Shimmer: A Novel

by Passarella, John

  Logan sighed. Slid his water bottle around the ring of condensation it had formed on the kitchen table. Spun the lazy Susan a couple times. Sighed again. “She’s better.”

  “Obviously,” Fallon said, then shook her head. “Not to pat myself on the back or anything.”

  “No, Ambrose is right. Don’t be modest. Her transformation is remarkable.”

  “But…?”

  Logan looked at her for a long time. “You were holding back.”

  She arched an eyebrow; playing innocent. “I was?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “The others were so happy, and Thalia, well, she’s a completely different person. Back among the living. They—she—didn’t see it. But I did.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Disappointment.”

  “Was I that obvious?”

  “No,” Logan said. “You covered well.”

  Fallon sighed. “Yeah.”

  “What you’ve done for her,” Logan began, “it’s like a remission, isn’t it?”

  “I think so,” Fallon said. “I tried to get rid of it, the darkness. I pushed it back. I tried to push it out of her. But…”

  “But what?”

  She stared at him guessing that he already knew what she was about to say. She shuddered with the memory but managed to get the words out. “The darkness pushed back.”

  “Oh… wow,” Logan said, stunned. “Uh, not good.”

  “No,” Fallon said. “Light years from good, actually.”

  “What does this mean for her?”

  “I bought her some time,” Fallon said. “Myself as well.”

  “How so?”

  “It was my first try,” she said, and shrugged. “I should have time to try again. You know, practice makes perfect. Better luck next time.”

  “Don’t think luck has much to do with it.”

  “Maybe not,” she said, “but my psychic intuition was in overdrive.”

  “Does she know? That it’s not completely gone?”

  Now Fallon sighed. “I think she wants it to be gone so badly, that…” She shook her head. “Right now, I don’t think she knows.”

  “How do we tell her? And when?”

  “We wait,” Fallon said. “Until she notices the signs.”

  “How much time does she have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Best guess.”

  “I’m not a fortune teller,” she said defensively.

  “Who knows?” Logan said with a wry grin. “Maybe you are.”

  “Right,” she scoffed. “I forgot.”

  “So humor me.”

  “With a guesstimate? Okay… Days, maybe,” Fallon said. She tapped the bottle cap with her thumbnail as she stared down at the table. That estimate was on the optimistic side but she wanted to remain hopeful in the face of frightening adversity. After another weary sigh, she lifted the water bottle, drained it, and resealed it. “There is so much darkness in her. It’s like this malevolent fog rolling through her mind. She’s continually fighting it, but she’s not strong enough to defeat it. And that’s not the worst part.”

  “What is?”

  “Logan,” she whispered, pausing to glance at the doorway to make sure they were still alone, “it’s aware.”

  He leaned forward, squeezing his water bottle so hard he crumpled the plastic and sloshed water on the table. “What are you saying?”

  “I sensed that it was an entity separate from her,” Fallon explained. “An invading consciousness.”

  “Like an evil spirit or something? Trying to possess her?”

  “No,” Fallon said grimly. “I think it’s trying to destroy her.

  “We have to do something!”

  “No!” she whispered harshly, catching his wrist as he began to stand. She closed her eyes momentarily, riding the roller coaster rush sensation. Then she said, “We can’t do anything right now.”

  “Why not?” The momentary tingling rush had dropped him back into his seat.

  “Because nothing has changed,” Fallon said. “Nothing since yesterday. No, that’s wrong; she’s much better than she was yesterday.”

  “But we didn’t know about this yesterday.”

  “Logan, don’t you understand? You need Thalia. You need her whole and sound and magical. She may be the only chance Liana and Barrett have. She may be the only chance any of us have. If we tell them this, if we tell her this, it could destroy her. And the time I’ve given her will have been wasted.”

  Logan ran his fingers through his hair. “Damn! Why’d you have to tell me this?”

  “Because you already suspected,” Fallon said. “You knew—or would have figured it out soon enough. You sense trouble ahead and I already tipped my hand. Blame me.”

