by Dina Given
I had no memory at all of Zane and our time together, but I knew immediately what Alex had said was true. I felt it in my soul. Zane had been mine once. “What happened to him?”
“Marduk,” he said simply. “Zane was taken. Broken. I can’t imagine what Marduk did to him, but whatever it was, it destroyed Zane’s mind. A few years ago, the Mage Council managed to capture Zane. The most talented and powerful mages in all of Urusilim tried to restore him, but to no avail. If they couldn’t do it, no one can. Zane is Marduk’s lap dog, completely and irreversibly brainwashed. Zane escaped the Council and went running right back to his master.”
“But it sometimes seems like there is still a sane person in there somewhere,” I insisted.
Alex shook his head, giving me a look of pity. “I think you are only deluding yourself. None of us have seen even a glimmer of hope. If you think you saw glimpses of the old Zane, it’s either because he’s manipulating you or because you don’t remember what the old Zane was like.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, unconvinced. I knew what manipulation looked like, and I didn’t think that was what was happening. The kiss had felt genuine. Besides, just because Alex had told me I had a history with Zane didn’t mean I remembered it, and I certainly didn’t feel it—at least, not entirely. It was more like a ghost of a feeling, similar to déjà vu. It was enough to create some passing intrigue, though certainly not enough to drive me to take an action on it … yet.
“And what about the amulet? What does it do?” I asked.
Alex shrugged and looked like he was about to tell me he had no idea when Lilly’s grandmother interrupted. “That depends on you, child,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice for someone who looked so frail. She continued to bustle about the kitchen, not even looking in our direction. “It has your blood; it is your essence. If you know who you are, you know what the amulet is capable of.”
That sent chills down my spine. I didn’t know who I was, but I knew at least some of what I was capable of, and not much of it was good. Could the amulet channel the darkness within me? If so, I didn’t want to be responsible for the potential consequences. I wasn’t the right person to carry an object of such power. I should give it to someone who could be trusted to do good with it, but who was that? Even if I knew any good people, would I want to burden them with the amulet?
“So, you’re saying I can do anything at all with it, without limitations?”
“Its limitations are yours. What are your limits?” She must have seen the fear in my face because she continued, “No faith in yourself, eh? You will be tested, child. That is when you will find out who you really are.”
Dread passed through me. I made a vow to myself then to give the amulet to someone who proved themselves worthy of it. And, if I couldn’t find that person in time, I would hide it away somewhere deep and dark where no one would be able to find it.
“So, what is our next move?” Lockien asked.
When I gave him an eternally grateful glance for having shifted the attention away from me, he returned it with the hint of a smile. That was when I remembered the sheet of paper in my back pocket.
“Nathan gave this to me just before we had to flee the building. I agreed to take a job finding a stolen object for him.” I looked at the blue Post-It note for the first time. On it, scrawled in neat block lettering, was the location of my next mission:
None of us had ever heard of North Brother Island, so Lilly googled it on her iPhone.
“Wow. It’s right here in New York City. It’s an abandoned island in the Hudson River that used to house Riverside Hospital, a quarantine facility for smallpox victims. It looks like someplace out of a horror movie.” She turned her screen around so we could all see the imposing yet dilapidated brick structure of the hospital that was slowly but surely being reclaimed by the surrounding forest. She turned back to her phone. “This says the hospital closed in the 1930s after a boat filled with patients caught fire on the river and everyone onboard died, their bodies washing up on the shore of the island. It looks like the entire island was turned into a wildlife sanctuary after that.”
“Why would he want to send you there? What is supposed to be there?” Alex asked.
“He said it was a weapon of some sort, something about it being a body for the amulet. It didn’t make much sense to me.”
Lilly’s grandmother stopped mid-chop on her onions and dropped the knife onto the floor with a clatter. Everyone’s attention turned to her; however, she was staring holes through me with piercing, incredulous eyes. Then she exchanged a long look with her son.
Therran said to her, “Do you think Nathan knew where it was all along and didn’t say anything? He wouldn’t do that. He knows how long we have been searching for it.”
“If you had found it first, would you have told him?” she asked.
Lilly’s father didn’t respond. His silence was answer enough though.
“What the heck are you two talking about?” Lilly demanded.
Her father gave her another disapproving look. I had a feeling Lilly got that look a lot from her family, but he proceeded to explain anyway. “If it is the weapon we suspect it to be, it is called Sharur. It is beyond ancient. Sharur is, in its most basic form, a battle axe said to have been forged by the gods in the lava pits that flow through the core of Urusilim. It was created for a fae prince who was said to have helped the gods defeat the Old One, the first god who created our world in darkness. However, some creatures still loyal to the Old One—the Monere—escaped retribution and searched Urusilim for the prince to take their revenge. To protect their loyal servant, the gods forged for him a weapon that could kill magic and open rifts in reality to allow him to escape to safety on other worlds. Yet the enemy eventually found him and mortally wounded him. Although they couldn’t fix his body, the gods preserved him by placing his soul in the axe, granting him immortality,”
“And you want it why exactly?” Lilly asked her father.
