Alight: The Peril

by K. C. Neal

  “Seriously? You’re going to bring that up now?” Sophie rolled her eyes, but splotchy red spots bloomed on her cheeks.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Bad timing.” Her blush was satisfaction enough for me. For the moment, anyway.

  I reached for the car door and eyed the office building that housed Harriet’s shop. The door that Mason had kicked in had a new handle, and fresh, unpainted wood showed where the frame had been repaired. My powers coursed through me, like I’d just downed about twenty espressos. I pictured Ang and Mason’s still bodies, and my skin prickled with the anticipation of unleashing some of the energy. “Well, we might as well go up there.”

  “Wait,” Sophie said. “What are we going to do if she’s there?”

  “You’re going to do whatever you can with that Spiderman net-throwing ability you’ve developed. Trap her, use it as a shield, anything. And I’m going to pummel her with everything I’ve got.”

  We crept up two dim flights of stairs. We were ready to fight, but no sense tipping her off to our arrival. When we got to the top of the stairs, we paused for a moment, trying to see through the window on the shop’s door.

  “Dark,” I said, and strode up to the door so I could cup my hands against the glass and peer through. The door to the back room stood open, and that room was dark as well. “She’s not here.”

  “Darn it,” Sophie muttered. “I’m so in the mood to kick some butt.”

  I knew exactly how she felt.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hunched over my laptop, combing the message boards for anything that might help us. I finally gave up when Sophie called me, my eyes tired and my neck aching from sitting there so long. When she came to get me after dark that night, I suggested bringing coffee to our stakeout. But she shook her head. “No way I’m going to fall asleep,” she said. “Plus, it’ll just make me have to pee really bad.”

  With my Pyxis abilities electrifying every cell, I knew drowsiness wouldn’t be a problem for me, either. Summer solstice was tomorrow. I kept looking down at my arms, expecting to see evidence of the powers surging under my skin. I was so amped up, I seriously wouldn’t have been too surprised if I’d started glowing. But my arms, and the rest of me, remained ordinary-looking. Good thing, really. It would be hard to sneak up on Harriet at night as Lightbulb Girl.

  As before, we parked half a block away from Harriet’s cottage. With no streetlights to illuminate the neighborhood, we had to sit for a few minutes to let our eyes adjust. Harriet’s block was lined with cottages similar to hers. All the yards were well-kept, and I imagined most of the houses were occupied by older single people like her.

  Sophie broke the silence. “I’m, uh, sorry about Andy.”

  “What?” I looked at her. The curtain of her hair cast her face in shadow.

  “I was a total jerkface about him, and I’m sorry,” she said.

  I snorted. “You’re forgiven. If you don’t ruin my brother,” I said.

  “Ruin?” she said, trying to sound offended.

  “Oh come on, you know you tend to eat ‘em up and spit ‘em out.” I snorted a laugh. Then my voice turned serious. “Don’t you dare do that with Bradley.”

  “He’s different.” Her voice was as soft as I’d ever heard it.

  I held up my palm and snickered. “Okay, let’s just not go there.”

  The porch light of the house next to Harriet’s winked out, and I knew that was our cue.

  “Let’s see if the wicked witch is home,” I said.

  We slipped from the car and pressed the doors closed, trying not to slam them. Keeping to the shadows, we stole through the night. My heart seemed to wing around in my chest like a nervous parakeet.

  Sophie followed me down the dark strip of lawn along the side of Harriet’s house. We saw no lights in any of the windows, so we circled to the unfenced backyard.

  The garage, Sophie whispered through our link, and pointed at the small detached building on the other side of the house. I nodded.

  We stood on tiptoe to peek inside high, grimy windows of the one-car garage. It was empty except for a lawnmower, some yard tools, and a stack of boxes.

  I sighed. “She’s not here.”

  Sophie winced and pressed her palm to her temple.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “My head. It’s like a weird tearing sensation in the middle of my brain. It’s been getting worse all day.”

