I opened my eyes and saw the shadow teens for what they really had become. It threatened to bring a curtain of intense sadness down on my joyous mood.
There were luminous threads of Lucent Energy that came from every living thing. Every living thing except for the shadow teens.
They had lost their souls.
I wasn’t sure if once you were separated from your soul you could ever get it back. Were all of the ones who had been taken over completely by the shadows doomed to live a soulless life? At that moment I got the full hit of how grave our situation had become.
If the plague of soullessness spread, we would eventually live on a planet devoid of Lucent Energy. We would live on a planet without a soul.
They’re lost. But you can show the rest the true power of Lucent Energy.
As the shadow teens continued their chant, they slowly started to advance on us all at once. Maybe they figured if they all attacked at the same time, I couldn’t hold them off. I waited until they were all about a foot away from our perimeter before I let loose.
I’d been drawing in Lucent Energy and collecting it in my body. I released it all at once and sent a 360-degree torrent of Lucent Energy out of me.
I could see the white heat leave my fingertips and body. The luminous energy hit the shadow people and sent them flying backwards about five to ten feet. I heard them land hard on the ground.
“How’d you do that?” asked Greta. I could hear the shock in her voice.
She didn’t think I had it in me. Then why’d she ask me to help her?
“It wasn’t me, really. It’s the power of Lucent Energy.”
“What’s going on here?” It was Vice Principal Spaulding. His aura was full of black spots. It wouldn’t be long before he turned. Course, I’m not sure, but his aura may have been riddled with black spots before Ciardha’s Dark Energy got released into our world. I couldn’t see auras back then, but he’d always been a crap weasel of a guy who seemed to relish his role as the heavy in our school. As he worked his way through the crowd, the shadow people got up and shook off the smack down I’d handed them.
“Are you fighting? Who started this?”
Before I could say anything, the shadow dudes pointed at me and were all talking at once. They told Spaulding that I’d started it.
“They’re lying. I didn’t start this. They did. They attacked Greta and me. I was just defending myself.”
Spaulding came over to me and tried his best to look fierce even though I had him by at least two inches. It’s hard to intimidate someone when you have to look up at them.
“Adams. I always knew you were trouble. You come with me. Now. And the rest of you, get to class.”
I followed Spaulding to his office while the crowd dispersed. I’d hoped to be able to talk to some of the still-Lucent people that I’d spotted in the small crowd before we had to go to class. I’d missed my opportunity, thanks to Spaulding.
As I walked down the hallway with Spaulding, I tried to catch sight of Greta and give her some signal that we needed to talk. But when I saw her, she glared at me and walked away quickly.
What’s that about?
My alliance with Greta was fragile. I couldn’t see how I’d done anything that would make her mad at me. I mean, I’d just saved her bacon – again. And she’d wanted a demonstration to the Lucent people in our school of my power, and she got it. So why is she mad at me?
Spaulding took full advantage of his captive audience of one and chewed my ass out for close to thirty minutes. Finally, he lost steam and sent me to class but ordered me to detention for a week, starting the next day.
Like detention was a punishment. The way I saw it, it was just a place to do my homework surrounded by other people rather than alone in my house, waiting for my dad to get home, scared that any minute someone was going to bust down my door to try to take our stuff or take me.
Greta and I didn’t have any of the same classes, so I hadn’t seen her all day. But I decided to go to her car anyway and hoped that she wasn’t still mad at me for whatever offense she thought I’d committed. As I approached her car, I saw her standing by the door on the driver’s side. She glared at me as I walked up.
“What the hell, Greta? Why are you mad at me?”
“Get in,” she barked.
Once inside, she laid into me. “Dammit, Adams, nice going!”
“What?”
“You got detention, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, a week.”
“A week? Shit!”
“So what? It’s detention. Are you pissed that it will soil your reputation to be seen with a person who gets detention?”
“No, twit. If you have detention, you can’t train people after school, now can you?”
“Crap.”
“Yes, crap.”
I hadn’t thought about that.
“Not a big issue. We don’t have anyone to train yet. And you can meet Jake. He clearly still hates my guts, so it’s probably best if you see him alone anyway.”
“Did you know that about a half-dozen people hunted me down today to ask me if you could help them?”
“No. How would I know that?”
“Rhetorical question. Don’t be an ass.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That’s what you wanted.”
“Yeah, but it does us no good if you’re stuck in detention.”
“It’s just for a week. Let everyone know we’ll start next week.”
“We may not have a week.”
Greta was right. In a week’s time, those few people that were still fully Lucent could be pockmarked with Dark Energy. And ones who had smudges in their aura might be completely turned.
“We can meet today. We’ll get people started. You can meet with them the rest of this week, and I’ll be back this weekend.”
Greta didn’t agree, but she didn’t disagree either.
“Come on, don’t be pissed. It’ll work out.”
“It better.”
She didn’t talk to me for the rest of the trip to our meeting place, an abandoned storefront in a strip mall. Greta’s dad was a real estate investor guy. He had his hand in just about every large commercial project around town. Probably had made a small fortune from it. But businesses were closing left and right. Greta didn’t talk about it, but I figured maybe it had become rough for her dad.
