This Magic Moment

by Susan Squires

  “I have let you free,” Morgan shouted. “You owe me immortality!”

  A huge, thin black arm, hinged in too many places, with a confusion of too many sticklike fingers, each with a lethal barb at the end, plunged out of the red, boiling stench. As the arm pushed into the hangar, the boiling lava-like goo surged into the room. The hand (or whatever it was) grabbed Morgan, the barbed fingers piercing her body. She screamed in anguish as the arm snatched her back through the crack. Clan members and soldiers alike shrieked as the lava engulfed them. Several more robes burst into flame. Others fell, screaming, into the goo. It heaved up around the outside of the blue dome of light the family had created and sloshed back. How long could Mom hold it at bay?

  Tammy glanced to the rift that still bulged in the far wall. Yes, it still had the black emptiness. But she realized what Drew’s last vision meant. Behind the gash that now spread outside the hangar and into the desert air, there were other somethings moving in the darkness. Somethings shadowy and stick-like with bulging bodies that made her shudder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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  “Close the hole,” Daddy shouted. But he was looking up at the stars now.

  “We can’t split our focus,” Kemble yelled. “The Talismans are attracting the power. It’s building. We’ll have Armageddon if we let it escape.”

  The feeling of otherworldliness in the hangar made it difficult to breathe. Tammy glanced to the glowing pedestals that held the Sword and the Wand. They glowed and throbbed. Lava surged against the bases.

  “The Cup,” her Mom panted. “Put your love into the Cup.” Mom looked exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. The Cup pulsed and throbbed too, only it was now inside the blue protective light. Mom had pushed the circle out to surround it.

  With a crack, the base that displayed the Wand leaned precariously. Lava had eaten away the metal. Tammy looked around frantically. Lava had eaten through the doorway they’d used to come down into the hangar. It was sloshing down the stairwell. A hole had opened in the floor on the far side of the giant, red and nothing-black crack in the world. The lava was going to eat the whole compound at this rate.

  “Focus!” Mom screamed. “The Cup. The Pentacle will pass. We have to hold out.”

  Tammy had never been so frightened in her life. Her breath was ragged as tried to think about love. Jason was gripping her left hand like she was a lifeline, and she was gripping her father’s hand just as hard.

  “We can do it,” her father said, his voice so low only Tammy and her Mom could probably hear it. Tammy shut her eyes to concentrate and thought about Thomas and how he’d changed her life. It wasn’t just about making love to him. It was his sincerity, his innocence, his courage and willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good. She thought about her love of the family around her, their years of struggle against the darkness when it would have been so much easier to give in and turn away, the love she’d received unconditionally, even when she’d been silly or difficult. She opened her eyes and stared at the Cup as it seemed to expand. Was it absorbing the power in the room? Was it easier to breathe?

  She heard the screams from the Clan members as they tried to avoid the lava-goo, and fainter, more inhuman screams coming through the glowing crack in the world. Thomas was still over Luc’s shoulder. Blood drenched the altar. Every cut on his body was burned on her brain. Because I love him so much, she thought, and put that love into the Cup.

  And then the unbearable power in the room just…faded.

  The Tremaines, joined by the two Clan guys, collectively sucked in a breath of relief as the power washed away. As one, they looked up. The Pentacle wasn’t perfect any more. The comet was infinitesimally out of sync with the other stars in the Dipper.

  The magic moment had passed.

  But that didn’t mean that their peril had passed. The Cup bulged and throbbed on the altar from absorbing the power of the Pentacle. The rift in space was like a black gash ripping upwards into the desert night, still extruding lava. The blacker marks moving in the darkness beyond the rift seemed to be coming closer. Lava sloshed around their blue bubble and poured down an expanding hole in the floor. The Talismans had started to glow blue. The stands for their cases bent and melted as the red-hot goo engulfed them. The Wand and the Sword collapsed into the magma. The bases were gone, but the Talismans themselves floated on the metal-eating pulsing waves in their blue halos, untouched. Clan members and the hired security screamed as the lava engulfed them, or ran for the elevators since the stairwell was useless.

