Awaken the Elements (Elemental Trilogy) (13 page)

             
Anatha’s anger had been floating in her middle, and she was doing a fine job keeping it in check until that last bit. It bubbled up, spreading its heat through her body. “You are doing this on purpose. Keeping me away from River.”

             
“Why would I do that?” Autumn asked, hands on her hips. She could feel the anger as it whipped out at her, stinging her skin.

             
“You know I like him!”

             
“I think you are being paranoid,” she said, calmly. Anatha’s anger lashed out at Autumn’s calmness. She reached out her hand. “Calm it, now, Anatha.”

             
“Or what,” she said, her eyes wide. “You go to make me?”

****

             
“I’m starting to think our sisters don’t like each other,” Mabon said.

             
“What gives you that idea? The fact that we can feel their feelings; is it my sister or yours who is flaming hot?” Aarawn asked.

             
“Should we tell Pyrus?”

             
“No, I say they have to learn how to hide their power.”

             
“Like us?” Mabon said and with a small hand movement, Aarawn felt as if he was drowning.

             
He bent over, coughing up seawater onto the ground. “Fine.” Aarawn looked at him with his grey eyes. Mabon heard only the wind howling before he noticed the fist coming toward his face.

             
Pyrus appeared out of the blue. “I am glad I came when I did. I just thought I was checking up on you two, the wards around this place, and what do I walk into? A fight. Shame on you both.” She stopped and looked over to the mall. Her eyes closed, and when they opened, she looked down at her dog.

             
“You share anger,” she spoke to herself. “Curious.”

             
“What do we do?” Mabon asked. “It is not good to feel so much. What if something bad happens?”

             
Pyrus shook her head. “Nothing. I just hope they don’t bring that place to the ground. They have no clue of the power they harness.”

             
“And we do?” Aarawn said.

             
“Not now, boy; in time, when I get the four of you together, I can see what it is you guys share. Until then, we wait and watch.”

****

             
“You really don’t want to do this right now,” Autumn said to her cousin. Her voice calm yet there was a bite of anger there. “No, but people might notice the strangeness. First impressions, dear, and you are not making a very good one.” She lowered her voice leaning in. Her eyes slid over to the guys walking over with a tray of food.

             
“I’m tired of you telling me what I want.”

             
Autumn did something she had never done before. She reached down and thought of damp dirt and leaves. She took the feeling, using it to snuff out the heat biting along her skin. She pushed the thought out and mentally dumped it on Anatha. Shaky and drained, she grabbed the edge of the wall beside her.

             
“What did you do?” Anatha asked in a whisper that held fear and awe.

             
“Leave me alone,” she said, trying to keep on her feet.

             
Anatha turned and walked by the guys. What had Autumn just done to her? She had dampened out her anger. Autumn was surprising her. Maybe she could do things like that too. Maybe all she had to do was practice. And then, not very nice thoughts flashed through her head. She shook it. She needed to think.

             
Autumn watched her stop the guys and ask them a question. She didn’t dare move. At the moment she felt weak. The guys answered her, and Anatha shot her a hateful glare and left.

             
“Autumn, you okay?” River asked, coming up to her.

             
“Fine. I’m thinking that maybe lack of food made me dizzy.”

             
“So here we are then, to save you from fainting, with a nice plate of food,” Rowan said, offering it to her.

             
She took the plate. “My heroes. Come on,” she said, slowly walking to the back.

             
“Wow,” River said, his mouth full of hamburger, as they entered the bookstore.

             
“Double the wow,” Rowan said as they looked around the back of the bookstore.

             
She had made it so there was a large screen on each wall. Two hooked up to video games and the other a Blu-ray. There were giant fluffy chairs which had to have already been part of the store.  They each looked a ton to carry. Beanbags had been thrown here and there. Hazel was playing some kind of RPG game on a large flat screen as the boys stared.

             
“This is like a little slice of heaven,” River said.

             
“Eventually you guys would have come up with the idea. I just needed a place where not many people would come in.”

             
“And why did you pick a bookstore?”

             
“She worked in one,” Hazel said, “And other than me, Autumn, and Anatha, no one really reads.              “Well, maybe we read,” Rowan said.

             
“There is a bookstore up on the third level which is much bigger. Plus, I don’t think anyone will be bothering us, unless I want them too.”

             
“Why is that?” River asked.

             
Autumn shrugged. “She doesn’t know,” Hazel answered for her, “But if she doesn’t want you somewhere, you don’t go. She is kinda like magic; you should see her grow plants from almost nothing. Magic.”

             
“Thanks, Hazel, I wouldn’t say that.”

             
“Magic,” Hazel said again.

             
Autumn shook her head and sat down to eat her food.

             
“Dibs on the game,” River said.

