Supernal Dawn

by J. A. Giunta

  He lurched to his feet, and lunged at her. With a flick of her wrist, Flare released a fireball that scorched the Super along with an entire side of the room. It happened so fast, he didn’t even have a chance to scream.

  “Damn,” Ember said, grimacing at the stench of burned flesh.

  “Sorry.” Flare shivered. “I can’t stand pervs.”

  “Guess that’ll teach him that no means no.” Ember slowly stuck her head out of the door.

  The entire floor echoed with vibrating energy. Screams emanated from down the hall. “Lee!” Ember rushed toward the painful screaming, hurling magical energy spheres at anyone who got in her way. Drawing from this close to the Nexus, even with the magical dampening field in place, gave her a control she’d never had before.

  Beside her, Flare kept up a steady stream of fire. Supers ducked and dodged out of their way. Those who stood to fight had no time for regret. Flux and Flare had no intention of being stopped. They struck hard and fast.

  “Hang on, Lee!” Flare shouted over the din of screams and explosions, then cursed as a wound opened on her shoulder.

  The vibrations shifted as they neared the end of the hallway and Breaker turned to face them. His curse died in his throat as fire engulfed him. Both Ember and Flare had struck him at the same time, and his energy emanations were no match for the blazing heat thrown at him by the two angry young women. He screamed in pain, dropped and rolled away, shouting something as he went.

  Ember let him go, intent on getting to Lee. She rushed inside the cell to find him crumpled in a heap on the floor. She gasped, kneeling beside him, afraid to touch him for fear of not only slowing his self-healing, but because he was so utterly broken and bloodied. “Jeez, Lee. Are you all right?” Her voice cracked with emotion. “I’m so sorry.”

  He tried to wave her off but could barely move. His face contorted in a grimace of pain.

  Allison stood just outside the cell, glancing now and again over her shoulder at Lee. Fire flew from her hands, singeing the ceiling and walls, keeping the other Supers at bay.

  Suddenly, all the cells that had still been shut, opened.

  Allison cursed. “I think I’m going to need some help.” She continued to fill the hallway with fire, her flesh glowing with the effort. “Don’t.” Allison shook her head at the girl in the cell across the hall. “Stay inside until we leave, or you’ll really be sorry.”

  The girl pressed herself against the back wall of her cell.

  “Can you move?” Ember asked her brother.

  He nodded, face intent. “We need—” a wracking cough cut off his words and blood spattered his lips and the floor in front of him.

  “It’s okay, Lee. Just relax and heal yourself.” Ember kept her voice steady, trying to hide her fear at how hurt he was.

  After a moment, he sucked in a long breath. “It’s the Bullet Squad. We need to stop them—”

  “We know,” Ember said. “Kevin had alarms hidden in every system. And he’s working on getting comms back up. Meanwhile, we have these.” She tipped the Tinkered earbud out of her ear and held it up for him to see. “Not quite the AIs we’re used to, but it got us here.”

  “Ember!” Allison shouted. Jagged ice shards flew through her firewall intact and sliced through the left sleeve of her uniform. Purple energy bent back the flames on her right. “I need you!”

  “Be right back,” Ember said, noting her brother’s body had begun to heal. She stood, and jerked to a halt, looking down at herself, recognizing the telltale shiver of magic. “What the—”

  Her vision shimmered. Lee, the cell, Allison, the fire and ice, all dimmed, the sounds of fighting muting out as she was pulled elsewhere.

  She tried to fight it, but there was nothing she could do. Her blood, her oath, the tattoo that marked her as one of them, left her completely defenseless against the combined will of the coven. But she didn’t have to like it.

  “Dammit, mother!” she sputtered as her mother’s face came into view.

  “I don’t have time for your tantrums, at the moment,” her mother said, as Tara and Seanna rushed over to grab Ember’s hands.

  Ember realized suddenly where they were. The Nexus chamber. Around them, the cousins and aunties began to pull on the power of the Nexus as the members of the Cerberus coven chanted, holding the veil in place while letting a thin stream of magical energy slip through to fill the room.

