Igniting Spirit (Gathering Water Book 3) (12 page)

“Oh my god, Cash? Are you there?” I turned my face to the closed door, then used my abilities to slam it open. “Somebody! I think he’s waking up!” I yelled, hoping a nurse or doctor would hear. Cash’s mouth opened a fraction, and a low moaning escaped his dry lips. I saw the red “call” button on the side of his bed, pressed it about a dozen times, and started speaking fervently to my cousin. “Hey, are you awake, Cash? Please be awake.”

“Argh,” he finally said, clearly. One of his arms lifted up, slowly, fell back down to his side, then lifted up all the way to his face. “Della?” he said, voice scratchy.

“Yes, I’m right here, Cash. Your mom and dad are here too, just not in the room right now. You’re okay, now. You’re okay.” It was important, for some reason, that I tell him that. My face was wet; I just realized my eyes were leaking again.

“Della, I need — I need an eye patch.”

I saw that his hand wasn’t just on his face, but was on his eye. The same eye that had been ruined before Dove had healed him. “Is it the light? Should I turn it off? Are you in pain? Where’s the damn doctor?!” The last question I yelled at the doorway again. Cash needed somebody to look at him if his eye was hurting. Maybe Dove couldn’t finish the healing before, and I just needed to call him.

“Tell Uncle Luke — I need the eyepatch,” he mumbled, and I thought he must be delirious, but he continued before I could yell for more help. “To match the peg leg. And an earring— ” confusion and worry covered my mind. “ — a gold hoop. And a parrot. Especially the parrot.”

Understanding dawned on me. When a number of bodies came into the room, I didn’t even bother to look — just trusted Alexander to ensure our safety and laughed, then basically lunged down and hugged Cash, even though he was still horizontal in bed. “You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re finishing off the botch-job those Clades did, if you don’t stop squeezing me,” his voice was strained, still scratchy, and with an undertone to it that I’d never heard from Cash before.

Immediately, I stood all the way back up. Ellis and Connor rushed in the doorway and basically did the same thing I had just done, except it was the two of them and I was certain Ellis was squeezing far harder than I had.

“I’m alright, y’all. You can let go now,” Cash said from under the pile that was his parents. I was grinning, couldn’t help it, and just watched as they ignored him for another minute before finally getting up.

Ellis used her sleeve to wipe her eyes, even though I knew she always kept tissue in her purse. Connor’s face was a little wet, too, and if I hadn’t already been crying, I would have started at the sight. The three of us were forced to stand back while a doctor came over and checked his vitals. They put his bed into an upright position so Cash was sitting. After several minutes of the doctor going over the same things again — checking his eyes and nose especially — Cash finally spoke up. “Dude, I’m fine. You can go take care of actual sick people now.”

The doctor didn’t leave, but did stop examining Cash, contenting himself with checking all the machines and talking to the nurse that had come in with him.

“Oh, honey. We’re so happy that you’re okay!” Ellis reached down and grabbed her son’s hand.

“Me too, Mom. I think you guys need to tell me what’s been going on. I started becoming
aware
yesterday, I think. I’m not sure, it was pretty foggy, but the Balints were here? And I heard you guys talking, but I... ” Cash’s voice trailed off, with a small frown gracing his lips.

“You’ve been awake?” Connor asked.

“Uh, maybe? I’ve just been
aware, if that makes sense. Once the darkness cleared, I had a basic understanding of what was going on. I could think and hear you. Which is why I know this —” he gestured to himself. “ — is not the most important thing on everyone’s plate now that I’m all the way alive and stuff.”

Connor nodded his head at his son, not necessarily agreeing with him, but maybe realizing that Cash might need something else to focus on. He walked over to the doctor, and after a small exchange, the doctor left. The nurse stayed, but kept to the corner and my Uncle created a sound Shield to keep her from overhearing. I was pretty sure Uncle Connor had instructed only people in on the secret to work with his son, but even those aware of my family needed to be kept in the dark about some things.

