A Time to Die (Elemental Rage Book 2) (5 page)

Jade picked her
up, “Are you okay?”

Claire said,
“Fine. How do we get it out of here?”

Raven crawled past
them, reaching under Mindy’s bed.  Jade grabbed Raven’s arm, “What are you
doing?”

Claire wanted to
throw up when she noticed that the eyes were missing from Raven’s face, as if
she were slowly being eaten by the void.  That feeling of sickness hung in her
stomach, the feeling like she might barf. She wanted to cry.  Raven didn’t even
look like herself without eyes.  Her nose was still there.  Her mouth was
pursed in a terrible frown.  But she had no eyes.

Jade grabbed Raven
by the shoulders and physically hauled her away from the bed, “Raven. Stop!
You’re turning into one of them.

Claire pulled apart
a garlic clove while Jade and Raven struggled.  She thought maybe garlic would
bring her back. Raven tore herself out of Jade’s grip with a shriek.  She
ignored Jade and dove for the underside of the bed, sliding under before Jade
could stop her.

“Mindy? Are you
okay?” Claire shouted.  She couldn’t see under the bed.  She couldn’t hear a
fight or Mindy crying.  She couldn’t hear anything.

Raven crawled back
out.  Now her nose was missing to.  Facing Jade, she demanded, “Where is your
sister?”

“Wouldn’t you like
to know?” Claire asked. She had managed to get the delicate sheath off of the
garlic clove. 

Turning to her
younger sister, Void-Raven said, “Yes, I would,”

Claire rarely got
into fights with Raven.  First of all, Raven fought dirty.  Second of all,
Raven fought to win. Raven was tough.  Claire knew when Void-Raven turned on
her that the Void had carefully selected this particular sister to do their
bidding.  Jade would have fought them with her goodness.  Claire was too weak. 
But Raven…she was the perfect choice.  Not so good as to have the moral fiber
to resist, not so weak to be useless once they took her.

She still had a
mouth.  Claire palmed the garlic clove.  She would have one chance...maybe.

“I know where she
is,” Claire said.  “Come here. I’ll whisper it to you.”

Void-Raven laughed
and laughed.  It was so creepy seeing skin stretched across eyes and nose. 
Raven’s hair framed her face, making the transformation seem so much more
surreal, but that mouth.  It was Raven’s voice that laughed, even if the
sinister note in the laughter was from something else.

Void-Raven said,
“Of course you do.  And you have no intention of whispering to me.  What’s that
you have in your hand, little trickster?”

While Void-Raven met
Claire from the front, the Void-Servant came through the wall from the back,
grabbing Claire’s wrist.  Her hand opened and the clove fell out.

~~ Jade ~~

Jade tackled
Raven, shoving a clove at her lips.  She couldn’t force Raven to open her
mouth, but even the contact with the garlic and her lips made Raven’s nose
appear.

Raven tried to
spit the garlic out.  Void-Raven said, “Give me your sister, and I’ll give you
your Mom.”  

“No deal.” Jade dropped
the small, silver butterfly on Raven’s neck.  It was one of the charms inside
the charm bag Jade had opened while Claire and Raven were arguing.

Raven’s eyes
appeared.   She changed from arrogant to terrified in a moment. That was how
Jade knew that her sister was back.  Raven hand spasmed when it touched the
butterfly charm. Jade pulled her up and shoved the garlic and another charm
into her hand, “Take these and hide in the bathroom.”

 Stumbling, Raven
ran for the door.  Jade turned her attention to Claire.  She felt a spray of
water in her face and was astonished to find a thin veneer of water flowing
between Claire and the Servant like a shield. Jade dove for another of the
little bags. The Void Servant withdrew before she could attack.

Jade knelt down
and looked under Mindy’s bed.  She expected to find a terrified little girl. 
There was no one there.

“Mindy is gone,”
Jade felt a dozen emotions racing.  Fear. Guilt. Blame.  Sorrow.  She thought
the Void had taken her little sister, and had no idea where to start looking.

Claire’s quiet
voice interrupted her cycling thoughts, “Jade, she’s okay.  Earth cares for
her. She is just hiding.”

Jade blinked.  She
sat heavily down on Mindy’s bed.  The teddy bear Mindy loved so well was there
just beside the pillow.  Jade picked it up. Petting the head of the teddy bear
for comfort, Jade realized that the protection bags were still down. “Are you
sure she’s okay?”

Claire nodded.

“Okay.” Jade
whispered. “Come help me.” She replaced the teddy bear and moved to hang the
curtain rod.

Claire whispered,
“Did you see Raven’s face?”

Jade nodded
quietly.  Claire’s eyes were as round as saucers when she remembered the blank
pieces of Raven’s face.

“What happened?”
Claire asked.

