A Time to Die (Elemental Rage Book 2) (19 page)

Earth shuddered a
little.

The air was so
thick with smoke and nearly impossible to breathe. They were suffocating.  They
were too far underground for Claire to bring Matt and Mindy out.  She could
abandon them, go to get help, but somehow she didn’t think there was enough air
for them to wait.  The only idea she had was to ask Water for rain inside the
tight space.  Water obliged, knocking the smoke out of the air.  Of course, now
everyone was drenched and miserable.

It bought them a
few hours, but they were still suffocating in the tight space.

~~ Zach ~~

Zach called Jade
first. Zach ran to his car while he dialed.

Before he even
greeted Jade, he asked, “What’s going on?”

 Jade assumed Zach
meant the strangeness with Claire and Mindy.  She said, “I don’t know.  What
happened there?  Fire just told me that Claire and Mindy needed help with a
project and bolted. She hasn’t spoken a word since.  I’ve tried calling and got
nothing.  I told Mom I was heading home.  Do you think they’re in trouble?  Can
you check on them?”

“Of course, but they’re
headed to my place.  They said that Harold could turn into a wolf and that my
Dad was in trouble.  I have no idea what went down, but Claire sounded upset,
like she’d been crying.” Zach didn’t dare tell Jade the rest, that her beloved
Aunt Bertha had been murdered.  That wasn’t the sort of thing a person should
hear over the phone, not before a long drive.

“Call me when you
know anything.  I’ll be on the highway. Mom said I can’t answer the phone or
text when I drive.  I’ll pull over at the first stop and call you back.”  Jade
was so strong.  Zach loved the sound of her voice.  He especially appreciated
Jade’s last message before hanging up, “Please be careful.”

“I will,” Zach
said.

The phone call
ended.

“I love you,” Zach
said. It was such a chicken move.  Zach knew Jade had already hung up.  He was
just testing out the words. Still he nodded with a sense of rightness and threw
his phone onto the passenger seat.

His drive home was
neither sedate nor lawful. Had a state trooper been on the road, he’d have a
reckless driving ticket.  Zach sped home. His house was up a gravel driveway
just like the Gray’s.  He took the corner too fast. The Escort slid sideways. 
Zach turned the wheel to correct and overcompensated.  He found himself
flipping end over end through the brush, his car banging against a tree.  The
airbags popped.

Zach sat stunned. 
His left arm was broken, maybe shattered.  The driver’s door was blocked. It
took Zach four tries to unhook his seatbelt. The last time was with a yell. Inching
his way along, Zach held his arm to his body as much as possible to protect the
injury.  

His phone was on
the floor with the screen broken.  When Zach turned it on, he saw a bit of
light but couldn’t make anything out. Climbing out of the car, Zach stumbled up
the embankment, falling twice.  It was at least a half mile walk to the house,
nestled among the trees.  Zach prayed that he wouldn’t be too late.

An earthquake
rocked the forest knocking Zach to the ground. He winced, his eyes watering
from the pain. With a grunt, he pushed himself up.  His run to the house was
more like a stagger.  His heart was in it, but his body wasn’t working right. 
Zach’s head hurt and he was seeing double vision.  The trembling earth didn’t
help.  Every time he managed a steady jog, the ground shifted and he lost his
balance.

It was a shock
when Zach turned the corner.  At first he didn’t recognize the funnel of broken
dirt as his home. He stood in shock. The house was completely gone, buried in a
sink hole. 

The forest was
absolutely still, not a woodpecker or a chipmunk in sight.  The birdsong had
stopped.  Zach held his left elbow in his right and crossed the gravel road. 
His Dad’s pickup was still parked in the same place but covered in dirt and
debris. Stunned Zach lurched forward.    

  “Dad?!” Zach
yelled into the silence.  His voice carried through the quiet.  He waited.

No one answered.

“Dad!” Running
forward, Zach’s sneaker sank into what was once the front porch.  The ground
was unstable and his leg was suddenly trapped in dirt and wood.  The jolt of
falling caused more pain to his arm.  His insides didn’t feel too great
either.  Zach figured he might have bruised some of his organs in the wreck.

With one foot
caught and his home in ruins, Zach squeezed his eyes shut and prayed that it was
only a dream.  When he opened them, his home was still gone.  He pulled his
foot out, cutting his calf on a sharp splinter of wood. 

“Ow,” Zach limped
back.

He was lost.

Zach didn’t know
what to do.  His phone was unusable, the car destroyed, his body broken and his
power gone.  His dad, Claire, and Mindy were supposed to be here…somewhere. 
One guess. One terrible guess as to where they had gone. 

