Hunted (Tainted Elements, #5) Page 2

  Everyone nodded, and we slowly and carefully climbed the old stairs until we reached the highest floor where no one was supposed to be living. Jaiden busted the old knob off and we entered a room that smelled of dust and mold.

  Kenna screwed up her nose. “You brought us here? Really? Couldn’t we just go somewhere nicer?”

  “No, this a good place,” I said. “Plenty of exits, not many people, and we can still check if someone is following us. If they show up around here, then we’ll be sure.”

  “If you say so.” Kenna dusted off one of the chairs and gingerly took a seat, careful of her dark blue jeans.

  When everyone settled onto the old couch and sofas, I brought a wooden chair next to Jaiden’s and took a seat. “There’s something I wanted to suggest before all the drama with Sophia started...” I glanced at Jaiden, who took my hand into his and squeezed gently. “My grandfather left me some money and... I wanted to create a group for tainted elementals. Something like Lily’s organization but led by tainted elementals and not by someone who might not have our best interest at heart all the time. Lily has done a lot, but... she’s not one of us.”

  “Well, I like the idea, but right now...” Noah grimaced.

  “No,” Marissa interrupted. “It’s an excellent idea. Tainteds need all the support they can get, now more than ever. I’m sure many of them out there don’t know what to do, especially those who don’t know anyone like them or who are trying to pretend they are regulars.”

  “Tainteds? Is that what we’re calling ourselves now?” Ashley scowled.

  “I heard it on the news earlier today.” Marissa shrugged.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Sam said, clasping his hands in his lap. “If we form a group now, do you think anyone will want to contact us? How would we make sure our enemies don’t hunt us down? Hell, I’m not even sure who our enemies are at the moment. The cops? People? Sophia?”

  Kenna scoffed, her eyes boring into mine. “No one will ever follow you. Not after they’ve seen what you can do.”

  “I wasn’t intending on leading the organization myself,” I said. “No one would know I’m funding it or anything. Just you guys.”

  Noah ran a hand through his black hair. “So the group would operate in secret, right? We’d gather as many tainteds as we can and try to help them.”

  “Yeah, that was the idea.” I intertwined my fingers with Jaiden’s. His warm touch managed to keep away the cold dread filling my stomach. “We could still try. Maybe the government will think this through better and they’ll actually let us voice our opinions on the whole thing. They can’t just decide to kill us all. Most of tainteds are just teenagers. They can’t kill off everyone whose genes were manipulated before birth. And what about the younger generations? Some of the tainteds are too young to use their elements.”

  “Okay,” Noah said. “I guess we could start a support group, or whatever we’re going to call it, and see what happens.”

  “Who would be the leader?” Nick asked.

  “Um, I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we could vote.”

  “Noah,” Ashley and Marissa said at the same time, and Noah’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Why me?” he asked.

  “You’re the best for that kind of thing,” Marissa said.

  “I am?” Noah gave everyone a bewildered look, but no one protested the idea.

  “If you want to do it, I don’t see any problems,” I said. “I think you’d be good at it.”

  “Okay then.” He raised his chin up, widening his shoulders, and then frowned at me. “Wait, what am I supposed to do? Just look for tainteds and ask them to join the club?”

  “You can offer them your help so they can understand their abilities better or just talk with them about their troubles.” The truth was, I hadn’t really thought that far. I’d always assumed the elementals who needed something would contact us. Granted, that would work in a world where Sophia’s announcement hadn’t happened. “I know it’ll be hard to get them to trust us, but... you’re charming enough. You’ll figure something out.”

  “Thanks a lot.” He rolled his eyes. “I guess I’ll have to improvise then. But you realize that this is different from just recruiting people like I was doing while...” His eyes flickered to Jaiden, and his jaw clenched. “Well, you know.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I said. Jaiden’s little group had been mostly in hiding and safe on Roivenna, and in the city there would be constant danger. Noah couldn’t pick a building where he could regularly meet with other elementals without risking being seen. Except... “Are those underground tunnels monitored? You could take elementals there to train them or to talk.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll have to check.” Noah took a deep breath.

  “What about the rest of us?” Nick asked.

  “You could go talk to Lily,” I said. “I’m afraid reaching out to her over the phone would be a bad idea, and if Jaiden or I go there, she might not have a choice but to report us to the cops. You could ask her if she knows anything about Sophia.”

  “I can do that.” Nick tilted his head back.

  “Nick, I’m going with you,” Kenna said.

  “Okay, you two go see Lily, and...” I looked at Sam, Ashley, and Marissa, who were all carefully watching me. None of them had an air element, so doing anything that required a quick escape was out of the question. “And you three... you’re going to be our eyes and ears out there. Since you can pass for regular elementals because no one has seen you, you can check what people are doing and thinking about us, then report to Noah.”

  They all nodded.

  “And what are you going to do?” Marissa asked, concern filling her eyes.

  “Jaiden and I are going to see what we can uncover about Sophia. We have a few theories about her that we need to check,” I said, then focused on Nick. “Talk to Lily as soon as possible. If she knows something...”

  “What are you going to do when you find that woman?” Ashley asked. “Mind-control her not to be against us?” Her voiced faltered. “Kill her?”

