The Fifth Element

I knelt beside Danny as I tried to halt the fountain of blood pouring out of his nose and not pass out at the same time. The not passing out part was proving to be the bigger challenge. Henry stood a couple of feet away from us, facing the still smoking RIGC castle. Students were beginning to pour out of it like fire ants, and they did look like fire ants from this distance and with their blood red uniforms. Henry stood over us, watching us intently with his electric blue eyes.

I ripped off a piece of fabric from my ruined dress and pressed it gently to Danny’s nose. Someone’s shadow suddenly blocked my sunlight. I looked up to see Henry looming above us. He didn’t look too happy, but then again when did Henry ever look happy?

“I just got a wind whisper from the headmistress, she said that luckily no one was in the dorms because of class, so the confirmed deaths so far are zero but a couple of people of injured. She said to wait here until she gives us further orders.”

People got hurt!? I felt like a block of ice had been dropped into my stomach. People had been hurt because of me. That thing had been after me.

If Henry saw my face turn a couple of shades whiter, he chose to ignore it.

Danny placed his hand on my shoulder and patted it in an attempt to comfort me. It helped a little, but it earned him a glare from Henry.

“How about the three of us have a little chit chat now?” Henry said still glaring down at Danny.

Danny returned his glare. “Yeah, starting with how you took her.” He pointed to me. “Do you have any idea how many people are looking for her right now? I can give you a hint, all of our toes and fingers combined wouldn’t be enough to count them!”

“That will be cleared up shortly,” Henry said abruptly.

“What do you mean cleared up?” Danny narrowed his eyes at Henry.

“I mean the people here can make a lot of things happen. A missing person’s case would be nothing to them. They’ve done it for every single student that that attends here and that number is in the hundreds.“Henry shot Danny a mocking grin.

Danny let out a low growl and stood up, snatching the bloodied rag from my hand and pressed it to his nose. Henry took a threatening step forward and cracked his knuckles suggestively.

“Stop it you two!” I snapped grabbing a fistful of Danny’s blue shirt and tugging him back to the ground. “What is wrong with you!? You guys have known each other for what ten minutes, and you are already at each other’s throats.”

“Well maybe if he weren’t such a cocky dwarf bag I wouldn’t be,” Danny growled.

“Oh really, I’m the cocky dwarf bag?” Henry raised an eyebrow, “Mr. Popular,” he said and popped the P. “How many people did you and your annoying sidekicks, Conner was it, belittle just last week?”

“We were just joking around I wouldn’t call it ....” He trailed off. I felt his muscles under my hand tense. “Wait how do you know my best friend’s name?”

Henry smirked at him. “I know a lot of things that you don’t think I know. Like how you...”

“Hey, can we get back on topic please before I hear something I really would want to unhear,” I interjected, sensing that things would escalate quickly without intervention. Holy crabapples these two were like water and oil!

“Like why Danny is here,” I suggested.

Henry cleared his throat, and if I didn’t know any better, I would say that Henry was embarrassed that he had forgotten what we had originally been talking about to us.

“Very well, how the hell did he manage to find a very highly classified institution and then break in?”

Good question, how did he manage to do that? We both turned to Danny expectantly. He squirmed uncomfortably under our combined gaze.

He gave us a sheepish smile and scratched the back of his head absently. “Well, that’s what I would like to know too.” He then repeated what he said to me back in my dorm, before all hell had broken loose.

“I guess there is still so much we don’t know about necromancers,” Henry said after he was done listening to Danny. “They are so rare that there have only been three others in recorded history, and usually, they were killed right after they were discovered.”

I felt a slight chill go down my spine at his words.

“A necromancer what is that?” Danny glanced at me curiously.

“One who can bring back the dead, why do you think you are so attached to her when you barely knew she existed? She brought you back from the dead dude,” Henry said before walking over to his blue dragon, Nessie, waiting patiently to the side for her master, and giving us some privacy.

Danny watched Henry leave and snorted. He turned to me and gave me a half-hearted grin, “He’s kidding right?” he asked.

I stared at him without answering. Danny’s smile began to waver.

“I didn’t know how I did, but I did somehow,” I said solemnly

I watched Danny’s eyes widen as he took in my words. He pulled the rag away from his nose and looked at me full on. “No way!” he said, before putting it back on his nose, “But the more I think about, the more it makes sense,” he said more to himself than to me. “But what now am I a slave to something? All I can think about is you, and I feel like I would do anything for you.”

