Five Elements #1

by Dan Jolley

  Brett took a hesitant step forward. The stone beneath his feet felt familiar somehow. Like the real Alcatraz? Maybe the inside of this place was an echo of the prison in the real world? A much bigger, twisted, darker shadow of that favorite tourist destination but at its core the same? If that were the case, and if Brett kept walking, he should start passing prison cells.

  Then a sound. Somewhere ahead of him—a human voice. Whimpering. Brett had heard so many anguished cries from this place, carrying to him across the water, he could only guess at how many prisoners there must be here. And if Charlie’s one of them, I’ve got to get him out. Brett took a deep breath, tightened his stomach, and started walking. Slowly, carefully, yes, but forward. Gotta go forward.

  Bit by bit, as he drew closer to the distant light globes, he began to orient himself in the darkness. He was standing on a sort of balcony, a long, long balcony that dropped off over the rail into . . . nothing. No, not nothing, because looking down and up, he saw more balconies, above him and below him. Too many to count, fading into the darkness in either direction.

  A bestial hiss sounded from the cell right behind him—a cell Brett had thought was empty. When he whirled, he saw a lizard-like face pressed against the bars, a long, forked tongue flicking out at him. Golden eyes with slitted red pupils blinked independently of each other, but both studied Brett like a cat poised to pounce on a mouse. Brett edged away from the creature, his back to the balcony’s rail, ice water in his gut.

  The next cell was no better. Worse, in fact, as a multijointed insectile leg passed between the bars, pincers on the end of it clacking and snapping . . . followed by another leg just like the first one, and another, and another. Brett couldn’t see the owner of those legs. Whatever it was stood too far back from the bars, too far into the darkness. He was glad he didn’t have to see it.

  The lizard creature made a noise. A wail. Long and sorrowful and savage, a sound of powerless rage. The noise also sounded like . . .

  “Boy . . .”

  The multilegged creature joined the lizard: “Heeeere . . . boy . . .”

  Brett scurried away from both cells, but the inhabitants of the first two had gained the attention of the rest. Tongues and limbs and antennae and tentacles all waved and pawed and clutched at Brett as he walked faster and faster past cell after cell, and he had just decided to break into a run when he all but stumbled onto a set of stairs.

  The stairs led down to a lower level. Brett stepped out onto them. His new vantage point gave him a better look at the balconies below him, and he had to clap one hand over his mouth to keep from crying out.

  On terraces and walkways below were more nightmarish things. He couldn’t make out much more than their shadows, but they were huge, and moving, patrolling like some sort of demonic prison guards.

  “Charlie,” Brett whispered, in a desperate attempt to remind himself why he was there.

  What happened next almost sent him scrambling back for the door, and the army of insectoids waiting for him on the wall.

  It started as an echo. A whisper, slithering along the floor and out of dark corners. But instead of fading, the echo grew louder, until it seemed as if the entire Citadel took a great breath and began talking to him.

  The voices came from everywhere. Not just from the cells, and not just from the inhuman creatures prowling the lower levels. It sounded as though the walls themselves took up the same awful, terrifying theme.

  “He’s looking for Charlie.”

  Brett understood the words though they were issued from inhuman mouths and lungs. They buzzed and scratched in his head like a nest of hornets.

  “He lost him.”

  “Couldn’t help him.”

  “Let him drown.”

  “Killed his own brother.”

  Tears sprang to Brett’s eyes. He fiercely wiped them away with his shirtsleeve. “It was an accident,” he said, his words catching in a sob.

  “He killed him.”

  “Drowned him.”

  “Split his skull open.”

  “Killed your brother. Killed your brother!”

  The voices took that up as a chorus, until they all blended together into one deafening wall of accusation:

  “Youkilledhimyoukilledhimyoukilledhimyoukilledhim!”

  A single sound pierced through the roar. A scream. His brother’s scream! Brett’s insides twisted into a knot of pain as he recognized it: the scream that had escaped from Charlie’s throat in the instant before he died.

  It was coming from below him.

  Brett charged down the steps, caring nothing for the immense, impossible beasts he rushed past.