“I think the Void
want her.  I think they are trying to make her like them,” Jade’s voice was so
low that she could barely hear her own voice.

Claire handed Jade
the curtain rod. She said, “What happens if they succeed?”

Jade didn’t want
to answer.  She didn’t want to think about it.  While she slipped the rod into
the first groove, Jade said, “We will lose her forever.”

Hanging the last
of the protections, Jade pushed the chair back under Claire’s desk.  It was a
wooden desk and wooden chair.  Mom had been talking about getting Claire an
office chair for Christmas, but then Claire asked for a pool.  The request
might have been strange for anyone else, but fortunately Amazon sold everything
all the time and Claire got an inflatable pool for Christmas instead of an
office chair. 

For the hours
Claire spent with the pool, even in the middle of winter, Jade had to admit it was
a worthwhile investment.  Give a Water Elemental a puddle of Water, and she’ll
be happy a long time.

Not that Claire
sat at her desk anyway.  Most of the time she used her laptop on her bed. Jade
sighed.  The fight was over, but it felt like only the beginning.

Mindy crawled out
from under her bed.

Jade picked her
up, cuddling her before she even said a word.  It surprised her when Mindy
said, “Raven cry.”

“Okay, Cricket. 
I’ll check up on her,” Jade tucked Mindy into her bed.  Mindy smelled like Earth,
but there wasn’t a single dirt particle on her. Jade asked, “Are you okay?”

“Mindy hide,”
Mindy grinned and stuck her thumb in her mouth.  Jade was supposed to gently
remind her not to suck her thumb.  They were breaking her of the habit.  She
was too old, but tonight Jade let it go.

“That’s great,
Cricket,” Jade said.  She wondered how many more times her baby sister would
have to play hide and seek from sinister monsters. Then she returned to the
sister who might become one.

Chapter 5

~~ Jade ~~

Raven was sobbing with
her head under the covers when Jade walked in.  It was a hard thing to listen
to.  There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Jade would have just
crawled into bed and pretended not to hear. 

Instead she sat on
the end of Raven’s bed.

A muffled cry
said, “Leave me alone.”

Jade put a hand on
what was probably Raven’s leg. Jade said, “We’re in this together.  I’m scared,
too.”

“You’re not
turning into a faceless thing,” Raven said.

Jade had to admit
that Raven had a point, but she knew what it was like facing the abyss.  She
said, “Maybe not, but I’ve been down my own dark path.  We’ll find a way
through this.”

“Can we watch some
television in the living room?” Raven sounded so small when she asked. 

“Sure.  I’ll make
us popcorn and hot chocolate,” Jade didn’t mean the fake kind, either.  Raven
took a side trip to the bathroom to wash her face while Jade airpopped the
popcorn and heated milk on the stove.  

“As sisters go,
you’re not that bad sometimes.” Raven said, gathering blankets and pillows for
the couch.

“What a ringing
endorsement,” Jade joked.  She forced a smile while her stomach churned with
fear.  Sometimes it felt as if darkness surrounded the Gray family, lying in
wait, and one wrong move would end them forever.

Raven turned one
of the kitchen chairs backwards and sat on it with her legs stretched to either
side and her arms resting on the back, “I think we should switch rooms.”

“In what way?”
Jade’s greatest fear was that Raven would say that she, Raven, should stay with
Mindy.  That would be proof that the Void’s claws were deep inside Raven and
that every act would be suspect.

Raven had another
idea. “ What if you and Mindy share a room. I’ll share with Claire. I’m done
sneaking out, so I won’t bother her in the middle of the night…” Raven said.

Jade interrupted,
“Or be a bad influence?”

“Or be a bad
influence,” Raven agreed. She watched the popcorn rise inside the popper.

Jade frowned,
“Why? How would it make a difference if I’m in there instead of Claire?”

Raven twisted a
strand of black hair around her finger.  It was something she did when she didn’t
want to talk or when she was bored at school.  She was quiet for so long that
at first Jade thought she might not answer.  Finally Raven said, “The Void
didn’t want you in that room. I was to slip quietly into their room and pull
down the protections.  The only reason they woke up was that I fought so hard
against it.  I tried to wake them up.  If I hadn’t fought so much, I’m afraid
that the Void would have gotten her.”

“Mindy was safe.
You couldn’t have gotten to her,” Jade said.  She didn’t say how, didn’t say
why.  Raven was compromised.

“Earth can only
hold Mindy for so long.  She gets tired, too. Like all Elements, eventually
Earth would have released Mindy. The Void servant was planning to freeze Claire
and wait out any Elemental tricks Mindy had up her sleeve,”  Raven rubbed her
hands in her face, mostly to hide the tears that were starting to fill her eyes
again.