I reached out to him and grabbed his face with both hands so he was looking directly at me and once again his hand fell from his nose.

“You aren’t my slave, not now or ever. You don’t owe me anything; I didn’t even know I could do that when it happened. It would be better if you forget me altogether. Maybe I can convince Henry to let you go.”

Danny’s hand shot out and grabbed my wrist before I could stand. I looked down at his hand confused. I realized how close our faces were when I looked back up. Our noses were centimeters apart. I felt my heart began to flutter frantically in my chest as he looked at my lips and then back up at me. I bit my lip nervously. Bloody nose or not he was one of the hottest boys I knew.

“I don’t think I could do that,” he murmured

My head felt cloudy as our gaze locked on each other. His green eyes were so beautiful, I noticed as he began leaning slowly towards me, and his hair looked so soft. I just wanted to run my fingers through it. He smelled good too, like peppermint and soap.

Suddenly Danny grabbed my face and pulled my face to his. I felt the warmth of his lips, and also a strange tingling sensation beginning to spread throughout my body. A dense fog settled in my head. He reached out and grabbed my hip and pulled me onto his lap, and then suddenly I felt some’s hand snake around my arm, and I was yanked away.

I staggered into a standing position, my arm above my head. I spun my head around to see that Henry had a grip on my elbow.

“What the!? Let me go!” I snapped as I tried to wrench free of his grasp.

His face was blank as he stared past me at something on the ground. I stopped struggling and followed his gaze to Danny who was still sitting on the ground. I gasped and moved closer to Henry. The cloud that had been hanging over my mind cleared.

Danny sat on the ground staring up at Henry with black eyes. His skin had turned an ash white, and black lines ran across it in intricate patterns. His gaze locked on mine and he stood. He began to take slow steps towards us.

Henry took a step back for every step that Danny took forward, pulling me along with him.

“Here’s what is going to happen,” Henry whispered in my ear as Danny took another two steps towards us. “I’m going to hold him off, and you are going to run over to Nessie. Get on her, and she’ll know what to do. Okay on the count of three, Start running, one, two....”

Danny collapsed on the ground suddenly. We both stared at him surprised as we watched the color seep back into his skin and the black lines faded until he looked normal again. He laid motionless on the ground for a couple of minutes, and then he slowly came to. He sat up slowly and looked around dazed. His eyes went back to their normal green color.

“What happened?” he asked looking up at us in a daze and, “I feel like I just got hit with a ton of...” he stopped when he saw us. “Why are you two looking at me like that?”

----------------------------------------

“Let me get this straight. I turned into a demon when I made out with her?” Danny said as Henry secured his hands behind his back with a rope he had pulled out of a bag strapped to Nessie. I stood a safe distance away watching them. “I don’t even remember making out with her. Hey, not so tight!” Danny snapped and gritted his teeth together.

“I’m not taking any chances neither so suck it up!” Henry replied coolly, pulling the rope even tighter.

Henry suddenly stopped what he was doing and turned his attention back to the school/castle. He cocked his head to the side as if listening to someone and frowned deeply.

“We are to go back to the school now,” he told us after a couple of minutes of his listening to the voice he could only hear. “The headmistress is waiting for us.” He refused to look me in the eye as he turned around. Something about his voice and this attitude bugged me, and I studied him wearily as I followed behind him and Danny back to Nessie.

Danny sat in front of Henry, and I sat in the back of him. I wrapped my arms around his waist as the blue dragon took off into the sky. We landed in front of the school gracefully. Outside students stood in groups talking amongst themselves and looking up at the damaged part of the school. They stopped and stared at us as we got off of Nessie. The air reeked of burning flesh as the carcass of the giant squid burned a hundred yards away.

The headmistress was waiting for us in front of what appeared to be the main entrance. She motioned us to follow her as she went into the school. When we entered, I recognized the room with the fountain and the staircase. She led us up the staircase and into her office. We passed several destroyed walls along the way there and had to navigate around massive pieces of stone in our path. She closed the two doors behind us and glared at us with her stone gray eyes.

“Miss Silver, I would like a really good reason why I shouldn’t lock you up in the deepest dungeon of the school right now,” she hissed. “Because of you half a dozen other students have been injured, and half the dorms have been destroyed, plus,” she pointed to Danny who still had his hands tied behind his back, “you informed an outsider of our existence and location!”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, and that’s the last thing I remembered before I woke up in the infirmary.