  I should have tacked left like you said! If I had, we wouldn’t have capsized. You wouldn’t have hit your head. You wouldn’t have drowned!

  Brett reached the end of the stairs and sprinted down a corridor, following the lingering, horrible sound of his brother’s agonized cry. He couldn’t tell how many levels he’d descended. It didn’t matter. His brother was there. Charlie was there!

  Leaving the balconies and the cells behind him, Brett ran as fast as he could, using every bit of extra strength and speed Arcadia gave him. That speed almost killed him when he nearly rocketed off the edge of an abyss that abruptly opened at the end of the corridor.

  Brett crawled to the edge and looked over. He had to blink and touch his eyes to make sure they were open, the darkness was so absolute. There were no glass globes here. Only a void darker than outer space itself.

  “Charlie?” Brett got to his knees. His brother’s scream had stopped. He couldn’t tell what direction it had come from. “Charlie, where are you?”

  The voice that hissed out of the darkness wasn’t like the taunting of the monsters from the cells. Each word it spoke caressed Brett’s brain, gripping and exploring, like the tentacles of some horrible deep-sea creature.

  “Long and long has it been since anyone from the outer world came here.”

  Brett shook his head, got to his feet, and backed away a few steps. The voice whispered to him, but that whisper vibrated in his chest like an avalanche. A dim green light appeared, out there in the abyss, some distance from the edge, and rapidly grew brighter. In the strange illumination, Brett saw something and wanted to look away, but as his eyes filled with angry, involuntary tears, he couldn’t.

  Vast tentacles coiled and uncoiled, sliding across each other like a nest of snakes.

  The body they belonged to defied description. Defied comprehension. Brett so lacked the ability to understand the shape that his mind trembled. Threatened to crack. Something warm and wet flowed down over his lips, and Brett realized it was a salty, coppery mixture of tears and the blood that had begun pouring out of his left nostril.

  The creature in the abyss moved, and Brett recognized it. This was the shape he had seen behind the buildings, when the giant horned hunters had gone after Dr. Conway. The creature like a living, moving thundercloud.

  He hadn’t escaped it. He had served himself up to it. On a platter.

  The source of the green radiance slowly turned and finally focused on Brett. The strange lights weren’t lanterns but a pair of eyes. Green eyes. Human eyes, though much, much larger.

  Brett moved somewhere beyond fear. He was afraid he had moved beyond sanity, as well, even as a tiny voice in his mind said, You can’t be crazy if you know you’re crazy! He felt a sudden urge to giggle and fought it, strangled it, because he knew if he started he might never stop.

  “I want to see my brother.” Brett’s hands clenched and unclenched. Sweat dripped off them. “Give him to me. Now.”

  The hissing laughter echoed from every surface in the Citadel. “You do not walk the halls of the dead here.” The green eyes moved closer to him, each one easily the size of a compact car. “Though if you wish to visit the dead . . .”

  The eyes narrowed. Grew hungry.

  “ . . . I can make that happen.”

  Brett sank to his knees. The vast shape’s voice .
. .

  It’s not speaking.

  The knowledge made Brett shiver to his bones.

  It’s pushing those words straight into my brain.

  He slumped onto the floor. He lay sideways on the cold stone as he stared at the creature. Through the creature. Unfocused. Brett could feel the monster in his head. He could sense an evil beyond all measure.

  He understood finally that Charlie wasn’t here. He’d never been here. Jackson had lied to him.

  Controlling the water, riding that wave to the top of the Citadel wall, Brett had thought he knew what it meant to be powerful. But with the sinister hiss of this voice in his head, he understood how wrong he’d been. This shape, this being, here in the heart of Arcadian Alcatraz . . . this was power.

  The grotesque, alien thoughts scratched and wormed themselves farther into his mind, and Brett realized something. Knew it, with as much certainty as he knew his own name.

  This creature lured me here. Made me think I was strong enough to handle this place. It played me, just like Jackson played me. . . .

