He smiled.
There was nothing pleasant about that smile.
Ebony decided to scream. She was good at screaming. The sound would wake the entire household. She got as far as drawing back her breath when she looked into the man’s eyes and saw he loved her.
He really, really loved her. It was a timeless love. Eternal love. For as long as she lived, she’d never find a love like this. Their love would exist from now till all life faded on Earth. Even now, time seemed to fall away as the man leaped down from the ceiling and landed nimbly on his feet next to her bed. His eyes remained on her the entire time.
‘My name is Anthony,’ he said. ‘And you are?’
‘Ebony.’
‘Ebony. Such a beautiful name.’ He held out his hand. ‘Arise.’
Ebony pushed back her sheet, placed her feet on the floor, and stood before him.
‘Do you know how long I searched for you?’ he asked.
‘Forever,’ Ebony said. She knew that. Anthony had searched far and wide for his one genuine love, and now he’d found her, and she’d found him, and they would be joined for all time. It was a love that no man could tear asunder. It had been said that love was a drug. If it was, she was an addict.
His eyes continued to bore into her, and now she knew she had to offer herself to him completely. She had to be owned by him, and there was only one way for that to happen. She tilted her head, offering her neck. Anthony smiled, and she smelt his breath. One part of her mind told her his breath was rotten. Fetid. Like roadkill on a busy highway in summer.
I don’t care, she thought. Love is like that.
Anthony drew close. ‘Time to—’
Before Anthony had a chance to complete the sentence, a fist appeared from nowhere and collided with the side of his head. The impact was so massive his entire body slammed into her bedside table and continued into the wall until he was jammed into the gap. He let out a shriek of rage as he struggled to extricate himself from the wall.
But Ferdy was faster. He pulled Anthony from the gap and, with no effort at all, tossed him through the window into the night beyond.
Ebony regained her senses just in time to understand Ferdy’s words.
‘Vampires,’ he said. ‘Originating from the early Serbian word vampir meaning a dead creature known to drink blood.’
Chapter Ten
By the time we reached the house, we were just in time to see a figure being thrown through the window. The man rolled twice, leaped to his feet, and yelled in a foreign language. He sprung from the ground straight up onto the roof.
‘What the—’ I started.
‘That was German,’ Chad said. ‘Something about us returning. There must be others in the house.’
That’s right. Chad and Ebony speak several languages.
But this wasn’t the time to think about it. The man darted along the roof as nimbly as a cat. I started after him, landing a few feet behind him. He turned around and aimed a fist at my head.
Smack!
I didn’t even see it coming. One second, I was reaching for him, the next, the blow almost took off the top of my head. I hit the roof, rolled off, and only just threw up a shield in time to stop myself from slamming into the ground. As soon as I righted myself, I felt the impact of something landing on my back. An arm encircled my neck.
He's trying to bite me!
I focused on creating a blast of air and hit him firmly in the face with it. He flew backward into the darkness.
By now, lights were coming on all over the house. I saw Ebony through her window, struggling with a girl clad in a leather bra and shorts. Ferdy was holding another of the creatures around the neck.
The man came racing toward me from the darkness. He had his mouth open. I could see large canines—
Fire leaped out of the darkness and engulfed him.
He shrieked in agony, and I felt someone pushing me down.
‘They’re vampires,’ Chad said.
‘How do you know?’ I asked, watching the figure rolling around on the ground.
‘What else would they be?’
I remembered the teeth.
Okay, I thought. They’re vampires.
He gave the burning vampire another blast and then climbed through Ebony’s window. I followed him. Ebony was trying unsuccessfully to turn her vampire to salt. Where her hands touched the creature, I could see large patches of salt, but the substance wasn’t spreading to the rest of the creature.
The vampire turned its head, and I saw her eyes.
And then I was wondering why we were fighting them. Especially this girl. I felt I’d been searching for her my entire life and now—
Chad engulfed her head in a block of ice, and the spell faded.
‘They’re vampires,’ Ebony shouted, breaking me free of the creature. ‘They can mesmerize you!’
They can mesmerize you.
I remembered the legends. So they could brainwash you in a fashion similar to Dan. And that was only one of their legendary powers. Supposedly, they also had the strength of ten men, and they could turn into bats.
But how much of it was a legend, and how much was real? The vampire in Ferdy’s grasp seemed helpless. Ferdy’s autism seemed to make him invincible to their mesmerizing powers. He had his hand firmly around the creature’s neck.
Movement in the hallway caught my attention. I saw Brodie falling back past the door with one of the creatures on her back as another one attacked her from the front. I leaped over the bed, focused on creating a blast of air, and slammed it into this creature’s head. It went sideways through the wall.
I didn’t know how many of these creatures were in the house, but we seemed to be getting the upper hand.
Then the lights went out.
Chad set fire to the ceiling. I immediately knew why. We couldn’t fight if we couldn’t see what we were up against, and we’d dropped our flashlights along the way. I pursued the creature into the next room as I heard the wail of a fire detector. It wasn’t a back-to-base alarm. The fire brigade wouldn’t attend unless someone dialed 911.
