The Prophecies (The Sentinel Series Book 2) (10 page)

I waited for them to finish, waited for the new rules which would limit my freedom even more.

Suddenly I got another flash of Aurelia crying again, but this time Izri was holding her, sobbing as well. What was with that? Should I warn them? I looked over at the clock to see it was early hours in the morning. How had that happened? It had only been a few minutes before that Seth had been kissing me, now it was several hours later. None of this made sense. I focussed on the problem in hand. Being early hours in the morning meant it was late at night back in the UK. Persia, Izri and Clementine would probably be in bed. And there was still nothing substantial, it was only going to cause them worry. I sighed. I had to let them know. There was a reason I had seen Aurelia crying three times now.

I reached out for Persia’s mind and as soon as I connected with her, I knew she was sleeping; her thoughts were all in disarray.

‘Eve?’
She was groggy.

‘Don’t worry Persia, I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’

‘Eve…don’t…’
I felt her thoughts drifting off and then the connection was broken between us.

‘Caleb is going to stay with you tonight,’ Eli said. ‘We’re going to talk more about you sliding unwillingly across the world tomorrow. It’s going to have to stop and it might be an idea to sedate you.’

I felt my mouth fall open. ‘I’m not taking drugs, you can forget that.’

‘We’re not talking about it now, you need to get some sleep. You’ll be safe tonight. Caleb will call us if we’re needed but I doubt the Oraculum are ready to attack you just yet. We’ll talk more tomorrow.’

That conversation would be over very quickly, there was no way I was letting them sedate me.

I climbed back into bed and Seth turned out the light. After a few moments it was very apparent he wasn’t going to join me.

My dreams were fragmented, panic filled though I didn’t know why. Shadows moved around me and they were all scared and crying. I heard my name called so many times, but as soon as I turned towards them, the shadow faded. And throughout it all, Aurelia was crying. I could hear her sobbing echoing off unseen walls.

There was a long dark corridor with light at the end and the cries of fear were coming from there. I was dreaming, I knew that because I was alone but maybe this dream would reveal the prophecy surrounding Aurelia once and for all.

‘Eve!’ a voice shouted out from the room, a desperate plea for help and I ran towards the light.

I landed in a large hut with corrugated iron sides. Izri, Persia and Clementine were strapped to a table and so were several other small children. There were five hooded figures moving round the children, who hadn’t seemed to notice me yet. Persia was semi-conscious, clearly drugged but trying to fight it. Clementine was completely unconscious or perhaps worse. Izri seemed more alert and she let out a hollow laugh of triumph at seeing my arrival. I stood in shock. If this was the prophecy I was supposed to see, I didn’t want to see it. My friends strapped to tables, vulnerable to whatever the Putarians or Reapers had planned for them. One of the hooded figures moved towards me.

Suddenly Caleb arrived, landing between me and the hooded figure and I belatedly realised that this was real; this wasn’t a dream at all.

Everything happened so fast. The hooded figure moved his hands so quickly, a blur of metal, that I didn’t realise at first what he had done. But something had snapped inside me, like an elastic band breaking and a wave of painful grief washed over me and I didn’t know why. Then Caleb’s head rolled off his shoulders and his headless corpse fell backwards into my arms.

Izri screamed, an agonizing, tortured scream as I held Caleb’s body in shock. Blood poured out of his neck, so much blood it was like a fountain, covering me, covering my clothes and collecting at my feet in a thick dark puddle. As I stood there, holding tightly onto his body, all I could think of was that he would be ok, I’d heal him. I’d saved Alexandria, ripped her from the jaws of death, this would be no different.

‘It’s ok Caleb,’ I muttered. ‘I’ll save you.’

A sharp pain shot through the back of my neck and I fell instantly to my knees, still clinging to Caleb’s body as a heavy cloud pushed in on me from all sides.

‘Now!’ said a voice, on the other side of the room, a voice that seemed to be made out of a paper bag, thin and crackly.

Seth suddenly landed in front of me as electricity bounced around the room, little bursts of lightning travelling across the walls and roof. My connection with my Guardians was immediately severed.

They moved towards Seth and I desperately reached for my powers but there was nothing.

‘Not the hybrid,’ screamed a voice. ‘He’s worth too much.’

I heard Seth roar as he moved towards them, but there were too many of them and he was alone.

Then everything went black.