  He felt like the biggest idiot who’d ever lived. The poor little boy who wanted to see his dead brother. The dumb pawn who did exactly what he was told, who believed exactly what he was made to believe. Ghost boys from dreams, and monstrous green eyes staring from the abyss. He’d done everything they’d hoped he’d do.

  I tried, Charlie.

  He reached a hand into the void.

  I tried.

  As Brett curled into a ball, there on the floor in front of the Citadel’s master, the buzzing laughter echoed around him and through him and filled him up.

  He could never bring Charlie back. It had never even been a possibility. Instead . . .

  The baleful green eyes drew ever closer.

  Instead, in Charlie’s name . . .

  What had he unleashed?

  Brett had just enough energy left for one coherent thought.

  I am so sorry, my brother. So sorry.

  18

  Clustered together at one edge of the circle, Gabe, Kaz, Lily, and Jackson faced the swarm of cultists and skinless beasts winging their way toward the island. Gabe wondered if he could pull off the same calling-down-lightning trick he had at the university. He didn’t really want Jackson to grab him by the shoulder again, but he might have to since they were seconds away from getting mobbed.

  Except that wasn’t what happened. To Gabe’s surprise, the abyssal bats set the cultists and the hunters down about twenty yards away . . . and waited. Gabe counted thirty bats, and about fifteen each of the humans and the hunters.

  “What’s happening?” Kaz asked quietly. “Why aren’t they jumping all over us?”

  Before anyone could answer him, a single figure stepped out from the throng and glided toward them, her feet hidden beneath the long robe all the cultists wore.

  “Primus,” Gabe murmured.

  “Be ready for anything,” Greta told them from the center of the circle. Then she continued her chanting.

  Primus stopped just far enough away to be able to talk to them without shouting. Slowly she raised her hands and pushed back her hood, revealing a woman of about forty. Gabe thought she might have been beautiful, if she hadn’t looked so cruel. Primus smiled at them. Gabe shuddered.

  “You fly in the face of inevitability.” Primus’s voice carried easily, clear and crisp. “In the face of destiny. Arcadia and this world are meant to be joined. Nothing can prevent that.”

  “Nothing, my butt,” Lily all but growled. The air around her danced and spun, miniature tornadoes kicking up tiny plumes of dust.

  Primus continued as if no one had spoken. Gabe wasn’t even sure she’d heard Lily. “The five of you have demonstrated an enviable command of the Art. Give me the Emerald Tablet and join us, and you shall reap the benefits of such talent and skill. Aid us, and the new world will treat you like royalty.”

  “Lies.” Jackson stated the word flatly. He wasn’t talking to Primus, but he didn’t bother keeping his volume down. “The Dawn doesn’t care about us. They only want to use us.” He sneered even more than usual. “Even from the Umbra, I saw enough to know that much.”

  Kaz nodded. So did Lily. Greta Jaeger stepped forward to stand alongside Gabe. “The circle is set. The ritual is ready,” she whispered. Then in a louder voice, “Jackson’s right. There’s no cooperating with these zealots.”

  Gabe drew a deep breath. “Then I guess it’s settled.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to reject your offer,” Greta called out. Behind Primus, the hunters growled, and the abyssal bats shifted and rustled their wings.

  Primus cocked one eyebrow. “There is no need for you to die, here on this desolate chunk of rock. You could make your lives worthwhile. You could whoulff—”

  A focused battering ram of water struck Primus squarely in the torso and drove her off her feet. The impact was so hard the woman flipped end over end, limbs flailing like a rag doll, until she landed in a senseless heap halfway between the ritual circle and the assembled Eternal Dawn.

  “Consider that our answer,” Greta Jaeger said, and every bit of hell broke loose.

  The hunters sprang toward them at the same instant the abyssal bats launched up in the air. That left the human cultists alone, but they had apparently learned a few lessons since their thorough dismantling at the theater. Every one of them drew a gun from their robe and took aim at Gabe and his friends.

  There won’t be anything left for the bats and hunters to tear apart if we all get shot to pieces!

  “Jackson!” Gabe barked. The smaller boy looked at him, surprised. “Time for another boost! For all of us!”