The answer came to me before Therran could respond. “You think that, if you had this weapon, you could open a rift back to Urusilim.” Therran looked pleased that I had been able to figure it out on my own and nodded. “But why don’t you just ask the mages to help you open a rift? There are some that are strong enough to do it.”
“That’s true,” Therran said. “However, they are only capable of sending one individual through a rift at a time, and the recovery from even that effort is significant. We believe that Sharur is the only object in existence that can open a rift large enough for long enough to send many through.”
“An army,” I breathed. “Marduk wants to invade earth.”
“Yes, that is possible,” he said. “But that is not the elves’ purpose. Those of us here on Earth are refugees from the partial destruction of Urusilim a decade ago. We simply want to reunite with our families and clans and see if enough time has passed so we can successfully heal the land.”
“Are you kidding me?” Lilly snapped. “There is no way in hell I am going anywhere. I can’t leave my job and my friends. I have a life here—”
“We will speak of this another time.” Therran nailed Lilly with a sharp look. I didn’t think it was possible, but she actually shut up.
“If the government is somehow aware of what is going on, that would explain their involvement,” I said as the realization dawned on me. “If they think I am going after the only object that can open a rift, allowing an invading army access to American soil, of course they are going to try to stop me. But how would they know about Marduk and Urusilim and rifts and magic?” My head was spinning with so many unanswered questions.
“They have their hands in more things than the public will ever know about. Why not this too?” Lilly said. “I watched this documentary on the Discovery Channel the other day about secret government projects. It explained that the fluoride the government adds to our drinking water is really a mind control drug, and that the government created the AIDS virus to purposef
ully kill gay people, and don’t even get me started on Area 51—”
“I get your point,” I said, unconvinced that she used the best examples, but believing that her general argument had merit.
“So now we think we may know what the government wants, but what about Nathan? What does he want with the axe?” Alex asked.
“He said he wants me to reclaim what was stolen from him, and will teach me to use it, but I don’t know why,” I responded.
“Whatever his reasons are, the fact that he didn’t reveal them to us causes me concern,” Therran said.
“What does this Sharur have to do with me?”
“It is our belief that, although the axe can be wielded by anyone as a traditional weapon, it will only share its full capabilities with the person who holds the key to unlocking them. I don’t know how that power is unlocked, but Nathan seems to think you are the person who can do it.”
Silence descended as we all fell into our own thoughts.
It took only a few minutes for me to make up my mind. I stood up and pounded my fist on the table, effectively getting everyone’s attention. “We go after Sharur tomorrow night. We’ll spend the rest of today planning our strategy, arming ourselves, and getting some much needed rest. We make our move tomorrow at midnight.”
I was expecting an outburst of debate and questions, but I was only met with eyes that glittered in anticipation.
A trickle of sweat took a slow path down my temple and over the band of my telescopic night vision goggles. My dark hair was pulled into a heavy braid that trailed down my back, but it did nothing to help keep me cooler.
I reached under my jaw and unhooked my helmet, ripping it off my head to allow some cooler air to reach my scalp. It was an unusually hot night; the first heat wave of the year had decided to come early in the season.
I was lying uncomfortably on the deck of a black speedboat that was almost motionless on the glass-like waters of the Hudson River. There was no breeze tonight, nothing to disrupt the stifling humidity. The air was so thick with moisture it felt as if I was trying to breathe through a wet washcloth.
It had been a while since I had pulled a job in this kind of weather. Most of my work the past few years had tended to be in the deserts of Afghanistan or some other God-forsaken-istan country. Don’t get me wrong, that environment was no walk in the park either. I had sand in places no one should ever find sand. However, the cooler nights in the dessert brought some measure of relief to the scorching, arid days. Tonight, there was no such relief. Making it worse was the heavy wetsuit that stuck to my back and trapped the sweat close to my body.
“Lockien, what do you see?” I asked to the elf lying beside me. Whereas I needed night vision to survey the old Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, Lockien was able to see just fine in the dark, even from this distance.
“I see four well-armed men patrolling the grounds on the south side of the hospital. It takes them six minutes to complete a full patrol,” Lockien reported.
“I see them too,” I said, wanting to ensure we weren’t missing anything.
“Daniel, what have you got? Over,” I said softly into my earpiece.
Through my goggles, I could see the bright white impression of the hospital standing stoically a few hundred yards from the shore of the river along with the blurry figures of the patrols. It would have been a bitch to go in blind trying to find Lab B13. Thankfully, Daniel had been able to locate old blueprints of the structure from when it had been first constructed. There was no room labeled “B13,” but areas in the hospital’s basement were specifically built as laboratories. I was guessing the “B” stood for Basement and figured that was the best place to start our search.
Daniel also assumed they must have upgraded their security system sometime recently if they were housing a valuable weapon. He had scoured his contacts until he had found the company that had done the work and learned they were a government contractor. That had told us two things—the building was a government facility, as we had already guessed, and they had probably installed one of the most state-of-the-art security systems available. Daniel had almost been giddy at the prospect of that kind of challenge; however, I had remained uncomfortable with the niggling question of why and how the government had come to possess Sharur.
