Elementals 5: The Hands of Time

by Michelle Madow

  If Kate were here, she would have been in heaven.

  And if we did our job right today, soon Kate would be here, able to see this building and get lost in the seemingly endless books for days.

  A librarian was working at the front desk—a witch, I assumed—and she nodded at Hypatia when she stepped through the portal. The librarian didn’t ask any questions—apparently it wasn’t her job to question the Head Elders. But I was glad to find that besides her, and now us, the library was empty.

  “Where do we start?” I asked, taking in the endless shelves of books.

  “There’s a computer room in the back,” Hypatia said, leading the way across the expansive marble floor. “It was added in the early nineties—of course it’s been updated to keep up with the times—but we keep the room hidden, because computers are such an eyesore in a place as beautiful as this.”

  “Are all the books eBooks now?” Danielle asked. “So we can read them on the computers?”

  “Heavens, no.” Hypatia laughed. “The most recent books are eBooks, yes. But only the ones that are also available to the public. Everything else is kept in its original format—although we do, of course, have copies in a secret library that’s located in a place only known to a few people. The computers contain a catalogue of all the books in the library. You can search the catalogue, and it will tell you where to find the relevant books in the library. There are also laptops that you can bring with you when you research to take notes.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath and entered the computer room, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the massive amount of material we had to search through. “I guess that searching for ‘apotheosis’ would be a good start, right?” I asked, trying to focus on one thing at a time.

  “Yes, it would be,” Darius said. “I suggest that we all search here together and each come up with a list of books that we think will be relevant. After an hour, we’ll take a look at our lists and see which books we agreed on. Then we’ll find the books and divide them up evenly. While glancing through them, be sure to only focus on the sections that are relevant to our search, since that will speed up the process. But first, I’d like to lead a meditation session. We already discussed that yellow energy will help you focus and retain the material that you’ve read. But more than just retention is necessary right now. We’re looking to generate ideas.”

  “Which means we’ll need violet energy,” Danielle jumped in, as if we were in a classroom and she was trying to show off her knowledge.

  “Yes.” Darius nodded. “And as we know, time is of the essence. So let’s do the meditation, and then begin our research.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hours passed as we researched, and eventually the late night librarian clocked out, replaced by an older lady who I guessed was in charge of the early morning shift. Before we knew it, the sun was rising, casting its pale rays across the golden floor.

  We’d been here for more than twelve hours. Which meant we only had a few hours left to figure out a solution.

  I was feeling more and more hopeless by the second.

  For the past few hours, Blake and I had been sprawled under the dome, a handful of books and scrolls in front of us. Danielle, Chris, and Darius were seated at the tables in the main room, and Hypatia and Jason were in a study room on one of the upper balconies.

  We’d been drinking water infused with orange energy to keep us awake, but after nearly twenty-four hours of not sleeping, the exhaustion was taking a toll on my body. My eyes tingled with the effort to keep them open, and I rubbed them to stop myself from nodding off. I yawned and blinked a few times, forcing myself to continue browsing the pages of the book in front of me. I leaned against the wall, the book perched on my legs, and while I would probably feel more awake if I sat up, my head felt so heavy that even moving positions felt like a challenge.

  I skimmed through the pages, looking for any mentions of ambrosia. All the stories about people who had gone through the apotheosis process were different, but a few hours ago, we’d agreed that ambrosia—the divine drink of the gods—was our best chance at successfully recreating the process for Kate. The problem was that we had no clue where we could find ambrosia. I was hoping to uncover a map that would lead us straight to it, but so far, I’d discovered nothing of the sort.

  The more I searched, the more impossible this quest felt. And sitting inside and researching was making me feel more drained than ever. It didn’t feel like we were making any progress. I was focusing as best as I could because this was our greatest chance of helping Kate, but I just wanted to get outside and do something to help us move forward.

  I’d started to nod off again, but then Danielle screamed for us to come see something, jolting me awake. I slapped the book on my lap closed, not bothering to mark my place, and stood up. Blake was already up, his hands raised above his head as he stretched.

  “This better be good,” he said, finishing stretching. “I don’t think I can stare at these books for much longer.”

  “Me either.” I reached for his hand, needing reassurance again that he was here and alive, and together, we walked over to where Danielle sat hunched over a laptop in the middle of the library. She’d used a pen to bundle her hair into a bun at the top of her head, and she bounced her legs, her eyes bright and alert.

  I hurried over to her, optimistic that she’d discovered something useful.

  “What did you find?” Hypatia asked Danielle once we’d all gathered around her.

  “Something that’s going to blow your mind.” Danielle lowered the screen of her laptop, clearly not wanting us to see it yet. “Remember how in one of the three main stories of apotheosis that we found earlier, we learned that Dionysus brought Ariadne to the mountain Drios to turn her into a goddess?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But didn’t we decide not to focus on that story, since Ariadne wasn’t given ambrosia?”