  “Time to go, Brina,” Daddy yelled. He turned to Jason. “Another way out? We’ll never make the elevators.”

  Indeed, fighting had broken out as people pushed to get inside a car that had arrived.

  Jason’s light blue eyes flickered in the unholy red light. “Yeah,” he said. He pointed toward the far corner of the hangar opposite the rift and the encroaching lava.

  “Move the circle that way,” Daddy barked.

  “Get in,” Mom shouted to Luc and broke the circle so he and Thomas could get back inside. Jason and Daddy pushed the bubble toward the far corner of the hangar. Tammy could see a four-sided pyramid of chains hanging from a winch.

  “Move it,” Tris called. “This stuff is advancing.”

  They thrust the circle and the blue glow ahead as fast as they could. The screams around them competed with the roar from the crevice.

  They reached the winch. The chains were attached at each corner of a square platform outlined in the floor. A huge motor off to the side drew the chains over a girder above them.

  “This lowers to the ground level,” Jason shouted.

  “Move,” Daddy directed and they surged forward.

  Lava was eating up everything in its path. Or maybe it wasn’t lava, but some corrosive goo from the other dimension. What did it matter? They squeezed onto the square metal lift, probably designed to haul vehicles or supplies up and down from the hangar. It was barely big enough to hold them all. Their clasped hands were broken but the blue glow held, maybe because they were now shoulder to shoulder. Jason reached out and pulled a lever on the motor. They began to descend slowly.

  The dim electric lights around the edge of the vast hall went out. The place was lit only by the glowing lava, the dying flickers of Thomas’s flame and the blue glow of the Talismans that floated on the lava, apparently impervious. A wail went up from those around the elevators. They had creaked to a halt. The power was down. Lava began to eat those people gathered in front of the elevator doors.

  But their platform had ceased to move as well. They were maybe knee deep in the shaft.

  “Damn!” Luc and Dev yelled. Lan and Jason were more graphic.

  “I’ll power the motor,” Tris called from the rear.

  “Keep forgetting that,” Luc muttered, just behind Tammy.

  “We can’t go yet,” Daddy said. He didn’t shout, but everybody heard him, even if some, like Tammy, couldn’t believe their ears. The screams were dying out, just because everyone still on this floor except the Tremaines were dead or dying.

  Daddy nodded to the rift at the other end of the hangar. It was longer and wider than it had been. And big, dark things now were moving more clearly on the other side. “Unfinished business.”

  “He’s right,” Kemble shouted. “We can’t let what’s in there loose on the world.”

  “How the hell do we close it?” Lan asked. Tammy could see him mentally sorting through their powers. She didn’t have to sort. None of their powers would be useful closing a rift in the universe.

  “Maybe I can expand the blue energy shield…neutralize the rift? I don’t know…” Mom trailed off. Tammy could see that the others knew what Tammy was certain of; Mom was struggling just to maintain the protective bubble. Anything more was beyond her.

  “It took the power of the Pentacle to open it,” Dev said slowly.

  “And that power now resides in the Talismans,” Daddy observed. “Somebo
dy will have to go get them.”

  Where they were floating on a pool of lava? Even if somebody reached the Talismans before their legs were burned away and heaved one of them back to the circle of Tremaines, that mission was certain death. And from the grim looks around her, everybody knew that.

  “I’ll go,” Kemble, Dev and Lan said, pretty much all at once.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  They all craned around. It was the Clan kid with rings in his face. “I Levitate.”

  The sigh of relief was palpable among them. “Get to it, son,” Daddy said. “Either the Sword or the Wand will do.”

  The kid raised his hand. His eyes lost focus. And both Talismans rose from the lava flow and floated over the bubble. One hung above Kemble, and one above Luc. Luc reached up through the blue barrier with the hand that wasn’t holding Thomas on his shoulder and pulled in the Sword. Surprised, Kemble reached for the Wand. He looked at Luc strangely.

