by Oxford, Rain
Instead, I just wanted to sit down on the ground and wait for my dad to tell me what to do. Hail had his own way of dealing with his grief, but it left me completely alone when I needed him more than ever.
* * *
I could feel the soft breeze against my father’s skin, which was quite possibly the oddest sensation I had ever felt. I could only see my father, as clear as day, while everything else was shrouded in absolute darkness. It was like there was a spotlight on him, but the light was not centered on any one area of his body. My mind was doing this to focus, not to point something out.
“Be quick,” he said, out of breath. He was panting slightly as if he was tired but not completely out of breath, and he wasn’t sweating.
Instantly, my mind searched for clues. His clothes were clean; a simple blue t-shirt, jeans, and boots. Normal. No blood, sweat, or dirt. His skin was unmarked and his hair was clean. There was a calmness about him and an acceptance in his clear eyes that bothered me.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked aloud. He didn’t see or hear me, of course, because this was just a vision.
The field of light widened to include Mordon, who faced my father. My uncle was panting harshly with his blood-soaked claws out. His clothes were torn and bloodied, but he was wearing clothes, so he hadn’t just come out of his shifted form. The azurath sword was in his hand, but it wasn’t bloody, so that meant he hadn’t used it. There was blood on Mordon, but not on my father.
Mordon raised his sword in a position that was more ceremonial than efficient. He was obviously not expecting his opponent to move as he stabbed the sword deep into my father’s chest. It wasn’t shock that made me gasp. I felt short of breath and my heart beat too fast. There was a reason I felt this pain that scorched my chest.
* * *
I woke to my brother screaming. I sat up and got out of bed. There was no reason for us to have our own rooms. I opened the door that joined our rooms, closed it, and climbed into bed beside him. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me to the point where I couldn’t breathe. It was only our bond that kept him from accidentally causing me serious physical damage. He was shaking and sweating, but I couldn’t say anything.
“Why did we see that? Mordon didn’t kill Dad.”
“Maybe that was the fate Dad wanted to avoid,” I said.
“I can’t see Dad die again. Should we ask Vretial about it?”
It was a sign of how badly my brother’s world was shaken that he was the first to suggest going to see Vretial. “Okay.” Light filled the room and cleared in a split second, leaving us standing before the dark god.
He sat, as he usually did, on his boulder. Instead of making some weird or rude comment like he would have before Dad died, he just waited patiently for us to talk. Although Hail really hated him, he had never done anything to hurt my brother. If anything, I believed Vretial cared about Hail in his own unique way.
“I had a vision of Mordon killing Dad.”
The god’s eyes were sad and tired. “You had a nightmare, Sammy. Go back to bed.”
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” I argued.
He studied me as if judging my sincerity. “Let me see,” he finally said.
Hail lightened his protection over me enough for Vretial to see into my mind. The sensations and images replayed in my mind as clearly as if I was seeing it all over again. When he finally pulled away and I could shield my own thoughts, there was a slight glint of worry in his eyes.
“Return to Raktusha. I will tell you if I find out anything.”
Hail and I were back in Hail’s room, no flash or anything. “Does he know something?” Hail asked.
“Vretial always knows something. He’s always trying to twist things around to get what he wants. However, I think he’s angry that he never got to figure out what Dad was. I wish we could talk to Alice.”
“But she’ll never be born now that Dad is dead.”
My brain wanted to find clues and solve the mystery so that everything could be okay, but there was no mystery to solve. Everything was quiet. Even the energy felt solemn, like it was mourning the loss of my dad as well.
I sighed and sat in the middle of the floor. Dad always had something to say, some words of wisdom that would make everything make sense, so I started going through them in my head. “Remember when Dad tried to teach us problem solving skills?”
“Yeah, he locked us in that room and put the bracelets on us. We had to find a way out. The only thing he said was that the clock was ticking.”
“We thought he meant that we had a time limit until we realized that the clock on the wall was broken. Yet we heard a ticking sound, which led us to the secret passageway.”
“It was an air shaft, not a passageway,” my brother argued. “And all that damn psychology he made us learn… It never did us any good. It didn’t do him any good in the end, either. Mirror neurons.”
“Every time I see you smile, my own brain lights up as if I am smiling. Change blindness.”
“You don’t usually notice changes when you don’t expect them to occur.”
“Your peripheral vision is adapted to spot movement.”
“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t. Dad was always giving us phrases. And when we got in trouble, he would make us tell him what we did wrong instead of him telling us. He taught us everything we needed to know about being Guardians. Now maybe we will have to grow up and do it.”
Tears started streaming. “You grow up! I’m fifteen, so shut up and leave me alone.”
“You don’t want to be alone.”
I didn’t, but for the first time in my life, it wasn’t my brother I wanted.
* * *
“Ron, pay attention.”
I woke as if I had been slapped hard across the face and sat up fast enough that the room spun. My heart pounded like I had been running. “Dad!” I cried when I finally caught my breath. I smacked Hail’s arm repeatedly until he groaned. “I heard Dad! I heard him!”
“You were dreaming.”
