by Bill Hiatt
“I’m right here,” said Tal. Alex took one look and immediately looked unhappy again.
“Worry not,” said Atlante. “We will break the spell on him next.”
Alex looked at the person he thought was Jimmie, puzzled by the difference in tone and speech pattern. We had to pause long enough to explain what had happened. Alex didn’t look any happier than the rest of us that someone else was possessing Jimmie’s body, much less that Dark Me, alias Magnus, was part of our group. As for being on the moon, he was a little nervous, but, like the rest of us, he had been in more threatening places than the silvery world that now surrounded us.
“What about Carla?” he asked, looking around.
“In a coma the last we saw,” Magnus said. “I’m sure Vanora has healed her by now, but I’m equally sure she’s still Alcina.”
“Do you know anything about Nurse Florence?” asked Gordy. “We haven’t seen her at all.”
Alex looked even more unhappy. “I don’t think Hecate had any plans for her, but when we arrived on Olympus, we were knocked out almost immediately. The attack on us was so intense we didn’t have a chance to resist. They woke the other three of us to change us, but Nurse Florence was still lying there. I didn’t see her get up.”
“Maybe they hadn’t thought of any way to use her past to their advantage yet,” suggested Carlos.
“If and when they do, we’ll be ready,” said Magnus. “Alex, when you say ‘they,’ I assume you mean Hecate and company. Any insight on what happened?”
Alex shook his head. “I wish I could be more help, but we were unconscious until Cronus started warping us into past versions of ourselves, and after I’d become…the guy I used to be, I was sent back to Earth immediately to meet up with Alcina.”
“Too bad it wasn’t a B movie,” said Gordy. “One of the villains would have revealed everything.”
Magnus questioned Alex a little longer—a pointless exercise since he had already read Alex’s memories. Then I realized he was working up to the big question: would Alex body-share with Ascalaphus?
Alex, who had practically memorized the Iliad, didn’t need to be told who Ascalaphus was. In fact, he added the detail that Ares had been so upset by Ascalaphus’s death that he had wanted to race down to the battlefield and take revenge despite the edict of Zeus forbidding such a thing.
“If Ascalaphus thinks he can help, I’d be honored to share my body with him.” Alex looked like a little kid on Christmas.
“Alex, once this is done, it’s pretty hard to undo,” pointed out Gordy. “You know that. Are you sure about this?”
“Stan seems to be OK with King David, and Shar with both Alexander and Achilles. You do know how to fix us so we can work together, right?” he asked Magnus.
“Just as Tal does,” Magnus said.
“You don’t have to do this,” said Khalid, giving Alex another hug.
“I know I don’t. I just want to help in any way I can. Ascalaphus has so many more years of experience than I do. Surely we can use his help.”
None of us could argue with that, and even Gordy reluctantly let Alex go through the process. Casting the awakening spell was the easy part; it had been designed as a low-power spell, though to do that, Ceridwen had made its counterspell incredibly tough to cast. Properly integrating Alex and Ascalaphus took longer, complicated by the fact that this Ascalaphus persona had no memory of the interactions his earlier persona had through past Alex. Nonetheless, Magnus, aided by Tal’s memories of what Merlin had done to enable Stan and David to coexist successfully and by Atlante’s power, managed to set up Alex to his satisfaction. He also helped bring Ascalaphus up to speed by sharing memories of what had happened earlier.
“Are you feeling OK?” asked Gordy.
“Great, actually,” said Alex. “Just like Stan with David, I can communicate with Ascalaphus whenever I want, and if something comes up he’s better suited for than I, I can let him control my body.”
Looking over at Magnus and Atlante, Alex thanked them. Atlante bowed, and Magnus made a show of accepting the thanks without any sarcastic response.