Wiping his eyes
with his sleeve, Zach reached out to the Universe.

Please! If you
can hear me, please listen.

No one answered. 

One of the patio
chairs was lying on its side in the dirt.  Zach righted it and sat down. He
closed his eyes as another tremor shook the ground, jumbling him back and
forth.  This was where it started. He could tell by the violence of the shake. 
He managed to keep his seat.

The house was
gone.  But it wasn’t just a house.  It was a home.  Zach’s drawings, his drum
set, the picture of his Mom and Dad at their wedding…a thousand small items
that belonged to his family were now buried in rubble. Zach wouldn’t quite
believe that his Dad was buried, too.

Closing his eyes,
Zach called out again,
I know you’re there.  I reaped a thousand souls for
you. Help me find my dad.

He hated being
ignored, hated the silent treatment.  He was only human, not some Demigod with
careless whims and no conscience.  Zach screamed, “I won’t apologize! Do you
hear me?  I won’t say I’m sorry again.  I’m not.  I’m not sorry at all.  You’re
supposed to keep the Void in line. Jade should never have been in danger.  I’m
not sorry!” He shouted the last words at the top of his lungs.

He broke down
crying. He hadn’t cried like that since he was five years old and his brother
pushed him off the merry-go-round. “Dad!” his voice broke high.  When no one
answered, Zach buried his hand in face and took a deep breath.

He wiped his eyes
and with a courage born from being a son more than a former Death Keeper, Zach
limped to the shed, pulling out a shovel. He studied the ground and the dirt. 

There didn’t seem
a good place to start, so he just thrust the shovel into the loose dirt where
his foot had stuck and started digging.  He couldn’t have known that at that
very moment his father was more than a hundred feet underground or that even
with a backhoe, they wouldn’t be able to penetrate the rock Earth had used as a
shield to block the house.

Shoveling isn’t to
be done with a broken arm.  Zach only tried to use it once, accidentally, for
leverage.  A sheath of white dots crossed his vision, and he collapsed.

The world disappeared
for a while.

A voice brought
him out of the darkness, “Zach? Can you hear me?”

When Zach opened
his eyes, Jade was leaning over him, her long hair tickling his forehead, a
worried look in her eyes. “Zach? Are you okay?”

Groaning Zach
lifted his head, “My dad is missing. I think he’s under the rubble. The
Universe won’t answer me.”

The air smelled
wet, like rain on foliage. Jade said, “I’ve called an ambulance.  Fire won’t
respond, and Aunt Bertha isn’t answering the phone.”

Zach closed his
eyes, hissing. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her.  When he realized she
was holding his hand, he squeezed, “I’m sorry, Jade.  I didn’t want to tell you
on the phone. Bertha’s dead. Claire said they were attacked and my Dad was
going to be killed if they didn’t stop Harold.  They came here.”

He hated the
moaning cry Jade made as she rocked back on her heels shaking her head in
disbelief.  Zach wanted to hold her, wanted to comfort her.

Instead he held
her hand.  It was nothing and everything.  

~~ Jade ~~

“Bertha?” Jade
sat, stunned.  Then the next thought…
the girls are here. He said the girls
came here.
 “Zach, where is Claire and Mindy?”

Shaking his head,
Zach looked like he might cry. In a strangled voice, he said, “I think they’re
underground with my father.”

Jade pushed out to
Earth, to Water. 
WHERE ARE MY SISTERS?!

Asleep. Sick.
We need Air.

Grateful that she
had at least some contact with Raven’s Element, Jade asked for Air.
My
sisters are trapped in the ground.  They need to breathe. Can you help them?

I need your
strength. Open yourself the way Raven does.

Jade had no idea
what that meant.  She thought.
Open.
Nothing happened. With an
exasperated sigh, Jade waited.  Still nothing. Desperate, she asked Zach, “Do
you know how to open yourself?  Air told me to open myself the way Raven does. 
They’re still alive, but they’re almost out of oxygen.  I don’t know what to
do.”

“Listen,” Zach
said in a hushed tone.

Jade strained to
hear. She thought he might have heard her sisters calling or his dad.  She
started to explain, “I…”

His face pale and
strained, Zach said, “Shhh…Listen. Then tell Air you’re ready.”

The world sat in
absolute stillness. Not even the buzz of an insect interrupted the silence.  Jade
listened to the quiet until the world fell away, until she was calm and focused.
Something inside her relaxed.  She said, 
I’m ready.

