Serpent's Storm

by Amber Benson

  “I know,” I said, squeezing Jarvis’s hand. “He got me out in the hall.”

  Suddenly, Jarvis’s eyes flew open and he looked hard at me, his eyeballs nearly popping out of their sockets.

  “Calliope,” he said, gripping my hand so hard I thought he was going to squeeze off my wrist. “What have you done?”

  I stared at Jarvis, aghast. Not because his words had penetrated my consciousness, but because something else—something exceedingly strange—had caught my eye. At first, I had assumed it was a trick of the light. Yet the more I looked, the more I began to believe that the gash on Jarvis’s head was knitting itself back together right before my eyes. He may have been immortal, but I’d never seen anyone, immortal or not, heal this quickly. Amazed by what I was witnessing, it took me a second to process Jarvis’s words. When they finally did penetrate my thick skull, I immediately picked up on his disapproving tone.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I said, confused. “What did you mean by ‘What have you done?’ I didn’t do anything—”

  In response, the faun reached up and probed the gash on the side of his head with his fingers.

  “My head wound,” Jarvis said, ignoring my outrage, “is healing, is it not?”

  I nodded.

  “Why do you suppose it’s doing this?” Jarvis continued.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged, not sure what the faun was driving at. “Why?”

  Instead of answering my question, Jarvis merely shook his head then closed his eyes again, exhaustion overtaking his features.

  “Tell me why it’s doing that,” I demanded, pointing at the gash. Even though his eyes were closed and he couldn’t see what I was doing, I didn’t care. I was in awe of his miraculous recovery and I wanted answers.

  Jarvis slid open his lids and found my eyes. It was as if he were plumbing their depths for some answer I would never verbally be able to give him.

  “You truly don’t know, do you?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t lying to the faun. I really was completely in the dark about whatever was upsetting him.

  After a moment he released his death grip on my fingers, seemingly satisfied by what he had found in my gaze. I pulled my hand away and massaged my numb digits against my thigh. Aside from the fact that his wounds were spontaneously healing of their own accord, something else was not quite right about my friend—and his odd mood was contagious. Shivers of fear pulsed up my spine.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said finally, gesturing to the ruined, watery mess of a bathroom we were sitting in. “Any suggestions?”

  Jarvis nodded.

  “A wormhole would be best.”

  I totally agreed with him. A wormhole that took us directly to Sea Verge (and my dad) would be perfection. I could get Jarvis all bandaged up, throw on some fresh clothes, and hit up my dad for some information about the bizarre situation I now found myself in the middle of.

  “I know I was hedging before, but I think you were right about asking my dad for help—” I was in the middle of saying, when Jarvis roughly grabbed my arm.

  “No! We cannot go to Sea Verge,” he said, his voice harsh.

  I stared at him, openmouthed, shocked by his stern reprimand. I’d seriously tried Jarvis’s patience on a number of occasions, and he had never been this aggressive with me before. He must’ve realized how brusque his tone had been because his next words were issued in a breathy whisper:

  “It is just that now would not be a . . . prudent . . . time, Miss Calliope.”

  “Uhm, okay . . .” I said, though I did not understand at all. Was I crazy or hadn’t Jarvis been bugging me to go back to Sea Verge ever since the subway fiasco? Now here he was telling me not to go home? I was beginning to suspect the beating he’d taken had scrambled his brains a little.

  “Please trust me,” Jarvis said, resting his hand over mine. “It’s very important. I know you have a difficult time accepting things without an explanation, but this one time, please, you must.”

  Jarvis had me pegged. He was dead right when he said I hated to be told what to do—especially without any kind of explanation. But there was something about the tone of his voice that made me want to do what he asked of me, as much as my nature might struggle against it.

  “Okay, fine,” I said, resigned to staying in the dark a little longer. “I’ll go wherever you want.”

  “I promise to explain myself when we get to a safer location,” Jarvis replied, relaxing now that we were in agreement. I noticed how much better he looked now than when I’d first entered the bathroom. His cheeks had regained some of their previous color, and the gash was knitting itself back together nicely as the magic that was healing him continued its impressive work.