“I don’t
understand.  Why would the Void care about me?  Fire is not the most useful
Element ever,” Jade said, which was true.  Fire was too volatile for daily
play.  Raven and Claire could interact hourly with their elements and not worry
that something would get out of control. Fire was a different Element entirely.

Jade poured the
margarine heating on the top of one of the burners over the popcorn.  She never
used the top of the popper.  It never quite melted far enough. Then she salted
it.

Raven watched all
of this with the feeling that somehow Jade was trying to normalize the crazy
situation they were in.  She didn’t want to admit her weakness.  She was the
wild child who rode the wind.  She mumbled when she said, “Air and Water are
closer to the Void than Fire and Earth.  The Void draws cold.  Fire is a bitter
enemy.”

Fire again.

Jade’s laugh was
bitter, “So, you’re telling me that I get to be the warrior who fights the
Void?  I’m the biggest pacifist out of all of us.  Claire would have been a
better choice for Fire.”

Raven rolled her
eyes, “Are you kidding me? Claire would have us all in flames.  I would have
killed us before my eighth birthday.  Mindy, well, I don’t even know about
Mindy.  If anyone is right for Fire, it’s you.”

Jade stirred the
chocolate, a worried frown on her face.  She didn’t know anything about
defeating anybody.  She just wanted to go to college for a forestry degree and
find a nice quiet place in the middle of nowhere to live. She felt Raven’s eyes
on her and looked up.  Raven’s haunted look was so far removed from the normal
smart-aleck, sarcastic sister Jade knew that she wondered if she’d ever get her
sister back.

“Do you know
anything about why they’re afraid of me? Anything at all?  I don’t feel strong
enough for this,” Jade glanced at the clock.  Almost midnight.  The witching
hour.  But she was no witch.

Raven shrugged, “I
don’t.  I just think you need to stick close to Mindy.”

Jade didn’t always
listen to her sisters, but Raven was so certain that Jade said, “We’ll switch rooms
tomorrow.”

Raven fell asleep
before the opening credits of the movie even started, the popcorn untouched on
the coffee table, her hot chocolate sipped to a safe level.  Jade turned down
the volume and left the living room, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt at
her lack of sisterly solidarity, but Raven didn’t really need her anymore.

Jade grabbed her
diary out of the bedroom.  The light was still on in the kitchen and the
furnace turned up high enough that the rooms were warm.  Some families turned
the heat down before going to sleep, the Grays included, but lately Aunt Bertha
was cold all the time, and the heat was left alone.

Scribbling in her
diary, Jade made notes about the time of the attack and her thoughts on how to
overcome the Void.  She flipped back a few pages to read prior thoughts of her
Mom’s disappearance.  Last week Jade had circled the word,
Keeper
and
underlined it three times.  At some point they had returned to normal life, but
she had never forgotten.

Jade rested her
chin on her hand.  Where would the Keepers hold an Elemental?  Jade turned back
to the nearly empty page and scribbled more thoughts.  The Keepers traveled
through space from dimension to dimension. Bertha told Wayne to ‘bring her
niece back’. Wayne’s name was already scribbled on the previous page.  Jade
just didn’t know what to do with it.

She had to find a
way to locate her mom. Soon.  The Void was closing in and Jade wasn’t up to the
task.  Aunt Bertha hadn’t even gotten out of bed with all that screaming. 

Jade had a sudden
fear.

She hurried down
the hall to her aunt’s room.  She pushed the door open slowly.  Even Aunt
Bertha used a nightlight.  Jade watched her for nearly a whole minute. Aunt
Bertha had seemed so fragile lately.  When Bertha groaned and waved her arm in
her sleep, Jade shut the door carefully. 

Notebook and pen
in hand, Jade returned to her place at the kitchen table.  She started to make
a list of all of the people who acted suspiciously around her mom.  Harold, the
old man in town who asked too many questions, was first on the list.  She
scribbled the names of a teacher, banker, gas attendant and a few parents of
friend who asked her personal questions at times. 

Amy was grabbed
when they were in Oregon, though, when they were on the run. Jade wrote down
the question,
Why, after all of our years here, would they find us in
Oregon?

Three in the
morning.  Jade closed her notebook and sighed.  This hunt for Mom was getting
nowhere fast. And now she had Raven and the Void to worry about as well.

~~ Raven ~~

First thing when
Raven woke up the next morning, she reached for Air.  Air ignored her.  Raven
nudged harder.  It was like talking to herself.  Raven couldn’t remember a time
when Air wasn’t there for her.  Her earliest memory was of Dad throwing her up
in the air while she laughed and laughed.  Only she didn’t always come right
back down.  Sometimes she circled or somersaulted or flew to the ceiling. She
even remembered her Dad nervously calling to his wife, “Amy, can you tell Raven
to come back down?”