  My stomach twisted. I was pretty sure I knew what was causing Sophie’s headaches. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, it’ll pass in a minute. What now? Should we wait and see if she comes back?” Sophie whispered. I could barely make out her face in the dark. She watched me with an unblinking gaze, waiting for me to decide our next move.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think she’s out playing bridge with friends. No. We can’t wait. We’re going to find her.”

  “Check her store again?”

  “No,” I started back around to the front of the house, and Sophie followed. “I think I know where she is.” Actually, now I was sure. It was almost as if my heightened Pyxis abilities helped me home in on my nemesis. She was growing powerful, too, though. Would she sense me coming?

  We settled back in the Honda, and I told Sophie where to go. As she drove, my fingers tapped rhythmically against the armrest, and I couldn’t stop my foot from jiggling.

  Sophie turned down the dirt road leading to the cove, then pulled over and killed the engine. We got out of the car, and I shivered. It wasn’t cold out. In fact, it was a good deal warmer than the nighttime should have been in the middle of June. No, it wasn’t chill that rippled through me, but anticipation.

  I beckoned Sophie to follow me. “I want to go through here straight into the meadow instead of approaching from the beach,” I said.

  Her hands were working at her sides, her fingers curling and uncurling in fists.

  “Get ready to do whatever it is that keeps Harriet from influencing you.”

  I turned and began picking my way through brush and trees. Our footsteps muffled against the carpet of pine needles and moss, we made almost no sound as we drew closer to the meadow. My powers were humming within me, vibrating in every molecule of my body. I built up as much white influence as I could hold.

  We were approaching the point where the back of the meadow met the tree line, and I paused. Sophie stopped beside me. We stood hidden within the trees, but with a wide view of the meadow. Both of us scanned the area.

  You sure she’s here? Sophie asked.

  I’m sure, I said. But what if Harriet wasn’t alone?

  Just as I started to think we should move closer to the beach, I smelled it. It was faint, but unmistakable. The rotting, burned smell that was like the breath of death.

  Shadows seemed to slide and churn around the plants in the meadow. My heart clenched at the thought of the delicate flowers and grasses withering under those murky shapes. I squinted, straining to make out forms in the darkness. A burst of maroon light, the color of dried blood, sped across the sky. Then another, and another. I remembered the pretty twilight rainbows Mason had created. These ones were an ugly, violent color. Something about them made my stomach roll with nausea. The growing smell of death didn’t help.

  The net we made. It’s . . . oh no, that’s why my head’s been hurting so bad. Sophie’s alarm bolted through my mind. Corinne, what are those things? I followed her gaze, and realized that in the second or so I’d been staring at the sky, the shadows in the meadow had taken shape.

  Horror chilled me as the shadows grew taller, unfolding to waist height, then chest height, and then they were as tall as me. And they looked like. . . . No, this wasn’t supposed to happen yet.

  I unleashed the wave of white influence I’d been holding, and followed it with another wave of influences. No time to perfect a blend.

  I reached into the mass of figures in front of us, searching for the heart of whatever propel
led them so I could destroy it. But every time I tried, my probe slid away like a fried egg off a nonstick pan.

  Sophie, you have to help me— I began, but a voice crept across the darkness.

  “Pyxis,” it said, gravely and deep, barely a human woman’s voice. “Meet my army.”

  || 31 ||

  ICE RAN THROUGH ME as the shapes in the meadow began to move. They weren’t just formless shadows now, they were people. I remembered what Mr. Sykes had told us about the fog taking shape. But he said that was supposed to take time, lots of time.

  Try to trap them! I said, and Sophie began weaving a net.

  I tried to pinpoint the direction from which Harriet’s voice had come. It seemed like it was straight ahead. I craned, trying to see through the shadow people massing before us, and by the light of a blood-red flash overhead, thought I glimpsed Harriet’s pale face.

  Sophie let out a low moan as she tried to fling a net at the horde forming in front of us. The net crumpled against an unseen wall and winked out. It’s like touching death, she said.

  Stay here, I told her.