In full scuba gear, Daniel had dropped into the black waters of the Hudson from the boat about two hours ago. He had come ashore on the island with his gear protected in a waterproof pack and proceeded to locate the underground wires and control panel for the system. I had probably checked in with him a half dozen times since then, but his progress was slow.
I was beginning to wonder whether we would need to abort the mission altogether when Daniel radioed back, “I’m almost in. I can disengage the alarms on the front doors, but if any other systems are inside, I would need to work on those separately. I can’t just cut the blue wire and shut the whole thing down.”
My shoulders slumped at the prospect of taking Daniel inside the building. He was one of the most capable people I knew, but I always had a protective streak when it came to him. He didn’t have a selfish bone in his body, no ulterior motives or hidden objectives. Everything he did, he did out of genuine loyalty to me. For that reason, I wanted to keep him out of harm’s way as much as possible, although it seemed like it just wasn’t going to be possible this time.
I closed my eyes briefly and then said, “Understood. We’re coming in.”
I stood, turning to Therran and the seven other elves of his clan who made up our party. We had wanted to be sure we had enough support yet hadn’t wanted so many that an ambush would be unfeasible; as a result, we had settled on twelve in total: Therran and Lockien, with their seven clan members, plus Alex, Daniel, and myself. Jason had argued, cajoled and even begged to come along, but he was still recovering, and I wouldn’t allow him back in the field.
I was the only one who needed scuba gear since, apparently, elves had a talent for holding their breath. They had tried to explain to me that it had something to do with the spirits of nature sustaining them, but I had simply been happy we didn’t have to find and lug the extra gear. Meanwhile, Alex had never dived before and couldn’t hold his breath; however, he had assured us he could freeze the water just long enough to allow himself to walk to land. We didn’t want him to waste his energy trying to sustain an ice bridge long enough for the rest of us though.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Without another word, eleven of us dropped into the water. If I could have sighed in pleasure underwater, I would have as the coolness enveloped me even through the wetsuit. Careful to avoid creating a wake on the surface of the water, we dived to a depth of about fifteen feet, the elves keeping up with me easily. We selected an area of shoreline where the trees came close to the water, avoiding the crumbling boat dock.
Alex and Daniel caught up with us onshore, and I un-shouldered my gear bag, gratefully stripping out of the wetsuit. We were all similarly clothed in black bodysuits with black body paint covering any exposed skin.
Reaching into my bag, I removed and assembled the parts to my M40 sniper rifle in less than five seconds, slinging it across my back. The elves carried knives and the handguns I had given them from my personal stash.
We silently picked our way through the foliage to a clearing that opened onto the hospital’s entrance. The building was three stories high, made entirely of red brick. Most of the windows were broken, and where glass still remained, it was coated in decades of dirt and grime. Moss and vines climbed the walls and crept in through cracks in the crumbling stone. The place had a creepy, haunted feel about it, like the ghosts of the hundreds of small pox victims who had died there still roamed the grounds.
I un-slung the rifle and placed my eye to the scope. Taking into account the humidity and lack of wind, I aimed the weapon on the first patrolling guard who came into my sight. I took a deep breath and held it as my finger exerted pressure on the trigger. Quietly exhaling, I depre
ssed it all the way. Although the M40 was outfitted with a silencer, one common myth is that a silencer makes a gun silent. It doesn’t. Instead, it makes the gunman invisible. I used a silencer to hide the muzzle flash and disperse the sound of the shot, making it much more difficult to pinpoint my location.
The bullet found its way home, straight through the unprotected throat of the man patrolling the grounds. I watched as his head snapped back and he dropped silently. Meanwhile, his friends on the opposite end of the building continued their patrol, none the wiser.
I chambered the next bullet and waited for the second soldier to return, but he didn’t appear. That’s when the rhythmic blaring of the alarm shattered the peacefulness of the night.
The. Shit! I looked to the top of the building and noticed the end of a high-powered rifle sticking out through the cracks of some misplaced boards covering a window. That soldier was too well-hidden for us to have noticed him when we had been scoping the place from the boat. He must have seen the soldier below him drop from my bullet and called in the cavalry.
The front doors of the hospital slammed opened, and Black Ops soldiers came pouring out. Thirty of them fanned out along the sides of the building, using the shadows, rubble, and overgrown shrubs as cover. They were all wearing night vision goggles and were armed with semi-automatics.
“Once they’re in position, they are going to spot us and open fire,” I said to my team. “Alex, can you blind them?” He nodded. “Our best chance is to take them by surprise. Now!” I urged him just as the soldiers completed their formation.
One minute he was there, and the next, Alex had simply disappeared. He had cloaked his presence and made a run toward the soldiers. Speed was more important than stealth; therefore, I could hear him crashing through the undergrowth. He came to a stop near the soldiers and dropped the cloak. Before they could react to his sudden appearance, Alex raised his staff high then brought it down, stabbing the end into the ground. When the wood touched earth, a blinding white light poured forth.