Liberation

Chapter 29

Julia's point of view:

"Peter..." I trail off, choking on my own tears as I stand in front of him, horrified by what I've just witnessed.

He looks at me, Peter's eyes now a sickly shade of gold rather than the warm brown they used to be. He stands rigid, his arms slightly outstretched like he wants to lunge for me.

A malicious smile is placed on his lips, making me back away from him as my hands begin to shake.

Laughter a few feet away makes me turn my head, only to see Henley clutching her side from laughing hysterically.

Anger rises up in me as she begins to speak.

"My oh my, how the tables have turned in this situation. How deliciously ironic this will be," she says.

And that's when I lose it.

My connection with the elements becomes magnified as the sky splits open, allowing massive amounts of flood-worthy rain to fall to earth.

The sky turns black, lightning throwing off sparks as it illuminates the inky darkness.

Gale-force winds erupt around me, scattering things unlucky enough to be caught in the currents.

The ground begins to shake a little, cracking in certain places where the concrete is weak.

The perfect storm, the magnitude of just how destructive I can be.

I lunge at Henley, knocking her to the pavement as I wrap my hands around her throat.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!" I scream. "What did you do, you witch! Change him back!" I demand, my anger only making the storm worse.

"Foolish girl...nothing can help him now!" She yells over the storm, and then I become aware of someone wrapping their hands around my waist and throwing me backwards.

I land with a sickening thump as my left hand explodes with pain, obviously broken.

Peter stands looking at me, him having been the one who threw me.

I scramble to my feet and place my good hand on his cheek, pleading that he can snap out of it.

"Peter, please...it's me. Peter, you have to remember me. Look at me Peter. You have to remember. Please," I beg, the storm only getting stronger.

"I remember more than you know," he says in a foreign tone, unrecognizable to me. Rain falls down his face, lightning making his eyes illuminate like shining pools of gold.

"Peter please," I begin, but before I can process anything, he spins me around and pins my elbow between my shoulder blades, making my back haunch over as I scream in pain.

He knees me in my stomach, effectively knocking the oxygen out of me.

"How could you forget who you are?" I sob out, the pain unlike anything I could ever experience. Rain blinds my eyes and the deafening thunder explodes my eardrums.

"I know exactly who I am!" He yells as he pushes me to the ground, my face making hard contact with the gravel.

Blood trickles from my forehead down my face, dripping off of my nose and beading down my cheeks.

"Stand up and fight, you coward," he snaps at me, his words as sharp as shattered glass.

I shakily rise to my feet, meeting his eyes with a terrifying stare. I ball up my fists at my sides, and a particularly deafening blast of thunder makes the pebbles on the gravel scatter in a million directions.

"I won't fight you," I tell him firmly.

"Fine," he growls, "you were going to lose anyway."

He lunges for me once again, but I quickly side-step out of the way so he misses me, crashing into a pile of wood nearby.

"You little..." he snarls as he turns around, rushing me again. This time, I turn transparent before he can get to me, and in vain he claws the air where I was.

"Show yourself!" Peter demands, looking around wildly.

Slowly, I reappear next to him and grab his face, bringing his eyes to mine. "Please remember me," I beg him as I stare at him.

And then it happened.

It was a split second, a flash, perhaps even my mind playing tricks on me. But I can't ignore it, because I saw it. For the smallest possible increment of a second, his eyes flashed back to brown.

"Peter?" I ask, feeling a small pinprick of hope rise up inside of me.

But as quick as it happened, they become gold again, and with that returns his evil harshness.

"Get off of me," he growls, pushing me onto the ground where I land flat on my back.

"Alright you two, enough child's play. I know what I'm here for, and now I've got it. It's time to leave," I hear Henley say, almost forgetting that she was still there.

Peter backs away from me at her command as she kneels down beside me.

I look up at her, the lightning illuminating her face and making her look even more terrifying. I want her away from me, away from all of us.

I want her dead.

I call down a lightning strike, but it ends up hitting a building next to us, exploding it with loud crash and electrocuting who knows how many people.

"Call off the storm, or I'll kill the boy," she whispers to me, her voice like ice.

And with a heaving sigh of defeat, the last drops of rain fall, the last flash of lightning strikes, one last tremble of the earth, and one final boom of thunder signifies the end.

The sky opens back up, the sun peeking its rays through the smokey clouds.

The ground sizzles where the fire once was, now extinguished from the storm.

People lie dead everywhere, the only ones still around being Henley's police. All of my people are either dead or hidden away somewhere.

We've beyond lost this fight.

"Peter, you know what to do," Henley says.

Peter comes over to me and turns me onto my stomach, bringing my arms together in the back and handcuffing my wrists.

Then, he props me up and ties a rope around my mouth, preventing me from yelling for help.

"Keep her there until my next order. I must find my brother first. Then, we leave," Henley says before walking away in search of him.

I want to yell, to scream against everything that's happening, but I know my efforts are futile by now. I don't have anymore strength to keep fighting.

I'm through.
I'm finished.
I give up.