Truth

Chapter 7

'Okay, fine I believe you,' Vi conceded,'Even if we are these 'empowered' people, what do you want us to do?  It's not like there's trouble, everything was fixed up years ago-' she looked at Holly's and Rowan's grim expressions,'right?'  Holly, glanced out the window and her eyes widened,'Someone in this world has an opinion,'she hesitated,'and they want that opinion to be the only one.'  She looked at the window again and said calmly,'No time, they're here.  Less talking, more moving.' She started to stuff supplies in a rucksack.  'And remember, they want you, not us.  So if there is a situation that one of us has to be left behind, run.'  Dare gazed out the window to see a tornado of water heading towards them.  Dare and Vi rushed out the door and pressed the 'down' button on the elevator.  They were in a mediocre hotel where 50% of the lights were usually turned off.  They were on the 14th floor and the nearest elevator was on the 3rd.  The elevator slowly started to ascend-3............4............5..........    Rowan and Holly appeared, dark and light energy emmiting from them.  6..........7............8..........     'It's too slow!,' Rowan roared in frustration.  'The stairs would take too long as well,' said Vi.  9..........10......... 'Nearly there, come on!' murmured Dare.  All eyes were fixed on the elevator doors.  11.........12...........13..................14. 

Rowan fired a blast of energy at the doors.  Smoke was everywhere. The lift doors opened, 'Look who we have here,'exclaimed a female voice, it sounded kind.  Two jets of water shot out through the smoke, clearing it and revealing the speaker.  A young, dark haired woman possibly around 17 slowly strided out of the elevator.  She was wearing a turquoise dress and was holding a wooden staff with a huge aquamarine stone at the top of it.  For someone so young, she was leaning on it for support.  'I should have thought you two were here,' she pointed her staff at Holly and Rowan, glaring at them.  'But thank you for making things easier for me, now hand them over if you don't want to get hurt.  'If you want to have them you've got to get through me first!' Rowan stepped forward.  'Oh by the way kids,' she flashed a smile at Dare and Vi,'my name is Mia.  Now why don't you walk over here?'  An arc of dark energy shot out of Rowan's hand but Mia easily deflected it by summoning a barrier of water.  'Out of practice are you?' she giggled, but her chest was heaving.  The barrier rushed forwards and encased Holly and Rowan in a bubble of water.  Vi screamed,'No!'  Holly tried to create light energy but it only a feeble spark appeared which was extinguished in a second, she and Rowan blacked out.  The bubble started to dissolve, slowly fading away and becoming nothing.  Vi and Dare stared in silent horror as the strangers they knew as Holly and Rowan just disappeared before there very eyes, slowly sinking into emptiness. 

A silence filled the room.  Mia smiled and said in a sing along voice, 'Now, I hope you know that I'm not the person you want on your bad side. Now get moving, someone wants to meet you.'  'What happened to Rowan and Holly?  Where are you going to take us?' said Vi stepping forward.  Her hands were trembling but the rest of her face was cool and calm.  No tears, No shouting.  Dare tried to look confident,but his mind was filled with fear and he prepared himself to run.  'To answer your first question, they're not dead, they're simply stuck in the bubble, which is timeless, something only I can do,' she said arrogantly.  'I was the one who had to trap your whole neighborhood, do you know how much magic energy I used just to find out that those to idiots found you already?  I used up the last bit of magic to travel here and to capture Holly and Rowan.  To answer your second question, you're going to help us track down the rest of the empowered ones!  We already know the first stop since I've got all of Holly and Rowan's memories since they are in my power, New York here we come!'  She punched the air.  She grabbed Vi and slashed her staff across her left cheek, a line of blood a few inches long, Vi cried out in pain, Mia made a sickly smile, 'Now if you don't want your girlfriend to get anymore hurt you should follow me!'  Dare resisted the powerful urge to shout, 'She's not my girlfriend and let her go!,' and punch Mia as hard as he could.  He silently walked behind her, glaring and often glancing looks at Vi as often as he could. The cut was thin but the blood was dark red, and it looked very deep.  How could someone like Mia, who looked so, well, beautiful and innocent, turn out to be so merciless?  Mia was, no evil wasn't the right word, what was evil anyway?

The travel turned out to be slow and mentally painful.  Dare watched helpless as Vi kept bleeding for the first thirty minutes.  Tears trickled down her along with the blood.  Slowly, the sickly flow of crimson blood stopped.  By then, they were on a plane to New York City.  The police or the officers at the airport didn't seem to notice that Vi was wounded badly or that a staff with an extremely sharp aquamarine was at her throat.  Mia didn't even have any tickets and simply walked through the whole wall of security.  How did she do that?  They simply, glanced at the them and let them pass through without a second look.  Suddenly, he noticed that they were never directly looking at them in the eye, as if they didn't really matter, as if Mia was manipulating their thoughts.  But that wasn't possible, right?  But after what had happened in the past days, nothing seemed impossible anymore, which for the first time, was actually a bad thing.  During the 8 hour flight to New York, Dare stayed quiet almost the whole trip, only pretending to hurt his foot and walk down the first class aisle to check on a Vi, he swore she opened her eyes a bit.

Vi felt as if her face was split open in pain, well it kinda was in a way.  The cut hurt like crazy, but she was too afraid to touch it or open her eyes.  She forced herself not to scream but just to sob.  Who was this crazy woman?  Where were they?  She remembered hearing, was it attendants?  She also heard a child say,'Look mommy it's a big, big bird!'  The mother answered,'That's not a bird, that's a plane!'  She were definitely at an airport, she fell asleep.  All of a sudden the blackness in her mind started to swirl as hse slept.  She saw a huge lake, an oak tree with a something like a platform near the top.  A rope ladder swung from side to side with the wind.  A girl appeared and started to climb the ladder and the Vi swore the stars started to shine brighter than usual.  Everything went fuzzy.  She woke up and found herself on her personal seat with a cup holder, a foot rest, a mini TV in front of her and a warm blanket covering her body.  We're already in the airplane, she thought.  She suddenly saw a turqoise dress coming towards her seat.  She shut her eyes tight forced herself to breathe as little as possible to stop any kind of movement in her body.  She was sweating a lot as if she had ran around the block, something that she hadn't done in a long time, she remembered.  After a minute or two, she heard the crackling of plastic near her and decided to open her eyes just a tiny bit.  Dare was pulling out a blanket from the plastic bag and spread it on her, tucking her in.  He murmured, 'Hey, you're awake right?'  Vi didn't speak back.  Dare continued,'Your cut is getting better, I've cleaned it and everything but I won't put on a bandage or Mia will get suspicious.  You've got a fever by the way, so you'll just have to sweat it out okay?  I've been practicing magic for the past two hours, apart from checking on you, that's all I've been doing.  Mia keeps checking on me, I hope she doesn't know.  Four and a half more hours and we'll be in New York, so, just hang in there 'kay?  We should get more rest, we'll need it for what's ahead.'  He tenderly touched her forehead, and let his hand slide down to her cheek.  It was warm and felt good against her face.  'We'll be fine, don't worry.'  Vi sensed the reassuring tone in his voice.  She closed her eyes hoping that his warmth could travel to her frightened heart.