by Amira Rain
“Ellie! Ellie, please! It’s just me! Dalton!”
With my heart hammering in my ears, I froze, and then slowly turned. Then immediately began swatting wildly at Dalton, pretty close to enraged. “Are you freaking kidding me? You scared me half to death! I should toss your little ass right in the lake for this!”
He blocked a few of my swats as best he could, and then grabbed both my wrists to stop me. “Hey. Hey, easy. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just didn’t know how to get your attention, and I though saying your name would be less scary than crunching branches behind you or something.”
“Well, what are you doing here, anyway?”
“I might ask you the same thing. I saw you sneaking away from your castle, so I grabbed a bike from outside another castle to see if I could catch up to you and see what you were doing. You were too fast, though. I only just caught up to you before you parked your bike. So, what are you doing here?”
In the dim light, I could see a look of confusion on his face identical to an expression our father had used to get when perplexed. It was a faint line between the eyes combined with a slight angling upward of the inner brows, and a funny little purse of the lips. The resemblance was downright uncanny.
With my pulse rate now returning to normal, I exhaled, apologized for swatting at him, and then proceeded to tell him my plans. “And who knows if throwing debris in the lake will work, but it’s at least worth a try, since I can’t think of any other way to stop Warren.”
“So... well, Hugh told me that he’s told you to just say the word if you want him to take Warren’s place. And, so... well, have you given any thought to that?”
I sighed, shaking my head. “I really can’t even think about that right now. Hugh has been like a father to me, like the loving father that I never had. Our own father never even told me he loved me, Dalton. I need Hugh in my life. It’s like I’ve been given a second chance at a kind of father-daughter relationship, and I can’t even contemplate that ending, and I really can’t even contemplate Hugh becoming a Form. I especially can’t contemplate that with Warren, though, either. I just...” Sighing again, I didn’t finish the thought. “All I can think about right now is what I came here to try.”
Dalton nodded, making his silver wire-rimmed glasses glint in the moonlight. “Well, I’ll help. I guess there’s a tiny chance we could create a golem using bits of organic matter or rocks. Though to be completely honest, I do think the chance of it actually working are about one in a trillion.”
“But that’s still too high for me.”
Someone had spoken from very nearby, someone with a very familiar, somewhat nasally voice, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on who it belonged to. But for some reason, unlike when Dalton had scared me, this time I didn’t scream or jump. This time, I suddenly felt too afraid to move a muscle or even breathe. I could only watch, eyes seemingly frozen open, while a man emerged from behind some shrubbery not ten feet away from us. He was holding a gun. He was wearing wire-rimmed glasses similar to Dalton’s.
It was our father.
*
“Jesus, my own two children trying to thwart my quest for justice; my own children fighting to keep the damned wormhole open. I should have expected this, being as how you’ve both always been thorns in my side. You, Dalton, by your mother requiring eighteen years’ worth of support payments from me, and you, Ellie, simply by being a child I told your mother never to have. But once the little ‘oops’ happened, I had to go along with it, didn’t I? We had to pretend we were the all-American family and put on a good show for the neighbors. With all the hours I spent at your damned dance recitals instead of working in the lab, I probably could have created ten wormhole islands for the government and been a billionaire by the time I was forty.”
With Dalton’s arm around my shoulders to help keep me upright, I spoke in a near-whisper, feeling as if I actually might faint. “You’re dead, Dad. You’re dead.”
He snorted, still pointing the gun at Dalton and me. “Well, no, little dumdum, I can assure you, I’m very much alive. I faked my own drowning and just tossed some of my personal effects into the ocean to make it look like I’d died. Your mother, however, really did drown, when I pushed her overboard. Was just plain tired of her by that point, I suppose. Not to mention that the authorities recovering her body made my own ‘drowning,’ supposedly alongside her, that much more plausible.