Even before Ares had tried to use Alex as a weapon, Alex had always loved Greek mythology and daydreamed about being part of it. Manipulation by Ares had left him physically much more powerful, but it had also left him with the feeling of betrayal and the haunting memories of how he had hurt us while being manipulated by Ares. I could see that having Ascalaphus inside him would be a completely different and much more positive experience than before. Our friendship had made Alex happy, but now he looked even happier, more able to distance himself from the evil he had been tricked into doing.
I hated to admit it, but Magnus had actually done the right thing, even if his reasons for it had nothing to do with Alex’s well-being.
I was still chewing on that unfamiliar idea when we heard howling in the distance.
“Wolves!” said Atlante. “We must prepare to defend ourselves.”
Magnus looked over at the broken gate. “The courtyard isn’t safe. We need to—”
Then the first wave of wolves was already rushing into the courtyard, white-furred, red-eyed, bigger, and faster than normal wolves.
The idea of wolves on steroids flashed through my mind. Magic steroids—or was it just the effect of being exposed to what amounted to a perpetual full moon?
We barely had time to draw weapons before those first wolves were upon us.
Chapter 10: Loss (Stan)
“Shar, what should we do?” I whispered, twisting my neck as if to look behind me. I couldn’t see him, of course, but he might be able to hear me better if I talked in his direction.
“Keep calm!” loudly insisted someone, probably the manager. “I’m sure the lights will be back on in no time.”
“Shar?” I asked again.
“Stay put,” he whispered back. “With all these people around, we’re safe, right?”
“I would have thought so,” said Umbra. “I cannot explain why the Populus Umbrae would have cut the power, however, if they were not preparing an attack.”
From the sounds around us, I would say some people had gotten up and were milling around. That was very unwise, since they could easily trip and fall, but in this case it was even more dangerous. If the Populus Umbrae really intended to attack despite the presence of a crowd, and people were blocking their path, those people could get cut down.
Shar drew Zom, awkward in the booth, but its emerald light was comforting, even though we were the only humans in the place who could see it. The assassins could see it as well, and perhaps it would give them second thoughts.
Dan and I also drew, though our swords didn’t radiate light. I doubted showing off our readiness to fight would change anything, but who knew?
Then a couple of flashlights came into play, and several cell phones also glowed to life. That might hinder the Populus Umbrae a little, though I thought it would take a direct hit with a flashlight beam to really drive them back, and the cell-phone light wouldn’t be any kind of deterrent. However, the lighting forced us to keep our swords on our laps. Now that they were drawn, civilians would see them as fencing foils, and they might reflect flashlight beams enough to be noticed. Even as fencing equipment, they would have been hard to explain.
“Sophia, it’s just a power failure!” insisted Mr. Weaver. “Nothing supernatural about it.”
Ignoring him, Mrs. Weaver said to me, “Stan, there are…others here. At least twenty.” She had been able to see Jimmie when he was still a ghost, so it wasn’t surprising she could see the shadow assassins and distinguish them from the other customers, even in the semidarkness.
“There are lots of people in here,” said Mr. Weaver, still clueless.
“Located where?” I asked.
“Singly or in pairs, more or less throughout the diner.”
With the interior now one big shadow, it would make sense they could pop in and out wherever they felt like. We were pretty much sitt
ing ducks if they decided to attack.
“Preparing to attack?” I asked, leaning as close to Mrs. Weaver as I could get.
“What are you talking about?” asked Mr. Weaver, obviously perturbed.
“Please be quiet, dear. Stan, I can’t tell. They seem more as if they are…scouting.” If she was right, they must have figured out exactly where we were and how we were positioned. If they were still just after Umbra, she was on the inside of the booth, with Shar between her and the aisle and Gavin sitting on the other side. That would make her hard to get to—unless the shadows got frustrated and went on a killing spree. Their putting out the lights suggested they just might be that frustrated.
I heard one of the flashlights break. The beam went out, and one of the waitresses, caught by surprise, shrieked.
There was no question now. The Populus Umbrae were getting ready to make their move.