But the upside, for us anyway, was that he owned this strip mall, and there was a vacant store, perfect for us to meet. The front was boarded up, but there was a back entrance.
Greta parked in the rear parking lot, punched a code on the keypad by the back door, unlocked the door and let us in. The space was a long, narrow room with industrial carpet and nasty fluorescent lights overhead. Quite a few of the fluorescents were burnt out so the place had a dark, dingy feel to it. There was a small bathroom in the back and a tiny office that had two chairs in it.
It was dim and cold and perfect.
After she gave me the grand tour (which took all of about a minute), we stood in the middle of the large, empty space.
“Now what?” I asked.
“We wait.”
Greta sat on the floor with her legs crossed and pulled a textbook and notebook out of her bag.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing? Homework.”
“Why do you bother with that? The teachers don’t even care anymore.”
“It’s AP calculus, and I care.”
For about a nanosecond I thought about doing some homework myself, but my motivation for it waned before I could even reach for my bag. Since Jake had shunned me, I realized that he was probably the only reason I’d done homework in the past. It had been a daily routine. Jake, Fanny and I together to study. Fanny and I would start a conversation about some asinine topic, and Jake would get angry about our lack of focus. We’d get back to it for a while, then get distracted and start talking again. It probably took us three hours to do an hour�
�s worth of work. But I’d get it done, thanks to Jake’s help. I’m not stupid, just lazy.
Fifteen minutes. Greta had her head buried in a textbook filled with numbers and equations. I leaned back on my extended arms and counted holes in the ceiling tiles. See, lazy. I could have been engaged in history homework but chose instead to be even more bored out of my skull by counting holes in the ceiling.
Twenty minutes.
I was about ready to demand that we pack it in for the day when we heard someone knock on the back door. Greta raised her head from her book and looked at me as if she wasn’t sure she’d really heard what she just heard.
“Was that …?
“Someone’s at the door,” I said. Greta shoved the books back into her bag and ran to the back door. I followed behind her.
Greta stood at the door and said, “Code word?”
Code word?
“I didn’t know we had a code word,” I whispered.
“Sorry, I had to make one up today so I’d be able to tell if it was someone I’d invited.”
I heard a small voice say, “Starfish.”
“Starfish? What the hell?”
“I like starfish, okay.”
Greta punched the key code into the pad beside the door to disarm the alarm, then swung the door open.
Standing just outside the door was a slight girl that looked like she was twelve. She had mousy brown hair that hung in greasy strips to her shoulders and large, roundish thick glasses that obstructed her eyes.
She was overly thin and overly short and overly not what I hoped for in the formation of a band of warriors for Lucent Energy. I let a long, slow breath of impatience escape.
“Come in before someone sees us,” Greta said. She gently pulled the girl by the arm, and the three of us walked back toward the center of the room.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Megan,” she replied in a quiet voice. Where does she think she is, the library?
“Welcome, Megan,” I said. I could see why Greta had asked her to come. She may have been small and timid and reeked of lack of self-confidence, but her aura was clear of smudges. It wasn’t overly bright, but it was at least free of darkness.
As we welcomed Megan, I heard another knock on the door. Greta went to the door, did the code word thing again, and came back with two more people, a guy and a girl. He was fairly tall, at least as tall as me, and she was of average height. His name was Tanner, and she was Ashley. They were both juniors, and we learned that Megan was a freshman. And all of their auras were clear.
As we chatted and got to know each other a bit, more people knocked at the door. By 4:00, we had a group of eight plus Greta and me. Mostly they were teenagers from our school. But Greta had found a few adults to drag into our fold as well. There was John, a minister at a local Methodist church, who was losing his flock and had turned to us as his last resort. And there was Julie, a paralegal at a small law office and mom to two kids. She wanted to learn how to defend herself and protect her children.
Once we were fairly certain that no one else was going to show up that day, Greta asked everyone to take a seat while we explained what was up.
“I’ve invited you all here because you are a special group of people,” Greta said. She spoke in her least bitchy most politician-like voice. By the end of her first sentence, all eyes were on her and rapt with attention.
Damn, she’s good.
“You’re an elite group. Rare. You are all still of the light.”
Everyone looked around, checking each other out, trying their best to gauge for themselves whether what Greta said was true or not.
“How do you know?” asked John.
Greta hesitated to answer. We’d decided it was best to keep it to ourselves that we could see auras. It felt like a secret that we needed to keep, for strategic reasons.
“Because of your eyes,” I said. “The ones who have turned dark – their eyes are totally black. Have you noticed?”
Some nodded, but Julie said, “I haven’t looked anyone in the eyes for a long time.”
“Just ’cause their eyes aren’t black, doesn’t mean they’re not shadow people,” said Ashley.
“Yeah, there’s plenty of kids at school that will steal from you or punch you for the fun of it who don’t have those creepy black eyes,” said Tanner.
