Power Revealed (The Elementers) (24 page)

“Okay. Go.” Justin slowly started stepping back. “Just don’t hurt her.” Raven’s eyes pleaded for help. Justin wanted to assure her he wasn’t abandoning her, but he didn’t want to do anything to suggest to Alexei that he wasn’t being completely compliant. Instead, he just looked into Raven’s eyes and hoped she knew he was there for her.

Alexei continued backing up down the path and around a corner out of sight. Justin wished some of the others would arrive, but he wasn’t going to wait for help. Since Alexei could sense his connections nearby, Justin needed to use one of his other advantages: speed. Waiting a few more seconds to make sure Alexei wouldn’t hear him, he hurried off the path to the left trying to avoid stepping on any large fallen branches to keep his progress as silent as possible. After running at least a few hundred feet perpendicular to the path, Justin swung right and burst forward to reach the parking lot ahead of Alexei. There was no time to go around all the obstacles, so vicious blackberry bushes ripped up his arms and pants trying to slow him down to no avail.

Breathless, Justin finally saw the parking lot through the trees. He slowed down to remain quiet and peeked through the dense plant life looking for Alexei. The Ferrari was still there and Alexei and Raven were nowhere to be seen so he stepped out into the opening and looked around trying to construct a plan Raven would approve. The cover on Mr. Hamilton’s blue jeep was pulled back due to the unusually sunny weather and Justin noticed his teacher’s emergency backpack sitting in the back of the vehicle. Justin had gone rifling through it during the long drive to Anya’s house. He had been surprised to find a can of bear spray among the items. Mr. Hamilton had explained he took it for protection while hiking. Alexei wasn’t a bear, he was more like a snake, but the spray might be just what Justin needed. He hurried over, opened the backpack, grabbed the bear spray, and hid behind the far side of Alexei’s car.

The next few minutes seemed like an hour, but he crouched lower behind the vehicle when he heard footsteps and Alexei’s voice yelling at Raven to move faster. The crunch of rocks signaled their approach through the gravel parking lot. As Raven emerged first around the side of the car she jerked back in surprise upon seeing Justin. By this time, Alexei only held onto one of her arms to speed up their pace and with Raven jerking back in surprise, Alexei’s face was partially exposed. Justin leapt up and sprayed the can on the side of Alexei’s face farthest from Raven. Alexei immediately hollered out in agony letting go of Raven and clutching at his eyes. “Run!” Justin yelled to Raven. But he looked at Raven and saw her stumbling away rubbing at her eyes and coughing. Justin grabbed her sleeve, careful not to touch her skin to avoiding connecting with her energy. “This way!” He pulled her back into the forest away from the parking lot and the path in case any of Alexei’s friends returned. Once they were a good fifty feet into the thick forest, Justin stopped and sat Raven down on a fallen log. “Don’t rub your eyes. It’ll make it worse. Are you going to be okay?”

Raven looked up at Justin through the tears caused by the pepper spray and forced a smile. “Yes. Thanks.”

“Okay. I need to go back and stop Alexei from getting away.”

“I’m coming to help you.”

“Yeah, right. I attacked you with bear spray. You can’t fight if you can’t see. I’ll be fine.” Justin stood up and looked one last time at Raven. “Please, just stay put.” He sped back toward the parking lot slowing as he approached the opening. Alexei opened his car door. Justin reached out to the energy and blew a gust of wind at Alexei pushing him away from his car. Alexei stumbled, but he regained his balance.

“Is that you, Justin?”

In answer, Justin stalked out of the trees toward Alexei. “You’re going to pay for what you’ve done.”

“Funny, Henry said the same thing and now he’s dead. It’s time for you to follow him.”

A searing ball of anger ignited in Justin’s gut and swelled throughout his chest. He could feel the elemental energy fueling his anger making it expand beyond his body. Anya’s warning voiced somewhere in the back of his mind, but he didn’t care and pushed the caution aside. The energy fueling his anger intensified causing sparks to crackle along his skin and clothes. Justin stepped toward Alexei without an ounce of fear. All he could feel was anger and power.

Alexei backed up sensing the energy and threw a blast of air at Justin. There was no need to connect to the elements, Justin was already a part of them. He simply swung his arm as if swatting a fly away and the wind redirected to the right. Justin could taste the anger and energy in his mouth. It reminded him of a combination of burned toast and popping candy. The ground shook violently beneath both their feet. At the same time, the wind picked up howling between the trees. Justin could feel the environment around him begin to reflect the anger and chaos inside of him.

“You may have power, Justin, but you can’t control it and there’s no way we, or the Council, are going to let you stick around long enough to control it.” Alexei had to lean into the wind to avoid being pushed over. Alexei’s hair flew wildly around his face and Justin could see fear enter Alexei’s eyes as another vehicle blocked his backward. Alexei swung his arm and a massive dust devil sprung up heading directly for his opponent. Justin attempted to swat it away, but as his energy touched the swirling wind, it just fueled the dust devil instead of redirecting it. The mini tornado grew in speed and size heading directly for Justin. With it only a car’s distance away, Justin tried redirecting it again, but again it just intensified the wind more. The storm picked him up and tossed him violently against one of the cars.

Justin wasn’t sure if the cracking sound he heard came from the car or his bones. The throbbing in his head had returned with more force. His whole body seemed to ache. He also noticed he had lost connection to the energy. Looking up he saw Alexei climbing into his car. Justin reached up with his arm in an effort to drop a tree across the road to block the car, but to his surprise, he couldn’t access the energy at all. Alexei’s Ferrari kicked up a large dust cloud as it sped around the corner and out of view. Justin wanted to run after the car but he knew that Alexei was out of his reach.