As far as I could tell from the intermittent light from the one remaining flashlight and the cell phones, making a run for the door would require trampling people standing in the way. Really, though, what would be the point of even trying? The streetlights appeared to be out as well, and my guess was the Populus Umbrae could cut us all down before we reached a better-lighted area. Not only that, but if the parking lot where our car was had also gone dark, it would basically be a deathtrap under these circumstances, so where could we run to?
“Umbra, how much do your…do the Populus Umbrae know about electricity?”
“Most of the worlds they visit do not have electric power,” she said quietly. “However, they did train me in some basic principles before they sent me after Lucas. I knew about switch boxes, for example.”
Clearly, someone in the current attack group knew more about the power system than just switch boxes, or our attackers couldn’t have blacked out the restaurant and the street this way. Perhaps after their second round of attacks against Lucas, they had studied in greater depth the way electrical power was delivered.
The lights came on so abruptly that I was momentarily blinded. The way Umbra jerked behind me suggested that our shadow-assassin friends must have been more than just blinded. At this point, part of me would have loved to hear their silent screams as they were forced back into their own world.
The manager was looking around the room. “Folks, it’s going to be a while before the regular power comes back on. Lucky for you, the owner invested in a backup generator, so you can finish your meals comfortably.”
What do you know? The Populus Umbrae had just learned something new about electrical-delivery options. They could probably have disabled the generator—if only they had realized it was there. Now it was too late. Anything they did outside now would have no effect—at least nothing I could think of.
Just to be safe, as the manager passed by, I asked, “What does your generator run on? Gasoline?”
He smiled. “No, natural gas, though there’s a propane fallback if electricity and gas are both cut off at the same time, like in an earthquake. Not that San Francisco ever has those.” He smiled again and moved on.
I doubted the Populus Umbrae had the knowledge to start digging up gas lines, a process that would anyway have been pretty conspicuous.
Dan took a quick walk to look out the front window, then came back.
“Power failure took out the traffic light at the intersection. Officers are just now starting to direct traffic, but it’s backed up for quite a way, this being Friday and all. I’d suggest waiting here awhile.”
“Maybe we should have dessert,” suggested Mrs. Weaver. “The desk clerk at our hotel told me the ice-cream sodas are really good here.”
“I’d rather have truth than ice cream,” said Mr. Weaver, eyeing Dan and me almost as if we were criminals. That hurt, especially considering how long I’d known him.
Then I realized there just might be a way I could offer Mr. Weaver the evidence he needed to accept what we were saying.
“Mr. Weaver, while we’re waiting for those shakes, can you come with me to the restroom? I need to show you something.”
OK, so that had sounded better in my head. Mr. Weaver really looked at me suspiciously at that point.
“I’m the guy who practically lived at the hospital while we thought Tal was having a breakdown, remember? Humor me one more time, and if I can’t convince you, you can tell our parents and have them punish us appropriately.”
Mr. Weaver might not like me much right now, but he couldn’t deny my past with Tal. “All right,” he said, sliding out of the booth. Mrs. Weaver, Umbra, and the guys watched us go. There wasn’t time to tell them what I had in mind.
We got to the men’s room and found two other guys in it, so I fussed with my hair a little in the mirror and waited until they left. Then I turned to Mr. Weaver and took off the top of my dragon armor, which looked like a shirt to him.
“Stan, what are you doing?” he asked. Without answering, I drew my sword.
“Where did that come from?” he asked, looking suspiciously at what he thought was a fencing foil.
“My sword. It’s invisible unless I draw it.”
“Magic tricks?” he asked. “That’s your proof for this whole story?”
“No, just watch please.”
My sword had once been David’s, but Govannon, the Welsh faerie blacksmith, had added some interesting features, making it as strong as a faerie sword but also giving it one other magic property. David was nervous about my using it, but he reluctantly agreed this time.