  “Direct their power toward the rift,” Daddy shouted.

  Luc tossed the Sword to Michael. “You’re the one with power.”

  Michael and Kemble worked their way to the front of the group. Tammy reached out and touched Thomas. Though her tee shirt was soaked with his blood, immediately, she felt calmer. She peered out between Lan and Greta’s shoulders. The rift was definitely opening, and—what was that coming out?

  Dear God. A spider? A dragon? It looked like a bunch of pick-up sticks with knobs at the joints where the black and shiny limbs moved forward. There were dozens of legs or arms or whatever they were. Tammy had never seen anything so evil looking. Most shocking of all, its face was human. Almost. Black and slick, like oil-covered metal or a kind of flesh that didn’t exist on this side of the rift, it looked more nightmarish than any horror movie she’d ever seen. She couldn’t look anymore, but she couldn’t look away either. It moved into the hangar, its many stick-limbs angling it forward through the lava gushing from the rift, apparently impervious to what would kill any human.

  Michael and Kemble braced their bodies and lowered the Wand and the Sword. Channels of blinding light shot from the ends of the weapons. The Tremaines gasped. Some covered their eyes. Tammy squinted, trying to see.

  A screech imbued with evil and anger and unspeakable pain rent the air. The black sticks began to flail.

  “Don’t stop,” Daddy yelled.

  Kemble and Michael’s big arms trembled with the effort of holding the Talismans and directing their power. The light channels crackled and spurted, but they held. The beast or the alien or the devil or whatever collapsed slowly at the far end of the hangar. Even as she peeked through the fingers of her hands, she saw the sticks and the face flutter into ash.

  But the rift still gaped wide. The black movement behind the doorway became clearer. There were more things with many shiny stick-limbs. A lot of them.

  “Morgan’s incantations!” Mom shouted. “Even with power, we need the right incantations.”

  “Shit,” Tris said.

  “They’d be Celtic,” Drew panted. She was right beside Tammy now. “They’d be the opposite of what Morgan chanted. What did she chant? What did she chant?”

  “Uh, she chanted, ‘Tuatha rendon danira elnarathon,’” Greta said. Lan looked at her as though she’d grown a third eye. Pretty much everybody did. “I’m an actress. I’ve got an ear for dialogue,” Greta said apologetically.

  “Okay. Okay,” Drew said, more to herself than to them. “Rendon is Proto-Celtic for open. So…God, what is ‘close?’ She went still. Tammy noticed that the lava was eating away at a corner of the blue bubble, right at the edge of the platform. The metal bubbled. Mom was fading, or the Tremaines were distracted.

  “Power to Mom,” Tammy yelled, “from everybody who can. Drew, now would be good.”

  Tammy and the others focused on her mom. Except for Kemble and Michael with the Talismans and Jane, who was doubled over again. Shit. This would be a very bad time and place for a baby. Tammy kept one eye on Drew as she tried to send her power along with the others to Mom and the blue bubble. It began to glow brighter.

  Drew opened her eyes. “Tuatha zardoso danira elnarathon,” she said clearly over the crackle of the channels of power Michael and Kemble directed at the rift. “Tuatha zardoso danira elnarathon!”

  The noise of the rift clapping shut was deafening.

  Michael and Kemble lowered their Talismans. The channels of power shut down. In the abrupt silence, only the lava hissed and flowed.

  “Drew, you did it!”

  And as Mom sighed in relief, the lava broke through the blue bubble where it was lapping against the front portion. Everybody scrabbled back as far as they could.

  “Tris!” Daddy shouted.

  Tris looked at the motor to the winch, pressed his hands down at his sides, and the winch ground to life and the platform began to lower.

  “Everybody, think blue,” Kemble yelled.

  Tammy thought furiously about sharing power with Mom, about maintaining the shield. It brightened again. But as they began to lower, the two Talismans Michael and Kemble were holding suddenly jerked out of their hands and sailed up and over the edge of the hole. The Cup filled with the remains of Thomas’s blood and Tremaine love followed its mates.

