The Secret of the Sacred Four

by E J Elwin

  “Should we finish this?” asked Sylvie, looking around at the force field.

  “Hold on just a second,” said Harriet, as Jessica and Jasper approached her.

  “We just need to get rid of their guns first,” said Jessica. “If you give me a little time, I can have the trees snatch them all away…”

  “No, let me,” said Harriet. She stepped toward the glittering barrier and looked out at the masked men hurling themselves against it. One of them yelled something at the men around him, his voice slightly muffled, and they backed away from him. The man then angled his gun in such a way so that he could point it at the force field but not be directly behind it as it fired.

  A muted series of gunshots went off, sounding like they were being fired underwater. The bullets exploded in rainbow-colored bursts of light, reminding me of sparklers on the Fourth of July, but made no dent in our powerful barrier. By the looks of the men ducking and covering their heads, the bullets had ricocheted off the force field like they had in front of Harriet’s house.

  Harriet raised her arms, not to her sides like she always did, but out in front of her. She pointed her open hands at the men beyond the force field, and I thought of a conductor guiding a symphony.

  “Enough,” she said, “with the fucking—” she twisted her wrists as if turning invisible doors knobs, “GUNS!” She shouted the last word in guttural fury and wrenched her arms up above her head, her fists tightly clenched, as though pulling the rug out from under something.

  All the men outside the force field had their guns suddenly yanked from their hands, as if twenty-odd giants had come along and plucked them from their grasp. The guns hovered high above their heads, and a few of them actually jumped up and down trying to reach them, like small children trying to recover a toy that has been taken from them by an older sibling. The guns which belonged to the men who had fallen during the Ceremony, also rose up into the air and joined the others. They floated up the sides of the force field until all thirty-something of them gathered at the top of the dome.

  The girls and I looked up at the weapons, their metal outlines just visible in the light of the force field. Then Harriet screamed. It was a straining, thundering sound that I’d never heard from her, and her clenched fists trembled above her head. There was a distant metallic crinkling noise, like the sound of a soda can being crushed, and then Harriet hurled her arms out in front of her as if throwing an invisible chair. I squinted through the top of the twinkling dome and saw that the many guns were no longer there. Harriet had flung them out into the Tillamook Head woods, now warped and unusable. She finally put her arms down and let out a relieved breath.

  “Alright, let’s end them,” she said. “Are you all ready?”

  “Most definitely,” said Jasper in a booming voice, raising his katana and staring out at the Brotherhood with his bright blue lamp eyes.

  “Yeah, let’s get them before they skedaddle,” said Hortensia to my right, glaring at one masked man in particular who was staring at her through the force field.

  “I’m ready!” said Sylvie. “Lizzie, are you?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Lizzie, her lips in a tight line as she looked out at the men.

  “Arthur, are you ready?” asked Harriet.

  “Let’s kick their asses,” I said, echoing both Sylvie and Connor’s turn of phrase. Across the cauldron, Sylvie smiled and nodded at me in a manner that clearly said, that’s the spirit!

  “Battle positions, everyone!” called Jessica in a lighthearted tone, as though we were all about to play a game of kickball at summer camp. “On the count of… four?”

  The girls and I grinned and said at the same time, “Count of four.”

  “One…” Lizzie shook out her shoulders like she was preparing for a yoga class.

  “Two…” Sylvie cracked her neck, reminding me again of a fighter in a rink.

  “Three…” Hortensia mouthed an obscenity at the man staring at her through the barrier.

  “Four!” We let go of each other’s hands and darted to the ground for our enchanted weapons. Sylvie shot up with her broadsword, Hortensia with her quarterstaff, Lizzie with her crossbow, and me with my crescent axes. The force field continued to glimmer and swirl around us for a few seconds before it vanished in the blink of an eye, like a soap bubble popping.

  There was a tremulous moment in which the twenty-odd members of the Brotherhood stared at us, as if in disbelief that the force field had come down, and we stared back at them, two armies on the battlefield. There was a collective shout from the assembled men, like wolves howling at the moon, and then they all swarmed into the clearing.