One of the
Elements took power from her. The Element felt too powerful to be Air, but what
else could it be?  Jade felt the energy leaving her body.  The hair on her arms
rose and her heart beat faster.  Closing her eyes, she tried to push the energy
to Air to work it faster. 

Air stopped her,
Wait.

Waiting in
silence, Jade allowed her energy to slide away, drawn to the very bits of the
Universe that would save her sisters’ lives.  As Air slipped down into the
Earth, burrowing deep, Earth shifted.  Through dirt, wood, and stone, Air
tunneled its way to the three bodies underground, the souls still housed within
for now.  These creations were also made of Air.  They needed all of the Elements
in the correct order to live. 

Little Earth. Not
the Element, but the Elemental was the worst.  Curled in the corner, she
suffocated slowly even with the Air pushing through the ceiling.  She wouldn’t
draw a breath. Not for lack of trying.  Air pushed her, teased her, begged her
to breathe, but the body had already been broken. 

Her soul waited,
confused, at the edge of Time, and watched.

Jade felt
something of what Air was experiencing.  It jolted her out of her meditative
state.  Hysterically she cried, “Mindy’s dying. We have to get to them.  We
have to save her.”

Air drew more
energy, but Jade could see through Air that Mindy hadn’t reacted at all to Air.
Jade dragged the shovel to a mound of dirt and started digging, tears soaking
her face. Zach rolled and tried to move closer to her.  He said, “Jade? What
did you see?”

Her voice rising,
Jade said, “Mindy’s not breathing. Air was in time for the others, but it’s too
late for Mindy.”

 Her heart broke,
shattered into a million pieces.  She screamed at Fire, “It’s your fault! You
made the smoke that killed her.”

Thinking he was
talking to him Zach said, “I swear, Jade, I didn’t.”

Crying and
babbling while she dragged another shovelful of dirt out of the hole, too
little to make a difference, Jade cried out, “Not you. Fire. I knew I couldn’t
trust her.  She killed my Dad and now she’s killed Mindy, too.”

Zach felt an
electrical charge building. Earth shook, knocking him down.  He said, “Stop,
Jade.  I can feel Fire. You’re upsetting her.”

“I’m not going to
stop. I can’t get to her in time.  No matter how fast I dig, it will be too
late. Fire did this.” She wiped her tears with a dirty sleeve, making a dirty
smear across her face.  Zach grabbed his broken arm, rolling to his knees and
forced himself to stand.  The charge in the air growing more violent. He had to
get to Jade.  He had to protect her.  Fire was angry.  He couldn’t imagine what
the Element might do.

The Earth shook
once more and Jade fell into the dirt, striking her hip against a rock while
Zach was thrown into a softer spot.  The electrical charge suddenly unleashed, striking
the ground and scattering a mound of dirt, then striking a nearby tree shearing
the branches and scoring it with power.

I saved them.
 
Fire protested. It wasn’t anger that drove the lightening strikes, but a
desperate loneliness.  Fire spent so little time with Her Elemental.

“You killed them!”
Jade screamed dragging another shovelful of dirt away from the buried house.
“Help me get to Mindy.  Please, help me.”

Sirens blared in
the distance, and Jade felt a weight of helplessness too deep to bear. The
energy Air pulled from her was going faster and with the draining of energy,
Jade’s emotions roiled.  Despair. Fear. Sorrow.  With an intensity Jade could
scarcely bear, they crashed down on her until her chin was in the dirt and she
could barely lift her head.  The energy was gone.  She was empty, with nothing
left to give.

The tree that Fire
had smitten was burning like an inferno, pushing out to the surrounding bushes
and trees. The same thought played over and over in her mind,
I have to get
to Mindy.  I have to get to Mindy.

“Shhhh…” Mindy’s
voice sounded in her mind, a quiet whisper, a promise of hope. 

Jade stopped crying.
She tried to lift her head.
Mindy?

“Time. It’s my
gift and now I’m free.” Mindy hugged her sister. Even though Jade was face down
in the dirt, she could feel the hug around her whole body. Mindy said, “You
won’t find me under the house.  Claire, yes, and Matt, too.  But you won’t find
me.”

“Don’t go,” Jade
wailed. She fell to her hands and knees, scratching and scrabbling at the dirt
until her fingernails were broken and bleeding. “Mindy!”

“Hush now.  I have
a secret.” Mindy giggled, and it was a happy, joyous laugh, the kind that was
so rare these days.  Jade sniffed.  She realized how much she hurt. Not her
hands, although they did a little, but her heart.  This was a goodbye she had
never expected, that she wasn’t willing to make.