Of Gaea (26 page)

Ari
could enter without breaking the wall.
She’d just suffocate for a few hours. There was no
way she was going into the house with that thing intact. None. She
wasn’t going to be uncomfortable in what was technically, still her
home.

Ari
tipped her head and imagined a fire spreading across the barrier
turning it to ash.
The
fire spread as unseen as the wall it burned to ash. Ari smiled to
herself please with her work.

Once the
wall was gone, Ari went into the house.
There was no reason for her to apply a barrier
like Kleisthenes had. Ghita wouldn’t stand for that but she made
sure as long as she was in the house, Ghita couldn’t re-establish
her protection.

Ari sat
at the table, like she had so many times before and closed her
eyes.
She was already
tired, not from what she had done already but from what still
needed to be done. She would wait, and then once this was done, the
rest was a blank page.

She
heard the car pull up and the door open and close. Then a second
door opened and closed. Keys jangled outside the kitchen door, and
Ari got up from the table to open it.

Ghita
juggled two grocery bags in one hand with the keys in her
other.
She was dressed
in a casual business suit and her hair was stylishly twisted up.
Her favorite string of pearls was around her neck.

Ari
smiled.
“Let me help.”
She took one of the bags of groceries and stepped back into the
kitchen to let Ghita in.

“
Sure.”
Ghita’s
tone was weak.

Ari set
the bag down on the counter and then went back to her seat at the
table.
“Kleisthenes has
offered soup for supper. Sasha is on the mend.”

“
Oh,
it’s good they figured out what was wrong with him. He’s such a
nice boy. You’d have been devastated.”

Ari
mirrored her polite tone.
“He had been marked by the Tainted. Not really that
difficult to undo if one knows where to look.”

The can
Ghita had been holding slipped out of her fingers and hit the
counter. The ping echoed in the silence.

“
Is
something wrong?” Ari asked innocently.

Ghita
turned and looked at her. Really looked at her, not just a once
over but a slow measured study. “So, you’ve met Gaea.”

Ari
nodded and watched Ghita’s eyes close and lips move. It was a
prayer, perhaps.

“
You
know how I feel about that.
I told you not to bring that pagan trash into my
house.”

“
It
cannot be undone. Nor do I want it to. I feel right for the first
time in a very long time. Something that you could have done
yourself if you weren’t so scared of it.” Ari’s tone sharpened
unintentionally.

“
I want
you to leave.”
Ghita’s
voice rose with the words.

“
I need
to talk to you.”
Ari
pleaded gently. “Please. I just want to talk. Nothing else,
please.”

“
I’m
asking you,” She glared and Ari felt the swell of her power. “To
leave.”

Ari
nodded slowly and held out her hands peaceably. “You are the only
person I know as family. I had hoped you would at least give me one
more conversation as such. I’ll be at Kleisthenes’s house if you
change your mind.”

“
You are
a monster. If you continue on this ridiculous path on your
eighteenth birthday you will die a monster. That’s all you’ll get
from me.”

Ari
nodded and moved slowly, so not to startle her, to the patio door.
“I loved you once, as my mother. I love you still as my aunt. I
just needed you to know that.”

“Get.
Out.”

Ari left.

Ghita
listened to the soft click of the door. She wanted to scream. She
wanted, badly, to throw something.

All her
hard work, all the evasion, and lies had been futile.
There was no taking Ari off the
path she was on. There was no saving her.

She had
failed.
She hadn’t been
able to protect her niece any more than she had protected her
sister. A quiet sob escaped her as she crumpled to the floor and
cried.

A
RI SAT ON THE
EDGE
of Sasha’s
bed and watched him
sleep. Some of his color was back. It wasn’t enough to ease her
mind, but his breathing was finally normal.

“I’m sorry.”
Ari whispered in fear of waking him. “There are a
lot of things I’m sorry for, but one of the most important is how I
feel. We’ve always been friends, so I can’t really say how long
I’ve loved you. Maybe I’ve always loved you. Leonidas made it very
clear that I may not keep you. That scares me more than you dying,
more than my birthday next week. I’m sorry for all the time that I
wasted when I could have told you, and I’m sorry for all the
moments missed because I was too much of a coward to accept how I
felt. Something I learned while I was away that my every action has
a consequence, and because of whom I am, the ripples spread out
farther and wider than with anyone else. And I’ve learned that I
need to be certain in everything I do, or I could lose everything.
I don’t want to lose you.”

