The Allatricia
an excerpt

Domenic’s eyes narrowed and he nodded, agreeing with Tristan. “I am all for leaving this tosser at the top of the hill,” Domenic said grumpily, “But whatever we do, we need to get as far away from here as possible.”

Keegan glared at him. “And how do you intend to do that?”

Domenic gave him an exasperated look. With a horrible sucking noise, a pair of huge and leathery-looking bat wings grew out of his back, both of them glittering with his pale blue magic. “How much weight can you levitate, Paige?”

Paige gave Domenic a horrified look. “I… I…” she stammered, looking fearful. “I’ve never tested it before.”

“Paigey, you can do it, I know you can,” Domenic pleaded, grabbing her hand. “Give it a try at first, I bet you’ll be able to do it.”

She took a deep breath and nodded, biting her lip extremely hard. Domenic smiled.

“Thank you. Tristan and Keegan, you’re going to have to hold onto each other. Tightly.”

Keegan had a horrified look on his face, but Tristan wrapped his arms around him, holding on tightly.

Paige narrowed her eyes and quickly a narrow gold line stretched out, encircling them. She narrowed her eyes, trying to focus on them more and the line slowly thickened until it became as thick as rope, rather than string. Almost like reeling in a fishing line, Paige tugged the magical rope towards her, lifting Keegan and Tristan off the ground.

Paige nearly sighed with relief as she held onto them tightly, though she didn’t dare upset her concentration. “Make sure you don’t wiggle,” she said, trying her hardest not to blink.

“Okay, Hayley, come over here,” Domenic said, taking a step towards Paige. “You need to climb up on in a piggy back. I’ll carry Paige and Barrett and you can wrap your arms around them for extra support. Paige can levitate Keegan and Tristan and then we’ll fly across the gorge.”

Barrett nodded in agreement, but Paige was uneasy. She hadn’t heard of a plan before where so many things could go wrong. What if Domenic couldn’t carry the weight of all three of them? What if they all crashed to the ground? And more so, what if she couldn’t levitate both Tristan and Keegan the entire time across the gorge?

Hayley was obviously just as anxious as Paige was. Domenic knelt down as she put her arms around his neck, twisting them around each other as she stretched them out, and then letting them hang so that they nearly touched the floor.

“Come here, Barrett,” Domenic commanded.

Barrett walked over and Domenic wrapped his right arm around him. Hayley then wrapped her stretched out arm around him three times, then grabbed onto his hand. And then it was Paige’s turn. Domenic walked over to her, knowing that nothing was allowed to break the concentration she currently had on the two young men. He and Hayley wrapped her into their grasp as well, and Paige grabbed onto Hayley’s hand and gave it a squeeze. She was glad that her younger sister was there, even though they hardly got along most of the time. Right now, though, she was so close to Paige and it managed to get her mind off the fact that their future was so uncertain. They didn’t know why their parents had been killed and they had no clue who was looking for them. They didn’t even know what the reason was for them being hunted out by the person with the white magic.

“Are you ready?” Domenic asked.

Paige breathed out a deep breath. “Please don’t move. I don’t want to drop you.”

Keegan gave Paige an ugly look, but didn’t say anything. It was a smart thing to do. He knew that he was dependant on her for his survival across the gorge and so he knew not to provoke her. However, Domenic still glared at him in warning.

“Paige, if Keegan gives you any trouble, I give you full permission to drop him.”
Keegan scowled, but Paige didn’t have time to pay attention to his expression. Domenic had spread his wife wings and flapped them, lifting them all into the air.

The sudden movement was distracting, and Paige’s concentration was broken for one small instant. She gritted her teeth as the precious parcel that was wrapped in her gold magic slipped slightly, Keegan and Tristan’s feet touching the ground quickly. She hadn’t expected the huge strain on her telekinetic powers that had come with picking up the two boys, both of them almost full-grown men. Tristan gasped and Paige used all of her strength to pull them back to where they were before.

It became even harder to keep a hold on Tristan and Keegan as the ground began to slip away from beneath them. It was obvious that Domenic didn’t want to get too high above the gorge – he was trying to stay at the height of the earth that they had just left. Paige tried not to think about how the trip across the gorge must look for Tristan and Keegan. She knew it must be awfully scary for them to just be suspended above the valley below, with no clue how secure her magic was.

The afternoon sun was just glinting above the horizon in the distance and Paige tried her best not to let the sun’s rays distract her. But the light was shining in her face and the colour of the brightness – if you could call it that – reminded her of the gold fire that was holding the pair in space. Paige tried to narrow her eyes to keep the light from hurting them.

“Paige! Watch out!”

Paige gasped at Barrett’s yell, seeing the gold rope start to fray and Tristan and Keegan begin to sink. She pulled them closer again, focusing only on them and the gold sting that was once again becoming thicker. “How much further, Dom?” she asked, panting slightly with the exertion that was being put on her powers.

It wasn’t Domenic that answered, though. “We’re just over halfway,” Hayley replied, her voice also strained with effort. Paige knew that her arms were probably aching in a way that they had never ached before, from being stretched and twisted for so long. She squeezed her sister’s hand in a reassuring manner, still concentrating on her telekinetic powers.

And then the gold thread broke.

The yells of terror that broke through the silence suddenly turned the world upside down. “Shit!” Domenic yelled as he saw Tristan and Keegan, still holding onto each other, suddenly freefall through the air. Paige gasped, trying to force her disobedient magic to work, trying to grab them in midair. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get the gold magic to strengthen again, and the normal string of gold fire was suspiciously absent from her arms as well.

Suddenly, Domenic dived, letting them all drop in the air. Their combined weight gave them more momentum than the bundle that was Tristan and Keegan and while they weren’t falling any faster, they were falling harder.

Paige stuck one of her hands out in front of her, almost as a barrier as the wind whipped her face. Suddenly her eyes zoomed in on the tiny bit of gold weaving its way around her hand. Concentrating on it, as they fell through the air, she forced it to grow and the fire began to weave its way back up her arm.

They were dangerously close to the trees, and therefore the ground, now. “Come on!” Paige screamed, and suddenly a burst of gold fire busted from her hand, grabbing onto Tristan and Keegan before they got to the trees. They jerked as though they were on a cord and then they stopped in midair.