  I bathed her in a wash of white influence, but I didn’t think it was needed. Some kind of barrier prevented me from using the influences on Harriet and the shadow people, and I was willing to chance that she couldn’t use the influences on us through the barrier, either.

  I shuffled forward, each step taking me closer to the horrors massing in front of me. A couple of feet away from the edge of the meadow, I paused. I saw that the forms weren’t quite solid, and they seemed contained within an invisible bubble that surrounded the meadow. Maybe to concentrate the energy or force that was bringing them to life, like how Ang and Sophie’s net multiplied my influence. I hoped it wasn’t a solid, physical barrier, because I was about to try to charge through it.

  “This place is no longer yours, Corinne.” Harriet’s voice seemed to echo in my heart. “None of it is. You’ve lost your friends. You’re going to lose so much more.”

  Anger bolted through me at her mention of Ang and Mason.

  Whatever you’re going to do, hurry! Sophie’s near-panic curled through our link.

  I let out a yell and ran the last few steps, plunging into the meadow and the invisible circle. The barrier slid over my skin like a layer of cold slime. Once inside, the smell was nearly enough to knock me senseless. Everything before me blurred and refocused, blurred and refocused, as if under water.

  The shadow army stood, thick as a putrid cloud, before me, shoulder to shoulder, but the forms didn’t move to attack. They seemed rooted to the ground, perhaps not yet animated enough to move under their own power. I stared in horror at their partially formed faces, punctuated by eyes that glinted silver.

  I wouldn’t be able to weave between them to get to Harriet. I’d have to walk through them. And quickly, before they became too solid for me to pass through. I drew a deep breath and gagged on the sickening smell that was so strong I could taste it.

  Lowering my chin, I held my hands out in front of me and stepped forward, trying to pass between two of the shadow people. But there wasn’t enough space, and as my hands, then one of my legs, then my body, entered the space the dark forms occupied, my resolve began to drain away.

  I stopped, my body merged with the shapes of the two shadow people on either side of me.

  Why was I here?

  Remembering. . . . It was too much effort. Unimportant now.

  I’d wait. Wait with the rest until it was time to act.

  Everything in me slowed. Like a dying engine, my awareness hitched . . . sputtered. . . .

  Then, pain. Middle of my back.

  A voice from far away, screaming a word. A word . . . a word I should know?

  A much bigger smack, knocking me forward to my knees.

  Free of the shadow forms, my mind revved up again.

  CORINNE! WAKE UP! MOVE! A voice boomed through my head.

  Something solid bounced off my shoulder and plopped softly onto the ground next to me. I turned to see what it was. A ball. A sparkling wad of Guardian net?

  CORINNE! PLEASE SAY SOMETHING!

  Sophie.

  I reached for the ball, which rested between the feet of a shadow man. Careful not to touch the dark form, I curled my fingers around the ball and picked it up. The net itself had no heft or mass. But Sophie had wrapped it around an egg-sized stone.

  I’m here, I said to her.

  I could feel her terror, now tinged with some relief.

  I closed my eyes, and then opened them, and I was in the hypercosmic realm.

  As I looked around me, a horrified scream welled up in my throat.

  Here, the shadow army was more than fog coalesced into shapes. Here, the shadow people were . . . people. Twisted, horrible bodies and faces with soulless silver-white eyes.

  The one nearest me, with long sinewy limbs and an awful bulge in the middle of its chest, reached toward me with skeletal fingers.

  I screamed and flashed back to the waking world. And into another nightmare. My mind started slipping away again as my left arm invaded the space occupied by one of the shadow people, and with great effort, I took one step forward. In a wink I was back in the dream world. My senses returned, and again I dodged the twisted claws reaching for me.

  I began cycling between the two worlds faster now, moving forward one tortured step at a time. I winked between the worlds so quickly, they began to blur together, shadow forms merging with their physical counterparts.

  As I moved forward, the influences I harnessed swelled within me until they seemed to seep out between the cells of my skin. I was like a ripe peach, ready to burst.

