That’s the text I get as soon as I sit down in first period. I’m a bundle of nerves today and with good reason. At eight o’clock tonight, we’re planning to break into Walter Bryant’s office and steal his flash drive. Never mind that this flash drive might expose us and our powers to the world. I’m turning into a thief.
Never would have guessed it of myself, but then again, I never would have guessed I’d be a part of a group of super-naturals charged with saving the world. That sounds like a big job, and I guess in retrospect it really is. I know we’re just in Lincoln, a small town on the east coast, but there’s something here that wants to get rid of us. There’s got to be a reason why.
It’s raining really hard today. Looking to my left, I can see out the window that the faculty parking lot is being drenched with heavy raindrops. The sky is a sickly gray color, and to make matters worse, the wind just kicked up a notch so that the driving sheets of rain are now blowing around like a water hose on the loose. Several late students are running, books on top of their heads—as if that’s really going to help—trying to make it into the building as quickly as they can.
I shiver. Not because I’m cold but because of the trickling sense of dread each falling raindrop deposits inside me. It’s just a rainstorm, and yet I feel something different. Something more. Tingling sensations move throughout my body as if I’m growing or something inside me is expanding.
The Power.
The door to the classroom slams, and in walks a tall woman with a briefcase in one hand and a mug in the other. She’s not Mrs. Copaceptic, and the rest of the class reacts to the substitute with glee. Me, I just stare at her.
And when she puts her briefcase down on the desk, takes a sip out of her mug and puts that down as well, she does the most alarming thing. She stares right back at me.
Only she doesn’t have eyes.
I know it shouldn’t scare me, considering all the things I’ve been seeing lately, but it does. So I scream. And scream until I feel hands on my shoulders shaking me and voices around me calling my name.
Then I stop screaming. Well, at least my mouth closes. The sound is still reverberating in my head. Somebody is carrying me—quickly because I feel a slight breeze against my face.
I’m lying down now, in a dark room. My chest and my throat hurt from screaming so loud and so long. Other than that, I’m lying perfectly still. My eyes are blinking but not seeing a thing. Then they’re closed, and I’m floating.
It’s familiar to me now because I know where I’m going. Only I don’t know who or what I’ll see or hear this time when I get there.
“He is not alone.”
I hear her and sigh with relief. I don’t think I could have stood it if it was the Darkness again. Something like creepy overload would definitely have taken over me then.
“You told me that already,” I say, getting tired of this drop-a-hint game she’s playing.
No, I can’t see her, just that blinding light again. But I don’t look away. I stare forward because whenever she decides to show her face I want to see it.
“He won’t stop unless you stop him.”
“And just how do you expect us to do that? And why is it our job anyway?”
There is a pause.
“It is her curse and her blessing, I guess.”
“Whose? Styx?”
“You are a quick one.”
Inside, I feel good that I was right. We are connected to the goddess Styx and her river. “Why would she curse us? How could she curse us when she lived so long ago?”
“Her curse will last as long as the threat is living. He will not stop.”
I nod my head, tired of her saying this. “Unless we stop him, I know all that. What I want to know is why? Why us? Why now?”
“Like the sun and the moon, it just is.”
“What just is?”
“Styx’s curse. Her power. Your duty.”
“I want to know more about the curse, about how we got this power. What did Styx do to the weather to make us get this way?”
“Not now,” the voice says, and I know she’s getting ready to fade.
“Wait, I have more questions.”
“Questions will not help you right now. Stop him first.”
It goes all black again and I curse. This is one crappy deal we’ve been dealt. Stop him first, before anybody tells us exactly why we are. It just is, she said. Yeah, well, I don’t like that answer. But to get more answers I guess we’d better do what she says since she’s the only one who seems to know anything.
Now I’m starting to wonder who “she” is in all this.
“Princesa, princesa, wake up now.”
I know that voice. Cracking one eye open, I try to smile at Casietta’s obviously concerned face as she looks down at me.
