Sneak Peek: Chapter Three

Here's what I intend to be the last Sneak Peek but hey, nothing's set in stone so if I get enough responses for more or if the soon-to-be-posted poll comes back with a cry for another chapter or two, we'll just have to see what happens next.

In the meantime, he's the third chapter of The Gift of the Greenstone.

Chapter Three

The Fight to Escape

The pavement was wet and unforgiving. Everything looked fuzzy and Jaden’s palms burned. He tried to push himself up off of the sidewalk but couldn’t, the venomous sting of scraped skin stopping him.

“Gwen,” Merrick said, “Get him out of here!”

Gwen crawled over to Jaden amidst the dust and debris of collapsed brick. “Are you hurt?” she said, the entranceway exterior crumbling around them.

“I’m all right,” Jaden said, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Merrick made sure—”

“You two. Up. Now,” Merrick said.

Jaden turned and could only stare at the sight before him. Merrick’s bear-like arms quivered, holding a cherry-red truck in the air, the headlights shining onto his chest. The impact of the truck had sent him sliding through the concrete sidewalk and into the ceiling-high windows and brown brickwork of the coffee shop’s front entrance.

“It’s not possible,” Jaden said, muttering those same words to himself a few more times, his mind incapable of rationalizing what he was seeing only teen feet in front of him.

“Go!” Merrick said, “Gwen, now!”

Innocent bystanders fled away from the entrance, hysterical and screaming. The unmistakable echo of scurrying shoes across asphalt interrupted the high-pitched pings and billowing metallic creaks of the half-ton behemoth still held aloft in Merrick’s hands.

With the entrance caved in and the individuals in the coffee shop gone, Merrick peered over the edge of the front right tire and looked across the street. Eight darkened figures stood in a line, their faces and bodies hidden in shadow.


“It’s Merrick!” one of them shrieked in a distinctly female gasp. A few of the dark figures stopped walking. Some even backed up. “What are we going to—”

“That is irrelevant,” said a booming voice on the right side of the line. “We’re not here for him. Kill the stray.” The largest shadowy figure pointed at Jaden and in a booming voice said, “Velda, do it.”

One of the thin smaller shadows swayed forward a few steps, her sultry silhouette sashaying to the forefront of Jaden’s attention, his eyes unable to look away from her. There was something about the way she moved, almost gliding into his consciousness with each alluring stride. He must not take his eyes off of her. She—

A sudden and overwhelming chill seemed to stifle the very air around Jaden and a paralyzing fear crawled into his mind. His knees buckled. His lungs felt like they were filling with icy water and he started gasping for air.

Panic set in.

“Resist it, Jaden,” Gwen said, her hand gripping his upper arm, “fight it.”

“What? Fight what? What’s—happening to me?” he said between strained gulps for air.

The crippling sensation coursed through every vein in his body, smothering him with fright. He didn’t understand what was happening. He tried to look at Gwen but a haze of tumultuous images, shifting lights and scattered shadows stained his vision.

“Gwen, I’m going to be sick. I can’t move, I can’t—”

His stomach lurched. He gagged back vomit.

“Gwen—”

He dry-heaved again.

“Help—”

Everything was spinning, spinning. His throat tightened and a fuzzy darkness closed in around him. He tried to struggle against his panicked fear but the strain was too much.

“Jaden, I’m right here, next to you.”

He could hear Gwen’s voice but couldn’t pinpoint where she was—or even where he was anymore.

“Gwen, it’s—”

“Listen to me,” she said, “you can resist her. I know you can.”

Resist her?

The air felt denser, almost too thick to inhale. He couldn’t breathe, his head swirled.

“Feel for her influence over you,” Gwen said, “feel for that outside influence and struggle against it.”

But he had gone numb to everything but the horrible fright enveloping him. All of his senses felt poisoned, their responsiveness tainted. Each of Jaden’s worst fears ripped their way into his consciousness, swallowing his mind in a sea of terror.

