Chapter One

First feet

I’m Katie Billing. I had been going to Edmunds school for gifted and talented children since I was four. It was a school hidden underneath London in England. When I was younger I didn’t realise what it meant by ‘gifted and talented’ everyone was the same we were all ‘special’, I suppose that’s the word. We are all ‘special’ in our own way but some people are ‘special’ in almost the same way as others. Not following?

Don’t worry, let me explain.

In school each pupil has a power, but each power can be put in a category:

Earth

Water

Fire

Air

Some fall under other categories:

Vampires

Were-wolves

At school you sat with your category, worked with your category and lived with your category. If you didn’t you would be punished. There were three rules we all had to abide by, these were:

Don’t go out of your dorms after 10 o’clock

Don’t socialise with any other group (as shown above)

Don’t combine your powers

I never understood why, until I was about seven, and something changed the way I saw the groups.

We had just learnt about the fact that Vampires, contrary to popular belief, do actually grow older. They keep aging until the age of 60, when Vampires stop getting older and have just 6 years to pass on their extensive knowledge to the next generation. I was sitting on the small oak bench outside my classroom with my brother, Liam, sitting beside me. Suddenly a surge of Vampires ran past us. They were chasing a wolf, it was grey with dark brown eyes. I soon realised it wasn’t just a wolf, it was a were-wolf. The poor wolf had no chance, vampires run faster than any other creature in the universe. Soon they had him cornered and the largest Vampire stood at the front of the pack his eyes burning a coal black. It all happened so fast. A large auburn wolf jumped out in front of the pack of vampires baring its teeth. The largest vampire however still stood there, but I knew his lips were pulled back to show his pristine teeth, with over-bearing canines. I was horrified. All of the categories watched in horror as each pack prepared to attack. My eyes flickered to each person’s face, the packs and the witnesses. I saw everyone prepare for what was coming. Then it happened. The two packs leaped into the air in perfect unison but the wolves got hit first, soon all of them had been set alight by flames thrown by a fire-starter. The vampires were still about to hit the flames when a branch dragged the largest to the ground. Even with the agony strewn across their faces they were dragging themselves toward each other. The flames on the wolves extinguished with water and the brown branches let go of the vampires’ ankles. Everyone wanted to watch they didn’t care if either side got hurt. I needed to stop it. I took a deep breath. Before I continue you need to understand the fact that air bourne creatures like myself can perform many different powers. We can move things, cause strong winds (hurricanes etc), and we can teleport by moving through the air.

The air pulled me to the centre of the fight and as I looked either side of me I locked my arms outstretched palms facing the two packs and closed my eyes. The energy surged through my body and out of my hands pushing the air away from me and towards the two attackers. The wind lifted them up into the air and threw them into the bushes. The silence wove its way towards me and slid down my spine. I glanced forward before looking around to see the damage I had inflicted.

The vampires were stood effortlessly as far away from me as possible. There were marks in the bushes were their bodies had landed for a brief second (vampires move at almost the speed of light remember). Next the wolves were still in a heap in the bushes disorientated and confused, and back in their human forms. I then saw the plant people (as we called them) glaring at me for destroying their bushes, the fire starters glaring at me for ruining what might be the only good fight all week (they are quiet violent people), the mermaids and water bound people sighing at how much watering these new bushes would take out of them and finally my brother and all the other air bourne laughing at what a mess I had created. I walked quickly back to my brothers side and sat down.

That memory still burned in my cheeks every time I think about it. That memory showed me I could only find acceptance in my own people, my own kind. I had lived according to that belief ever since. Even as I went through my awkward teens, I only ever felt accepted in my social group. In the dorms I had only ever lived with female air bourne because they shared my gift, the ability to move objects with my mind, to manipulate them in certain ways and to teleport through the air.