The creature that I’d smashed through the wall had ended up in the living room. Now it scampered up onto the wall and into the recesses of the ceiling. It was so dark in here the visibility was reduced to a few feet. I could hear fighting going on in the hallway. It sounded like Brodie was involved in a full pitched battle. I heard another blast of flame from Chad, and an inhuman shriek erupted from behind me. Maybe that was another creature on fire.
A sound came from above and behind me. I formed a blast of air—a focused ball of wind—and fired it at the ceiling. It punched a hole straight through the roof and into the night but missed the vampire.
Something slammed into me from behind. It was like being hit by a truck. My face hit the living room table, and I tasted blood in my mouth. The hissing creature threw me across the room. I struck the wall and slid to the floor.
I tried to form a shield, but I couldn’t focus. What’s going on with my powers? I couldn’t make it happen. Within seconds the creature had leaped across the room like a giant frog and landed in front of me. It picked me up effortlessly as I tried to create another ball of air.
Its breath was terrible, like rotten meat. I punched it hard in the face, and it laughed. I struggled to create a shield between me and it, but nothing would happen.
‘Come on!’ a voice yelled from the hallway. ‘We only need the boy!’
The vampire gave me a last look and tossed me across the room. My head collided with the wall, and I lay there, stunned. Moments passed. Then I became aware of the fire spreading. Something collapsed in the house, and I heard the distant roar of a vehicle.
I have to get out, I thought. I have to move.
Unsteadily rising to my feet, my eyes searched the darkness for the others. Where were they? Someone appeared in my field of vision: Chad.
‘Quick!’ he said. ‘They’re getting away!’
He dragged me out of th
e building and into the night. The cold air snapped me back to wakefulness. The house was totally alight now. All of our possessions—what there were of them—were going up in flames.
Chad held up something in his hand. ‘I was able to grab the book.’
The book. The one containing the addresses and formula.
Great. But where’s everyone else?
‘What about Brodie?’ I gripped his arm. ‘And Dan and—’
‘They’re gone!’ he said. ‘They were thrown into a truck and taken away.’ He peered into the night. ‘We’re the only ones left.’
Chapter Eleven
‘They’ve got a head start on us,’ Chad said. ‘But it’s only a couple of minutes. Create a flying platform so we can catch up.’
That was easier said than done.
In my mind, I created the flying wedge I’d formed a hundred times before. I saw it perfectly, an arrowhead of shimmering air that would support us as we soared up into the sky. I’d made it so many times it even had its wings angled upward to aid it in flight. As a flying machine, it truly was a thing of beauty.
But it wouldn’t come into being.
I can’t make it work.
We stood in the dark with the house blazing behind us as I focused on creating the flying machine.
Nothing happened.
‘What’s wrong?’ Chad asked.
‘It won’t happen,’ I said. ‘I’ve been having some problems—’
‘On the airplane,’ he said, realizing. ‘When the bomb exploded—’
‘I couldn’t create a shield,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong.’
‘Could you have told us?’ he asked angrily. ‘You’ve put all of our lives at risk.’
‘There hasn’t been time—’
‘Forget it!’ he snapped. ‘We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.’
‘You mean—’
Moments later, we were in the campervan barreling down the road. We reached the highway and stopped. The night was still and dark. I saw an animal scurry off into the roadside scrub. A car drove past us. Probably some late-night partygoer from the city.
Far in the distance, a vehicle moved away at high speed. It turned off and changed direction.
‘Where does that road go?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Chad said. ‘There’s some abandoned properties down there.’
‘There are.’ I remembered. I’d sometimes flown around this area early in the morning before everyone was out of bed. There was an abandoned homestead and airfield that hadn’t been used for years. ‘They must be moving them by plane.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘But using a plane would be the fastest way to escape.’
‘Okay.’ Chad pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator. ‘We’ll do it your way.’
We sped through the darkness in silence. One part of me was worried about what might be happening to the others. The other part of me wondered how all this came into being. And then there was the whole deal with the vampires.
Vampires are real. Really real. How had they survived all these centuries without being discovered? And who had planned this? And what did a bunch of vampires want with a group of super-powered kids?
Chad turned onto the side road and increased speed again. The vehicle was bouncing badly all over the road. A hub cap flew off one of the campervan’s wheels. We were moving at high speed. He needed to slow down; otherwise, we wouldn’t survive the drive.
‘We need to slow down,’ I yelled.
‘Do I tell you how to drive?’
‘No, but—’
I spotted a row of lights in the night. As we crested a hill, I realized they were the takeoff lights for the airfield. A plane—some sort of cargo plane—had started to taxi down the runway.
‘There it is!’ I yelled.
‘I see it!’
Chad braked. Swerved. Accelerated again. The campervan hit a dip in the road and flew straight up into the air. It hit the road again. Something snapped on the underneath of the vehicle, but somehow it kept moving.