“That’s a good girl,” she croons and wipes a palm against my cheek. “You wake up so we can go home.”
There are a lot of students who would kill for someone to come and take them out of school early. But not me. If Casietta takes me home now, she won’t let me out of her sight for the rest of the night. And I won’t be able to break into Mr. Bryant’s office.
I struggle to sit up with Casietta next to me on the side of the small cot. “No. I don’t need to go home. I’m fine.”
“You just screamed down the entire classroom. I’m surprised the windows didn’t break.” That is Nurse Hilden speaking with her pinched face and broken-off fingernails. “I think you should go home.”
“No,” I say, adamantly shaking my head. “I’m okay, just had a bad scare, that’s all. It’s fine now.”
“What scared you?” Casietta asks.
I hesitate. This isn’t something I can tell Casietta. I know this and yet I still want to. “Something just didn’t look right and it freaked me out,” I say instead.
Casietta’s dark eyes narrow as she continues to stare at me. “Did not look right? Something or someone?”
All right, I’ve been thinking something freaky was going on with Casietta since her warning the other day. Now I’m sure she knows more than she’s letting on. Why else would she ask me that question? So I decide to test the waters.
“Someone.”
Casietta’s lips close in a tight line. Her hair is pulled back so tight her face looks pinched. She’s wearing a floral dress with the same black leather purse she’s carried ever since I can remember on her left arm. “What did they look like?”
Narrowing my eyes at her, I’m trying to figure out what to say or what not to say. I don’t want her to take me home, and I definitely don’t want her to call my father and tell him he needs to take me to a nuthouse. But something tells me none of that’s going to happen now.
“Like she didn’t belong here.” I lower my voice because I don’t want Ms. Hilden to hear me.
Casietta nods, her lips still tight, her eyes closing slowly, then opening the same way.
“What do you know, Casietta? What is it you’re not telling me?”
“Not here,” she whispers back, then takes a deep breath and releases it. She lifts her hand, touching her palm to my head. Then, speaking in a regular tone, she says, “You don’t have a fever. I guess if you feel you are okay, it is safe for you to stay in school.”
The way she says “safe” tells me she knows a lot. “Later, when I get home, we’ll talk?”
Casietta nods. “I will see you at home after school.
“Mr. Lycanian will pick you up,” she says, then gives me a hug.
It’s a super tight hug, like the ones people give you when somebody dies.
I just nod my head as she lets me go.
“Then it’s back to class for you,” Ms. Hilden says, and Casietta walks quietly out of the office.
I stare at the doorway long after she’s gone, wondering what I’m going to find out when I go home and talk to her. Wondering how, yet positively sure, Casietta knows about my powers and what’s going on around Lincoln.
The rest of th
e school day seems to drag along, sort of like the last day before winter break. Somehow the six-hour day feels like it’s lasting more like twelve hours instead. But the final bell rang with definitiveness about five minutes ago. I make record time dropping books off to my locker, keeping what I’ll need to study over the weekend, and head out toward the parking lot.
That’s when I hear it.
The sound is muffled but it’s definitely a scream. Every nerve in my body is instantly on alert. I turn in the direction that I hear the sound and am about to walk that way when someone grabs my arm.
“It’s Krystal,” Jake says, his fingers tightening on my arm.
Lindsey comes up on the other side of me. “Did you see her?”
“No. I just heard a scream. How do you know it’s Krystal?” I ask Jake.
His lips are drawn as his eyes rake the parking lot and pause toward the line of trees at the end of the school grounds.
“There!” he yells, then takes off running.
Lindsey and I only pause a second before we’re running across the parking lot right behind him. We get to the gate that separates the school property from the woods. I can teleport to the other side. Jake already jumped over the gate as if it were nothing more than a bag in the street. Lindsey climbs over, surprisingly very agile and picks up right behind me.