  What felt like a black flag billowing in my face turned out to be Sylvie’s cloak as she shot into the air, seemingly vanishing for a second, before diving back down and plunging her sword into the chest of one of the masked men. The men around him quaked in shock, then one of them pounced at Sylvie. She shot back into the air, flicking the blood from her sword into the man’s eyes as she went.

  Hortensia ran directly at the swarm of men, both she and her long quarterstaff passing right through them. They all looked perplexed as they grabbed at the air, no doubt thinking they’d just seen the ghost of a witch. Then Hortensia came bolting out of the trees, took a running leap at one of the men, and drove the shining blade at the end of her staff into his stomach. The man grunted in dying pains as Hortensia twisted the blade inside him and then wrenched it out.

  Two of the man’s comrades aimed to tackle her but instead ran straight into each other with the sickening sound of skull smacking against skull. They stumbled around dazed, clutching their foreheads. Hortensia took the opportunity to skewer them both with her spear, quickly and efficiently as if she were making shish kebabs.

  Jasper’s blue lamp eyes stood out in the chaos as he darted around the masked men, all of them unable to touch him. He ducked and dodged at precisely the right moments, his attackers grunting with frustration as every punch and kick they tried to land missed him. He swung and thrust his katana with deadly precision, and the men dropped around him like marionettes. He remained unblinking the whole time, his expression neutral, almost bored, reminding me of the kids at my school who played video games with blank-eyed, vacant expressions.

  Jessica stood rooted in one place, standing against a tree trunk like before. She too looked almost bored, a mellow smile on her face as she flicked her wrists out in front her, causing the tree behind her to slash its branches through the air with vicious force. It was as if she were leaning against a giant octopus with a leafy crown as it whipped and bludgeoned the members of the Brotherhood who dared approach. Every now and then, she’d extend her arm toward another tree to help someone out. I watched as a tree behind Jasper snaked a branch around one man’s neck and snapped it like a toothpick.

  Harriet strode calmly through the melee, every knife from the array on the black velvet cloth hovering around her like a shining cloud. The knives shot through the air with lightning speed, slashing and impaling any masked man who came near her. Like Jessica, she would occasionally help someone else. I watched a knife fly across the clearing into a man’s back who had run at a break in Jessica’s tentacle branch line of defense. The knife flew back into Harriet’s hand, and I saw the sapphires in its hilt, gleaming in the light of the colorful cauldron fire.

  Harriet saw me watching her and smiled in the most leisurely manner imaginable. Then her eyes flicked at something over my shoulder, and one of the knives hovering around her shot right at me, flying past my head and into the eye of a man who had run at me from behind.

  “Keep your focus, Arthur, honey!” she said, reminding me of my brief stint playing little league baseball as a child when my mom would call out similar things from the stands.

  A man, bleeding and battered, perhaps from Jessica’s tentacle branches, caught my gaze from across the clearing. His mask had come off, and of course I didn’t recognize him, the Patriarch being the only Brotherho
od member I knew by sight, but I recognized the look of hatred and bloodlust. He ran toward me, and I raised one of the crescent axes and threw it as hard as I could in his direction, wishing for it to hit him in the face. Instead, it sank into his chest, and he fell back onto the ground. Close enough, I thought, as I ran to retrieve my axe.

  I had never in my life thrown a weapon like this, but it felt as natural as tossing clothes into a laundry hamper. It was wonderful, electrifying, to have such command over these instruments, to put my best effort behind the axe and watch it fly through the air to stop my enemy in his tracks. I imagined what I might be capable of with a little target practice and felt the urge to squeal the way Hortensia had when she’d seen the conical hats.

  Another barefaced man launched himself at me, and I ducked before swinging my right axe into his stomach. The man choked and made gurgling sounds, bloody spittle dribbling from his mouth. He grabbed my arm holding the axe inside him and squeezed hard, determined to pull it out. I swung the axe in my left hand at his face but he caught my wrist.

