Chapter three

As sun crept slowly over the tree tops the tangerine beams of sunlight burst through the windows to lighten up my room. I’d barely slept at all. The excitement of finally getting somewhere kept my mind so busy that by the time I closed my eyes to sleep I was awake again and two hours had passed. The ticking of the clock seemed louder as it filled the silence between Blake’s snores and soon enough I was too anxious to just lie down.

I jumped out of bed and began getting ready, glancing over at the clock to see it was barely five o’clock. Last night, after explaining my idea and plan to the rest of the Elementals, I’d asked everyone to meet by the lake at six to capture the shadow in the forest; Helena and Bree were a little sceptical. I could still remember the looks of doubt colouring their face when I finished explaining everything.

‘And you think it would just help us...?’

‘It might not even be in the forest....’

I grumbled. I already knew there was a high chance that the shadow mightn’t even be in the forest... and if it was, I had no idea what we could to make it help us... but what I did know what was it was the best tie to Malum and it was our best chance. Dressed in my usual jeans and black t-shirt I stared out the balcony and gazed over at the horizon. I knew that Val was alive. Somehow, I just knew it. Cara... well, I couldn’t be too sure anymore because now I was almost certain that I was basing everything on gut instinct instead of my Stinger abilities.

I glanced at the clock and saw that half an hour passed. Leaning against the door frame of the bedroom I faced my hand at Blake’s bed and wriggled my fingers gently. Slowly, smoke began to rise from Blake’s bed and small flames grew from the plain white sheets beneath him leaving black burn marks. A grin pulled at the corner of my lips and in a matter of seconds Blake’s eyes shot opened just as quickly he did jumped out from his bed shouting obscenities at me.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” He shouted, his eyes still unfocused from sleep and spit flying from his mouth.

My grin grew, “We’re meeting everyone in fifteen minutes” Turning, I didn’t bother to suppress my snort of laughter and grabbed my leather jacket from the sofa before slamming the door shut just when the door knob froze.

I had been first arrive at the lake and only had to wait five minutes before Helena, Sophia and Bree arrived, followed shortly by a still sullen Cameron and cantankerous Blake. The sun was a little stronger now but not too overly bright and the wind whistled quietly around us as we began to walk towards the edge of the forest.

“I still don’t know about this idea...” Blake mumbled under his breath. “The Control is after him... uh, her... them? Ugh, the shadow! And why do your plans always end up with us going into the forest?! Your ideas are never original”

“No one is forcing you to come along Ice Prick!” I snapped back. Blake threw me a dirty look but stayed silent this time, mostly due to Helena touching his shoulder.

“So” Cameron spoke up stretching out the ‘O’, “What’s the plan exactly? Walk straight in and shout ‘Here Shadow, Shadow, Shadow!’?”

I stretched out my neck out from side and side before looking over to him. “Yeah, something like that”

I strolled through first, my eyes darting to all the shadows that the sun cast to the ground, as well as the hollows in the thicker trees. I could still remember how the shadow was able to dart from any sort of crack, shadow and hollow and I knew that if the shadow wasn’t looking for us again this was just a waste of time. If this plan failed then the only other choice I had was to run blindly into the two Stinger hideouts without any idea of what to expect.

“Help... us...”

I stopped and frowned. Had I just imagined a voice? I looked at the others and they were still looking around for the shadow following after me, not one seemed to have noticed anything. While we continued to walk further into the forest I could hear the soft creaks of the giant trees as Helena gently pushed them aside with a light wave of her hand, allowing the sunlight to beam down and giving us more of an advantage to finding the shadow.

“He-lp... uh-sss”

I stopped again. Surely that hadn’t been another mistake. “Did anyone else hear that?” I whispered to the group. They stopped and threw me a confused look, all except Bree who was frowning as well. “Bree... was that you making sounds in the wind?”

She slowly shook her head, “No... But I can hear what you’re hearing. It sounds like a plea for help”

“I don’t hear anything” Blake added, which seemed so loud compared to the silence surrounding us.