  “What the hell is going on?” Ember felt her cousins’ fingers entwine around hers. “You’re sending us back in to get Lee, right?”

  Aunt Gwen shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut as if against a bright light. “No time for that.”

  The power rose up around Ember and she struggled to get her hands away from Tara and Seanna. “What do you mean no time? He’s one of us. He’s blood.” She turned her pleading eyes to Seanna, hoping for help from her cousin. “He’s my brother! Your betrothed!”

  Seanna looked away, trying to hide the guilt she wore.

  “Ember!” Her mother’s voice cut across her protests. “If you and your cousins can’t retrieve the artifacts, it won’t matter. None of it, none of this, will matter. Do you understand?”

  Ember stopped struggling. A shiver ran across her scalp. “Artifacts?”

  “No time,” Aunt Gwen intoned, her eyes still closed.

  “We’ll fill you in when we get there.” Tara gave her hand a firm squeeze.

  “Get where?” Ember asked, but just then, the magic hit and once more, the room and everything in it, everyone, shimmered and dissolved.

  They coalesced in a dimly lit room. “Where the hell are we?” Ember peered into the darkness at the rows of shelves outlined against the pale light of security lamps.

  “The Pandora reliquary,” Tara said in a hushed voice, clearly impressed by their close proximity to such a huge store of powerful objects.

  “What’s that?” Seanna hissed, as a black shadow separated itself from the darkness and dove at them, a long arm wrapping itself around Seanna’s neck. Her green eyes went wide and she choked as the demon grabbed a handful of her hair and began yanking her with it toward the dark corner.

  “Rifter!” Tara jumped back, reaching toward the nearest shelf.

  “Don’t,” Seanna gasped. “Wards,” she warned, struggling to free herself from the shade that clutched her by the throat.

  “Let her go,” Tara growled, grasping for the shade, but her hands passed through the space she’d thought it had been.

  Ember formed an orb without thinking but hesitated, the ball of energy burning bright in her hand. What if she missed?

  Tara pulled a glass container from her pocket and uncorked it, murmuring something low and guttural.

  “Throw...it.” Seanna coughed and bent forward, trying to flip the creature off her.

  It rasped out a dark laugh and said something ugly in another language.

  “You...think,” Seanna managed to shift her weight, spinning the creature around and putting it directly between her and Ember.

  Ember’s orb struck home dead-center at the same time as Tara emptied the bottle and released her spell. The creature screeched in pain and anger, slapping at itself and contorting. No longer a darker shadow against the darkness of the room, the rifter was covered in something glowing that seemed to eat away at the dark form like powerful acid. The creature grew fringy, melting where the liquid had splattered over it. With a final shriek, it finally vanished.

  “You okay?” Tara asked.

  “Aside from nearly being scalped and possibly eaten by a demonic spirit?” Seanna grumbled. “Sure thing.” Her words sounded slow and slurry.

  “How’d that thing get in here?” Ember glanced around, searching the room for signs of other spirits, suddenly realizing there weren’t any ghosts in the room. She’d seen so many of them everywhere else in the facility, she’
d gotten used to ignoring them. Now, the lack of them bothered her. The room was lined with rows of shelves filled with all kinds of boxes and containers.

  “Most likely through the same crack in the barrier we did.” Tara leaned over Seanna, checking her head. “I think it scratched her.”

  “It also ripped out a major chunk of hair. Can you do anything about the bleeding?” Ember peered at the blood that had dripped onto Seanna’s forehead.

  “Great,” Seanna groaned.

  “That’s gonna leave a mark,” Ember said. “Maybe you need to smear some of that salve on it.”

  Seanna pushed Tara’s hands away from her head. “No way. Let’s just get what we came for and get out of here before—”

  The screech of the metal door being ripped open filled the room, cutting her off.

  “So much for high-tech security.” Seanna began chanting to set a ward between them and whatever was coming into the room.

