Okay, here's the first part of the prologue of a story that I did have on fanfiction until I found this place. Anyway, if the summary didn't quite wow you (which it probably didn't), then hopefully this will. Any and all reviews are very welcome (I would love it if you wrote back to me!), so don't hesitate to review. Well, anything but horrible insults, of course. Well, on with it!

Prologue

“Would you stop looking over your shoulder?! You’re starting to make me nervous!” I accused, scowling at my identical twin, Renji. “It’s not sunset yet; we’re not out past curfew yet; we’re fine!” Even though I couldn’t read my brother’s mind – like many people thought twins could – I could tell what he was thinking, what he was worried about. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was a bit on edge as well, and it was very hard not to look behind us as often as Renji was.

“Key word?” he retorted immediately, “Yet. The sun hasn’t set yet, we’re not out past curfew yet, and time is speeding by as we speak, Taran!” I opened my mouth to say that he should just stop time, then, but he glared at me, so I stopped. I supposed he didn’t need my sarcastic remarks all the time. He continued when I didn’t. “If we get caught out here, anywhere outside our home, after the gates close, we’ll be in loads of trouble!” I rolled my eyes. Always the sensible one between the two of us, wasn’t he? “Would you rather get another long lecture from Mum or have to deal with Demons for being out too late?”

“Demons,” I answered with a smirk, which earned me a hard smack on the back of my head. “Okay, okay,” I laughed. “So why are you still talking at me? Let’s hurry!” I quickened my pace as my brother did and laughed again at the expression on his face. Usually I was the one glaring, not him.

“Sure, speak as though I’m the younger one,” Renji muttered. This nearly made me stop in my tracks in disbelief, but I settled for looking at him as if he was crazy. For all I knew, he was.

“You’re joking, right? No, maybe a Demon got to your head, or something. We’re twenty minutes apart! That hardly matters!”

Renji opened his mouth to say something undoubtedly snide, but his eyes latched onto something ahead. I followed his gaze to see the guards pushing the gates to our home, Telema, closed. Instead of hearing the expected curse from my twin, though, I watched as the guards suddenly froze in place, their hands still against the gates to finish closing them. But, they just stayed like that, unmoving, as if they were stuck in time. Oh…duh. This was probably Renji’s doing. He could stop time, I had to remember. And sure enough, I heard his voice not seconds later, while we were still jogging.

“Let’s hurry it up, Taran. It is kind of hard to keep their time stopped like this, you know.” That confirmed it. I nodded and broke into a run, and soon we were close enough to the gates to rush through as needed.

Renji ‘unfroze’ (for lack of a better term) the guards as we came closer, and I flashed a bright smile at one of them, enjoying the astonished and confused expression on his face. We were safer now that we were inside Telema, but it was still dangerous: There was only a foot of sunlight on the tip of the time-tower, and when that was gone, curfew was up.

It had been this way ever since the Dark side had started gaining power. The Demons were taking over cities all around the country, and Telema was one of them. We’d been living under their control for five years now, since Renji and I were ten, so really, this was nothing new. In fact, we’d even been out way past curfew before, and had only gotten caught once out of about twenty. At least, by the Demons. Our mum and father had caught us about half of those times, and depending on which one got us, we received either a long lecture or a beating. Neither one was pleasant, but the Demons were no better. The time we had come home after they’d caught us, our parents were so worried that they called healers. I had passed out, so I didn’t know if Renji had stayed conscious or not. Even with all this, though, I’d rather face the Demons, we would actually insult them and fight back...unlike with our parents.

We were laughing as we ran, for the looks on the guards’ faces, like I said before, were just priceless! They were confused as to how they could have missed seeing two identical teenage boys running straight for the gates, especially over the flat desert-y terrain our city was placed on. Like I said: priceless.

“So,” I said after regaining my breath as much as possible. “Regular shortcuts?” Renji nodded his head in agreement, and we both turned into an alley on our left automatically. The trail of shortcuts I had been talking about was one path we had been using for years, and we both knew it so well we could run it with our eyes closed. We didn’t, of course, since we had to run like we never had before. Usually, we weren’t home quite this late; the sun had set ten minutes ago already. Well, you know what they say: time goes quicker when you least want it to.

I ducked to the right after taking two other shortcuts, starting down the dark tunnel that was our favorite passage (because it was dark and scary for so many people in our town, especially the little kids). Then, I realized I couldn’t hear Renji beside me, and looked back the few feet I had traveled. He was standing outside in the faint light, a wary expression on his face.

