Midnight Metamorphosis

by Deborah E. Kehoe

  I wondered if the same thoughts were running through his head that were going through my own. If I could do all of these things before my sixteenth birthday, what powers would I gain when I actually turned sixteen?

  Chapter 10

  Cole

  The first time I took my dad over to Avery’s house, he concentrated on defensive moves. Surprisingly, she could also blast with energy, but I think her real strength may be in her ability to talk to and move the earth. That’s why I was headed to her house today to test her affinity with earth.

  We both agreed that we would continue training every day after school that we didn’t have soccer practice. My dad has created a training regime for me to follow, and trusted me to continue her training myself, which was cool, considering his concern about how powerful she might be. I was just glad to get to spend a little time alone with her. The more I learned about her the better I liked her.

  I went around to the side door when I got to her house and gave a quiet knock.

  “Hi,” she said, as she opened the door. The smell of cornbread swept past her in a rush of warm air, and she brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, moving sideways to allow me room to come in. She quickly looked away from my gaze as I passed by her purposely brushing my shoulder against her arm.

  “Hey.” I thought it was cute that she still looked shy when she saw me. “What smells so great?” I looked around the room, and said hi to Brenna, who was standing at the stove stirring a spoon around a pot. She raised a brow at me and I felt my face warm as I realized she saw me intentionally brush up against Avery.

  “I have been dying to cook a pot of chili now that the weather has gotten a bit cooler.” Brenna fought a smile and grabbed a potholder off the counter. She reached into the oven and pulled out a muffin pan.

  I glanced at Avery. “Cornbread.” Avery said, smiling as my eyes lit up. “You can stay for dinner if you want?” She ended her sentence with a question in her voice. My stomach grumbled in response and I winced slightly with embarrassment, but she laughed

  “Awesome.” My dad and I did OK with meals, but our skills in the kitchen were limited, we ate sandwiches or ordered in a lot. “Should we go outside to practice?” I glanced out the doors and saw that the sun was still peeking over the trees.

  “Yes, go on you two.” Brenna waved us outside, and Avery gave me an “after you” sweep of her arm.

  “So, what’s on the agenda for today’s training?” Avery walked over and stood on the lawn, watching me walk towards her.

  “Well, the other day with my dad, you were able to draw a shield and send energy towards me. I’d like to see how much ability you have to talk to the earth.” I sat down in front of her and patted the ground in front of me. Avery dropped down and sat cross-legged, a perplexed look on her face.

  “Do you want me to meditate?” She tilted her head slightly to the right side and sat up a little straighter.

  “Well, kind of, but I want you to put your hands down on the grass on either side of you. Concentrate on the feel of it. Picture the grass in your mind.” As I spoke, Avery closed her eyes, laying her palms flat on the ground. “Take a deep breath and smell the air.” She inhaled deeply and I copied her movements, feeling the buzz of Earth’s power channel through me.

  “I want you to feel each blade of grass and in your mind, visualize the roots. With your mind only, pull a chunk of the grass out of the ground and float it in front of us.” She opened one eye and gave me a look that said I was crazy. I chuckled. “No really, close your eyes. Clear your mind and focus on the feel, smell and energy that is emitting from the grass beneath you. I’ll do it with you.” I closed my own eyes and lay my palms flat on the ground. The grass pricked my palms, but beneath that touch, I could feel the energy emanating from it.

  “Now, focus your energy down into your hands, and pull upwards on the grass with your mind.” I envisioned the roots of the grass breaking, and a chunk of earth floating in front of me. I opened my eyes, looking at Avery, and smiled. In front of me was the chunk of grass that I had envisioned. I looked around, and then looked down, then quickly up again in astonishment.

  “Ah, Avery? Slowly open your eyes and look around.” She had such a peaceful look on her face as she opened her eyes, which quickly faded to panic. We were still sitting on the grass, with my small chunk of earth floating in front of us. Avery, however, had not lifted a small chunk of earth; she had lifted the entire lawn. We were now sitting in her back yard, five feet in the air, on her back lawn.