  “Good,” I said. “Because I expect a thorough explanation—and when I say ‘thorough,’ I mean it. I want the whole damn story—”

  “Of course,” Jarvis said, cutting me off as he added: “You deserve nothing less. Now take my hand. I shall need to draw from your power in order to call up the wormhole.”

  Without any of the hard-core, question-everything attitude I was usually guilty of, I did as the faun said and slipped my hand back into his. I felt a jolt of stinging electricity flow from my fingers directly into the faun. The raw power was so intense I could literally feel Jarvis’s body spasm as it flooded into him. He gripped my hand hard, his jaw clenched tight against the pain, but he refused to cry out even though he was clearly suffering. In all my Afterlife adventuring, I’d never personally been on the tendering end of anything as potent as the power surge we were experiencing. I had hopes that the catalyst was the three inches of water we were sitting in while trying to open the wormhole, but I was pretty sure this was only wishful thinking.

  Another burst of energy shot through my body—I was beginning to wish I had a circuit breaker—and my head began to throb as a deafening crack split the atmosphere around us, charging the air with electricity. All the hair on my body bristled and I could taste the electrical current with my tongue. Another booming crack split the air, almost as if a mini thunderstorm had found its way into the bathroom, and a pinprick of light appeared, hanging like a crystalline teardrop in the middle of the room. The overhead lights began to strobe and then went out completely, which should have reduced my visibility down to zero, but I found I could see just as well in the dark as I could in the glare of the fluorescent light.

  I watched, fascinated, as the wormhole began to unfold like a lotus flower, each petal of light ripping apart the darkness until it had rent a gaping hole right in the very fabric of time and space, enticing us forward. I was entranced by the wormhole, the way its edges sputtered and twirled with energy as it continued to eat away at the darkness. It seemed to grow larger with every second, consuming more and more of the matter surrounding it.

  “You ready?” I asked, slipping my arms around his rib cage and lifting him onto his hooves. He didn’t answer me, merely nodded his head. Together, we stepped forward, the humid heat from the other side of the wormhole steam-cleaning my pores.

  “It’s like a sauna in there,” I said, my voice starting to go hoarse from all the beating my throat had taken. “Where does it go?”

  Again Jarvis didn’t answer me but, instead, took another step toward the wormhole. I grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back to me. I wanted some kind of assurance we weren’t going back to Hell. I’d spent a good chunk of the last few months wandering around the place, and I had no intention of going back there without my knowledge.

  “If that thing’s going to Hell,” I began, digging in my heels, “then I’m staying in the flood plain.”

  Jarvis raised his head so he was looking into my eyes.

  “I swear on my life that we will not be visiting Hell,” Jarvis said.

  “Okay,” I replied, feeling like I’d gotten back at least some control over the situation. “Let’s do this thing.”

  I let Jarvis take my hand, giving him no resistance as he pulled me towa
rd the light. Suddenly, the bathroom door flew open and my now former boss, Hyacinth Stewart, stood framed in the doorway, her spun white gold hair like a halo around her head. She wasn’t in the same outfit I’d last seen her in—apparently she was a quick-change artist—but instead had donned a thin white sheath dress and a flowing cloak of what appeared, upon first glance, to be falcon feathers.

  “Stay away from the wormhole,” she intoned, forcing her way through the door and into the bathroom, the bottom of her cloak seeming to magically float just above the waterline.

  “Okay, hold on there—” I began, but Hyacinth placed one meaty hand on my shoulder and the other on Jarvis’s and physically drew us away from the wormhole.

  “They are monitoring all the wormholes. It isn’t safe for you to travel this way,” Hyacinth said to Jarvis, who stared up at the hulking woman, glassy-eyed—with lust or pain, I couldn’t have told you which.

  “Come away from here before they discover that you were the ones who called it,” she continued, pointing to the fast-growing seam of light.

  “I had no idea,” Jarvis whispered, more to himself than to Hyacinth.

  “It wasn’t for you to know,” she barked back at him. “Come.”