  A masked man at the other end of the clearing noticed our struggle and raced toward us. I strained to push the axe further inside the struggling man but he seemed to be gaining in strength. Just as the other man ran past the cauldron and pelted toward us, the axe inside the man and its twin in my other hand suddenly ignited in my yellow orange flames.

  The man impaled on the axe screamed in agony, and I wrenched my left wrist from his grip just as his comrade reached us. I swung the axe under my right arm and into the new attacker’s abdomen, bringing him to a shuddering halt. The axes burned inside the men for a few seconds, my arms crossed awkwardly over each other like an X, and then I yanked both out at the same time to a deluge of blood.

  The men fell to the ground, and I held the flaming axes up, admiring the fire that now felt like a welcome companion. The blood on the blades quickly dried up in the heat from the magical flames.

  Another black flag swished across my vision as Sylvie flew past, her sword gleaming and her leg outstretched. She zoomed over the cauldron and kicked a man in the chest with the force of a wrecking ball, sending him flying backward. Another black cloak billowed nearby, this one Hortensia’s. She ran in a wide circle through the trees, passing smoothly through the tree trunks, darting out here and there to strike at the masked men in her path.

  Then I saw her. The dark swan flew out of the trees as Hortensia ran through, soaring into the clearing in a flutter of black feathers. I took one look at the blood-red eyes and beak, the sleek black plumage flecked with white, then hurled my right flaming axe at her with all the strength I could muster. The axe narrowly missed and stuck in the wood of a tree behind her.

  She squawked in alarm and flew in the other direction, right into the path of my second axe, which instead sunk into the chest of an errant member of the Brotherhood. She started to fly upward, her black wings expanding to a span of six or seven feet, and I bolted after her, knowing full well that I couldn’t fly without a broomstick but determined to end her all the same, to pay her back for getting Connor and so many other people killed.

  “Oh no you don’t!” I shouted, as she rose high into the air.

  She had nearly cleared the trees when I threw both hands into the air and shot out two dazzling jets of yellow orange flames, striking her squarely between her long black wings. There was a hideous high-pitched squawking as the dark swan was engulfed in flames. She flailed her wings wildly but then faltered in the air before dropping to the ground like a lead weight.

  I gazed at the burning carcass of the witch who had caused so much devastation, who had murdered twelve fellow witches and ripped their hearts out. My rage seared inside me and the flames on my hands grew in response. Even though the swan was charred and completely dead, I thrust my right hand out and shot another jet of flames at the smoldering remains for good measure. The carcass was now unrecognizable and might have passed for a campfire.

  I thought for a second that no one had seen my fiery execution of the traitor witch, but then saw Harriet beaming at me from beside the cauldron, her knives slicing and dicing at a man on the floor next to her. The clearing was littered with the bodies of the Brotherhood. The battle was nearly over.

  I watched Hortensia smack around an unmasked man, his face becoming progressively more bloodied as she thwacked him this way and that with both ends of her quarterstaff.

  “¡Andale cabrón!” she kept saying in Spanish, and I wondered if the man she was thrashing was the same one who had been staring at her through the force field.

  She swept her long staff beneath his legs, sending him crashing to the ground. She twirled the staff in a quick figure eight above him before sinking it into his chest. The man stopped struggling and Hortensia yanked the weapon from his body.

  I looked up and saw Sylvie running through the air around the clearing as if there were an invisible running track up there, her black cloak flying behind her like a cape. She swung her sword out at the men who were still standing, deftly slashing open their throats. Finally, she glided smoothly down into the clearing to face the one man who remained. The man crouched in a combat position, his hands out in front of him, reminding me of the gorilla costume in the Wardrobe Room. Sylvie smiled, held out her sword, and dropped it on the ground next to her.

  Both she and the man lunged at each other at the same time, but Sylvie soared up into the air above him, kicking him squarely in the face as she did so. The man fell to the floor and then scrambled back up just as Sylvie descended gracefully back down in front of him. He wiped blood from his mouth, his eyes gleaming with hatred as he regarded her.