  “This isn’t your fault,” Logan said. “And you’re right. She has more time now, which means we have time to help her.”

  “So we’ll keep it to ourselves? Our little secret?”

  “For now,” Logan said. “But if there comes a time when our lives are at risk, we need to tell Ambrose. This information can’t die with us.”

  “Never thought about it like that,” Fallon said. Glad I’m sitting, she thought, because I don’t think my legs would support me right now.

  “Walkers don’t worry about retirement plans.”

  “Cheerful thought.”

  “One other condition,” Logan said. “If—when Liana and Barrett return, we spill the beans.”

  “Agreed.”

  Logan’s eyes opened wide. “Uh-oh…”

  “What?”

  From two rooms away, they heard Gideon shout in pain.

  Displaying impressive reflexes for someone lacking hyperacuity, Logan sprang from his chair and raced out of the kitchen.

  Fallon was close behind him.

  Chapter 43

  Gideon’s first reaction was disappointment.

  The four-inch-long incision in his forearm stung no more than a mild paper cut. The spelled blade had opened his flesh long enough for the necessary blood to flow, but the wound had already sealed itself. Part of the magic, he supposed. Not that he cared. The moment he witnessed the film of blood vanish within the enchanted eye as promised, he’d tossed aside his eye patch and removed the old hydroxyapatite implant. He inserted Liana’s magical orb into his eye socket, expecting nothing short of a miracle. Cupping a palm over his good eye, he stared—rather, he tried to stare—out of the enchanted sphere. But all he experienced was darkness, complete darkness. No change.

  Unable to hide his disappointment, he shook his head dejectedly. “Sorry, Thalia. Nothing. Not a damned thing.”

  Thalia frowned. “I don’t understand. We placed all the required spells on the eye.”

  “Maybe you missed one.”

  Ambrose scratched his forehead pensively. “These things often require trial and error.”

  “No,” Thalia said. “We agonized over this. Every detail. It should work. All we needed was your blood to bind the eye to you. Your blood, flesh and bone. It’s made contact. It should open itself to your mind as soon as it imprints—”

  Gideon gasped. His face contorted in pain.

  His fingers dug into the furrows and scarred flesh around his left eye socket, his knees buckled, and he screamed in sudden blazing pain. “Something’s wrong! Get it out!”

  “No!” Thalia shouted. She fell to her knees beside him to stop him. Her strength was no match for his so, instead of trying to pry his hand away from the eye socket, she pressed against it, forcing him to keep the artificial eye in place. “It must imprint!”

  “Christ, it hurts!” Like an ice pick skewering my skull! “Oh, God…”

  “Just a few moments! That’s all! Please!”

  Gideon’s body was vibrating with pain and dripping with cold sweat. His arms and legs were twitching and he couldn’t control his breathing. It was as if his body was trying to rip itself apart to get away from the pain and—

  —and then the
pain faded, not as quickly as it had begun, but as if he was suffering aftershocks, physiological echoes of agony.

  He was on his back, knees drawn up, arms flopping at his sides, staring at the ceiling of Ambrose’s office. But something was different. The room was blurry, smeared across his field of vision.

  “What happened?” Logan asked. “We heard—”

  “Wait!” Thalia said, hushing him.

  Gideon raised his weak right arm to palm his good eye.

  He smiled. That’s more like it, he thought.

  “What?” Thalia said. “You can see now, can’t you?”

  He nodded.

  Thalia clapped excitedly. “I knew it would work! What was that nonsense about ‘trial and error’, Ambrose?”

  “It’s blurry on this side,” Gideon said, “but it’s better than nothing.” Images blurred and swirled and smeared as his brain tried to interpret the sudden sensory overload. Like peering through a kaleidoscope with a melting lens.

  “Congratulations are definitely in order,” Ambrose said agreeably. “This has turned into an extraordinary day despite the earlier tragedy.”