  I opened my mouth to say “Careful,” when we dropped abruptly, with an audible thud, back down to the ground. My teeth clacked together as we hit. I heard the back door open.

  “You need to move it slightly to the left, Avery. It’s off center now.” Brenna said loudly, with a laugh in her voice. Then the door closed and she went back into the house. I looked at Avery and fell backwards, laughing. Her eyes had gone wide in astonishment, but she quickly joined me.

  “You’re going to have to help me shift the lawn back,” she said, giggling.

  The next day I picked Avery up on my way in to school and as she sat beside me in my car I tried to think of something to say. I still hadn’t told her about the Daïmonids attacking Ben and me at school the other day. I wanted her to get a little more comfortable controlling her powers before I let her know how much danger she was in. I’d been hoping that my father would have more instructions after talking to Mathis, but they were pretty much the same, although my father was acting weird and really stressed out. My orders were still to stay close to Avery, evaluate her powers and protect her. My father, after meeting Avery the other day, was convinced that Avery was the child from the prophecy, but I was holding out hope that it wouldn’t be true. The fact that Daïmonids were trying to kill her did seem to point in that direction though. Of course, all of these thoughts weren’t helping me come up with something to say.

  I opened my mouth to finally speak just as we pulled into the lot, I saw Ben and Summer getting out of his truck. I went around to open Avery’s car door, and when she thanked me quietly, I just grinned back at her. So much for conversation, I thought. Ben and Summer spotted us and moved in our direction. “Dude.” Ben grinned at me.

  I saw Summer greet Avery with a “Hey, Ave!” and they started walking across the parking lot towards the school entrance. I saw Avery look to the right, and Ana shifted away from a car she was leaning against. The freckles on her skin swirled, her skin tone changing from the beige of the car she was leaning against to her natural peach tint. Summer jumped when Ana appeared on her left.

  “Damn Sugar, you scared me!” Summer bumped shoulders with Ana and giggled.

  “Sorry. I saw you guys and thought I’d wait until you caught up.” Ana glanced over her shoulder at Ben and me. “Hi Ben, Cole.” Still smiling she turned back to the girls. She whispered something to them and they all laughed and kept walking.

  As Ben and I stepped up onto the sidewalk, a car pulled into the parking lot, music blaring. Catching my attention, I looked over but I didn’t recognize the car, a dark green Camaro. It pulled into one of the teacher’s spaces up front and the engine turned off, silencing the music.

  “Ben, why don’t you take the girls to their lockers. I’m going to check this out for a minute.” Ben nodded his head, caught up to Summer, and slung his arm over her shoulder.

  “Ladies, let’s move this party inside.” He bent to Summer’s ear and whispered something that made her giggle.

  “Come on Aves, Ana. We don’t want to be late for homeroom.”

  Avery glanced over her shoulder at me, but I was too busy checking out the guy and girl getting out of the Camaro. Shit. What were they doing here? My stomach knotted. I recognized the twins from a meeting I had followed my father to last week.

  After he had met Avery, my father had been acting kind of strange. One night, while I was doing some homework in my room, he knocked on the door and said he was going to run an errand and
would be gone an hour. I was concerned because he hadn’t been acting like himself and would occasionally disappear at night.

  That night I decided that I’d would see where he was going so I followed him to an office building just off of Main Street and across the train tracks. This is not a good neighborhood, I thought glancing around at the trash on the street. The building he stopped in front of was old with a couple of broken windows on the second floor. When my father got out of his car and approached the door, someone I didn’t recognize let him in the building. Feeling apprehensive, I approached the building, but kept to the shadows. Headlights glanced off the window in front of me and I ducked down an alley, running quietly. There were windows down this wall, about a foot above me, but I stopped and gripped a windowsill straining to pull myself up to look inside.