  Jackson nodded, closed his eyes, and extended his hands from his sides. A fine, glowing web of golden energy shot through the air, first touching Kaz and Lily, then Greta Jaeger, and finally Gabe. Jackson opened his eyes again, their brilliant golden glow bright enough to cast shadows across the grass.

  This time Gabe was ready for the rush of power. His own eyes blazed with light and terrible heat as the electric veins of Alcatraz Island revealed themselves to him. Electricity ran through wires, along cables all across the island . . . and through one conduit only a few inches beneath their feet. Gabe latched on to that energy, wrenched it free, and absorbed every kilowatt. His infernal gaze swept across the firearms in the cultists’ grips, and in the quarter second of concentration he gave each one, every bit of the gunpowder in their magazines exploded.

  It sounded like the loudest string of firecrackers ever, and the cultists shrieked and cursed and staggered, clutching burned and bloody hands.

  A grin crept onto Gabe’s face as a tiny voice in the center of his brain whispered, “Burn . . . burn . . . burn . . . !”

  The grin vanished and the voice receded when an abyssal bat crashed to the ground beside him, its skinless body soaked with water—water with hints of Jackson’s golden energy flickering through it. Gabe tore his attention from the wounded cultists and spun in place, trying to make sense of the whirling chaos.

  While he’d been busy with the cultists’ guns, the hunters had surged forward and surrounded them. Every second two or three dashed in, jaws savagely snapping and lunging. But Kaz had pulled at least two dozen head-sized stones from a nearby retaining wall and set them spinning in a protective barrier. As Gabe watched, one of the hunters tried to slip through it, and a great, heavy stone dipped out of its course and smashed against its skull. The beast flopped to the ground, shrieking in pain.

  The abyssal bats fared no better. Her eyes a gorgeous silver-white, Lily had both hands raised toward the sky, and as the winged creatures swooped and dived, the multitude of tiny vortices dancing around her shot up in the air, one after another, growing and yawning wide. The miniature tornadoes enveloped the bats, spun them senseless, and smashed them against the ground or trees or buildings.

  Any bats that Lily missed Greta tried to take out with directed blasts of water, but Gabe saw at a glance that the older w
oman was already tiring. He put an arm around her, supporting her. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she panted. “Just old. Setting up the ritual and hitting Primus hard enough to take her out of the fight . . . well, it almost took me out of the fight.” She looked past him. “Kaz could use your help with the hunters.”

  She was right. Gabe saw at least ten of the creatures approaching Kaz in a single mass, clumped up closely enough that the ones on the inside would be protected from his flying stones by the bodies of the ones on the outside. Gabe was at Kaz’s shoulder in a heartbeat. “That’s not working anymore! You’ve got to try something else!”

  Kaz’s eyes were a solid slate gray. “If I try something else, some of them will get through while I’m shifting!”

  Gabe could see what he meant. The protective ring of stones was slowing down the hunters, but if Kaz changed gears, that split second would give them time to pounce. “Don’t worry,” Gabe told him. “I got this.”

  The electricity in the huge conduit beneath them still flowed, channeling near-limitless power from the mainland, and once again Gabe drew from it until every cell in his body vibrated with power. He thrust out one hand, fingers splayed, and concentrated on the five hunters in the center of the lethal, slowly approaching pack.

  A roar like a forest fire almost deafened him. Gabe’s skin tightened from the heat, and Kaz yelped as he recoiled from the glare. The protective ring of stones fell inert to the ground; but that didn’t matter, because the five hunters in the center of the pack suddenly exploded in balls of fire, reduced in a heartbeat to nothing more than elongated scorch marks. The rest of the hunters screamed, their skinless bodies burning, and staggered out of sight.

  Even the abyssal bats abandoned their attack. For a few long, silent moments Gabe and his friends stood alone on the impromptu battlefield.

  It took Gabe half that time to realize everyone was staring at him—followed by the further realization that the fire-hungry grin had again appeared on his face.

  “My God, Gabe.” Lily’s beautiful, coal-black eyes held an emotion he’d never seen before. Not when she was looking at him. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had to: her eyes were filled with fear. “What’d you just do?”