True enough. They were smart to be skeptical. Smart not to trust too much right off the bat. I didn’t wholly trust them either. That’s why I didn’t want to reveal too much too soon. But I also didn’t see how I was going to gain their trust without divulging something that would inspire them.
I had on my usual sweatshirt, cargo pants and sneakers. I peeled off the sweatshirt under which I wore my ubiquitous black tank top. The torc was revealed for all of them to see.
“What’s that? Around your arm?” asked Megan.
“It’s called a torc. It’s an ancient Celtic armlet, made of solid gold. But what’s important for you to know about this particular torc is that it’s magical.”
Megan’s eyes were wide with wonder. But the rest of the small band of would-be warriors was already too cynical to believe it. Despite what some of them had witnessed at school earlier that day, a magical armband was too much to swallow.
“This torc was forged by faerie hands many thousands of years ago. It was wound around the arm of the first High Priestess of the Order of Brighid and has been on the arm of every High Priestess since. My ancestor, Saorla, lived over a thousand years ago, and she was, sadly, the last High Priestess of the order.”
“So how’d you get it?” asked Ashley.
“It’s a long story. But even though I’m not yet a High Priestess, it was entrusted to me three years ago. This torc gives me abilities that I wouldn’t otherwise have.”
“Abilities? Like magical powers or something?” asked Tanner. His voice was full of incredulity.
“Yes, exactly like magical powers and something.”
“That’s how you whipped the ass of those shadow people this morning?” asked Ashley.
“Yep. I have some natural abilities. Like reading minds and telekinesis. But the torc … it’s like it allows me to channel the energies around me and use them.”
“Give me one of those, and I’ll take out the whole lot of ’em,” said Tanner.
“Sorry. There’s only one.”
“Lemme get this straight,” said Julie. “You’re some magical witch girl with a trinket made by faeries that you claim gives you magical powers? Have I got that right?”
“Yes, that’s what she said,” said Greta.
Julie scoffed. “Okey dokey. I’m outta here.” Julie grabbed her purse, stood up, and began to make her way through the others still sitting on the floor.
“Julie, wait. What if I showed you? What if I proved that I’ve got magic? Would you stay and learn about how to defend yourself – and your kids – from the shadow people?”
She stopped, turned, and looked me in the eye. I’m not sure what she was looking for, but whatever it was, maybe she found it because she didn’t turn and leave.
“Okay, torc girl. Show me this magic of yours.”
I had her attention, and everyone else’s. But what to show them? I could read someone’s mind, but that would only be effective proof for the person whose mind I’d read. I could show them some levitation, but that felt more like a parlor trick than a demonstration of the immense power of Lucent Energy.
“I’ll need a volunteer for this.”
They all just looked at each other. No one offered to be my volunteer.
“Greta, we’ll start with you.”
I looked over at her, and she glared back at me. I wasn’t sure if she’d cooperate or not. She’s the one who got all these people here. I hoped she’d go along for the sake of the mission.
I planted my feet, took in a deep breath, and pulled my hands up over my head and then into prayer position in front of my heart. I shut my eyes and did my best to clo
se out the world. I allowed myself to enter into that place where I ride the stream of energy that flows all around me.
In that room of people who were still mostly Lucent, it was, at first, a bit overwhelming. The Lucent Energy flowed like a white-water river of light. I pulled from that energy stream and gathered it to me, surrounded myself with it, and opened my eyes.
When I did, I could see wide eyes and heard whispers and a few gasps. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see that in the dim light of the room, my aura glowed brightly around me. Can they see it too?
“What’s that?” asked Megan.
“That’s what pure Lucent Energy looks like,” I said. “Now, Greta, it’s time. I want you to come at me with everything you have. Try to throw a punch or kick at me.”
Greta rolled her eyes, but she positioned herself in front of me and came forward with a strong forward kick aimed at my head. I didn’t do a thing but stand there. As soon as Greta’s foot got within about a foot of my head, an invisible force suddenly threw her backward. The huge energy of her own kick ricocheted back at her and was enough to throw her to the ground.
“What the …?” said Julie. “Wait a minute. You two know each other. They planned this out. Who do you think you’re dealing with? A bunch of morons?”
“It’s no trick, Julie. You try.”
“Go ahead,” Greta said as she got up and dusted her butt off. “In fact, you can all take a whack at her if you’d like.”
I think Greta hoped my Lucent armor wouldn’t hold and someone would get a shot in as revenge for her trip to the floor.
“I’ll try,” said Tanner. He stood in front of me, did a little boxing shuffle with his feet, and threw a hard punch toward my gut. But his punch was knocked back at him, and he stumbled backward from the force of it.
“Damn, that’s weird. It’s like you’re hitting an invisible wall or something. Ash, try it.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Oh, come on. Ashley, you gotta do it.”
Ashley didn’t make a move to get up, but Tanner went to her and pulled on her arm to get her up. I felt like a circus freak again. The new carnival ride: Try to Punch Emily. I hoped the demonstration didn’t need to last much longer.
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 50