  “Your vision should improve,” Thalia informed him. “Uncover your good eye. That will help the enchanted eye adapt.”

  “Ah, so it learns from the natural eye?” Ambrose said.

  “Exactly,” Thalia said with a self-satisfied grin. “And that’s not all. It may soon have a few tricks of its own.”

  “Focus is improving,” Gideon said. “Triple vision is now double vision. Not as much distortion.” When he looked at a face, he saw two copies, separate at first, but then overlapping, as if something inside his head was fiddling with a focus knob and had almost found the right setting.

  “Unlike your old artificial eye,” Thalia said with a cautionary tone, “you must never take this one out.”

  Logan asked, “Is that sanitary?”

  “The enchanted eye is becoming part of him,” Thalia explained. “That’s how Liana and I spelled it. No other choice really. Otherwise it would have been like plopping a crystal ball in his head. Our goal was first to duplicate human vision, then improve upon it. For the former, we needed the eye to integrate with his body and his brain.”

  “So that endless momentary agony was…?”

  “Growing pains,” Thalia said. “I’m sorry, Gideon. We never imagined imprinting would be so traumatic. If we had, I would have warned you. But, in time, I hope you’ll agree the long-term benefit outweighs the, um, brief discomfort.”

  Gideon laughed heartily. “What discomfort?”

  A moment later, somebody began to pound on the front door.

  Chapter 44

  Barrett caught Liana’s arm. “Get behind me,” he whispered.

  She readily complied and said, “It looks like a dragon.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t breathe fire.”

  With a fierce shriek, the flying creature plunged toward them. A rippling silhouette against the molten fissures splitting the sheer cliff before them, it swooped down and then shot toward them with frightening speed. Its leathery wings pounded the air with ferocious force, while its ropy limbs, barbed with fearsome claws twitched eagerly, ready to snatch them off the barren rocky plain.

  Liana looked from Barrett and his sword, pale in the illumination cast by her light sphere, to the flying behemoth, and she didn’t like their odds.

  Barrett shouted, “Get down!”

  Liana dropped to the ground, but looked up as Barrett braced his sword.

  The impact was violent and thunderous. From her low vantage point, it appeared as if Barrett tried to cut the creature’s long neck, perhaps hoping to sever the head with its long and twisted, tooth-filled snout, but no matter how fast his reflexes, he couldn’t match the speed of its movements. The dragon—for that’s how she thought of it now—wrapped one clawed foreleg around the sword in an attempt to disarm Barrett. But if Barrett misjudged the creature’s speed, the creature underestimated Barrett’s strength. One moment he was standing over Liana’s prone form, the next he was twenty feet away and bouncing off the hard ground, dragged on his back as he maintained a tenacious grip on the hilt of his otherworldly sword.

  Like a tin can dragged behind a wedding limousine, she thought. And about as effective at slowing down the dragon’s flight.

  Barrett grunted with each bruising impact. In moments, he was lost in the deep shadows beyond the glow of the lava and her light sphere.

  The dragon pounded its wings in an attempt to rise into the dark sky. Liana saw Barrett’s form beneath the bulk of its body, dangling impotently. Then he twisted his arms, digging the blade into the dragon’s foreleg. A moment later, he slipped from its grip and fell with a frightening thud.

  Fearing the worst, Liana rushed toward the point of impact. The light sphere accompanied her, bobbing overhead, just out of reach, its diameter contracting with each passing moment.

  She prayed that Barrett was alive. Couldn’t imagine how she would proceed in this world of darkness and predatory evil if she was alone. Her magical skills would be no match for Carnifex. Of that, she had no delusions. She was playing the sidekick role here. Strictly backup, holding the keys to the supernatural doorway back home. At least she hoped she had the keys. If Barrett suffered a serious injury or if—God forbid—he died before their mission was a success, she would need to return to tell the others what had happened. And then return to this godawful place with Gideon. I never want to come back here again. Please, God, let him be alive!

