The Soothing Scent Of Earth (Elemental Awakening, Book 2) Read online

  "You're flashing yellow," I remarked, my voice still so very shaky. "What am I flashing?"

  "A hint of green, but its not nearly your usual vibrant shade," he said, sadness reaching his eyes. Then he surprised me by saying, "We need the Aeras, Casey. You're not like other Gi nor Pyrkagia. You're different, Oraia. And in order to keep you safe, we need to know what that difference entails. Even if we have to put ourselves in danger first."

  He was right, and this was clearly evidence of how desperate our situation had become.

  I turned and looked out on the larger area up ahead; the arrivals terminal. Where hordes of people stood waiting, through doors in the distance, for their loved ones to emerge from their flights. We didn't need to go to the baggage claim area off to the side, as Theo's overnight bag had been small enough to carry on board, but we still had customs to get through. I sucked in a fortifying breath and squeezed Theo's hand, still in mine.

  "Let's get this over with," I said, sounding more like myself again. He nodded, but I noticed his eyes kept flicking to my face every few feet; checking to make sure I was all right.

  Customs was surprisingly quick, but even in that short amount of time the weather outside had shifted. Rain spat large droplets of water against the windows, the wind making the angle now acute. The storm was here, which meant so were the Aeras. My heart couldn't quite keep up with the rapid pulse of my blood, I was sure I felt it falter.

  With shallow breaths and sweaty palms we stepped through the final gateway into the arrivals hall, officially in Peru at last. My eyes scanned the crowd of people, unable to determine features as my head was spinning with thoughts of lightning striking through the roof overhead. I even glanced up to make sure there wasn't a skylight above us, but thankfully the ceiling looked solid. Although, how was I to know what an Aeras induced lightning bolt could achieve.

  We headed toward the access-way to the taxi stand and before we'd taken half a dozen steps they appeared. And I mean, appeared. Out of nowhere, in the middle of our path, in amongst all of the humans present. Who of course noticed nothing, because humans can't detect Ekmetalleftis like Athanatos do. God knows what their minds told them they saw, when the three very Scandinavian looking men popped into existence right there. I know my mind screamed, my mouth quickly following with a yelp. Theo's hand tightening in warning in mine, as though he thought I'd strike them down with Fire.

  Oh, it was close. They'd given me a hell of a fright. I could see the gold blazing from my eyes, as it was reflected back from every shiny surface around us.

  No one said anything for a moment, we all just took each other in. Two of the men, standing on either side of a smaller one, looked huge. Well over six and a half feet tall, with broad shoulders, and muscles bulging out from tight fitting short sleeved T-shirts. Their hands were hanging casually at their sides, as though they were tensed, ready to pull a gun, but keeping themselves limbered for optimal movement. A quick flick of my eyes at Theo, and I found him in the same stance.

  Scouts. I was guessing these two almost goon looking guys were Scouts like Theo. My eyes returned to the middle man, who looked a little younger than his Guards, but that didn't tell me much. Athanatos age so slowly it's difficult to tell. The young man was smiling; if I could believe it, it was friendly. The contrast between him and the other two was vast. They scowled, brows furrowed, eyes intense. Middle man sparkled a little surreal white from his eyes, but otherwise looked relaxed. He also looked to be the one in charge, despite the Scouts' training.

  All three men had short, dark blond hair, smoothly shaven cheeks, and stunning pale blue in their eyes. They were definitely lookers, but the intense and frightening gleam in the two Guards' eyes meant appreciating their façades was not on my to-do list right then.

  Still silence. It was becoming creepy.

  So, I decided to get things started. We did need them, after all. "Hello," I said, my voice only wavering slightly. The Scouts tensed, and the middle man let out a burst of laughter.

  "My grandfather did say you were a surprise," he said, laughter still evident in his tone. I flicked a glance at Theo, to see what he was making of this surreal meeting. But his frown hadn't altered since we'd been ambushed. Nothing new there.

  "My name's Casey," I tried, hoping introductions would move things along.

  "I know," the Aeras middle man replied. "We've been expecting you," he added, his eyes finally leaving me and taking in Theo. "Welcome to Peru, Prince of Pyrkagia. You won't mind if we bind your Stoicheio for the trip?"

