by Jae Vogel
Another shadow was just out of his vision and Dion realized this one was further up front, closer to the door. They were entrapping him by allowing him to walk further back into the store. Whoever they were, they were working in cahoots to lure him to the back of the store. Dion closed his eyes and tried to see if he could feel any elementals in the store. He couldn’t, which meant there was some kind of background activity to limit his abilities. His uncle had rented this store to be a trap and he was inside it.
He saw a face on the other side of a large tank and it was gone. Dion recognized it; the face was one of the three elementals who’d raised him until they tried to attack him. He couldn’t remember much about the three women who turned out to be water elemental nymphs, but he did know they were very powerful for an elemental of their class. He walked around to the other side of the tank, but no one was there.
There was another shadow further down the aisle between the tanks and he followed it. Behind him, Dion heard a very feminine laugh. They wanted him to know the aquarium store with its black light was their domain. He still hadn’t seen a single person inside it. Where did they hide the captured chess club and girlfriends?
The first one met him at the end of the aisle where the wall stood. According to the map, there should be another room beyond it. Plenty of space for a twenty or more people to be held and not create too much of a problem. The nymph stood there in her uniform with a sinister smile on her face. Dion couldn’t imagine what kind of twisted ability was employed to take carefree water elemental and turn it into this creature.
“Where are my friends?” Dion asked her. “You’re holding them in this store, aren’t you?”
She laughed and darted to the next row of tanks, daring him to follow her. Dion walked over to it and found the row empty. It didn’t surprise him. The elementals were in their own environment. And one of these tanks could house them and allow for their escape. They could be used to imprison them too, but first you had to find out which tank they were inside.
He saw a figure on the other side of the aisle waiting for him. The nymphs didn’t even try to hide right now. They wanted to be found. Dion crossed over again and followed the lone figure down the aisle in the direction of the shark tank. I only made sense they would lead him there.
All three of the nymphs were waiting for him at the junction of the aisles were the shark tank was situated. The stood close together and smiled. They’d manage to shed their uniforms and were covered in their long black hair. All three were dripping with water and covered in seaweed as well.
“So what did he offer you? Dion said to them. “What did he pay you to capture those innocent people and hold them here? You took the Naiads who were with them too, didn’t you? There are only three of you. Three against one human and one Naiad you can manage. But what happens when all of them are freed? How will you contain their rage when that happens?”
“You think you are so powerful and high,” the first told him. She stood in the center and glared in Dion’s direction. “All those years your parents forced us to work for them. Don’t you think we hated every minute of it? Do you think your parents might’ve considered us and how we felt turned into slaves? At least your uncle is paying us. What did we ever get from your parents?”
“Why did you turn on me?” he demanded. “Who was the woman you were talking to before you came at me? I remember her; she was older than you were. A lot older than any of you, almost an elderly woman.”
“She doesn’t always appear that way,” another one of the nymphs said to him. “Sometimes she appears as young as we are. Sometimes much older than what you thought.”
“She’s an immortal,” another one said.
Dion realized they were moving out to each side to make it difficult for him to focus on any particular one of them. The air sylphs have tried the same technique the day before. This time they surrounded him in a matter of second and began to walk in a circular pattern around him.
“The truck driver was an immortal too,” another one of the nymphs giggled. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you that? You think the only reason you have such ability is the reason your parents told you?”
The nymphs began to move rapidly around him. Dion realized what they were trying to do: confuse him. If they could trap him in the aquarium store, he couldn’t get to the next stage of his quest. They needed to control him and keep him here for his uncle. They couldn’t do it for long, but if his uncle needed him out of the picture, they didn’t need to imprison him here very long. Quite possibly this was the same way the water elementals had imprisoned is friends.
Dion felt dizzy. Just as if the last time he had to wait and make the elementals think he was trapped and had no way to respond. They didn’t know about the cup he had inside his jacket. If they started whatever practice they’d used to imprison his friends on him, it would cause them to momentarily expose a weakness. A weakness he could exploit.
He felt the moisture in the air. Whatever the nymphs planned, it was about to happen. In his mind, Dion began a countdown again. He needed to make them think they were in full control at this point. And why not? They’d used this technique against the members of the chess club and their girlfriends. If he was just another mortal, shouldn’t it work too?
Dion felt a power surge as they stopped their movement. This was supposed to disorient him enough so they could entrap him, but they hadn’t counted on what he had inside his jacket. He pulled the cup out of his jacket and raised it up into the air the moment the energy was at its peak.
Dion spoke the words he’d memorized.
There was a flash and the nymphs were gone. The cup was hot, so hot it threatened to burn his fingers. The energy the nymphs summoned to entrap him was dissipated into the cup. He needed to get into some place cool before it turned red hot. Dion looked at the shark tank in front of him and hurled the cup into the middle of it.
