seem more simple than a sixty year old man should.

  "We've already established you're an Alchemist," I said, swallowing past the lump of betrayal in my throat. "And that you groomed me for what I now am. Tell me," I whispered, the wind still moaning out on the moor, but not reaching our little piece of solitude, "why?"

  "They are not who you think they are, sweetheart," he said. "There are good Athanatos and bad, like humans. But those at the top, those closest in age to the ancients, have become corrupt. Imagine the length of time they have existed. Imagine what that does to a mind."

  All quite reasonable, when you think about it. But then, one look at Aktor and I could refute that claim. Twenty-five thousand years old and he was more sharp minded and level headed than the rest of us.

  The Rigas on the other hand? Hmm.