Mythos (The Descendants, #1)

by Vrinda Pendred

  * * *

  When the call ended, Itzy dropped the phone to the floor and lay in the dark. She felt herself slip away, drifting out of her body and into the ether.

  Then there was the shadowy figure again, floating forward, his black arms extended and his grey eyes dazzling her. Again, she felt herself drawn to it - to him, whoever he was. He reached for her, waiting for her to take his hand and step into his world.

  ‘They’re coming for us,’ he said.

  Her eyes flew open.

  She was alone, but she couldn’t shake the sensation that someone was watching her.

  THIRTEEN

  Seth, as it turned out, had a penchant for classic rock. He insisted on cranking up the car stereo to ear-shattering volumes and singing along at the top of his very out-of-tune voice with bands like Pink Floyd and The Eagles.

  ‘You can check out any time you want, but - you can never leave!’ he wailed.

  The windows were all the way down and the wind whipped through his dusty hair. His elbow was propped up on the window frame, his fingers dancing in the air. Sparks flew from the space he struck. Itzy couldn’t help thinking the lyrics to Hotel California were especially sinister that morning.

  ‘Hey, you’re really good,’ Devon called to him from the backseat.

  Seth twisted around so he could see her. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Oh yeah. You should try out for X-Factor.’

  He laughed and continued his performance.

  It took them over four hours to drive from Ealing to Wiltshire, and most of that was down to London traffic. They received a range of stares from other drivers sharing their traffic jams, some amused by Seth’s ‘singing’, others looking like they might open their doors and do something about it.

  ‘So where is it?’ Itzy asked as the car crawled down a barren country road surrounded on all sides by fields.

  ‘You know what the trouble is with crop circles punched out of maize fields?’ Seth threw over his shoulder. The girls shook their heads in the rear-view mirror. ‘You can’t see them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Devon.

  ‘He means,’ said Oz, ‘that corn is tall. So if you want to see the patterns, you have to get higher than the field. Then you work out where to go, when you’re back at ground level.’

  Itzy’s eyes ran over the landscape, stopping on a hill. ‘You mean we’re climbing that?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Oz said.

  He drove the car into the countryside equivalent of a car park, where a handful of other day-trippers had left their vehicles to go rambling. The Ferrari stood out like a black eye next to the family-sized Citroens and Toyotas.

  The four of them stepped out and stretched their legs after the cramped journey under the low roof of the car. It had certainly been fun to drive, but it was not made for long road trips.

  Seth inhaled and took in the smell of manure. ‘Fresh country air,’ he joked in a poor imitation of a Somerset accent, and they began walking.

  The hill was taller than it looked. It took them a half-hour to reach the top. Up there, the wind tossed the girls’ hair around, slapping it in their faces and getting it caught in their mouths. Devon pulled a bright red band off her wrist and yanked her hair into a hasty ponytail, while Itzy just had to suffer through it. She put her hands to her face, holding back the hair, and looked out over the fields.

  She’d not thought to bring a jacket or a jumper, because on the ground the air was hot with the beginnings of August. On the hill, she regretted that omission. A chill rushed over her bare arms, extending from her t-shirt, navy blue with a print of the staircase scene from Labyrinth.

  They weren’t the only ones on the hill; it was covered in visitors with cameras, but they weren’t there for the crop pattern. As it turned out, it was more than a hill they were standing on. In fact, it was the remains of an old castle that had been destroyed long ago. And down one side of it, there lay an enormous chalk etching of a horse.

  ‘Crop circles tend to be made at historical sites of interest,’ Oz told them when they saw it. When Itzy and Devon both arched their eyebrows at him, he shrugged and explained, ‘I did a little reading before we came here. I wanted to be prepared.’

  Seth clapped his hands together and said, ‘Let’s get looking, yeah?’

  The foursome spread out over the hill and stared across the landscape. At first, Itzy didn’t see anything of interest, just enormous patches of green, green and more green. But it was remarkable just how many different shades of green there were, if she thought about it.

  All of it was cornfields. Off in the distance were other crops, wheat and rapeseed, but those had already been harvested. They were lucky the patterns they were after had been done in maize, as it was the only crop left standing so late in the year.

  ‘I see it!’ Seth announced, startling a family nearby who seemed oblivious to the fact that there might be a crop circle nearby.

  His companions rushed over to where he stood and looked in the direction he was pointing. There, in a swath of corn, was a series of curved lines, sketching the shape of a bird - and in the distance, other familiar shapes. Itzy gasped: it really was just like the ancient lines in Peru.

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ said Devon, excitement colouring her voice.

  ‘Think you can find it when we’re on the ground?’ Seth asked Oz.

  ‘They don’t call me the Human SatNav for nothing,’ he answered.

  ‘No one calls you that,’ said Seth.

  They scrambled back down the hill, their feet sliding on wet grass and momentum pulling them toward the bottom. On the ground, Oz took the lead.

