LAILAH
EIGHT
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes once more, trying to do as she asked. We had been at this for nearly two weeks now, and I still couldn’t find my power source. My power flowed around me readily, but I couldn’t pinpoint the center of it, which is how I was supposed to control it better.
“All I see is blackness, and I can’t feel a damn thing,” I grumbled, gritting my teeth.
“Don’t focus on your outer senses, you need to delve deeper than that. Your power is a part of you. Like your heart, it controls life running through you. All you need to do is tap into it once, and you will be able to find it again easier,” Nona said. Her voice soothed me as my irritation flared.
Fidgeting on the pillow I was sitting on, I tried to push all the other emotions in my mind out.
I needed to be calm and centered. Every other Elementi Blessed Warrior had managed to do this, so I could figure it out too.
The ticking of the metronome in the background wasn’t helping me regulate my breathing, though—instead I wanted to chuck it against the wall.
Snapping my eyes open, I got to my feet and started pacing, feeling too wired to sit and do this.
“Tell me what’s going on right now. The only way I can help is if I understand,” Nona said.
Being half-sisters, Nona and Cami shared similar features, but Nona had this eccentric free spirit thing going for her.
Nona’s honey brown hair was in a big messy bun, and her large glasses were sliding down her nose, which she pushed up for the hundredth time.
Even though her outward appearance didn’t impress, the intelligence in her green eyes told a different story.
“I’m pissed, Nona,” I ranted, spinning to face her. “Sitting here on a cushion with the new-age meditation crap is just making it all worse. All I want to do is smash that damn metronome and get the hell out of this stuffy little room.”
Getting to her feet, she walked over to me and grabbed my shoulders, stopping me from pacing. “This is exactly why we do this; your emotions are going haywire, and this will help you gain some control over them. We can’t start working with your power until you can manage to keep it contained.”
Glaring at her, I brushed off her hold of me. “It’s been contained for twenty years. It's done being put in a box or whatever it is you want me to visualize. Nothing I do right now will work.”
“Are you telling me that you can feel that your power is upset with being locked away for so long?” Nona asked, her eyes full of curiosity.
“I had always hypothesized that Synergy would need to be around the boys to be triggered. Now knowing it was a person all along, it gives my theory even more ground.”
For some reason, hearing Nona talk about me like I was one of her case studies made me lose it.
“There is more to me than being Synergy! I am a human being who is just as frustrated and angry as her power. Stop turning me into one of your experiments! If you can’t help me, then just leave me the hell alone! ”
Nona looked at me, shocked, her eyes wide and mouth hanging open. I could see her gearing up to address my disrespect to her as a teacher and as someone older than me, but Jay’s appearance in the room drew our focus.
“I think it might be best if we take Lailah out for a little while,” Hudson said from the open doorway. “Come on, we’re going on patrol of the school grounds.”
My first reaction was to argue, but Jay took hold of my arm and dragged me out of the room after Hudson.
“This isn’t optional,” Jay said, pushing me towards the elevator.
“Just what I wanted to do on my Saturday night—go hunting for demons,” I muttered as I waited for the doors to open, bringing us back up to the Manor.
When Beth told me that the Elementi went underground, she wasn’t kidding.
Under the school and the house was the hub for the secret society.
It was something out of a science fiction novel with a dash of James Bond.
I had fingerprint access to the whole facility, and it was where I spent many of my nights, working with Professor Philips and Nona.
All I wanted was to go back in time before Halloween when I didn’t know about any of this.
That night my life had changed, and I thought I could roll with the punches, but the way my emotions had become so volatile, I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
“The plan tonight is to patrol the border of the school to make sure the wards are still functioning as they should,” Hudson explained as we exited the elevator in the oversized pantry of the kitchen.
“I think it might be best to take your Jeep tonight. The south pastures are still wet from the rain we’ve had the past few days. ”
I hopped into the back jump-seat without further protest. I would much rather spend my time with the guys than any of the other Elementi at the moment.