“Renji!” I said, jogging up to him. “What are you doing?! We have to hurry!” I tried grabbing his wrist and pulling, but he stayed as if rooted to the ground, and spoke.

“I don’t know, Taran. Let’s go the long way home the rest of the way.” He was officially crazy. The long way would be taking the patrolled streets; we would get caught – by Demons – for sure!

“Don’t be an idiot Renji! If we take the long way, we’ll be caught and punished by them! What’s with you?” The last time he had acted this unsure was when we were asked to play our song at our sister’s funeral! That was already two years ago!

“I just don’t think we should go in there tonight! It’s a feeling!” he answered with more force that I thought necessary. “I’m going the long way, Taran, and it would do you some good to follow.” He turned his back on me and started walking away. I was shocked. And I knew I’d have to resort to taunting him.

“What’s wrong, Renji? Are you scared? Is that it?” That made him stop in his tracks and I smirked. “Whatever, I’m going the short way. Have fun getting two lectures, one for dawdling.” His back was still turned towards me, so I shrugged and started down the tunnel. Paranoid freak, I thought, rolling my eyes as I entered the darkness once more. Soon enough, I heard Renji follow me, his mouth shut, though I could feel him glaring at me. I ignored him.

As we jogged down the tunnel, I held my palm out and let a small flame light in it, so that we could see. A weird feeling of foreboding came over me, and I looked at my brother the same time he looked at me.

“What are you, my twin?” I teased quietly.

“No, I’m better-looking.” Renji gave me a quick smile, and I rolled my eyes, but both our heads snapped around at a sound from the back of the tunnel, where we entered. I extinguished my flame, and it threw the passage into pitch-black, the only lights being very dim, one from each end of the tunnel. The sound carried to our ears again and we both quickened to a run, trusting only our feet in the darkness.

We skidded to a halt about twenty feet from the front of the tunnel as two silhouettes stepped in our path. Automatically, I whipped around to go the other way, like Renji did, but a voice came the darkness and stopped us yet again.

A low chuckle was what we heard behind us (at the end we had originally been racing for) and Renji and I spun around together, facing the two silhouettes again. They were standing so a small glimmer of light shone on their faces, making them recognizable instantly.

“Demons…” I muttered under my breath. Almost immediately, I heard an answer from Renji, and resisted elbowing him for it.

“Told you so.” His voice was a low growl, and I didn’t respond. I knew he would be annoyed at me for not listening to him in the first place, so I’d deal with that later.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” The voice that spoke was deep and guttural, almost gravelly. “Two little boys out past curfew? We might have to punish them, won’t we?”

At these words, I clenched my jaw hard to keep back a smart remark, knowing it would only cause more trouble. Demons, after all, were merciless. As I tried desperately to come up with an excuse, Renji spoke.

“Our judgment was bad, we went too far out of town and weren’t able to get back in time for sunset. It won’t happen again.” He always was better at speaking formally, but I didn’t know if it was really the time for that.

“Of course, of course,” a new voice said, coming from the other silhouette in front of us. This one was liquid-smooth, cool, and very calm. If it wasn’t slightly menacing, I would have thought it almost fatherly. Almost. “It won’t happen again, because you two won’t be around to make it happen again.” My eyes went wide, and I felt Renji stiffen beside me. Did these Demons mean to banish us from Telema?

Or worse, a quiet voice said in my mind. I ignored it.

“How long can you keep us invisible?” Renji suddenly asked, his voice so quiet I was almost unsure if I had heard it or not.

“I don’t know. Maybe half an hour,” I answered, trying to keep my voice soft and calm as well. Luckily, it seemed as though the Demons didn’t hear us. They kept speaking as we did.

“So what do you say, boys?” the one with the smooth voice asked. There were murmurs of agreement from both in front and behind us. That was our cue.

“I’ll stop their time on the count of three,” Renji told me. He would do that as long as he could.

“One!” we both yelled in unison. As we did so, I grasped my twin’s right wrist with my left hand and turned us invisible, while he raised his free arm slightly. The Demons froze, and we bolted. There was still half a mile to go before we got home, and I didn’t know how long he could keep them frozen in time, I didn’t know if Renji even knew! I did know that it got harder to keep time still the farther away a person got.

I was still holding onto my brother’s wrist as we ran, and I could feel him starting to slow down. Not good.

“Don’t push yourself, Ren! You have to have enough energy to run! Just relax and focus on getting back!” Even as I spoke, I could feel my own strength starting to wane. Maybe I’d been wrong about how long I could keep us invisible. Again, not good. “Come on, let up! We can make it!”

