Mythos (The Descendants, #1)

by Vrinda Pendred

  * * *

  Everyone’s heads filled with the sound of buzzing handsaws. They fell to their knees, writhing in pain and unable to speak to beg for release. Only Aidan remained unaffected by it. Just as he’d predicted.

  He stepped closer to Melody and maintained a cool poker face. He knew her too well.

  ‘Just one wee problem,’ he pointed out. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the screaming that surrounded them. ‘How’re ye planning to get him to do tricks for ye if he can’t think straight for pain?’

  Melody chewed the inside of her cheek. Her eyes narrowed at him and a look of murder filled her face. All at once, the buzzing stopped, and the others fell to the floor in exhaustion and relief.

  ‘It’s not permanent,’ Melody told him. ‘It’s just a taster of what they can expect if he doesn’t comply.’

  Aidan considered this for a moment. ‘Ya realise I could kill ye right now,’ he told her quietly.

  She gave him a wry smile. ‘If you wanted to,’ she said. ‘But you don’t. Remember? You’re all talk.’

  He gave no indication of whether he agreed with that proclamation.

  ‘So,’ she said as she headed back across the room to where Oz sat bound. She dropped to the ground and crouched in front of him. ‘Are you going to do what Mummy says?’ Melody joked badly.

  ‘You want me to make it talk?’ Oz guessed through ragged breaths. ‘Is that it?’

  Melody nodded meaningfully.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Whatever. I’ll make the stupid mummy talk to you.’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Seth’s voice rang out across the room.

  Oz knitted his brow. ‘Why? Who cares? So she talks to a corpse. So what? If that’s how she gets her kicks, fine. Just untie me.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not until you do it. I don’t think you need your hands for it.’

  Aidan watched this scene as if it were happening on the other side of a glass wall, separating him from them. Seeing Melody in this state, he wondered what he’d ever seen in her. How could he not have known what lurked beneath her surface?

  ‘What’re ye trying to prove?’ he heard himself ask.

  Melody turned on him, her eyes wide with astonishment. ‘What am I trying to prove?’ she repeated.

  ‘Aye. Why’re ye doing this?’

  Her expression grew furious and she stormed over to him. ‘I’m doing this for you!’ she shouted in Aidan’s face. ‘Don’t you get that? All I’ve ever done this last year has been for you!’ She pounded her fists against his chest, pummelling him through the folds of his grey hoodie.

  For the second time that day, he gripped her by her wrists and held them tightly. This time, he didn’t care if he hurt her. Melody twisted in his grasp, but she couldn’t free herself.

  ‘This,’ Aidan said evenly, ‘is not for me. This is all for yerself.’

  She flinched. ‘How can you say that?’ she whispered.

  She went limp in his hands. He released her and shoved her aside. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were undressed and didn’t want him to see her exposed. Then fresh fury overtook her and she flew in Oz’s face.

  ‘Make it talk, death boy. Or your sister gets it.’

  ‘Oz, no,’ Seth protested again, his voice weak with lingering pain.

  Aidan wondered if perhaps he was right. After all, Aidan had seen Oz’s animal skeletons, but humans? He didn’t like to think of the implications of such a thing. Zombie films had never been his thing.

  But Oz’s eyes were already closed in concentration. Whatever was going to happen…well, it was going to happen.

  At that moment, the vines tying Oz down began to unravel. They snaked themselves slack, at last dropping in a heap on the floor, and Oz’s eyes jolted open. Aidan twisted in the direction of Seth, who now no longer lay helpless on the floor but stood strongly on his feet. Anger flashed in his blue eyes. Against the pillar, Oz jerked himself to his feet, his legs like jelly from sitting for so long.

  ‘No,’ said Melody. Then, louder, ‘No!’

  She poured her anger into her thoughts, letting it flow like the most angst-ridden symphony ever composed. Her emotional circuit boards had reached breaking point. Aidan watched the effect as the sound flooded his companions’ brains once more with its rage. A dreadful chorus of shrieking filled the room. It was them - they were screaming, and they were falling to the floor, crawling across the tiling, crying out for their agony to end.

  A noise crashed in one of the other rooms of the museum, but no one noticed it except Aidan. Melody was too absorbed in concentrating her anger on her former prisoners.

  It came again - and again. It sounded like it was getting louder…or closer. Instinct turned Aidan in Itzy’s direction. Across the room, her eyes were closed against the onslaught of hate assaulting her brain. But they moved under her eyelids, like someone caught in REM sleep, and her expression was alert, as though she were seeing something only she could see, in her mind’s eye. Black stars sparkled all around her.

  He recognised her expression. He’d seen it once before, in his car. She was writing.

  Well, it was about time!

  Except…what was she writing?

  Aidan dashed to the doorway and looked through the adjoining rooms. Something was coming for them.

  Then the noise was behind them, too. It was coming from all directions.

  Aidan started to say, ‘What -’ when he was cut off by something whizzing past his head. It lodged itself in the wall next to him. He started when he saw what it was:

  A long slender sword.

