Chapter Eleven
Ness hit the ground hard. She heard Jonas fall next to her, heard the sound of flesh smacking off concrete. She heard the evil laugh of the cloaked figures hovering around them, enjoying their pain.
“Useless humans,” one of them growled. “When will He ever learn?”
A drop of rain landed on the ground next to Ness, then another…and another…
Yes, she thought as the hands of the cloaked people grabbed her by the arms and legs. Four of them hoisted her off the ground, giving her a clear view of the surrounding landscape. Her eyes as well as her mind searched everywhere, raking every hiding spot possible.
Her mind hit something—Landon. She could feel his presence close by…the rain was falling harder, blurring her vision…she looked toward the place where she felt Landon’s mind…the fire on the house was slowly going out…
Her eyes shot up to the house straight in front of her. She could feel the heat from it all over her body, but it was dying. The flames seemed to be consuming themselves, diminishing as every second passed by. She could see Jonas’s eyes—burning red like the fire inside of him—unleashing his power. He was turning the flames off; they were, after all, being carried inside the mansion.
Lightning struck down right in front of Ness, scorching the ground there. The grip on her arms loosened slightly, and the rain was making her skin slippery. She struggled, narrowing her eyes and trying to use her own power to send the cloaked men flying away…she couldn’t; she was too nervous to even get a firm grasp on her own mind. Turning into wind was useless; knowing her luck, they’d turn into wind with her and she’d be caught forever…
Cascades of lightning were raining down from the sky, striking everywhere around Ness and Jonas. Landon had to be somewhere close—where else would the mass amounts of unnatural electricity come from? And the rain…rain meant one thing—Max. He could create a tsunami with the force he held…this rain was nothing to him.
Ness cast her eyes out through the rain and flashing light, willing them to See beyond it. There, on the east side of the property—there was Landon. She could see him, but not with her eyes. The picture was in her mind: his palms were turned upward, toward the sky, and his normally gray eyes were bright gold. Lightning was forming at his command, she knew. Close to him was Max, looking skyward with glowing blue eyes—the rain fell heavier as his eyes shone brighter.
Lightning struck too close again, and Ness felt herself hitting the muddy, soggy ground. Bolts hit the men who had been carrying her, disintegrating them where they once stood. Jonas had been dropped, too, and his captors were nothing more than a smoking pile of ash.
Ness grabbed Jonas’s arm and led him through the maze of lightning bolts and blinding rain to Landon and Max—she knew he couldn’t see the way; only she had the Sight. They reached their two best friends, and Ness threw her arms around Landon. She was shaking badly, scared stiff and drenched with rain—the smell of burning flesh still lingered around her.
The deluge slowly died down and the lightning disappeared. Landon and Max’s eyes faded to their original colors, and the four stood there, planted in the saturated ground.
“We have to get out of here,” Landon said. “Fast—before we all get caught. This whole thing was a trap.”
“What are we going to do? His guards are everywhere, watching us…” Jonas’s voice trailed off.
“Not my guards, boy.”
The voice rose up around them like a physical thing, pushing them closer together. The air around them grew darker and darker, fading quickly as if time had been sped up just before sunset. A deep, booming laugh filled their ears, again turning into a physical sensation that sent pain teeming through their bodies…
Everything turned pitch-black. Even Ness’s Sight wouldn’t let her sense anything…
The world fell out from around her.
* * * * *
Ness sat up in bed screaming. Cassandra ran into the room, her slippered feet pounding on the carpeting.
“Ness!” she cried out, stopping her daughter’s scream. Ness’s red hair clung to her face, nearly plastered there by sweat.
“They got us…they got us!” she muttered, her hands grappling around. Finally, she found her mother and fell into her arms. She was breathing hard; tears were falling down her face.
“Ness, honey, who got you? It was just a dream…I’m here…it’s okay.”
Her daughter’s violet eyes shot open and quickly surveyed the room. There was nothing there—no one was hiding in the shadows; there was no bloody guy about to attack her…there wasn’t one sign in the room at all concerning the new life she would have to lead. Except, of course, for the dream in her head.
“It’s…it was a dream,” she told herself quietly, putting a shaking hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry, Mom…I didn’t mean to wake you up…”
“It’s okay, Ness,” Cassandra said, not hiding the big yawn that followed. “I’ll just…go back to sleep.” She got up off the bed and walked, dazedly, bad toward her own room. Now that everything was okay, she could turn off her mother-mode and go back to being the hard-as-a-rock sleeper that she normally was.
Ness, however, couldn’t sit in her bed any more. Her legs were like jelly at first, and she staggered into the bathroom she and Claire shared like a drunk. She turned on the hot water, soaked a washcloth, and pressed the steaming material to her face. It soaked into her pores, soothing her.
The waterproof clock in the shower read three-fifteen. She was lucky it was Saturday—there was no way she’d be getting up early for school the next day.
She froze there with the cloth to her face. She had read the clock, seen it there with her eyes…but the cloth covered them. Slowly, she lowered the washcloth and looked at the shower clock. It read three-fifteen—now three-sixteen.
She turned her head back to the mirror and gazed deeply into her own strange eyes. Memory dawned on her.
Oh…my…God. Literally.
Every event from the night suddenly soaked into her brain—Camael coming to them and telling them the truth; the attack of the mysterious bloody guy; the strange dream.
