Chapter Eleven

And then all of a sudden it was time to go.

I’m not sure what I was expecting – a magical cupboard that would transport us to another realm; a train from a platform only accessible to people with powers; some explosive powder that would obscure the vision until we found we were somewhere else entirely – but as we all tumbled into Tristan’s car I found I was somewhat disappointed.

Though, obviously, I tried not to show it.

Somehow managing to accommodate Gregory, Edwin, and Tristan in the front with Maya, Annabelle, and I in the back despite its sports-car status, the car once again seemed to navigate itself through traffic like its shape was fluid and its passengers inconsequential.

We were moving so fast I could barely make out the figures we passed; trees and people and cars and buildings all blurred into a runny oil painting as we drove for what seemed like hours. The atmosphere in the car was tense and despite my own nervous misgivings I felt out of tune with everyone else.

That was until Tristan turned around in the driver’s seat – no longer bothering to pretend he needed to control the car – and shot me a quick reassuring smile, before turning back to join his discussion with Gregory. A calmness spread through my chest.

Too soon for my nerves, the car jolted to a silent stop, and I peered outside. We had left central London; that much was certain. The ground outside was dusty and there didn’t seem to be life for miles. In the distance I could make out the tall, imposing shadows of large buildings, but they were dormant. I was reminded of the blueprints Edwin and Gregory had been studying for the last couple of days. I guess these were the buildings they depicted.

I glanced around at everyone else expectantly. Even without anyone having told me that Gregory and Tristan were naturally going to be in charge tonight I would have instinctively followed someone’s lead, but nobody seemed to be “leading” anywhere. A cursory glance at Maya and Annabelle confirmed that their eyes were black, which meant they had to be doing something. Trying not to panic, I wondered what it was.

Suddenly and simultaneously, all the doors of the car opened and they started to climb out. There was something different about them; their natural grace and elegance of movement seemed to have amplified. They didn’t make a single noise as they moved away from the car towards the buildings in the distance; I saw Tristan pass a mouse that was facing the other way and it didn’t so much as twitch a whisker.

My heart thumping with the realisation that for all my whining and protesting, I wasn’t actually ready for this, I hurried after them, trying not to let my human clumsiness mess up their plan of attack.

I felt a hand slip into mine and glanced down to see Annabelle. Her eyes were still pools of darkness but she smiled and whispered, so quietly it felt like she was projecting the words directly into my brain rather than saying them, ‘Just float.’

From my meagre training with Tristan, I realised what this must mean; I closed my eyes and imagined myself floating. Sure enough, my footfalls became silent, my movements more fluid. It felt like my body was made of liquid elastic.

Gratefully, I opened my eyes and smiled down at Annabelle.

Once we were standing in the shadow of the building, the group split into two. Tristan broke off and moved around the other side of the building; stupidly, I made to follow him but luckily Annabelle was still holding my hand and tightened her grip to remind me I needed to stay with the others. For the first time, I found myself wishing that I could have gotten my powers another way. This dependence I seemed to have developed on him since last night was irritating.

As we walked en masses further towards the building’s entrance, I gazed up at its considerable height doubtfully. It was obviously unused; a warehouse type of building with three or four floors that stretched upwards into the night, half of the windows missing their glass. However, there didn’t seem to be so much as a bird nesting here. How could a group of evil kidnapping wizard-y people possibly be keeping Kaley here? It didn’t seem like anybody had set foot here in decades. I felt a nervous twisting in my stomach; what if they had somehow gotten it wrong?

It was too late to try and say anything though; we’d reached the imposing wooden door and, lifting his hand but not bothering to touch it, Gregory forced it open. The first noise I’d heard since the car stopped erupted into the night as the hinges squealed in protest. This door hadn’t been used in a while.

I was proved right about the complete lack of life however; in movies birds would have fled through the windows, rats would have scuttled for cover. The only living thing we’d seen since we got here was that mouse five hundred yards away by the car.

Nevertheless, we moved inside. I tried to remind myself that none of this could be escaping the others; Gregory, at the very least, had to be aware of the resounding unlikeliness that anybody, much less his daughter, had been here in decades.

We stopped in the centre of the room; the full moon casting a dull light through the broken windows. I desperately wanted to ask “Now what?” but restrained myself. They had to know what they were doing, and I satisfied myself with taking a cursory glance around the room. The bottom floor was mostly empty; a few bits of abandoned machinery in one corner and a rusting metal staircase leading to the next floor at the other end of the room. Dust motes floated idly in the air and I worried about Tristan.