  Bloody hell,’ he cursed when he’d caught his breath. Just what had Itzy done?

  Melody’s furious trance was broken by the whistling sound of a second sword flashing through the air. In the doorway hovered a suit of samurai armour from a Japanese exhibit. No body dwelt within it, yet it had structure and moved like a person might. It clunked toward them, wielding a long sword, despite having no arms. Held by nothing, it danced dangerously in the air.

  The others collapsed to the floor again, groaning in the aftermath of the double-whammy of pain. Aidan’s eyes darted toward Itzy, who stared at the armour in abject terror. It occurred to Aidan that Itzy, in her untrained naivety, was perhaps just as deadly as he could be. But whereas Aidan’s slogan might have been, If he wanted to, Itzy’s was more like, Whether she means to or not.

  ‘Verdi, do something!’ Melody shrieked as she beheld her new opponent.

  Verdi’s head was obviously reeling from his sister’s indiscriminate punishment - she’d never been very good at projecting her powers on specific people. His DS lay open at his feet, GAME OVER flashing on the screen.

  The armour stepped menacingly in Melody’s direction. She should have run, but she seemed paralysed with fear.

  Somehow Verdi scrambled to his feet.

  The sword lifted into the air - when suddenly Verdi’s brambles wrapped themselves around the enlivened metal. Melody exhaled audibly and they watched as the brambles tightened, squeezing the metal and slowly compacting it -

  until the sword came down and, in one fell swoop, sliced through the vines as if through butter. They fell neatly away in a jumble of disgruntled pieces and the armour, albeit a bit warped, stepped forward again, undeterred in its object.

  Verdi’s mouth dropped open. He tugged his sister’s arm. ‘Okay, Mel, you’ve had your fun, now let’s go.’

  The armour took another step toward them.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’

  Again, it came for them.

  ‘Mel, I mean it: let’s go!’ Verdi ordered. He yanked her hand, turning them both in the opposite direction.

  At last, he got her moving, and they ran. They ran and ran, with the armour clunking after them like some antique Terminator that could not be killed. They ran until, finally, their footsteps could no longer be
heard echoing through the maze of the museum, and it seemed they had escaped.

  The others watched this scene in amazement - then let out cheers of jubilation and rushed to congratulate each other in the centre of the room.

  Aidan hurried over to Itzy and helped her off the floor. ‘You did it!’ he cried, and he flung his arms around her in a tight hug.

  ‘I did!’ she exclaimed with excitement. ‘I can’t believe it, but I -’

  ‘Hang on,’ Oz interrupted his sister. He stood at their side, his eyes fixed on the next room over. He looked very worried.

  Seth joined them. ‘What is it?’ he asked. Then his eyes grew wide and he doubled backward.

  The armour was coming back…this time, for them.

  Aidan stepped forward, his eyes also trained on their would-be killer. ‘Itzy, make it stop,’ Aidan instructed in a low, deep voice.

  ‘I - I can’t,’ Itzy stammered behind him.

  He whirled around to face her. ‘What d’ye mean? You created this. Can’t ye make it stop?’ he asked, in an echo of their first ever conversation.

  He realised he already knew the answer to his own question. She was powerful, yes, but she was still so inexperienced. It was exactly what Melody had been banking on, and it was about to get them all killed.

  Itzy closed her eyes, obviously fighting off tears, and threw her palm to her forehead. ‘Okay, I just - I need time to think of something,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t have time,’ Oz said grimly.

  The armour hurtled toward them, parting the quartet and rushing right for Itzy. Its sword was aimed at her, hungry for gore. Aidan’s heart pounded with panic. It was like a bad dream, where he could see what was about to happen but could do nothing to prevent it. Just as he ‘woke up’, prepared to spring into action -

  she vanished.

  The armour went right through the place where she had stood and stumbled forward in bewilderment. The sword crashed to the floor. Black lines wibbled in the air, like cracks in a wall.

  Aidan shook his head and the lines went away, just as Itzy had.

  Oz interrupted his thoughts by asking, ‘Where’d she go?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ said Seth, ‘I did that thing. I hid her.’

  Aidan dragged his gaze away from the spot where Itzy had disappeared and turned to face Seth. He was about to ask just what he meant by I hid her, but there wasn’t time. The bewitched armour had recovered and was coming for them, now.

  They stood, just staring at it, as if they couldn’t believe what was happening, before the adrenaline surged through their bodies and they dodged sideways, parting from each other and leaping toward the walls. The long samurai sword came down against one of the exhibit cases, sending an explosion of glass in every direction. Aidan ducked to avoid catching anything in his eyes. When he looked up again, he saw Seth put up his hands, prepared to perform his magic again.

  There was a shattering sound from the next room. Everyone’s heads were drawn that way, wondering what new surprise was about to present itself to them.

  Through the wide doorway, they could see the glass in the display cases bursting. As if moved by a gust of indoor wind, it flew at the Descendants like violent confetti. They threw themselves at the floor, to protect their bodies. When the glass had finished falling, they dared to lift their heads once more.