Suddenly, she knew that she had more powers. So did Landon, Jonas, and Max…
She could see things. She didn’t need her eyes to tell her what was there—maybe her dreams could even show her the future…if it did, they were in trouble, that’s for sure. She gazed at her own reflection, half a smile creeping over her lips.
The adventure was beginning.
* * * * *
“I’m telling you, it was the most realistic dream I’ve ever had.”
Landon, Jonas, Max, and Ness were in Jonas’s backyard the next day, enjoying the warm November day. Crunchy leaves fell all around them, and the wind blew them in little spirals around the four friends.
The boys were lying flat out on their backs, but Ness was sitting up, talking quickly and animatedly. “Yeah, Ness, but you’ve had some pretty weird dreams before,” Landon pointed out to the redhead, his piercing gray eyes turned to the sky.
“But this one is different. It feels like I’ve had it before, or something…”
“And we were all in it?” Max asked, looking at Ness. “You saw our powers?”
“I did,” she said. “Landon was making all this lightning…and if he could control lightning, then that means he can probably control all electricity. And Max…same thing with you and water, because you were causing this torrential downpour…we already knew Jonas can do that with fire.”
“Which is awesome,” Jonas said. He was making tabs of fire burn from his fingertips, then turning it off again. He torched a dead leaf every now and then, and he could easily make the fire grow or stifle.
“Anyway. I can control the wind,” Ness continued. “That is, if my dream was right. And I can just…see things. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. But I don’t need my eyes to look around.”
“Hmm, sounds like me,” Landon said. “Only I get voices and smells and tastes…which, by the way, still hasn’t turned itself off too well. That Camael guy amplified it too much.”
“Oh yeah? What am I thinking?” Max asked. Landon and Jonas laughed.
“Let’s see. You’re broadcasting pretty loud over there…but for the sake of Ness, I’ll keep that to myself…you’re still thinking about that English muffin you ate for breakfast and how you need to finish your math homework…and there seems to be a special interest with Jordan Mackey’s thong that was hanging out of her skirt practically all day during school yesterday.”
Jonas and Landon were lost in laughter. Ness shifted uncomfortably. “You’re sick,” she said to Max, who turned red.
Ness lay down on her back, staring up at the leaves of the tree above her. If only she could figure out how to control the wind…but how could she control something she couldn’t even see?
Above her, the leaves stirred. Ness leaped with her mind—almost in the same way as when she used her telekinesis—and into the rustling foliage, catching on to whatever was moving between the branches. A feeling of triumph surged through her as she pulled the force through the trees, making leaves spiral off into mini-tornadoes.
She stopped moving it, but the newfound connection was still in her—it wasn’t just the wind, it was air…she swirled her fingers through it, finally feeling what she had been breathing in all her life. It was the oddest sensation; even more so than figuring out she was an angel. She took in a deep breath of the invisible matter around her, feeling it fill her lungs and body with its power—power that only belonged to her.
She let go of the wind and let it blow by itself again.
“Wow, Ness, that was crazy,” Landon said next to her. His eyes were looking at her in that deep, thoughtful way they had.
“What?”
“Whatever you were just doing,” he said, shrugging. “I told you he amplified my head way too much.”
Ness got an idea, and she sat upright again. “Landon! You should try it. Not with air…with electricity. I want to see if my dream was right.”
“Try what?” Max asked, sitting up, too. Jonas was too engrossed in the fire he was making to pay much attention to what the others were doing. He already had his element figured out.
“I don’t know, Ness…I’ve got a handful with this,” Landon said gently, pointing to his head.
“Yeah, but you have to learn some time,” she argued. “Come on, I’ve got two out of four right…maybe my dreams are true.”
“Alright, alright…”
Ness sat and looked expectantly at Landon. His eyes were closed in concentration, and she could tell that he was searching within himself. Suddenly, she felt a pulling sensation gripping at her—it was attached to her mind, somehow pulling her deeper and closer toward Landon…
Maybe he was right. Maybe getting one power under control was what he had to do first.
A spark shot up out of his palm, and the sensation in Ness’s mind went away. A ball of glowing light formed in Landon’s hand, and little sparks emitted from it every now and then. A faint ringing entered her ears: it was sort of like the sound a television made when the TV was still on, but the cable box wasn’t. Either that or the quiet ringing that could be heard in the background of a running computer.
Landon opened his eyes. They weren’t gray anymore; they shone a faint gold color. Ness gasped, and Max said, “Whoa.”
Jonas looked up and saw the ball of electricity, then his eyes traveled up to Landon’s. “Whoa, man, your eyes.”
The crackling ball disappeared, and with it, the color in his eyes. However, more light erupted all around them, a golden glow that enfolded the four of them.
“Okay, you can stop it now,” Max said.
“Well, I would, but that’s not me,” Landon told him. The wind stopped moving through the trees; leaves were suspended in the air as if frozen there. Ness glanced at her watch; the second hand was not ticking. She looked at Jonas’s watch—his had stopped, too.
The ground shook furiously—a bit of it even split apart, and chunks of grass and mud slid down into the hole. Ness grabbed on to Jonas and Landon—each hand grasping one of their arms—and stared. Max’s blue-brown eyes were wide open and fixed on the spot. Landon cast his mind out, searching for anything familiar. Jonas’s hand was raised and a ball of fire rested in his palm, ready to be shot out.
Everything stopped shaking just as suddenly as it had started. Slowly, two hands grasped the side of the earth, pulling up a body from its recesses.
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