Chapter 19

         I tried to fight. I struggled with every bit of strength I had, and so did Vesta. We tried to burn the Heinous Knights, but they kept dousing our flames. I tried punching and kicking, but nothing worked. The Heinous Knights had every bit of protection that they needed. They took us to an airplane and chained us up. I told you about the special chains that were used on my brothers and me when we were with the female mortals in the U.K. They used these chains again, but this time they weren't as stupid; they didn't mix the chains up. There was no way for us to get out. We sat on the cold floor as the airplane rose into the air.

         I don't know how much time we spent in the air, but eventually we began to descend. Before the airplane had landed, two Heinous Knights came in to the room where we were chained.

         "I don't want no funny business, got it?" one Heinous Knight asked.

         Neither Vesta nor I moved or showed any response in any way. They grabbed both of us and dragged us out of the luggage compartment where they had kept us. They shoved us out of the compartment, and we began to free fall towards the ground. The Heinous Knights jumped from the airplane as well, and they held onto our chains. We landed in a large swamp. I wasn't positive, but I was pretty sure we were in the Everglades. The Heinous Knights dragged us onto dry land and removed the chains they tied us in, but there were two Heinous Knights guarding us, and we each had one holding our hands behind our back. They marched us forward to a clearing where we were met by a hecapsycheir.

         "Welcome son of Sergius and . . . daughter of Julius," the hecapsycheir said.

         That was the first time I had heard Vesta's father's name. I don't think I ever told her mine until Vadrak referred to my brothers and me as the sons of Sergius. Before I could think too much about it, Vesta snapped at him.

         "You," she snarled. "Traitor."
         The hecapsycheir was wearing a black cloak over black pants and a collared shirt. He did not appear to be armed, but what really struck me were his eyes. They were piercingly blue, like lightning being conducted through water.

         The hecapsycheir shrugged and said, "Traitor is a strong word. I don't think I'm a traitor, more of a renegade."

         "Who is this?" I whispered to Vesta.

         "There's no need to  be so quiet, I can hear every word you say," the hecapsycheir said.

         I could tell that he and Vesta had a history and it wasn't a pleasant one.

         "He is the reason that my father is dead," Vesta told me. She turned to face the hecapsycheir. "You're a murderer and a traitor. If I weren't being held here I'd rip your face off."

         "Now, now, Vesta, is that any way to greet your father's best friend?"

         "If he knew what you did to him, you wouldn't be alive to tell the tale. You've already done enough damage. Just stay away from me."

         "I'm afraid that won't be possible," the hecapsycheir said and he turned to me. "Who's this? Your husband?"

         "We're not married. He's a better friend than you ever could be. My father trusted you, and you betrayed him," Vesta said defiantly.

         I didn't like this hecapsycheir one bit. As much as I liked Vesta, we were not fiancé and fiancée, much less married. I had no idea why he thought we were a pair. I wished that I could say something strong in Vesta's defense, but my mind went blank.

         "I didn't want Julius dead. I loved him like a brother. He was my best friend," the hecapsycheir said.

         "You handed him over to save your own skin, Troy; you never deserved him as your friend. He trusted you, and you handed him over to Vadrak and his Heinous Knights," Vesta shouted as tears and lightning bolts flew from her eyes.

         "Do calm down, Vesta," Troy said, and he turned to me. "What about you? Have you treated my niece well?".

         "I'm not your niece," Vesta screamed.

         "Not technically, but your father and I were the best of mates. I loved you like my own daughter. As for you, if you don't treat her with courtesy and respect, I'll tear your throat out and drown you. I can control water, and I will kill you if you lay a harmful hand on my girl."

         "I would rather Aden betray me to Vadrak than to you," Vesta said defiantly.

         "Oh, don't worry, my dear. I'll vouch for you. I won't let my master hurt you. Your husband here is a different case."

         "He is not my husband," Vesta said. "He's my best and only friend present."

         "Though I am not her husband, I will protect her, unlike you. I would give my life to protect her, and all the other pieces of my soul," I said.

         "Who are the other pieces of your soul?" Vesta asked me telepathically.

         "My brothers, Gina, Aurelia, Izumi, and Tamara," I replied telepathically.

         "Oh, sweet romance," Troy said.

         "It's not romance, it's friendship," I told him.

         "No, it's romance. Vesta and I are friends, right, sweetie?"

         Vesta's eyes hardened. "Don't you dare call me that again," she said.

         "What, 'sweetie'? Don't want to be reminded of Julius? Sweetie, I didn't want him dead. I don't know how long it will take for you to realize that, but I didn't. It was either him or be killed myself."

         "Then you should have died," Vesta shouted. "He would have died for you. He would rather die than betray his best friend."

         With that, Vesta kicked the Heinous Knight that was holding her and flew at Troy. The Heinous Knight was so surprised, he didn't have time to react. I knocked the Heinous Knight that was holding me out and shoved him on top of his partner. By then, Vesta had already pummeled Troy with her fists and used his own knife on him. He was a hecapsycheir so he could heal himself, but Vesta was ruthless.

         Just as I reached her, Troy gathered a huge wave of water and threw it at her. Vesta didn't have time to block the wave. It crashed down on her.

         "Vesta!" I shouted. I ran to her as the water flowed toward the swamp. I sent fire to help her recover her strength and went for Troy. I didn't try to use a knife or my fists on him. I knew that he could destroy me with his water, but I didn't care. I was so mad at him for every reason imaginable, I surrounded him with a circle of fire. I looked into his head and saw a strong fear of snakes. I created a snake out of fire that it coiled itself around him. I was about to finish him off when one of the Heinous Knights came up behind me and pressed something into the small of my back. Before I could react, I started losing consciousness. The last thing I saw was Vesta stumbling to get to me as the second Heinous Knight came up behind her.