He felt like he was falling from a terrible height with the ground rapidly approaching, growing closer, closer, closer until—suddenly he had been plunged in a vast and deep ocean. He couldn’t see the surface and he was running out of air.

“I only feel cold—and dark,” he said in between gasps, his voice growing weaker.

“Jaden, you can do this.”

“It’s—too cold, Gwen.”

“No! You’re stronger than this,” she said. He felt her fingernails sink into his shoulders for a second, shaking him, but even the pain of Gwen’s nails dissipated into nothingness.

“Jaden!”

Something about her shriek and the fading sensation of water, that awful feeling of coldness and a terrible fear enveloping him from head to toe triggered something new. The vast ocean was gone, replaced with a pitch black room that Jaden now stood in the middle of. After a few seconds the darkness lifted and he could see his mother kneeling over…something.

This was different. This wasn’t just some materialization of an abstract fear. He had been here before. He remembered seeing this but he could not place the event. And in an instant flashes of memory, images somehow familiar yet ones he could not recall seeing before began playing in his mind. He saw himself as a grown man lying dead on the ground, a bloody wound on his back and his mother screaming and sobbing over him. Except he was seeing this from a few feet away, like he had been removed and made smaller than everyone else, like he had been forced to watch himself die and witness his mother’s agonizing screams over him. And she looked so young.

But how could he have seen this if he was the one who had died?

And in a horrifying moment of recollection, Jaden knew beyond any shadow of doubt that this was a genuine memory. A pair of green eyes shone out of the darkness of the room and moved out of the shadows and into the light, moving towards his mother with an unnerving smile stretched sadistically across his face. Jaden’s heart pounded furiously against his sternum, breaths heaving in and out as the grinning man reached for his mother.

“No!” Jaden’s scream seemed to part the haze in his mind, but only for an instant. The memory dematerialized into a swirl of sand, sinking sand.

“Jaden! Focus on what you want to do,” Gwen said, “focus on your desire to get up and then you’ll hear it, you’ll hear her.”

Her? He didn’t hear anything. He did want to get up but the nauseating darkness made him want to rest, his entire body felt heavy and sinking like stone. The quicksand enveloped his entire body, pulling him down to where only his chin was not covered. He needed to close his eyes and—

“Jaden!”

—rest. He needed to sleep

“Don’t give in!”

Muscles constricting. Too tired. The sand was too much. He had to—

Wait.

There was something there. He could feel something, some other influence, different than his own. Like a seductive suggestion, a whispered proposition guiding him to relinquish control and stop resisting. He felt someone moving against him, an oppressive and strong sensation affecting what he wanted to do, like his own conscience only foreign and convincing. This manipulating influence was not audible and appealing like Gwen’s voice had been but overwhelming and immobilizing. It seemed to be directed against his limbs and muscles and not just his mind, crippling not just his physical body, but his entire being, playing on his worst fears, nightmares and the paralysis of panic.

“Gwen…”

“Fight,” she said, her voice resolute and demanding. “Focus on nothing but your deepest desire to break free. Cling to that desire and fight back.”

The reassuring sound of Gwen’s confident voice and belief filled him with strength, like a lone headlight through a thick and drifting fog. He slowed his breathing, rasping aloud, “I want—to get up.”

“Think one clear thought,” she said.

“I want—”

The crowding darkness receded and his vision improved but the sick sensation to vomit and slip into unconsciousness intensified.

You will give in! The thought hissed within his mind.

“I want—to get”

“Merrick, help!” Gwen said, “Jaden, hang on.”

But his eyes felt too heavy, he couldn’t strain anymore.

“Merrick!”

Better to rest, to give in.

“No! Leave him alone!” shrieked Gwen.

