Young Writers Society

Chapter Twenty-One

Ness realized that the cloaked figure was inches from her face at the last minute. She stumbled backwards, falling into Jonas. She felt hot tears pressing into her eyes, threatening to trail down her pale face.

This was too much! First, Max nearly died; second, she had to kill someone; third, Landon and Max were taken to God-knows-where…

“Ness, we can turn back time and save them,” Jonas told her, answering her unspoken questions. “Don’t worry. We’ll save them.”

“Where were they taken?” she asked, her voice shaking.

“I don’t know, but we can find out. Somehow…we’ll find out.”

“Jonas…” her voice trailed off.

“What?”

“If we go back home and it’s just the two of us, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll come through in the end, all right? Please trust me.” He held out his hand, motioning for Ness to take it. She put her thin, pale hand on his dark fingers and held on.

Time travel was strange. She watched as Jonas’s eyes started to turn red with the force of his power, and then the world collapsed around them. An empty buzz filled the air and the color around them folded inwards, mixing with the existing light until they were plunged headfirst into blackness.

Jonas looked down at his watch, but instead of the second hand slowly ticking backwards, it began to move forward.

“Oh, no,” he mumbled.

“Jonas, don’t say ‘oh no’ right before we’re about to travel through time, okay?” Ness said.

“Too late.” The second hand was spinning quickly, followed closely by the minute hand. The hours were creeping by and they were losing time.

Jonas tried with all his might to stop it, but instead of the world forming around him again, his vision went black.

* * * * *

Ness couldn’t see anything as she and Jonas hurtled through time. She hoped to God that the same thing wasn’t happening to him—what if they ended up twenty years in the future, or worse…a hundred years in the future? Then they’d never get to rescue Landon and Max…

Suddenly, the world came back. Pavement came up underneath her feet, meeting her red shoes with a hard clunk as she landed. .

It took awhile for Ness to come to. She took in the sights around her, happy to finally be on solid ground again. There was a large house in front of her—at least it looked like a house—and there were people walking in and out of it.

Westchester Drive. They were back on Westchester Drive, and the house was right in front of them. She peered at her watch. The date told her that it was now Thursday: it was exactly one day later from Landon and Max’s capture.

“Ness!”

The night air was unusually still as Ness crept silently along the street. The wind rustled through the trees, causing the dead leaves to create cover noise for her footsteps.

“There’s too much wind, Ness,” Jonas’s voice said, coming from behind her. “They might guess we’re here. Turn it off.”

She turned around to see his face, but it was covered in shadow. However, she knew who he was, and having him behind her gave her a sense of comfort.

“Ness, get down!”

His hand grabbed her arm and pulled her down behind a row of extraordinarily green bushes. She fell stiffly to her knees and felt a dull feeling go through them—not exactly a pain, but it didn’t feel good, either.

By the time she was completely on her knees, the wind had died down. She turned around to look in Jonas’s golden eyes.

“There has to be an easy way to get them all out,” he said.

“Set the house on fire.”

“What? No, we can’t do that...what if there’s innocent people inside?” The outline of his face looked tense as he spoke.

“There’s not.”

“How do you know...?”

“It’s just...I know.” Ness shrugged.

“Damn Seers know everything,” he muttered.

“Okay, so do it. We—” Ness stopped abruptly. Why did this all seem so familiar to her?

“Are you ready?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she whispered back, hardly able to control what she was saying. The two looked at the building in silence.

Jonas gulped and said, “This could be the end of everything—”

“Or the beginning of it all,” Ness interrupted.

“The beginning of the end.”

“It doesn’t all have to end here.”

“We have to stop it...”

Ness was getting impatient. “We can do this. It has to start here.”

“Or it has to end here,” the dark-haired boy whispered.

“Light the roof on fire,” she told him. His power of fire was greater than anything she could ever do.

“Alright, alright,” Jonas said. He took a deep breath, snapped his fingers, and muttered, “Fire!”

Immediately a tongue of fire popped up onto the roof of the building, and it grew faster than Ness had ever seen fire spread. She knew it was Jonas that made it grow so fast, him and his power…

People dressed in robes were streaming from the building, standing at the vast front yard and pointing at the roof.

“They’re here!” the people called. “They’ve come to stop us.”

“Find them!” a deep, booming voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once bellowed. “Find them now, and do not let them escape!”

“Turn us into wind, Ness!” Jonas yelled, grabbing Ness’s arm. She closed her eyes in concentration and felt her power course from her brain, through her fingertips, and into the boy.

Their bodies rose into the air; then they merged with a misty smoke that disappeared in seconds.

“Ness, concentrate!”

She knew what was going to happen long before it actually did. The memory of a forgotten dream slid into her mind, and she could do nothing but fall to the truth it told.

Her full power was thrust into the job of keeping them both a part of the air, of keeping their molecules joined. She wanted to do it so badly...

“They’re in the wind!” the evil voice bellowed, resonating through the air. “Stop them! They chose their fate; it must come upon them! Stop them! ”

Ness felt her molecules being pulled fiercely back together, and she tumbled with Jonas back down to the earth, behind the impossibly green bushes. It was out of her control; it was destined to happen. There was nothing she could do about it…

They had failed—and now the whole world would suffer. Especially if Landon and Max were lost forever…

“Ness!”

She was being pulled harder and harder...the people in the house were going to bestow upon the two teenagers a fate worse than death, and then give it to the rest of the world...

Ness hit the ground.

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. She remembered now! All of this happened before—all of it!

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 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 get a firm grasp on her own mind.

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.

Everything was coming back to her. The dreams were clear as day, now that she was living them. She remembered every detail, every single bit she forgot when she woke up screaming…

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.