“The Clade that ordered that attack on you has gone AWOL. We’re not sure exactly what his next move is, but his ultimate goal is to open the gate to the OtherRealm.”

“Was Derek here?” Cash asked.

I nodded my head, but my Uncle spoke. “Yes, he came by last night after speaking with Della and some new allies.”

“Okay, I heard that part then. About the council coming, and thanks to Della’s bright idea, there is potential civil unrest on the horizon among the Elfennol. Oh, and she has the hots for the son of our arch-enemy.”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but stopped. It didn’t feel right to yell at him when he was still in a hospital bed. I hadn’t realized Derek had come back, and clearly they had discussed Ezra and his parentage.

“Cash, sweetie, Della saved your life by going to the Clades. I still don’t understand exactly how they did it, but she brought the only people that could have helped you. Ezra was one of those people, dear. Without him, you wouldn’t be with us right now.” Ellis defended me using a gentle voice, as far from scolding as it could be since it cracked on the last sentence.

“I know, Mom. I was just teasing her.” The side of his mouth pulled up in a sad almost-smile.

Of course he’d been teasing me, and if I hadn’t been standing there feeling sorry for him, I would have known that immediately.

“You’re welcome, Cash. Y’know, for the ‘breathing’ thing that you’re doing right now.” I tried to add the same teasing note I usually used with him, and if it was a little off, then I just hoped he would ignore it.

“Careful, Della. You don’t want me to embarrass you in front of the parents and Alexander by kicking your butt,” he threatened, as if it were a possibility even with him at one hundred percent.

“You and what leg, gimpy?” I responded without thinking. Bantering with Cash was more second-nature than breathing was — all it took was a little reminder.

Silence in the room. Besides a small gasp from Ellis and the ever-beeping machines, there was utter silence.

Cash responded first with a grin. “I was wondering if you’d take the bait.”

We all sighed with relief.

“How could I not?” I smiled back. It wasn’t cool, or really funny, but Cash seemed to
need
to gloss over how serious it was. Maybe for him it wasn’t serious. Hell, it
wasn’t
that big of a deal compared to what had been going on before. He almost died, and I hadn’t given a second thought to his leg until I’d been certain he was going to live. Leg, shmeg. I couldn’t feel sorry for him, couldn’t let him see I felt guilty for it happening. We all needed to adjust, to be okay with what was now, and above all, to be thankful that he was still with us.

You know what can hold a person back more than an amputated leg? Being dead.

Besides, Cash wasn’t the type of person to let that hold him back. He’d get his peg — or a real prosthetic — do his therapy with the same vigor he approached our lessons with, and continue with his life with the same zeal and humor he always had. At least I hoped he would.

“Is there anything else that has happened that I didn’t overhear last night or this morning?” Cash asked us.

“Your father has called a lot of the European families to keep a lookout for Kaylus. It might be time to fully explain to everyone who can help what is going on in our world, and precisely who it is that’s threatening it,” Ellis told him, leaning forward to brush a stray bit of hair out of her sons face while speaking.

“Okay. So, what do we do next?” he asked, tone serious. He didn’t want us dwelling on him, I could tell. Suddenly, I remembered that my cousin was a bit of an Empath, thanks to his matriarchal line, and a stronger one when with people who knew him well. I didn’t know exactly what Ellis was able to do, if she could read that from his emotions — or mind — but I was glad I’d already decided to stop feeling sorry for him.

Now, I would stop hurting as well. Because if
I
was hurting for him, and so was Ellis and Connor, then Cash would feel that, and add it to whatever emotional pain he might be feeling himself right now.

“Son, maybe you should —” Uncle Connor started, but I cut him off really quickly.

“I was thinking the next step should be to tell the other Dunamis here. They all already know about our alliance with the Elfennol, right?” I waited, and then when Connor gave a nod, I continued. “We need to let them know about the Clades, as well. They need to know the truth, and the truth about how our family joined with the Elfennol in the first place.”