The metal cup hit the water as steam rose up from it. He didn’t think it would hurt the shark, but he had no options at the moment. He watched the cup sink to the bottom, water boiling around it as it went down. The shark momentarily ceased to swim around the tank and made a detour to the sinking cup. It felt the heat, which radiated from it, and made a U-turn back to the walls of the round tank where it resumed its circular swimming pattern. The cup sat on the bottom of the tank as the heat rose to the surface. Dion walked up to the thermometer on the side of the tank and looked at it. It might rise a few degrees, but the shark would be fine.
The elementals, on the other hand, were in a worse state. The cup was designed to trap elementals inside it, but the nymphs had magnified its ability by their generation of a power cone. The focus of the cone ended up being the cup, instead of Dion. When the apex of the cone touched the cup, it pulled them into it. Now there were permanently trapped inside the cup, which was a hunk of fused metal after the heat flash.
Dion heard a rumble behind him and turned to the wall at his rear. It was dematerializing as he stood there. Whatever force the nymphs used to keep it in place was gone since they were trapped inside the remains of the cup. The wall became translucent, then transparent and finally it was gone. What remained in its place was the room on the other side, which was filled with supplies for the store.
And the members of the chess club with their Naiad girlfriends.
The young men were hazy and acted as if they’d just waken from a deep sleep. The rubbed their eyes and looked around, unsure where they were. The Naiads, on the other hand, knew exactly what had taken place. They were angry. Dion found himself facing a group of confused guys and a furious collection of young women in swim team tracksuits. He could see the fire in their eyes.
“Where are they?” the Naiad called Cynae demanded. “We want them.”
“There was only three,” one of her sisters roared. “We’ll have to divide them up. I’ve got a beach infested with lamprey’s I want to introduce them to.”
“They’re sealed in the cup I u
sed,” Dion said. “The cup overheated when they tried to trap me too. It’s at the bottom of the shark tank.” He pointed to the mass of metal at the bottom, some heat still waffling up to the surface.
The Naiads formed a group around the tank and looked in.
“They can’t get out from it,” Cynae pointed out. “Unless some idiot allows them to leave. I don’t think too many people will attempt to enter the this tank.”
“It has to be cleaned sometime,” another one of the Naiads said. “What if someone finds the cup and doesn’t know what it holds?”
“I don’t think we can risk letting them out,” Cynae agreed. “At least not this century. Who wants to go in there and get it?”
Four of the elementals leaped into the shark tank and dissolved into their water from the moment they hit the surface. The water churned as they went to the bottom of the tank and returned to the surface. The only thing Dion could see was the melted mass of the cup rise to the surface. Once it was on the top of the water, the Naiads returned to their human form and climbed out of the tank, water dripping everywhere. The shark had moved away from them when they hit the water, as it instinctively knew to avoid the water elementals.
“So how do we decide who gets to take care of them?” Cynae asked the four Naiads who’d sank to the bottom of the tank to get the melted cup.
“I’ll hold it for now,” the one who grabbed it from the tank said. “Someone else can get the honor to dispose of it when this is all over. I’d like to dump it in the Sahara Desert, but we’ll put it to a vote.” She unzipped a pocket on her tracksuit, slid the mashed cup inside it, and zipped the pocket back up.
The chess club had stood in amazement while the elementals transformed as they hit the water. It was hard to say anything to a girl you’d fallen in love with who was forced to see you hauled off by what they assumed were security guards. They stood there, mouths open and quiet. The elementals were still gathered around the tank, their anger only a few degrees lower.
“So can anyone tell me what happened before I arrived?” Dion asked them.
“I was in an ice cream parlor with James when the three of them came and ordered us to come along,” Cynae said. There were three of them and I didn’t know what they might do to James, so I came along. The next thing I know we were here. I don’t remember a thing until you broke the barrier they used to keep us here.”
“Is that pretty much what happened to the rest of you?” Dion asked the other Naiads.
They nodded.
“They were the fall back plan in case you changed your mind,” Dion explained. “I would expect we won’t have it easy once we leave this place. My uncle is determined to keep me from meeting up with Salacia Delphi.”
“Did I hear someone call my name?” a voice from behind the cluster of chess club guys called out. The bodies parted and women who appeared to be Greek and in her thirties stepped through the crowd.
Chapter 13
“You are Salacia Delphi?” Dion asked the woman.
“I don’t know any other ones,” she responded. She wasn’t very tall and her hair was short and curly. She wore a dress with a suit jacket over it.
“How did you end up here?” he asked her. “I’ve been waiting all day for you outside your store on the other end of this part of the mall.”
“Sorry, I was late. Traffic on the interstate and I had to pick up some parts from the shipper. I got here an hour ago and was on my way back to the store when three women in security guard uniforms pulled me aside and wanted to talk. Next thing I know I’m here. Is that what happened to everyone?”
“Yes. You were captured by some rogue elementals working for the guy who built the mall. I’m an elemental worker like you, but I can work all four elements. I already have full powers on the first two; I need your initiation to work the third.”