  The lights were dim, but I could see a group of men gathered around a set of chairs. My father was sitting in one, talking to a man about his age with blonde hair. They were sitting facing each other with their elbows on their knees, arguing quietly.

  The door opened behind them and these two kids, both around my age, walked through. The girl was laughing and teasing the boy next to her. They both had the same coloring as the man my father was talking to and the boy looked like a younger version of him. Father and son, obviously.

  My arms started to tremble, my fingers losing their grip on the windowsill and I dropped to the ground. Shaking my arms out I glanced around the alley and spotted a trash bin to one side. I picked it up, turned it over, and placed it beneath the window, then stepped onto it in a crouch, hoping they couldn’t see me from the inside. This window had a piece of glass missing, so I could hear murmurs of conversation but no words specifically until my father raised his voice.

  “No! That just can’t be true, Julian!” My father shot up out of the chair and placed himself behind it, gripping the back of the chair.

  Julian also stood from his chair and walked over to my father, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Mathis doesn’t want to admit that it’s true, because she’s his daughter. But Will, you have admitted already that her powers have started building and she’s not yet had her sixteenth birthday.”

  My father sank back into the chair shaking his head.

  “But my son, how am I going to tell him?” Tell me what? I thought, anxiously, wondering what my father was keeping from me.

  “I know, we are all making sacrifices.” Julian looked over to where his son and daughter stood inside the doorway watching them. “My son, Devon, too will be ready.”

  I glanced over their heads and made eye contact with Devon who had looked up and was staring directly at me. My adrenaline pumped as Devon turned back towards the door and I dropped down to the street and ran to my car. I started it and backed slowly away from the building, my headlights off, cruising down the street in the dark. Thankfully the streetlights weren’t working or had been broken, because I noticed Devon coming out the front and looking around. I let out a breath, my heart a jackhammer in my chest and I gave a last glance back in my rearview mirror and turned the car around a corner and drove away.

  When Devon and his sister got out of their Camaro in the parking lot at school, we made eye contact again. We held it for a few seconds, my hands clenching at my sides. The wind whipped a piece of hair onto my forehead and I reached up and swept it back, touching the bar in my eyebrow as I did. Electricity sizzled up my fingers, but I brought my hand back down and turned away pull open the door to go into school. Keep your cool, I thought. You need to figure out what’s going on, and fast.

  Chapter 11

  Devon

  I knew I was different when the other Elemental kids got their powers at 12 and I had already been able to mesmerize them by the time I was ten. You see, my father was a strong Elemental, having skills in both fire and air. However, his ambitions had always been larger than what those two powers offered.

  His father had been Sentinel over the Committee in his day, with strength over three elements. As Sentinel, he had been allowed to marry outside of our race, choosing a human woman that he’d fallen in love with while at an Elemental gathering in Europe. That woman, however, was not an ordinary woman. The story was that my great-grandmother met my great-grandfather when she was part of a magical Vaudeville act in London.

  As Sentinel, you are sent to visit other clans during annual Elemental gatherings. Each clan would strengthen ties with others around the world, helping out each other during troubled times. The London clan, as host of this Elemental gathering, hired a Vaudeville troupe to entertain one evening. There were various singers, dancers, and acrobats, and my great-grandmother had an act where she’d bring someone on stage and mesmerize them. Kind of like a hypnotist would do in shows today, except that my great-grandmother was a Mesmer. Once she mesmerized you, she stole a part of your will, so that she could call upon you to do her bidding whenever she wanted. At this party, she did not mesmerize anyone, because to mesmerize an Elemental was asking for more trouble than she’d want to bring upon herself. My great-grandmother’s act on this night involved large cats that seemed tame and did tricks, but they were only tame for my great-grandmother. She had mesmerized each of them, and their will belonged to her.

  The story I was told was that my grandfather and grandmother fell in love at first sight, and my grandfather used his influence in the clan to convince them to let him marry her. My grandmother’s powers were inherited, but my father did not receive his mother’s Mesmer powers, only his father’s use of Fire and Air. Having two powers was a big deal, but he wasn’t satisfied with having just two. His father and mother loved him unconditionally, and he grew to be a member of the Committee for our clan, but I think he was always resentful that he couldn’t rise any higher.