  My eyebrows shot up and I felt Theo tense, then with what must have been a monumental amount of self control, his shoulders slowly relaxed and he gave a curt nod of acquiesce. I let my breath out slowly, wondering if there'd be a light show now, that the humans couldn't possible ignore.

  The Aeras speaker flashed white in his eyes, blindingly bright, and then a bolt of that light arced out towards Theo. My Pyrkagia side flared to life in direct response to what seemed like an attack. Even though the guy had warned us and Theo had agreed, the reaction was intrinsic. Coming from somewhere deep down inside. Somewhere my love for Theo dwelled.

  Before I could stop myself, before I could think better of the action, I let it have free rein, spreading out in a wall of flames in front of Theo. Directly into the path of that faster-than-the-speed-of-light flash of white. A crackle, a hiss, a sonic boom of thunder, and the wall of Fire snuffed out, leaving a sizzling ozone smell on the air. The little hairs on my arms stood up, I could feel the longer strands on my head floating.

  Theo was looking down at me with a bemused expression on his face. The two Guards were blazing white from their eyes, crackling energy hanging in the air around them. Their leader, the one whose lighting bolt I'd just intersected, had his head tilted at an angle as he studied me.

  "Thisavros," he finally muttered. "My grandfather hadn't warned me of that." He seemed a little put out, but otherwise not overly concerned. Or at least I thought so, until he added, "Well, this changes things, I suppose." He shrugged his shoulders, then looked at his two Guards. "Don't hurt them too much."

  My eyes expanded and an argument got caught in my throat, as three bolts of lightning came towards us way quicker than the previous faster-than-the-speed-of-light pace. I didn't have a chance to put up a wall of flames, and if Theo had intended to, I don't know. The next thing I knew was only white light, an intense shot of pain right through my body, tingling in my fingertips and toes, and agony in my head; splitting it apart.

  I couldn't tell what was up or what was down, only a strange sense of speed and air and space moving around me. I reached for Theo, but my body wouldn't respond, and as I could no longer see where he was, I wasn't entirely sure I'd have been able to grasp his hand anyway. But still I tried, unable to give up on searching for him, frantic to ease the pain with touch.

  I reached inside for my Gi, but here, in amongst nothing there were no plants or animals to fuel that Stoicheio. For the first time since the Gi fortress and my prison there, I felt entirely cut-off from my Element. This was worse than when I shut myself down in the car. Worse even than the Gi torture of a concrete bunker. It felt gone. My Gi was simply no longer there.

  I whimpered, or at least tried to, then reached for my Pyrkagia side. Only to suffer the same desolate loss. No Gi. No Pyrkagia. Only bright, white light that I had to assume was Aeras. I wondered if I'd tap into that Stoicheio too, but obviously now was not the time for an Awakening, as it remained aggravatingly aloof as well.

  Seconds turned into minutes, which seemed to turn into hours, but how could I really tell? Floating in this painful white haze of nothing. After some time I stopped even trying to reach for Theo. I stopped trying to reach for my Stoicheio, too. And simply stopped trying to fight the sensation of floating, of moving, of stinging pain; an electrical current which arced through my veins.

  I shut down.

  I just stopped.

  And, surprisingly, realised for the first time since I
'd been buried in that pit of Earth, how truly precarious my life had become. I'd thought I'd understood the perils. I'd thought I'd come to acknowledge the dangers lurking in this new, often cruel world. But it wasn't until an upstart Aeras with his two personal Scout Guards attacked us, that I really accepted how frighteningly bad my life now was.

  I was an Athanatos. I was an Ekmetalleftis. I was supposedly an Aether, at present connected to two Stoicheio. But none of it mattered, because I was defenceless against three Aeras, in a way I had never been when alone in a room with Davos the Gi.

  That pit of despair opened up before me...

  And swallowed me whole.

  Chapter 22

  So, This Is Aether?

  It was the scents that reached my consciousness first. Clean, crisp, something altogether different from any smells I'd ever experienced before. There was an ethereal quality to it. My lungs strained to gain enough oxygen, yet my sense of smell was in heaven.