‘Okay,’ Gregory’s voice suddenly sounded and I glanced at him, surprised. His lips were barely moving and I realised he was using Annabelle’s same trick of putting his voice directly into our heads rather than risk speaking. ‘If they come, they’ll be coming from over there.’

He pointed and I followed his gesture; he was marking a seemingly nondescript corner of the building without windows or doors. My sense of trepidation strengthened; what was he on about?

‘That’s the most obvious point of exit and entry so they’ll naturally assume that’s how we got in. Tristan’s used the back entrance, they won’t expect us to know about that. He should be in and out with Kaley before they notice anything is wrong but if they do, they’ll defend here first. Meanwhile, Tristan will smuggle Kaley back out the way he went in and they’ll meet us where we agreed.’

We? I didn’t remember agreeing to anything.

‘The risk is minimal, we all know that,’ he went on. ‘But I want everybody on their guard. You know what we’re dealing with here.’

He wound up his speech and I tried not to lose my nerve completely and bolt. I could sense he’d wanted his words to be reassuring, but for the newbie in the room they were anything but.

We spent a few more moments in watchful silence and I wondered how we were supposed to know when it was okay to leave. How was Tristan going to alert Gregory that Kaley was safe and we could go home?

As it turned out, I hadn’t needed to worry about it. The corner of the room we’d been staring at, the one Gregory had indicated, jumped. Nothing too impressive if you hadn’t been looking for it, but it resulted in my stumbling backwards slightly and the others all crouching into defensive positions, just as the corner jumped again and suddenly exploded. A gaping hole in the ground appeared and the previously idle dust motes seemed to multiply and frenzy as a cloud of dust filled the air.

Of course, I realised too late. They’ve been keeping Kaley underground.

Instinctively I narrowed my eyes and suddenly the dust became transparent; it was still there, but I could see through it. Shapes were pouring from the hole in the ground and making their slow, menacing way towards us. There were at least twice as many of them.

From the corner of my eye I saw Gregory make a sweeping motion with his hand; four of the shapes flew backwards, hitting the wall of the warehouse with a sickening, satisfying crack. They fell to the ground, but slowly got back to their feet and moved towards us again. I stared, horrified. That should have killed them.

More on my guard now, I felt my stance become more defensive, my volatile powers begin to take over. Whatever happened next, I knew I’d have very little control over my own body.

‘Where is she?’ a rasping voice demanded.

‘Back where she belongs,’ a voice said archly; I was surprised to realise it was Annabelle.

The main figure, the one who’d spoken, seemed to pause and regard Annabelle thoughtfully. ‘What age are you, child?’ he asked again in the same raspy voice.

‘Not old enough to interest you,’ she snapped, once again displaying her precociousness.

‘Pity,’ he sneered. ‘Though you’re hardly the most powerful child in the room.’ His glance seemed to land on me; I felt instantly colder. ‘A Virgin...’ he mused, and my hackles rose.

‘No use to you anymore,’ Edwin’s voice rang out, stealing attention away from me. ‘He’s already been turned.’

‘Disappointing me at every turn,’ the voice rasped. ‘As though you come here to insult me.’

‘We wouldn’t waste our time,’ Maya hissed, sounding angrier than I’ve ever heard her.

‘Maya.’ The fact that he knew her name chilled me more than his glance had. ‘Don’t you miss us?’

‘About as much as Kaley will, I imagine,’ she snapped. I glanced interestedly between them. Had Maya been one of them before? Or had they kidnapped her as well? How had she gotten away? Did she know Kaley? A whole new series of questions erupted in place of the ones Tristan had already answered.

‘You could join us again,’ he rasped, taking a step closer to her. That cleared that up then. She’d been evil once too. How did the Darlingtons trust her? Was she even Gregory’s real niece or had that been a lie as well?

‘I’d sooner live out eternity being tortured,’ Maya said archly. Whatever the levels of her anger, she wasn’t as scared of these people as the rest of us were. While Annabelle and Edwin had a distinctive tremor to their voices while talking to these powerful creatures, Maya was unafraid.

‘That can easily be arranged,’ the raspy voice hissed, and that seemed to be the end of the conversational portion of the evening; suddenly, moving a lot more quickly than they had before, the shadowy figures slithered towards us through the darkness, finally emerging into the dull moonlight.

If my powers hadn’t been in full control by now, I think I would have run from sheer terror. They didn’t look human. Whatever the Darlingtons were, they looked human on the outside. These things were wizened and shrunken, covered with flaky dry scales rather than skin. Their eyes were huge and pulled around towards the sides of their heads, giving them better peripheral vision, and their noses were long and hooked. If I’d seen them on a busy street in daylight I’d probably have thought they escaped from a Disney cartoon somewhere, but in this place, under these circumstances, they were terrifying.