We learnt about the other categories, how they worked their strengths and weaknesses, but we never learnt what it was like to have that power. Right up to the age of sixteen we were completely separated from the other categories. We were in different classes and were taught different things. We went to power training and saw our own powers develop and we never thought about how well the other categories were progressing, until we were sixteen and were put into mixed classes for the first time.

I was petrified at the thought of sharing classes with other categories. Scared the vampires would suck my blood, the were-wolves would pounce on me, the fire-starters would burn me, the earth people would drag me six foot under and that the water bound would drown me. When I stepped into my first mixed class, many others felt the same way. We were sat in a strange order and I was unfortunate enough to have no one close enough to talk to. I sat next to Tanya Maple a Latin fire starter with tight brown ringlets and deep brown eyes which burned me every time I peered into them. On the other side of me was a pale blue eyed mermaid with light blonde hair, she was called Lydia Lychee, it wasn’t until now that I realised I didn’t know that mermaids only grew tails when in contact with water and despite this fact they still found it hard to walk around without falling over. Behind me was a tanned earth person with green eyes and very short brown hair, his name card said James Hartley, his t-shirt exposed his muscular arms which were placed on the table carefully. I did not mind sitting near those three beings, they scared me but I could grow used to that. What I was fearful of was what was sat in front of me, Simon Stander, a vampire, his black hair reached his jaw line and every time he turned to pass something back I saw his pale face and his black smouldering eyes, and each time the wind blew into my face causing me to smell what could only be was supposed to only attract his prey, that was what I was now, his prey, I would never be anything other than that. I watched him raise his arm to answer each question correctly. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit afraid. I felt as if it was only a matter of time until the hunter took his prey and never returned it. Each lesson would end and he would stand and gracefully leave, and I would be left petrified of what could happen, next lesson or the lesson after. I always gathered my books in silence and waited for my friends to emerge from the back of the classroom. As we walked swiftly out of the room I wouldn’t listen to their conversations of why we were in mixed classes and what effect it would have on us, I only thought of what I fought against in those mixed classes were I was constantly exposed to the hunter, each time this thought would grace my mind it would send a chill down my spine.

Weeks passed and I gradually got slightly more immune to Simon, but each time he turned around I would feel the same fear that he still saw me as his prey. Lunch was always a strange time of day but as we began to sit in a mixed lunch room they became weirder and weirder. The water bound always sat near the pool and always looked as if they had just got out of it; they ate a diet of well, water. The were-wolves sat near the fire exit which led out to the woods, they ate three portions of whatever was being served at the canteen. The fire-starters sat near the fire extinguishers, just in case, and ate spicy fajitas, enchiladas and curries. The earth people would place themselves next to the window and constantly gaze at the green grass and trees, they ate a vegetarian diet of vegetable and fruit, lots of vegetables and fruit, in fact the three tables they claimed were covered in about twenty portions of them. The vampires sat on the tables as far from the windows as possible under the broken light, they ate or drank pots of red liquid which took me a long time to realise was blood, real human blood from the bodies collected by the hit men we were all training to be. Finally there were us the air bourne the ones who sat in the centre of the room away from any possible breeze, we ate, well nothing, all we had for the day was a bottle of water with some sugar and salt in it, we didn’t really even need that, we live off the air.

As we began to see how powerful each person was we also began to see the competition between each category and how each time a new one would come out on top.

In one of the tests we had before we got moved into our final year, I began to feel the power that was embedded within me. I was getting stronger, everyone around me seemed to notice it too.

When it was my turn to show my ability I teleported myself to the spot where we were told what we had to do. My task was to lift a jug of water, simple and really easy. I lifted it without even trying and placed it in the exact spot where it was. Then I was told to smash it on the target which was placed in the top left corner of the room. I swung my arm which sent the jug hurtling toward the target. Bullseye. I felt extremely pleased with how well I did and flew back to my seat. As that day drew to a close I felt a great sense of happiness wash over me and I sat in my room smiling for about half an hour. That was when Aimee Stander had her first vision of her, the new girl.