Evanescent (15 page)

“I know.” I swallowed bile. “We have to destroy them to save them.”

“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” she said, and grabbed my hand. The tingles of pins and needles made its way up my arm, and I started to wonder if it was telling me something again, as only with certain people and in certain times it was more persistent. Droids crashed into the wall of impeding Zulus. I watched in horror as the battle got ugly fast.

“I know this magic, and I know how to stop them.”

I turned to meet Thandiwe’s hollow stare, stained with glossy tears.

“I know
you
know how to destroy them,” she said softly.

I kept my eyes on her, studying, waiting for the words to come from someone else’s lips, not my own.

Denial: Phase Four
.

Before the words could spill from her mouth, an escaped fireball came hurtling toward us. Troy pushed us out of the way just in time. Tatos shot a flaming arrow at the ball, sending the dark orb shadowing the flaming arrow into the shady forest – an explosion the result as they collided. A huge, orange fire bled into the dark sky, taking an innocent tree with it.

Troy
was maddened. His eyes turned dark and savage. It scared me in a horrible way. I grabbed for him, but he pushed me away.

“Troy! You’ll get yourself kil…” I shouted, but it was no use. When he wanted to do something, he did it.

Troy
pulled daggers from his father’s harness, hidden beneath the thick, long, purple robes, and ran right into the conflicting warriors.

“No!” Kronan’s voice reverberated through the air.

Suddenly, the whistle of arrows increased as Troy made his way through the mob of droids, arms swinging, daggers flying, his body twisted and gracefully glided over and through them. He ducked, swung and swiftly danced his way out of, into, and around those deadly machines, leaving androids crashing to the floor in his wake. He stood holding gleaming, silver blades dripping with black ink in each hand. He kept his eyes trained on the stilling bodies, his chest rapidly rising and falling with anger, but soon some of them came back up before he started again. He was a machine himself, one that started pinning enchanted metal spikes into the flesh of their necks in order to immobilize them. Suddenly, there was a huge noise, a charge of hundreds of spears wailing, whistling through the air in one gigantic wave. I turned back to see more Zulus converging through the mess of metal, smoke, fire and eerie flesh of dying droids. Turning away from the gore and violence, Anaya’s gaze shot to me.

“Now, Ava.”

I couldn’t. I shook my head, still afraid of what had come during and after the shield’s power surge. While the disease ran in my blood, I was afraid to use my abilities any further.

Kronan enchanted something, then grabbed the crystals from the ground. A purple dome pulled over us. Flames exploded all around. Smoke blanketed the entire clearing. There was an eerie silence, followed by coughs and moans. The dome receded.

Kronan staggered. Anaya and Tatos helped him regain his balance.

“It’s too much in one day.” Tatos looked at Thandiwe as her tears tumbled down her beautiful face. Her honey, brown eyes lit up with grief at the disaster around us. Before the smoke could dissipate, I searched for him.

“Troy!” I shouted, panic ripping at my chest, my heart turning inside out. I couldn’t sense him.

The slight hum started up again as a few of those mechanical creatures came back to life. More clashing of metal on flesh as they started fighting Zulu warriors.

“What happened?” I heard Anaya ask Kronan.

“Her shield, it’s…” he groaned, but would not say anything in front of me. “I managed to use
that
energy to disable their weapons.”

“What do you mean?”

I could hear them whispering.

“She harnesses in the same way.”

Okay, so now they knew, and I didn’t care.

“Troy, where are you?” my voice finally broke.