  I hadn't realised how affected I had been by all the pollution in the cities I'd been visiting. Manaus and Santarém had both been laden with the smells of the rainforest and wet vegetation. Belém had the salty air of the Atlantic Ocean to soften the smells of diesel and overcrowded streets. But here, right now, I couldn't smell the denseness of forests, nor the clogging, choking stench of petrol. Not even the scents of too many people registered when I inhaled.

  No, all I smelled was clean, fresh, slightly thinned air. We were are up high. My guess, we were in the Aeras village already.

  My eyes flickered open on that thought and I took a look at the room I'd been housed in. A simple bedroom, with one king sized bed, a pale wooden dresser topped by a mirror, and side tables in the same light coloured wood. A comfortable looking armchair stood in the corner, and a large window with the most extraordinary view through open drapes beckoned over its shoulder.

  I swung my feet off the side of the bed and felt the world tilt precariously sideways. It took a moment or two for the spinning to stop. Whatever the Aeras had done to get us here had taken a toll on my body and head, that was for sure. I wondered if Theo had fared better. And then, the realisation that Theo wasn't with me in the room made my stomach roil. Where was he? What had the Aeras done?

  For a moment fear consumed me, but I forced myself to breathe through the angst and focus on what I could control. Location. I needed to know what I was up against outside of this room. Then I needed to find Theo and make sure he was all right.

  I crossed to the large window without any further ill effect and found myself staring out onto something that should not have existed. A long, stretched, surreal moment passed as I tried to align what I was seeing with what was the truth. I'm a practical kind of person, but this was taking a hell of a lot to digest.

  Grandly designed houses sat on top of centuries of rubble and ruins. The scattered remains of an ancient city seemed familiar, yet I knew I'd never been here before. This was Machu Picchu, but not as I had seen it in any travel magazine. The building my room was in must have been high up on the mountaintop, because a vast rebuilt village lay below the window I was staring out of, in staggered layers down the side of a steep slope. Yet, even though the houses looked well maintained and modern, the ruins of the ancient Inca town they lay on still seemed more visible than they should have.

  It was like one of those visual history books where a sheet of see-through plastic covers the ruins and shows you what they would have looked like whole in their day. Remove the clear sheet and you have today's image of ancient rubble. Replace it and you've got an artist's impression of what it would have been. But this wasn't a trick of the eye. Or was it?

  Humans can't see what Athanatos are capable of, they find excuses they can believe for anomalies around them. When humans looked on this site they would see Machu Picchu's ruins. Athanatos see the Aeras village.

  Clever. And what better place to be, than up in the mountains, in a clean, crisp atmosphere if you're an Air Elemental?

  Part of me was dying to explore. To see what the Aeras had done to this iconic Inca place, but I wasn't here as a tourist. If my arrival was anything to go by, I was here as a prisoner. Again? I shook my head in disgust. When would these paranoid people just invite me to their homes? I think they were as afraid of me as I was of them.

  I swung around at the sound of my door handle turning, followed by the gentle squeak of hinges that needed oiling. The Aeras middle man of earlier poked his blond head through the door and smiled when he saw me up and about. I didn't feel inclined to return the greeting.

  "You're awake," he declared. I just raised my brow, ya think? "Good. Good," he announced, rubbing his hands together excitedly. "Maybe we can get on with this, then."

  For a second he looked like an over enthusiastic puppy; harmless, excitable, raring to go. I couldn't quite make this guy out, and that scared me. I'd trusted Noah, and he'd turned out to be an Alchemist. Hell, I'd trusted Gramps and look where that had got me.

  "Where's Theo?" I demanded, not moving from my spot by the window.

  "The Prince? Ah, yes the Prince. You see, he needed to take a break," he replied.

  "A break from what?"

  "From threatening to take our heads if he couldn't see you," the guy replied, deadpan. I had to work not to smile at that image. Theo could very well be making life more difficult for himself, I shouldn't really be encouraging it.

  "Maybe you should let me see him, then," I suggested, knowing the answer I'd receive already.

  "No can do," the guy chirped, almost merrily. "Grandfather is asking for you."

  I ignored that. "Have you harmed Theo?"

