by Brea Essex
I watched him carefully as he made his grand speech. He seemed to believe in the rightness of what they did.
“I get it now. I didn’t believe any of this existed until Zac appeared in my hospital room after my accident. Even after he explained things to me, I still didn’t really want to believe him. It was only when I saw him, but my family didn’t, that I began to believe in what he was trying to tell me. I’ll stop asking questions now—but only until we get out of here. Then I want answers.”
Zac nodded and we finally turned to face into the room. “We shouldn’t turn on the overhead lights,” he said. He glanced at Xander. “Any chance you’re carrying a flashlight?”
Xander reached into a concealed pocket in his shirt and pulled out a small metal flashlight. “You know it. But I don’t know if one flashlight will be enough to quickly search this room.”
“Don’t you carry an extra?” Zac prodded.
He sighed, and pulled out another, smaller flashlight. “Yeah, but don’t lose it.”
“Wait,” I said. Both guys turned and looked at me. “I found a spell, in that book Hecate gave me, to light my way, remember?” I asked Zac.
I had discovered the spell in the intervening months between our trip to Greece and our finding the facility we were currently searching. Zac cocked his head to the side, waiting for me to continue.
“I think I remember the spell. I haven’t practiced it in a while. If I can still do it, we can search faster and we won’t have to worry about losing Xander’s precious back up flashlight.”
Closing my eyes, I attempted to visualize the spell for light that Hecate had given me to memorize. Good thing I seemed to remember spells better than I did facts in school. Pulling the words from my memory, I recited the spell out loud and then opened my eyes. My hands began to glow faintly. I brought them together, and the light coalesced to form a small, bright orb. Zac looked on in satisfaction.
Xander had an odd look on his face. “Well, this one’s definitely a keeper, Zac Man.”
Zac shot him a self-satisfied smirk. “I do know how to pick them, don’t I?”
“Them?” I asked in amusement. I knew I had nothing to worry about.
“I chose you, didn’t I? Don’t worry; you’re the only one.”
I smiled at him, and lifted the orb in my hands. The light only stretched far enough for us to see approximately ten feet in front of us. Since we were trying to be discreet, it was more than enough.
The room was empty, save a giant obsidian marble pillar standing in the center of the room.
“Where are we?” Zac asked.
“I’m not sure,” Xander told him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this room before.”
We approached the pedestal slowly, cautiously. I held my light over my head, illuminating the pillar. The brightness fell across a small leather-bound book. It looked similar to the spell book Hecate had given me, except it was bound in dark red leather, rather than brown.
Xander frowned and reached for the book.
My hand upon his arm stayed him. “Wait. It could be a trap.”
He shot me a look that suggested I had lost my mind. “There would be no reason for a trap here. Only the other Zayin have the clearance necessary to enter these rooms. Why would anyone set a trap for their own people?”
“You said yourself that you’d never seen this room before. Perhaps it’s usually hidden somehow? A
ll I know is that something is weird here. Between Zac’s body disappearing and this room that you don’t remember seeing before—something’s not right. So, don’t pick it up, but we can open it. I’m as curious as you are to see what’s in it.”
He nodded, finally agreeing. He reached out once more, and flipped the book open. A list was written on the first page. Frowning, he paged through the rest of the small book. All the other pages were blank.
“What does this mean?” he wondered out loud.
Zac stared down at the list, as did I. After a moment, Zac gasped out loud. “Look at this! The first item on the list is the Helm of Hades. This is a list of the Seven Relics.”
“Seriously?” Xander asked, disbelief coloring his voice. “A list of the Seven Relics lying about for anyone to find? I don’t even know all of the Seven Relics.”
“I thought you said that the knowledge of the Seven Relics was something you learned in school?” I interrupted.
“We learn about the Seven Relics, but most of us don’t learn what they actually are,” Zac explained.
Pulling a small notebook and pen out of my back pocket, I started to copy down the list.
“What are you doing?” Xander demanded.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” I asked incredulously as I continued to write. “I’m copying down the list. I just said that this book might be booby-trapped. I’m not going to attempt to move it, but I’m certainly not going to let this opportunity pass us by either.”
“But this is top-secret knowledge!”
I paused, pen hovering above the paper and looked up at him. “Top-secret knowledge or not, if this could help us…” I trailed off, noticing Zac trying to signal me behind Xander’s back. Why was he trying to keep me silent?
“Help us what?”
“Never mind. Just call it curiosity. I like to study ancient relics,” I lied. “I want to look these up later, and see what they do.”
“Oh,” he said simply. Apparently he was done arguing. “Well, let’s get out of here and keep looking for Zac’s body.”
“I really don’t think we’re going to find it here,” Zac spoke up. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“Why?” Xander asked, turning toward him.
I took the opportunity of Xander having his back turned to finish copying down the list and slipping my notebook back into my pocket.
“I should feel it if it was here, shouldn’t I?” Zac replied, nodding slightly to me as he noticed the notebook disappearing into my pocket. “Always before, I’ve felt the pull of my body. I don’t feel a pull now.”
