Like a Torrent Read online

  Like a Torrent

  Disordery Elements, Volume 2

  Olivette Devaux and Mason Winters

  Published by Mugen Press, 2017.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  LIKE A TORRENT

  First edition. July 12, 2017.

  Copyright © 2017 Olivette Devaux and Mason Winters.

  ISBN: 978-1540185556

  Written by Olivette Devaux and Mason Winters.

  Also by Olivette Devaux

  Cancelled Czech Files

  I am here for you

  Disorderly Elements Short Stories

  Zero Power Signature

  Within a Crowded Blade

  Three Solstice Gifts

  Disordery Elements

  Like a Torrent

  Like a Surge

  Like a Phoenix

  Like a Freeze

  Like a Rock

  International Affairs

  The Fighting Dutchman

  Lucky Starflowers

  Yellow Peonies

  Steel City Story

  Lucky Starflowers

  WILD HORSES

  HORSEPLAY

  Standalone

  Adrenaline Rush

  Flux

  Watch for more at Olivette Devaux’s site.

  Also by Mason Winters

  Disordery Elements

  Like a Torrent

  Like a Rock

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also By Olivette Devaux

  Also By Mason Winters

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  Further Reading: FLUX

  Also By Olivette Devaux

  Also By Mason Winters

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  The date was June 21st, and the weather was as hot as could be. Cooper emerged onto the porch that overlooked the orchard of his grandmother’s country house and peered through the trees, toward the lake. Its water glistened through the leafy crowns, where apples finally reached the size of marbles, and hopefully would keep growing as the summer wore on. If it rained enough, they would grow big and juicy and fragrant.

  But apples weren’t the reason he was here.

  “I think we should head out, Grandma,” he said. “I think maybe we should go camping for a little while.” He slid his eyes toward her diminutive figure. She stood there on the porch, leaning against the banister dressed in loose linen slacks and a sleeveless blouse. Her long silver hair flowed down her back like white water rapids.

  She smiled. “Forget it.” she said. “I have the gift of foresight and I know what you’re up to.”

  Cooper almost purred under the benevolent caress of her eyes. They were as clear as the water of northern lakes far away, and their gaze turned from grandmotherly affection to an investigative probe, as though she could peer right through him and search the very depths of his soul.

  “Cooper,” she said, and raised her old and wrinkled hand up to his cheek. She stroked his stubbly jaw gently. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  Cooper shifted his weight from one foot to the other. There were so many things he’d have loved to address, but the most pressing one got him tongue-tied. His need was so embarrassing.

  He always hated to ask for money.

  All those years of school, when he had been in college and doing a little too well for his good, and got falsely accused of cheating, had taken their toll on him. Having to hide the fact that he got kicked out of one of the most prestigious architectural programs in the country from his family had hurt like nothing else.

  Of course they had found out, mostly because he didn’t want to talk to them when he was in trouble. Back then he hadn’t called home, either. He got a job. And another job. He had worked his ass off just so he could move out of town, enroll in a school that didn’t think he was the scum of the earth, and finish his degree.

  That’s how he ended up in Pittsburgh, the place where he now lived. Except his grandmother wasn’t asking him to rehash old business. She was onto him over something new.

  The silence stretched like salt water taffy. Wind stirred, warm, laden with moisture, and oppressive. It carried the notes of mud, which was drying by the banks of the lake, and Cooper hoped the rain would come soon. A rain, which the parched region so badly needed.

  “Cooper. You need to talk to me.” Olga Sorensen drew herself to her full height, and even though she was 8 inches short of Cooper’s eye level, he still felt like a little boy who had done something wrong.

  “I’ve been just hoping.” Cooper said only that, and stilled again, as though his hope was that his grandma would just walk away and let it be, even though he knew full well that she wouldn’t. She was patient, not breaking the silence of the late afternoon. Finally, Cooper spoke again. “I’ve been hoping that I could use my earth sense and Ash could use his water sense. And maybe he could go up north, to the property line.” He held her gaze, and saw a glimmer of understanding in her old eyes.

  “But Cooper, this is not as simple as it might seem.”

  Cooper had such high hopes that they could find diamonds, at least a few, and sell them for good money. That would help Ash’s project so much, and if Ash benefited from their effort, Cooper could build him the dream house he wanted. The one by the river. A tidy home where they both could live, and where they could both work together and keep an eye both on the river and on the rocks beneath the bank.

  That money was the life blood that would keep Ash’s environmental clean-up effort alive. It was crucial, yet Cooper couldn’t ask for anything outright. Finding it, however, that would be different. Somehow, Cooper felt it was a more honest way to finance Ash’s venture. Sweating on the mosquito-infested northern border was certainly preferable to having to walk up to his family and admit to the fact that his architecture firm was in its fledgling stages, barely a blip on the local building market radar. Even though he had finished the project of rebuilding the six row houses that Ash had bought on the contaminated property by the river, the fact remained that Ash was his only major client. This being the case, Cooper had no way to help, and nothing to invest aside from his expertise.