I forced my eyes open and tried to focus on my surroundings. The walls were blurry and there was a constant humming, and crackling coming from all around me. My eyes rolled back in my head, but I forced them open again, willing them to focus. The iron roof, charged with electricity, buzzed above me. I slowly moved my head, though it felt very heavy, and looked around. I was strapped to a table and as I peered round the room I could see eight other tables also with their victims. Seth was amongst them.

My stomach shifted so violently I was nearly sick. He looked bruised, cut in several places but he was alive. At least for now. What they must have done to him to subdue him like that, he would have fought until his last breath. A sob tore at my throat.

What had I done? Caleb was dead because of me. As his last moments replayed themselves for me in my mind, in vivid, bloody High Definition, I felt the grief ride through me. I quickly pushed it to the back of my mind, before it consumed me. I couldn’t deal with that now, I had to get out. I had to save Seth, Persia and her sisters, plus the four other children. I looked around the rest of the room; it was empty of anyone else at least. I looked down at my bonds and tried to wriggle free of them, but they held me tight. Across my chest seemed to be some copper wiring, and the crackling and humming came from this too. In fact the whole of my table seemed to be charged with an electric current. I was attached to so many monitors it was unreal, all emitting low beeps as they registered some part of my body.

I reached out for my powers but as I feared I couldn’t find them, there was a thick bubble or shield round my mind preventing me from reaching them.

Everyone seemed to be unconscious now except Izri who seemed to be drowsy and unresponsive.

‘Izri,’ I hissed. She didn’t turn towards me.

The tiny boy to my right did though. ‘Hello?’ his voice filled with fear, as he wriggled round in his bonds to see me.’

‘Hey, are you ok, are you hurt?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m ok, but my sister hasn’t woken up for days,’ he indicated the girl on the table between me and him.

Days. These poor children had been here for days before I’d turned up and now we were all going to die together. The world was a bleak place. I had to save him, had to save them all, or die trying.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Oliver, and my sister is Abigail.’

‘I’m Eve.’

‘They knew you would come, they were so excited about it.’

It had been a trap; they knew I would come for Persia and my friends. If only I’d known about it, I would have brought every single Guardian I could have laid my hands on.

I heard a door open at the far side of the room and then I heard footsteps approaching my table. I turned to face my captors angrily.

‘Let me go, you have no idea who you’re messing with,’ I yelled, fighting against my bonds. The arrogance of The Sentinel had worked for me before.

I saw the face of the hooded man, just briefly as he bent over my arm. It was a face of bones, someone who looked half-starved with sunken cold eyes and cheekbones protruding from papery thin skin. He rolled up my sleeve and tied a strap round the top of my arm. He slapped the middle of my arm a few times then stuck a needle into the vein, pulled the handle of the syringe back and it filled with my blood.

I reached out angrily for my powers, but there was nothing I could do, I couldn’t feel my Guardians, I couldn’t feel any of my powers. It was hopeless. The man removed the needle and strap from my arm and shuffled off back out the room, closing the door behind him.

I turned back to Oliver. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘I don’t know, it seems like a week but it could be longer.’

A week? What were they waiting for?

‘What about the red headed girls, how long have they been here?’

Oliver shrugged. ‘A day, maybe two.’

Not long after I had spoken to Persia after my first prophecy about Aurelia. Aurelia might have seen this but she was too young to be able to understand any of it

‘What have they done to you in that week?’

‘They took my blood, a lot. They shined a light into my eyes; they hooked me up to these machines. Not much really. They don’t say a lot.’

‘Have they done anything to Abigail?’

He shook his head. ‘The same as me, but the electric current makes her sleepy, it makes them all sleepy.’

‘Except us,’ I mused.

‘Yeah maybe its cos we’re stronger.’

‘Maybe, though not strong enough,’ I said quietly.

The door reopened then and a hooded figure came back in. It could have been the same one who had taken my blood, they all looked the same, all dressed in the long shabby grey cloaks. He moved towards Clementine and attached a small machine like a telescope above her head before he moved out of the room again.

‘Oliver, can you feel your power at all, can you do anything?’ Please God let him be stronger than me.

Oliver shook his head, sadly.

‘Please Oliver,’ I begged, frantically. ‘You have to be able to do something, anything might help. You’re strong, you can do this.’

‘I’ve tried Eve, I’ve tried for the last week. I can’t do it, it’s too hard.’