  Devon caught her foot in something black and grimaced. ‘Yuck. Sheep droppings.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we, like, ask permission or something?’ asked Itzy.

  Seth didn’t turn around, but said, ‘From who?’

  She shrugged. ‘Dunno. A farmer? It’s not our field, you know?’

  ‘But which farmer?’ he pressed.

  She threw her hands in the air. ‘I don’t know! Just someone!’

  ‘Temper temper,’ she heard him say.

  They hit the edge of the maize and stood around an opening where the seven-foot cornstalks had bent in parting as if to allow them through. Devon ducked her head under a leafy extension and disappeared into the crop, Oz right behind her.

  Seth swept his arm and bowed in a cavalier manner. He winked at Itzy and said, ‘After you.’

  She breezed past him and stepped through the maize archway. Once inside, the pathway narrowed and cornstalks stroked her face. They were so much taller than she was; it felt like she was being swallowed by them. She could even imagine they were alien beings, their leaves their limbs, caressing her and luring her into a trap. She was hit by the overwhelming presence of claustrophobia and her heart rate quickened.

  Hands fell on her shoulders and she shrieked.

  ‘Easy,’ Seth dropped into her left ear. ‘It’s just me. You looked tense.’

  She wished she could whirl around to see him, so he wasn’t just a disembodied voice, but she was finding it hard to move.

  ‘I don’t like close spaces,’ she told him.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t expect you would.’

  They fell into comfortable speechlessness, just listening to corn as they rubbed past it. Then Itzy said, ‘About yesterday. When you…I mean when I….’

  Seth laughed. The sound was dense, with no space to echo. ‘Hey, no worries. I know you were only messing with me.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Sure. It didn’t mean anything to me either, so just forget about it.’ He paused. ‘That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?’

  Itzy swallowed. ‘Yeah. You took the words right out of my mouth.’

  Then she heard Devon say, ‘Whoa,’ and the corn started to give way. Suddenly, Itzy and Seth stumbled into a clearing.

  It was strange. From t
he hilltop, the patterns had looked so much bigger, but snaking their way along the pathways, it didn’t take long to traverse the entirety of the bird design. And yet, the paths themselves were so much wider than she would have guessed, too, so there was room for them to move two at a time.

  The sky above was clear and beautiful, the air free of toxins. The fresh oxygen made Itzy dizzy, but in a good way. She gulped it down in long, slow breaths, savouring it. It filled her with a sense of peace she’d only ever felt once before. She was awe-struck that those two occasions should have come just two days in a row. After so many years of feeling like a tropical storm waiting to happen, now she had been blessed with sunshine twice in as many days.

  Perhaps it wasn’t natural, though. Perhaps there was something about that place, some energy rising from beneath the ground, because she could see that same calm on her companions’ faces.

  Oz brought something from the pocket of the leather jacket he was wearing. There, it was warmer than it had been on the hill, but all the plants growing up around them meant there was still a breeze that sent an occasional chill through the bones.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Devon, her thumbs looped through the waistband of her jeans.

  In Oz’s hand was a small square of metal and plastic that looked vaguely like a tablet computer. ‘It’s something I found in my dad’s things.’ He noticed Itzy and amended, ‘Our dad’s things.’

  Itzy approached to get a closer look. ‘What’s it do?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure, but I think it’s a little like an electronic dowsing rod.’

  Itzy’s brow crinkled. ‘A what?’

  ‘Dowsing rods are meant to pick up the energy emitted by ley lines,’ Oz explained.

  ‘Oh, hey!’ Devon surprised them. ‘I’ve seen that. Yeah, yeah, it was that Derek guy.’ She snapped her fingers, trying to remember. ‘You know who I mean…he did that ghost show from when we were kids….’

  ‘Most Haunted?’ Itzy guessed.

  ‘Yeah! Him!’

  Oz looked at his sister’s friend as if she were the alien, rather than he. ‘Are you comparing me to Derek Acora?’

  Devon giggled. ‘You actually know his name, that’s brilliant.’

  Oz shot her a dark look and then went on. ‘Anyway. This is a little more sophisticated than the traditional dowsing rod. It picks up electromagnetic energy and measures it. I think.’

  ‘You think,’ Seth echoed.

  ‘Well, I’ve never tried it out before. I only just found it the other day,’ Oz defended himself. ‘But I thought it might come in handy.’ He shrugged. ‘You never know.’

  He pressed a button and the device lit up. The screen filled with what looked like a graphic equaliser. Then it started clicking.

  ‘Spooky,’ Devon said, her attention held by the device.

  Seth tilted his head in contemplation. ‘It’s like a Geiger counter.’

  ‘Are you saying it’s radioactive out here?’ Itzy asked in alarm.