“All four? Haven’t run into anyone who could do that in a long time. You should try for the fifth if you can get all four. There haven’t been many people who could work the fifth in history.”
“My uncle is one of them, but he did it the wrong way by not getting his authorization to work the first four.”
“Not good,” she said to them. “I’ve heard bad things about people who went in that way to get the fifth. It never ends well.”
“I’ve heard that too,” Dion agreed. “I guess my uncle is proof enough of it.”
“Well, now that we’re one big happy family here,” she said, “perhaps you can introduce me to all these fine young people.”
Dion quickly introduced her to the chess club and the elementals in the form of young women with them. He could see her eyes widen as he told her the story of what happened before she arrived. He neglected to tell her about her former husband, Captain Gabriel, who stood outside and wanted to see her too.
“I can’t believe what you did,” she said to him. “But you made the best decision anyone could’ve done in this situation. I’ll have no trouble granting you full water elemental powers, but we need to get back to my store so I can do it in the office.”
“Door is in that direction,” Dion told her. The combined group filed out through it.
As Dion, the last to leave, exited the store, a lady walked up to him and stared in confusion at the crowd who left it. “What is going on here?” she demanded. “I couldn’t get the door open and the maintenance crew is supposed to be on their way to fix it for me.”
The woman appeared to be light in complexion and small in size. “Do you work here?” Dion asked her.
“I own this place,” she snapped at him. “We just opened yesterday.”
“Don’t worry, we didn’t take any fish. Nice selection. Who came up with the design?”
“I did!” she snapped at him.
“The shark in the tank was a good idea,” Dion said to her as he walked away.
“What shark?” she demanded to know. Dion simply continued to walk with his group. His uncle, or the elementals, had made some changes.
The next group they encountered was his friends who’d stood outside and waited. Lilly ran up to Dion and tossed her arms around him, relieved that he’d managed to get everyone out of the aquarium store safely. The rest of them appeared to be calmed that his plans worked out.
“Everything alright out here?” he asked Sean and the rest of the group.
“No real problems,” the captain told him. “We had some kind of security guard come by and look us over, but he left after a few minutes. I guess we weren’t the criminals he needed to find.”
“Probably went back to the usual suspects,” Dion said. He was about to tell the captain his ex-wife was inside the aquarium store with the others when she stepped out from the crowd again.
Captain Gabriel had an instant look of relief on his face and walked up to Salacia. She stopped and looked at him with equal surprise. It was a special moment for both of them and they hugged.
“What are you doing here?” they said at the same time.
“I heard about your new store in this mall,” Captain Gabriel said to Salacia. “I had a bad feeling about it so I put out the word to some people I know to look into it. They did and told me it was built over the entrance to the abyss. I knew I had to get back here and make sure you were safe when I didn’t get a quick answer to the last letter I wrote.”
“As you can see, I’m safe and sound. No reason to worry about me. Those nymphs who captured me and the rest are locked away some place where they won’t get out very soon if at all.” She turned in Dion’s direction. “Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”
“I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for you.”
“It was nice of you. Especially after being trapped in that place. Come on, we need to get back to my office so I can give Dion his full water elemental powers.”
The group continued on their way toward the pool store. This time there were no further interruptions. Most people didn’t think it was odd an entire squadron of chess players and a swim team walk
ed together to as they wound their way through the mall.
Outside the pool store, the crowd halted and Salacia turned to face the group with Dion at her side. “You have to stay out here,” she informed them. “What I need to do with Dion has to be carried out alone between him and myself. I’m going into the office and when we return, Dion will be a Water Element Master.
Dion and Salacia Delphi went through the door to the pool store and the rest waited outside.
A few minutes later the door to the pool store opened and one of the regular sales clerks stuck out his head. “Are you all here to see Ms. Delphi?” he asked them. “I think she’s going to be busy for a while. She just went into the office with someone. I couldn’t tell who it was, but she closed the door which usually means it’s intense and will take a while.”
“We’re waiting for her,” Lilly let him know, “but she told us to stay here. There is something she needs to do with a friend of ours.”
“Okay,” he looked and saw the Naiad sisters standing around in their tracksuits. “Say, if any of you want to come back and use the demo pools, it’s fine. I’ve had men come by all day and ask about you.”
“Thank you,” Cynae spoke for them, “but we’ll stay here for the time being.”
“So what happens inside there when he gets his full powers?” Emily asked Lilly. “You’ve been with Dion every day this week. Does he have to pass a test, get fingerprinted, swear an oath, what?”
“I have no idea. He’s never allowed me to go in there with him. I guess it’s too special for anyone else to see.” It was clear from the way she spoke that Lilly found it to be an irritation she wasn’t allowed inside.
“I still can’t imagine what we’re going to do with them all,” Emily mentioned to Lilly a little later as they watched the Naiads interact with the chess club. “Didn’t they say they need a large isolated body of water to thrive? Where are we going to find something around here that meets that requirement?”