  She didn’t wait for us to respond before she spun us around, dragging us out of the war-torn bathroom like two limp rag dolls. Hyacinth slammed the door closed behind us, a muscle-relaxing sense of relief flooding my body. I hadn’t realized how tense the situation had made me until I was out of it.

  “Where can we go?” Jarvis asked as we followed Hyacinth down the hallway.

  “This way,” she urged, guiding us away from the crowd of office workers who were surrounding the kitchen—obviously, someone had found Robert’s prone body.

  As we ran, it seemed like Jarvis and I were forced to take two steps for every one of Hyacinth’s. Call me crazy, but I was pretty certain my boss had grown like five inches since I’d last seen her. After all the weird stuff I’d been exposed to since Jarvis had unspelled me from my Forgetting Charm, I knew that when someone presented themselves as completely normal and then suddenly did something totally abnormal right in front of you, it meant they were not totally human.

  “I have a way out. It’s not magical, but it should do the trick,” Hyacinth—who wasn’t really Hyacinth, my boss, anymore—said. She led us to the emergency exit stairwell and pushed open the door, setting the alarm off. It began to screech like a banshee, but this didn’t faze Hyacinth—she merely waved her hand across the doorframe and the sound instantly ceased.

  “Nice,” I offered as she held the door open for Jarvis, who was standing unsteadily on his hooves.

  “Easily done,” came her reply, but she wasn’t really paying attention to me. Instead, her gaze was fixed on Jarvis as he paused beneath the door lintel, trying to catch his breath. The head wound may have healed, but the faun still looked drawn. His skin was pasty and dry, his eyes encircled by dark purple bruising. He gave a ragged cough that sent him reeling, but Hyacinth had anticipated what was coming next and reached out, catching him just as his legs gave way beneath him.

  “Jarvis,” I cried, but the faun only shook his head for me to be quiet. Hyacinth stared at the creature in her arms, taking in his haggard appearance and lack of strength. Then she fixed her steely gaze on me, and under the intensity of her glare I felt like an impaled bug trying to wriggle its way off a specimen board.

  “What have you done, Callie?” she asked. Her words came evenly, but I didn’t believe for a second there wasn’t malice underneath them. I took a cue from the rigid set of her shoulders and the faint lines ringing her mouth and decided not to be a smart aleck.

  “Look, I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done,” I said, my thoughts all jumbling together as I spoke, “but I swear to God I didn’t do it.”

  Hyacinth pursed her lips, but didn’t respond.

  “I’m serious, I didn’t do whatever it is you think I did,” I said again. “I mean it.”

  Hyacinth shook her head.

  “I believe you, Callie, because I don’t think you would have knowingly wrought this thing upon a friend.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, my voice going up an octave. I didn’t like being accused of something . . . especially something I had no knowledge of having done. I wanted an answer from her, but Hyacinth didn’t seem to think now was an appropriate time for further discussion. Instead, she turned her back on me, slinging Jarvis’s barely conscious body over her shoulder as if he were as light as a sack of foam packing peanuts.

  “This way,” she intoned, crossing the threshold and taking the fire stairs two at a time, leaving me with nothing to do but follow her.

  “Crap,” I said under my breath as I stepped into the stairwell, letting the fire door close behind me with an ominous click. I paused, the sense that I was closing the door on my past, now and forever, overwhelming all other thought. I let this feeling linger inside my brain, hoping time would give it clarification, then I picked up my pace, grasping the handrail with a shaking hand as I blindly followed Hyacinth’s retreating back.

  The stairs seemed to go on forever. This was only compounded by the fact I was in mediocre physical shape, and with each step, my lungs flailed in my chest, waving the white flag of surrender. But I couldn’t stop. Hyacinth was still barreling up the stairs ahead of me, Jarvis in her arms, and I was determined not to let them out of my sight. Occasionally, I would have to stop and lean against the railing, gasping for breath, but then I would marshal my waning strength and begin the climb again. Each time, Hyacinth got a bit farther ahead, but as long as she stayed within eyeshot, I wasn’t too worried.

