by Dan Jolley
Inside, Brett saw nothing. Only darkness. He couldn’t even tell if there was a floor to step onto. But the insectoids had almost caught up, and he knew he had no choice.
Brett flung himself into the fortress and shoved the giant door shut behind him.
16
Gabe threw both hands out, all his fingers stretched toward the abyssal bats rocketing at him and Jackson. Three different streetlamps nearby exploded, the plastic of their globes vaporizing as glaring blue-white bolts of lightning found their way to him. A vortex of flame burst from his hands and enveloped all three bats, which screamed and flailed and ultimately slammed into the ground around him, either dazed senseless or dead outright.
Students and faculty ran past, shouting at each other about wild animals and fire in the building.
Hope everybody’s out. I’d hate for regular people to get caught in there with those hunters.
Then he wished he hadn’t remembered the hunters, because two of them smashed through a ground-floor window and barreled toward him as though he’d summoned them just by thinking about them. Gabe raised his hands again, ready for another burst—and watched in shock as a manhole cover, glimmering with golden energy, flew across the ground like an oversize hockey puck and knocked both hunters nose over tail. Gabe darted a look at Jackson, whose eyes shone gold above his smug white grin.
“Do you think that was all of them?” Jackson’s eyes returned to normal. “Might we make our escape now?”
“I don’t know. There was still Mandy and Professor Juniper. And I saw him calling for help.”
Jackson frowned. “Well, at least let us seek some less-exposed location.” He gestured around them. They stood in a quad surrounded by College of Liberal Arts buildings. “Lingering out here in the open will surely invite nothing but trouble.”
“Oh, it’s too late to run,” Professor Juniper barked as he slammed open the main doors of Rothenburg Hall. He strode out, Mandy Carson at his side, both of them wearing nasty, hungry grins. “At this point you’re only prolonging the inevitable.”
Gabe was about to try to run, at least, when he saw a dozen hunters slither around the two Dawn cultists, and two dozen more push their masses through ground-floor windows all along the building’s length. They weren’t in full-tilt pursuit. Instead, they spread out in a broad semicircle, moving to surround Gabe and Jackson.
“I can’t blast this many at once,” Gabe hissed.
Jackson put a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. It surprised Gabe so much that he whipped his head around to look at the smaller boy, and found himself staring straight into shimmering, dangerous golden eyes. “Oh, I believe you can,” Jackson said. “I shall make sure you can.”
Starting at the place where Jackson’s hand touched his shoulder, a wave of crackling, pulsing power flooded Gabe’s entire body. He felt the heat emanating from his own eyes, which he knew must have ignited into twin infernos. Gabe raised his right hand, and instead of drawing electricity from the streetlamps, he reached up. Higher and higher.
All the way into the clouds.
A bolt of lightning as thick as a tree trunk stabbed down out of the heavens, and Gabe’s body drew in every last volt like water into a sponge. Gabe swung his hand, finger pointing, in a wide arc, and a volcanic gout of flame slammed forth, raking over the hunters like the fury of an ancient Greek god. The fire reduced the twisted creatures to blackened dust as soon as it touched them, and when they were all gone, Gabe swung the infernal beam of destruction back to the building’s main entrance.
Gabe couldn’t tell if it hit Mandy and Professor Juniper or not. The glare from the column of flame hid the doorway from view . . . and grew even brighter.
He could feel fires starting inside the building.
He could feel stone melting.
“Gabe,” Jackson said at his shoulder.
The flames kept pouring out of him. Hotter. Brighter.
Hungrier.
A voice that spoke to him without words rejoiced inside his head. “Yesssss.” It dragged out, popping and crackling and roaring, and Gabe laughed, delighted. The fire loved him. The fire needed him.
He was the fire. And fire burned.
Jackson shook him. “Gabe!”
“Burn . . . burn . . . burn . . .”
Gabe felt his lips pull back from his teeth in a savage snarl of destructive bliss.
“Burn more . . . burn it all . . . !”
“Gabriel!” Jackson balled up a fist and struck Gabe across the jaw.
