Eli Fletcher: Mark of the King: Book 1

Aiden’s words echo through my head the rest of the night and into the next day. They keep me distracted at training too. By the end of the session, my hands are cut up, but the river stone heals me. I’ve learned that the stone works similar to a videogame where you can take a step back, in some cases hide, and in a few seconds, you injuries heal.

“Eli, would you like to read a story for the class?” Miss O asks, interrupting my mental torture. I stare at her for a second but then realize that it’s the exact kind of distraction I need; I barely remember leaving training and ending up in the pre-school room.

“Sure, Miss O,” I say and take the seat at the head of the class. She’d left the book sitting on the seat so I won’t have to choose. I open the book to read the story to the kids. I slip back into my old self for those few minutes. It’s like entering a different world. One where there are no demons lurking around corners; no suspicious people I thought were friends; no girlfriends; just me, a book and the kids listening to the story.

I’m still able to hold their attention with every word like before, but even in that, something is off with them. They don’t have the same joy they used to. And who can blame them? Five of their friends are missing.

When I finish the book, they lie down for their nap and I step out into the hallway and watch them through the windows; Fiona joins me. Most of them don’t sleep; they stare off into space, not really looking at anything.

“You okay?” Fiona asks concerned, standing extremely close to me.

I shrug. “I just wish there was something we could do to cheer them up.”

There’s a long pause of silence as we stand there together. Then suddenly her head rests against my arm. It feels nice. Warm. Comfortable. I don’t want the moment to end; and then it does.

“Maybe there is,” she says, lifting her head back up to look at me.

“Maybe there is what?” I ask, suppressing the disappointment of her head no longer being against my arm.

She laughs at me. “A way to cheer them up!”

“Oh, right,” I say as if I completely forgot what I’d said to her. “So, you have an idea?”

“I might, but we’ll have to talk to Miss O,” she says.

________________

Miss O was a little reluctant to do much outside of the group home, but in the end we convince her it will be good for the kids. Plus, with me, Fiona and Billy all being able to fight demons, the kids should be safe. So, a day later, we pile all the kids into a bus and go on our day long field trip. First stop is breakfast; the restaurant gives us a deal since we’re the only group home our size in town. Not to mention we have such a large group.

After that, we get back into the bus and go to Memorial Park for a big game of kickball. Billy and I are team captains once again and pick the teams. The game isn’t as competitive as the last one we played; but it’s still a lot of fun, especially with the little kids. Mr. Reese and Miss O seem to be getting along well too. Sometimes Miss O gives Mr. Reese the same kind of smile Fiona gives me.

When we get to Mr. Biggs (which is a big building full of games, a bowling alley, laser tag and stuff like that), Miss O orders a bunch of pizzas and pitchers of soda. Maybe it’s the environment or maybe it’s the fact that we’re outside of the group home, but this pizza is the best I’ve ever had. The kids are already in higher spirits too. However, while we’re eating, I get that weird feeling in my stomach like there’s a demon nearby again. It isn’t a strong feeling like normal, but dulled. I feel anxious, like that feeling you get when you know bad news is coming.

I instinctively look in Aiden’s direction. He’s refilling a cup of soda for one of the younger boys at the far end of the table from me. Ever since I found him with Miss O’s sword, I’ve suspected him of conspiring with demons; especially since I keep thinking I sense a demon whenever he’s around.

“You okay?” Fiona’s voice breaks through to my consciousness.

I shake my head and tear my eyes away from Aiden to look at her. She has a concerned look on her face as she touches my arm comfortingly.

“Yeah…just….I don’t know. I’m fine,” I say distracted, looking back at Aiden again.

“Is it Aiden?” she asks in a hushed tone as she takes up a kid’s cup to give him more to drink.

I nod without looking back at her again.

“Well, don’t draw so much attention to it. You’ll freak everybody out, not to mention give yourself away.”

I turn to her again. She’s helping get another slice of pizza for one of the younger kids.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she says, pouring a little more clear soda into a small cup for the boy, “you’ve been staring at him non-stop for the past ten minutes.”

“I have?” I ask, turning towards Aiden again, unable to control my actions.

“Yes, and he’s noticing it too, he’s just less obvious about it than you are.”

A little boy tugs on my shirt.