  Now that the glass was gone, objects that had never before tasted modern air flew gleefully from their places and spun together into funnels, before cycloning their way into the Egypt room. Much of it was clay pots the shape of cow or pig heads, moulded by the Ancients thousands of years before.

  They smashed themselves into walls in suicidal ecstasy. Shards of hardened terracotta burst like firecrackers, showering down upon the Descendants. A chaos of noise filled their ears. A piece of pottery grazed Oz’s arm, reopening one of the wounds left behind from Verdi’s thorny plants. Fighting off the pain, Oz flattened himself on the ground, next to Seth.

  On the other side of the room came the sound of pounding feet. Only, when the owners of those feet appeared, Aidan realised there were no feet after all, only stone. Itzy had somehow brought an entire stone army of headless Greeks to their ‘rescue’. They hopped viciously against the ground, while Samurai swords made their appearance and rained down on them, smashing the stonework.

  Aidan stood apart from his companions, his vision blocked by one piece after another of animated pottery, threatening to take out his eyes, and swords threatening to take off his limbs. All the while, the metal armour still clunked about the room, slamming its own sword blindly against the glass that surrounded them.

  Aidan stepped back against the wall, in awe of what Itzy had done. It seemed she had a certain knack for letting her stories run away from her. Without meaning to, she could conjure a whirlwind of disaster. And when she did mean to do something, well, he knew what that felt like too. And it was no less unsettling than what surrounded them now.

  Across the room, he saw Seth’s hands furiously working the air. A stone box enveloped Seth and Oz, shielding them from the chaos. A heartbeat later, the front of the box grew translucent, so Aidan could see them once again. Then, without asking for it, a matching box materialised around Aidan. He admired Seth’s quick thinking, though he acknowledged it was only a temporary measure.

  He considered how to get out of this alive. What were their options?

  He discounted Oz automatically. He was like the boy in the second X-Men film whose sole mutation was the ability to change television channels by blinking. It was a neat trick, but its uses were limited.

  On the other hand, just as Aidan had recently told Itzy, sometimes his powers were useful.

  He slowly closed his eyes.

  Despite the box, it was hard to focus on anything amidst the pandemonium all around him. Aidan had been feeling the splitting within his mind grow with intensity ever since he had arrived at the museum. He knew from experience that the worst thing would have been to fight against it. If he was going to divide, so be it. Perhaps he could use that.

  So he allowed one part of his brain to panic. It was the more human side, he supposed, while the alien side lifted right out of his body, a separate entity observing all that surrounded him. He reached for that entity, grabbing it with his mental arms and pulling it toward him. He melted into it, becoming one with it. At some point, he realised he could no longer feel his own body.

  When he opened his eyes, the box was no longer there. The people were gone, the objects had vanished - even the ceiling and walls had disappeared. In their place were billions upon billions of atoms, hovering and vibrating magnetically together but never quite touching. His grey eyes were microscopes, allowing him to see right into the spaces that lay between the molecules.

  Not for the first time, he marvelled at the fact that there was no such thing as emptiness. Even the air was filled with particles. It was so busy. So what was it that that made him a different creature from Seth, for instance? Their consciousness was all. But even that, Aidan thought, was perhaps more connected than they might believe.

  It was in those moments - when Aidan really used his power - that he found himself faced with the interchangeable nature of all things in the universe. It reminded him of the ‘magic’ painting books he had as a child, where there were pictures made up of dots, like impressionist art. All he had to do was add water, and somehow the dots smeared together into colour. Then the pictures would become clear. Before that, they were just a mess of equidistant points.

  That was the key to how Aidan’s power worked. When he saw that his physical form was no different to anything else around him, he found he was part of that matter. He could touch its essence, join with it, take control and act on its behalf - and he could change it.

  I am it, and it is me, he thought as he stepped away from Seth’s wall and turned his attention on the glittering grey he knew to be the living armour. He sta
red at it with deadly intent. A clay pot flew over his head, but he didn’t feel the breeze of it going by. A shard of glass grazed his leg, but it didn’t hurt. He was enveloped in a bubble of protection, through the strength of his mind. His golden complexion glowed with his power, lighting him up like a full moon.

  Before everyone’s eyes, the metal started to melt under his unblinking glare. It liquefied and dripped to the floor in a pool of silver, grateful to be put out of its misery.

  The sword drizzled down beside what was left of the armour, like a desperate lover throwing himself at the side of the lifeless object of his desire.

  No longer having to think about what he was doing, Aidan turned his fearsome glare on the possessed pottery. Some distant part of himself watched with remote interest as it crumbled quickly into dust. The glass transformed into water and fell over them like rain. He shut his eyes again and allowed the coolness of his mind to surge forward.

  He lifted his arms and a great inexplicable wind flew from him. It swept through the room, blowing the dust into the corridor next door. With one last push of his hands, the Greek statues shot out of the room, as if pulled back on reels. At last, they hit a wall, where they smashed and settled in the distance.

  The sudden stillness in the room was deafening, like the pounding in one’s ears after spending an hour at a rock concert.

  It was finished.