I ran through the crowd of Zulu warriors, almost got hit by a few spear ends, but it wouldn’t have mattered because I would not have felt them. All I felt was the burn of the loss looming closer. Not being able to see Troy through all the clashing bodies, I dropped to the floor looking for his legs, he would no doubt be the only one wearing denims and military issued black boots. I started to shudder as things were starting to settle around me. Droid parts carpeted the ground, while Zulus continued to tear their limbs off. It took almost eight Zulu warriors to tear one of them apart. I stumbled through injured warriors unconscious on the floor. Blood, smoke, and dark oil poisoned the earth I crawled upon. The smell of ash, acid and metal, threatened to turn my stomach to bile again. My panic was full blown, I couldn’t sense him at all. Yelled as my hand touched a piece of gory, red flesh. I started to cry, it was all too much, too much! But still, I kept searching for Troy through hot tears. Something grabbed on to my leg, I did not feel it, I only knew that I could no longer move. I looked back at a metallic hand, the fingers clawing into the meat of my leg. I screamed, trying to shake the filthy thing off me but it was stuck, so I sat trying to pry the thing’s talons from me – it crushed into bone. I screamed, not because I was hurt, but because it kept me from Troy. My panic deafened the shift, and my ability to free myself and get to Troy. The chaos inside of me crippled me to a pathetic little girl once again. I heard an ugly crash of metal somewhere behind me, ducked as a Zulu fell to the ground beside me, moaning, yet flashed a smile and got to his feet once more, yelling as he impeded two of the remaining droids. I watched as Tatos kept shooting his arrows into their backs. Finally, they dropped to the ground, and I sat trying to free my leg once again. Kronan was suddenly by my side, while Zulus ripped yet more droids apart.

“Kronan!” I cried, when I heard the ticking within the mechanical arm.

“Watch out!” he yelled, and a bright flash left his hand. I looked away, and the release of the metal claw freed me. Kronan helped me pull the thing from my leg and threw it into the air. He fell over me as a loud bang simultaneously resonated through the air, while tiny metal splinters came raining down. A Zulu shield flew over, protecting us from the metal piercing our skin for a sliver of a second, before the shield landed a few feet away. The white and brown pelt of animal skin caught alight. The valley quietened abruptly as we stared at the devastation around us. I heard metal crash again and pushed Kronan from me to veer around him, and found Troy stuck between three or four of those things pounding into him, two of them only had a top half, the other two a mangled mess. I ran for him. When he saw the look of horror on my face, he kicked his way out and stabbed daggers into all four of them before I reached him. When I got to him through the mess, he sat perched on all fours on top of one pile of metal bodies, a silver glint in his eyes, blades planted in two of those things’ necks. I ran right into him, punching him to the ground. We rolled to the floor but he rose to his feet swiftly, rubbed at his jaw with one hand, and with the other pulled me to my feet.

“You selfish idiot! Don’t you ever do such a stupid thing again!” I shrieked.

“Now you know what it feels like,” he said grinning, and pulled me in for a long hug.

“I couldn’t sense you,” I said.

“What?” he mumbled, his hand stroking all life back into my skin.

I looked up. The smell of blood, sweat, ash and metal was all over him, but he still tasted good when I lay my lips on his. I felt myself weaken as his naked torso pressed against mine, but our kiss didn’t last. He pulled back, midnight eyes staring into me and through me with the same perplexed expression as before. We peeled away from each other.

“Dad.” He nodded.

“Son.”

“Perfect timing, thanks.” Troy extended his hand.

Kronan stood firmly, his black, cropped hair a mess, his denims torn, his arms folded over his tattered and torn purple kaftan.

My eyes narrowed on him. I hadn’t noticed he’d had his hair cut as he’d worn his hoodie up earlier.

“You could have killed yourself!” The authority in his voice left me shocked. Kronan never lost his cool, but then again, Troy was his only son.

“Not likely, Dad.” Troy flashed a self-assured grin.

“You’re no
God
, Troy.”

Troy
kept his lopsided grin. “Only time can tell for sure.” He rested his forehead against mine. “Besides, Ava won’t let anything happen to me.” He smiled.

I swallowed. It was hard keeping myself composed but for him, I was capable of anything.

Troy
hugged me tighter, holding a hand out to his father. Kronan took his purple robe off, and handed Troy a black shirt from beneath it.

“Here, put this on,” he said to me, his eyes falling on my hot-pants and torn shirt.