“Do you want to keep looking?” Xander asked slowly.
“Yeah. I don’t want to leave if it’s actually here, but I’m really beginning to believe that it’s not.”
Xander nodded and we headed for the door. “You might want to douse that light,” he reminded me.
“Oh, right.” I made a slight gesture and the orb of light dissipated.
Once the room had fallen dark again, Xander scanned his badge at the scanner placed near the door. This time no fingerprint was needed. There was a slight click and the door sprang open. Xander poked his head out first and glanced up and down the hall. “Coast is clear.”
We snuck down the hall toward another door. Each room we checked was either empty, or filled with odd equipment I couldn’t recognize. Some of the objects seemed to be weaponry. I wondered briefly how they managed to take the weapons into the spirit realm with them. Maybe they only used these weapons for training. I would have to ask Zac later. I was tired of not getting answers to my questions, and we would be taking too much of a risk to stop and talk in the hall more than we already had.
I slowed, noticing that Zac was trailing behind Xander and I as we walked down the maze of hallways. “What’s wrong?” I asked him quietly.
“I really don’t think it’s here,” he told me.
“Why do you think that?”
Xander noticed that we were no longer following him, and stopped. He turned toward us, but didn’t approach. Instead, he stayed a couple of feet ahead of us. He crossed his arms, looking annoyed. I got the feeling that he was only a few seconds away from tapping his feet impatiently. “Problem?” he called softly.
Zac shrugged, but didn’t respond to him directly. “I would feel it if it was here,” he told me.
I glanced at Xander, and leaned toward Zac, standing on my toes so I could whisper in his ear. “I thought you couldn’t sense your body?” I was pretty sure he had told me that just before we had come inside, but
maybe he had noticed Xander was acting odd.
Zac gave me a strange look. “Where did you get that idea? I never said that.”
Yep. He must be trying to cover something. I didn’t know Xander, but he sure seemed weird. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe Zac really didn’t think his body was here now that we had looked.
“We haven’t covered every room yet,” I told him, rather than continue the topic of whether he could sense the presence of his body or not.
“We don’t have to. It’s definitely not here.”
“So, now what?”
“Now we leave and try somewhere else,” he said quietly.
I nodded as Xander approached. “What’s going on?” he asked us.
“I don’t think it’s here,” Zac said. “Rhiannon and I should go.”
An odd look passed across Xander’s face, but his expression quickly returned to normal. “Yeah, sure. You guys should go. I don’t want to get in trouble. I shouldn’t even be helping you.”
“I know, I know. You said that already. Look, I don’t want to get you in trouble any more than you want to be in trouble. We’re gonna go. Can you just forget we were ever here?”
Xander nodded. “Of course. I won’t breathe a word. You can count on me, man.” He smiled a smarmy-looking smile. “Don’t forget about your promise to make me your Best Man when you finally marry this pretty young necromancer here.” He winked at me, causing me to shudder. I hoped that he didn’t notice. “What I wouldn’t give to hook up with a necromancer. Any chance you got a sister?”
I tried not to make a face at him. “Uh, no,” I lied. “I don’t have a sister. Only child, sorry.” He wasn’t as bad as Typhon was, but I still didn’t trust the guy.
“Too bad,” he said, lifting one corner of his mouth in a wry smile. “Thought you might hook me up.”
“Like she said, she’s an only child. Sorry, man,” Zac told him. He looked at me. “Let’s go before we get caught.”
“Don’t forget what you said,” Xander called as we turned to head back down the hall.
“I won’t. Don’t worry,” Zac said with a weird tone to his voice.
“He’s not seriously going to be your Best Man, is he?” I whispered to Zac once I thought we were out of earshot.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Zac murmured back.
I glanced over my shoulder to see if Xander was still watching us. He had disappeared from view. “Boy, he sure moves fast,” I said.
“What?” Zac looked back too. “Oh, crap. We gotta go.”
“Uh, I thought we were already going?”
“No, I mean we really have to go. Xander was acting super weird. I think he might have gone to get back up. We need to move before they come back and catch us, or we might not get out of here.”
“Are you serious? We’re in that much trouble?”
“We might be. My people spend their entire lives training in combat. We protect humans, and we protect our facilities where we train—like this one. They won’t take this building being broken into lightly, not even by me.” He started to walk faster, waving his hand to indicate for me to pick up the pace as well. “Xander was acting strange. I know you don’t know him, but I’ve known him practically my whole life.”
“Yeah, I thought he was acting odd,” I said as we hurried through the maze of hallways.
“Well, I don’t like it. He might be in league with whoever took my body.”
If the current situation hadn’t been so serious, I would have laughed at him saying “in league.” It sounded like something you might hear in a movie, or something some old person would say. “He might be ‘in league’”—I stifled a laugh—“with The Necrovorst.”
Zac looked at me sharply, but he didn’t slow. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“I’m not. I was just saying.”