  As her fear flared, the crystal amulet dangling from her neck emitted a warm glow, bringing her to her senses. She tried to control her breathing, aware again that something unseen in this hellish place was attempting to stoke the embers of her fright. She closed her palm around the glowing orb for psychological comfort and resumed her search.

  She found him among some rocky outcroppings. No place for a soft landing. For all she knew, no such place existed within the entire hell dimension. Kneeling beside him, she made a quick assessment of his condition.

  Remarkably, he’d retained his grip on his sword. Pale greenish fluid coated the length of the blade, probably blood from the dragon’s foreleg. Barrett’s clothes were ripped in a dozen places, and he seemed to be bleeding from a dozen more. His shoulders, elbows, and the backs of his legs had absorbed the brunt of the assault. With his eyes closed, he moaned softly, almost as if he were feverish instead of brutalized.

  “Barrett,” Liana called. “Can you move?”

  “Think so,” he mumbled.

  “Good,” she said, casting a nervous glance toward the fiery cliff. In a moment she spotted the winged, serpentine shadow as it completed the loop to bring it in line for another attack. “Because in about ten seconds we need to be somewhere else.”

  She helped him to his feet. “Let’s find a slab to hide behind.”

  He frowned. “Is the ground moving again?”

  “No.”

  “Could have fooled me,” he mumbled. “Go—get to your slab.”

  “What about you?”

  “Gotta catch this bus.”

  “That bus already ran over you once,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. Regroup.”

  “I softened him up,” he said. “Go!”

  Liana shook her head in disbelief but ran for cover. She couldn’t help it. He refused to budge and she lacked his strength and meta-human agility. He was an immovable object to her highly resistible force.

  “I think it softened up your skull,” she yelled angrily as she scrambled across loose gravel on her way to ducking behind an angled slab of rock. She pressed her back against the cold stone, waiting for the inevitable, sickening impact.

  A moment of calm.

  She couldn’t help it; she peeked.

  Again Barrett was standing his ground, but this time he was almost crouching, and she wondered if he was about to topple over. The dragon was a few second away, at most. As good a meta-human fighter as he was, Barrett was
no match for the flying creature’s speed and power. If only there was a way for me to help even the odds. Her concussive spell would take too long and would have minimal effect on—

  Minimal!

  A slight advantage could make a big difference.

  Her fingers danced upon the sigils on her forearm and they awakened with a ready glow. She twirled her palm out and up, raised her arm abruptly and shouted, “Levitas—exos!”

  The first command caused all the loose dirt and gravel around her to rise from the ground in a hovering, weightless cloud of debris; the second command cast the stones at the long head and twisted snout of the dragon a moment before it reached Barrett.

  The earthen barrage momentarily blinded the dragon.

  Its forelegs came together where it expected Barrett to be standing, in a viciously clawed clapping motion design to rip human flesh asunder—and missed!

  Liana gasped when she realized why Barrett had been crouching. He’d needed to give his legs enough spring for his planned attack. His vertical leap was, naturally, inhuman, his timing impeccable. Up and over, his free hand guiding him around the thick serpentine neck, he landed astride the dragon’s shoulder. Squeezing his thighs together to secure his bareback riding position, he clutched the sword in both hands and drove the point down through the leathery skin of the dragon’s neck.

  The creature shrieked again, this time in agony.

  It’s crooked snout, as long as Barrett’s arm, looped back on its serpentine neck and attempted to dislodge the human rider with its jaws. Barrett tugged his sword out of the dragon’s flesh and swung at the ferocious mouth, the edge of the blade whacking repeatedly against the snapping teeth as Barrett kept the head at bay.

  Beating its wide leathery wings, the creature shot straight up, perhaps hoping the extreme angle would dislodge Barrett from his perch. The tactic proved ineffective as Barrett held tight, and once again the creature’s head swung around for a frontal assault. Its attention distracted, the dragon’s ascent began to corkscrew. Liana imagined that the first deep sword wound was having a debilitating effect, continually sapping its strength as the battle raged on.