Mystify (14 page)

“Who was in it?” Lindsey asks.

“Your father,” she spits my way, but I stand perfectly still. I keep looking right at her. I am not responsible for my father’s actions, and I won’t keep apologizing for things I don’t have any control over.

So I say, “And who else?”

She gets quiet then, and I know what she’s going to say even before she says it.

“Walter Bryant.”

She nods her head positively.

“Jeez.” Jake lets out a whoosh of air and goes back to his little stalking box.

“There were others but I don’t know who they are,” she says. “And there’s something else.”

Jake’s still pacing. Me and Lindsey ask in unison, “What?”

“The creatures, the ones we talked about the other day, that only you and I can see. They were there, too.”

A slivery chill rolls down my spine. At my side, my fingers clench and unclench. “You only see them in your visions, right?”

Krystal nods.

“And you see them where?” Lindsey asks me.

I shrug, but it’s anything but nonchalant. “Anywhere. I mean, I haven’t seen any since we were at the mall that night. But I don’t think I have to be any specific place to see them. They’re here, walking along the streets with us.”

Jake’s voice erupts with worry and frustration. “Then what the hell are they?”

“And what do they want?” Krystal asks.

Lindsey’s rubbing her arms and now sinking slowly to the floor where she crosses her legs. Then one of her hands slides down her leg to cup her ankle. The one with her
M.

She cringes as if in pain. I know exactly what she’s feeling because I’m feeling it, too. At my side.

Lindsey’s
M
is glowing. A deep intense purple color that provides additional light in the dark warehouse.

If I lift up my shirt, I’m sure mine is glowing pink.

Turning to Jake, I know his is glowing green even though he keeps moving so I can’t really see. Krystal isn’t even bothering
to hide it. She takes a step closer to me and Lindsey then holds out her hands.

Lindsey stands and reaches out, taking one. They both stare at me expectantly. I’m not sure where Krystal and I stand on a personal level. What I am absolutely positive about is at this moment we’re committing to each other, to our power and to whatever lies ahead of us.

I take Krystal’s other hand, and the heat at my side simmers to a comfortable warmth that immediately spreads throughout my body.

Be vigilant.

I hear the voice I’ve heard so many times before. But this time, Krystal and Lindsey hear it, too. I can tell by the way their gazes shoot up, back and forth from me to the other.

“Did you—” Lindsey begins, but I’m already nodding my head.

Krystal nods, too. “So did I.”

The three of us look at Jake, who has stopped pacing but now has his hands thrust into his front pants pockets. “Yeah, I hear it,” he says and moves closer to us.

Breaking through the clasp of Krystal and Lindsey’s hands, Jake makes our circle complete.

And there we stand, in the dark warehouse, our symbols glowing, words of encouragement from the unknown source still echoing throughout the drafty old space. We are the Mystyx and we are in this together. No matter what.

2nite @ 8 main street

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? Some
thing
or some
one?
”

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.

“Some
one
.”

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 the 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?