She leaned forward and placed an innocent kiss on his
forehead. “I will not lose you. Promise. I will do whatever it
takes to keep you, if that’s what you want, too. I love you. Sleep
well.”

Ari silently
exited and went to her bed.

A
RI COULDN’T SEE
ANYTHING THROUGH
the hazy smoke. She could hear screaming and crying, but
she couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. The smoke was far
too thick.

She picked up a broken piece of metal and used it as a fan.
Ari put the full intent of air behind the swoosh motion.
When the air
cleared she could only stare, frozen in shock. The makeshift fan
dropped from her numb fingers.

The town lay in broken rubble.
Fires burned in odd intervals. People
lay everywhere in various states of injury and death. Blood ran
through the streets like water.

A familiar screech filled the air, and Ari ran and ducked
next to a broken building just as the Tainted thing galloped down
the street leaving death and destruction in its wake.
The Pure swooped
through the air close behind almost as if trying to catch the
Tainted creature, but the buildings did not restore shape nor did
the people come back to life. All the fires went out and a sort of
peace prevailed in her wake. Like the aftermath of an event, with
the Tainted being the headliner.

Ari ran towards home. She didn’t know what she was going to
do. Or what she should do. She knew, deep down some part of her
knew, it was her they were looking for.

When Ari turned down the street she saw Sasha wielding a
massive sword against Damia.
Damia laughed manically as they fought.

Sasha seemed to be on the losing end. He was continuously
forced back until he tripped. His sword flew out of his hand and
Damia laughed triumphantly.

Damia’s blade streaked forward faster than Ari could move.
She impaled Sasha on her blade. She thrust forward with all her
weight even as he struggled to pull out the blade against
it.

Power surged out of Ari and Damia burned.
Her screams were
but a song to Ari. She had no regrets for killing Damia.

Sasha’s face was smeared with blood and he looked
tired.
He
smiled at Ari and held up her bow. When she took the bow, his eyes
closed. There were no words. There was no need for them.

There were no arrows, but that didn’t matter.
There was more than
one way to use a bow. Ari knew most of them.

She ran again, but this time towards the woods, and the
cliff.
She
could get better vantage from the height and make hasty arrows from
the branches. She didn’t make it there.

Ari made it to the clearing.
Bodies scattered across the ground like
broken toys. They wore armor unlike anything she’d ever seen
before. Ari grabbed an arrow protruding out of someone’s chest and
ran to the top of the hill.

A Pure and a Tainted were locked in battle on the other
side.
They
screamed at each other and lunged. When they fell back Ari saw them
for who they used to be. They shared the same face; a face she had
seen all her life.

Ari only had one single arrow.
She knocked it to the bow and took
aim. To kill one without the other would mean choosing sides. She
didn’t want to choose sides.

“I am
Gaea.”

S
HE WOKE COVERED
IN SWEAT
with the sun just barely peeking over the trees. It wasn’t
hard to understand what the dream meant. Ari dressed silently and
went out for a walk.

There was no point in staying in the house with only her
troubled thoughts.
Sasha wasn’t awake yet to talk to and while she knew
Kleisthenes wouldn’t shut her out, she didn’t want to wake him. Her
nightmares were hers alone.

She had a choice to make. She knew that. Ghita had hinted
it was between Pure and Tainted. No one had considered the
possibility of choosing Gaea. Was that even possible? Was she
fighting against the inevitable?

When Ari emerged from her thoughts she found herself in a
park she hadn’t been to since she was a child. She and Sasha had
played there often until they were old enough to be in the woods
alone. The dew hadn’t melted off the grass, and the fog was still
patchy in areas. Not nearly as thick as it had been in the dream,
but thick enough to give her a moment’s pause. She crossed the
familiar playground and sat heavily on a swing.

It creaked as Ari swayed slowly.
She wasn’t trying to swing, but the
familiar motion was comforting.

“May I join
you?”

Ari looked up to see Leonidas with his hands in the pockets
of his pea coat. “I would think you’re too bad ass to ask.” She was
too tired to deal with him if he was in a mood, yet even if he was
in a mood, wouldn’t that still be better company than her
nightmares?

He chuckled and sat in the swing next to her. “I’m pretty
bad ass, but not rude. Well, okay, I can be rude. What’s troubling
you?”