The Dragonfly Prophecy

by Jacquelyn Castle

  After that night, he lightened up a tiny bit, but I still complained. I got sick of listening to myself, but Chace never got annoyed, tired or impatient, even when I stopped him from breathing and almost killed him by accident.

  Poor Chace was on the receiving end of a lot of my blunders, but he must have been okay with it since he insisted on being my lab rat. His normally tight and sculpted body became a heap of Jell-O while I perfected the art of paralyzing my opponent. When sucking all of the energy out of my surroundings, not only did everything in the facility stop functioning, but Chace stopped functioning too. Lucky for both of us, I was able to stop before I killed him.

  The real fun began when I started speaking French. I had never taken a French class in my life so that was really odd. It was the first time Chace took me into one of the other rooms in the facility.

  “Things aren’t what they seem inside these walls,” he warned. “We have to find out what this French thing is about. No better way than to go to France, no?”

  “France? Forget it! By the time we get there, the sensation will be gone.”

  He smiled and gave his head a shake. “Phyters,” he mumbled.

  He pressed his eye up to a laser scanner on the wall and a three-dimensional globe of lights popped up in front of us. His finger moved fast through the continents and countries until he landed on France.

  “It’s run by computer so we can get anywhere in this world by touching the country and then walking right in.” He locked his hand with mine and we took a synchronized step into the room. After a small shock wiggled through my flesh, the lights flickered and we were in Paris. The Paris. At least I thought we were. It was no miniature replica, of that I was absolutely sure. The city was bustling with activity under the afternoon sun that made me squint. People walking the streets, ladies lunching at the outdoor cafés, cars honking their horns in the rush hour traffic, the smell of baking bread filling the streets. I thought I had seen and heard it all, but that theory went out the window when I found myself standing at the corner of Rue de Rivoli. Chace was right, as always. I had much more to learn.

  “W-T-F? Are we really in Paris now? The Paris? The Paris in... Europe?” I knew Chace wanted to laugh uncontrollably at my being stupefied, especially since he hadn’t seen it in a while. He held back and gave me a simple explanation instead.

  “We are in Paris, the Paris and yes, we are in Europe.”

  “C’mon, you gotta give me more than that!” I said abrasively.

  “The Commission is always working on ways to improve our existence and keep our security and intelligence far ahead of the other world. Part of the development of those new strategies required us to be able to travel at the speed of light. We can bounce between universes with no problem, but bouncing from place to place in the same world isn’t quite the same. We needed another way to get across the globe in a hurry. This is what they came up with. Every facility has one. If you need the scientific specifics, you’re out of luck. I don’t know how they did it, I only know why.”

  I didn’t really care about the science of it. It would have been nice, though, to know why we were there in the first place.

  “You wanna take a walk over to the Louvre while we wait?” I asked.

  “Might as well. The sensation will find you anywhere.”

  I knew how to get there, but acted like I didn’t so I wouldn’t have to explain that I had already been there with William. We had snuck away for a romantic French weekend when I was with him in England. It almost hurt to go back without him. Chace navigated the crowds and lead us to the museum, proud of his sense of direction.

  The Italian couple who stood next to us while we were admiring the Venus di Milo, smiled when they saw Chace’s arm slip around my waist. I guess it looked romantic to outsiders, but to me, it was just normal behavior for us. >From under her big black hat, the petite older woman whispered, “Ricordi quando eravamo giovani amanti?” The blood shot to my face turning it a lovely shade of tomato. She was more shocked than I that I knew what she’d said. It meant, “Remember when we were young lovers?”

  I gave Chace that ‘W-T-F’ look that always cracked him up. He smiled and mouthed the words ‘feel it’ to me. I had become a master at harnessing and controlling the abilities so it only took me a fraction of a second to comprehend. Any words spoken within my hearing range were translating in my head into dozens of different languages. My head buzzed with French, German, Spanish, Greek, Hindi, Japanese and a whole host of other languages. The strangest part of the whole thing was that I understood the conversations even though they were translating in all of those languages at the same time.

