A Time to Die (Elemental Rage Book 2)

by Jeanette Raleigh

  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 t
he 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.