Those words. A profound pain gnawed inside him. Gwen’s blood-curdling scream snapped Jaden’s senses out of the mist with an excruciating sting Jaden had never experienced before. Something resonated within him when he heard those words, when he heard the shriek of “No! Leave him alone!” There was something familiar about that sickening sound that shocked him back into consciousness and filled him with a terrible and potent ache to fight back.

He didn’t want to hear that again, hear someone he cared about shriek in fear and agony because of him again but—he didn’t understand. Nothing like that had ever happened to him as far as he could remember.

“No!” Jaden said, pawing against the air, “I want—to get up.”

The choking feeling lessened.

You can’t resist me!

“I am going—to get up.”

Despite the hissing thoughts bombarding him with doubt and vicious threats Jaden’s terror lifted; he could stand. The disorienting, shifting images slowed and the colors and shapes around him starting taking the form of a champagne convertible to his left and a worn pine bench to his right. A hazy halo beamed around the light of a streetlamp illuminating a golden haired woman with blue eyes beside him. He could feel Gwen’s grasp on his arm again. He looked across the empty street, past the black and glowing yellow of road toward the intimidating line of darkened figures, each fuzzy outline becoming crisper.

He focused on the thin, short figure that had swayed forward. The one who Jaden’s attention still felt almost magnetically pulled to.

“Stop,” he said.

Never.

The faint queasiness intensified but he had had enough.

“No!” he said.

I will break you, Jaden.

“Out!” Jaden roared, the ferocious power of his even surprising himself.

The oppressive immobilizing force that had held him captive vanished. Jaden had no idea what had just happened or what he even did. The dizzying after-effects lingered but he saw the thin dark figure stagger and fall to her knees, trying to regain her footing like a fawn attempting to walk for the first time. She scrambled behind the largest, broadest figure.

“He’s so strong,” the woman said in between cowering gasps, “As is the girl; I could do nothing against her. But it’s true, Diederik. There’s no doubt that he is Jaden Scott!”

The other figures stirred but hesitated to act. They almost looked—scared.

“We can’t let him live,” the staggering woman said. “The Assembly can’t get their hands on him!”

At once the largest figure leapt towards Jaden, soaring through the air only a few inches off of the ground. A colossal yell blasted into Jaden’s ears as the dark figure approached. Jaden tried to hurry to his feet but he still felt weak and drained as the very large man soared closer and closer. But before this immense man’s outstretched hand reached Jaden a cherry red, half-ton truck whooshed past Jaden’s face and slammed into the cloaked figure, sending the man and the shiny red truck hurtling end over end down the street, never coming close to touching the pavement.

Jaden looked behind him to see Merrick’s wild eyes glaring across the road, staring down the other dark figures.

“Who wants to be next?” Merrick growled.

For a tension filled second, no one moved. A thick cloud of anxiety hung stifling in the air. Not even a slight breeze or distant echo dared disturb the charged, stilled silence.

And then a series of split-second, blurred movements flew in front of Jaden’s eyes so fast that he felt like he was trying to focus on bullets moving back and forth. He could not follow all of their movements but here and there he’d catch glimpses of what was happening. One of the smaller cloaked figures sped towards Jaden and Gwen faster than he had ever seen anyone move but Merrick’s reflexes were too quick and he caught the speeding shadow’s leg, spun the would be assassin, and tossed the attacker high into the air.

The hurtling attacker disappeared behind a line of trees a quarter mile away, a high pitched scream echoing the entire way.

The rallying call of one of the other shadowed figures pierced the night as the rest of them dashed after Jaden but an astoundingly quick and agile Merrick caught one of the smaller figures by the nape of his neck and threw him at another blurry figure reaching out for Jaden.

“Gwen!” Merrick’s roar ended Jaden’s stationary awe. “Get Jaden out of here. I’ll stay here and keep them busy.”

A scraped and bleeding Gwen helped Jaden to his still unsteady feet and they both raced away from the battle, Jaden’s heart throbbing and his nerves pulsating with each step. This couldn’t be happening. He had never even gotten into an elementary school fistfight.