  “We did,” Danielle said. “But I wasn’t finding anything about where to find ambrosia, so I figured that it might not hurt to backtrack and look more into the other stories of apotheosis to see if I could find a hint there. I still wasn’t finding much, so I decided to broaden my search to the internet. I looked up the mountain Drios, since that seemed to be a key element in Ariadne’s transition. I couldn’t find anything about a mountain called Drios, but when I looked up Drios on its own, I found out that it’s a village in Greece on an island called Paros, which is right across from an island called Antiparos. I started researching the different mountains there, which was when I found this.”

  She flipped up the screen of her laptop, showing us a photo that I recognized instantly.

  “It looks just like the caves where the portal to Kerberos is.” I leaned down to get a better look at the image. It wasn’t of the room where the portal was, but the shapes of the stalagmites and stalactites were nearly identical to the ones in the cave. “But it can’t be the same cave,” I said, resting my elbows on the table as I studied the image. “Can it?”

  “This is the photo of the Cave of Antiparos,” Danielle said. “According to my research, this is the closest cave to the town of Drios, and the entrance to the cave is on a mountain.”

  “So you think that’s the same mountain where Dionysus took Ariadne?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “And I think we can safely come to the conclusion that once he took her up the mountain, he led her into the cave. We don’t know where in the world the cave with the portal to Kerberos is, since the only way we can enter it is through a portal, but it looks so similar to this one. And both caves have connections to the gods. It’s too much of a coincidence—they have to be the same cave.”

  “They do look similar,” Chris agreed.

  “So you think we can find ambrosia in our cave?” I asked. “That the answer’s been right there all along?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Blake said, and I stood back up, having a good feeling about what he was going to say next. “We have to go th
ere and search for ourselves.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jason created a portal for us to go to the playground in Kinsley next to the cave, and he, Hypatia, and Darius stayed back in the library to continue doing further research. We would call them once we were ready to return and then we could update them about what we found.

  The first things I noticed upon stepping out of the portal were the huge footsteps leading out of the cave. I gasped, putting two and two together and realizing how they’d gotten there.

  “The giants,” I said, pointing at the prints in the dirt. “We saw them escape Kerberos when we were there. We knew they were coming. And we were so involved with trying to figure out how to save Kate that we didn’t realize we could stop them.”

  “The witch on guard should have called us the moment he spotted the giants.” Chris glanced around the area, searching for the guard. He was nowhere to be found.

  I shivered, dreading what that could mean for him.

  “It looks like the giants were heading east,” Danielle said, looking out at the path of the footprints. “To the ocean.”

  I let out a breath, since the ocean was the opposite direction of where all four of us lived. And we’d checked in on our families before leaving the library. They were safe inside their homes. They also knew about the dangers, and knew to stay inside until we returned home and told them it was safe to leave.

  “How long has it been since the giants came through the portal?” Blake asked.

  “Hours.” I looked at Danielle for verification, since we weren’t exactly paying attention to the time when we were in Kerberos. She nodded in agreement.

  “We have no idea how far they could have gotten,” Chris said. “And we don’t have time to track them down right now. We have to stay focused on figuring out how to save Kate. Until then, let’s hope the giants keep laying low.”

  As much as I hated it, he was right. We had limited time, and had to remain focused on the big picture.

  Right now, that meant stopping Typhon, and saving Kate.

  CHAPTER TEN

  We stepped through the portal that led to the cave, bracing ourselves for anything. After all, who knew what other monsters escaped after the giants? Erebus had told us that more monsters in Kerberos were learning that the portal was weakened, so more of them were trying to make their way through. We had to be prepared for anything.

  I expected to see the stone statue of the Cyclops in the center of the cave—since it had been there the last time we were there. What I hadn’t been expecting was the girl around our age sitting calmly on the ground next to the Cyclops, facing the portal. Her back was toward us, but I recognized that long, wavy blonde hair anywhere.

  Rachael.

  Ethan’s twin sister had died in Greece, in the hydra’s cave. The hydra had pierced her shoulder with its fang, the poison entering her system and killing her. Ethan blamed me for not being able to heal her in time, and he’d never forgiven me. Then, when Helios came to him and offered to raise his sister from the dead if Ethan brought Medusa’s head to Kerberos and destroyed it, Ethan agreed to the deal.

  I hadn’t expected Helios to honor his side of the bargain. But now, Rachael was here.

  And Ethan was on the other side of the portal to Kerberos, dead.

  Did she know about her brother’s fate? Was that why she was here, staring at the portal? To mourn him?

  “Rachael?” I spoke her name softly, not wanting to make any sudden movements. I had no idea what to expect from her. When we fought with her in Greece, she was spunky and impulsive. But this Rachael wasn’t the same Rachael we’d fought with. She’d been to the Underworld and back. Who knew how that could have changed her?

  She stood up and turned around, and I gasped at what I saw. Her veins were gray and bloated, spider webbing across her chalky, bruised skin. A hole the size of the hydra’s fang remained in her shoulder, coagulated black blood surrounding the edges of the wound.

  Helios might have followed through on his promise to bring her back from the Underworld, but he hadn’t healed her body. He’d left her as a walking corpse.