  Michael and Kemble looked at each other in shock.

  “Guess they didn’t want to be separated, after having been parted for so many centuries,” Daddy said. Did that mean the Talismans were lost? Could they survive the lava?

  The winch and the hangar receded as they were lowered into the bowels of the compound. One story. Two stories. Three. Four. The red glowing square opening above them grew smaller. How many stories were there in this damned building?

  Then, as they all watched, the lava began to drip over the edge of the opening above them. It pattered on the blue bubble. Slowly, a strut that held the chains to their platform bent.

  The platform canted downward to one corner even as it continued to descend. Everybody stumbled toward the slumping corner.

  “Grab somebody,” Daddy yelled. Those at the corners grabbed for the chains with one hand and Tremaines with the other. Daddy grabbed Luc’s waist. Tammy grabbed the big man’s belt on the other side and heaved. She couldn’t let Thomas be lost. Lan had grabbed her waist.

  “Faster, buddy,” Kemble said to Tris.

  “If I can,” Tris panted. But the platform did descend faster. The remains of the strut and its chain came pelting down on the bubble. Only three chains held them as they hurtled downward.

  They were all looking up as the second strut began to bend. This was it. They weren’t going to make it out of here alive. They held each other tighter, but it wouldn’t do any good if the platform hung by two chains.

  The chain and the strut melted through at the same time. The platform swung out from under them. Screams filled the air. The blue bubble burst as they lost concentration.

  But they didn’t hurtle down to splatter on the ground floor.

  They were all suspended in mid-air. Lava splattered around them with hissing noises. Tammy looked around to see the Clan guy standing next to Jason holding his hands out to each side, palms out.

  “Thank God,” Maggie breathed.

  “Thank Duncan,” Jason said dryly. “Now stand still. Don’t make it harder for him.”

  The entire group froze. Tammy glanced down. They were descending slowly. The ground floor was maybe two stories below them. Tammy craned her head to see above. They had no protection from the lava now. As a matter of fact, Michael and Kemble, out on the edge, grunted in pain. Those drops of lava would shortly become a flow.

  Duncan didn’t need to be told to go faster. The sizzle of lava on the floor below them was inducement enough.

  Greta gave a little shriek as a splatter hit her, and Lan, hissed in pain next to her.

  When Duncan shouted, “Fuck!” as he too was hit, they all dropped.

  There was much shrieking but it was over quickly. It was only ab
out six feet to the floor. Tammy twisted her ankle and rolled to the side. Others fell around her. “Thomas!” she shouted, but Luc staggered and righted himself. There were several groans around her.

  “Sorry!” Duncan called as he got up, holding one arm that was blackened and burned just below the elbow.

  “Jane,” Kemble panted, crawling over to her. “Are you all right?”

  “Me, I would get out from under the lava shower,” Luc said with maddening calm. “Also the platform will shortly fall.” He strode away into the dimness, Thomas still slung over his shoulder. Jason was already moving, and the others gathered themselves and their mates. The place was dark, with looming shapes.

  “Can I give us some light?” Greta whispered. “I don’t want to make us a target.”

  “Please do,” Kemble said. “If anybody is down here, they’re probably trying to get out as fast as we are.”

  Greta held up a hand and a globe of light appeared in it.

  Jason opened the door on one of about six vehicles in what looked like a big garage. There was a huge door at one end that hung askew.

  “This is where we came in,” Michael said.

  “Let’s go.” Daddy started gesturing to the vehicles.

  “Keys are in ’em,” Jason yelled as he took off at a jog.

  Behind her, Tammy heard an ominous plop and sizzle. She turned. A great glop of lava landed behind them. It was followed by another.

  “Get out of the way,” Lan barked, pulling Greta after him.

  The platform crashed to the ground with a thunderous clang of metal on metal. It was half eaten through with lava, which now started to descend in a steady stream.