  “I hate asking for things.” Cooper stuffed his fists into the pockets of his worn jeans. “I... I really want to help him.”

  His grandmother gave him a kind smile. “What you do not realize, Cooper,” she said in an English that was still tinged with her Scandinavian heritage, “is that if you start looking for those diamonds by the northern border, and if you do it with Ash, it won’t go well. Uncle Owen was here.”

  “Oh.” Cooper felt his blood drain from his face. Uncle Owen was the only member of the family who knew of his and Ash’s unexpected interaction, of the way their powers melded together and amplified each other, and he was the only one aware of the fact that he and Ash had somehow managed to cause a small flood and
earthquake.

  Wailing emergency vehicles were not the best way to mark their first sexual encounter.

  “What you don’t realize, Cooper, is that there is a ley line under those kimberlites. And that ley line is old. We try not to touch it very much.” Grandma sighed. “Why can’t you just ask for help? Don’t you realize that your parents, or your uncles and aunts, or your cousins would be perfectly happy to look out for you? We’re a family. When one of us needs extra help, others come and give it.” She narrowed her eyes and inhaled, letting her shoulders drop as she stood there, facing him.

  Cooper saw the way her breath stilled, the way she almost rocked back and forth with each beat of her heart. He hated seeing the evidence of her vibrant life. Such a visible manifestation of life was also a reminder of her mortality.

  But she always did that when she was meditating, he recalled from all those summers he’d spent up here as a boy. Those summers when she and Grandpa had explained to him that having a zero power signature didn’t make him a lesser person.

  That it was okay not to have “special talents.” That his keen three-dimensional sense was enough, and that he alone was worthy of love and success.

  These lessons were easy to forget as he grew into his turbulent teens. How ironic that now, after having adjusted to what some called a “normal life,” Cooper was the bearer of the rare earth sense, a gift that ran so strong in him, he could hardly control it.

  Being half-trained meant bleeding power, and bleeding power caused complications.

  “If you go up there with Ash,” she said, “the whole area is likely to experience an earthquake between 3 to 4 degrees of magnitude. That particular earthquake is likely to shift the water table, because you’ll be searching deep. I won’t forbid it, because the diamonds are a family property resource, but I’ll certainly advise against it.”

  I won’t forbid it.

  Oh, she knew him well! The words were a revelation. The decision and the responsibility rested on Cooper now, on his conscience and on his good judgment. The surrounding farms’ fresh water supply might well depend on whether he and Ash decided to go up north and look for diamonds using their powers, or whether they tightened their belts and weathered the financial shortfall like ordinary people.

  Cooper was amazed that his grandmother would use her foresight on his behalf.

  “Grandma, I thought you didn’t look into the future anymore.”

  “Only when it’s important.” She walked over to her rocking chair, reached for a glass of lemonade, and settled down. “You’re important to me, Cooper.” She sipped a little and nodded toward the pitcher on the little, round table that had been there ever since Cooper could remember. “Why don’t you have some?”

  “You mind if I add sugar?” Cooper tried not to grin.

  “You grow and grow, but some things never change.” He watched her brows draw together. Something was on her mind, but he knew better than to pry. She worried all the time, courtesy of a gift that was sometimes a curse. He had heard that her mind tended to wander into the dark and distant past, a time which she had never experienced herself. And at other times, the things that bothered her or weighed heavily upon her, those events had not even occurred, or they were an alternate reality that might come to pass if someone took a wrong turn at a critical juncture – but they were sure to involve the family.

  “Where is Ash?” she asked suddenly.

  Her question came as a surprise. Cooper always assumed that grandma Olga would know where everybody was. Her gift was, after all, the one of foresight. Sometimes the most trivial things occurred to her, such as knowing that no matter how hard she would try, she would end up burning dinner. And at other times, she saw things far ahead and was able to warn her neighbor of a flood half a year ahead. Those visions came spontaneously, and it always seemed as though she was aware of everybody’s location, everybody’s movement, and everybody’s intent.

  “You don’t know where he is?” Cooper cocked his eyebrow and allowed for a small grin. “I thought you always knew these things!”

  She shook her head. “He isn’t family,” she said. “It’s always easier to keep track of family than strangers.” He stiffened, and she halted. “Not that you aren’t aware of him, dear, but I don’t know him personally, so he isn’t on my radar, so to speak. Not yet, anyway. But I know what you kids are usually up to. I don’t have to have an obscure ability to figure out that you’ll be stuck up in a tree somewhere, trying to eat the apples before they’re ripe!” She laughed, and Cooper joined her.

