The Prophecy of Shadows (22 page)

Once the pain resided, I could focus on what had pushed me in the first place.

I saw the claws first—huge crooked orange things with three toes each. They looked like bird feet, but mutated to five times the size. The orange ribbed skin climbed up to the middle of the creature’s thighs, where it changed into human-looking flesh. Its arms were similar—its hands talons, morphing into regular-looking skin around the elbow. Red wings jutted out of its back, spanning about six feet each. Wrinkles covered the skin on its face, like an old woman who had spent too much time in the sun, and a huge hooked beak sat where its mouth should have been.

Its features looked female, but all I knew was that it wasn’t human.

It stared down at me with its huge yellow eyes and sauntered towards me, letting out a cackle and throwing its head back. I scooted back and looked around, but there was nothing I could use to defend myself. I was trapped.

Then a ball of fire whizzed through the air, hitting it straight in the wing. Blake stood a few feet behind it, holding his lighter in his hand and preparing to launch another fireball.

The creature turned around and hissed at him. “I don’t want to fight with you,” it said through its pointed beak, shocking me with the fact that it could talk. Its voice was hoarse, like it hadn’t spoken in years, and it patted down its wing to put out the fire. Tendrils of smoke rose up toward the ceiling, and the tips of its feathers had been singed to a dark charcoal. “I simply want to discuss a deal,” it continued. “Once we make the exchange, you’re all free to leave.”

“My sister, too?” I asked, resting a hand on the back of her chair.

“She’s part of the deal,” the creature hissed. It tucked its wings closer to its sides, the smell of burnt feathers lingering in the air. “Now, are you ready to listen?”

I looked over at the others. They had spread out in a semi-circle at the entrance of the chamber. Blake gripped his lighter, ready to fight. Chris and Danielle held their hands out as well.

“We’ll listen,” Kate said, her voice surprisingly calm. “But that doesn’t mean we’ll agree.”

Blake lowered his lighter, and Chris and Danielle relaxed their stances. Now that I wasn’t trying to free my sister or run away from the creature, I was able to take in more of the chamber. The front wall shimmered, similar to the boulder in the woods that had led us into the cavern. On the back wall, a murky, muddy substance swirled in the shape of a door. Looking at it made my stomach drop, like it had when I first glimpsed Bosley Woods.

When it was clear that no one was going to attack, the creature said, “Behind me, you’ll find the Book of Shadows.” It moved to the side, and I saw an elegant, wooden stand balancing an ancient-looking book. A few feet behind it was another cliff.

“The Book of Shadows,” Kate repeated, her lips parted in awe. “
That’s
what the prophecy meant by ‘the Shadows.’ We were being led to the Book this entire time.”

“The Book is what I assumed you came here for,” the creature said. “Which means you are the five from the prophecy who are gifted with powers over the elements.”

“We go by the Elementals,” Chris chimed in, forcing a half-smile. Danielle nudged him with her elbow in a silent plea to be quiet.

If the creature had irises in the center of its yellow eyes, I swear it would have rolled them. “Right.” It focused on me, and I shuddered under its gaze. “Here’s the deal I’m willing to propose. You give me the Book in exchange for your sister. Then all of you can go.”

“Why don’t you grab the Book yourself?” I squared my shoulders, hoping I looked more confident than I felt.

“Because the one with the power of spirit is the only one who can lift it from the podium.” The creature snarled, raising its wings into an arc above its head. “I sent the stupid hound Orthrus to fetch you, but apparently that wasn’t enough. Now, hand me the Book, and I’ll let your sister go instead of throwing her into Kerberos.” It glanced at the muddy door, and I realized—that portal led to Kerberos. That was the prison world Darius had mentioned in class, where all of the evil creatures who’d rebelled against the Olympians had been contained.

Wasn’t the portal to Kerberos supposed to be sealed forever?

“How did you get Becca here in the first place?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. Stalling the creature would buy us time. It was all I could think to do right now.

“The portal has been weakened, and a few of us have been able to escape,” it said, pulling its wings back to its sides. “After my unsuccessful attempt to send the hound Orthrus to fetch you, I decided to do it myself. But this time I went after easier prey—your sister. I brought her here a few hours ago. After you left on your scavenger hunt with your friends, it was easy to get through the second floor window of your house to capture her. Your mom’s music was playing so loudly that she didn’t even hear her scream.” The creature glared at me, and I gripped my sister’s chair tighter. “But the choice is yours,” it continued. “If you refuse to hand over the Book, the energy of six witches will make my friends in there very happy.” It pointed a talon at the muddy door—the portal to Kerberos—and cackled again.

It doesn’t know that Becca’s not a witch
, I realized.

Danielle stepped forward and stuck her chin in the air. “What’s to stop you from throwing us in there even if Nicole gives you the Book?” she asked.

“Just my word.” It smiled to the best of its ability given that it had a beak instead of a mouth.

“Because that’s
so
reliable.” Becca sneered.

The creature raised a talon and hissed at her. Then it turned its hungry eyes back at me. “My word is all you have to go on,” it said. “And you’re not exactly in the position to bargain. So … what’s it going to be?”

I stared into the creature’s yellow eyes, trying not to fidget—even though it could rip me apart in a minute without breaking a sweat. It let out a low hiss, and I knew I had to do something. It wasn’t going to wait all day.

I marched towards the Book and held my hands above it like I was preparing to lift it from the stand. Then I looked at Blake and nodded.

He flicked on his lighter and threw a fireball at the creature, hitting the side of its face. It opened its beak and let out a head-splitting squawk.

“That’s right,” Blake said, his eyes charged with anger. “Your word means nothing.” He threw another fireball at its chest, but the creature opened its wings and flew through the air, landing near Kate. The flames hit the rock wall and fizzled out on impact.