  Seth looked anything but bothered. ‘Nah. Just that it reminds me of that.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ Oz spoke more to himself than to the others, ‘the way it gets louder and faster - if I do this.’ He held out the device in the direction of the cornstalks bordering their bit of pathway. ‘I wonder what happens if I -’

  His words were lost in the crop, as he left the path and was enveloped by leaves.

  Itzy looked at the ground. On the pathway, the cornstalks had all been pushed down. They hadn’t been snapped the way one would expect. That was the mystery of crop circles. She’d seen it on a documentary, once, at Ash’s house. He had a love of laughing at the Paranormal Channel. The documentary had said experts could tell the difference between the explainable and the very much inexplicable.

  The explainable circles (so-called, whether they were circular or not) were ones where the crop had been broken. The inexplicable were ones where they seemed to have been pressed carefully down without damaging the stalks. There was a very loose theory that they were pulled down by steam emanating from ley lines below the ground, but that didn’t explain the perfect geometry of the designs.

  Once, the British military had observed a series of fields in the West Country, to see if they could catch a crop circle being made. People reported seeing red lights flashing in the sky, and then the patterns had appeared in a matter of seconds.

  Perhaps most mysteriously of all, crop circles weren’t a modern phenomenon. The first recorded circle was centuries ago, in 1678 in Hertfordshire, England. It looked like someone had taken a lawnmower and run it through the field in a spiral that was smashed at the sides, making it long and narrow. The people believed the devil had come in the night and mowed patterns into the fields.

  Something flitted past in Itzy’s periphery. It might have been a person. Except that was ridiculous; they were the only ones there. Crop circle exploration clearly wasn’t the tourist attraction she’d assumed it would be.

  ‘Seth,’ she said –

  then realised she was alone.

  ‘Seth! Devon!’ she called out, her voice pregnant with panic.

  ‘In here!’ Devon returned. It sounded like it was coming from inside the crop.

  ‘Why did you walk off without me?’ Itzy cried, aware she was sounded childish.

  ‘We thought you were right behind us,’ Devon’s voice came back. ‘We found the spider.’

  The spider?

  Oh yes. One of the other patterns, from Nazca.

  ‘I think I’ll just stay put until you come back,’ Itzy called out across the field. She didn’t want to roam through the maize on her own; they would return for her.

  It struck Itzy that if they remained there too long, it might get dark, and then they’d never find their way out. After all, there were no street lamps. They could be trapped in that field all night. And as she’d told Seth, Itzy hated close spaces. They brought to mind that memory of hiding in her wardrobe as a little girl. The hiding wasn’t what had been so scary, but rather what lay just outside of the doors.

  And the thought that it might come for her.

  She noticed the sky had gone overcast very suddenly, in a way that didn’t feel natural, even for England. A breeze iced through her, wrapping her hair around her face. She spun around on her heel, grappling with her hair. When she managed to peel it away from her eyes, she did a sharp intake of breath and staggered backward.

  Standing before her was a boy who could have been eighteen. He had soft brown hair grown just long enough to dust his long eyelashes. He was dressed in grey track bottoms with a matching hoodie, the hood down over his back. It was hard to tell how big he was, under the waves of fabric, but his face was strong and angular.

  He might have been easy to ignore and forget, if not for two things:

  One was the golden tint to his skin, so strange to see in a place like England, and almost gleaming in the sunlight.

  The other was his piercing grey eyes.

  Itzy felt her insides turn to water at the sight of them. It was the boy from her dreams. She knew it was crazy, but every instinct screamed it was true. Could she have been dreaming about someone real, after all? Had her dreams been prophetic?

  His stare was watchful and penetrating. It was like he was looking through Itzy’s corporeal structure and seeing into her soul, examining it, deciding what he thought about it.

  She hadn’t heard him approach. But she’d seen that on the documentary, too. Apparently, people regularly appeared out of nowhere, when you visited crop circles, and they disappeared just as suddenly. She’d thought it was ridiculous, at the time; they were in a maze (of maize), after all, so it was only logical that there would be some surprises.

  Yet this apparition took the breath right out of her.

  ‘Wh-where’d you come from?’ she found her voice.

  He shrugged. ‘Same place you did, I expect.’

  He’d spoken
. She now had a voice to put to the vision that had haunted her dreams for so many months. His accent told her he wasn’t from around those parts. What was it? Northern Irish? She decided it was nice - better than nice, in fact.

  As if recalling something he’d been instructed to do but still had trouble remembering, the grey-eyed boy gave a little wave and said, ‘I’m Aidan.’

  Aidan.

  ‘I’m…Itzy,’ she said. The more sensible part of her brain was unsure if she should be giving her name to this stranger who had just startled her in the middle of a cornfield.

  The impulsive part argued that he wasn’t a stranger, not really. Whether he realised it or not, she knew him. She had been waiting for him.

  ‘Would ye be here alone?’ he questioned.