  “That was fun! And loud!”

  “I bet. Let’s get back to the facility. That French bread made me hungry.”

  “We’re done for the day then?”

  “Yeah, let’s go get some dinner and I’ll take you home. You gotta get some rest, Lex. You’re looking pretty tired lately.”

  “Gee, I wonder if all of this training has anything to do with that?” I joked.

  “It shouldn’t make you this tired, though. You sure everything else is all right?”

  “I’m fine. I can even go some more if you want,” I bluffed, hoping he wouldn’t take me up on it. I would have volunteered for a tooth extraction before training any more. At least I could’ve napped when they put me under. He knew I was full of it.

  ˜ * ˜

  The days went by, the training continued and I learned more in a few weeks than most phyters learned in their lifetimes. Sometimes I struggled, other times I cried, and once in a while I just had fun with it. Chace and I had a few of the same gifts, so we horsed around a lot, mostly as a way of decompressing at the end of the day. We could both jump about thirty feet high and practically fly through the air. Chace would rush me at inhuman speeds and try to catch me while we leaped and flipped around the entire facility. In the beginning, he caught me a lot but after a few times, he wasn’t so lucky. I was pretty fast, even for a phyter.

  We could both build temporary energy fields around ourselves, which could save us against lethal attacks. While I was perfecting that ability, Chace had to use some of his gifts on me for a change. He didn’t really want to because he thought he might hurt me since I was still learning.

  “We’ll start small,” he said, just before he tried to drown me in a flash typhoon. The poisonous darts that protruded from his hand flew much too close to my scalp for me to keep quiet.

  “That’s small? Damn, I’m not that good! Calm the hell down, will ya?” I was scared and he knew it.

  “You are that good, but you have to be better.”

  I barely saw the boulders he hurled at my head until they were in my face. They would have killed me if I had moved any slower. When his tornado encircled me, I got myself out of it and I even escaped the walls he squeezed together with his mind. I held my own, but couldn’t hold the field as long as Chace could. He assured me that would come with experience.

  The next step, and probably one of the biggest ones, was trying to hold up the force field while fighting back. It took a lot of practice, as Chace said it would, to master using two gifts at once. After I had a few hissy fits, meltdowns and plain old missing the mark, I got it under control. I learned how to hold up my force field with only some of my strength while using the rest to counter-attack. I still needed a lot of practice. I couldn’t compare to half of Chace’s ability when attacking and shielding at the same time.

  I thought Chace was a ‘by the book’ kind of gifted guy so it surprised me when, just for kicks, we went into the room that looked like a beach. He put his eye up to the laser again and we walked onto the shore. The sand under our bottoms was as warm as if the sun had been beating on it all day. We swam in the calm ocean and drank from the coconuts that seemed to be left there just for us. No questions, no training, no charades. It was one of the most peaceful days I’d had since I had been awake. I didn’t think or care about anything, or anyone
else, except Chace and me right there, in that moment. I almost asked him if there was a way we could have frozen it in time. It would have made my life so much easier. But then again, I was determined to stop always looking for the road of least resistance. I was on my own now, responsible for my decisions and myself.

  Chapter 14

  Old Friend, New Problem

  With all of my time being spent with Chace, I didn’t see much of Paige outside of school. It wasn’t like her to not bitch about it, either. I knew she was mad at me when she avoided me in the cafeteria. I scooped up my tray of slop and sat down in the empty chair next to her.

  “Where ya been, stranger?” I asked.

  “Me? I’ve been around.” She took a deliberately long sip of her water.

  “Listen, Paige, I don’t want this to get weird, so let’s just talk about it.”