Raven rubbed her
eyes.  The sun was up, but she was the only one awake.  Jade was curled up on
the other couch, her notebook wide open on the coffee table. 

Knowing it was
wrong, Raven snuck a peek at the notebook.  Jade was always writing in her
diary.  Raven had been so screwed up yesterday she kind of wanted to see what
her sister thought of her.  Not that Jade couldn’t be verbally blunt.

Seeing Mom on the
page, Raven carefully lifted it, flipping back a page to find Jade’s notes
about the disappearance, her opinions on Wayne and the chapel, her thoughts on
where Mom might be and how they might find her, even thoughts on the Void.
Nothing specifically about Raven’s drinking or sneaking out. 

Raven carefully
flipped the page back and replaced it on the table before Jade could wake up.
Raven knew something about the Void.  She remembered the words flowing out of
her mouth. When the Void joined her, she knew as much about the master’s
thoughts as he knew about hers.  Servants of the Void didn’t have personalities,
at least not on Earth’s plane, but in the empty space where the Void ruled…men
and women waited, deeply angry and alert, eager to return to bodies that had
been conscripted to make featureless haunts. Many would never return.

Exhausted, Raven
snuggled back into the nest of blankets on the couch and turned off the
television.  She rolled to her side, mind whirring with a thousand thoughts. 
If she could figure out a way to partially give herself to the Void, she might
be able to figure out where her Mom was being held.  

The Void Master
knew where the kidnappers held her mother and taunted her with the secret. 

The knowledge was
like a lure to draw Raven deeper and deeper into the Void’s labyrinth. She
hadn’t taken the bait…yet.  Raven thought about the danger she posed to Mindy,
the fear in Claire’s eyes when she lost her reason…yes Raven saw those things
from a strange and distant perspective.  If she were to return to the Void, she
needed a way back.  That was the dangerous thing about the Void.  Once lost in
that maze, a person’s essence could be lost forever.

When Raven woke a
few hours later, Jade had stowed her notebook diary away.  Hidden depths. 
Raven would have never guessed how ardently her sister was trying to think of a
way to bring Mom back.

Sunday was a normal
day for the Gray family…with one notable exception.  Mindy wouldn’t go anywhere
near Raven.  She wouldn’t come within an arm’s length.

Jade cajoled her
at breakfast, “Come on, Mindy.  We are all here.  You’re safe.”

Mindy shook her
head, “No Raven.”

Aunt Bertha
stepped in, allowing Mindy to stay in her room while the family ate. “Leave the
girl be.  She might not be able to express herself, but she knows what’s good
for her.”

Raven felt sick to
her stomach.  Her little sister wouldn’t even be in the same room with her and
her great aunt thought that was a fine idea.  She wanted to cry.  Instead she
ate her Cheerios as fast as was humanly possible and then said, “I’m done. 
I’ll go outside until Mindy finishes breakfast.  Come get me when I can come back
in.”

Jade protested,
but Raven waved it off.  She wasn’t offended.  If anything, she thought Mindy
was displaying a wisdom that the others were missing.  The Void had already
touched Claire and Jade and had claws in Raven.  The Void Master wanted the gift
of Time, as much as the Keepers. 

The weather was
changing and autumn in the mountains could be cold.  There was a strong
northern breeze giving the air a bite. Raven sank into a patio chair, her
sneakers on either side with feet just behind the legs of the chairs.

Air wouldn’t talk
to her.  Raven decided she might as well talk to the Void.

Aunt Bertha
wouldn’t like it.

Aunt Bertha didn’t
have to know.

First she reached
out to all of the Elements, poking and prodding to see if any would help her. 
Fire whispered encouragement.

Decision make,
Raven focused.  She felt a strange buzzing in her head and then her soul
detached.  Her eyes disappeared, her nose, her mouth.  Yes. That was how the
Void looked.  She was not Void, not lost in the maze yet.  Raven played a trick
to ground herself. Whispering to Fire she said, “Here I am.”

Fire shared the
thinnest filament of heat and light with Raven, but it was all that she
needed.  As the Void dragged her further and further away from her body and
away from the space she knew so well, Fire created a tether.  Jade’s Element. 
The Gray sisters all thought of the elements as belonging to one or the
other...and yet that wasn’t completely accurate. 

Now Fire spun a
thread of light so nearly invisible that sometimes Raven wasn’t even sure it
was there.  Dragged along vastly faster than the speed of light, she would look
back in fear at the huge emptiness of the universe and feel so very small and
so very alone and then would see the glimmer of violet, always violet that
played against the midnight blackness of space. 

Fire knew how to
play in space. 

Raven boldly
allowed herself into the Void and baldly asked, “Where is my mother, and don’t
pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

She could feel
that first hesitation, that first pretense and stopped it before it could even
start.