Different (Tainted Elements Book 1)

by Alycia Linwood

  “We don’t have time for this.” He kept stuffing things in the bag. Noah materialized next to Jaiden, who handed him the bag. “We have another safe place near here, but only for our things,” Jaiden said as Noah vanished with the bag.

  “I can help you.” I took hold of another bag and crouched next to Jaiden. “Then we’ll have just enough time for you to explain how you know about Elemontera.”

  “You really won’t give up, will you?” His dark eyes met mine. “Can’t you trust me like everyone else?”

  “Doesn’t matter if I trust you or not. I only want to know if there’s an effective way to know when Elemontera is near. Maybe you don’t want to share your secrets with the rest of us, but this could be important. Or do you want everyone to depend on you for everything?” If he hadn’t come to warn us, Noah and I would have no idea we were in danger.

  He snorted, shaking his head, and patted the pocket of his jeans. Curling his hand into a fist, he took out something, but I couldn’t see what. When he opened his palm, a round metallic device sparkled in the light. A blue dot flashed on the tiny screen, but blue turned very quickly into green. “One minute,” he sighed.

  “What is that?” I reached for the device, but he moved it away from me.

  “I stole it from Elemontera. It’s one of their untraceable devices that tells them a position of a particular agent. They don’t know I took it or they would have deactivated it.”

  “So it sends a signal if the agent is near?” My brow furrowed. “I don’t get it. Wouldn’t the device react whenever you passed near the agent, no matter where he was going? Maybe they aren’t coming here.”

  Jaiden let out an exaggerated sigh, clenching his jaw. “Not exactly. The device goes off when the agent is sent on a mission. It doesn’t actually track the agent himself, but the info that the computer in Elemontera’s headquarters sends out. Devices like these alert other agents...” He bit his lip and closed the cabinet.

  “Alert them about what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really?” I rolled my eyes. Why would other agents have a device that could track another agent? If the device could track only one person, they’d need a bunch of devices. I couldn’t see any indication of who the device was tracking, so how would they know? It seemed pointless, unless... “The device is tracking someone important, isn’t it?”

  Jaiden remained silent.

  Noah burst through the door. “Are we ready?”

  “Yeah.” Jaiden glanced at the device, which now had a red dot on it.

  “No,” I said, snatching the device out of Jaiden’s hand.

  “Hey!” Jaiden yelled. I inspected the device, but the dot was no longer glowing. The device seemed to be turned off. “Give it back.” He used his air to get it back, but I moved it out of reach.

  “We don’t have time for this. Moira, please.” Noah jumped from foot to foot. “We have to go.”

  I looked at Jaiden. “Elemontera has a leader, doesn’t it?” I raised the device. “This device receives alerts when the leader is on the way, right? So they could protect him? Is that why you think they’re coming here and not just passing by? Because the leader only participates in important missions?”

  “Something like that.” Jaiden ground his teeth together. “I’ll explain later. Just give me the device and let’s go.”

  “What if they realized you have it? What if they’re using it to track us? How long have you used this place and no one has found you? If the leader is coming, then they are pretty sure you’re here.” It would be stupid to take the device with us if that was how Elemontera was tracking Jaiden.

  He blinked, a frown creasing his brow. “They don’t track the devices because if they did, someone else could track them too. The device is made to receive the signal from a special network, but it doesn’t send anything back or acknowledge in any way that it has received the signal.”

  “But if someone wanted to get to you bad enough, could they figure out a way to track the device? You haven’t been in Elemontera for a long time. They could have changed the whole system.” I didn’t quite believe anything was completely untraceable. Maybe hard to detect and find, but not impossible.

  Jaiden swore. “You’re right.” Opening the window, he hurled the device through it, giving it a strong push with his air. “Let’s get out of here.”

  That was finally something I could agree with. The screeching of tires from the street told us that Elemontera was here.

  Noah turned into air, the shimmering cloud flying toward the window. “Come on!”