He started to blame himself for not just believing Gwen in the first place but how could he have? She sounded crazy. Not only was she not making any sense but there was no proof.

Well, he had it now, didn’t he?

Once he had run a few blocks the dizziness and queasiness started to dissipate and he found himself oddly able to moving quicker than he could ever remember running. But he noticed that with each successive block and every quickening stride that he took that Gwen was falling further and further behind him. He had to slow down so she could keep up with him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said, her voice thin and wheezing, “I know you’re faster than this!”

“I’m doing what Merrick said.”

“No, you’re not. Don’t you dare slow down because of me. Go.”

“I’m not going to leave you, are you crazy?” he said.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, “You’re the one they’re after! There’s a chapel about two miles ahead. Merrick or I will meet you there. Go!”

“No.”

“Jaden, you—”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Gwen didn’t say anything back and the two of them raced on together, distant booms and resounding tremors intermittently filling their ears. The street ahead of them was darker than normal, lamps broken out. And the street was oddly absent of any headlights, or even any cars. There was a disturbing tranquility to it all.

After a few more blocks Gwen’s breathing became even more erratic.

“We need—to get,” her wispy words were interspersed with more wheezing, “to the—fall back point.”

Gwen started gasping, slowing to a stop. Jaden stopped running to help her when a slight tingle nestled in at the base of his neck.

Something was wrong.

Jaden looked around. He took a few steps forward, surveying the dark street but couldn’t see or hear anything. Gwen spun around, though still very out-of-breath. “I don’t need—to catch my—what are you doing?”

He didn’t know what he was doing. No matter how many times he looked around and saw nothing but empty sidewalk he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. That something wanted them to continue running.

Away from Merrick.

“Gwen, do you feel that?”

Gwen shook her head, still out of breath. “Feel what?”

The alarming sensation intensified.

“We have to go back,” he said.

“What? No. Out of—the question,” she said. “We’re getting out of here, and, why, why in the world would you even think that?”

He didn’t have an answer. But something just wasn’t right. Something was out of place. No one had even followed them. A part of Jaden urged him to leave and run as fast and frenzied as he could, that this was something he could not handle, something that would end badly for him and Gwen. But another part of him told him something different.

He mustn’t leave Merrick.

“We have to run away,” she said, her contorted face visible even in the poor light.

“Just stop,” he said, “and—”

“I can’t protect you!” Gwen screamed, streams flowing down her flushed cheeks, “I was sent to protect you. Please, just go.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said.

“I said, go.” She pushed him away up the sidewalk but her weak shoves didn’t move him.

“Gwen, stop. Listen to me, “he said, “Can’t you feel that? Don’t you get the sense that something, something’s not right about any of this?”

“What do you mean?” she said, easing her shoves.

“It’s too easy.” He pointed behind him. “No one’s even following us.”

She looked back and then turned around, scanning the street. The wrinkles in her forehead showed Jaden that she finally understood what he was saying.

“You see what I mean,” he said. “None of this is right. It’s almost as if, as if they wanted us to run.”

She started to say something but a hollow voice crawled into Jaden’s ears.

“The boy’s quite right. We’ve been wondering what took you so long. I can see now why the Sovereign sent us here on such short notice.” A tall, cadaverous man crept out from behind a large oak tree, his long fingers violating the night air with each wave of his hand. He reached under a black cloak and pulled out a silvery steel blade that shimmered in the darkness. “Yorck, Sable, I don’t care what you do to the girl here but kill the stray at any cost. If he was really able to sense us without any training, well, there’s no wonder that he is the one who did the impossible.”

Two more figures emerged from behind another large oak tree, each gliding out from either side brandishing a similar silvery object. Try as Jaden might, he could not see any distinguishing characteristics on their faces. It was like looking through a fogged window.

The two dark figures walked closer, sparks shooting off the ground. The sound of metal dragging across concrete made Jaden shudder.

They had swords.