Gabe staggered, the world spinning around him. The column of flame sputtered and went out. He shook his head, blinking hard, and rubbed his jaw. “Why’d you hit me?”
Jackson pointed at something. “Because of that.” Gabe couldn’t see through the brightness that still seared his vision, but he did hear the sound of distant fire truck sirens growing closer. Jackson said, “And because of those. Come, we must depart.”
As Gabe blinked, his world came back into focus, and with a sickening clench in his stomach, he took a good look at what Jackson had been pointing at. Rothenburg Hall was completely engulfed in flames. Gabe might have started crying hysterically, except that he heard someone behind him say, “Yeah, everybody got out. Apparently there was a big gas leak and, like, some wild animals, too?”
Gabe turned. There, not ten feet away, stood a group of students, and he could tell just by looking at them that not one of them had seen a single bit of what he and Jackson had just done. How could they, without any connection to Arcadia? He took a staggering step, light-headed and exhausted, and didn’t even try to fight Jackson off when the smaller boy steadied him.
“We have what we came for, yes? We need to go.”
Gabe nodded, wordless, and let Jackson lead him away.
Half an hour later, Gabe and Jackson stood in a motorboat, trying not to lose their balance as they crossed the choppy waters of the bay. It had been a couple of years since Gabe had piloted a boat—not since the last time Uncle Steve had taken him fishing, back when they lived near Lake Lanier in Georgia—but he still remembered how. It made him miss his uncle that much more. He glanced over at Ghost Boy. He would get Uncle Steve back. No matter what.
Alcatraz loomed large in front of them, and overhead the stormy sky had turned an otherworldly, unsettling gold, not unlike Jackson’s eyes when he . . . did whatever it was he did.
Gabe kept looking over his shoulder.
“You need to relax,” Jackson said. “The Dawn lost our trail when you impersonated Mount Vesuvius.”
Gabe frowned. It wasn’t the Dawn he was worried about. “This isn’t right.”
“What isn’t right?”
“We stole this boat! Do you know how serious that is? Uncle Steve’s gonna kill me!”
Jackson peered at him from beneath lowered, intensely sarcastic eyelids. “Yes, your uncle will fret greatly over the theft of one boat. Especially after you just burned down his university.”
Gabe’s frown deepened. “Thanks. You’re a real ray of sunshine.”
As they approached the island, they passed the last ferry of the day. Gabe spotted tourists standing all along the top deck, taking photos of the bizarrely glowing sky. He wondered exactly what they saw when they looked up at it.
I wish things could go back to the way they were. Wish I could just see the world like everybody else again. . . . Wish I’d never heard of the stupid Tablet, and Ghost Boy here, and all of this other craziness.
“Gabe,” Jackson said, just loud enough for him to hear. “Look.”
Gabe followed the line of Jackson’s pointing finger and saw, tiny at this distance, a multiwinged shape perched atop the TransAmerica Pyramid. “Holy crap. Is that the null draak?”
Jackson didn’t have to answer. The massive creature threw back its head and howled. It was terrifying, to be absolutely sure, but as the sound carried across the water, Gabe realized it also sounded . . . lonely. It was trapped in a strange world where it didn’t belong.
; The way Brett is. The way Uncle Steve is.
“Don’t worry, big fella,” Gabe murmured. “We’ll put all this right.”
To Gabe’s intense relief, he spotted Lily, Kaz, and Greta Jaeger on the dock, waiting as they pulled up. Lily hugged him as soon as he got out of the boat, and without giving it a second thought, Gabe returned the hug and kissed her on the cheek.
“It’s really good to see you,” he said, pulling back just far enough to look her in the eye. Lily’s cheeks went a shade darker, and she turned away, but Gabe caught the glimmer of a smile on her lips.
Greta Jaeger cleared her throat. “Did you get the chalk?”
Gabe nodded and patted his pocket.
“I was concerned. It seemed as if you might have run into some obstacles.” She jabbed her chin toward the mainland, where a line of dark smoke cut through the sky.
“Oh yeah.” He didn’t particularly want to go into detail about what happened back at the university. “You could say that.”
“And did you and Jackson work well together?”