  “Cover your eyes.” Tara reached inside the bag she carried and pulled out a handful of something, then flung it across the room, murmuring under her breath.

  It hit the barriers layered between them and most of the rest of the room, dropping them in a cascade of glittering particles as the door on the other side of the room was ripped off its hinges and tossed aside.

  Two guys and a girl strode in through the destroyed doorway. All Supers by the look of them. The girl waved her hand and the room lit up, as if a flare had been fired up at the ceiling.

  “Maybe we should have waited to drop those barriers.” Ember let her hands fill with heat.

  “Maybe,” Tara said. “But I wouldn’t want to get knocked into one by accident.”

  The girl said something to one of the guys. He nodded and started walking toward Ember and her cousins. He reached out one hand and the shelving units nearest him began to morph, boxes and jars sliding off, crashing and clattering to the floor, as they shifted and fell.

  Seanna continued to chant, keeping her eyes on the Super striding their way, when he suddenly froze, his eyes widening in surprise. His body spasmed and he jerked like a thousand volts rolled through him.

  “I guess I missed one.” Tara said as he collapsed in a heap.

  The girl shrieked in anger, running toward the fallen Super. “Get them!” she ordered.

  The second guy glanced across the room, then back down to where his buddy still quivered, drool running out of the side of his mouth. “Screw that,” he said. “I didn’t sign up to fight shit I can’t even see.” He backed out the door, then turned and ran.

  The girl stood up, raised her hands and squeezed them into fists.

  Tara gasped and Seanna’s chanting turned to a choking sound.

  Ember watched in horror as Seanna grabbed her own throat, as if trying to remove someone’s hands. “Stop it!”

  The Super grinned. “I’m. Not. Finished. Yet.”

  “Yeah. You are.” Ember threw the orb she’d been holding, sending it across the room and into the Super. It hit her in the chest, slamming her backward to crash into a shelf full of glowing bottles. She screamed as the glowing energy surrounded her. She disappeared behind the neon cloud of mist, her scream choking off into sudden silence.

  Seanna coughed, heaved in a lungful of air and rubbed at her throat. “Damn,” she croaked. “That’s going to make spelling a lot harder. Do you think we need to tie them up?”

  Ember looked across the room to where the two Supers were lying, shaping another ball of energy just in case.

  “Not him,” Tara said. “That barrier spell was nastier than any I’ve ever seen.”

  Ember nodded, walking slowly to where the girl Super lay. When she got close enough to see the girl’s face, she turned away, letting the orb fade. There wasn’t anything left of the Super’s face. Ember doubted even Lee could have healed her.

  Lee. She needed to get back to him and Allie. “Let’s get what we came for and get the hell out of here.” She eyed the rows of shelves with disdain. “Just don’t tell me we have to search this whole place.”

  “Not exactly,” Tara said. “Seanna’s got a spell up her sleeve for that, but what with her head and throat...”

  Seanna waved Tara over, gesturing for her to get closer. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just give me a hand with the circle.” She held out a piece of black chalk.

  Tara made a quick circle on the floor, her lines smooth and practiced.

  “Make sure you mark true north exactly.”

  “Duh.”

  Ember paced, worrying about Lee and Allie. And where was everyone else? She shivered. What if the fighting was already over? What if the facility was under rogue Super control right now? The technology they’d have, along with their own powers, would be impossible to fight.

  As soon as Tara was finished marking the lines on the floor, Seanna un-stoppered a small bottle and sprinkled the contents just outside the circle. “Stand behind me.” She stood facing north, held her arms out to her sides, palms up. “Oh, and don’t step outside—”

  “The circle.” Ember and Tara finished for her.

  Seanna sighed, rolled her head to loosen the tension in her shoulders, then began to chant, her words whispery soft in the gloom.

  A smoky mist rose from the floor around them. Glowing tendrils writhed from within the haze. It looked like radioactive fog, only the tendrils reached out like tentacles, sensing, searching. Ember glanced at Tara.

  Tara shrugged. Clearly this spell was new to her, as well.