  Jaiden offered me his hand and I took it. The shimmering surrounded us both, but we didn’t turn into air. His face paled as he looked down at his hands. “No,” he whispered.

  “What’s wrong?” I could hear the door crashing somewhere. It was only a couple of moments until the agents got here. “Jaiden?” My heart did a nervous flip in my chest.

  “I don’t have enough energy to turn us both into air. The pill must have weakened me.” It was a surprise the pill hadn’t killed him, but we were out of time. He grabbed my hand and we started running. The thudding of boots echoed from the floors below us and Jaiden shoved me toward the stairs that led to the roof.

  I ran as fast I could and threw all of my weight against the roof door. Jaiden shut the door behind us and I used my air to push an old cabinet to block it. We crouched behind the wall and I hoped Jaiden would get his strength back soon. Letting the warmth fill my body, I created five walls of fire and hoped it would take Elemontera some time to break through them. The only problem was that I didn’t know for how long I could keep the walls up.

  “Now would be a good time to tell me your strength came back.” I gave him a hopeful look, but he shook his head.

  “Turning another person into air requires more energy than simple flying.”

  Yet he could have done it drunk yesterday. I shouldn’t have let Noah give him that damn pill. The door rattled as someone slammed against it. The agents would be here in a second. “You should go.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall. He could fly alone. He just couldn’t do it with me. Why risk both of our lives when he could save himself?

  “What? No,” he said determinedly. “They came for me. Not for you.”

  I was about to argue that he should go because Elemontera had him in their system and escaping for the second time would be impossible. Hell, the agents had protection against his mind control and they could block his powers if they caught him. “How about you just fly around alone and force them to go after you? They might simply leave and you can escape them.”

  “If I do that, I might not be able to come back for you. They’ll scour the whole building and look into every corner just to make sure there isn’t anything or anyone I left behind. You don’t want them to use you to get to me. Trust me.” A shadow passed through his troubled gaze. I could feel the exact moment one of my walls was hit with other elements and brought down. Shouting broke through the silence until everything went quiet.

  “I know you’re here, Jaiden. Come out and whoever you’re trying to protect won’t be harmed. You have my word,” a deep male voice said. Another one of my walls was destroyed and I blindly sent fireballs all over the roof. I doubted any of my fireballs had hit someone. The agents who were after Jaiden were most likely too powerful for me.

  Beads of sweat appeared on Jaiden’s forehead and he took a shaky breath. A couple of moments later, gunshots pierced the air and something whizzed not far from us. My fire should have been strong enough to stop bullets, but these looked more like tiny vials than regular bullets.

  “You need to use two elements to stop those,” he whispered. The agents were coming closer, so I focused on my elements until my hand was glowing with blue fire. I let go of the fire and formed a blue wall, which was the only thing stopping the agents from coming around the corner and finding us.

  Jaiden crawled closer to me and leaned in, his lips brushing my ear. “Yo
u can’t hold them off forever, but I need more time. Keep the wall up and I’ll go talk to them. When I tell you to get up, do it.” He got to his feet right in front of the wall, in full view of Elemontera’s agents, his hands raised up.

  “Ah, there you are,” the man sounded bored. The shooting stopped, but I kept my wall up. “Why doesn’t your friend lower the wall so we can talk like civilized people?”

  “Why don’t your men drop their weapons and leave us alone?”

  The man laughed. “I don’t see a good reason to do that. You, on the other hand, are still here, so I assume you and your friend have a problem.”

  Jaiden took a step back and glanced at me. A shimmering thread shot out of his body and brought a wave of pain into my head. What the hell was he doing? I took a deep breath and decided not to fight him. My air and fire surged out, my arms and legs getting consumed by blue fire. As I looked down at myself, I could see that I had turned into blue fire, which was trying to stay in the shape of my body. The pain in my mind forced me to get to my feet.