They were okay! How had they escaped? Where were they taken? Were they really okay? Most of all, would they ever forgive Ness and Jonas for leaving them there, pushing time forward without them…?

Lightning struck too close again, and Ness felt herself hitting the muddy, soggy ground. The dirt sunk into her clothing, giving her a horrible feeling throughout her body. Bolts of lightning 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 covered with rain and mud—the smell of burning flesh still lingered around her.

“You’re okay,” she whispered into his ear. “I thought you guys were gone forever.” Landon put an arm around her and the rain mixed with his touch.

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.

“We’re going to have to explain it all to you later…right now, there’s no time. But we have to get the Candle, and fast,” Landon told them, water dripping down his face.

“I’ve had this dream before,” Ness said quickly. “Well, right now it’s not a dream. But it was once.”

“What are you saying, Ness?” Jonas asked.

“In my dream, the ground opened up and swallowed us,” Ness remembered, hearing the deep, booming voice in her head once again.

“I’m kind of sick of getting swallowed up by the ground already,” Max said.

“No, but then I had another dream…kind of like a sequel to this one. The ground opened us up to the room where the Candle was kept, and…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the final part of her dream.

“What is it?”

“We all died, and I woke up.”

A flicker of recognition flashed in Landon’s eyes as he remembered the night she called him at three-fifteen in the morning.

“Remember what I told you that morning?” he asked her.

“That nothing was going to happen to us,” Ness remembered.

“And has anything happened to us yet?”

She gave him a hard look with her strange violet eyes. “Actually, I can name a few things.”

“Yeah, but we’re all standing here, aren’t we? Together. We’re safe.”

“I know, but I still worry—”

“As you should. ”

The booming voice suddenly rose up around them like a physical thing, pushing them closer together. The air around the four grew darker and darker, fading quickly as if time had been sped up just before sunset. A deep, threatening 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.

* * * * *

They were falling, tumbling head over heels through the black abyss. Wind was whipping all around them, trying to stop them from falling quite as fast. Ness felt around for her friends, grasping for any parts of them. Finally, when she felt each one of them putting the slightest amount of pressure on her legs or arms, she released her mind.

Bone and tendon stretched as she blended with the wind, leaving behind a puff of white smoke that disappeared in seconds. She felt Landon, Jonas, and Max merge into the air with her, becoming light enough that they could float the rest of the way down the hole. As they approached the ground, Ness allowed herself to return to solidity, landing on her feet. The boys fell on the ground, unprepared for the abrupt change in body.

They stood in a room that was so dark that it was impossible to see anything around them. Landon cupped his hands to make a crackling ball of yellow electricity burn above his palms. Though a small source of light, it showed the boundaries of the room and what lay within it.

Again, the situation around them exactly mirrored one of her dreams.

“Landon, I don’t like this,” Ness whispered, looking around at the tunnel they were in. “It’s exactly like my dream. I don’t want to go any farther.”

“Ness, you and I single-handedly took on a whole mass of those guys a bit ago. We can handle it,” Jonas said.

“That was yesterday, actually,” Landon told them. “A lot has happened since then…sort of.”

“Well, when are you going to fill us in?” Jonas snapped. “We were trying to save your asses; the least you can do is tell us what we missed.”

“Leave him alone, Jonas,” Ness said defensively. “We’ll figure it all out. We just have to do what’s important now—”

“Yeah, which is getting the Candle,” Max said.

“Listen to me, though,” Ness said. “In my dream, they weren’t the normal robed people that came after us,” she explained. “Those guys were just like…a test, I guess.”

“I knew it couldn’t be that easy the whole way through,” Max muttered.

“Yeah, but you also told me that Bloody Guy is the one that killed Max in that dream, but he’s already dead,” Landon reminded her.

“Let’s take our chances. What do we have to lose?” Jonas said.

“Um, our lives, maybe?” Ness rolled her eyes.

“Let’s go.”

The four began to walk through the same stone-floored corridor that graced Ness’s horrible dream. Water trickled and puddled on the floor, sending cave-like noises throughout the hall. The only light they had was from the ball of electricity in Landon’s outspread palm. Ness realized as they walked that the electricity also doubled as protection—who knew what could jump out at them here?

As the thought crossed her mind, Landon stopped abruptly. Ness ran into his back; Jonas ran into her; Max ran into Jonas with a small oomph. “Why’d you stop?” he asked.

“Take a look at this,” he said, squinting at what was in front of him. The other three peered over his shoulders to see a shiny, transparent veil covering the path in front of them.

“What is it?” Jonas asked, reaching out a hand.

Ness slapped his hand. “Don’t touch it! Especially if we don’t know what it is.”

“It looks like a spider web,” Max said, looking closely.

“Try torching it,” Landon suggested, looking pointedly at Jonas.

Jonas sent a set of fire at the web, his eyes burning red—and it disintegrated at its touch. “That was simple,” he said as his eyes faded back to their real color.

“No it wasn’t,” Ness said, her voice weak.

A rumbling noise like thunder sounded, shaking the stone floor and the earth around them. Worms fell from the earthen walls, landing on the four friends.

Further down the corridor, the walls and floor bent. The path beyond was no longer visible; it curved off into nothingness. The rumbling stopped abruptly and a slow clopping sound replaced it.

“Is that…a horse?” Max asked.

“Oh, no,” Ness whispered, the details of her fateful dream flooding back.

The leg of a horse revealed itself from beyond the hall, and in seconds the entire black stallion was visible. Its eyes were bright, evil red, and the rider on his back was even more menacing.

The horse reared and charged.