  I licked my lips. “No, I hope we won’t have to do any of that. Actually, we should try not to be the monsters everyone thinks we are. She probably has a secret agenda, and if we figure out what it is, we can show the world that she’s not really concerned about people’s well-beings.”

  “And what if she is?” Sam asked.

  I doubted that was a possibility, because why go through all the trouble of obtaining the footage and hacking Lily’s transmission? “If she is... well, we’ll deal with that somehow.”

  “Okay, so let’s go.” Nick jumped to his feet and Kenna followed, curling her lip as she inspected her jeans for any stains.

  “Be careful,” I said. “Make sure no one sees you leaving here together.”

  Everyone got to their feet except Jaiden and me, and after everyone said their goodbyes, I turned toward him and tilted my head.

  “So where do we look first?” I asked.

  “Elemontera... or what’s left of it.”

  Chapter 3

  “I don’t remember any of this,” I said as Jaiden and I landed in the backyard of a small house. Unless bits of my memory were still missing after Blake had messed with my mind, I had never been here before. The house looked like any family house down this street. Its facade was perfectly white, the blinds drawn, and the porch filled with pots of flowers that were hiding two garden gnomes.

  “That’s because you haven’t been here before,” Jaiden said, going for the front door.

  “Is this someone’s house?” Maybe he’d brought me to talk to one of Elemontera’s former employees or something.

  “It used to be Elemontera’s.” A frown creased his brow as he studied the door. “Someone got here before us.”

  “How do you...?” I came closer and saw the knob was broken. “Are you sure it wasn’t Lily’s men?” I assumed they would have checked any properties that were connected to Elemontera after the headquarters we
re shut down.

  He shook his head. “Lily doesn’t know about this.”

  “Oh.” My eyebrows shot up. “And you never thought you could mention it to her because...?”

  “I had my reasons.” He pushed the door open, taking a peek inside.

  “Who else knows about this place?” I asked as we entered the darkness, and Jaiden immediately flipped the switch, lighting up the hallway. Since he knew exactly where to find the switch, I assumed that meant he’d been here more than once.

  “My father and a few of his confidants.” He inspected a room that looked like a regular kitchen. To our right was a bathroom, and it didn’t look like it had been disturbed either, so we continued down the hallway until we reached a large bookshelf.

  “Let me guess. Something is behind that.” I pointed at the shelf.

  “Yeah.” Jaiden skimmed over the books until he found the right one and pulled it out. As he pushed his hand through the opening, something crunched behind the shelf, which started to move until it slid completely to the side, revealing a door with a keypad.

  “That’s a lot of protection,” I said as Jaiden punched in the code, and the door finally opened. “What’s supposed to be inside?”

  “Come and see.” He pushed the door wide open and let me enter a small room crammed with shelves and papers.

  “Um, great. A ton of papers. Why is any of this important?” I picked up one of the files hoping it might contain Jack’s old research that could help us recreate the serum Jaiden needed to keep his elements, but all the paper consisted of was a list of names. At least I thought they were names.

  “Oh, that thing you’re holding isn’t important at all. Just like most of things in here. It’s just trash.” A smile tugged at Jaiden’s lips as he went to the corner of the room and picked up a stack of papers.

  “What?” I gaped at him. “Is it more protection? For what?” That seemed like a lot of trouble to go through to hide something. Jaiden finally picked up a small metal box and fiddled with the tiny lock on it until it opened. I loomed over him, trying to see what was inside. Jaiden swore as we both realized the box was empty.

  “What was supposed to be inside?” Judging by the worried look on Jaiden’s face, it was something valuable.

  “A flash drive. With most of Elemontera’s files from earlier days. It’s a backup of a backup in case everything else fails. Someone has taken it.” He got to his feet and threw the box against the wall, causing a loud racket. “We could’ve used it to check if Sophia was mentioned somewhere in there.”

  “Do you think it was stolen?” Thieves usually didn’t bother to put everything back into place after they found what they were looking for. I mean, wasting time on rearranging things surely wouldn’t be easy and they would mostly likely get caught before they were done. “Was it your father?”

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed his chin. “I guess it was him or everything would be... a mess.”

  “Except he wouldn’t have to break in.”

  “Yeah.” Jaiden pressed his lips into a tight line. A sound of a door opening somewhere in the hallway made us look at each other. I just stood there, motionless, trying to hear the sound again, but everything was quiet. A shimmering thread rose from Jaiden’s body and slipped through the crack in the door.

  “Shit! Someone’s here!” a panicked male voice yelled, and Jaiden and I burst through the door. I rose my fiery hands up, ready to throw a fireball at the intruder. A dark-eyed girl yelped when she saw us, pressing herself closer to the guy, who was gaping at us.

  “Please don’t hurt us!” The guy lifted his hands up, moving forward so he’d shield the girl. “We don’t mean any trouble.”

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Jaiden’s voice was tense, and a shimmering thread shot for the guy’s head. I pulled my fire back and placed my hand on Jaiden’s arm, shaking my head, and he gave me a long look before he called his air back. We didn’t immediately have to jump into someone’s mind and force them to tell us things.