Chapter 8

             
Summer came quickly. Spring went by too fast for the people in the mall. They had finally settled down, getting used to their situation. Making themselves daily routines they could live by. One such routine: Waking, eating, doing something constructive, reading, playing, watching movies, and from there, see what happened. Some coped, while others fell into alcohol and drugs. Drugs were hard to come by, but there were ways if they wanted it bad enough. Everyone tried to ignore it, because it was that person’s way to cope with the situation. As long as a person could cope, there was no trouble. No trouble was good enough for now.

             
By early June, the temperature had hit the high nineties to low one hundreds. They still couldn’t get the mall’s air conditioning units working. No one went outside to brave the heat unless it was a pick up day, plus the smell of the infected flesh baking filled the air, making breathing hard. It was tolerable in the mall. When the temperature was scorching, the people inside could feel the heat slowly invading the floors. Fans were set up everywhere, and people tried to stay cool, hoping the air conditioner would soon be fixed.

              During the nights, when everything was quiet, you could hear the infected moaning either in pain or with the thought of food just beyond the glass and bars. They came to the glass, pressing their bodies into it as if they could walk through it like ghosts. Autumn observed this as she sat by the fountain, and in a way, they were ghosts. Just the shell of what they used to be. They had no memories of what they had once been. They were a reminder of the world that no longer existed.

             
  That night, yet again, everything came crashing back; the memories, the guilt, and the loss flooding in. She was tired of crying, but the tears still escaped her eyes. She let them as she watched the zombies. She fingered the emerald pentagram that hung from her neck on an iron chain; she’d had the necklace since she could remember. She had nothing to do at that moment and found herself sitting there watching the infected behind the doors.

             
They had once been normal like her. They had once been normal people that felt and cried like her. Who had created such a virus? Who would do such a terrible thing? This wasn’t the first time she had thought about these questions, and not the only one to do so. The TVs were all the same, giving news about which states were crowded with infected or about government doings. No real answers to their questions ever answered and no cure for the problem ever brought up.

             
Rowan flopped down beside her, and she hastily rubbed the tears off. “No need to hide them,” he whispered. She didn’t reply. “At least you aren’t apologizing for them.” She sat quietly, watching the infected do their moaning dance with the glass.

             
“It’ll all be different,” she said, speaking at last.

             
“I know.” He put his hand gently on her leg. “It’ll be okay.”

              She shook her head, her curls hitting her cheeks. Standing up, she walked to the glass. “It’ll never be okay again. Everything is different and always will be after this is all over. When the zombies are nothing but memories, so will the world we once lived in.” She looked at him with pain in her eyes. “Even with the world as it was, with the wars and corrupt politicians, we were
  
” she couldn’t find the right words to finish.

             
Angrily, her eyes turned to the infected. “I want to crush the person who created this,” she said with malice in her voice. “I want to make that person pay. I hate you!” She shouted at the suit-clad infected she was looking at. She broke into tears and let her legs fold under her as she sat on her knees. “I hate you,” she whispered.

             
Rowan gently touched her cheek and used both of his hands to make her look at him. She had almost forgotten he was there. “It’s going to be okay,” he said softly. 

             
“I don’t mean to be so hysterical.” She pulled away, angry at herself for acting so stupid.

             
He grabbed her hand. “Every hero has hysterics. It’s not written, but a hero is human. And all humans have hysterics, no matter how strong they are.”

             
“I’m not a hero.”

             
He smiled brightly. “You are.” She smiled back. Their eyes held, and his hand on her wrist sent a shiver down her back. Rowan pulled away, and there were no words to describe their feelings. Until that very moment, they’d thought it was just a crush, but it had become something more. They had been teasing each other for the past couple months.

****

             
In the darkness that filled her head, a small red glow came to her, and then a green one bounced along. Finally, a blue one and a turquoise one appeared. “Oh, Dark Lord,” Moorgun whispered. “What are these lights?”

             
“That is for you to find out, my beautiful dark witch,”

             
“I don’t understand. How does this fit with the girls?”

             
“You will find out when you find them,” his deep sensual voice made her shiver.

             
“How close am I to finding them, Oh Great Lord?”

             
“Close.”

****

             
“I don’t like them,” Mabon said as he watched his sister and Rowan.

             
“Mabon, relax; if you are so worried, put a binding spell on them,” Aarawn said as he cooked a hotdog. “While you’re at it, check our wards.”

             
Relynn ran by, hissing at the giant spider chasing her. The cats silver fur radiated with light. Its turquoise eyes scanned the room, finding a hiding spot. The giant spider had eight long hairy legs; it was the size of a dog. It turned and looked at the guys with bright yellow eyes. “Aarawn, call it off.”

             
He sighed, “Bane, go play outside.” The spider made a small noise and looked at the guys with its three tennis ball-sized eyes. “Don’t look at me that way,” he pointed to Mabon. “Blame him.”

             
It snapped its pinchers as it walked up to Mabon. He raised his finger and let out a small light of blue energy. The spider squawked, running outside. “That was not nice,” Aarawn said.

             
“Spiders are afraid of water,” Mabon said at the door.

             
“So are scaredy cats like Relynn.”