“Neither do I... which makes me feel like we’re in the right place” Sophia piped in. “I can’t hear what Derrek and Bree are hearing but what I don’t hear is any sounds from any animals in here... and for the size of this forest, that definitely means something is wrong”

It was only then that I realised that Sophia was right. While I was trying to tune my hearing for the eerie voice in the wind, I hadn’t noticed that there was a complete absence of every other sound that normally filled the forest. The silence had begun to feel heavy, like it was pushing down on me that when a small gust of wind filtered through the trees and carried the pleading voice again, I started.

Something was definitely out there.

The question was if it really did need help, or if this was all a trap.

I flicked my hands down and spread my fingers wide just before sparks flickered and warm orange flames filled my palms. The flames slowly crept up my forearms as I searched the trees, bushes and rocks surrounding us.

“Bree... are you able to tell where the voice is coming from? It seems to travel with the wind” I muttered lowly while still searching the shadows.

I felt a warm breeze caress my exposed skin, “No... whatever it is isn’t taking the form of something solid so I can’t find it”

“I guess you were right then Derrek...” Cameron whispered tensing slightly.

Everyone was mimicking me, spreading out slightly but moving slowly while our eyes darted everywhere. The emptiness of anything living was irking me, it didn’t feel right. Just as the thought ran through my mind a large dark figure flew past the gap between two trees and everyone jumped to face it. “Keep your eyes peeled everyone...” I growled.

“Over there!” Shouted Blake pointing ahead of us. I turned to see the shadow flittering through the sun beams that speared between the canopies above and we all ran after it. Flames licked up my arms, ice frosted over Blake while Bree spun quickly and instantly transformed in a Wind-being and flew ahead of us. Sophia vibrated and the next thing I knew a peregrine falcon quickly whooshed past to follow after Bree. Cameron was sprinting by my side and, probably out of pure anger at something so closely connected to Malum, he was elbowing huge trunks of trees cracking them as we all dashed past.

“I’m going after Bree and Sophia!” I shouted and concentrated my anger, focusing on my body, and soon I felt the heat engulf me. The trees lit up while I sprinted past them before growing darker again and further ahead I could see the trees bending and swaying while a Sophia swooped around and around, circling the shadow

However, the shadow seemed... different. Was it lighter than before? For some reason the shadow didn’t appeaer as though it was as dark as it was previously. The closer I ran the more differences I could see. It had a blurred look around its edges, like someone trying to erase a dark smudge on a piece of paper and somehow it seemed more solid...?

I skidded to a stop and tried not to think about the random differences now that it was in front of me. It was acting differently now though. Instead of shrieking and flying straight into a shadow to hide and transport somewhere else it seemed to be confused; it would fly one way before darting back to the centre of everyone who had now joined and circled it. Its actions were confusing but made it all the more easy for me.

I pointed my fingers straight down at the ground by the shadow, my palms facing the sky, and dragged them up above my head until I clasped them together. All around the shadow fire began to grow and fly upwards until it created a fire dome and soon the shadow was stuck inside, much like the one I was able to trap it with last time. The last time I had trapped it, it howled and shrieked while trying to escape but this time it continued its odd pulling to and fro as though it was unsure of where to go – not that it could escape the fire anyway.

“What’s wrong with it?” Helena whispered standing next to me.

Everyone eyed it suspiciously. It had been fairly cunning in the past and I just couldn’t understand what its plan was now. Suddenly the head of the shadow was splitting and the dark silhouette grew lighter so that I was able to see the two women again – Chimera and Evanesce, but all of a sudden slammed back together to form the shadow.

“What the hell is going on?” Cameron exclaimed confusedly.

That was pretty much what I was thinking as we all watched it split and reform again and again. “He...help uh-uss!”

“Was that coming from the shadow?!” Bree asked aloud.

“I think... I think it’s trying to fight against the control Malum has over it!” I exclaimed. I watched the women’s eyes when they were able to split apart and saw the fight they had in it – it looked exactly how Val did before when Malum was controlling her!