  ‘No. My friends…they’re somewhere,’ she said lamely.

  Aidan nodded like maybe he didn’t believe her. ‘Not a lot of pretty girls would be interested in crop circles,’ he said smoothly.

  Itzy felt stupidly flattered. The last person to call her pretty, other than her mother and Devon, had been Ash. And before that, no one. Not even her father.

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Interested in crop circles, I mean. Not really. We just thought…you know, something different, something to do.’

  She hated the way she was grappling for words. But she couldn’t seem to help it. It was the way he was staring at her, taking her in, appraising her with his eyes. She wondered if he recognised her too.

  Aidan let those eyes land on hers. His gaze hit her like a brick to the chest and left her dizzy. She hoped it didn’t show on her face.

  ‘I’m sorry if I scared ye,’ he said, his voice deep and throaty. ‘It’s so quiet out here…and ye were so lost in thought, like. I didn’t want to banjax the moment.’

  Itzy got the impression that maybe he, too, was used to spending time on his own. She remembered what he had looked like at the edge of the river, in her dream. She found herself easily slotting the real Aidan into that picture. He looked like he belonged there. It was a beautiful image in her mind; she thought someone should paint it.

  ‘What kind of name would Itzy be, then?’ Aidan asked. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, so his arms bent at right angles.

  ‘It’s Itzel, really. It’s this Mayan thing,’ she said, sick of having to explain it. It had been the bane of her entire school career, and it hadn’t improved much now that she was older.

  Aidan’s brow went up a fraction, like he’d heard something more than what she’d just said. Then it smoothed back just as quickly.

  ‘Ya know, I always wanted to go there. See the pyramids,’ he said carefully, studying her reaction. ‘I’ve been to Egypt, but the Mexican ones are different, so they are.’

  She felt an inward stab of jealousy. ‘You went to Egypt?’

  ‘Aye, with my parents. I’ve always had a wee interest in mummies and mythology.’ He grinned at her. It was a lovely smile. It did something to his eyes, made them sparkle and look almost innocent.

  ‘So,’ she said, aware that what she was about to say would come out sounding like a line, ‘what brings you here?’

  Aidan laughed. ‘I’m a crop circle enthusiast, ye might say.’

  Itzy lifted a dark eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  ‘Aye.’ He dug his hands deeper in his pockets. ‘I’m part of a forum called the Crop Circle Connector. Ya get all the announcements and photographs, like. I’ve spent the summer driving round the countryside to visit them.’ As if reading her mind, he withdrew one of his hands and held it in the air, saying, ‘Now, before ye judge, I promise that isn’t as geeky as it sounds.’ She made a face like she found that hard to believe, and he laughed again. ‘Okay, maybe it is. So…would this be yer first time?’

  ‘Are we still talking about crop circles?’ she tried to joke away the blush creeping into her cheeks.

  Aidan’s mouth puckered into a sly smirk. ‘I can’t believe yer friends left ye here on yer own, like.’

  ‘They didn’t,’ Itzy argued. ‘At least, they didn’t mean to. I was sort of…in my own world, I guess, and didn’t see them go.’

  He nodded like he understood. ‘I spend most of my time in my own head, too, I do.’

  The breeze chose that moment to return and she shivered. Aidan stepped forward, removing his other hand from his pocket and tearing the hoodie over his head. It pulled up his clothing, revealing his flat stomach. It, too, was gold.

  When the hoodie was off, she saw he had on a plain white t-shirt that showed off his sunny arms, which were lightly muscled like Seth’s. He tossed the hoodie over her shoulders and tied the arms around her neck. He was so close, she could feel his breath on her as he inhaled and exhaled easily.

  ‘Ta,’ she said, ‘but you didn’t have to do that.’

  He shook his head at her as if he thought she was being silly. ‘It would be no good having ye foundering.’ His hands lingered on her shoulders and his eyes bore into hers until all she could see was grey.

  Then she felt herself sinking. He narrowed his eyes at her in curiosity: what was happening?

  She wished she knew. The claustrophobia strangled her. She slipped out of his grasp, down to the ground, on a bed of folded cornstalks. She could see Aidan’s trainers. They were a blinding white that filled her vision and left her feeling sick for no discernible reason. Something tickled her forearms, where they protruded from the warmth of the grey hoodie.

  She was vaguely aware of Aidan asking if she was alright, but she couldn’t speak. The tickling sensation grew and she moved to swat away whatever bug was crawling on her arm.

  Then she saw something that made her blood run cold.

  It wasn’t a bug at all. It was a leaf. More precisely, one of the cornstalks bordering the pathway was leaning toward her. But it wasn’t caused by wind. In fact, the air had gone still.

  She forced herself to look up, at the other cornstalks. They were all leaning, and they were inching their way closer to her. Black lines sparked in the air around them.