The plane was directly ahead of us but accelerating away at high speed. Chad slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and we tore down the runway after it. I glanced over at him. If I’d known he was such a good driver, I would have let him do it more often.
We were getting close now. Fifty feet. Twenty feet.
‘What’re you going to do?’ I yelled.
‘Ram it!’ he yelled back.
‘What?’
He shot me a look. ‘We’ve got to stop it now or we never will!’
He seemed to urge one last piece of energy out of the van, and it accelerated again. We drew ever closer to the tail of the transport. A couple more feet. Ten feet. Five feet. I gripped the door and waited for the collision.
It never happened.
The plane lifted into the air, out of reach, and began to rise up into the night.
‘No!’ I screamed.
Leaning out of the window, I focused on creating my flying platform, and then in the dim headlights of the campervan, I saw it form next to the vehicle. Drawing back, I pushed the door open.
‘What are you doing?’ Chad asked.
‘My powers are working again!’ I said. ‘I’m going after them.’
‘Not without me!’ he said.
I leaped through the door of the campervan and landed nimbly on the invisible platform. Whatever had gone wrong with my powers before had subsided. They were as good as ever. I steadied myself on the flying wing.
‘Hey!’ Chad’s voice came from behind me.
I turned around just in time to see him leap from the door of the vehicle. I caught him nimbly on the edge of the wing. Our van—our beloved campervan—skidded sideways, hit a ditch, and flipped over the road. It burst into flames as we soared up into the sky.
‘Are you crazy?’ I asked.
He could have been killed. There were a dozen things that could have gone wrong. My powers could have failed again. He might not have landed on the wing. The van could have flipped before he’d jumped.
‘You think I’m letting you have all the fun?’ he asked.
This is fun?
We rose higher. Within seconds we’d caught up to the plane. It was only a matter of time now. Drawing closer to the side, I focused on forcing the side door open, and we jumped nimbly inside. The interior was eerily silent.
‘Where is everyone?’ Chad asked.
‘I don’t know.’
We crept up the center aisle.
The interior was empty. Stripped of all seating. Even the lighting had been removed from the ceiling. Chad looked at me in confusion. Reaching the flight cabin, I pulled open the door to confront the pilots.
Instead, all we saw was a computer-automated system. The flight cabin, like the rest of the plane, was empty. No sooner had I realized this than the bomb located in the hull of the aircraft exploded, ripping the aircraft into a thousand pieces.
Chapter Twelve
Brodie awoke to find a trail of drool running down her chin. She wiped at it absently as she wondered about her alarm clock. Has Chad stolen it again? He’d done it three times this week already. He was such a practical joker. Once, she’d woken to find it snowing in her bedroom and Chad standing in the doorway laughing his head off. He thought he was so funny, but mostly he was just a pain in the posterior.
Now she realized the rest of the furniture in her room was also gone. For some strange reason, she was lying on a camping bed. It was the type the army used for long term outdoor exercises. The rest of the room was empty apart from two other camping beds currently occupied by Ebony and Dan. The walls were made from concrete and the door from metal.
Where are we?
Then everything from the previous day came rushing back to her.
Good grief, she realized. We’ve been kidnapped.
For one long moment, Brodie thought The Agency had taken them, but then she quickly di
smissed the idea. This didn’t seem like The Agency’s style. And then there was a strange symbol on the door. It looked like a rifle superimposed over an image of the planet. Brodie had never seen it before, but it looked too militaristic for The Agency.
So who had kidnapped them? Vampires. She remembered the comment that Mister Jones had made when he visited.
‘Staying out of sight has kept mods alive for centuries…Mods are humans that have been modified…’
So vampires were a type of mod that had stayed hidden for centuries. Did that mean werewolves and ghouls and other legendary creatures were also real?
She shook her head.
That’s impossible.
But she had superpowers, and that was possible.
Okay, she thought. Vampires were real, but what do they want with a bunch of super-powered kids?
A sound came from the door. She noticed there was a slot at the bottom, and it now slid up slightly, and a tray appeared. It appeared to have sandwiches and a squat pitcher of water on it. As she went over to retrieve it, another tiny slot slid open at eye level.
‘Here’s some food and water,’ a voice said. ‘I’d advise you to accept it gratefully and not cause any trouble.’
The voice sounded young. Brodie wondered if it was one of the vampires.
‘Why have we been brought here?’ she asked.
‘All that will be explained later,’ the voice said. ‘Just be grateful you are here.’
Be grateful—
Brodie had never felt less grateful in her entire life. ‘You have a strange way of treating your guests,’ she said. ‘Attacking them. Kidnapping them. Holding them prisoner.’
She looked through the slot and saw the eye staring back was blue. It appeared to be a boy aged seventeen or eighteen.
‘Are you a vampire?’ she asked.
‘Me?’ The boy reacted in surprise. ‘No! I’m not one of those freaks.’
‘Then why are you working with them?’
‘We’re not.’ The boy paused. ‘Anyway, I can’t talk to you. Not yet. Not until you’ve had everything properly explained. Until you fully understand.’
Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 20