“See, I needed to ‘die,’ because once the government caught wind that I planned to destroy this secret little island because they’d never paid me, they wanted to stop me from doing so. And I had to get them off my back.” Taking a step forward, he looked directly at Dalton. “Though, of course, after my ‘death’ I hoped that you, Dalton, would earn all the support I paid on you over the years and do my dirty work for me. But, something you never knew was that I’m not only a brilliant physicist and computer scientist and occultist, I’m also a bit of a psychic. At least when it comes to literally reading some of the thoughts of my own children. And I was able to read in your thoughts long ago that you ultimately might have some ambivalence about ensuring that this island would self-destruct as I planned.
Then, when I intuited that you’d finally actually traveled here, with your long-lost biological half-sister, no less, I decided I just had to make a trip here myself to see how things would go. And so, I arrived here a few days ago, and after a bit of stalking around the village, gathering information, invisible, which is just another of my occultist tricks that I’m able to do for at least an hour a day, I retreated back here to the lake, where I’ve been standing guard to ensure that no one ever becomes a Form again.
“I will see that this island self-destructs, even if I have to lose my life along with everyone else. It’s only right, since I was never paid. But, now...” He took another step forward while still pointing the gun, which I could now see had a silencer attached to the end of it. “Now, it’s time for me to dispatch my own two children, I suppose. Too bad, so sad, but true. Which one of you would like to say hello to Jesus first?”
Dalton immediately pushed me behind him and spoke in a loud, clear voice. “But, wait. Just wait a second, Harold. How did you even get here?”
He scoffed, rolling his eyes so hard I could see the action even in the dim light. “You’re not the only one in the family who can open a wormhole. Idiot.”
My father raised the gun a bit higher, seeming like he was preparing to fire, but Dalton spoke again, kind of edging backward, pushing me along. “Just wait again, Harold. Just hold on. You can shoot us and hide our bodies somewhere, sure, but have you thought about what you’re going to do when Chief Knight comes back here to enter the lake and become a Form, thwarting your plans? Have you even thought about that? You can’t fight a shifter, you know.”
“Oh, yes, I can; I created shifters, remember? I know exactly how they work. I was never able to turn my own self into one, but by using black magic, let me assure you, I sure as hell can fight one. I’ll fight them all to keep them out of the lake. No one will ever be able to become a Form again on my watch. And we’ll all die together when the island self-destructs, which seemed to me just as it, should be. It will be a day of justice, and one long-awaited for.”
Dalton continued on with the questions, obviously trying to buy us time, and I decided to take advantage by attempting to pull my phone from my pocket. I figured that as long as I could remain hidden behind Dalton’s back, I might have a chance of tapping out a brief SOS text to Warren, probably just including two words: help and lake. I figured I’d probably have a better chance of successfully sending off a text than I had of escaping by running away. I knew my father would probably just shoot me in the back. And besides, I didn’t want to just leave Dalton all alone.
I managed to type out hel before my father became aware of what I was doing, probably because of the glow from my phone screen, which I’d been hoping Dalton’s body would shield.
“Hey! Drop it!” He’d shoute
d the words with such force that I inadvertently did as I was told, trembling and terrified. I hadn’t had even a split second to hit send.
“Come on out from behind him, right this second, Eleanor. If you don’t, I’ll really make you suffer before you die. Both of you.”
Cringing, I did as he’d commanded, despite the fact that Dalton was trying to keep me behind him. I looked my father in the eyes with tears freely flowing from my own eyes at this point. “Please don’t do this. Please. Maybe we can work something out. Maybe we can—”
“Enough.” He’d lowered the gun slightly, but he now raised it to shoulder height again, pointing it directly at me. “Oh, and, Ellie, by the way. I never told you I loved you because I never did.”
For a split-second, I thought he’d already fired, because the moment he’d spoken the words that he had, I’d felt a pain in my chest like something between a knife stabbing me and fire burning me. I thought I’d been shot in the heart. But he hadn’t even fired yet. That came not a split-second after he’d spoken, but maybe a full second. And during that second, it seemed as if a million things happened at once, millisecond by millisecond, in painfully slow motion.