  She kicked herself onto her feet. Aidan, she noticed, didn’t look remotely surprised by what was happening. Could he even see it? Was it just her? Was she losing her mind?

  The maize closed in on her, leaves rubbing against her arms like a lover might. Suddenly, she was yanked back to the ground. A particularly feisty cornstalk coiled its way up her right leg and disabled her from running.

  She screamed, but Aidan just stood above her, watching. She might have been a science experiment he was studying. He looked like he should have been holding a pad of paper and a pen, taking notes: ‘Subject appears to be in a state of terror - continue observations.’

  When he spoke, his words were cryptic: ‘Can’t ye make it stop?’

  Make it stop? What was he talking about? And why was he now looking at her so expectantly?

  ‘Help!’ she finally found the words. She shrieked it over and over: ‘Someone help me, help me, HELP ME!’

  Where were her friends?

  She looked up at Aidan, who now looked angry. More than angry. But not at her. He was shouting something that she couldn’t make out through the pounding of fear in her ears. He dropped to the ground and reached out his hand for her. She stretched out to grab it -

  and felt herself being tugged along the pathway. She flipped herself over onto her stomach and dug her fingers into the earth, trying to stop herself, cursing her ugly short nails that couldn’t catch the soil.

  She flew backward, down the path, screaming all the way. She tried to keep her head up, catching glimpses of Aidan running after her, but she kept bouncing on the ground. Pain stabbed through her scalp, burying itself in her skull. She could feel the skin on her arms tear apart.

  Just as she was about to lose all hope, she heard her name shouted through the corn. It was Devon. They’d heard her after all. It was a relief to know they were comin
g for her.

  Then again, it meant what was happening was real.

  She felt the air leave her lungs. She was choking. It seemed to do something to the plants too, because the dragging finally ceased.

  But it was so abrupt, her body snapped forward and her face crashed into the ground, making her nose bleed. The terrorising plants didn’t let go of her. She wondered what - or who - had stopped them moving, though.

  As she lay still, trying to recover, trying to breathe, she realised the ground beneath her was trembling. It felt like the earthquake simulator she once went on at the Natural History Museum in London. Except the trembling grew stronger, and a deep growl accompanied it, followed by the cracking of cornstalks. It sounded as if the earth were opening up, like an egg. She lifted her head, afraid to see what might be about to hatch.

  A fissure appeared before her, stretching as far down the path as she could see. It was subtle, at first, and then it yawned wider. Itzy rolled onto her side to avoid falling into the cavern making its way for her. The plates under the ground lurched toward one another, colliding and pushing each other up into a peak. It lifted the soil into the air, hurling her backwards into the waiting crop.

  She screamed once more, but this time the cornstalks didn’t reach for her. She stared at the ground, which had now taken on the shape of a volcano, its mouth rising toward the sky, which had turned a murky colour. The growl morphed into an outright howl, like an animal in the throes of death. Wind gushed all around her.

  The snaking plants released her and she leapt forward, crawling up the side of the split earth, lifting herself over its edge so she could see what was happening. What she witnessed cast all thoughts of pain out of her mind.

  White fragments burst from the cavern. They whirled together in the air, a miniature tornado of bones. They assembled themselves together, one piece at a time. She gasped as she watched them form a skeleton - a dinosaur skeleton. It stood erect on bent hind legs, like a bird. Its arms darted, the talons flashing. It screeched, the horrible sound of a chicken losing its head, and lunged for Aidan.

  Aidan dodged the skeleton and found himself lying on the top of the precipice. His upper back leaned precariously over the cavern and the muscles in his arms flexed in response. A noise erupted from the deep; whatever was in there sounded ravenous.

  The skeleton came for him again and he slid sideways, scraping his arms on rock. He jumped, landing on his hands and knees, on safe ground. His head rotated sideways, watching the skeleton. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, which was open and panting.

  He leapt to his feet and dusted his hands on his track bottoms. His face was set in hard resolution.

  Then he closed his eyes.

  All at once, Itzy felt herself suffocating again. The air was too heavy, and there was too much of it. It clogged her lungs and she worried they might burst from the pressure. The veins in her arms turned red under her skin, like they’d been cut open, only the skin remained intact. They thickened and pulsed, threatening to pop.

  She struggled to focus on the scene in front of her. Now there wasn’t one skeleton but a whole army of them. They weren’t all dinosaurs. One looked like it might have been a squirrel. Another looked more like livestock, a sheep perhaps. And there were others. There were so many, it made her eyes hurt to behold them. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

  The dinosaur slashed one of its talons across Aidan’s face. Blood gushed from the stripes, but he hardly registered it. He wiped his hand across his cheek, as if he were clearing it of rain. His fingers came away scarlet.

  ‘Melody!’ he called.

  The air softened and Itzy fell forward, coughing. The maize field filled with the sound of soft music. In a way, it was almost stranger than seeing the living skeletons, because she was outside, and yet she heard a guitar. It was acoustic and jangly, gentle, soothing.