  When Dani and I were born, I started showing signs of the Mesmer skills at nine years old. My father was ecstatic. When I was 12, I inherited my Elemental skills, receiving three of the powers, Air and Fire, like my father, and also Water. Having both Fire and Water was an extremely rare gift, because the two powers could cancel each other out if used incorrectly. He immediately enrolled me in training that would teach me how to use these gifts separately as well as together. No other boy in our clan received these two powers, and there was no one able to train me in both. My teachers had to group together, use their powers as a unit, and then figure out a way that Fire and Water could work for and against each other, and then teach me.

  My sister, Dani, inherited Earth. It was rare for daughters to inherit any Elemental powers, and this gave my father another reason to boast. His daughter, not just his son, had inherited powers. Together, the two of us had all four powers, and we learned to use them both as weapons and in our own defense. In addition to her use of Earth, Dani proved to be an incredible athlete. She was able to run faster and farther than any other, climb and jump higher, and leap and tumble longer. It was almost as if she had inherited cat-like traits from my great-grandmother’s pets. My mother enrolled her in gymnastics and track thinking that would be a good way to focus those talents, and she became the best athlete in our clan, including among the boys.

  My grandmother, in her 70s, was the only Mesmer in the area. So She trained me to mesmerize without intent to capture anyone’s will. Not wanting our entire clan to become mesmerized by me, she taught me to hypnotize and gain control, but then release my captives, with their will intact. I practiced this on animals until I became so good that at 11, my father wanted me to try it on our cook. After successfully hypnotizing her without any harm, other than having her bake a houseful of my favorite treats, my grandmother deemed me a natural. Even though I had what she considered natural talent, she taught me that with this power came an awesome responsibility. It was not a power to use as a game. When she was first tutoring me in how to mesmerize and I was practicing on animals, I mesmerized my sister’s pet dog by accident, transferring its favor from her to me. Once it was under my spell, I wasn’t able to change the dog’s favor bac
k again, and my sister didn’t forgive me for a long time. She only forgave me when my mother made a promise to get her another puppy that I would never try to mesmerize.

  My father, gifted with a talented son and daughter, began to push us harder in training and school, riding us to be the best. Dani took to that pressure better than I, easily surpassing anyone else in her class with her athletic skills as well as her element. However, it wasn’t as important to me to be better than anyone else. I was fantastic at the elemental defense maneuvers but struggled a little bit more with the offensive skills. My father and I would often argue, and Dani would step between us if things became tense, diverting attention from me to her, successfully relieving the tension between the two of us. Because of this, my father favored Dani, but he pushed me harder. It was through me, he said, that he was going to rise through the ranks to Sentinel. I hated the pressure he put on me.

  “Come in.” I yelled, at the knock on my bedroom door. My sister opened it, with her phone to her ear.

  “Ok, we’ll be there in a half hour.” She hung up and came over to stand next to me at my desk. “That was Dad. He wants us to meet him in town in a half hour.” I made a face at her and she said, “Come on, it won’t be that big a deal. He’s meeting with a Committee member and wants us to be a part of their meeting.” She flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder and turned for the door.

  “Wait. Did he give you any more information? I’m tired of being at his beck and call.” I closed the book in front of me and pushed it aside with a shove. “Haven’t you noticed how irrational he’s been lately?”

  “Irrational? Nah, he’s always been intense, Devon. You know that! It’s just how he is.” She stepped over and sat down on the edge of the bed, balanced forward as if she was going to shoot up off it at any moment.

  “Haven’t you noticed how he’s disappeared a lot lately, going to these secret meetings?” My fingers curled into imaginary quotation marks as I said “meetings” sarcastically. “I’ve asked Mom about it and I don’t think she knows where he is either.”