  Her body slumped down in the seat while she stretched her face down with her hands. “I know, I know, I’ve been meaning to call you. I’m sorry I haven’t been around much. I’ve just been busy. I can’t really get into it now, and it doesn’t matter anyway, but I promise we’ll hang again soon. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Oh, okay.” I shrugged. Why bother telling her I thought it was the other way around?

  “Everything okay? I mean, do you need me to do anything for you?” I asked. It wasn’t good enough that I was off the hook. I had to know why she was too busy for me, even though I hadn’t noticed it. And I was concerned for my best friend.

  “Yeah, just don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not.” I laughed a little. “We’re good, Paige.”

  She picked up her tray of half-eaten food and shoved it in the garbage when the bell rang.

  “I should’ve put it there in the first place,” she said and we walked together to our history class for the first time in over a week.

  A strange little lady with an outdated, bleached blonde mess on top of her head greeted us at the door, smiling a lipstick-smeared grin. Great, a sub. I can sleep, I said to myself. I was so tired I didn’t realize I said it out loud until Paige answered “Like that’s something new?”

  “Let’s go everyone, find your seats or I’ll mark you absent,” the woman demanded with a big, raspy voice that contradicted her stature.

  “Don’t you hate it when they act all bad-ass?” Paige joked. “It’s so stupid, if you ask me. They earn their fifty bucks whether they teach or not, so just babysit for the damn forty-five minutes and let us get a break.”

  “You should run for student council, you know,” I said lightly and slipped into my seat.

  I couldn’t tell you whether Ms. Substitute taught the class or slept through it with everyone else. I was too busy in my own head, questioning myself, my friends and pretty much my existence, to notice. I propped my head up on my hand and spun my pen between my fingers. The teacher started talking, but all I could think about was my predicament.

  It made me very uneasy that most of my gifts were destructive. Why was that necessary? What was the Commission going to use me for? I could see what Gypsy Vera meant when she said if my gifts fell into the wrong hands it could be catastrophic. I was never a violent person and I didn’t want to use these abilities on anyone, from either world. I couldn’t imagine what my position would be, but I thought it was a pretty good guess that I would be a gunner or something like Chace’s father. It was no secret that I was smart, but none of my abilities so far was giving me the notion that I would get a cushy job in research, somewhere in a back office of the UN building.

  Chapter 15

  Who Do You Love Now?

  “Good Morning, Lex. Can you come down for a minute, please?” Aunt Fay called on the intercom. It was Saturday and I was hoping to catch up on some sleep. Aunt Fay obviously had a different plan since it was only 8:00 a.m.

  “Be right down, Aunt Fay,” I yelled while trying not to use that gruff, manly voice I have in the morning before I’ve brushed and had my coffee. I moseyed over and closed the window overlooking the stream. I caught myself staring at the water below and the rocks that had become my meeting grounds for the last couple of weeks. I pictured William there, waiting for me with his stunning smile and outstretched arms. I closed my eyes to dissolve the daydream. My heart was truly breaking. No matter what I did, someone who didn’t deserve it was going to get hurt. I thought I had it all figured out. My life continued to shift gears so fast that my vision of my future in the other world had become clouded.

  I brushed my teeth, threw on my bathrobe and headed downstairs. The aroma of coffee and breakfast being prepared as I dragged myself into the kitchen reminded me of those Sunday mornings at home with my parents. I caught a glimpse of Aunt Fay who was in the sunroom with Maria whispering about something. I couldn’t imagine what, nor did I care at that moment. I was only interested in getting my caffeine fix so I headed straight for the coffeepot.

  “Here she comes!” Maria said, gritting her teeth, to Aunt Fay, who didn’t know I had entered the room. It was obviously a cue to Aunt Fay to stop talking.

  “Good morning, honey! How are you feeling today?” Aunt Fay questioned. She hadn’t asked me that in quite a while so I started to get a little worried about what she was thinking.

  “Morning, Aunt Fay. I’m fine today. Why?”