  An organ struck, giving the impression of being in a cathedral. Then there was a choir, their harmonised voices climbing out of silence and charging to the forefront of Itzy’s attention. They hummed in her ears, drowning out all other thoughts and feelings, drowning out the entire scene.

  The maize was gone. The skeletons were gone. Aidan was gone. She was rising out of her body and floating in the ether as pure energy.

  What had caused this?

  She swam through the atmosphere, catching glimpses of her friends just out of the corner of her eye, but not caring. She was beyond them now. She was beyond everything.

  Then, cruelly, she fell back into her body and lay on the ground, dirty and torn apart. She shook herself free of whatever power had just held her in its grip and she crawled through the cornstalks, pushing her way into the clearing, to see what had just happened.

  Oz and Aidan appeared to be having a face-off. They stared each other down like cats, neither of them moving a muscle. Seth stood with Oz, and a girl and a younger boy were on either side of Aidan, hanging back but ready to jump in if necessary.

  A laugh filled the air. It was Aidan. He clapped his hands together in a slow rhythm, applauding what had just happened.

  ‘That was cracker,’ he said to Oz, who looked anything but pleased. ‘I’m impressed, like.’

  ‘Why don’t you take your freaks and go?’ Oz suggested quietly, the prelude to a storm.

  Above their heads, the dreary sky dissipated into its former blue, though threads of darkness still dashed the air. The sound of birds slapped their ears. Itzy hadn’t even realised it had been missing until it returned.

  She got to her feet and dragged herself over to the others. The crop pattern had been decimated, a large clearing of smashed cornstalk now crunching under her feet. She spotted Devon pressed against the maize, her hair unravelling around her face. Itzy moved into position next to Seth, who pounced on her with his gaze.

  ‘Are you alright?’ he demanded.

  He looked stricken by what he saw. Itzy was coated in red gashes up and down her arms and legs. Her clothing was torn and an assortment of leaves, branches and dirt were tangled in her jet hair.

  ‘I - I don’t know,’ Itzy said.

  She was worried she might start crying in front of all of them. Because aside from the physical damage, she found she was shaking inside, and she thought she was probably in a state of shock.

  She felt Aidan’s eyes on her and she dared to meet them. Incredibly, he looked like he was the one who had just been brutally ravaged. She saw her pain mirrored in his face, as if they were the same in some way.

  But more than that, she recognised the expression coming over him. It was pure, unadulterated hate. She had seen it so many times on her father, and she had felt it so many times in herself.

  All at once, Aidan’s hand met the face of the boy beside him, knocking him to the ground.

  ‘What was that for?’ the boy yelped.

  Aidan’s eyes flashed dreadfully. ‘Who told ye to take it so far?’

  The boy kept his mouth shut. His hair covered his eyes, which made it hard to tell what he was thinking, but his face turned to the girl. He might have been asking her for help, but she ignored him. Her attention was fixed on Aidan as if he were some god dropped down from heaven and she were one of his disciples.

  ‘Aidan,’ the girl said. She sounded shocked, like she wasn’t used to seeing him this way.

  The sound of his name seemed to jolt him back into the moment. He looked around at his audience like he had gone somewhere in his head and only now remembered where his body was. Itzy recognised it; it was just like when she fell out of one of her trances. That was how she knew:

  They were all Descendants too.

  Aidan closed his eyes and breathed deeply, as if centring himself. When his eyes reopened, his face moulded into apology.

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to get so out of hand, like,’ he told Oz. ‘She,’ he indicated Itzy, ‘wasn’t meant to get hurt, she wasn
’t.’ He said this so softly, she believed him.

  Besides, despite everything that had just happened, she knew him - like Sleeping Beauty, she had walked with him once upon a dream. She had no idea what it meant, but she felt drawn under his spell, unable to doubt him.

  But she sensed Seth and Oz weren’t as easily placated.

  There was a noise to the side, and they turned to see the skeletons dissembling and dropping into the cavern, which was closing in on itself. Itzy turned back to her friends and saw Oz’s eyes smouldering with concentration. The ground sealed itself, the scar disappearing. The cornstalks returned to their original standing positions, and there was no longer any sign that anything had happened, other than the clearing he had left for them to stand in.

  Devon rushed out of her hiding place and stood just behind Itzy, lacing her fingers through Itzy’s.

  ‘It was meant to be a test,’ Aidan explained. ‘We heard yousuns talking about that wee Energy Sensor.’ He pointed at it.

  Oz looked down at the tablet in his hand like he’d forgotten he was holding it. ‘You know what this is?’ he asked the strange boy.

  Aidan smiled like he was privy to some secret he wasn’t sure he should share. ‘Of course I do. Though I don’t think you really do. Still…cracking moves.’

  ‘What does he mean?’ Itzy wanted to know. ‘Oz, what’s he talking about?’