“Justin!” He looked up in response to multiple voices calling his name. Both Mr. Hamilton and Raven were hurrying toward him from separate directions. His whole body felt completely drained of energy, so he just laid there against the car as they both chastised him for risking his life to go after Alexei. He didn’t really hear what they had to say, his mind focused on trying to figure out how he would beat Alexei the next time he found him. But how would he find him?

Chapter 34

Justin picked up his backpack from his bed and swung it at his bedroom wall, but halted mid-swing when the pain in his shoulder rudely reminded him that he had been thrown at a car only a couple hours earlier. Grimacing, Justin walked over to his bedroom window. Mr. Hamilton’s jeep sat parked a few houses down the street. Justin had told them he didn’t need a babysitter, but because two of the Elementers escaped, in addition to Alexei, they insisted Justin needed extra protection if he insisted on staying at his house.

He didn’t want to be sitting at home, but his parents wouldn’t agree to let him spend the night at a friend’s house on a school night. As a result, Mr. Hamilton and Grant were taking turns staking out his house to make sure neither Alexei nor his friends showed up. Justin argued he could take them out on his own, but after losing control against Alexei, even he doubted his usefulness if he couldn’t control his powers. He didn’t tell anyone, not even Raven, that he lost control of the energy. Rex might use that information against Justin with the Council. Alexei was a liar, but Justin suspected that there was some truth to Alexei’s comment that the Council wouldn’t let Justin stick around long enough to control his powers.

A voice in Justin’s head began thinking Rex might be right. Maybe he couldn’t control four powers at once. Maybe they should just wipe his powers away. What good were they anyway if he couldn’t control them? He had already hurt Raven with them, sent a tornado at himself, and allowed Alexei to escape. Besides, a lot of good having powers were to Henry. If he had been normal, he’d still be alive. Being an Elementer got him killed. Justin thought that maybe he should just volunteer for the Wipe. Nobody wanted him to have the powers anyway.

Besides, the Wipe didn’t look painful. When he returned with Raven and Mr. Hamilton to the meadow after Alexei got away, Justin watched Rex, Grant, Selena, and Anya, do a partial overload on their three prisoners. Mr. Hamilton explained that they were just overloading them enough to temporarily inhibit their ability to connect to the energy until they could get permission from the Council to do it permanently. It usually only obstructed their powers for a few days and had no effect on their memory. Doing so was technically allowed, but only if absolutely necessary. As the group needed to keep their prisoners from escaping, it was the only practical option. A partial overload was the same as a Wipe, but done at a lower magnitude. Four Elementers, one from each element, sent their energy at equal levels toward the target during the entire process. Mr. Hamilton explained that if the levels weren’t equal, the overload would become imbalanced and dangerous to everyone involved.

They took Anya to the hospital and Raven was staying at a hotel with Selena near the hospital. With her Mom out of town, Raven just told Marcela, her housekeeper, that she was staying at a friend’s house. Rex was staying at a cabin near town owned by a friend of Mr. Hamilton’s. Alexei could easily find out where Mr. Hamilton lived and they couldn’t exactly drag three people tied up and gagged into a hotel.

Rex already contacted the Council Chairperson and a virtual Council meeting was to be held. But a couple of the Council members were traveling and were still unreachable so the meeting wouldn’t be held until tomorrow or Friday. Even if they approved Wiping the three Elementers clean, the Wipe wouldn’t happen until Saturday or Sunday because only Council Members were authorized to do Wipes and Rex and Grant were the only Council members from their group. A Tree and a Water Elementer Council Member would need to fly out to Bellingham to complete the Wipes.

Justin had sat beside Alexei for all that time when he could have overloaded the creep, but he had played Rex’s game and now Henry’s murderer was free and nowhere to be found. Henry was dead. Anya was seriously injured. Raven had almost been hurt or killed. So what if they had a few prisoners. Alexei needed to be stopped and instead, Rex and the others were hiding out waiting for instructions from the Council.

Justin couldn’t sit still any longer. Even though he had expended a lot of energy during the fight, all the frustration from Alexei and the others escaping was balling up inside of him and needed a release. Pushups and sit ups weren’t enough. He needed to run. After pulling on his running shoes, Justin walked down the hall to his parent’s room where his mom was folding laundry.

“I’m going for a run.”

“Did you eat yet? We saved you some dinner in the fridge,” his mother said.

“I’m not hungry right now. But I can’t sit still to do the rest of my homework.”

“Okay, but don’t take too long. I haven’t seen much of you lately.”

Justin wanted to remove the shroud of sadness wrapped around his mom, but her smile seemed to be buried in the coffin next to Henry. He couldn’t bring grandpa back, but at least he could make grandpa’s killer pay.

Justin nodded goodbye and leapt down the stairs ignoring the discomfort in his shoulder. He went out the rear door and through the backyard gate into the alley to prevent Mr. Hamilton from seeing him. He knew his teacher would tell him it was too dangerous to go running, but Justin wasn’t going to hide.

It wasn’t raining, but the moisture hung in the air and settled on Justin’s skin and clothes. He looked up as he walked down the alley, but he couldn’t see a single star as the clouds blocked any visibility. Everything had been clear back in Texas. Not just the skies, but his life. Things were far from perfect, but at least he knew where he stood. But now he felt like the truth about so many parts of his life was clouded behind layers of lies. Who could he trust? He was told that being an Elementer required hiding the truth. So how could he decide who he could rely on? Rex and the others had been wrong about Steven Collier. Who else wasn’t what they seemed?

The questions were spinning around in his head, refusing to be answered, when an arm suddenly wrapped around Justin’s neck and a hand clamped over his mouth pulling Justin back into the shadows of the alley.

Chapter 35