The door at the other side of the room opened again and five hooded figures walked out and positioned themselves on the far side of Clementine’s bed. It was a deliberate action. They wanted me to be able to see what they were doing. The machine next to my table started emitting several beeps and I looked at it briefly. It was recording my heart rate, my brain waves and several other readings from my body.

Then suddenly it made sense. They hadn’t done anything to them before because they were waiting for me, they were deliberately doing this in front of me to monitor my reaction. They were going to kill or torture the people I cared about and loved just to provoke some reaction in me or my powers. These were the Reapers.

Izri seemed to come round. ‘Hey, what are you doing to my sister? Stay away from her? I swear if you hurt her, I’ll kill you. I’ll destroy you.’

I closed my eyes, pushing as hard as I could against the prison on my mind, straining to reach my powers. I forced the weight away from my mind and stretched towards my powers, but they seemed just out of my reach and as hard as I pushed for them, the further away they seemed. I opened my eyes and turned back to Clementine. The Reapers were fiddling with the machines around her table.

‘Eve, do something, you have to save her,’ Izri cried.

I fought hard against my bonds. I had great strength in me, I knew this, I’d held onto a coach to stop it falling over a cliff a few months before, if I could find this strength in me again I could stop this. I fought, and kicked and struggled, but the bonds held me tight.

The door opened again, and my heart turned to ice. I recognised the manic face of Corben, the man who had kidnapped me a few months before from the church, the man who had been so excited about my slow, painful death. So the Putarians and Reapers were working together. He didn’t care how I died, just that I did, and he wanted to watch the pain I’d be in first as my loved ones were slowly killed around me.

I turned my attention back to Clementine. One man pressed a button and a white hot laser drilled into Clementine’s skull. Clementine convulsed and Izri screamed kicking out uselessly at the bonds that held her tight.

‘STOP THEM!’

I struggled in vain, reaching for my powers but there was nothing there, not even a glimmer of hope. The machine next to me beeped faster, recording my desperate attempts.

As one man fiddled with the machines around Clementine, the other four watched me intently. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Corben smiling, smiling at Clementine’s torture and my pain.

‘Turn it up,’ said one of the men.

The laser started emitting a high pitched scream as the intensity of its blaze seared through Clementine’s head. She shook in her binds on the table, blood trickling from her nose and mouth and then she was still.

Izri howled with pain. They turned the machine off, unhooked it from Clementine’s head and then wheeled it down the line, deciding who to target next. They stopped at Persia and Izri sobbed.

They were going to kill every single one of my loved ones and I had to watch it all. I closed my eyes, there was no way they were going to win this battle. I would stop them. I breathed deeply trying to connect with my powers within but as hard as I strained, as hard as I stretched there was nothing there.

‘DO SOMETHING, DON’T JUST LIE THERE,’ Izri screamed at me.

I opened my eyes and looked at the Reapers as they watched me intently, standing by Persia’s bed. Then, clearly not getting the reaction they wanted, they moved the machine towards Seth.

A furious rage consumed me, boiling my veins, and hammering through my heart and my brain. A red cloud darkened my eyesight. My heart pounded with a wrath I had never felt before. Every cell in my body bubbled over with a hungry vengeance and I suddenly found myself on my feet. The Reapers and Corben, his smile sliding off his evil face, moved to restrain me, but a wall of white hot liquid fire exploded from me, as simultaneously I shielded the eight other beds in the room. The wall of fire turned the Reapers to dust, tore through Corben’s body like a hot knife through butter. It quickly ripped through the room like a nuclear explosion, and incinerated the thick iron walls as easy as burning paper. More Reapers came running with knives and swords and my personal guard arrived, landing in a circle around me. I shielded them as in a rage filled frenzy, I pulled more power, as easily as sucking water through a straw, and the earth shook, cracking under me and rippling out in waves from the epicentre under my feet. I let another wave of fire rip from my body, moving easily past the shields and disintegrating the Reapers and the rest of the building in a matter of seconds. As the dust settled, the ashes blowing gently in the wind, Noah, Jacob, Isaac, and about ten others arrived. They landed in a circle around me, with knives out ready to attack, their feet kicking up the ash. But the Reapers were no longer a threat, they were all dead, every single one of them. I knew that, my fire had sought them all out and burnt them to a crisp. I let my powers wink out and unshielded the tables and my Guardians.