  The wall of fire was long gone and, before I could see Elemontera’s agents, Jaiden turned around and rushed at me, somehow managing to take my hand with his own fiery hand. A couple of strange bullets hit me, but I couldn’t feel anything after the impact. As we raced to the other side of the roof, followed by the agents, my legs started to turn back to normal. Jaiden better have a good plan or we were screwed. My fire was completely gone, but, luckily, the agents’ aim wasn’t as accurate as it had been when we weren’t moving.

  “Don’t look back! You don’t want them to see your face,” Jaiden yelled as we neared the edge of the roof.

  “Please tell me you have your energy back.” I hoped he hadn’t wasted it on mind-controlling me and turning his hand into fire.

  “We’ll have to jump.”

  “What?” We didn’t have anywhere to jump. The nearest building was too far away and if we simply jumped off the building, well... We’d be dead. “I don’t want to die!”

  “You won’t. Jump!” Jaiden leaped over the edge, pulling me with him.

  I screamed.

  Chapter 27

  My stomach felt as if it were turning inside out. Air whooshed past my ears, the ground coming closer and closer. My throat was getting raw from screaming. I tried to push my elements out of me, but it didn’t work. The only thing I could do was close my eyes.

  My body crashed against something and bounced back into the air. Was I dead? I cracked my eyes open just in time to see a rooftop getting dangerously close. The air around me pulsed and shimmered as Jaiden materialized, and my body was becoming visible again too. Maybe we weren’t dead after all. But as the shimmering disappeared, we tumbled to the hard ground of the rooftop.

  Jaiden gasped as his back collided with the stone, his arms still tightly wrapped around me. I scraped my arms and legs as we rolled over a couple of times until we came to a stop in the middle of the roof. My face was pressed against Jaiden’s chest and I was lying on top of him. As I lifted my head to look at him, my hair fell over my eyes in a messy heap.

  “Are you okay?” I said, trying to push myself up, but my muscles wouldn’t cooperate.

  “Yeah,” he breathed, reaching up with his hand and tucking my hair behind my ear. His dark eyes bored into mine, his lips spreading into a smile. “Are you?”

  “Totally,” I nodded. “My muscles don’t quite work yet, but...”

  We burst out laughing. A cloud of shimmering air caught my attention, and I watched it descend not far from us. The air shifted and Noah’s face came into view.

  “Thank God you’re alive,” he said, swaying slightly on his feet. “I thought I would have to scrape you off the street. It would be harder than getting Ashley’s burnt pancakes off the pan.” Placing his arms around me, he helped me to my feet. My knees almost buckled, but I managed to stay up. Noah knelt next to Jaiden who winced. Blood was smeared on Jaiden’s shirt, his jeans ripped in a couple of places and stained with red.

  “Can you move?” Noah inspected the gash on Jaiden’s arm. “You didn’t really go far. Elemontera could be here soon.”

  “It was the best I could do.” Jaiden gritted his teeth and scrambled to his feet with Noah’s help.

  My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh my God.” The back of Jaiden’s shirt was completely shredded and drenched in blood.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We reached the ferry just in time. No Elemontera agents in sight. Noah had given Jaiden his jacket so no one would see the state of Jaiden’s shirt and back. The scratches on my arms were not that deep and weren’t bleeding anymore. My whole body ached as if someone had thrown me down from the sky. Oh wait, that had actually happened.

  “Take my hand,” Jaiden said, and I did what he asked. Once we were all invisible, we boarded on the ferry and waited for the control to pass. They wouldn’t have let us on the island if we didn’t have a reason to go there and unannounced visits to magic disease carriers weren’t allowed. The good thing about so much control was that Elemontera’s agents couldn’t get on board so easily. We’d made sure no one suspicious was following us.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief when my feet touched the ground again. Who would have thought I’d be happy to be back on the island? Bailey and Sam waited for us at the docks, their faces brightening up when they saw us. After we made sure no one was nearby to see us, we got into the old car that Bailey had stolen from a deceased carrier. We couldn’t risk leaving tracks that led to our hiding place, so we left the car hidden in the other part of the woods, which meant another hour of walking.