  “Hey.” Rachael smiled, as if everything were normal. “Are you waiting for Ethan, too?”

  “No,” Blake said simply. “We’re not.”

  “Oh.” Rachael’s forehead creased, and she frowned. “What are you here for, then? And where’s Kate?” She sounded so normal—vulnerable even. If I closed my eyes, I would have had no idea that I was speaking with someone who looked like a monster.

  “Kate’s not here.” Chris stepped up, his fists curled at his sides. “Your brother killed her.” He raised his hands and shot a gust of air toward Rachael, lifting her up and pinning her to the cave wall.

  She kicked and screamed for him to let her down, but he didn’t let her budge. She gasped for air, choking, her face turning more and more purple by the second.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Chris.

  His eyes were narrowed, glaring at Rachael with no hint of pity or remorse. He didn’t respond—instead he threw her back at the wall again, banging her head against the rocks.

  “Let her go,” I begged. “You’re killing her.”

  “Of course I’m killing her.” He tightened his hold on her, and she squeaked as she tried to suck in breaths of air, her eyes about to pop out of their sockets. “Look at her—she’s a monster! She shouldn’t be here. She should be dead, just like her brother.”

  Two streams of fire shot toward Chris’s palms, and he screamed, dropping to the ground to put out the flames. Rachael fell to the ground, released from his hold. She wrapped her hands around her throat and gasped for air, each breath sounding less and less strained.

  The fire was out around Chris’s hands now, but his skin was mangled and charred. He stared at them, breathing heavily from the pain, and turned his gaze up to Blake. “What the hell, man?” he said. “You burned my hands!”

  “I had to.” Blake’s eyes were cool as he looked down at Chris. “It was the only thing I could do to stop you from killing her.”

  Chris raised his arms as if to use his power, but nothing happened. “My hands,” he moaned, bringing them back to his lap and staring down at them in shock. “I can’t feel my hands. I can’t use my power.”

  “I’ll heal you,” I told him. “But you have to promise that you won’t try killing Rachael again.”

  He glared at me, saying nothing.

  “You’re angry about what Ethan did to Kate and want to take it out on Rachael—I get that,” I said, hoping to get through to him. “But she’s a victim in all of this. She didn’t do anything to harm us. We have to hear her out and talk to her.”

  “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Just heal my hands. Please.”

  I knelt down next to him and placed my hands on his burned ones, calling on the white energy and healing him in seconds. Once I pulled away, his hands were good as new. He flexed his fingers, as if making sure they still worked, and sent a gust of wind through the room. My hair whipped across my face, and the stone statue of the Cyclops blew to the ground, breaking into pieces. Then the air stilled, and Chris stood, his gaze fixed on where Rachael stood on the other side of the cave. She backed up to the wall, her eyes wide in fear. But as promised, he made no more moves to harm her.

  Her eyes darted around the cave, and she sprinted toward the tunnel—toward the lake of boiling water. As a demigod daughter of Zeus, she was faster than all of us. But Danielle raised her hands in the air, and water zoomed from the end of the tunnel, freezing into a wall of ice.

  Rachael skidded to a stop, seconds away from colliding with it. Then she saw her reflection in the ice and screamed.

  “What happened to me?” She pressed her hands against the ice, as if she were hoping the image in front of her was a lie. “Why do I look like…” She paused, tracing her fingers against the reflected lines of her face. “Like a monster?”

  I took a few tentative steps toward her, not knowing whe
re to start. “A lot’s happened since you last saw us,” I said. “What do you remember last?”

  “I was in the hydra’s cave.” She turned away from her reflection and stepped away from it, as if she couldn’t bear looking at what she’d become. I couldn’t blame her—I would feel the same way. “The hydra pierced me with its fang,” she continued, her voice shaky. “Ethan rushed to my side to try stopping the bleeding, but my blood felt like it was boiling. The next thing I knew, I was floating above my body. I watched as you tried to heal me, but I knew it wouldn’t work. Then a god appeared in front of me—Hermes—and he brought me to the ferryman who took me on a boat to the Underworld.”

  “What happened after that?” Danielle probed.

  “Everything after that is hazy.” Rachael gazed up at the ceiling and ran a hand through her hair, as if she were trying to remember. “The next thing I remember clearly is being dropped off here by Helios. He told me to wait by the portal for Ethan to return. I asked him why Ethan was in Kerberos, but he just said that Ethan would fill me in on everything once he got back, and then he was gone. Since then, I’ve just been sitting here, waiting.”

  “For how long?” I looked around the dim, cold cave, feeling terrible that Rachael had been here alone.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Hours, I guess. But what Chris said—about Ethan being dead—it’s not true. I know he’s in Kerberos, and that it’s tough to survive there, but my brother is strong. He’ll make it out alive. I know he will.”

  She looked at the portal with so much hope, and my heart dropped, knowing that Ethan wasn’t coming back. And even though we had to kill him to stop him from killing us, he was her brother. How were we supposed to break this news to her?