“Eli, can I have more soda?” I take the empty cup he’s holding up to my face. I take it and grab the pitcher of soda that’s closest to me but he stops me. “No, I want that one,” he says, pointing at the darker soda.

“Okay,” I say and put the pitcher down to grab the other one.

Something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye. Aiden is walking away. I glance at Fiona who shakes her head. Quickly, I scan the room until I spot Billy a little ways away at the neighboring table. He’s looking right back at me so I jerk my head in the direction Aiden has gone and Billy nods in response then gets up to follow him.

Fiona squeezes my forearm as she moves past me. I don’t know how, but she seems to be much better at all of this than me. I probably would have followed Aiden and ended up fighting him or something.

“Okay!” Miss O says over the loud chattering of the kids. “Is everybody done eating?” She surveys the room and the kids quickly finish their slices of pizza, or drop them, ready for the next portion of the day. “Good! Leaders get your groups together and follow me and Mr. Reese!”

Immediately, we older kids gather our groups together, put them into lines and follow Miss O and Mr. Reese towards the Lazer Tag area. Aiden rejoins us; he hadn’t been given a group of kids to take charge of since he isn’t officially part of the orphanage. I guess Miss O doesn’t seem to trust him much either. He joins Allaryce’s line of kids, which is right next to mine. I start to worry about Billy; his group is wandering behind mine.

“Jordan,” I call out to the oldest of the kids in my care.

“Yeah?” he says, looking guilty of something.

“Can you lead the others for me? Just follow behind Fiona’s group, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, taking the spot at the head of the line. I head back to Billy’s group and get them straightened up and send them to follow the kids from my group. Then I go in search of Billy.

Finding the bathrooms, I go inside to find a mess of paper towels, toilet paper and water covering the walls and the floor. I pull my blade from my pocket, suspecting demonic activity.

“Billy?” I say, my voice echoing around the tiled room.

I hear a muffled groan come from one of the stalls. I drop to my knees and look under, but there are no sets of legs in front of any of the toilets.

I step up to the first stall and push it open, holding my sword up, ready for anything.

Empty.

My heart beats a little faster as I approach the second stall. Kicking it open, I find it empty as well. I pray hard that he’s in the third. My heart races even more as I go to kick it open. The door flies open as soon as my foot makes contact, but I’m met with disappointment. There’s only one stall left; the handicapped one. The muffled sounds have stopped. The bathroom is dead silent. I hope the dead part of that isn’t literal.

I take a deep breath as I stand in front of the final stall door and brace myself for the worst. Then, kicking it open, I charge inside, but Billy isn’t there!

“Billy! Where are you?” I ask in frustration.

The muffled sounds return, my eyes search the room frantically, but there’s still no sign of him anywhere. As I start to run out of the bathroom, something from above catches my eye. There’s Billy, plastered to the ceiling by some kind of white material.

“Hold on, Billy. I’ll get you down.”

How I’m going to do that, I have no idea. I clamber onto the nearest toilet and hoist myself onto the wall of the stall. Carefully, I scoot along the narrow ledge until I reach the end and have something else to hold onto. When I reach Billy, his eyes are wide with fear as he breathes heavily through his nose. With my blade, I cut along the drying cloth that holds him to the ceiling, hoping it’ll release him. The blade cuts through like butter.

Billy’s eyes bulge as gravity pulls him away from the ceiling. His mouth is covered by wet toilet paper as well, so he can’t warn me that he’s about to fall to the floor.

He lands with a thud and lays there for a moment. I jump down next to him to help him up but he springs to his feet and begins frantically pulling the wet tissues off of his skin, starting with his face.

“He’s evil!” Billy shouts once his mouth is free.

“I had a feeling. What happened?”

“I came in here, trying not to look like I was tailing him, but he was waiting for me,” he starts as he pulls the wet tissues from his arms. “Before I knew what hit me, I was plastered to the ceiling with this stuff,” he said with a shiver. “Then he started talking, but there wasn’t anyone else in here. Then something appeared in the mirror; something really scary and ugly. I could just barely see it.”

“Tentatio,” I say quietly.

“That’s what Aiden called it, but it didn’t look like the guy in the suit.”

“That’s because you saw him in his true form this time. Come on,” I say and turn for the door.

“Can you help me get this stuff off of me first?” he asks desperately.