  “Why don’t you face me without your devil powers, witch?” he spat, saying the last word like it was a curse word.

  “Says the guy who can’t fight without a semi-automatic!” said Jessica from her tree, its tentacle branches curling in apparent agreement with her statement. She, Harriet, and Jasper were all watching Sylvie’s fight against the last man standing with utter calm and even amusement.

  “Yeah, and like you don’t have eighty pounds on me, asshole,” said Sylvie coolly.

  The man lunged again and so did she. She darted around his graceless attempt at tackling her and kicked him cleanly in the face once again, this time without flying. She watched him coldly as he stumbled, clutching his nose which was now pumping out blood.

  “They’re not devil powers, by the way,” she said with a saccharine smile. “The only devil left here is you.”

  A masked man lunged suddenly out of the trees behind Sylvie and barreled toward her before any of us fully realized what happened. She turned just as he was upon her, but then he suddenly dropped to the floor like a thick lump of coal. Sylvie blinked in confusion.

  The man she had been fighting took his chance and lunged the few feet between them. His hands were inches from her neck when— boom!— he fell to the ground like his comrade.

  We all stared at the bodies in perplexity for a moment before Lizzie appeared out of thin air a few feet away, holding her glittering crossbow and smiling with satisfaction at the two corpses. I looked again at the bodies and saw the arrows sticking out of their heads. Apparently, the arrows remained invisible even after they left Lizzie’s person, at least until she herself reappeared. I looked around the clearing and saw more of her arrows poking out of bodies. Jessica’s words in the Illusion Room echoed in my head: You are going to be unseen death coming for the Brotherhood…

  Harriet, Jessica, and Jasper burst into applause while Sylvie ran over to hug Lizzie.

  “That was amazing!” said Sylvie. Lizzie smiled but looked pensive as she went to retrieve her arrows and examine the two bodies. “Are you okay?” Sylvie asked.

  “They were trying to kill you,” said Lizzie. “I’d do it again.” She looked around at the clearing. “Is it over? Did we win?”

  “It looks like we did,” said Jessica, finally leaving her tree. “We beat the Brotherhood! Well, there’s a network of
them planted in government and law enforcement, but we just took out their death team, the ones who actually go out in the field to torture and kill. There’s at least—” she flicked her finger around at the clearing, “forty. This could be it for the Brotherhood.”

  “Oh, and here’s another little surprise!” said Harriet gleefully, indicating the smoking remains of the traitor witch. “Roasted swan, à la Arthur!”

  Jessica and the girls exclaimed in surprise and ran over to the shriveled swan carcass.

  “How did I miss that?” asked Jessica, disappointed.

  “You and me both!” said Sylvie.

  “I caught it,” said Jasper smugly, eyes still aglow. “I knew she was about to fly out of the trees right into Arthur’s path.”

  “He was amazing!” Harriet gushed. “Massive bolt of flames that caught her right in the air!” She patted me on the back and gave me that motherly smile. It felt nice to see her proud of me and to know that I had really earned it.

  “So that’s it, then?” asked Hortensia. “The Brotherhood’s witch tracker and demon summoner is gone? The murders and heart harvesting will stop?”

  “We can’t say the murders will stop yet,” said Harriet. “The Brotherhood technically still exists. But the heart harvesting was only needed for the Malevolent spell the witch was working on, so that should stop.”

  Hortensia looked down at the smoking remains thoughtfully.

  “What is it, sweetie?” asked Jessica.

  “I don’t know…” said Hortensia. “It all feels a little anticlimactic… A little too easy…”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I said, looking down at the spray of blood on my clothes from the two members of the Brotherhood I’d axed.

  “It doesn’t feel a little weird to you?” she asked. “Our destiny, the new war, hundreds of years in the making, is just a bunch of douchebags with guns and a swan?”

  “She wasn’t just a swan, to be fair,” said Lizzie, looking down at the carcass.

  “I don’t know,” said Hortensia again. “Something doesn’t feel right…”