I felt myself blush with embarrassment. In all the anarchy, I had grabbed nothing at all to cover myself. I half smiled at Troy; embarrassed was putting it mildly.

“Not appropriate battle wear,” he joked.

I gasped. “Where is Maya!”

I pulled the black, torn shirt over my head.

“She is in a secure location.” Kronan’s words were meant to appease me.

“No!” I pushed Troy off, but before I could tell him anything, Greg, Shane and Dave, came running down a narrow corridor where flames were dying, turning droid flesh to ash.

“Oh good, you’re all okay, I see,” Dave choked through a fit of coughs.

“You okay there, Dave?” Troy asked, patting him on the back.

“Bastards!” Dave spat through all the panting.

“Too much of the general’s steaks,” Greg joked, and laughed goofily motioning to David.

“Where’s Robert?” Troy asked.

“With the girls,” Shane confessed, his blue eyes glimmering in the low light emitting from the receding flames.

“Typical,” Troy said, rolling eyes.

“Damage?” he asked, wiping his damp hair back.

“Extensive,” Dave answered, staring up at the slight drizzle.

“Casualties?”

“Too many to confirm.”

There was an awkward silence between the boys.

Troy
glared at David. “The general?”

“Bad.” Dave shook his head in despair.

“You should go, I’ll be fine,” I told him.

“Dad?”

“Go, Son.” Kronan grabbed Troy’s shoulder. “I’ll take good care of her.”

“I know you will.” It was not a statement, but a demand.

They hugged, Troy bent down to give me the slightest peck on the cheek, and they turned walking past a grave of dying cinders. The wind blew a tunnel into the smoke as I watched Troy walk off, slight curls of smoke licking the darkness around them. My eyes glued to the skin on his back, cuts and bruises had started healing the further away he got from me. The drizzle had started washing dirt, blood and ichor from his skin. My chest ached a bitter cold that spread into my arms and hands but when I flexed my fingers a few times, the numbness slowly crawled back, settling over my skin. The pain in my leg faded. I frowned in frustration, and tried to inspect my injured leg.

“Are you okay?” Anaya asked, making her way over to us.

“I’ll be fine. My body seems to take things very well.”

I looked up at a staring Kronan, eagle eyes watching me.

“You are different,” he stated as he studied me.

I held a straight face. “I know.”

His hand stroked his chin. I pulled my hair over my neck, burying the evidence of my earlier tattoo discovery. My eyes fell to the ground, feeling the connection to those beings, the ache and pull was undeniable, trying to tear its way through. I shook the thoughts from my mind. I couldn’t trust my thoughts if they came from the Shadow side – it would do anything to betray me, to get the one thing it needed, and it was my fault it had discovered its next target. I had used my blood-shift to protect Troy, and the results were astounding.
It
wanted more of the power, the emotion that triggered it; it sought the cause of the potent, fervent trigger – Troy.

“The Council knew of our deceit, we were exposed,” Anaya said solemnly, upon watching me studying Kronan free of Minoan robes and long hair. I turned my back and walked a few steps through scattered debris. Flakes of ash and black slivers of soot rained down on the entire city, turning it into black mush from the drizzle. Our lives were ashes to the wind in the wake of a devastated landscape, pushed into black, muddy ground as time burned on. The anger left a vicious taste in my mouth. I swallowed the guilt, remembering what Enoch had said before – guilt curdles inside and makes the disease that much stronger, but the pain and disappointment clung to my chest, a heavy suffocating smoke when I felt the second wave of revenge hitting me, planting itself inside my fibers. Whoever had done this to us, to the city and to my friends, was going to suffer everything we had been dealt, a hundred times over. A hurricane of thoughts cut through me, memories twisted before me in wild, overflowing flashes, uprooting forgotten pangs of the dark and dangerous. I was beginning to suspect what I was, but the name dangled from the tip of my tongue, the knowledge hanging on the very edge of my mind, holding back, hovering until the time was right.