Who carried swords?

Jaden, get behind me.

Gwen’s distant voice faded into his head.

Leave this—to me.

The dark figures inched closer, sending sparks dancing away from the grinding metal blades. Gwen closed her eyes and the lanky man put his hand up to his temple but after a few seconds he shook off whatever was affecting him, waving his finger.

“No, no, no,” the lanky man said, “It’s cute that you’re trying to save him. A touching display, really, but unfortunately not nearly capable enough.”

The two other figures cackled, encircling Jaden and Gwen.

“You should get behind her,” said a high pitched, grating voice. The woman Jaden assumed was Sable slinked her short figure towards him, “But I’m afraid leaving everything to her won’t help you.”

They had heard Gwen’s voice inside of his head. How was that possible?

“The running,” Gwen said, still gasping for breath, “I’m tired.”

But I need you to be ready.

He looked to the dark figures. Nothing. They had not heard her that time.

Follow my lead.

Gwen took another deep, long breath but he didn’t want her to try anything. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if she put herself in danger because of him, because of some stupid notion she and Merrick had about him being unique or different.

She closed her eyes.

“Gwen…” he said, the circle of blades tightening around them. “Gwen, what are you doing?”

The sword was within a foot of Jaden.

“Gwen!”

Gwen’s eyes flew open.

“You don’t want to fight us,” she said.

“What?” the lanky man said.

But Gwen was not looking at him.

“We are not your enemy,” Gwen continued.

“Gwen, what are you—”

Be quiet, Jaden.

She stared at the other two people encircling them. “You should be giving the orders, not taking them from him.”

The disturbing laugh of the lanky man rang out into the air again.

“Yorck, Sable, amusing as this may be we have a job to do. On my count dispose of both—”

But Yorck and Sable had turned their attention off of Gwen and Jaden and onto the lanky man.

Get ready, Jaden.

He nodded.

“Yorck? Sable?” the thin man said, “what are you two—”

Yorck and Sable, who had been encircling Jaden and Gwen, now glared at the lanky man, trapping him in between them with their raised swords.

“You’re always bossing me around, Victor,” Sable said.

“You never listen to my ideas,” Yorck said, his short, rotund body now moving for Victor.

The lanky Victor backed up a few paces. “You weaklings! How could you let a puny girl invade your minds? I command you to—”

Yorck took a huge swing at Victor, almost slicing his thin torso in two. This forced him to back up towards Sable, who quickly slashed and screamed, “You never listen!”

Gwen grabbed Jaden’s hand and dashed down the sidewalk back to Merrick, the booms and yells in front of them growing louder with each successive stride.

“That should keep them busy long enough for us to get back to Merrick,” she said.

She was able to keep pace with him for the first few hundred yards at his slowed speed, but the strain on her face showed that she couldn’t endure much more. Her wheezing intensified with each block they raced past, the long run back to Merrick taking its toll on both of them as they labored up to the sidewalk in front of the coffee house at last, slowing down to survey the destruction.

Jaden couldn’t help but tremble at what he saw. Overturned cars littered what appeared to be massive chunks of asphalt, all that was left of the street. The smashed cars looked like they had been catapulted up into the sky, then fell violently back to the earth in a heap of shattered glass and crumpled metal.

What had happened here?

A demolished fire hydrant sprayed water thirty feet into the air, more broken glass covered the sidewalks from windows that had been either smashed with debris or appeared to have been blown out by some terrible concussive force. Deep gashes scarred the street, the way tillers turnover soil before sowing seed.

He couldn’t think straight. He had only been gone for a few minutes.

Could people do this?

He watched as the same broad and big man that had leapt for him after that sultry figure collapsed to her knees approached a bruised and bloodied Merrick. But the broad figure sported a sizeable gash along his right cheek as well. Three other shadowy figures lay unconscious on the ground nearby them.

“Back for more, Diederik,” Merrick said, his lower lip split and dripping blood.

