What Lies Between ✔

The Horned Shadow

44.

I wanted to move, but everytime I tried to it felt like my skin – what was left of it – would peel off if I did. A numb stinging covered my body, and I could feel warm streams of blood running down my face. I had not fully escaped Chimera's last blast of fire, evident by the smell of burnt hair.

I had thought that Adrian would take us to a place I would recognize, like the Hummer or something, but staring up at the white, water stained ceiling, I couldn't place where I was. I had come out of the wormhole at a rapid speed, flipping over the banister of a wooden stair case. I must have broken it, because if I moved my eyes I could see that there were chunks of wood laying around me. That wasn't what really concerned me though. What really worried me was that I didn't hear any of my friends moving around me. I didn't even know if we all ended up in the same place or not.

"Shit!" I heard Ben curse, "Shit!"

I did not like the frantic tone of his voice. I tried to call out to him, but when I managed to part my lips only a small moan came out of them. I should have been scared, but alomst relflexively I reached out to the earth to heal me. Once again, though, it ignored me. Ben must of heard me, because he came running over, and was soon hovering over me.

"Oh my God, oh my God." He looked like he wanted to move me but wasn't sure how. "You're okay, you're okay. Just heal yourself, alright? Kairos?" This was the first time I had seen Ben look like this. Through all the blood and bruises and his one good eye that hadn't fully swelled all the way shut like the other one, the expression on his face was petrified, like he had no idea what it was he was supposed to do. This is what finally scared me. That and the sensation of blood running all over me. I tried the earth again, but its refusal devasted me once more. I felt another pull, from a different source, and began to feel energy coating my body to heal all of my wounds.

"No Kairos!" Ben screamed down at me, "Not from them! You're going to kill them!"

I realized then where the energy was coming from. My firends. I tried to stop the intake, but the pull was magnetic and reversal seemed impossible. My heart started to hammer, knowing that each second I was draining them to death. My eyes met Ben's and he saw my horror, understanding that I had lost control over my abilities.

"This is going to hurt," he warned before he scooped up my ragged body with a grunt. I screamed as sharp sensations of pain rolled all over my body. As Ben turned I caught glimpses of the stair case, a large grandfather clock, what appeared to be ghosts standing in another room, the kind you see children dressed up as on Halloween with a sheet over them, and the bodies of our friends laying unconcious on the floor. Ben began to run and it wasn't long before I felt a rush of cool air against my skin that only agitated the rawness of it even more. I looked up into a cloudless, sun-filled sky, but it would only be afterward that I would realize that it shouldn't had been light out since it was dark out just moments before.

Ben's breathing was labored, but his running was crazily fast, almost abnormally so. The further we ran from the others, the more I could feel my body pulling greedily at Ben's energy alone. I brought a hand up to thump against his chest in protest. "Stop," I wheezed, becoming aware of what he was doing, "Get away, go far away from me."

He only kept running, and I almost thought I seen the shadows of trees leaping out and chasing after us. There were a great deal of trees that were flying by, and my vision of the sky was soon clouded by leaves and boughs. When I could no longer feel the energy of the others pumping into me, Ben staggered to a stop and we both fell onto the ground. I winced in pain as I hit the ground, and Ben dropped down beside me, panting heavily. We lay in a bed of tall grass that stretched out high above us, and I had a weird thought that it was holding up the sky, keeping it from coming down.