  “Grandma,” Cooper said, “is it true that when I was a little boy, nobody could feel my power signature?”

  She nodded. “It’s still hard, especially when you’re by yourself. When you’re with Ash, I can feel both of you, which is equally strange. Uncle Owen says you resonate together. You feed into each other somehow and amplify each other’s gift. The only reason I know where you are is because I know what to look for. Plus, you have gotten better at shielding. Few weeks back I could feel you all the way up from Pittsburgh!”

  Cooper blushed. That must’ve been the earthquake incident. The one time when he and Ash got carried away. A hug became a kiss, and a kiss became something a lot more than that. The tension between them had turned into a natural disaster neither one of them could have predicted. He never realized that being with the man he loved would result in a massive city-wide emergency response, complete with flashing lights and blaring sirens. He still couldn’t believe the Armstrong tunnel had to be closed due to a collapsed ceiling.

  As though she could read his mind, his grandma put her hand onto his bicep, and squeezed gently. “Nobody got hurt, at least not this time.”

  Cooper groaned. “This is just so horribly embarrassing,” he admitted. “We’ve gotten better. Can you really tell every time we, you know...?”

  He could tell his grandmother was biting back a smile. He must’ve been glowing like the sunset with his embarrassment just then, and the heat in his face surely wasn’t just the heat of the day. If it turned out that his own grandmother, who lived hundreds of miles away, knew of every single time he had an Ash-induced orgasm, he’d join a monastery. He would become celibate, and the only sword he would ever wield would be the Japanese one that Ash was teaching him how to use.

  “Don’t worry about it, dear. Your father has the same problem. Just work on that shielding, and you’ll get more privacy in everything you do.”

  Cooper thought he would die.

  CHAPTER 2

  A bank of clouds boiled up northwest of the lake, large and fluffy in the crystalline blue of the upstate New York sky. Its mass reached all the way up to where the air was thin and cold, with ice particles even now, during the summer.

  Ash knew that, because he could sense it. Feel it.

  He stretched his thoughts, his water sense, his very being all the way up into the sky, and let it spread to the north. Then he veered to the west. There was weight behind this storm. It roiled and bubbled with unspent energy, waiting to strike, and shed much-needed rain.

  He looked at Mrs. Sorensen. “A storm is coming,” he said. “The big one.”

  She nodded. He thought she would say that she had already known that, but instead she thanked him, and asked him whether he would like some more tea. It was either unsweetened tea or sour lemonade with Mrs. Sorensen, but that was fine by him. He didn’t mind drinking whatever she put in front of him, as long as he stayed in her good graces.

  She was a fearsome and powerful woman. The air almost shimmered around her even while she was fully shielded, and Ash wondered how it was at all possible that Cooper couldn’t tell. Maybe it was because Mrs. Sorensen was his grandmother. Maybe it had something to do with Cooper’s unique earth sense and the way he had a hard time shielding himself, let alone perceiving others.

  But Cooper could feel Ash – as though he’d chosen to make an exception.

  Ash could feel Cooper, and Cooper could feel him even when they
were separated by hundreds of miles. When they came close together, their powers meshed and amplified. Which could explain this big weather system, too. “Do you want me to do anything about that storm?”

  Mrs. Sorensen gave him a bemused look. “Not everything is your fault, Ash,” she chided. “Just because you and Cooper boost each other doesn’t mean that every storm and every flood and every earthquake and every landslide rests upon your shoulders.”

  And this was exactly what had been bothering him all along. Could he possibly justify being with Cooper if it meant destruction? Injuries, even deaths? Could they even risk it? He had no such experience in his own family, because his own mother died when he was a young teen. His father didn’t have a talent to speak of, or at least he always said he didn’t. In light of what Ash was learning about Cooper and obscure abilities in general, he realized it was quite possible that his father’s ability was never properly identified. Maybe he could do things that were not obvious to the casual observer. Because how else could Ash be so powerful?

  Olga Sorensen leaned into her rocking chair, and closed her eyes. Ash watched her casually, trying not to stare, yet he was very curious to see how she did things. How did she focus? What were her techniques, and how did they differ from Uncle Owen’s?

  Her chest rose and fell as her breath grew shallow, almost unconscious. The rocking chair hinted at the smallest movement back and forth, as though she let herself be moved by her very heartbeat. But that was ridiculous, because that was clearly not possible.

  And then he felt it. Her shields grew transparent, and her power radiated outward, directed to the north and to the west and way, way up into the sky. And it was also directed at him, and at Cooper, who was in the woodworking shop under the house.

  Her power tasted metallic in the back of his mind, not quite like blood, but like something else. Like a residue of something old, and almost electric. Like a silver-plated spoon with a mélange of different metals underneath.