Kate froze and backed towards the wall. The creature towered over her, tilting back its head and cackling.

“Over here!” Chris yelled, raising his hands frantically above his head. A gust of air collided with the creature, slamming it against the wall. It snarled, shook itself off, and charged towards him. Its claws struck the ground with enough force to shake the cavern.

Blake threw another fireball at its wings, at the same time that Chris pushed his arms forward, sending another rush of air into the creature’s chest. The creature crashed into the wall, inches away from the muddy portal to Kerberos. Its wings blazed from the fire, and it rolled onto the ground to put it out, thick smoke swirling around it.

Blake and Chris inched closer towards it, continuing to attack it with their powers. I kneeled down next to Becca, who was struggling to free herself from the ropes.

“What
is
that thing?” she asked, her voice coming out in tiny gasps. “And how are you all doing this superpower stuff?”

“I’ll explain later,” I told her, pulling at the ropes around her wrists. “Stop struggling so I can get you out of this.”

She did as I said, but the knots were so tight that no matter how hard I pulled, they wouldn’t come undone. Her wrists had been rubbed so raw that they were bleeding. Her blood was smeared all over my hands. I closed my eyes and called on white energy, healing her before continuing with my attempts to get her untied. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t loosen the ropes. I needed Blake’s firepower to burn them away, but he was busy defending us against the creature.

Then I saw someone move in the corner of my eye—Danielle. She stood in front of the tunnel, her arms raised in the air. Before I could figure out what she doing, water streamed inside from the opening, hitting the creature in the chest and sizzling on impact. It must have been the boiling water from the nearby chamber.

The creature arched its head back and let out a screech so loud that it felt like my eardrums were about to burst. Blake threw a ball of fire at its exposed neck, and it squawked again, stumbling backward and collapsing in a heap against the wall. Its lifeless wings flopped to its sides.

Silence filled the chamber for the first time since we’d entered.

“Did you kill it?” Kate asked, backing up to the wall.

“Maybe.” Chris took a few steps forward. “Who wants to check?”

Blake created two more fireballs and threw them at its chest. “Just to be safe,” he explained.

But the creature’s yellow eyes snapped open, and it let out another screech, lifting its wings into an arc above its head. It scrambled onto its feet and spun on its claw to face me, its eyes burning with anger as it stared me down.

Then it charged.

I hurried away from Becca, and a few balls of fire whizzed past me, so close that I could feel the heat on my face. Someone yelled my name seconds before the mass of feathers collided with my body. The force of the creature’s weight pushed me backwards, towards the cliff I’d noticed earlier, and the ground disappeared beneath my feet. I reached blindly for something to hold onto, and a scream that I vaguely recognized as my own echoed through the cavern.

Then my head collided with the ground, and everything went dark.

My skull felt like it had shattered, the tiny pieces lodged into the crevices of my brain. I managed to open my eyes, but the world spun so quickly that I had to shut them again to stop myself from being sick. The pounding in my head was a deafening beat in my mind. It was like someone had taken a gong, placed it next to my ear, and was hitting it as hard as they could with the heaviest mallet they could find.

I lifted my arm to try to quiet the noise, but a sharp pain shot up from my elbow to my shoulder, so excruciating that it traveled through my entire body. The arm flopped uselessly to the ground. The impact sent another jolt of pain through my spine. My hair felt matted with something warm and sticky, and even though I couldn’t move to touch it, I knew it was blood. I felt it dripping down my neck.

An ear-splitting scream echoed from above, and someone shouted my name. It was a muffled noise hidden behind the pounding that consumed my thoughts. I tried to open my eyes again, but I couldn’t. Instead, yellow eyes burned in my mind, followed by a rush of red. Red, all around me. So much that I was drowning in it.

Then I thought about another color—white. White would make the pain end.

If only the pounding in my head would stop, so I could focus.

Another muffled scream echoed from above, followed by a thump as something crashed to the ground. The scream sounded like Kate, but I couldn’t be sure.

Focus
, I told myself, squeezing my eyes together as if it could make the pain disappear.
I can heal myself. I’ve done it before.

But just because I could fix cuts and scratches didn’t mean I could repair the damage from a fall off a cliff—especially given how much I’d already used my power today. What if I depleted my energy? I could die.

The thought terrified me. I knew that what we were going into today could be dangerous, but I didn’t realize I might not survive it. Now, I was bleeding out at the bottom of a cliff. My friends were in danger, and it was very possible that they wouldn’t be able to get to me in time. Even if they did, they couldn’t do anything to help me, and we were still deep down in this cavern with no easy escape.

But if I didn’t heal myself, I would definitely die. So despite the possibility of depleting my energy, I had to at least try.

I cleared my head as much as possible and closed my eyes, grasping for the energy around me. At first it didn’t come. But I reached farther—so much that my head felt like it was about to explode from the effort—until finding it. It filled the cave like electricity, bouncing off the walls from every direction. I pulled it towards me, refusing to let it go until the streams of white entered my palms.

It hummed all around me, surrounding me in a cocoon of pure, crackling energy, soaking through my skin like water on a sponge. It was everywhere at once—inside and outside my body, leaving no part of me untouched. My surroundings melted around me until I had no idea where I was anymore. It was like floating inside a warm, white cloud that I could bend to my will.

Then the energy disappeared, the pain leaving with it. I could feel the ground beneath me again. I lifted my arm, anticipating another jolt of agonizing pain, but it moved normally, as though never injured to begin with. I touched the back of my head where I’d felt the blood earlier, and while the blood was still there, I couldn’t find a wound.

I’d done it. My entire body had been broken, and I’d healed it all.