My mind was racing. This was good! This was better than I had hoped for and maybe, just maybe I was able to help! “Bree!” I shouted turning quickly to catch her eye, “I’ll need your help! I think they’re fighting Malum, just like how Val did last year and there was only one way I was able to snap her out of it. I’ll need you to turn back into a Wind-being and circle them as fast as you can!”

Without asking any questions she nodded once and spun around, her body fading until she was a whirlwind once more and twirling around and around the two women. As she did, she picked up the flames from my fire dome. Once the flames began to follow after her I pushed more flames out and fed them more and more until it grew larger and higher and swirled around the women in an orange haze.

The flames chased after Bree and grew into a tall fire twister that scorched the blades of grass beneath and blew steaming hot air outwards. The trees surrounding us swayed heavily, some leaves catching fire as they grew too close to the fire twister and in the middle the shadow had finally completely split into the two women. The sound of the raging wind stopped any sound coming from them as they clutched at their throats and fell to their knees. The moment they both slumped forward to the ground I sliced my hands down and the fire instantly ceased. Moments later, Bree landed heavily by my side, her breathing rapid while she tried to catch her breath.

“Good job, Bree” I panted.

No one made a sound. No one moved. We all stood rooted to our spots watching intently at the two women lying on the ground, and in the back of my mind I wondered if this was a trick of theirs to catch us off guard. However, seconds turned to minutes and when they didn’t shift at all I tentatively inched forward until I stood by their heads. Nothing happened. I crouched down, my own fire extinguishing itself as I knelt lower and soon my flames were out as I looked down at their faces. They were unconscious.

Slowly, I reached out to give the woman with dark raven hair a shake when Helena whispered, “Be careful”. I nodded and gave the woman a shake before carefully shaking the woman with red and violet hair. Their eyes fluttered and slowly opened, but as soon as they saw me their eyes widened in shock and both of them bolted up scooting away from me and the others. I hadn’t anticipated this reaction at all.

They began mumbling, their eyes slipped a little unfocused and for a moment it looked as though they weren’t really seeing me at all. The two women had a crazed and scared look about them, almost like they were hallucinating. I turned to look at who was behind me – Helena, and threw her a ‘what do I do?’ look. She looked helplessly back and shrugged her shoulders, so I did the only thing that came to mind. I clapped my hands loudly and flames erupted quickly with every slap of my palms, like a flaming volcano eruption.  The two women instantly snapped out of their trance and snapped their heads to look at me.

“What the hell is going on? Who the hell are you!” I asked loudly.

“Derrek!” Helena scolded me. “At least try to be a little friendlier if you want them to answer you”

I rolled my eyes, but listened. “Who are you?”

The women looked at each other before the one with red and violet hair spoke, “My name is Evanesce”

“And my name is Chimera” The woman with raven hair finished.

“Oh-kay... and what exactly are you?” I asked them.

Chimera and Evanesce looked back at each other, almost although they were having some sort of difficult discussion between them. “I suppose you could say we’re a morphed experiment of Malum’s” Evanesce spat, her voice full of venom as she said Malum’s name.

“What do you mean ‘morphed’?” Bree stepped forward.

“’Morphed’ as in we have our own new abilities... but we can’t use them unless we’re morphed together as a shadow” Chimera answered her.

I rolled back onto my heels. This was something new. I’d gotten used to these singular Elementals that something as odd as a ‘morphed Elemental’ gave me a headache. “So you’re a ‘morphed Elemental’? How the hell did that happen? And why were you following us?”

The atmosphere around us relaxed slightly, now that it seemed as though Chimera and Evanesce weren’t dangerous... at the moment anyway, but as the atmosphere relaxed the two women tensed. “It’s a long story...”

I crossed my arms. I didn’t care how long a story it was. The sooner they answered our questions, the sooner we could go searching for Val and Cara. “Well? Go ahead and start explaining, we haven’t got all day”

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A/N

I knowwww... you wouldn’t believe the trouble I had trying to write this! Took me about a week to write paragraph by paragraph. I also lost my laptop for a few days when I moved houses lol. Thanks for being such amazing fans and being so patient. You’re all absolute gems!

Nix <3