  “No reason, really. I just thought you seemed a bit tired these last few weeks. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. It’s great,” I mumbled. Aunt Fay stopped smiling and her face took on a concerned mother look.

  “It doesn’t sound great. You want to talk about it?”

  I hadn’t planned on discussing any of this with her, but I needed advice when it came to affairs of the heart. Surely she had been through it before. Maybe she could help me hash it all out. I pulled out a chair, plopped my butt in and scooted it closer to Aunt Fay.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, anything. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong really. Well, maybe it is. Can you just promise me that you’ll give me your honest answer without asking me any questions?”

  She let out a light laugh. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise I won’t ask anything. I don’t know what we’re talking about yet.”

  “Well it’s not me... it’s a frien... it’s just a hypothetical situation,” I babbled. “I just thought you might have some insight, since, well, you know, you’ve probably been through it all before.”

  “Oh, I get it. This is the boy talk,” she said letting me know she didn’t fall for my feeble attempt at hiding that it was me who needed the advice.

  “No, no it’s not that. Well, it just—” Aunt Fay cut me off while I was trying to find the right words.

  “Lex, you can talk to me about anything. I’ll always help you in any way I can. I want to help you.” She squeezed my hands in hers. “What’s bothering you?

  “Well,” I began. “Do you think it’s possible to be completely in love with two people at the same time? I mean, how do you know when the guy whom you connect with on all levels, and is truly your soul mate, walks into your life? If it were one or the other, wouldn’t you know right away or... do you never know?”

  “I’m not sure how you can tell, but you’ll know. I’ve never been faced with the dilemma of loving two people, but I can tell you how things unraveled for me. I was a little older than you are now when I met your Uncle Jack. He was a good friend of Max Preston’s, for whom I used to dog sit when he and Katrina were away on business. I was so in love with your uncle and it happened so quickly that everyone thought it was puppy love. I knew he was the one, but I was still so young. Grandma and Grandpa would have pitched a fit if I married him when I wanted to. Your mother used to tell me she knew from the first day I brought him home that he was going to be my husband. It didn’t seem feasible because our parents were so against it. But your mother was right.”

  “She always was,” I joked. Fay smiled.

  “When we did get married, we still didn’
t have the blessings of our parents. I was a struggling journalist and he was a young resident working crazy hours at Columbia Presbyterian. All of the cynics said we had everything against us and we were doomed from the time we said ‘I do.’ Well, as you can tell, they were all wrong. We had a love that was so true, so solid and so deep. I knew right away he was the one and we just had to hang on until the time was right for us. There was never a question in my heart that we were meant for each other.”

  I could tell that this conversation had opened up old wounds for her. She never found anyone else and I don’t think she even tried. Uncle Jack was gone, but in her mind, she still had hope he would be found and they’d spend the rest of their lives together. I couldn’t fault her for that. I did the same thing when it came to William.

  She looked a bit perplexed and inhaled deeply. “Are we talking about Chace here?” There was no danger in telling her, so I gave her a nod as I sipped my coffee.

  “Okay. Who is the other guy then?”

  That one would be more of a problem to answer. I had no other choice but to lie—well, it was really stretching the truth, just a little.

  “He’s just someone I used to go to school with. You know, before the accident.”

  “Oh. And have you seen or heard from this guy since you’ve been here?” Since she never saw an unfamiliar face come to see me, she probably expected the answer to be different.

  “Yeah, he calls me every night. I really love him, Aunt Fay. In fact, we had always talked about our future together. We still do. But since I’ve been back, I think my feelings for Chace have changed.”

  “How so, Lex?” she asked, stirring the sugar in her coffee. Before I could answer, she answered first. “You’re in love with Chace, too. The two of you have been inseparable since the party. I could tell something was brewing. Everyone could see it. Paige has even mentioned to me in passing that she was feeling a little left out since you hadn’t been spending much time with her. It’s not a bad thing, Lex. It’s only natural that you would gravitate to him of all people.”