Faults

Chapter 35: Aydin

Our crew rushes into the village to see what's going on. It's not hard to see what happened once we arrive at the scene. The schoolhouse. It's no longer a schoolhouse. It's merely a flame-ridden shell of a building.

"Taylor," I blurt out.

Archie looks at me. "No doubt."

"Isn't that who we're trying to take down?" Dakota asks.

I nod. "Indeed."

Archie runs over to the guards attempting to control the situation. He tells them something and comes back to us. "We're going now," he says simply, marching off to the forest.

"Wasn't that already the plan?" I ask.

"Yes, but this just made it all the more urgent. It's not like we can do much here, anyway. Christian and Taylor are nowhere in sight," he replies.

"Wait," Klaus says, making Archie stop walking. "I want to go get my friend, Marshall."

"Um, he can raise people from the dead. I don't think that will help us magic-wise if we all manage to stay alive, but I know he's a good fighter," Klaus explains.

"Be quick," Archie commands.

Klaus runs back to the village and comes back a few minutes later with no one behind him. "Where's your friend?" I ask.

He shrugs. "His father said he hasn't seen him since earlier this afternoon."

"How come you didn't mention him before? Ah, never mind that," Archie says, beginning to walk again. "Let's get going then."

We all follow him and once we're into the woods, Klaus shifts into a small white bird, flying ahead of us. First, we make our way to Christian's old cottage and head west, the direction which we think Christian took Taylor in five months ago. From there, we don't find anything but trees for a solid hour and a half.

Trey comes up beside me and looks at me quizzically. "What happened to you?"

I glare at him. "Why do you care?"

"I'm curious."

"It's my brother's fault," I say, being blunt and staying cryptic. I'd rather not retell last year's events. The thought of what Taylor did to me still makes me shudder. It doesn't help that I have to see the marks of his cruelty every time I look in the mirror.

Trey's eyes move from my face to my neck, and then to my arms. "What did he do?"

"Would you drop it already?" I growl at him, in no mood to explain this to him.

Dakota and Aster look over at me and Trey, wondering what's going on. Trey smiles at them innocently. He then looks back at me and says, "I'm just curious. You don't seem confident in yourself, though. All I want to know is what caused that."

"Well, curiosity killed the cat, now didn't it?" I seethe.

Trey opens his mouth to speak but luckily, Klaus comes back to us and makes a swift transformation back into a human right before he reaches the ground in his bird form. He's gotten way better at that. "I saw a small shack a mile out," he tells us, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

"Great, let's go," Archie says, running past Klaus.

We all struggle to catch up as Archie runs through the trees. After running for a few minutes, we come upon a shack. It's pretty dark out now and there doesn't look to be any light inside of the shack. "Is this the one you saw?" I ask Klaus.

"Yeah," he replies, walking around the back of it.

I follow him and look through one of the windows. There's no way I'd be able to tell if anyone is inside. It looks just as dark in there as it is out here. Nobody seems to be home. "Aster, can you go inside?" I ask, peering around the corner of the house.

"Sure," he says, becoming transparent and walking straight through the wall.

Dakota heads to the front of the house and Klaus looks through a window, presumably watching Aster walk around inside the shack. I look around for Archie and Trey but they're nowhere to be found. Archie was just here a second ago, ready to stay on task with our mission.

Where could they have gone? It's barely been two minutes.