I grin, trying not to laugh, and help clear the wet wads of toilet paper off of him. Once he’s cleaned off we run for the Lazer Tag room. Our entire group is inside, receiving the final instructions and rules of the game.

“…So, we’ll go ahead and activate your packs now,” says the guy in charge. He’s a tall guy, with long hair down past his shoulders.

“Eli, there you are,” says Mr. Reese. “You two grab the packs there at the other end of the room.”

We walk past everybody, searching for Aiden. There he is, at the back of the room next to Fiona. I’m surprised to see she doesn’t look scared, but seems to be acting as if nothing’s wrong. Of course, she has no idea what he did to Billy. When I get closer to them, she gives me a wink, telling me she’s been watching Aiden since he returned.

The guy running the Lazer Tag activates the kids’ packs to start the game. It takes him a couple of minutes since we have such a large group. To be honest, I couldn’t care less about Lazer Tag. Aiden is about to be alone in the arena full of kids he can hand over to Tentatio. How am I going to protect them all? How am I going to be able to stay close to Aiden the whole time and not look suspicious doing so? Maybe this whole day was a bad idea after all.

Aiden’s pack is activated, then Fiona’s right after him. She gives me a knowing look and follows Aiden out of the room as quickly as she can. Billy’s pack is activated before mine.

“I’ll go catch up with her,” he says and jogs after them.

“Here ya go, bro,” the guy says, but for some reason the thing he uses to activate my pack won’t work. Of course this would happen to mine! “That’s weird. Your pack must be defective. Let’s try it again, dude.”

He presses the little magnet to the top of my gun again, but it doesn’t do anything. I look up at him; his skin suddenly melts away to be replaced by blackish-red, scaly skin.

Really? Here?

“It’s too late, bro,” the demon says, mocking the voice of the Lazer Tag attendant he’d been posing as. Suddenly there’s a blood curdling scream from within the arena. The demon in front of me laughs maniacally, so I pull the paperclip from my pocket and watch briefly as it glows bright red and then cut the demon in half before he knows what hit him. I throw the pack off of my shoulders and run through the door leading into the arena.

Black lights make neon paint glow brightly, overtaking my senses for a moment. I blink a few times to get my eyes to adjust. Loud, heavy metal music pounds in my ears as I search for the source of the scream. My sword glows red, brighter than any of the lighting in the room.

“Billy!” I holler into the room. Kids run in every direction, shooting at each other with their laser guns. They seem to have a less-than-human appearance, but it’s got to be just the crazy lighting combined with my heightened sense of alarm playing tricks on my eyes.

Suddenly, Miss O comes out from one of the splatter painted corridors, screaming and laughing playfully.

“Eli…why aren’t you playing? Where’s your vest?” she asks, her face wide with a big smile, but her smile fades away when she sees the look on mine and then spots my sword. Mr. Reese joins us a second later.

“Alison, you cheater. You can’t-- Oh, hey Eli. Where’s your pack?”

“It wouldn’t work,” I say quickly then turn back to Miss O. “Did you hear that scream?”

If she blushes, I can’t tell, but she shoots a glance at Mr. Reese and, with an embarrassed smile, says, “That was probably me. Mr. Reese scared me.”

“No, it wasn’t you, I know it wasn’t. It sounded like Fiona.”

“Eli, what’s going on?” she asks, this time much more concerned.

It’s about time!

“Aiden was talking to Tentatio in the bathroom mirror. You can ask Billy, he was plastered to the ceiling with toilet paper.”

I’m shocked to see that Mr. Reese isn’t completely surprised at anything I tell Miss O. Is he in the Custodes Avis too?

“Where is he?” Miss O asks.

“I don’t know. Fiona and Billy went after him before I could get in here.”

“Let’s split up. Eli, you go that way; David, you take the other way around the outside wall. I’ll search through the center corridors.”

With that, we split up and begin our search. Miss O has pulled her sword seemingly out of nowhere and Mr. Reese’s hands suddenly have a silver shine to them.

What makes his knuckles look like that?

I look back in the direction I’m going, dodging kids who try shooting at me until they realize I don’t have a pack.

“Where’s your gun?” Ryan asks.

“It didn’t work, Ryan. Have you seen Fiona or Billy?” I ask, kneeling down to his level.

“Yeah, they were with that other guy, that way,” he says, pointing along the main wall.

“Thanks, Ryan. Stay near the front okay?”