I remembered the story that the Elders had told me, about Delilah Deare and how she came to join with the Elfennol. “Everyone should know how far back Kaylus’ depravity goes, and exactly how dangerous his abilities can be.” I wouldn’t let anyone underestimate him. He’d been able to drain Cash from a symbol that a lackey placed on him. That was scary all by itself.

“What do you mean?” Connor asked me.

“Uncle Connor, do you know how the Deares and the Elfennol joined together?” I asked. He looked confused for a moment by the change in topics.

Cash is the one who answered. He was already looking so much more like himself and was sitting up, resting an arm over the bent knee of his whole leg. “About Delilah Deare? Yeah, he used to tell me the story when I was a kid.”

“Can you tell me? I heard the story from the Clade Elders, but I’d like to hear what our family has said about it.” I wondered if the two stories matched, and if not, which one was true. No one from my human family was alive when Delilah was, and things can be warped in the retelling.

“Do you want the long version, or the short version?” Uncle Connor looked a little confused by my curiosity.

“Tell her the short version, Dad,” Cash answered for me.

“Delilah Deare, and her twin Analisa Deare — who would become Analisa Neale, but that’s another story — were the beginning of our families here in America. They lived apart from other people for the most part. Their mother had fallen afoul of a medicine man in the nearby tribe when she was pregnant with them, and his curse caused the two of them to remain wary of others, but they were still well known for their control over the elements.”

“Were they the first in the family to have abilities?” I asked. I didn’t know much about our family, other than what we were now. I had no idea how we came to be.

“I don’t know. Maybe. When my mother would tell me the story, she would say they were affected by the magic that transformed their mother and it changed them into something more than they would have been.”

“Transformed?” I asked.

“That’s in the long version, but has nothing at all to do with Elfennol. It’s a good story, though. Make sure Dad tells you at some point,” Cash said, smiling, while his father just ignored our interruptions.

“But I’m not sure I believe that. Who knows, though. Anyway, the sisters were approached by a small group of men who discovered that Delilah was able to see things through the Elements, and demanded she help them discover a way home. They were Clades, of course, and Delilah reluctantly agreed to help. But Reading the Elements is difficult, and the information they needed was so detailed, that it took months to decipher what she was seeing. Of course, she found out that their home was so dead that, if the gate between our worlds was opened, it would destroy our home as well. She refused to help them anymore, but started having visions of other things. I don’t know if you knew this, or you Cash, but when you spend too much time Reading the Elements, you start doing it by accident. You start having visions. I know my grandmother had them frequently, and my mother had them a few times. It doesn’t seem to adversely affect anyone, other than a small space-out occasionally —”

He was starting to ramble. Under other circumstances, I’d be cool with learning new tidbits about the fam. But I wanted the rest of the story; it felt important to know everything, and now that Cash was safe, I could let myself really pay attention to it.

“Uncle Connor! What were her visions saying?” The Clades Elders hadn’t mentioned this part, so this was new information.

“It was of the man she loved dying by the hand of one of the Clades who had come before. Her lover had his own abilities of some sort, and she made him promise to make himself an amulet for protection. He did, but her vision still came true — when the time came, he gave her his amulet instead, and without that shield against death, he was murdered by one of the Clades that had come earlier. She and Analisa spent the next several years looking for a way to get revenge when they came across the Elfennol, and joined them in their war against the Clades. The amulet from Delilah’s love was passed down through the Deare line, for protection. It’s the key that Gabby left for you, though I think it is more a reminder of what’s at stake, rather than something that can actually offer protection.”

“Wait, did you say Shield against Death? Are those the words that your mother used, or did you add that for theatrical flare?” I was standing, and didn’t even realize it. Ethan had made the
key
that my mother had left me? It was an amulet.