  "Of course not!" the guy replied, looking shocked. "Only contained him, like we have you."

  Contained me? A sinking feeling took up residence inside my heart. I reached inside blindly searching for my Stoicheio, finding both elusive. Not a shred of their existence detectable.

  "What have you done?" I demanded, horrified at what Theo must be feeling, cut-off from his Element like that. I'd had experience at this, Theo had not. No wonder he was rampaging and threatening their heads.

  "We did what was necessary to protect our people," he answered, gone was the carefree attitude of before. Replaced now with pure intent. "You attacked us."

  "I...I did not," I spluttered. "I defended Theo."

  "We were not harming the Prince," he said slowly, as though talking to an imbecile. "We were attempting to contain his Stoicheio after gaining permission to do so. Something we do for all high level dignitaries from another Ekmetalleftis branch when they enter our territory." Yeah, there was an element of truth to that, wasn't there? "You attacked us," he repeated. And God, didn't it suck that he made containing our Stoicheio sound so legitimate? "We have many people who are not as strong as the Prince living here in Aeras," the guy pointed out. "They deserve to feel safe in their own homes."

  Ah, freaking hell. He had a point. I didn't like it, but it made perfect sense. He had asked permission to contain Theo's power. I'd just reacted automatically, without forethought. Damn.

  "What about my Stoicheio?" I said, hopefully.

  "Well, you proved as powerful as the Prince." And that was clearly all he wanted to say about that. He opened the door further and made a motion to usher me outside. "Grandfather awaits," he added with a flourish of his hand.

  "Who's grandfather?' I asked, as I allowed him to direct me out of the room and down a light corridor. Paintings of mountain scenes and cloudy, sunlit skies flanked each wall.

  "Our shaman," the guy replied. And I was guessing the shaman Aktor had mentioned. Maybe something good would come out of all of this, after all. Ah, hell. Who was I kidding?

  We walked in silence down the long hallway, turning a corner here and another there, making the building seem larger than it should have been. I hadn't quite managed to get a handle on the scale of Machu Picchu, but this was taking longer than I had certainly expected, in any rate.

  "What's your name?" I finally
asked, thinking conversation was better than letting my mind run rampant on what was about to happen.

  "Oh," he said, sounding surprised that he hadn't introduced himself yet. "Hip," he promptly supplied.

  "Hip? What kind of name is that?"

  A laugh bubbled up from his chest, surprisingly genuine. I got the feeling this guy, Hip, was a happy sort of chap under normal circumstances.

  "Hip, is short for Hippolytos," he explained.

  "Ah," I said with a nod of my head in understanding. "I can see why you'd go with Hip."

  His returning smile was sensational. It lit up the hallway we were in as much as the unbroken sunlight streaming through the windows did. He seemed to relax further after that little exchange, opening up about their village and what they'd done to create the illusion of Machu Picchu still being in ruins for the humans who trekked all the way up here.

  "It's the atmosphere," he explained. "We control weather, which is basically just the state of the atmosphere. Through this we can manipulate the layers of earth's atmosphere, substituting the troposphere with, say, the thermosphere." I stared blankly at him. He smiled indulgently. "Mix it up a bit?" he added. "Make a little of outer space blend with a little of the troposphere which begins at the earth's surface. Manipulate it until those parts of the village containing our rebuilds are housed in a different layer of atmosphere than humans can detect whilst still on earth."

  "Huh," I said, really not quite getting it, but aware all the same that it obviously worked. "Cool," I added, for good measure.

  "Yes, it is pretty cool, isn't it?" Hip agreed. "About as cool as what you'll be able to do."

  My head swung so I could look at him, trying to decipher what he meant by that. But he wasn't looking at me, his eyes were focused forward on a thick, double width and height carved door we were about to walk through. The carvings on the wood depicted various weather scenes, from a sunlit day, to a storming night at sea. From the the heavy rain of the Amazon, to the fork lightning of an electric storm, trees bursting into flames where it struck. Stars covered the entirety of the top of the carving, wrapping the scenes in an ethereal blanket. In one quick glance I could see the imagery suggestive of all four Stoicheio, with Air being the cornerstone of each.