I heard the shot ring out. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I felt the very beginnings of Dalton trying to push me out of the way, his hands closing around my shoulders. But before he even could, something, or someone, pushed us both out of the line of fire. It was something large and dark. I sensed that it was something that had descended through the treetops from the sky, though with hardly a sound. Before I could make sense of it, I was on the jungle floor, as was Dalton.
Then I heard a rumbly sort of roar, and suddenly I understood. Harold, who I’d never refer to as my father or dad again, was firing the gun up at the sky, and I looked up, seeing a massive dark shape against the stars. The dragon appeared to be flying by only using one wing to beat against the air. His other wing hung pretty much limp, as if its shoulder or arm were injured. It was Hugh.
As he dove for a second pass, Dalton and I scuttled away, while Harold continued to fire, standing between two large palms. Being so close to the trees, making him harder to dive at, was the only reason I could think of why Hugh hadn’t taken him out first; but now with Dalton and me out of the way, he had a clearer path, and he now raced toward Harold, who’d abandoned his gun and was now pointing at Hugh, muttering strange words, as if to cast a spell. But whatever he was trying to do, it didn’t work.
Hugh knocked him right off his feet and he fell back, hitting his head on a palm trunk with an audible cracking noise. He landed in the dirt and remained there, motionless.
Hugh immediately landed, shifted into human form, and began striding over to Dalton and me. “All okay? Anyone take a bullet?”
We both said no, and I launched myself into Hugh’s brawny arms. “How did you know we were here? How did you know to come?”
He squeezed me tight with his good arm while planting a quick kiss on the top of my head. “A good father figure is always looking out. Now tell me who the hell the guy is, and what the hell just happened.”
I very quickly told him the gist in a shaky-voiced rush, and when I was nearly finished, Dalton interrupted. “Hey, guys? I think he’s trying to get up. Look at him.”
Hugh and I both looked, and we saw Harold now staggering around, trying to get to his feet and stay on them, though without much success. Blood poured from a wound on the back of his head, and it colored the back of his white shirt black. For some reason he seemed unable to open his eyes. He didn’t seem able to talk, either, he just moaned.
Dalton looked past me to Hugh. “Should we give him a helpful push into the lake?”
Hugh nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Hugh told me to stay put, and he and Dalton began walking over to Harold, but before they quite made it to him, some kind of bright white light began shooting from one of Harold’s fingertips. And being that he was blindly still staggering around, the light was shooting around in all different directions. Hugh didn’t have any time to get away. The laser-like light seemed to hit him, and he rocketed backward, toward the lake. He landed with a splash, head and torso in the dark water, and his legs on the marshy edge. Instantly, some unseen force began slowly dragging him in, and I took off flying over to him, screaming.
My heart seemed not to hammer but explode in my ears four times before I reached him. I belly flopped down on the ground, grabbing at one of his big brown boots, the only part of him that wasn’t now submerged. “Dalton! Help!”
Yanking on Hugh’s foot with all my might, I glanced over my shoulder to see if Dalton was coming. He wasn’t. Harold had made it to his feet and had Dalton pinned up against a palm by shining the beam of bright light at him. Moonlight revealed Dalton’s face as chalk white. Eyes wide and limbs motionless, it appeared that the beam of light was having the effect of freezing him in place.
Sobbing, I turned my attention back to Hugh, who was being quickly pulled into the lake by something I couldn’t even see. As hard as I was yanking, something else was yanking even harder. And within seconds, despite the fact that I had two hands on his boot, trying to pull it over my shoulder, grunting, it disappeared from my hands with one mighty tug. And then I was just looking at murky water; just a few faint ripples the only evidence that Hugh had ever been there.
Crying out, I beat my fists on the rocky, muddy soil. “God, no! No, no, no!”