He didn’t listen to me. I could tell when I glanced back to him because his face showed strain, his left fist was clenched.

“Renji!” I yelled, trying to get my moron of a brother to realize he was only making it worse. He’d be exhausted within minutes! I was sure of it.

“Fine,” came the breathless – and somehow still stubborn – response. I glanced back once more and saw, with satisfaction, his arm relax.

There was a shout of rage from the 300-something feet behind us that we had traveled. We ran faster, we still had a little less than half a mile to go.

Luckily, I was still able to keep us invisible, so as we kept running, I heard nothing from behind. Good. And so we ran for a good ten minutes, and we were both breathing heavily; I felt drained.

There was a soft thump behind me, and I stopped immediately, turning around. Renji was lying on the ground face-down, his only motion being his back moving up and down with quick and heavy breathing. It scared me, seeing him so worn out like that, and I knelt by his side.

“Come on, Ren. I know you’re tired, but we have to keep going. We only have about five hundred feet to go. We can do this!” I lifted his arm and placed it around my shoulder. He wasn’t totally lifeless – thankfully – and rose with me as I pulled him to his feet.

“Thanks,” he told me quietly as we began moving again. I nodded in response, feeling my energy start going down quicker as I helped him along. We were moving more slowly now, but I still heard nothing behind us, so I felt safe for now.

“I’m fine now,” Renji said after a few more minutes, pulling his arm away. He looked in my general direction and smiled reassuringly, but I laughed. His eyes were a foot to the right of my head.

“You know, I think I like this little ability of mine,” I said, putting clear happiness in my voice, seeing his head turn towards my voice slightly. “After all, it’s nice that you can’t see me.” And it was true. Even though we were both invisible, I could see him, not the other way around, because I was the one who had turned us invisible. This meant that he could only see me when we were touching...so if I wanted to stay away from him, all I had to do was not touch him. That was easy enough.

Renji gave me a look, saying an annoyed, “Just shut up and walk,” before doing so himself. As he did, I remembered that the Demons were still likely looking for us (I was glad I was able to keep us invisible this long), and tried to quicken to a run. No luck, I was so tired already. Too tired. My breathing was heavy, I noticed, and it felt like my strength was draining much too quickly. Was this what Renji had felt just moments before, when he had collapsed?

I was jolted out of my thoughts when a high scream cut the air. It sounded just like-

“Mother!” Renji shouted, breaking into a run in front of me, and I was soon sprinting as well, my adrenaline and fear pushing all weariness aside.

I glanced behind us only once to make sure we weren’t being followed, and when I looked back, Renji wasn’t there, a Demon was, and I was about to run straight into him. Great, right?

A hand yanked me to the side, though, into an alley on my right. Lo and behold, Renji!

“What were you doing, you idiot?! You were going to run straight into him!” he whispered angrily, holding onto the back of my collar like I was a little kid.

“Not enough reaction time?” I offered weakly. In truth, I was planning to run right around him…before Renji pulled me aside, of course. Hey, wait a second. “Hang on, how’d you see me?” I asked, incredulous. I was still invisible, wasn’t I? It felt like it.

“You flickered.” His jaw set, and he looked at me through narrowed eyes. At me, not through me. Was I still flickering? Either way, my twin looked seriously pissed off. Oops. Renji was...frightening when he was really mad. “Stop trying to stay invisible. The effect already said good-bye to me; it’s just tiring you out more. Don’t waste your energy.” As he said it, I paid more attention to his form. Invisible, he would have seemed slightly transparent, airy, but he looked very solid. Come on! How could I have not noticed it before?!

“May as well stop anyway,” I conceded. “After all, I won’t be able to hold it much long-“

“Hello, kids,” the same smooth voice from earlier growled. It sent chills down my spine.

Renji cursed under his breath at almost the same time I did, and we flattened against the wall behind us. There was no escape. Man, were we in trouble. This Demon planned to beat us into the – cough brick cough – ground for being out too late. Mum and Father were going to have a fit.

“Could you just punish us for being out too late and let us get home... Please?” I asked in my sweetest voice...which wasn’t extremely sweet, I have to say. “We’re sorry. It won’t happen again.” This time, I sounded as sincere as I could, because sarcasm probably wasn’t the best choice right now.

“No, you won’t do it again, because you won’t be around to. I said that before, and I still mean it.” His face was cold fury, probably from our little escape, and I watched as he reached down to his side, walking toward us until he was only about seven feet away. I stiffened when he drew a sword. They never used their swords, not for just showing someone who was boss. “Too bad that both kids die in one night, isn’t it?” he crooned.

God. He meant to kill us.