The Elementals - The Ice Princess

Chapter 41

Laney is fevered by the time we find a safe place to lay her down. It appears to be a med-station. Laney now lays on a hospital style gurney. The room is filled with medical supplies and I have no idea where dad would have gotten all of it. There are bottles of hydrogen peroxide on the walls, a defibrillator and several different types of medicines that sit behind glass cupboards. On some of the counters, there are medical supplies and equipment. This is just one of the newest rooms that is in here. Apparently when I hit the flashing button that was going off in the "control room" that opened the extra monitor, several other rooms opened up that appeared to be just walls. Alexander and I walked past a small armory, another computer room and a few rooms that remained dark.

"The wound looks like it is festering," Alexander says as he examines the black ooze continuing to drip out of Laney's arm. There are black veins that protrude out into various parts of her arm and neck that all come from the bite mark.

She is barely coherent when we talk to her.

I take the remaining salve out of my backpack and rub it on to her arm but it appears to have no effect on the wound. In fact, the salve begins to bubble and then like drops of water in a hot frying pan, it evaporates into nothing.

"What are we going to do?" I ask Alexander.

"Uhh, check your bag. See if there is anything in there that we can use."

I open my bag and pull out Laney's Illuminos and the other two objects. Nothing I see seems to look like it will work.

"Maybe there is something in the room that can help," I say to Alexander. He immediately is to his feet and searching through shelves and cupboards. It does not take him long to return empty handed.

"There are lots of things in here, but they are for human wounds not something like this. And if the salve didn't do anything, I am almost positive that some penicillin isn't...Eira, why is your necklace glowing?"

I look down and see that my necklace is glowing that familiar blue color. I must not have noticed it because it was tucked in my shirt.

"Maybe I can try freezing it out of her? I mean if the scouts and the Achlys can possess someone, maybe this is like a symbiote, or a living thing trying to move into her body. Maybe I can stop it."

Alexander thinks on it for a minute. "Well I don't see another option."

"You're going to have to hold her down. I am not sure what this is going to do to her.

Alexander reaches underneath and grabs the restraints that are on gurney and tightens them around her unbitten arm and chest. He then comes around to my side of the table and uses another restraint around her wrist. Her upper body lays completely restrained on the table.

"Be careful," Alexander says to me and takes a step back.

I concentrate inside my head for a second, thinking about how I can do this and Laney lying strapped to the table. An inner calm washes over me and I can see my hands inside my head. They are a blueish color meaning that I am finding my center to try and make this work. With my eyes still closed, I can see everything in my head as though it were clear as day. I can see Alexander watching over Laney and looking at me periodically. I can see every detail of the room we are in. I can hear the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. I let my gaze shift down to Laney and am startled at what I see. The black ooze that was crawling out of her arm is actually moving ever so slowly inside of her. Even though her eyes are closed, I can see a flicker of yellow light from behind her eyelids from time to time. It's as if the ooze is trying to possess her on the table as we speak and she is fighting it, albeit losing.

I place my blue hands on the wound and immediately I hear not just one scream but two screams. The first is Laney as she cries out in agony on the table at me putting my power into her. The second is the from the symbiote ooze. It sounds like a thousand tiny screams all happening at once. Immediately the ooze starts to work its way outside of her shoulder. I continue to put just a little more of my power into her and it's not long before the ooze has completely left Laney's body. I reach out with my hand and grab the ooze. I can feel it writhe in pain. As it struggles in my hand, I release even more of my power into it and it freezes into a solid object. However, the frozen ooze is no longer black. It's crystal clear. I think my power completely destroyed it.

I open up my eyes and see that I am holding the frozen object in my hand. Alexander is looking at me. "Is that it?" he says to me.

I nod my head.

With a cloth he takes the long frozen blob from my hands and places it into a glass jar which he then places into what I believe to be a cryogenic freezer. "How cool!" I think to myself that my dad actually has a cryogenic freezer. No pun intended.

Laney begins to stir in her bed and struggles for a moment when she realizes that she cannot move her arms. She opens her eyes to see Alexander and I standing over top of her and she relaxes after a minute.

"Are you ok?" Alexander asks.

"My shoulder freaking kills..." she says. "What happened?"

"You were bit by a scout and he left a symbiote or a parasite to possess you. Eira used her power to get it out of you. How do you feel?"

"Better. Thanks Eira. I owe you."

I offer her a smile. Even though Laney can be a bit crass and sometimes pushy, she has grown on me and I am glad that she is with us because she adds an element of toughness to our team that I think we need.

"What did it feel like? Being possessed."

Laney's eye narrow on the ceiling as if she was looking through us. "It felt like drowning or dying."

Alexander loosens up the restraints on her arm and she sits up in the bed.

"The good news is your dad is still alive and I know where he's being held," Laney says to me. "When I felt like I was being possessed, I could hear voices and languages and see things. One of the things that I saw was your dad tied to a chair. He was beat up and bloodied a little bit, but he was still alive. They were talking about a ritual that they were going to perform and they were welcoming him into it."

"Oh no. If it's what I think it is, my dad is going to be absorbed by the darkness. We have to save him."

"Well there's another problem."

"What? What is the other problem?" I say anxiously.

"Jared lied to you. They weren't going to wait to begin the ritual. The ritual is going to begin soon and they were going to bait you into getting close to you and he was going to kill you."

"This is too dangerous Eira, you need to consider that your dad is already lost."

"No!" I snap at them both, "I won't believe it."

To my surprise, I don't feel hopeless. I feel angry, no more than that. I feel like I want to rage on everything.

"I am going to the school and I am saving my father," I say to them with a newfound conviction through gritted teeth. "Come if you want, or don't. I am going."

It only takes a moment for Alexander to respond to this, "If you are going princess, so am I. I am sworn to protect you."

"Well hell," says Laney, "I haven't done anything stupid and reckless in the last 10 minutes, let's go."

"No," I say to Laney. "You're staying."

"The hell I am!" she responds to me. "I've already put a new salve on my shoulder and it's good as new. You are not keeping me from taking as many of those things down as I can. I won't let you."

I laugh out loud. "I can't believe we are actually going to do this. We leave in 5 minutes."