“I wasn’t! He was trying to give me a clue! He said---”
“Pay attention.” I stopped and looked at him, but he just rolled over. “He’s said that to you a thousand times. You were dreaming.”
My heart crumbling from his frustration, I scooted away from him and tried to sleep. After many hours of lying there in the dark with my cheeks sore from tears, I fell back to sleep.
* * *
“The echo. What happened to the echo?”
I didn’t even wake my brother this time as I woke with more adrenaline running through me than I could stand. I flashed to my mother, who was curled around my father’s breathing corpse, crying.
“Mom?” I asked softly.
Her eyes turned to me, clear with sanity, but she didn’t move the rest of her body. She wore a red plaid shirt, one of Dad’s favorites, and short black shorts. My dad was only under a sheet, for he hated blankets in his sleep.
“What happened to the echo?” I asked.
I knew she wanted to ask what it mattered, but that would have led down a vicious cycle neither of us wanted to walk into. “I think Xul took it.” Her words were soft, but steady as her thumb stroked across his rising and falling chest.
When Mordon had told Xul, the Ancient refused to believe it at first. His last words were, “So much for the happy ending.” Apparently, he stuck around long enough to take the echo.
“Thank you.”
“Ron,” she said as I started to flash out. She swallowed. “You and your brother should visit more. We need to pull this family back together.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s what your father would have wanted.”
That was enough for me. I loved my mom, so even though she could never make my brother laugh or put everything into perspective for me like Dad could, I would try. “I will be back soon.” I flashed to Xul and just gawked for a minute.
“Hey,
you can’t be in here!” someone yelled.
Xul didn’t turn, so I needed to get his attention, because there was no way I was taking one step further into the nasty, dank little bar. “Hey, stupid-butt!” I yelled.
Startled, the demon turned. “What are you doing here, french-fry? Damn, kid, are you ever going to reach four foot?”
I was five-four and not about to get into an argument over it. “Get over here, fish-brain!” I was fifteen and no longer had a father to scold me for fowl-mouthing someone, but Dad had said a million times that using fallback, vulgar cusswords was a sign of a lazy mind.
Fortunately, the demon did as I ordered, because the smell of drunken men and cigarette smoke was going to make me gag. It was one of those bars like in the movies, where the characters never remembered the bar anyway because they went home with some… maybe I shouldn’t have watched those movies.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and crossing my arms.
He pushed my shoulder to turn me and forced me out the door. “No sago kid should be subjected to this kind of place. I was just leaving, anyway.”
“I am a quarter human! Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer, and instead forced me to get into a hideous, beat-up, old yellow pickup truck. I was hesitant, having seen horror movies that started like this when we lived on Earth and Dad had to work late. However, Xul was Dad’s demon, so he could be trusted. I sniffed at the seat when he jumped in the driver’s seat and cringed.
“Who died in here?”
“Still as primadonna as ever, I see.”
We stopped a few minutes later at a brightly lit fast food place. I wanted to throw a fit; I hated fast food. He didn’t give me a choice, though, and dragged me out of the truck and into the horribly dismal place.
“Find a booth, midget.”
I stuck my tongue out at him but did as he instructed. Why am I doing as the demon says? I am the balance. I found a halfway decent booth and desperately wanted to ask for some cleaning fluid… or maybe Hail could do it. He would do it if he was here. There were duct-taped tears in the light green, vinyl seats. The plastic table was white with strawberries.
“Did you ever have a milkshake when you were on Earth, shorty?” Xul asked as he sat across from me.
Pushed passed my normal restraints of elegance, I scratched my cheek with my middle finger up and my others down in a very clear gesture. He just laughed and passed over one of the large plastic cups and orders of french-fries. As he popped off his lid, I looked into his cup first, which was full of white goop. “Is that cauliflower puree?”
“Oh, God,” he said. He scooped some up with his straw, which made me shudder at the texture of it, then put the straw in his mouth and blew. I screamed as I was splattered with the frigid white muck. He laughed until he nearly fell out of his seat.
I tried to ignore him, since it would have been a dishonor to my dad to send this uncouth demon to the void, and collected napkins from the dispenser. I cleaned myself up first, but tasted it on my lips in the process. It was some form of ice cream. I was a little humiliated as I wiped down the table. My own muck-shake was brown. His was vanilla, so I assumed mine was chocolate.
I tasted it, hesitantly, and found I was right, and also that it was pretty fantastic. French-fries were one of my favorite junk foods, but they went especially well with the shake. So, naturally, I dipped my fries in the shake, which made Xul gag.
“So, what were you doing at the bar?”
“Well, there was this hot young---”
“Demon,” I interrupted. “I have three knives on me and only half an hour of sleep. Tell me, or I will read it in your entrails.”
He sighed. “I’m trying to find those two Ancient that your dad stripped of power.”
“Why?”
“I thought I’d start a club.” I growled. “You have no sense of humor. I know they don’t know what your father was, but maybe they know something. Also, the Ancient who faced your father before the war said a word. I didn’t hear it clearly, but it was an Enochian word. I’ve heard it before from a minor demon that was referring to Dylan. I can’t think of many reasons why a demon would use an Enochian word.”
