Angels & Shadows

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Elizabeth and Ben were kept together in quarantine until the Friday. They underwent numerous tests and scans until the Doctors finally admitted that they hadn’t got a clue what they were looking for, nor indeed what had happened. Laura had also been confined but in a separate room and Corporal Warner had been dismissed as a red herring in the whole affair. The time that Elizabeth and Ben spent together allowed them some thinking space to try and make sense of it all.

Firstly, they considered the attack on Laura. They quickly concluded the obvious, that Elizabeth was the target and Laura was just unfortunate to have taken the venomous strike. Elizabeth shed a few tears over how it had nearly cost her best friend’s life and the vision of Laura’s life ebbing away in front of her was horrific and something that she would never forget.

It opened their eyes as to just how easily they could lose their own lives, and those of their loved ones, in this dangerous game between Angels and Shadows that was unfolding before them.

This led their thinking on to “Who was Katya and who had placed her in the school?”

Elizabeth would have liked to have believed that it was Mrs Hyde, but there was no evidence to support this. It just remained a possibility that needed to be explored later. When Elizabeth told Ben about how, in Laura’s defence, she had thrust out at Katya unleashing an incredible force from within her propelling Katya across the hallway, he was stunned.

“Awesome!”

He had exclaimed, then jumped out of bed and proceeded to make Kung Fu moves with the associated sound effects, imagining that he was a Japanese Ninja.

“Ben this is serious! Stop behaving like a child, you’re not one anymore.”

The poignancy of this casual remark hit them profoundly and saddened them. It was the truth, they would never be free again, nor could they ever afford to be in this dangerous new world that they now lived in.

Elizabeth told of how Katya had not thrown a shadow when she ran out into the sunlight, so she had to be a Shadow herself, evidence of the truth of all that May had told them. They decided that they needed to trap Mrs Hyde in the sunlight to establish if she was a threat or not but they would plan that later. In any event they needed to know where Katya had come from and how she was placed at the school.

Ben countered this incredible story by the telling of his adventure with Corporal Warner. He told of how in the cricket nets, his vision, hearing and concentration were so super-tuned and his reactions so quick that he could naturally hit anything that came at him or bowl a ball in any way that he wanted. They agreed that as special as this was to Ben, it was only a small manifestation of the enormous abilities that now existed within them that they needed to explore.

Ben described the race against the green sports car to the hospital with Rob sir and how they had outrun the Shadow, or Shadows that were chasing them. When Ben told Elizabeth that Rob was also an Angel, sent by May to help protect them, she was elated. She had been struggling with the burden of the responsibility that they had been given. This news was a breath of fresh air, they were no longer alone, but then negative thoughts and doubt consumed her.

“So Rob is an Angel” Elizabeth’s tone was down-beat “then he will be targeted by the Shadows too and we will lose him, just like Mum, Dad, Crystalita and David Williams…”

“Not this one, he’s a soldier back from the war in Afghanistan, he’s used to killing people and stuff. Wait till you meet him Lizzie, he’s really cool!”

Elizabeth smiled at Ben’s simple boyish faith in Rob sir.

“Go on tell me more about Rob and what happened at the hospital.”