Chapter 19

"So we know that they're going to attack, but we don't exactly know how?" Sickening asked Angelo.

"Yes, basically." Angelo confirmed. The Scrapers, Sickening and Archie were all sitting at a table and Angelo was describing the situation. Sickening was asking questions, Archie was sitting silently listening; he obviously had nothing to contribute. Angela was sitting playing with one of her throwing knife, no-one was quite sure if she was paying attention or actually listening, and to be honest, they didn't really care, but Angelo knew she'd do her part. "Maelicen has tasked us to stop whatever feeble attempt they do try so we've each gotta be patrolling around the castle, if we see someone…"

"Then we raise the alarm, I guessed." Sickening interrupted.

"Actually I was gonna say beat the crap out of them, but I guess that works too." Angelo said shrugging. "Chances are they'll probably be splitting up or something stupid like that so we'll each be able to take whoever."

"When's creepy coming?" Sickening asked.

"Soon." Angelo said. "Well… supposedly. Ok, so if Archie, you patrol the east side." He said and Archie grunted in reply. "Sickening you do the west side…"

"Yeah, alright." Sickening replied, interrupting Angelo and Angelo frowned, not sure why he felt the need to interrupt, but he carried on.

"Angela, you go south and I'll do the north side." Angelo concluded and Angela didn't reply Angelo had no clue if she'd heard him, but he shrugged. What was the worst that could happen anyway? He thought to himself, and then realised that actually the worst that could happen was probably pretty bad, he shrugged again mentally, meh, he wasn't one for caring much about things.

"Right, we might as well start now, but remember, these are desperate people we're up against, so we shouldn't underestimate their stupidity." Angelo said and everyone started to get up, much to Angelo's relief, Angela put her knife away and started towards the door. Everyone but Angelo left, to leave the Texan sitting at his chair alone. 'Come on then Emerson Tate.' He thought. 'Let's see what you've got.'

"How are we actually going to get up to the roof to get in?" Jeremy asked Emerson. They'd just reached the foot of the castle, and were now staring up at the giant wall in front of them.

Emerson frowned thoughtfully at the question. "That's quite a good question…" he said. "I never really thought about that…"

"You didn't think of that?" Jeremy asked in disbelief. "Surely that's the most important thing of this entire plan?"

"Nah…" Emerson insisted. "OK so maybe a little bit, but I'm sure we can improvise." Emerson stared up at the wall, his last hope rapidly receding.

"We could try and get in through another way?" Jeremy suggested.

"Well if we can't get in there," Emerson started, indicating the roof. "Then I guess we'll have to." They both hesitated. "I'm sure we could find a way." Emerson said and they both went quiet.

"I have an idea." Jeremy said, breaking the silence. "We could go through the door?" Jeremy suggested and Emerson laughed.

"Yeah, we could ask them very nicely to let us in." Emerson joked, laughing not very quietly to himself.

"No, I didn't mean we should knock again, I'm not that thick, I meant you could, kind of… destroy it?" Jeremy explained and Emerson frowned. "You have magic right?" Jeremy asked and Emerson nodded. "Well couldn't you just destroy the door?"

Emerson thought for a moment then his mouth formed into a grin. "You want me to destroy the door?" he asked excitedly.

"That was my idea... the others will hopefully be distracting them around other parts of the castle so we probably won't come up against anyone really." Jeremy prompted.

"I think that could be within my capabilities…" Emerson said, his grin widening more and more.

"Well it'd better be." Jeremy muttered quietly.

Emerson began to lead the way to the door and he muttered to himself thrilled, "I'm going to destroy the door; I bet the others aren't doing anything nearly as awesome."

Amya was in fact doing nothing of the sort, and she was most definitely not thrilled. She'd launched herself up onto the roof with some air and her ascent was not as smooth as she'd hoped. When she'd launched herself up, the air had shot her straight up towards the ledge but she'd misjudged and she kept going up as she flew past it.

A few seconds after, she stopped going up and started falling back again. When she did land on the edge, she landed hard and she could tell that she'd twisted her ankle. Now she was crawling around the roof looking for a possible entrance below her, a window or something. She realised that she probably should've launched herself up to a window from the ground, but that was out of the question now, she couldn't go back down and risk another hard landing.

There, she thought. She could see what she hoped was a window. It was probably about seventy metres or so away. Great, she thought.