They understood what I was going through and didn’t hold my nasty temper against me .
. . for now, that was. Jay took us out to a dirt road that was far from the used part of the campus.
“How can you tell if the wards are working or not?” I asked, peering out into the blackness.
“Bring your power up to the surface and let it coat your vision,” Jay said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“Personally, I think of it filling my eyes with my energy, but it’s whatever comes naturally to you.
Water is more fluid, and air is more external, so that is how Jay and I use it.
For you, it could be completely different,” Hudson said, seeing the question mark in my expression.
“Don’t think of your power as something separate; it’s an important part of you.
Just like your blood flows through your veins, so does your power. ”
This had been exactly what Nona was trying to explain to me, but for some reason, hearing it from Hudson it made more sense.
Like a cat brushing itself against me, it surrounded me as I reached out to it.
Unlike what they were talking about, it seemed my energy was more sentient.
This time, I tried asking it to show me the wards, instead of trying to demand it to bend to my will.
Suddenly the world around me lit up, and I could see the dome the wards created around the school property. “Holy shit!”
“Pretty cool isn’t it? Like we have our own private aurora borealis here at school. Before we boosted the wards, they were just a faint glimmer, but now they’re holding strong,” Hudson said, twisting to grin at me.
“If they’re strong, then why do we still need to patrol?” I asked, my head smashed to the window, trying to see the top of the dome above us.
“Everything has a weak spot, even magic,” Jay said, slowing down at a dim spot in the shimmering wall of light. “Just because demons can’t get in now doesn’t mean they won’t scope out another way to make it happen.”
Stopping the car, we all got out and walked up to the weak spot in the ward. It was low to the ground, and it looked as if on the other side someone had etched something into the ground.
“A demonic rune will cause a crack in our defenses over time,” Hudson explained. “Runes like this could take days, weeks, or years to work, depending on how strong the demon who cast it was.”
Reaching out, I ran my fingers over the magical wall, feeling it send tingles of energy down my arm. My power pooled in my hand as if it was just as curious as I was about this blemish in our creation. It tried to fill the spot, but it was missing something to bind the powers together.
Turning to the boys, I held out one hand. “Hold on to me, I think I can fix this spot.”
Hudson’s eyes grew wide, and he looked at Jay, then back to my outstretched hand.
Tentatively, he placed his hand in mine, with Jay grabbing my wrist. Shifting my attention back to the shield around us, I placed my hand back on the weak spot, and this time, I could feel the difference.
I was pulling from both Jay and Hudson, their gray and blue energy mingling with my golden power before it seeped into the shield.
The spot glowed and became more solid than it had been, but still not as bright at the rest.
“That’s incredible,” Hudson cried out, letting his hand slip out of mine to examine the ward more carefully. “I wonder if the rest of the guys had been here if it would have repaired completely. It would only make sense since it took all of us to make the shield.”
I glanced over at Jay, who was still holding my wrist, and grinned at Hudson’s excitement. Jay gave me a ghost of a smile before his typical stoic expression returned, and he removed his hand.
“Still a lot more ground to cover,” Jay said, heading back to the Jeep.
We stopped twice more to patch up spots, and we were only halfway done with the route. Being able to bleed off some of my power this way helped me feel a little more like myself. The next half would be closer to the school and would be more populated.
“I think it should be late enough that no students will be lingering around campus,” Hudson said as he looked down at his watch. “The library is closed, and they lock down the buildings on Saturday nights for us to do our scouting. If they’re still awake, they’ll be at a party or in their dorm.”
Suddenly, I was slammed into the back of Jay’s seat as he slammed on the brakes.
Tossing open his door, he leaped out of the car and started running.
Hudson quickly followed, leaving me to scramble out of the car and catch up with them.
Luckily, I was a fast runner, so I was right on their heels once I had my feet on the ground.
Running in a forest with hardly any moonlight to go off of was tricky, but I wasn’t going to be left behind.