“Why?”

I hesitate and then say, “We might be leaving soon.”

“But we just started!” he complains.

“I know, I’m sorry, buddy, but just try and keep anyone else you see towards the front okay?”

“Okay,” he mopes.

I stand up, watch Ryan and the little girl he’d been chasing disappear around the corner, shooting at each other and laughing. I pull myself back around and continue along the wall. I search the maze-like room, but no matter how many twists and turns I follow, I still can’t find them.

“ELI!” Fiona screams at me from above.

I look up and find her in Aiden’s arms as he stands behind her, holding a sword to Fiona’s throat and grinning down at me maliciously. Where did he get that sword? It doesn’t look like the one Miss O lent him.

“Let her go, Aiden,” I warn him.

“Come and get her,” he challenges me with a sadistic grin.

I step forward and Aiden presses the blade closer to her neck. I stop myself from taking another step, in fear he’ll cut her.

“Oh, I forgot to mention that if you do come and get her, I’ll cut her throat,” he says as if it’d been something silly that’d slipped his mind.

“Let her go and face me!” I demand.

“Tempting as that sounds, I don’t think I will.”

With speed that surprises even me, I jump up, grab the railing in front of them and fling myself over his head, landing behind him. Before he can turn to face me, I grab the wrist of his sword hand and squeeze hard. I feel something dislocate and hear a pop to go with it. He screams in pain then twists his body, catching me in the face with his elbow and then kicks me in the stomach. I fly back into a wall separating a hiding spot from a ramp leading back to the ground level.

There’s a crack in my back, but nothing bad enough to cripple me from the fight. I have to duck quickly as his fist flies for my face. He misses and his fist punches through the wall I’d crashed into. From my crouched position I lunge forward and tackle him into the railing, which breaks from the force, and we fall to the ground. I land on top of him, rolling away immediately so I can ready myself to fight him. Aiden struggles to his feet as we stand up simultaneously. Kids run away, screaming at the sight of our fight, calling out for Miss O. A yellow glow shines in Aiden’s eyes, then immediately after that, they turn pure black.

There is a demon inside him! Is it Tentatio?

“Tentatio has not possessed this body yet, Eli,” says a gravelly voice from within Aiden’s throat. I smell something like rotten eggs and spoiled milk. I do my best to ignore the smell and keep my focus on my fight with Aiden; the guy Billy and I saved from death; the guy we saved from Tentatio possessing his body. Now it seems that he was only a shell of a person possessed by a demon already.

I pull my sword from my pocket again, having dropped it as I jumped up to the second level. Aiden lets out a deep, foreboding laugh that makes my skin crawl.

“Quite incomplete isn’t it, Eli?”

I look down at my sword. Sure, it’s just the blade and the stone, but I have a safe place to grip it with the electrical tape. It glows redder than it ever has before, eager to destroy a demon, almost vibrating as I clench it tight in my fist.

“It’s enough to take you down with,” I say as we began to circle each other in the tight space we’re in. There isn’t much more than three feet between us. Suddenly, Aiden raises his hand up and the sword I’d knocked out of his hand earlier flies right through what remained of the railing above us.

Once the sword is back in Aiden’s hand, he attacks. I block smoothly, holding him back as he leans into me with all his weight.

“Curiously strong, huh?” he asks me.

“Yeah, I am,” I say and shove him off of me, right into a wall. I rush forward before he can fully recover and swing my sword at his head. But a sword stops mine. Not Aiden’s, but Fiona’s.

“You can’t kill him!” she cries.

“Why not? He was going to kill you!”

“Because, if you do then Tentatio can take over his body, making him even stronger,” she reminds me as she desperately keeps my blade from reaching Aiden’s throat.

“Listen to her, Eli. She’s a smart one,” he taunts me.

“Shut up!” I yell at him, wanting to rip the evil grin off his face. “Just let me cut him a little,” I beg her.

“No,” she says, struggling to find more strength. “Eli, I can’t hold you back anymore. You’re too strong.”

I look away from Aiden to see she’s struggling to hold her sword against mine. Then out of nowhere Billy grabs me by the arms and pulls me back. Fiona collapses to the floor.

“NO!” I hear Billy scream in my ear.

Aiden grabs Fiona around the waist and then disappears. I stare unblinking; unable to comprehend what just happened.