After about five minutes of awkward crawling later, she was above what she could now confirm was an old window. She lay down to rest and gather her thoughts for a few seconds and then sat up. Firstly she ripped the window from its old hinges with the air and it fell to the ground far below. Now for the harder part.

She positioned herself so that she was facing away from the edge and stepped backwards. She fell, quickly at first but immediately she brought the air up to slow her descent until she stopped directly in front of the recently opened window. Finally, she thought, the first piece of luck she'd had that entire day.

She used the air to slowly guide her through the space and she dropped, luckily not very far and slumped against the wall. Phew, she thought, she was in. She wondered how the others were faring, couldn't be nearly as bad as her, she reckoned.

Alasdair had, in fact, fared a lot better than Amya. When he'd left, he'd 'jumped' straight to his side of the castle. He reckoned it would most likely be pretty simple for him to get in, he was a Jumper, he could go pretty much wherever he wanted. Something like this was easy, it was basically his job.

As it turned out, his job was a lot more difficult than he'd expected. He couldn't find a single place to see through into the castle so he could 'jump' inside. Why didn't this place have any windows? He thought. He'd gone up to the roof and looked pretty much everywhere up there, he'd looked all around the walls from the ground, nothing.

He could see where windows had been, but they'd been knocked out and replaced with wooden planks so he couldn't see through to the other side. It was at times like this when he thought about how annoying and ridiculous his power could be. He could go anywhere he'd been or seen but put a freakin wall in the way and he's stuffed.

It was amazing how something so obvious and normal could stop him, he almost felt like going to get something to eat for a while, but no, he couldn't abandon his friends to fight all on their own while he went away just to get a bite to eat.

He appeared back with a cup of coffee and a cookie from Starbucks and continued his searching for an entrance. He looked everywhere but couldn't see any entrance. Then it hit him, all he had to do was see inside, then he'd be able to 'jump' inside, all he needed was a hole, just one small hole in the wall. He resumed his searching with an entirely new determination. This was a seriously old castle, there had to be at least one hole somewhere, he thought.

Then he saw it. It wasn't very big at all, only about the size of a tennis ball, but it'd be fine. He was suddenly there, bending down and looking through the hole to the other side. He could see a small, empty room with one entrance, a wooden door on the left side. He suddenly disappeared and appeared in the room. He was inside, finally. He wondered how the others were doing.

Ryker had easily been the best off of all of them; he'd got in very quickly. Once he'd made his way around to his side of the castle, he'd jogged and it hadn't taken long. He had decided not to use his shadows to carry him around; it would take too much energy. Straight away he used the shadows to carry him up onto the roof and the first thing he saw was a huge hole.

He didn't have a clue what might have caused it, but he didn't really care at all, he was in, that was all that mattered. Below him was an empty room with an old wooden door across from him. The shadows lowered him down to the floor and almost immediately he heard movement from outside the door. He flung himself forwards just as the door opened, he landed behind the opened door as Sickening strode in.

The creature swung the door shut behind him and as soon as Sickening was in the open, Ryker leapt forwards and wrapped his arms around Sickening's neck in a choke hold. The creature tried to cry out in surprise but Ryker's hand muffled the noise. Sickening struggled madly and clawed at Ryker's arms with his long nails, but Ryker held on, his grip staying firm.

Soon Sickening's struggles got weaker and after not too long, they stopped completely. Ryker figured he must be unconscious and so let go, the limp figure falling to the ground. Almost as soon as he hit the ground, Sickening sprung back up, obviously faking unconsciousness. Ryker, seemingly unable to be surprised, kicked his leg out, catching Sickening in the chest and flinging him backwards.

He hit the door with a thud and Ryker was there, picking him up and chucking him against another wall. Just as he was getting up again, Ryker thrust his arms forward and the huge wall of shadows that he had been collecting flew forward, catching Sickening in the chest and knocking him off his feet. This time, he didn't get up.

Ryker walked over to Sickening's once more limp body and prodded it with his foot. He then lifted up his head and brought it down violently onto the floor, the body remained limp. Finally satisfied, he turned and approached the door.

A/N: As you can see, I had fun switching points of view in this chapter. So everyone's in, well we don't actually know about Emerson and Jeremy, but this is Emerson we're talking about, I think he can destroy a little door. Granted, it isn't that little; and I guess it probably isn't really a door… oh well! Thanks so much for reading, please review, I'd appreciate it so much if you do, even if you say it's crap, I'm open to criticism… mostly. Thanks so much.

Mangobean.