  The fingers of mist elongated, threading themselves through the room, winding over and around the shelves.

  Across the room, a knot of glowing mist began to pulse, growing brighter with each oscillation. “Is that—” Ember stopped as another spot grew bright and faded in sync with the first. Then another, and another, until there were seven in all.

  Seanna continued to chant, but rolled her eyes at them.

  “I guess that’s our cue,” Tara said. “I’ll take this side of the room. You go that way and—”

  “We’ll meet in the middle,” Ember finished. Picking her way through the low-lying mist, she reached the first pulsing object, a pyramid that looked to be made of precious metals. She reached for it, snapping her hand back when an electric shock sprang from it, zapping her fingertips.

  “Damn!” Tara griped from across the room. “Fricking thing is hotter than one of Seanna’s burners. We need to find something to carry these in.”

  Ember searched the shelves nearest her. It was difficult to see clearly through the creeping fog, but she finally found a decorative wooden box that looked big enough to contain her half of the items. Nearby, she found a velvet bag full of mostly worthless crystals. Dumping the contents onto the floor, she swept the bag over the gleaming pyramid and slid the whole thing into the box. The mist that enveloped it dissipated.

  She reached the second object and paused, slowly extending her hand toward it. When nothing happened, she grabbed it, an ancient wooden bowl rough-hewn on the outside, smooth and polished on the inside, and placed it in the box beside the other object. The box vibrated against her hands. “I’m not so sure we should be putting these things together,” she said, eyeing the objects in suspicion.

  “Just...hurry...up,” Seanna said in between the lines of chanting. Her voice was strained and the misty tendrils of her spell were disintegrating. Ember moved quickly to grab the remaining objects. The first, a plain silver ring thinned by years of wear, she dropped into the box unceremoniously. The last, a lumpy cloth-wrapped bundle, pulsed rapidly even as the enshrouding fog melted away. Ember approached warily.

  The sensation that hit her in the pit of her stomach startled her and she almost dropped the box. “Dammit! Not now.” She grabbed for the bundle as the room began to shimmer around her and glanced anxiously at Tara and Seanna, breathing a quick sigh of relief as they,
too, began to fade out.

  Fifteen

  Mon, Oct 3, 4:01pm

  - Lee -

  “Ember!” Lee shouted and coughed.

  There was no sign of her. It was like the spell his family had used at the police station but in reverse. Was his mother trying to save them with magic? He saw Allison struggling to keep the other Supers back. What would happen to her if he was summoned as well?

  Allison threw handfuls of fire through the faltering walls of flame on either side.

  “Do something!” she yelled back at him.

  Lee was healed but still weak, his sensory bubble no bigger than a few inches from his body. The cells would duplicate on their own over time, but he caused them to grow and spread much faster. He got up, endured the wave of dizziness that swirled his vision, then headed across to the girl in the opposite cell.

  He couldn’t help but be disappointed when no spell came to take him. The hollow feeling in his chest was his own fault. He should’ve known better than to allow even the tiniest glimmer of hope that his family cared.

  “What can you do?” he asked the girl with a stern measure of authority.

  “I—I’m earth,” she said quickly, still afraid. “I can—I see shapes through walls. I can move rocks and dirt. Sometimes I—”

  “None of that is useful here.”

  Lee looked out at Allison again, formulating a plan. He couldn’t risk leaving any of them behind to join Jim’s team. If this girl couldn’t help, he’d have no choice but to paralyze her.

  “Excuse me?”

  She was clearly offended, but Lee didn’t have time for hurt feelings. She looked him over and narrowed her eyes, held out a hand and pulled toward her every speck of dirt from his clothes and mud from his shoes. They gathered in a vortex of earthen debris that spun just above her palm.

  “How’s this for useless?” she asked with attitude.

  The ball shot out and hit the wall to the side of her cell’s entrance. It spun over and over in a furious swell, tearing away at the metal. The flecks that broke free joined the spinning ball, growing the sphere and tearing a hole in the wall. She called it back to her hand, and the ball continued to turn in air.