“How are you living without your powers?”
“Dylan restored my powers before he died. Now that the link is broken, I am as powerful as I was before I met your father and not a drop more. That means if you or He-Man is hurt, I can’t sense it and pop in to save your ugly butt.”
Although it was late enough that there were no other customers, this was still a public place. For no other reason did I not draw my dagger. Instead, I stuck him in the throat with my straw. “My butt is perfect,” I growled. He wiped off chocolate shake, undisturbed, while I went back to enjoying my chocolate fries. Perhaps it was a good thing I could never gain any weight.
“I believe finding the female Ancient could lead me to answers.”
“Why do you want to know what Dad was? He’s dead, so he’s not a threat to the demons anymore.”
Xul sighed. “Dylan was never a threat to anyone. He would have gladly allowed all demons to be amongst the living if only they promised not to hurt anyone. Unfortunately, it is in our nature to destroy. Still, it isn’t me who wants to know.”
“Vretial is pushing you?” He nodded. “Has he said anything about Dad… maybe having made it to the spirit world?”
“Blue Jay, Phoenix, and Ronez were all watching the passage between the universe, the spirit world, and the void during the war. They felt the disturbance of Dylan’s presence in the void, but it was gone before they could find anything. He never made it to the spirit world because his soul was altered when he became a Guardian. Hell, I think his soul was changed before that. The Land of the Dead is for the souls of mortals.”
We sat there in silence for a while. I knew there was no hope. “I had a dream,” I finally said. “Dad said to pay attention, like he always did when he was about to give me a clue. He then asked me what happened to the echo.”
He frowned. “I’d think even in your dream that he would ask about the real book.” The demon wore the same clothes as he always did, but I noticed finally that he had a black leather bag in the same style as Dad’s around his waist. Maybe if he ever wore anything that wasn’t black…
Xul pulled the echo out of the bag. It looked so much like my dad’s book that I almost shivered when he handed it to me. I only had a second to see it before it disintegrated into dust. My instincts went nuts as I sat there with my hands out. Dad had told me the books disintegrated when their worlds were destroyed. Obviously, Earth wasn’t destroyed, because we were here.
“This has to mean something,” I said.
“You mean, it wasn’t just the creepiest thing you have ever seen?”
“Why would the echo disintegrate? Vretial wasn’t destroyed, and it was his magic that created it.”
“But it was made for your father.”
“Then it would have disintegrated then, not now.” The dust remains of the book vanished after a moment. “I think this is a warning. I’m not a seer, but I am the son of Dylan. Yes, I’m sure of it; this is a warning that Earth is in danger. Where is the real book?”
“With your mother, I suspect.”
“We have to get back.”
To protect our family’s secret, and with some complaining from me, we got back in the truck and Xul drove us into the dark. Even in the dark of night, there was enough moonlight to illuminate the sand and cacti. We were in the desert. After a few miles without seeing anyone or any stores, he pulled over to the side of the road and I flashed us home… and found something straight out of a horror movie.
* * *
Hail and Mom were both in Mom and Dad’s bedroom, standing by the door. Xul and I appeared right in front of them, but neither of them paid us any attention. They both had twin expressions of shock and disbelief, which I completely understood when I turned and saw my dad sitting up.
; Mom had kept him clean and shaven. He wore a blue shirt and jeans. Ignoring us, he picked up his boots from the floor and put them on as if he was about to leave the house.
“Dad?” Hail asked, his voice weak with hope.
I grasped his arm to stop him from approaching the person on the bed. “No. That’s not Dad. Who are you?” I asked. I could feel power emanating from him, but it wasn’t my dad. This man’s power was sinister.
The being inside my father’s form grinned. “I am Dleso Atos. Finally… after all these years, I finally have the power I deserve.”
“How?” Mom asked.
He reached for the iron pentagram around his neck that my father always wore. “This can contain energy, as well as souls. All I needed was a genetic bridge, and then I just waited. I fully expected Dylan to be killed in the demon war, but this worked out so much better because the body is completely uninjured.”
“But magic doesn’t work that way! If Dad’s soul is dead, you can’t use his power!”
“His body is a creation of magic more so than Tiamat’s or Vretial’s. Thus his power is intact in this body, and both are now mine.”
Chapter 15
Mordon
I was sitting on the porch swing, watching Ueme and Regar run in the fields. Regar was small, identical to me as a child, with black hair and ice blue eyes. Regar was able to shift into his person form before he really knew what he was doing. His sister was even smaller. Because Regar already understood the need to hide as a person, or maybe because Sydney and I were always in person form, Regar would carry his baby sister around for her first two years. He was always trying to teach her to act like a person, even when he needed help. It was quite a sight to see a four-year-old try to feed a baby dragon with a spoon.
Ueme’s dark red hair made her light blue eyes appear purple. When she finally did learn to shift, she was constantly surprising everyone with her intelligence. It was a good thing my mother never met either of my children. I would never let them be subjected to the same harsh training and rules as I went through. Dragons were no longer at war with people… we were just in hiding from them.