Storm Born (5 page)

His grin widened and he shrugged a shoulder. “Same difference.”
 

Wow. Guess he wasn’t as smart as I thought.
 

Ignoring him, Piper turned her eyes back to me. “What about you? Why were you in West Palm?  You should have texted me.”
 

Chills wracked my body again. I dragged my knees closer to my chest. I barely noticed the truck stopping. We must have arrived at someone’s house. One of the men across from us scrambled to his feet and began exiting the truck bed.
 

“I wasn’t in West Palm,” I muttered quietly.
 

“What?”
 

I could feel my heart shuddering through my chest. I tightened my grip on my arms and breathed steadily.
 

“I was at home. In Lantana.” Pressure built behind my ribcage, and words began to spill from my lips. “Dad and I were barricading the house. He hurt himself and the front door slammed open. The house started flooding, so I told him to get into the basement with Mom and James, and I…” My eyes stung. “I couldn’t get back in the basement so I went outside–”
 

Piper gasped. “Oh, God, Ava…”
 

Declan snorted.
 

My eyes began to burn. “I was trying to get to Park Vista to the SPU station, but I got caught in the flood, and… and…” I whirled to face my best friend. Her eyes were as wide and horrified as mine must have been.
 

“I saw one, Piper.”
 

She stared at me, not sure what I meant, and seemingly afraid to ask.
 

“I saw a Stormkind.”
 

Piper’s eyes bulged, her pretty mouth becoming a shocked “O.”
 

“Bullshit you did,” growled Declan. The truck had stopped again, more survivors getting out. “Nobody’s ever seen them. All that historical account crap they make us read in school? None of it proves anything.
Actual
scientists have proved that the Centennial is just a freak occurrence.”
 

“What about those photographs and films they show us? The ones that soldiers from the war recorded when they saw them land on the battlefield in the middle of a storm?”
 

I remembered what she was talking about, the grainy black and white images of WWI soldiers shooting and running across the battlefield, a flash of light smashing into the earth.
 

A figure rising from the dirt, scrambling left and right and chasing the already terrified soldiers, hurling winds, ice, water, and dirt at the men. The massive storms that made the Great War even more grueling.
 

There were critics who accused the videos and films of being hoaxes, tricks of the light and illusions created by the sheer terror from that war, but other historians spent their whole lives digging into history and finding old journals or ancient sketches that detailed accounts of great storms happening every hundred years. The most reliable evidence came from the WWI accounts, when millions and millions of men and women had been writing about the atrocious things they’d seen. Finding fifty thousand accounts that mentioned strange beings falling from earth and controlling the weather was hard to ignore.
 

It was up for debate whether or not the SPU believed the historians and their feverent displays of evidence. But after a collective of meteorologists looked up records of the massive storms and theorized what would happen if another storm like the Centennial happened in our lifetime, they formed the Storm Protection Union and began to prepare. The years had changed, but the paranoia remained the same.
 

Though some people just wouldn’t bend to the possibility of the supernatural.
 

“Right,” Declan scoffed. “Because you can really rely on the story of a terrified fifteen year old soldier in World War One. They won’t have massive PSTD or delusions or anything.”
 

Something snapped in me. I whirled and shouted at Declan, forgetting that he was twice my size and liked to break things.
 

“I saw it! I saw it, and then–”
 

Piper’s hands gripped my arms. “Ava, calm down. It’s okay.”
 

My best friend tugged me away from Declan and wrapped her arms around me. One of us was shaking, but I couldn’t tell who it was. I wouldn’t have admitted it any more than she would have.
 

Declan narrowed his eyes and glowered, but I was too rattled to say anything else. All I could do was see a skeleton of light surrounded by a featureless, liquid face, its very presence reminding me of how small and simple I was, how easy it had absorbed the life of my neighbor, and then the man, the man with the dagger, and the pain–
 

The truck jolted to a stop. Piper and I bounced in the truck bed. I blinked rapidly, remembering where I was, and where I was headed.
 

Home. I was finally going home.
 

I pinched my eyes shut and forced out another breath. I really did not like these panic attacks.
 

The truck started again, and Piper’s arms were still tight around me. She was whispering something in my ear, but my brain refused to process her voice into coherent words.
 

For whatever reason, when I opened my eyes, they went straight to Declan.
 

I don’t know what I expected when I looked at him. Maybe the usual disdain and indifference.
 

I didn’t anticipate the confusion. Or the unease. Declan was looking at me like I was an animal he wasn’t sure I should approach.
 

He looked at me like I was dangerous.
 

The expression was gone so quickly from his face that I was sure I’d imagined it. I must have. Declan wouldn’t be afraid of a nobody like me. I was just another player on his field, ready for him to stomp on.
 

The truck pulled to a new stop and he looked over the side.
 

“Well, this is my stop, ladies. One of the docs said I took a good hit to the head and need to get it checked out.” He rolled his eyes, and I suppressed the urge to tell him there was no need to check his head– there was nothing decent inside of it. He looked at Piper. “Hottie, I hope I’ll see you around. Ginger…” Declan’s eyes flicked up and down my body, lingering too long on my skinny legs and insubstantial chest. “Well, I won’t be looking for you.”
 

Declan sneered at us and leaped over the side of the truck.
 

“God, he’s such an asshole,” Piper grumbled. She released me from her hold. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ava?”
 

I hesitated for a split second, only one more memory threatening to resurface. I turned to my best friend and smiled weakly. “Yeah. I’m good. It’s just… It was just scary, you know?”
 

