The Broken Ones

Chapter 17

Taylor:

And these three people have to make a huge sacrifice in order to secede.

What could those words possibly mean?

Did I even want to know?

I don't remember Tyson saying anything too specific about any prophecy, only that us three were important to the cause. Still, it was a heavy burden to be carrying on our shoulders. A terrifyingly huge burden.

Thinking about what would have happened if we went right was great. A fun little activity I could do when I really wanted to be scared out of my mind. I just thanked God for Kat.

For about half-an-hour, we continued to discuss her vision and what it could possibly mean. All while this was happening, we paid little attention to the change in scenery, how everything gradually grew darker, more beaten down, the path thinning exceptionally.

"Six-hundred-and-ninety-three," Felix muttered to himself, his eyebrows furrowed in thought.

Kat giggled for some odd reason. She screwed up her face suddenly in a stony expression and spoke in a deep voice, "Turn to page three-hundred-and-ninety-four."

Harry Potter. Of course. "Ha. Funny," I said as she continued to giggle. "Snape reference, I got you."

But then something clicked. The two of us seemed to get the same idea at exactly the same time as our eyes both flickered to Felix's satchel. His man-purse. Swiftly, Kat dived into the bag, pulling out the book. Felix jumped with a look on his face as though we had gone mad. We probably have. There was no time to dwell on the thought.

She immediately flipped to the very back on the book, her eyes going wild against the numbers on the bottom of the page.

686, 687, 688, 689, 690, 691, 692 . . .

"Where's the rest of them?"

We were stumped. Page 693 was gone, along with several others. Completely ripped out of the book.

"Where are they?" Kat looked frantic as she continued to flip back and forth through the pages. "My vision said 693, and the entry we read said to find the prophecy on page 693."

"So where the hell are they, then?" I asked. I stepped closer to observe the rips.

"Tyson."

I was slightly startled by Felix's voice, more so the way it sounded. He was angry, you could tell. I knew this look, where his eyes would turn hard, his eyebrows creased together, his lips formed into a tight line.

I shook my head at him. "Tyson? What . . ."

Then something clicked again. Thinking back to before we left the forest, when we first got the book and we were flipping through the pages to find the last pages gone. He said that they were notes from his gran, which, now that I truly thought about it, didn't make any sense. One, his "gran" was probably six-feet-under by now, two, why would his gran put notes in this book anyway, and three, he was all too suspicious when he said those words. This could only mean one thing: Tyson ripped those pages out for a reason. He clearly didn't want us to read whatever resided in them.

"That bastard," Felix breathed.

"Hey, we don't know what was in them." Kat put a comforting hand on his shoulder. We were completely stopped by now, surrounding the empty page. For the first time since taking that left turn, I was able to observe my surroundings as Felix and Kat spoke.

"It could have been, I don't know, useless recipes?"

"Why would there be recipes in this book."