  Finally, above me, I heard a door opening, and a shaft of light cut across the head of the stairwell. I picked up speed, pushing my body to power its way up the remaining flight. When I reached the topmost landing, I found the door to the roof propped open, encouraging me forward. A blast of chilly air pounded through the doorway and I took a small hop backward to avoid the brunt of it, almost stepping off the landing’s edge.

  “Are you coming?” Hyacinth bellowed as she stuck her head back through the doorway to hurry me along. I could tell by the look of annoyance she wore she was fast running out of patience.

  I never said I was a damn Olympian, lady, I thought to myself, but I kept my attitude in check, replying with as much saccharin as I could muster:

  “On my way!”

  I huffed my way across the landing and out onto the rooftop. Because of the height, the wind was vicious, tearing at my clothes and hair and pushing me bodily toward the lip of the rooftop.

  “This way,” Hyacinth called, her voice carrying on the wind. I followed the sound of her words to the far side of the rooftop, where she stood hanging from the cockpit of a gun-metal gray helicopter, beckoning me forward with her free hand. The other was clutching a flight headset already plugged into the control panel.

  I jogged over to the helicopter and crawled into the passenger seating, slamming the door behind me. I saw Hyacinth had already buckled Jarvis into the backseat and I sighed with relief. Hyacinth handed me the other headset and I fitted it over my head, filling my ears with the hiss of static.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as Hyacinth closed her door and began flipping switches at—what seemed to me to be—random. Suddenly, the blades above us roared to life and the helicopter thrummed with burgeoning energy.

  “Somewhere safe,” she replied as she gripped the cyclic stick, which resembled a giant joystick and controlled the steering. The helicopter gave a sharp jerk, then lifted off the ground, and I couldn’t help but grin with surprise as I realized we were airborne.

  While the helicopter gained speed and altitude, I marveled at the bird’s-eye view of Manhattan spread out before me. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything so beautiful.

  “This is amazing—” I started to say, but then some strange instinct for the macabre made me turn around to look at Jarvis. What I saw in the backseat
of the helicopter made the rest of that sentence disappear completely from my mind. I gagged as the bile rose in my throat and I had to look away before I got sick right there in the cockpit.

  I felt my hands instinctively cover my face as I shut my eyes and tried to blot out the image I’d just seen—although I was pretty sure it was gonna be ingrained in my memory for the rest of my immortality anyway.

  “What’s wrong?” I heard Hyacinth’s words echo in the headset I was wearing, but the disembodied quality freaked me out and I ripped them from my ears. I didn’t care that the roar of the helicopter blades was deafening. I wanted the sound to overwhelm my brain and block out the image etched in my mind.

  “His face,” I moaned, letting the headset fall to the floor of the cockpit. “It’s sloughed right off the bone.”

  seven

  I twisted around in my chair, my eyes settling on Jarvis’s prone body, where it sat, strapped to the bench like a child in a car seat. The pale bone of his exposed skull reflected back the golden sunlight streaming in through the transparent shell of the helicopter like fire. I stared at his tattered body and, for my trouble, was gifted with the spectacle of cloth-covered skin and muscle sloughing off his right arm bone before slipping past the seat and pooling on the floor with the rest of his already-melted flesh. I was glad the whir of the blades made it impossible to hear anything above their din, so I wasn’t subjected to the sound of Jarvis disintegrating before my eyes.

  “Jarvis,” I whispered, my ability to speak compromised by the sight of him.

  From the collarbone up, he was skeleton, the flesh having melted away like butter in a pan, leaving only pristine bleached-white bone in its stead. For some strange reason, Jarvis’s eyeballs had remained fixed inside their sockets, but since his eyelids and eyelashes had fallen away with the rest of the delicate skin of his face, it was hard to gauge what my friend might be thinking, trapped inside his putrefying body. I knew he was still sentient by the wild twitching of his eyeballs inside the smooth orbital bones of his skull, but I really needed the other aspects of the face—facial muscles, eyebrows, etc.—to give me the emotional context.