  I thought I would pass out as we all stumbled into the main room. Ashley and Marissa hurried to help us, worry evident on their faces. Marissa dabbed a gauze over the scratches on my arms, making me hiss in pain.

  “Sorry,” she said, pouring more alcohol on the gauze.

  I waved my hand. “I know. It’s okay. Where’s Kenna?” I couldn’t see her anywhere and I hoped she hadn’t gone off somewhere on her own.

  “She’s in her room. Hasn’t really come out ever since she got back.” Marissa shook her head, tossing her red curls over her shoulder. “She’s either crying, breaking things or cursing Jaiden.”

  Gathering my strength, I pushed myself off the couch I’d been sitting on. “I have to talk to her.”

  “Whoa, we’re not done here.” Marissa stepped back, a concerned look on her face, the gauze still raised in her hand. “And I really think you should postpone whatever you have to tell her for a month or two. You know, until she calms down. Ashley tried to help her and Kenna basically created a wave to get her out of the room.”

  I pursed my lips. Kenna wouldn’t be pleased to see me, but she’d want to hear what I had to say about her brother. “Thanks for the heads up. I’ll remember to keep my air shield on.”

  Marissa shook her head. “Are you sure whatever you have to tell her can’t wait? You might not know how it feels to be separated from your family for a long time, but I do.” Her eyes pooled with tears.

  I placed my hand on her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze.

  “It feels like a part of you is missing and whenever you close your eyes, you see their faces, their smiles...” She swallowed hard. “And you know you can never go see them again.”

  I pulled her into a hug, caressing her hair. I wanted to tell her that she’d see her family again, but I couldn’t lie to her. We didn’t know what our future would bring. Placing my hand on her cheek, I met her gray eyes. “I’ll do anything I can to take Elemontera down.” At least that was a promise I could keep.

  She wiped away the tears with the sleeve of her green shirt. “Do you think we could do something to Elemontera?” Her face lit up with hope. “I thought you’d get scared after they almost got you.”

  “Well, even if we do nothing, they’ll still come after us.”

  “I guess you’re right. But we need a plan or something.” She bit dow
n on her lip.

  “We’ll think about it.” I offered her a small smile. One of my plans was to get Noah and Jaiden to tell me everything they knew about Elemenotera, and I meant everything. No lies. No secrets. They’d been holding back on me and I was sure they knew more, especially Jaiden. I just had to figure out the best way to get it all out of them.

  Chapter 28

  “Kenna?” I knocked softly on the door of her room, bracing myself for an air or water attack just in case she wasn’t feeling chatty. No one answered, so I knocked again, louder this time. “Kenna, I’ve seen your brother. He’s fine.”

  Kenna’s air pulled the door open with a whoosh. She stalked toward me, her eyes narrowed. “If you are lying, I’m going to choke you to death. Got it?”

  “I’m not lying. Pull back your element and we’ll talk.” I could see the shimmering around her body.

  “My element?” Her brows furrowed. “I’m not...”

  “I can see it around you. Kind of looks like you’re surrounded by a bunch of floating, shiny particles.” If I wasn’t wrong, I was getting better at spotting the elements of those like me. “I guess you’re emotional, so your element is out of control a little.”

  “I don’t care. What do you know about my brother?” She crossed her arms, her face inches away from mine.

  “I saw him from afar when he was on one of Elemontera’s missions.” I didn’t want to tell her that I’d been the one to set Elemontera in motion. “Heard him talk about you.”

  Her mouth went slack and she stepped back. “Are you sure it was him?”

  I nodded. “He was talking about his sister and the guy with him called him Nick.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. “Is he okay? Is he...?”

  “He’s fine, but...”