Govannon had inscribed a short Hebrew chant on the blade. I spoke the words, and before Mr. Weaver’s eyes, my muscles expanded, making my relatively slender build look much more like Shar’s. The effect was not quite as dramatic as it had been before I started working out, but it was enough to be difficult to explain.
“That’s…that’s not possible!” protested Mr. Weaver.
“And yet here it is. We have concealing illusions on our gear, so this was the only thing I could do that you would be able to see. Do you agree this isn’t a trick?”
Mr. Weaver reached out and touched my new-and-improved bicep, as if its expansion could have been some kind of optical illusion. “If it’s a trick, I can’t see how,” he admitted.
I sheathed my sword, which shrank my muscles back to normal, and put my dragon armor back on. Then I walked back to the table with Mr. Weaver trailing wordlessly behind.
Over ice-cream sodas he ran a couple of tests before he would let himself concede that the world was totally different from what he had always believed. One of those tests was to call my mother.
“You can’t mention I’m here with you!” I said, alarmed at the thought.
“Don’t worry,” he said. Then he spent several minutes asking my mother about the evacuation. The conversation seemed normal enough from his side, but I gnashed my teeth the whole time. One slip, and word of where we were might get back to Vanora.
After the call ended, he looked at me and said, “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“What…what changed your mind?” I asked.
“I’ve known your mother for years. I’ve never had a conversation with her when your name hasn’t come up. Not this time, though. Even when I prompted her by mentioning Tal, she said nothing. You may not know this, Stan, but she fretted nonstop when you were on trips Carrie Winn set up…well, we thought they were trips at the time, anyway. But now, with the whole town evacuated, she isn’t fretting about you at all? Her behavior makes no sense—unless she really is under a spell, as you thought.
I had to snicker a little. My physical transformation hadn’t done the trick, but my smother-mother’s failure to obsess over me was proof positive magic existed. Go figure!
“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?” Mr. Weaver asked Mrs. Weaver. She didn’t answer immediately, so I jumped in.
“Telling you would have put everyone in danger, including Tal,” I said. “There are a lot of elements in the supernatural community who take a very dim vie
w of telling ordinary mortals anything.”
“Then how can you tell me now?” he asked, still glaring at Mrs. Weaver.
“Gwynn ap Nudd gave Tal permission to talk if the circumstances were dire enough. They aren’t likely to get much more dire than this.”
“I wanted to tell you so many times. I wanted to with all my heart. Tal and I even argued about it…often,” said Mrs. Weaver, clutching at Mr. Weaver’s hand.
“We’ll discuss it later,” said Mr. Weaver somewhat coldly. “So just how dire are these circumstances?” He asked, scanning the diner as if he expected to find monsters occupying some of the booths.
“That power outage earlier is an attempt by the shadow assassins I told you about to get to Umbra. If we can get through the night, we can probably shake them if you can help us fly out during daylight. They won’t be able to track us effectively that way…at least, we hope.”
“And then what?” he asked. That was really the heart of our current problem. I had no idea what to do once we got out of San Francisco.
“We need to find someone with magic who can help us. We don’t know where anyone else is right now. We just know they weren’t Vanora’s prisoners. Maybe they’re trapped somewhere else, or maybe they’re just in hiding. Either way, we don’t have the ability to beat Vanora on our own.”
“Nor should you have to. You’re all just teenagers. This is too much for anyone to expect of you. The state police—”
“You can’t call them,” interrupted Dan. “You could never expect to be believed. Look how long it took us to convince you, and you’ve known us for years. Even if you could get police officers to believe you, they have no way to protect against the magic Vanora could throw at them.”
“You don’t think any law-enforcement agency could help?” he asked, still clinging to the idea that the world made some kind of sense.
“As far as we know, there is no government agency that has any knowledge of magic,” I said. “If Vanora can control our parents the way she seems to be, she could twist any government agent who got close to her. Anyway, it probably isn’t just her. She’s using way more power than she should have, unless someone else is helping her, maybe even several someones.”