Children of the Elements: Prey to Him

Chapter Twenty-Two: Oncoming Storms

Chapter Twenty-Two: Oncoming Storms

“That is so not how I sound!” Eva squealed, pushing Nathan roughly as Chris, Ellie, Joey and himself started chuckling.

“Maybe not normally, but that’s how I heard you when I first met you,” Nathan argued. He turned to the others, walking backwards to show them. “She walked up to me like they do in the cartoons with her boobs pressed together and a pout on her face, as if that was going to help her cause.” The laughing continued, Eva blushing as she joined in. She noted that Chris wasn’t finding it as funny as everyone else.

“Well it must have worked if you still kissed me.”

Eva raised her eyebrows happily as Nathan’s smile weakened at her defence.

“Technically, you kissed me.”

“Do you two just go around kissing each other?” Chris asked in a joking tone, but Eva heard the jealousy hidden behind it. She wasn’t the only one.

“Aww, not jealous are we, brother?” Joey teased, shoving Chris’s shoulder gently.

Chris blushed, laughing nervously as he pushed Joey away. “Shut up. Idiot.”

“Anyway,” Ellie finally inputted softly, looking at her brother with bright blue eyes tinted with amusement. “I thought you had a crush on the fire girl.”

At this, Eva and Chris burst back into laughter. “See, she hasn’t been around you for more than a day, Nathan, and she can already sense your undying love for Ash” Eva prodded.

“It is not ‘undying love’. And anyway, Ellie and I have a special connection so of course she can tell,” Nathan protested, wrapping his arm around his sister.

“Or it’s just that it’s so obvious to everyone except you that you’re in love with her.”

“It is not- you’re so- oh, shut up.”

Ellie and Joey joined in the laugher as it was Nathan’s turn to blush.

However, the jovial atmosphere was suddenly broken when Elicia turned around from the front of the patrol. “Get down,” she hissed.

Eva instantly dropped into a crouch. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply as she forced a heat to grow behind her eyes, glowing in her brain. On re-opening, her vision was sharp as a needle point, picking up every single detail across the landscape.

They had travelled down a woodland path for the last half an hour, but now the treeline to the left of the patrol had thinned, leaving only a couple of trees before a tall electric fence had been erected around large open gardens. In the distance, past acres of flat grass fields and the occasional bordering red and orange flowerbed, a huge cream mansion could be seen, glowing in the quickly dimming sunset. Shadows had been cast over the gardens behind it in the light, giving the house both a warm and an eerie feel.

The patrol had approached the back of the house, but due to Eva’s increased eye for detail, she was able to identify the long winding pebble driveway leading towards the front of the house, decorated by obsessively pruned Silver Birch trees. Eva smirked as she subtly flicked a finger and a single branch of one tree grew longer than the rest of the branches, sticking out and making the entire tree unsymmetrical.

“Everybody stay down, and follow me” Elicia commanded quietly before she began to hurry down the pathway, her submachine gun suddenly in her hands.

Eva briefly made a scan of the surrounding gardens for any sign of movement before she started to follow Nathan. She immediately noticed a root poking out of the ground as Nathan caught his foot on it. Quickly, she pushed it into the ground, allowing him to catch himself before he fell. He glanced back, smiling briefly at her, and then carrying on.