I sobbed so hard that the sound tapered off to silence while my shoulders shook. Hugh was gone, but Warren wouldn’t have to make the sacrifice. But I hadn’t wanted it like this. It was in the silence of my sob that I heard something other than Harold’s incoherent occultist mutterings. I heard the soft whoosh of beating wings.
Praying that my ears weren’t deceiving me, I got to my feet, peered into the sky, and then immediately cupped my hands around my mouth to shout. A dragon was flying directly above the lake, and fairly low. “Help! Hugh’s in the lake, but he just went in, so maybe there’s still a chance to save him! Please try!”
I didn’t even know which dragon was up there, and I certainly didn’t want him to get dragged into the lake, too, but I just hadn’t been able to not try for some help for Hugh.
The dragon rapidly descended, and now I could see that it was Warren. He was the largest of all the dragons, by far. His wingspan was at least ten or so feet wider, maybe even more. Inches from the water, he stopped his decent and hovered there, and then began ever-so-slowly sliding a wing into the water, not stopping until he was in nearly up to his shoulder. At that point, he began breathing long jets of fire, making the surface of the lake glow with brilliant orange and red light. I realized he was probably trying to create some sort of a beacon so that Hugh could see him and grab his wing if he was still even conscious and able to do so. Nobody really had any idea what exactly happened when someone was pulled into the lake, or exactly how long it took for them to become a Form.
As Warren really got going breathing fire, steam rose up from the lake’s surface in misty waves, obscuring my vision a bit, though I was still able to tell when Warren suddenly seemed to start tugging on his wing, hard, or he was tugging something back, I couldn’t quite tell which. I could just see that some kind of a struggle was happening. Willing myself to continue looking, I prayed that he was pulling Hugh up, not that the mysterious lake currents were pulling him in to join Hugh.
After maybe half a minute, my breath hitched in my throat when I saw Warren clearly begin to get pulled down. The water had now fully enveloped his wing and shoulder and had halfway swallowed his chest.
I clasped my hands together tightly, the fact that I was digging my nails into my own flesh barely even registering. “Oh, God, please, God. Please, please, please. Don’t let him get taken, too.”
Suddenly, Warren let loose a near-deafening roar, louder even than any he’d made while battling the golem. It was so powerful and deep that the ground beneath my feet shook with the vibrations from it al
most imperceptibly. And miraculously, seemingly inch by inch, still roaring, he began pulling his wing from the steaming black water.
“Yes. Yes, Warren, please, God, yes.”
By the time his roar finally faded, his wing was clear of the water. And dangling from the end of it appeared to be a person, holding on tightly. It was Hugh.
Warren began flying him over the lake toward me, and at the sight of them both, I fell to my knees, half-laughing, half-crying. I began laughing and crying even harder when Warren landed near me, and Hugh simultaneously let go of Warren’s wing and landed on his feet. From what I could see by the light of the moon and stars, both of them looked healthy and whole. I threw my arms around Warren’s neck first, telling him how much I loved him between sobs. Next, I hugged Hugh, who unbelievably still had the strength to hug me back with his good arm. He even had strength enough to speak.
“I don’t know if this old-timer will have the energy to shift for a while, but other than that, I think I’ll be just fine. I just hope the same for poor Dalton.”
To my complete horror, I realized that in the life-or-death drama of Warren and Hugh, I’d forgotten about Dalton being pinned to a tree. I turned to look for him, but Warren was already on it. He’d already flown over to Dalton and Harold, and he now snatched up Harold in his strong jaws and began shaking him like a rag doll. Right away, Harold’s beam of white light disappeared, and Dalton fell to the ground in a heap, groaning.
Running over to him, I shouted at Warren. “The man you’re holding tried to kill me and Dalton, and he’ll try to kill us all by letting the island self-destruct if you let him go! Drop him in the lake!”
Warren had already begun heading over to the lake with Harold still clenched in his jaws the moment I’d said Harold had tried to kill me. While Warren went to do his task, I cradled Dalton’s head, asking him if he was okay.