         When I woke we were back in chains. Vesta and I were tied back to back with a small post between us. My legs were tied together, but they weren't tied to a pole. I woke Vesta up by nudging her with my shoulder. I tried to break out of the chains with my powers, but they had used the special chains for hecapsycheires who could control fire.

         "Aden, what are we going to do?" Vesta asked.

         "I don't know. I'm trying to come up with a plan."

         "Do you think it would be possible for me to break you out of your chains so that you could break me out of mine?"

         "You could try," I told her.

         Vesta couldn't see what she was doing so she had to do it by touch. There wasn't any lock, the chains were just heavily tangled around our arms. She was able to slowly unwind my chains despite the uncomfortable position she was in.

         "I've almost got them," she told me. "Try not to move."

         I stayed as still as a statue until the chains fell to the ground. I stretched my arms forward and untied my legs. I tried to stand but fell to my knees and had to crawl to Vesta's side.

         It was much easier unwrapping her arms from the chains than it had been for her to unwrap them from my arms. I had the chains off of her in about ninety seconds. As we freed her legs and stood up, we heard footsteps outside the door getting closer. Vesta and I hurriedly sat down next to the post and threw the chains over ourselves without actually tangling ourselves in them.

         Two Heinous Knights entered carrying Hearst and Tamara. They chained Hearst and Tamara to another post and left. We heard a lock click as they left. Hearst and Tamara were unconscious when we reached them. We shook them awake and untied them.

         "What's going on?" Tamara asked groggily.

         "Vadrak captured us," Vesta told her.

         "Should we try to break out?" Hearst asked.

         "We could, but I also have a feeling that he's going to bring the other six in here too," I said.

         "Why do you think that?" Hearst asked.

         "There are five posts. I think they plan on tying all ten of us in here. We'll wait until the last two arrive and that's when we'll assault the knights, chain them to the posts like they chained us, and then make our escape."

         "I like the idea," Tamara said.

         "So do I," Vesta agreed.

         "Okay," Hearst said and he stiffened.

         "Hurry," I whispered.

         We all draped the chains around ourselves and leaned against the posts. This time, five Heinous Knights entered. Four of the knights were carrying Timur, Aurelia, Gina, and Demetrio, while the other was standing guard. They chained the four up without even giving of us a second glance. We pretended to be unconscious, but I peered at the Heinous Knights' actions whenever I felt it wouldn't hurt to do so. The Heinous Knights left, and I heard an iron dead bolt close behind us. That shouldn't be a problem to break through now that Timur and Aurelia had arrived.

         We shook the new arrivals awake and told them about our plan. Though some were more optimistic than others, everyone agreed that it was the best chance that we had. It seemed as if the Heinous Knights had only been gone for a few minutes before two more arrived with Irvin and Izumi draped over their shoulders. We followed through with our plan and quickly knocked them out and chained them to the posts that we had been chained to. We woke Irvin and Izumi and told them we were escaping.

         Irvin surmised that we were surrounded by everything that could be a downfall for any individual hecapsycheir. We were lucky to have one hecapsycheir of each element in the room.

         "I think we should search the Heinous Knights for any keys in case we can't just use our powers to get ourselves out of here," Irvin said.

         It was a lucky thing that we did search them. We found a total of five keys, and each one corresponded to a different element. On our way out, we learned that we couldn't use our power to get out, we had to throw the correct key into the element. Once the key had disappeared into the element, the element would form the outside of a tunnel so that we could walk through it without being harmed. On the other side of the tunnel, the key would be waiting for us. We did this through all five different elements until we got to one huge wall.

         It wasn't just a wall of one of the elements. It was one of all five combined. We threw all five keys into the wall at once, it parted to let us through. Once we got to the end of the tunnel, we found a room at the end of the tunnel. Across the room was a door. We had just reached the door when it opened, and we found five very surprised Heinous Knights. We were able to knock them out and dragged them to the side so that no one would see them if they looked in the room that led to the wall of all five elements, hurried out the door and began our search for the exit.

         The building was labyrinthine. I had no idea where we were, but it seemed like every time we took a turn, we started at the beginning of the hall we had just come down. After ten minutes of running through the corridors, we finally found a door that did not lead to another corridor. We walked through it and found ourselves under a dome. There were five other doors that branched off of the dome as well as the door we had just come through. Unfortunately, the dome was not made of glass or any other material translucent material. We had to guess which door to go through.

         "Anyone have a great feeling about one of these doors?" Hearst asked.

         "I expect that they all contain some sort of guard behind them. If the guard isn't too powerful, we may be able to get past him and find our way out of here," Irvin said.

         "We could each try a door and see what happens," Tamara suggested.

         "I think that would be a mistake," Demetrio said. "If Irvin's right about there being a guard behind each door, we'd have our hands full. If we have to try every door, we should try them one at a time."

         Before anyone could say anything more, Vesta strode forward to the middle door.

         "If anything bad happens to me, run back through the door we came from and don't look back," she told us.

         "Wait, I'll come with you," I said.

         She held up her hand as if to stop me, but I wasn't going to let anything happen to any of my brothers or friends, especially Vesta. I say especially Vesta because she and I are even more similar than my brothers and I are. We can both control fire, and we both have similar personalities. We understand one another's ideas, we can finish each other's sentences, and we can act in total synchronization as if we'd spent years practicing. Our spirits feed off each other.

         Vesta reached out her hand toward the doorknob, and I stood right behind her, ready to attack anything that moved. As soon as she pulled the door open, gallons and gallons of water descended upon us.