              Mabon slammed the door of the small trailer when he went to the gate to check on the wards. Pyrus had it moved here before the guys even showed up as if she knew what was going to happen.  He could see the mall perfectly, but no one could see them. The glamour spell that made them invisible was working great, and the wards were still as tight as could be. He stared at the mall; he would soon have to do something about those guys who were all over his sister.

****

             
The next day was a scorcher. Autumn had five fans going in her pillow store. Even the shower didn’t help her feel any better. She put on a cute, fitted, black tank with red Chinese letters sketched on it. The dark denim shorts were shorter than what she liked, but she really needed less clothing at the moment. The heat made her ill.

             
As she walked out of the bathroom, she noticed how quiet the mall sounded and counted the days in her head, “Tuesday,” she said to herself. Why was it so quiet?

             
She walked around, looking for people and ran into Jaime. He was sitting on a bench listening to a Walkman and writing something in a journal. “Jaime,” she said, poking him instead of yelling.

He pulled off his headphones, looking up at her
, startled. He closed the cover of the book he was writing in.

             
“Hey, girly,” he said, and she let it slide. She discovered it was much easier to just tolerate what he said and move on.

             
“Where’s everyone?” she asked, eyeing the journal in his lap.

             
“I have no idea.” He put his headphones back on and went back to writing. She shrugged and continued looking.

             
She ran into Hazel, who was looking for her. “Hey!” She ran to her, out of breath. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

             
“What’s the matter, Hazel?”             

             
“You know what tonight is, right?”

             
“I know,” Autumn said, thinking of the summer solstice, “I was waiting for you or Anatha to say something. I think she might have forgotten.”

             
“You mean you weren’t going to say a word until one of us brought it up?” Anatha asked, walking up. Autumn nodded. “You’re a bitch.”

             
Autumn shrugged, and they talked about their plans for the night. They paused in front of the hot tub shop. Looking in, they saw the guys cheering and hollering. The three stared in disbelief at what they were seeing. A curtain hung in front of the guys, and one of the other girls in the mall was stripping. The disbelief turned into laughter, and they laughed until tears ran down their cheeks.

             
Ivy Lee and Envy walked up to them. “What’s going on?” Envy asked while they looked in.

             
“Who is that?” Ivy Lee asked.

             
The three stopped laughing and looked at them. “If that’s not one of you, then who?” Anatha asked. She looked back in at the person behind the curtain.

             
Just then whoever was behind the curtain tripped, taking the curtain with her. All their mouths fell open. “What the fuck?” Anatha said, walking into the shop. Autumn put her hand on her shoulder, stopping her. “That dirty whore! Let go of me!” She could feel her anger, a black thickness surrounding her hand.

             
“Calm down,” Autumn whispered, looking at the naked girl lying on the ground covered in the curtain. Janice looked at them and then the guys. How could they have been friends? Before, when they were really close, she had been so different. Now everything about her had changed, and her eyes, they didn’t have that gleam like when they were young and stupid. They reminded her of the eyes of the dying. Close to giving up but still holding on. She shook her head at the pity that gripped her heart.

             
Anatha glared at her cousin. “How can you be so calm?”

             
“We’re better people for not doing anything.” Autumn walked away.

             
Anatha looked at Janice. She sent her a very nasty picture that would make Janice fear her. The visions were the easiest thing she could do. She didn’t have the energy to do more. She had been practicing in her room, and with her brother. He didn’t like it, but when he was stoned, he had nothing better to do. When Janice saw the vision, her eyes grew wide.  Anatha smiled, running after Autumn and Hazel.

             
“Can you believe that girl tried to break into our little group,” Hazel said.

             
“Yeah,” Anatha said, frowning.
Our?
She hated Hazel; she hated the little troll.

Autumn turned into the big bookstore
and started looking through a pile of books. She picked up one, reading the back, and held it up. “Anatha, here’s that new book by your favorite author, CJ White.

             
“Just put the book on my pile over there.” Anatha went over to the book she wanted to look at for tonight.

             
“So here’s the rundown,” Autumn said, “First off, Anatha will make the circle.”

             
“Yes,” Anatha said.

             
Hazel looked at Anatha, “Autumn, about the circle
  
”

             
“Hazel, there’s nothing to discuss. You did it during the full moon, and now it’s Anatha’s turn,” she said, thumbing through the book in her hands.

             
“Okay. I’m going to get some of my stuff,” Hazel said, leaving.

             
“Thanks for letting me make the circle.” Anatha sat down on a blow up chair with the book she had.

             
“It’s your turn anyway.” She looked for the spell she found yesterday.

             
“Can you believe her?” Anatha asked.

              She looked up. “What did she do now?”

             
“She seems to think she knows what we do. I mean, yeah, to some people paganism is a religion, but to me and you it’s more. You can feel it like I do; we’re different, and you know she isn’t like us.”

             
“Drop it. She’s my best friend.” She went back to search for the spell. “You hurt her because you’re jealous, and so help me, Anatha, you will regret it. “ She found the spell. “Try to control yourself.”