Piper’s face twisted into a grimace, and she
still
looked beautiful. Not fair.
 

“Scary’s not the word I would use,” she remarked. “Pant-shittingly terrifying is better.”
 

I gaped dramatically. “You swore! You
never
swear!”
 

She held up a delicate finger. “First of all,
you’re
the one that never swears aloud, and second,” she lowered her hand, unease filling her eyes, “you have to admit it fits the situation.”
 

No argument there. I couldn’t imagine what she went through. I mean, blacking out in the middle of a hurricane? She was lucky to be alive. I wanted to tell her about… the other part of my little adventure, but Piper was going to have her own nightmares now.
 

Besides, I didn’t want to think about my last conscious moments in the hurricane. I wasn’t ready. Right now, I just needed to get home.
 

“Yeah, I guess it does.” I tried to smile, but it felt wrong on my face.
 

We sat in silence until the truck pulled to another stop. I stayed in the truck bed, wanting to look over the side, but too scared of what I would see.
 

“Ava,” prompted Piper. “We’re here.”
 

“I know,” I said. “Just… give me a second.”
 

She nodded and said nothing. I closed my eyes and sent out a silent prayer to any deity that was listening.
 

Please, please, please, let my family be okay. Please don’t take them away from me. I can’t be alone. I won’t know what to do. Please let them be safe. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
 

Knowing there was no point in delaying any longer, I opened my eyes and dragged myself to my knees. Piper let down the truck bed then turned and turned to face me. Her eyes dropped to my chest and she frowned.
 

“Where did you get that?”
 

Bewildered, I looked down to the spot over my heart where her eyes were locked.
 

Peeking out from the top of my tank top was a white, circular scar with jagged edges. Exactly the kind that would have been left if I’d been stabbed.
 

Panic welled in my chest again. I clenched my fists and my jaw, willing the memory away.
 

“Ask me later, okay?” I whispered.
 

Piper nodded slowly. Her hand rubbed over her own heart, as if guarding it. She looked like she wanted to say something, but chose not to. Silence was what we both needed.
 

Piper opened her arms and wrapped me in a hug. We both needed that, too.
 

“I’ll come see you as soon as I can, okay?”
 

I nodded and hugged her tight. I didn’t know what happened to her parents, and I couldn’t help her without knowing what happened to my own family. We had no idea what kind of state we would be in when we saw each other again. If we’d both be whole, or broken.
 

“Be safe, Piper.”
 

We let each other go and I slipped out of the truck bed onto my old street. I think the truck drove away, but I didn’t notice. All I could see was my house.
 

Or what
used
to be my house.
 

My eyes noticed irrelevant things, like how the ruins of my house were bunched together like a flat pyramid. Shingles were everywhere, slipping through cracks of the caved in walls. Tattered, snapped furniture was piled on the waterlogged grass behind warped metal appliances. The garage was completely flattened into the driveway. I couldn’t see Mom or Dad’s cars, and had no idea where the mailbox was.
 

I walked forward in a daze, my aching, soggy feet dragging heavily through the grass. I went toward the furniture, touching it and stupidly wondering why it was outside on the lawn. It wasn’t supposed to be here. It was supposed to be inside–
 

“Ava?”
 

I turned around and looked at the people standing in the middle of the road. I hadn’t looked back when Piper dropped me off. I went straight for my house, thinking that’s where my parents and little brother were. I didn’t think to look back, where they were standing now.
 

My eyes took in all of them. My Dad’s wide, shocked eyes as he held my little brother’s hand. My mother’s joyous tears as she ran for me.
 

Fresh tears slipped past my own eyes. I choked on a sob and ran for my family.
 

Mom met me in a crushing hug. I shuddered and cried into her chest, like I was a lost baby. She soothed me like I was one.
 

“Oh, thank God, Ava, thank God, thank God.”
 

Hearing the fear in her voice only made me cry harder. When I felt my Dad and brother wrap their arms around me, I was almost screaming.
 

It was eternity before they pulled away. I didn’t want to let go. I was still a shaking, crying mess.
 

Mom cupped my face in her hands and looked in my eyes. “Where have you been? We were looking for you everywhere.”
 

Speaking past my tears and the released pressure in my chest was harder than I thought it would be.
 

“I couldn’t get the door closed,” I sobbed out. “I tried, but I couldn’t so I tried to get to my school because I didn’t want to drown, and I… I…”
 

I couldn’t tell them about the Stormkind the way I had with Piper. I’d gotten too upset to know if she believed me or not. With my family, I was just too relieved they were alive to care. I would tell them later.
 

Just as I would tell them about that other part. I would have to tell them eventually. If Piper had seen the scar on my chest, there was a chance my family would too.
 

“When I woke up, I was in Palm Beach. I got a ride with Piper.”
 

“Did you stay with her?” my Dad asked.
 

Confused, I turned to look at him, but a crying baby caught my attention. I looked past him to where a young mother stood, holding her child. She was talking frantically to SPU soldiers. All across the road, my neighbors were standing together, moving debris and talking to authorities. They were
everywhere
, packed on the road like homeless sardines.
 

That’s what we were now. Fish out of water.
 

My eyes went back to the crying baby. To the woman that held her.
 

To the patch of street they were standing on.
 

Where Mr. Cortez had died. Drained of his life force by the Stormkind. I saw its skeleton glow bright in my mind. Watched it glow brighter as it stood over me, reached for me.
 

Saw a shadow and a pair of cruel eyes.
 

Felt a sharp punch in my chest before the world exploded into agony.
 

“Ava? Ava, sweetie, what’s wrong?”