Gabe flashed a look at Ghost Boy, who was busy admiring the glittering buildings downtown, an expression of dumb awe on his face. “Yeah, actually. He did help. And—” Gabe didn’t quite know how to say it. “It’s like I got more powerful around him, too.” He’d never admit it, but Gabe wasn’t sure he’d have made it off that campus without Jackson’s help.
“Hmm,” Greta looked Ghost Boy over with a slight frown. “Yes, he’s a puzzle, isn’t he?”
“What about the park rangers?” Gabe asked. He didn’t want to talk about Jackson anymore. “Where are they? We can’t just waltz in there after the place closes, can we?”
Greta smirked. “The water and I convinced them that it would be best if they left for the night.” She patted her stomach. “Just a touch of, let us say, gastrointestinal distress, by way of a temporarily incapacitating water-borne virus.”
“The rangers all have the runs!” Kaz explained helpfully.
Gabe chuckled, and pulled out the blood-infused chalk. “So what do we do now?”
As soon as Greta’s eyes lit on the chalk, her face went pale. Her shoulders, normally squared and confident, slumped a fraction of an inch, and she chewed on one side of her lower lip.
Gabe slipped the chalk back into his pocket. “Greta, are you sure this is going to work?”
She examined her fingernails. “Of course. Of course it will.”
“Really? I mean . . . really, truly?”
Instead of answering him, Greta turned back toward the other kids. “Come on. We don’t have any time to waste.” She gestured to the group and led all four of them up the steep steps to the prison.
As they climbed—and as a remote part of him registered that Lily had decided to walk right next to him—Gabe turned everything over in his head. The last time Greta tried something like this, Uncle Steve lost a leg and both my parents died. What are we doing? Are we all about to get ourselves killed? He paused, considering. It’s no wonder Greta looks nervous. Talk about traumatic memories.
But he knew they had no choice. Not while Uncle Steve and Brett were stuck rotting in some gold-and-wrought-iron version of hell.
Greta strode out onto a broad, empty patch of ground and turned to face everyone. “All of you, listen to me. Once we start this, the Dawn and every otherworldly creature they can muster will descend on us. It’s like lighting a beacon. But we need to keep them away until the null draak gets here. And then, once it’s in the center of the circle, we have to stab it with the ritual dagger the Dawn used on Steven. Do you all understand?”
Gabe, Kaz, Lily, even Jackson all nodded solemnly. Gabe handed Greta the silver dagger he’d taken from the cultists at the theater, and Kaz pulled the Emerald Tablet out of Brett’s backpack.
“All right. We need a circle from that point”—she gestured to a spot on the ground—“to that point. One I can draw on. Kaz, some bare stone, if you would?”
Kaz’s eyebrows shot up, but as soon as he realized he was being asked to help, he didn’t hesitate. He concentrated, making a low, rumbling sound in his throat. His eyes turned solid slate gray, the ground beneath them vibrated and shifted, and a perfectly smooth circle of stone formed in the earth, exactly as wide as Greta had indicated.
“Thank you,” she said, favoring Kaz with a smile. His eyes returned to normal, and he smiled back. “Good, good. Now. If you’ll allow me to work for a moment.” Gabe handed her the chalk. Greta Jaeger drew arcane symbols all over the broad, bare stone in much the same way Primus had back at the theater. Then she positioned the amethyst shard in the circle’s center and held the glowing vial in one hand as she walked over to the circle’s edge. “Kaz, you stand right there. Lily, over there, Gabe, right over here, and—”
“Move it, Ghost Boy,” Gabe told Jackson as he began to traipse into position. “You’re not needed here.”
If Gabe hadn’t known Ghost Boy better, he might have thought he looked genuinely hurt. “To have traversed dimensions only to be treated like common riffraff,” he muttered as he turned away.
Greta came to a sudden halt. “Wait!” she yelled.
The tone of her voice demanded Gabe’s attention. He turned to watch her, and saw the creases of Greta’s face shift as she stared openmouthed at Ghost Boy.
After a few long seconds Gabe spoke up. “Um, Greta? Is something wrong?”