As it was, one of the lesser minions hurtled towards me; as Tristan had predicted my powers made for overkill and like the apple before him he was vaporised. I swallowed, shocked. I’d just killed.

There wasn’t time for remorse however, wave after wave of these creatures flung themselves on us and I could see what Tristan had meant about them being powerful. The casual nonchalance the Darlingtons had about their powers belied the incredible strength they obviously possessed, but they were clearly struggling to hold off this torrent. Gregory’s defense of choice seemed to be incapacitation; the cracking of bones filled the air every time he flung another opponent against a wall. Edwin was more docile; despite his status as the most powerful in the family he simply froze his attackers in place.

Annabelle was sitting cross-legged on the ground, her favourite position, and any of the creatures that got close to her ended up dangling helplessly in the air, suspended puppet-like by invisible strings. Maya’s method was closer to mine in brutality – she carelessly removed their heads.

It was mostly futile though. Bones healed in seconds; bodies unfroze; invisible strings snapped; heads reattached. Even the crimson mist that was the remains of my attacker slowly drifted back together and reformed into a seriously pissed off creature.

It took me a while to realise that our real aim wasn’t to kill them. As Tristan had pointed out to me, getting Kaley back was our primary objective; revenge came later. While our separate endeavours yielded disappointing responses, we seemed to nevertheless be driving the creatures back towards the hole in the ground.

As more and more of them retreated and there was less of them to focus on, I allowed myself another glance to see what everyone else was doing. While Gregory, Edwin, and Annabelle seemed to be holding their own alright, Maya seemed to be struggling. Tristan had said she was the least powerful of the family, but that didn’t seem to be the problem right then; the problem was that Mr Raspy Leader Thing was focusing all of his energy on her. The personal insult had clearly incensed him and he seemed determined that if she wasn’t going to join them, she was going to die.

Nobody else was paying any attention. Nobody else saw him rise to his fullest height, raise his hand, and deliver what would have been the final blow. They didn’t see the look of fearless resignation on Maya’s face as she dropped her hands, her eyes fading back to brown. They didn’t do anything.

Too late, I noticed I was doing something. Without even realising it, my powers had propelled my body defensively in front of Maya. Both my hands raised as a feral growl curled around my throat and a force so powerful erupted from my palms that he was thrown into the air and conveniently dropped through the hole in the ground.

The fighting around me stopped. Seeing their leader so thoroughly disposed of, the creepy minions paused momentarily before scurrying back into the hole after him. Seconds later, the ground looked like there’d never been a hole there to begin with.

I glanced back at Maya, who’d been thrown to the ground by the force of whatever had just happened. She was looking up at me warily, an expression of grudging gratitude on her face.

‘Thanks,’ she muttered, and I knew it nearly killed her just to say it.

‘No problem,’ I replied shakily, but I was grinning.

‘Come on,’ Gregory interrupted, casting one more glance towards the corner where the hole had been and striding back towards the exit of the warehouse. ‘Time to go, before they regroup.’

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Minutes later we were back in the car, zooming towards London. Maya and I were shunted to the front of the car so Gregory and Edwin could keep an eye on an unconscious Kaley in the back. I desperately wanted to turn around in my seat and look at her properly but it felt inappropriate; this was the first time they’d seen their daughter in years and I didn’t want to impose my curiosity on them.

Instead, I glanced warily at Tristan. For once, he seemed to be actually driving the car, not that that made any difference to the speed or flexibility of the vehicle. He had one hand on the steering wheel, gripping it so tightly his knuckles had gone white, and his eyes were still black as he stared at the road. The rest of us had gratefully relinquished the tight coil of our powers once we’d gotten to the meeting point but he seemed unwilling to settle into a more human calm.

It seemed to take forever before we pulled up in front of the Victorian house I’d been calling home for the last few weeks.

‘Quickly,’ Edwin murmured as we all clambered out of the car, and they hurried to get Kaley inside.

Despite my curiosity, I opted to stay outside for a few moments and give them some space. I leaned against the car and took some deep breaths of the cold night air. It still felt like I was trying to get my breath back.

I’m not sure how long I stayed outside, staring up at the night sky, but it must have been a while because I jumped in surprise when the door opened. Tristan came to lean beside me.

‘How is she?’ I asked, blinking up at him.

He ignored me. ‘How are you?’

I shrugged one shoulder uneasily. ‘I’m okay. Maybe a bit shell-shocked. But, you know. Fine.’

‘That was really stupid of you,’ he informed me, and I looked back up at him, surprised.

‘What was?’