The trees are sort of thin at first. Then, the deeper into the woods we get, the thicker they are. We’re both just following Jake’s lead. I can’t see Krystal or anything else besides him. He said he could feel that it was Krystal. I trust his feelings. And a few seconds later I come to a stop just before crashing into Jake’s back as he stops ahead of me. Lindsey comes up beside me again just a little more out of breath than I am.
Krystal’s back is against a huge tree, and Franklin’s standing right in front of her, his hands on her shoulders.
“Let her go!” Jake says, and from behind I can feel the waves of tension coming off his body. I put a hand on his shoulder, hoping that will calm him down.
Franklin doesn’t seem to hear him. He’s wearing dark pants and a tight T-shirt. His arms are absolutely ripped, muscles so thick and bulging that the material of the shirt strains over them. This is not the Franklin I’m used to seeing. Everything about him seems different.
“I need you,” he’s saying to Krystal.
“No! Stop!” Krystal argues back, trying to release herself from his grasp. Her hair’s fallen loose from the ponytail she was wearing today, her eyes more than a little frantic as she looks at this person we thought was just a normal boy.
Even though Franklin’s holding Krystal up against that tree with her feet not even touching the ground, it looks like it’s taking little effort. Keeping one hand on her shoulder to make sure she’s pushed firmly against the tree, he reaches up to her face, his fingers dragging along her skin.
“I…need…you,” Franklin says again, and I realize that not only is his appearance different, but so is his voice.
“Something’s wrong with him,” Lindsey whispers from behind me. “I can’t really see his mind, but it’s a lot of rage, a lot of dark anger around him.”
The air around us is utterly still, and the sky is that drab gray color. It feels like we’re in a box, trapped with our power on one side and something bigger and darker on the other.
“No!” Krystal screams, and Jake makes a move forward.
I grab him by both arms because that’s what it takes to keep him from running over there. “You don’t know what’s in him, Jake. You don’t know what he can do to you.”
“I’m not worried about what he’ll do to me, I’m worried about Krystal. He’s hurting her!” And there’s this sound that comes from Jake’s chest that isn’t good at all.
Krystal yells again, and we all look over to see Franklin’s fingers move closer to her eye.
“I…need…you…now,” he roars and sticks his fingers into Krystal’s eye.
“Oh my god! He’s gonna take them out. He needs them, was told to get them. I can see it. Krystal sees it and I can see her mind.” Lindsey pushes past us and moves toward Krystal and Franklin.
In the next instant, she’s blown off her feet, sliding along the ground like a batter going into third base. Jake pulls away from my grasp, and I fall forward on my knees trying to stop him. But there’s no stopping Jake. Not this time. In two long strides, he’s right behind Franklin, grabbing him up by the back of his collar and pulling him off Krystal.
She falls to the ground, gasping for air and instantly reaching up to her eyes—I guess to make sure they’re still there. Lindsey scrambles over to her.
Pulling myself up, I head right for Jake who is still holding Franklin in his grip. That is until Franklin twists in Jake’s grasp, opens his mouth and spits out thick black smoke that gets in Jake’s eyes and has him stumbling backward. Falling to the ground, Franklin lands right on his feet like he was only levitating the whole time. I get a little closer, only to be knocked back down on my butt like I’d run into some sort of invisible shield.
Franklin throws back his head and laughs. And I know that sound. It’s not Franklin’s.
His eyes are changing right in front of me. The color is shifting from brown to yellow, to gold, to something iridescent, then to absolutely nothing. No eyes. Just like the bodies they found from that religious retreat.
“You can’t win,” Franklin’s mouth opens, and he talks in the voice of the Darkness that’s been following me.
The ground is now dark beneath my feet. Black smoke swirls all around us, rising up our legs like shackles. Krystal and Lindsey are still huddled by the tree. Jake is up now, fists clenching at his sides. He wants to charge Franklin—I can tell by the expression on his face—but something’s stopping him. Probably the same shield that’s keeping me down.