  “I... My name is Kyle,” the guy said. “This is my sister, Willa.”

  “You’re tainted elementals,” I said. Kyle had yelled when he saw Jaiden’s shimmering thread, so he had to be one of us.

  “No, we...” Kyle stammered.

  Willa, who was almost a head shorter than him, slapped him on the arm and narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh, stop it, K. They’re like us.”

  “What?” He stared at her for a moment, then blinked at Jaiden and me. “Oh, right. The shimmering...”

  “What are you doing here?” Jaiden asked.

  “We... we thought no one lived here because we haven’t see anyone for days, so we thought we could... Never mind.” Kyle placed his hands on his sister’s shoulders and tried to steer her to the door. “We’re leaving. We’ll find another place. Sorry to disturb you.”

  “Wait.” Willa dug in her heels. “It’s them! They were on the news!”

  “Shh.” Kyle hissed, grabbing her hand and bolting for the door. But before they could get out, Jaiden created a wall of air in front of them, and they couldn’t cross through no matter how hard they tried. I glanced at Jaiden’s expressionless face and noticed beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.

  “We’re not going to hurt you. We just want to talk,” I said.

  “Please let us go. We won’t tell anyone we saw you.” Kyle said. “I promise.”

  “You’re lying,” Jaiden said through his teeth, and this time his shimmering thread jumped for Kyle so fast no one had a chance to stop it. “Why are you here?” Jaiden asked with all the intensity in the world.

  “We’re here to watch the house in case Maiers’ son or anyone else appears,” Kyle said, his eyes glazed.

  “Who sent you?” Jaiden asked.

  “Jack Maiers.”

  “When did you last speak to my father?”

  “Two days ago. He promised a safe place for me and my sister if we did what he asked.”

  Willa gaped at her brother, probably not comprehending why he was saying all that. She visibly swallowed as her eyes fell on Jaiden.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “He caught us here when he came for something and said this was his house, but that we could stay if we...”

  “Yeah, yeah, heard it already.” Jaiden pulled his element back, his jaw set. But if his father had been here for the flash drive, that meant he was probably trying to rebuild Elemontera somewhere else. Lovely.

  “Why didn’t you come for the drive before?” I turned to Jaiden.

  “I thought I would be able to catch him here, but after what happened... I forgot.” He rubbed his forehead. “Will you do it or should I?”

  “Do what?” I frowned as I followed his gaze to Kyle and Willa. Oh, right, make them forget they’d ever seen us. Except... “Why would your father leave them here to watch the house if he knew you could just mind-control them to forget?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t expecting me.” A frown creased Jaiden’s brow.

  “But who then? Lily? She could bring mind controllers with her too. And why would he watch the house if he already got what he wanted?” I doubted there was anything in here more valuable than the missing flash drive. “If there isn’t anything else in here...?”

  Jaiden blinked in confusion. “I don’t know. It’s strange.”

  “Yes, it is.” I focused on Kyle and Willa. “Where is your family? Why did you need a safe place to stay?”

  “We...” A huge wave of water rose toward Jaiden and me, and I sent a blast of my air in its direction to destroy it. While I was shielding my eyes from thousands of drops of water that were flying everywhere, I glimpsed Kyle and Willa running away.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” I turned into air and rushed after them. But as I emerged onto the street, I couldn’t see anything. Materializing, I squinted my eyes, trying to spot the shimmering. Jaiden appeared next to me, his eyes flashing with anger.

  “Do you see them?” I asked.

/>   “No.” His air surged out and started circling around the houses, but I knew it would be impossible to catch them now that we’d lost them.

  “Well, the worst that can happen is that they tell your father or someone else that they saw us, which doesn’t really matter.” I shrugged.

  “True, but I want to know who my father was expecting to show up here.”

  “Me too.” The distinct sound of a police siren could be heard not far from us. “We should get out of here. Any other places your father used to hide his important things?”

  “Not really. Lily took almost everything.”

  “So the only thing we can do is wait for Nick to tell us what Lily found out.” I groaned. All these special abilities we had and there was not much we could do. Awesome.

  “Maybe there’s something else.” The corners of Jaiden’s lips turned up. “The cops are supposed to work with Lily, but who says they’ll give her all the information? Maybe we should check for ourselves and see what they’ve got on Sophia.”

  “Okay. Do you know a high ranking cop and where to find them? Because I’m not about to parade right in front of people who are looking for me.” The cops were mostly powerless against us, but now that everyone knew the truth, maybe they had found a way to detect our presence or were being more careful, and I didn’t want to risk that.

  “Yeah, I do. I just hope he still lives at the same place. He knows my father.”

  “A shady cop? Sure. Let’s check.” We both turned invisible and soared into the sky.

  Chapter 4

  “Is that him?” I whispered as Jaiden and I crouched behind one of the low stone walls. Across the street was a tall building with a white facade ornamented with flowery symbols. In front of the big door stood a man in a dark suit and white gloves, and he was talking to a dark-haired guy dressed in dark blue jeans and a black hoodie. The hoodie guy was probably the one we were looking for, although he looked terribly out of place in front of that building.