‘Jumping in front of Maya like that.’

I felt my usual Tristan-inspired irritation prickle at my fingertips again, but reigned it in. Now was not the time. ‘I saved her life, though.’

‘I know,’ Tristan said quietly. ‘Thank you.’ I felt his hand touch my arm lightly for a moment before he stepped away from the car. ‘Come on,’ he said, gesturing me towards the house. ‘She wants to meet you.’

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I followed Tristan along the floor containing his and Annabelle’s bedrooms to discover another room had magically appeared further down, with seemingly no alterations to the length or appearance of the hallways. I wasn’t even surprised.

Tristan knocked and pushed open the door without waiting for a response; nervously I followed him inside to see Gregory and Edwin sitting on one side of the bed with Annabelle on the other; blonde, blue-eyed, heart-faced Kaley was sitting up in the middle of it, smiling serenely.

I guess I’d expected her to be in shock or something, scared at the very least, maybe even unable to remember her family, but she seemed perfectly content with her new surroundings. I was reminded vaguely of the creatures’ ability to recover from injury quickly; maybe the capacity to bounce back was built into us as well?

‘Cody,’ she said warmly, her smile growing. She let go of Annabelle’s and Gregory’s hands, reaching them instead towards me. I tripped forward and she took my hands in hers, squeezing happily. ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ she said, her voice soft and warm. Her eyes were scanning my face and I knew she knew everything. ‘You’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to save me,’ she said, but her lips were barely moving and I knew I was the only one who could hear her. ‘No matter what happens, you always have a place in our family.’ Somehow, when she said “our”, I knew I was included.

‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, still unsure of how to do the whole voice-projection thing. The others were all looking at us curiously, but Kaley seemed content to keep the conversation between us, so I didn’t elaborate either.

I stepped back when I heard the door opening again and Kaley sat bolt upright. I knew the only person it could be was Maya and I wondered what was going to happen. Did Kaley know Maya used to be on the side of those creatures? Would she hate her? Did she know Maya had played a part in saving her life?

Maya stepped tentatively into the room and the two girls stared at one another for a few seconds. Nervously, I glanced between them. I didn’t want Kaley to kill Maya; I’d only just saved her life.

Before anybody could do or say anything, both girls had shot towards each other, arms wrapping around each other’s bodies and holding on tightly. I glanced around. Everyone was pointedly looking away and smiling.

For god’s sake. Wasn’t anybody straight around here?

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When Edwin went downstairs to get everybody something to eat, I traipsed after him and demanded to know the full story. It turned out that yes, Maya had worked for the raspy voiced dude, but in a sort of secretarial capacity with no idea of what they were really up to. Upon her “promotion” to Kaley-Watch she’d freaked out – not least because, apparently, people with powers know immediately upon seeing their soulmate that they’re in love with them.

My mind wandered uncomfortably to Tristan when Edwin said this, but I ignored it.

Anyway, Maya quit, tracked down her uncle Gregory (‘Did she know you guys were Kaley’s parents?’ ‘Yes.’) and spent the next three years working with the Darlingtons on getting Kaley back.

‘Well then why does she have a crush on Tristan?’ I demanded. Having put up with Maya’s snide looks and comments since I’d gotten here, it felt unfair that she’d been in love with someone else all along.

Edwin scratched his chin thoughtfully, turning away from the sandwiches he was making. ‘You know, I’ve wondered that myself. I think after years of hearing nothing, poor Maya lost hope and latched her affections onto the next best thing – Tristan. They look alike, they have similar personalities, and if she wanted to spend the rest of her life with somebody who loved Kaley as much as she did, Tristan was the man for the job.’

‘Similar personalities?’ I demanded, suddenly not caring all that much about Maya’s attitude towards me. ‘Are you kidding me? Kaley’s all warm and soft. Tristan’s like a prickly ice-cube!’

‘He’s not that bad,’ Edwin laughed, turning back to the sandwiches. ‘He’s just tense. He’ll relax now we have Kaley back.’ He glanced down at me. ‘For which we will always be grateful to you, by the way,’ he added softly, putting a hand on my shoulder.

I shuffled my feet awkwardly. ‘I didn’t really do anything,’ I mumbled.

‘Do you think Kaley would be as happy as she is now if you hadn’t saved Maya’s life? If they’d captured or killed Maya, Kaley would have gone running right back to them as soon as she woke up, with some half-assed plan or rescue or revenge, and gotten herself right back into trouble.’ He looked at me intently. ‘You were the only one powerful enough to take Aldrich on.’ Aldrich, I registered vaguely. ‘You’ve done a lot more tonight than you seem to realise, Cody.’