Diederik towered over Merrick, a good six inches at least. But Merrick smiled, as if he knew the grin would unsettle his opponent. Diederik bared his teeth, unleashing his right fist for Merrick’s face.

It landed.

Merrick’s knees buckled. Diederik raised his fist again but Merrick unloaded an uppercut of his own into Diederik’s chin. Jaden thought he felt the ground vibrate but that wasn’t possible.

Merrick quickly front kicked Diederik with his right leg, sending him crashing into the concrete base of a lamppost fifteen feet away, a loud boom resonating upon impact. Merrick then dashed towards Diederik and lowered his shoulder, knocking Diederik back a few more feet through the wet sod in between the curb and the soaked sidewalk, windows still shattering around them with shards of glass intermittently raining down. Diederik’s body went limp.

Jaden didn’t know what to do.

“Merrick,” Gwen said weakly, “it was a trap.”

Merrick turned toward Gwen and Jaden, his amber eyes going from feral to calm, “What are you—a what?”

Gwen, wheezing, tried to speak. “It, it was…” She fell into Jaden. Her breathing was erratic and her chest sporadically rose and fell. Jaden put her left arm over his right shoulder and picked her up. Her fingers curled into her palm.

“Take a slow breath,” he said.

Her wheezing increased.

“Gwen,” Jaden said, “you’re hyperventilating. You have to slow down.”

Her eyes fluttered and rolled back into her head, her chin hitting her chest. Jaden supported the majority of her weight, unsure if she would be able to keep conscious for long.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he told her, “I promise. Hey Merrick, we—”

A violent crash ripped Jaden’s attention back to the struggle between Merrick and Diederik, who had apparently been playing possum. Merrick tossed aside his shredded rain coat as Diederik nearly landed a crushing right hook, Merrick’s muscled arms huge even from far away. Merrick snapped the fractured light pole in half on his left, ripping it away from its concrete base. An eruption of sparks lit the street, raining down around Merrick for a few seconds as he waited for Diederik.

“Come on,” Merrick said. “You must have been waiting a long time for this. Our last confrontation must have left quite a sour taste in your mouth, huh, boy?”

Diederik shook at this statement and howled, charging recklessly forward. Merrick swung the metallic tube with surgical precision and a sickening crack rang out throughout the street. The onrushing Diederik soared backwards through the air, past the small grove of trees and away into the dark night. Merrick waited a few moments but nothing stirred.

“What are you two doing?” Merrick said, slightly limping over to them, “you were supposed to—”

Gwen raised her chin and tried to stand by herself, her eyelids fluttering, but could not speak.

“It was a trap,” Jaden said, turning to try and explain what had happened to Merrick. “They were waiting for us so we had to—”

His words choked inside his throat when he looked up. Diederik loomed behind Merrick, the thick light pole raised in his hands, ready to strike.

Everything stopped. Jaden didn’t have time to say anything. He pushed Gwen toward Merrick and launched himself at the murderous Diederik, whose black eyes were fixed on the back of Merrick’s skull. Jaden soared through the air, feeling no resistance from the weight of his body or the familiar tug of gravity demanding his immediate return to the ground. Diederik’s downward swing of the lamppost moved slowly, like everything else around Jaden.

With his hands clasped together, Jaden swung his locked fists upwards like a sledgehammer at Diederik’s chin, unleashing all of his might.

Contact.

And agony.

Excruciating, white-hot pain.

The steel cylinder stopped inches away from Merrick’s skull as Jaden’s hands seared with a throbbing, intensifying anguish. It was like he had punched a brick wall. An ill-tempered brick wall.

Jaden looked away from his bloody knuckles to see Diederik flying backwards off of his feet, his eyes closed and his limbs hanging loosely at his sides.

Merrick was safe, untouched.

But the metallic pole fell from Diederik’s hands and swung away from Merrick towards—

A white flash of blinding light.

Then darkness.