The sound of many footsteps pounding down the hall cut off whatever he was about to say next. “Run,” was all he said.
We both broke into a sprint. The footsteps drew closer and closer. We picked up the pace. My breath came in gasps. I wasn’t used to running. I wasn’t sure, exactly, how much trouble we would be in if we were caught, but judging by Zac’s actions, it would be pretty bad.
Finally, we reached the outer door. I slammed into it, pushing at it, but it didn’t open. My fingers scrabbled at the doorknob. “It opens in,” Zac told me.
I yanked it open, and tumbled out into the darkness.
“Hurry!” Zac snapped.
We dashed toward the car. I jerked the car door open and jumped in as figures began spilling out of the door of the facility. Zac didn’t bother to ask me to open the door for him. He just passed through the metal. “Go, go, go!” he shouted.
I shoved the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine started quickly, and a sob of relief escaped my mouth. Putting the car into gear, I peeled out of the copse of trees and sped toward the highway. “That was close,” I said.
“You’re telling me,” Zac responded, leaning back against the passenger seat.
“So, now what?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Now we try somewhere else.”
“Where else? We can’t just drive aimlessly. How many Zayin facilities are there, anyway? Are we going to search them all?”
He shook his head, which I barely caught out of the corner of my eye as I focused on the road. “No. That would be ridiculous. I mean, if we have to, we have to. I don’t think we have enough time to do that, though.”
“What exactly are these time restraints that you and Xander kept talking about anyway? Why wouldn’t you explain to me? I think I have the right to know.”
Sighing, he said, “Yes, you do. I just didn’t want to worry you. Hopefully, we won’t even have to worry about it.”
I took my eyes from the road long enough to give him a dirty look. “What am I not supposed to be worrying about? Tell me, please, Zac. I really should know everything that’s going on, don’t you think?”
“You’re right.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the deal: if I don’t get back in my body soon, I won’t be able to at all.”
“Wait, what?” I asked, confused.
“If I don’t find my body soon, and find some way back into it, I won’t be able to. I will become permanently disconnected from my body. I will be a spirit adrift…” He paused. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I didn’t want to think about what he was really saying. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“I’ll be dead, Rhiannon. Actually. Completely. Dead. No way back.”
My heart sank. That had been what I was most afraid of. I couldn’t lose him. Not now, not ever. I didn’t want to discuss that possibility, let alone think about it. “So, if you say we’re not going to check every single facility, what are we going to do? Do you have a better idea as to where to look?”
He nodded. “Canada.”
“Canada?” I echoed.
“Yes. To be more specific, the facility that is located on Vancouver Island. Our main ‘base,’ if you will, is just outside of a small town called Bowser. It’s mostly country up there. It’s easier to hide.”
“Have you been there before?”
“Yeah, once or twice. Enough to know my way there, and my way around.”
“How do we get there?” I asked.
“We drive to Washington, then take a ferry across to the island. That’s probably the shortest way.”
I heaved a sigh. “That sounds like a long trip, but okay. It needs to be done. If that’s really where you think your body is, we’ll go.” I paused. “We will find your body, Zac.”
He reached over and covered my hand with his. “I know we will, Rhi. We’ll find my body, I’ll get back in it, and then we’ll be together.”
“So, Washington?”
“Washington,” he agreed. “Then Canada.”
I had to ask. “And if it isn’t there?”
“Then we keep looking.”
S
eventeen
The ferry slipped out of its port and began to glide slowly through the water. My glamour was firmly in place, so I could safely talk to Zac without looking like some crazy woman talking to myself.
“So, why aren't we teleporting? Wait,” I held up a hand to stave off his correction. “I mean: transporting.”
He smiled. “About time you learned the correct terminology.”
"So, why aren't we?"
"It's a long distance, and I wanted you to be able to see the port at Victoria. It's a beautiful city."
"You've been everywhere, haven't you?"
He shrugged. "Not everywhere, but a lot of places. My people travel a lot. There's one other thing, though... "
"What's that?"
Sighing, he said, "The longer I'm away from my body, the weaker I get. If it isn't in Bowser, I'm not sure how much longer I can last."
I sat down heavily on a bench near the bow. "What do you mean, you don't know how long you'll last? Like you'll fade away?"
"I don't know, exactly." He began to pace. "I've never seen it happen before. I just know I'm having a hard time hanging on. I feel like I lose more and more of myself every day."
We had to succeed this time. His body just had to be here. I couldn’t lose him. After so many months of being with him, I didn’t want to think about what my life would be like without him. He made my life so much better, and he was still just in a spirit form. Things should be fine once he had his body back and we could truly be together. Failure was definitely not an option.
“What if it’s not here?” His words echoed my thoughts.
“Then we will keep looking.”
“Rhiannon, I’m not sure I have that much time left,” he said forlornly.
I positioned myself directly in front of him, cutting off his view of the looming island shore. “Don’t. Just don’t. Your defeatist attitude is not helping us. I know you’re frustrated—we both are, trust me. We have to succeed.”