  Oz ignored her. ‘So you’ve had your fun, now go.’

  Aidan looked at him with incredulity. ‘Are ye geggin’? After what just happened? I’m not going anywhere. We have something in common.’ He pointed from Oz’s chest to his own.

  Seth’s brow went up. ‘Hey, I know you,’ he said. He wagged his finger in Aidan’s direction. ‘Yeah, I saw you at the funeral.’

  Devon and Itzy’s eyes widened. ‘You were at my father’s funeral?’ Itzy asked.

  Aidan cocked his head to the side and studied her with new - and troubled - interest. He pursed his lips. ‘You would be Stephen Loveguard’s daughter, wouldn’t you?’ he realised with surprise. ‘And you,’ he turned to Oz, ‘are his son. That explains a lot, it does.’ He looked up at the sky and laughed, before facing them again. ‘I should have known. Who else but Osiris could drag the dead out of the ground,’ he joked, his hazy eyes on Oz.

  Itzy exhaled. ‘You did that?’ she said to her brother.

  Aidan’s eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘He didn’t tell ye what he could do?’

  ‘Don’t answer his jibes,’ Oz ordered without looking at his sister. His skin was bloodless as he stared at Aidan now. Itzy wondered if it was because of the news that this strange boy had known their father.

  Aidan sighed, his chiselled face drawn with regret. ‘They wouldn’t be jibes. Ach, but I can see yer not going to listen to anything I have to say - and I guess I can’t be blaming yous for that.’ He shot a hostile look in Verdi’s direction, out of the sides of his eyes. ‘I wish things hadn’t happened like they did. I’d rather we were friends, like.’

  The way he said this reminded Itzy of everything she had ever thought of Oz. But then, she wondered why it meant so much to him. Who was he?

  Oz crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I think you’ll agree it’s too late for that,’ he said in a cold voice that was disturbingly calm.

  Aidan looked frightfully sad, as if this wasn’t the response he’d been hoping for. ‘A wojus shame,’ he noted with sincerity. He spun on his heel and flicked his hands. ‘Melody. Verdi. C’mere.’

  They began moving away, when Aidan twisted his head over his shoulder and caught Itzy staring after him. Their eyes locked a long time. Inexplicably, she felt the urge to run to him. Her heart screamed at her not to let him go. At all costs, she had to know this boy. She just didn’t know why.

  But before she could bring herself to move, he turned back around and his trio disappeared into the corn.

  Seth let out the breath he’d been holding. It came out as a whistle. He leaned forward, his palms pressed to his thighs. Beside him, Oz still stared in the direction Aidan had left.

  ‘What happened?’ Devon broke the silence. Her words came out like a cry.

  ‘I think,’ said Seth, righting himself, ‘we just got served.’

  AIDAN

  FOURTEEN

  ‘You didn’t have to hit me,’ Verdi complained when they were back in the Jag Aidan had borrowed from his father’s garage and forgotten to return.

  ‘Is yer head cut? What would ye have had me do, then?’ Aidan shot over his shoulder, to where Verdi sat in the backseat. He never rode passenger side; that was reserved for Melody.

  Verdi didn’t seem to catch Aidan’s meaning and he continued to grumble. ‘What’s the big deal? It was an honest mistake. I thought she’d fight back.’

  Melody rolled her eyes at her sixteen-year-old brother. ‘You idiot, anyone could see she couldn’t do it.’

  ‘But -’ Verdi shut his mouth, catching Aidan’s hard expression in the rear-view mirror. Then, quietly, he said, ‘We thought she would, right?’

  ‘Aye,’ Aidan acknowledged. ‘But ye saw how scared she was. She didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Do you think she’s powerless?’ Melody wondered. She turned her ponderous eyes on her boyfriend.

  She was pretty, in a generic sort of way. Her hair was bleached white with black streaks, though pale brown showed at the roots. She regularly teased it, swept it over to the side and locked it down with half a can of extra-strength hairspray, giving the illusion that she had more hair than she did. It fell well past her breasts, which was a good thing because she tended to wear minimalistic efforts at clothing that barely covered her. And she had plenty to cover.

  ‘Not likely,’ Aidan said. His hands clenched the steering wheel. ‘Ya saw what her brother could do.’

  ‘So did she,’ Melody recalled. ‘Maybe she doesn’t know her own strength, yet.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He didn’t look at her. His eyes were on the road, which had started to look less countryside and more tarmac. An abuse of billboard advertisements appeared and other cars rushed beside theirs, but couldn’t keep up. Aidan had a penchant for speeding. Not for the first time, Melody wondered how he’d not been caught.

  ‘You were worried about her, weren’t you?’ Melody noticed. ‘That’s why you lost it with Verdi.’