  I could feel Harriet’s influences growing within her, too. She launched them at me in tidal waves, but I evaded them, flashing between the two worlds.

  I forced myself forward, through the dual nightmare that surrounded me, toward the green eyes whose owner was responsible for my friends’ sickness. Finally, I broke through the last of the figures that circled Harriet. I planted my feet, facing her, still flashing between the two worlds. The influences pulsating from her ricocheted off me.

  Harriet’s mouth twisted as she realized her efforts had no effect. Her eyes narrowed, and she bombarded me with influences so intense, my skin burned when one hit glanced off my forearm. I flashed between the two worlds, dodging each wave of influence she hurled at me. She growled, a nightmarish, inhuman sound. But I could feel her tiring. She’d grown powerful so close to the solstice, and she had harnessed the power in horrible ways. But she was still the false Pyxis.

  My body pulsed with energy. Sophie, a funnel! I commanded. Use a rock to make it pierce the barrier. Aim it at the center of her chest!

  As Harriet flung attack after attack, I kept flashing to the hypercosmic realm, cycling so rapidly my own body became a weightless blur. Time stretched as Sophie’s net took shape, painfully slowly, it seemed to me.

  As the net curled over itself, beginning to form a tube, I raised my left hand. I still held the glittering ball with the stone in the center.

  I closed my eyes, gathering every swirl, every drop of influence I held. Then I focused on the ball and everything within me surged into it. The stone in the center glowed white-hot, and the net around it swelled, straining to contain the power. The song from the dream—my song—coursed through my body. Its rhythm pounded in time with my racing pulse, its melody vibrated in tune with my soul. It sang through my blood, using my bones and muscles as amplifiers.

  Then another song, the one I’d heard that had no owner, joined it, weaving into my melody. The power within me grew impossibly, and violent shudders wracked me as I drove the influences into the ball.

  Sophie’s funnel elongated, the wide end yawning a few feet in front of me, the far end narrowing to a point trained on Harriet’s heart.

  I switched the ball to my right hand, drew it back. The ball grew painfully hot, and I let it fly.

  The funnel seemed to suck it in, accelerating it
until it was moving too fast for my eyes to follow.

  It exploded out the other end in a burst of white light so bright, I squeezed my eyes shut and doubled over, trying to protect myself from it. The ground rumbled beneath my feet, and a shock wave blew me backward.

  I stumbled and fell, smacking the back of my head on the hard ground with a thud and knocking the breath from my lungs.

  Then, blackness.

  || 32 ||

  VOICES SOUNDED SOMEWHERE BEYOND the pounding in my head, but they came to me muffled, as if through a stack of pillows. I didn’t want voices. I wanted to live in the song that wove through me. I let the melody lull me back to where the voices couldn’t reach.

  * * *

  Energy surged in my veins, and I sat up. Ugh, too quickly, judging by the pulsating ache across my forehead. Sunlight streamed through half-closed blinds, pooling on the floor in a bright, gyrating shape as the conifer outside the window rustled a little in the breeze.

  I touched the bump on my skull and winced when my fingers brushed a patch that was sore, but not too swollen. I looked around, for a second failing to place my surroundings, before I recognized the guest room in Aunt Dorothy’s house.

  Another surge of energy, bigger than the last. A little more, and I might levitate right off the bed. Ah. Today was summer solstice.

  I threw back the covers and righted my top, which had twisted around me. The legs of my pants were bunched up to my knees. I swung my legs to the floor and froze.

  Harriet.

  I reached out with my mind. Sophie? Are you okay?

  Corinne, you’re awake! We’re downstairs.

  I heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, and Sophie nearly crashed into me at the end of the hall. She threw her arms around my neck, and I embraced her back. When she let me go, she stepped back to take me in from head to toe.

  “How are you feeling?” she said. Her happiness turned to frowning concern.

  “Aside from the bump on my head, I feel like I could fly.” I laughed and the sound seemed out of place. We both shifted self-consciously.