Greta Jaeger’s eyes suddenly went wide. Gabe had seen the proverbial “lightbulb” moment before when someone had suddenly come to a thunderous realization, but never like this. The ground beneath them rumbled, and there was the groaning of bursting pipes underfoot as twin geysers of water tore through the grass and into the air, waving around like the wagging tails of excited dogs.
“Five,” Greta whispered, but then abandoned the whisper for a full-voiced shout. “Five! FIVE! We only used four!”
“Okay,” Lily said, sounding maybe a touch scared. “What does that mean?”
Greta Jaeger jabbed a finger at Jackson. “There are five! Don’t you see? Five elements!”
Jackson Wright gaped at her, and then his face split into the biggest, most genuine smile Gabe had ever seen on him. “Magick!” Jackson bellowed. “Of course! Magick is the fifth element!”
Gabe glanced at Kaz and Lily. He didn’t like where this was going at all. Magick is an element?
Greta waved her hands excitedly, and behind her, the water geysers mimicked her movements. “That’s why we failed before! Why it all went so wrong! The creation of Arcadia back in 1906 changed everything! We only had four elements. But now there are five!”
Gabe scowled. Greta was looking at Jackson as if he was superimportant or something. And yes, he had saved Gabe’s life, and if somebody wanted to get technical about it, maybe he wasn’t entirely, completely bad. But he was still getting shoved back into Arcadia where he belonged.
Gabe spoke up. “All right, okay. Can we get on with it? I’m sure Brett would rather be here arguing with us than doing whatever he’s doing right now.”
Greta beamed at him. “Of course. Not only can we get on with this, but once we take care of our little dragon problem, we can take care of our big Arcadia problem. And we can get it right this time!” She took a deep breath and looked at Lily. “But first things first. Gabe is right—let’s get your brother back. Then we can worry about everything else.”
Lily nodded seriously and gestured at the circle. “Let’s do this.”
Gabe took his place along with everyone else.
Holding the Tablet in both hands, Greta started chanting in that same weird, alien-sounding language he’d heard the cultists use. It made the insides of his ears itch.
As Greta chanted, vibrations pulsed out from the Tablet. Gabe felt them ripple across the island and the bay like huge rocks dropped into water. Everything they touched seemed to be affected.
The waves crashing along the shore grew until they became towering. What had been a simple breeze accelerat
ed into a gale that howled all around them. The ground pulsed and throbbed like a gigantic, beating heart. Torrents of rain poured from the golden clouds overhead.
Greta Jaeger threw the vial of swirling, golden energy at the amethyst shard in the middle of the circle. It shattered, and the energy—the magick—flowed out from the point of impact, sinking into the stone.
“Look,” Lily breathed.
Gabe glanced down at their feet. The perimeter of the circle pulsed with more golden light—but this light came straight from Jackson. Just as he had at the university, Gabe felt power flood through him, and judging by the gasps he heard from Lily and Kaz, they must have felt the same thing.
Fiery red lightning flickered overhead. Gabe could feel that, too. Every bolt, branching and forking through the clouds.
In the distance, the Golden Gate Bridge swayed ominously in the clutches of an earthquake. That’s when he heard it: the howl of the null draak. Growing closer.
“The null draak!” Gabe shouted. “It’s headed this way! Get ready!”
“All right, it’s time to finish this.” Greta pulled the silver dagger out of her sleeve. “You have to keep them all off me until it’s done!” She closed her eyes and started chanting again.
“Keep what off her?” Kaz squinted around the island. “I don’t see anything.”
Her face paling, Lily gestured skyward. “I think she means them.”
Gabe followed Lily’s pointing finger. Despite the fire of his magick, his blood ran cold.
Winging their way across the water, a massive flock of abyssal bats shrieked toward them. And in their taloned feet, every bat held a member of the Eternal Dawn—or one of their terrifying, skinless hunters.
17
It took several minutes, but Brett’s eyes finally adjusted to the interior of the Citadel. Glass globes like the one in the theater gave off dim golden light high above him. He couldn’t see if they were attached to the walls or hanging from the ceiling or what. It was like looking at fireflies on a moonless night.