  She knew this had to be true, because while Melody was prone to what they had come to think of as the splitting, falling into embarrassing fits of anger and tears when everyone least expected it, Aidan was more controlled. He had worked hard to achieve a sense of inner peace, and when sometimes the world got to be too much for him, he removed himself from the situation and took off.

  It drove Melody crazy, not knowing where he’d gone or when he would be back, but at least it meant he was always calm, always as steely as the colour of his eyes. It took a lot to make Aidan lose his cool.

  But he had lost it in the field.

  When Aidan didn’t respond to Melody’s question, she placed one of her manicured hands on his shoulder. ‘Hey, I’m not jealous. It’s kind of sexy.’

  He shrugged her off with irritable violence and she slumped in her seat, her lips in a pout. She wished she could see into Aidan’s head and figure him out. He was so difficult to read. She remembered how much that used to excite her, when she’d first met him.

  Back then, he had lived with his adoptive parents in a white stone manor house up in Carrickfergus, overlooking the crashing waves of the Irish Sea. He wore designer clothing and an attitude that suggested he was better than the clothes, the house, the rich parents. Melody’s father ran his own company making something technological she’d never bothered to understand. He took the family up north from London on a business trip and they spent an afternoon at Aidan’s house.

  One afternoon was all it had taken. Melody had found herself entangled with Aidan in a compromising situatio
n in the greenhouse that sat imposingly at the end of the vast back garden, which looked more like a park. Aidan had left her breathless and confused, her head swirling and her heart pounding with emotions she’d never experienced before.

  After her family returned home, Melody had spent days, weeks waiting for Aidan to ring. Just when she was about to give up hope, he did. Just one phone call, to say he would be visiting London and wanted to see her. They met in Regent’s Park. That was when he told her he was adopted - that his parents didn’t know who he really was and what he was capable of.

  ‘Show me what ye can do,’ he’d whispered. And she had. She had closed her eyes and let the music pour out of her. She felt it flow from her heart, a gushing in her chest, heat tingling through her extremities. This is how I’ll make him love me, she thought.

  But when she opened her eyes, Aidan looked unstirred. Except there was something different about his expression, something akin to being impressed.

  ‘That was beautiful,’ he told her. It was the closest he’d ever come to saying she was beautiful, but she took it.

  ‘My brother has it, too,’ she spilled the family secrets. ‘Our parents don’t know. We haven’t told anyone.’

  ‘And what can he do?’ Aidan asked.

  ‘He controls the plants.’

  Aidan nodded. She waited for him to tell her he had a gift, too, but he said nothing. Then she felt her throat constrict - not painfully, but enough to make her gasp and claw the air. It released as suddenly as it came on - and then it rained. No, it poured, buckets of water dropping on their heads. Then the water froze - then it steamed - it sizzled away - and the air returned to normal. But not Melody. She sat in shock.

  ‘I,’ Aidan told her, ‘can change the chemical composition of things.’

  She blinked. ‘Things?’

  ‘Anything,’ he clarified. ‘If I wanted, I could turn yer skin to water. I could replace yer blood with gold, like, and let it solidify in yer veins. I could fill the atmosphere with fire and burn the Earth away. If ye were walking across a frozen pond, I could unfreeze it and let ye drop away to drown. Or I could cure global warming. If I wanted to,’ he added.

  Melody touched her fingers to her throat, remembering the sensation of the air turning foul and killing her lungs. She believed every word he said: he could absolutely do all those things. If he wanted to.

  ‘But you don’t,’ she dared to say.

  Aidan shrugged, but his face filled with a smile brilliant enough to outshine the sun. There was something childish about it that made Melody cast all doubts out of her mind.

  ‘It’s a good thing that kind of power isn’t in the hands of someone really dangerous,’ she had said at the time. And when, a year later, Aidan had notified her that he would be coming down to London to live with her, she let him. Because what could you say to someone who could strangle you just by blinking - if he wanted to.

  But it was more than that, because Melody had decided she was in love with him. She had already allowed herself to get carried away with ideas that they might get married one day. The trouble was now that they had been living together for almost two months, the fantasy image of life she’d built up in her head for them to share had burst like a balloon.

  She had no idea what Aidan really thought of her. She knew facts and figures about him, but not a lot about how he felt about things. Sometimes she wondered if Aidan felt as strongly about her as she did about him. She doubted it. There had been something there, when everything had been conducted at a distance. But perhaps it didn’t work on a daily basis.

  The other problem was Verdi, who was at that awkward teenage stage and had a tendency to blow up at their parents, storm out of the house and crash at Melody’s. His XBOX had taken up permanent residence in her flat in Enfield. She could tell Verdi got on Aidan’s nerves. He lacked commonsense, and sometimes it got him into trouble. That was what had happened in the cornfield.

  Secretly, Melody felt a little sorry for her brother. It was obvious he looked up to Aidan and was trying to impress him, but he never seemed to pull it off.

  And he had gone too far with that girl today.