“No. You won’t win!” I shout back because with the black smoke comes this weird howling sound, like a bunch of wounded animals crying out into the air.
“It is mine. It’s always been mine. You can’t take it away. I don’t care what powers she’s given you. She couldn’t beat me and neither can you!” The voice roars through Franklin, his body shaking with the urgency of the words.
The wind starts to blow, black smoke whirling all around. I wish we had active powers, at least one of us. I mean, Jake can fight with his super strength, but he can’t move. I can teleport, but not now, not through this shield. How are we supposed to beat this thing if we have no defenses against it?
I don’t know the answers. I just know we’re supposed to do something. So I concentrate. I think about getting past this shield, breaking it down or possibly just getting closer to Franklin’s body. There has to be a way to get this Darkness out of him. Maybe if we’d done that when Mr. Lyle was possessed, this would all be over. But now is no time for regrets.
Closing my eyes, I call on everything that’s inside me. I pull from everything I know: we are the Mystyx, our power stems from the goddess Styx and her river that was toxic, we are chosen to fight this Darkness, to win the battle between good and evil. We have to do something.
And as I crack my eyes open again, my body trembling with power, I feel the heat at my side. Spears of light come from each of us, from our birthmarks, cutting through the dark smoke. On impulse I take a step, and then another, and when I’m not knocked down again, I break into a run. Jake follows my lead, and we both crash into Franklin’s body at the same time. Only by then, the body is reduced to nothing.
Dark smoke lifts into the air, trickling through our grasp and headed upward to the sky. The laughter sounds and echoes throughout the wooded area.
“You won’t win!” it says, and all the smoke is swooped up into a thick cloud that floats away.
We’re all too stunned to move. So we just sit or stand in that clearing in the woods. Gradually the air clears, the sky, which was a dismal gray, opens to a wan blue. The smoke is gone, but we all act as if it’s still there, as if this thing that’s taunting us is
still right here. We’re so quiet, not really sure what to say.
Jake wants to move closer to Krystal, to touch her, to make sure she’s all right. But he remains still where he stands, slipping his hands into his pockets. My heart instantly goes out to him as I think I know what he’s feeling. Wanting somebody but not being able to just say it, to just be with them. I’m thinking of Antoine again and the argument we had. He’s right about me playing games and being ashamed of being with him. I shouldn’t be. He’s a cool guy and his aunt’s really nice. I shouldn’t care what my parents or anyone else will say.
“He won’t stop.” Lindsey breaks the silence. Leaves and twigs crunch beneath her feet as she stands, reaching a hand out to help up Krystal, who was still sitting on the ground beside her. “He’ll come back because our power is what keeps him from gaining his strength. As long as we’re alive, he can’t get what he wants.”
“And what’s that?” Krystal asks, brushing the dirt and crap off her clothes. “I mean, what is it that he wants that we can stop him from getting?”
“More power,” Jake says quietly. “There are three things worth fighting for—money, power and respect. I doubt he needs the money or the respect. It’s the power that’s driving him. But somebody’s keeping it from him.”
Krystal nods, her hands and attention having gone from her mussed clothes to Jake. “Somebody created a final barrier so that he wouldn’t be able to get that power. Ever. We’re that barrier. We were created to stop him. But by who?”
“Styx,” I say. “She did something, cursed the weather or something so that we would be created to fight him when he came for the power.”
We all take a minute to let that sink in. I think we know it’s right. Some of the holes we’ve had in our theory are finally filling up.
“Created by a goddess,” Lindsey says on a whoosh of breath. “Cool.”
I laugh, and then so do Jake and Krystal. I know it’s probably not the most opportune time to do such a thing, but it just sort of bubbles out, and before I know it or can stop it, everybody is laughing. In the midst of all this unknowing and turmoil, only Lindsey could think it was cool.
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