They Called Me FIVE

LANCE

He slowly shakes his head.

"Don't be." His body is stiff at my side. His mouth hardened at his words. "You only did me a favor. Killing them. Their acts should be stopped...but instead of stopping them I joined them. I lend them this power."

The blue faint light dance at his finger tips and he raise his arm. The light blasted off him, recocheting through space. The walls, the stairs, the tables, everything inside the house fix itself.

Debris hover in the air and attach itself to scrapes and chips of walls. I watch in amazement. Both Jesper and Sam can fix things. Through the blessing of time, Jesper can revert or flash forward the time of an object or person at his will.

Sam can command any object to move through telekinesis. He can use it as defense and offense. Use it to disarm his enemies...

What about me? What can I do? I've been nothing but an excess baggage to this group. I clench my fist to my side.

This can't go on. I must train. Listen to what Seven said. I should not rely more on my blessings.

As much as I hate it. I'm back to where I was before. Back when my blessing made its presence known to me. Back when Dad used to drill on my skull how to protect myself.

I will seal my power if I have to.

***

At the distance. I heard it. The howling that does not belong in this world. We immediately rush out of the house. Leaving the silent argument Magnus and Seven has. Leaving the dead bodies of Jesper's cannibal family.

He doesn't seem as stricken as I expected him to be. Sure, he's shock. And I think he couldn't possibly forgive me but....so far, from his actions and the stubborn silence he put on...He's struggling inside.

He must be having a hard time convincing himself. That the twisted 'home' he always had is gone. And he has nowhere to go except to come with us.

At the yard, I watch cars driving back to houses. Parking in garage lot. Small kids get off and hop on to their doorsteps. Their mothers greeting them looking a bit haggard and wearing apron. Probably preparing for their snacks...

It took me a moment to realize the sun is already on the other side of the horizon. Pinching through the clouds to shine the house roofs. It's already afternoon.

We left in a hurry. Magnus stopping by to the basement to fetch the thing he forgot. He threw me the duffel bag. Along with new supplies I don't know how he manage to scavenge in seconds.

Ignoring the neighborhood giving us the curious stares, we cross the road. Run in the sidestreet as fast as we could. My lungs barely keeping up to my pace. Magnus sprints beside me. Jesper and Sam behind me. And then Seven.

I can't tell what we're running away from. But I know something is keeping up with our pace. Magnus without blessing was the first to notice it.

The faint echo of the wind whistling in my ears. It was the only sound that I permit to enter my head. And then nothing. One minute. Two minutes. I can't hear anything. Except the pounding of my chest. The deafening roar of my lungs.

I caught a glimpse of a room casted by the sunlight. A living room. The tv is turn on. The woman I see who's always in the news is on. How long has it been since I sat in one of those living rooms worrying nothing except my Dad?

I haven't run that far but the exhaustion is already wearing me down. This has never happened before. I don't get that tired immediately.

At the living room, something passed. My eyes caught a glimpse of it. A zipped of red light. And that brought painful memories, watching Sam dying in front of me, Jesper suffering in front of me.

Me doing nothing except watching them suffer. Me doing nothing except obsessing on to my powers.

Something in me enters. Dissolving the guilt and remorse. An instinct honed from things I can't say. That zipped of red light is not the same one I've seen from Blood Hogs I've fought or the Fire hogs who almost killed Seven and Sam with the demons.

It's different. Something more ancient. Powerful. The harsh reality that our number can't do anything to defeat that...

The realization that it might hold the power to kill all of us. Darkness suddenly cloud my surroundings. My steps falter.

Magnus decided to plunge on but something stops him. A voice. I heard it too. I recognize the richness and softness in it. But I can't fathom why its full of urgency and desperation.

"Seven?" I turn around to look at her.

A sharp ringing in my ears passed and my eyes narrow, my face twists in agony. I don't know what's going on. It all happen so suddenly there's no time for me to react.

Out of nowhere a figure came to strangle Magnus and lift him off his feet. He's a giant.Barely eight foot tall with buffy arms, two big twirling devilish horns, and another set of glowing adorned rings on his biceps, ears, nose, lips, nipples and wrist.

It took me a moment to realize its the same species as the Blue Man I killed earlier.

"Let him go!" I screeched. I did not think twice what I was doing. My feet only knows to move forward. And without thinking. Without truly knowing what I was doing I lunge at the Blue Man and strapped my arms on its thick neck.

Something behind me crash. A glass shattering to million pieces the shard had already pierced me in my back. I gasp.

A scream of shock follows.

My feet land in the outside grass. I turn right and run across the schoolyard, the classrooms passing in a blur to my right, across the lot and into the woods that lie beyond the baseball field. There are cuts on my forehead and left elbow from the glass. My lungs are burning. The hell with the pain. I keep going, the sheet of paper still in my right hand. I shove it into my pocket. Why would the Mogadorians send a fax? Wouldn't they just show up? That is their main advantage, to arrive unexpectedly, without warning.. The benefit of surprise.