by Bill Hiatt
“Life or not, it’s mine!” I almost shouted. “I will do with it what I want—and I want to stay here!”
Bisavó looked amazed. “Lucas, I thought you were just part Encantado; I didn’t realize you were part mule!”
I was ready to storm off dramatically, go straight up the stairs and slam my bedroom door—not perhaps the most mature exit, but dramatic enough to make my point—when the lights went out.
Chapter 6: Power Failure (Lucas)
“Is this a spell?” Mom whispered.
Bisavó frowned. “Magic doesn’t generally work directly against technology…but where are your circuit breakers?”
“Outside,” said Mom, “but the box is locked.”
“I’d say our assassin can also pick locks or found a way to break one,” said Bisavó. “Either way, we have no choice but to fight now. There’s no nearby body of water I can use to take Lucas to the Encante.”
If capoeira had taught me anything, it was focus, and the lights going out caused me to quickly shuffle through different scenarios. “Upstairs bedrooms now!” I ordered. “We can lock ourselves in, and the only way to come at us is through the one door.”
“What about—” Mom began.
A floorboard creaked in the living room. Had the assassin entered the now darkened house? If so, she really could travel from shadow to shadow. We didn’t have time to get upstairs. She could be upon us any second.
“Scratch that; stay right here!” I said quickly, although I wasn’t confident they would do what I told them. I grabbed the high-powered flashlight Mom had used earlier. Then I raced into the living room, rapidly swinging it back and forth. The beam hit nothing at standing height, which made me suspect the assassin had borrowed some capoeira maneuvers and was staying close to the ground. Before I adjusted my angle, a rock hit the flashlight with such force that it shattered the plastic lens, as well as the bulb. She had quite a throwing arm, not to mention deadly accurate aim! Under other circumstances, I would have admired that performance, but right now, I wondered how I’d survive.
She was willing to kill. I wasn’t. She could see in the dark. I couldn’t. I did know capoeira, but capoeira tactics rely on being able to see an opponent.
But I suddenly realized I could see her, just as I could when she followed me on the street, except now I could perceive the real her—her human body, or at least the outline of it, not just its shadowy cocoon. From the way she was approaching, I guessed she hadn’t yet realized I knew where she was.
I started an aú, and when, as I expected, she lunged at me, I shifted to aú batido, a broken cartwheel in which I stopped at the handstand and hit her with a perfectly executed martelo. The L-kick to the head caused her to lose her balance and fall forward instead of finishing her lunge. She was moving at the wrong angle for me to take her down with a sweeping kick. Instead, I used my speed to get in front of her, and then came up in an escorumelo, a head butt from below that struck her beneath the chin hard enough to rattle her teeth and jerk her head back. She staggered backward, probably in pain, and almost certainly disoriented. I just needed to take her down and subdue her—being careful not to repeat my mistake from last time.
The whine of a siren and the flashing lights of the police cruiser interrupted my thought, giving my supposedly helpless opponent the chance to throw her weapon at me. Normally, someone reeling backward like that would have been hard-pressed to aim, so her training must have been incredibly effective. The weapon scratched me on the way past, and the distraction gave her enough time to disappear back to wherever she came from.
“Lucas?” my mom called uncertainly from the kitchen.
“I’m OK, and she’s gone,” I shouted back, trying to get the message across without giving the nearby police too much of an earful if any of them happened to be standing near the house.
Mom and Bisavó ran from the kitchen, and Mom hugged me a lot harder than seemed necessary.
Someone knocked on the front door. “Paulo? Lucas? Carolina? Are you guys all right?” the familiar voice of Officer Sullivan said.
“Answer it, Carolina,” ordered Bisavó, taking her turn to hug me.
Mom opened the door. My father’s worried-looking friend stood on the porch with his trusty police issue flashlight. He was careful not to blind Mom with the light, but it provided a little glow that was welcome—though the living room was still too full of shadows for my taste.
“Carolina,” he said, “your porch light is broken…and it looks as if your power is out.”
“It just went out.” Mom made a show of looking over his shoulders at the dark street beyond. “It looks like some of the streetlights are out too.”
“All of them on this block, actually.” Sullivan scratched his head. “But not because they lost power. Every single one is broken.”
“Kids, I think.” Mom was apparently a much better liar than I had ever suspected. “I heard some pretty high voices outside.”
“One of the neighbors called in earlier and reported some kind of fight on your lawn.” Sullivan paused expectantly.
“We heard something also. Lucas was going to go out and investigate when the power went out. Must have been the same kids, don’t you think?”
“Probably,” Sullivan conceded. “It was dark, so the person who called in didn’t really see much. Any idea who the kids were?”
“I wish I could help,” Mom said, “but we didn’t see much, either. I wouldn’t let Lucas go outside and look without having a better idea what was happening.”
“Well, it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway,” Sullivan observed, “considering his condition, I mean.”
I was standing behind Mom, so even if it had been lighter, I wouldn’t have been able to tell what her expression was like, but evidently it was blank or surprised, because Sullivan continued, “The twisted ankle. He really should be staying off of it.”
It’s too bad Sullivan was good at his job. I sometimes wondered why he wasn’t located somewhere with a larger, better-paying force…and tonight I wished that especially.
“Oh, I forgot, because it seems better already,” Mom said lamely. Apparently she wasn’t such a good liar after all. “I think Lucas was just mistaken about it being twisted.”
Sullivan frowned. “I’m surprised someone like Lucas would make a mistake like that, what with dance and capoeira and all. He knows his body pretty well, doesn’t he?” There was a long silence.
Mom was sinking fast.
“I’m afraid I underplayed the pain a little, Officer,” I said, hobbling over to the door. “Didn’t want her to worry. I’ll see the doc about it tomorrow.”
Sullivan smiled and seemed to buy it.Then he looked at my arm. “Lucas, you’re bleeding.” He pointed at my wound with the flashlight.
Damn! I’d forgotten the assassin nicked me. There was a little blood on my right bicep.
“Blood?” asked Bisavó, sounding panicked.
“Who’s that?” asked Sullivan, raising the flashlight a little.
“Oh, my mother is visiting from Brazil,” Mom replied.
Sullivan looked into the darkness, raised the flashlight a bit and seemed about to introduce himself, when a blood-curdling shriek captured our attention.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” He hurried off in the direction of the scream. “Stay inside!” he called back to us over his shoulder as he vanished into the darkness.
“Who’s screaming?” I asked, visualizing shadow assassins popping up all over town.
I jumped a little when Bisavó grabbed my arm with surprising strength. “How did you cut yourself, Lucas?” she demanded.
The scream seemed higher priority to me, but she sounded so upset I answered her. “The assassin threw her…weapon at me.”
“No!” she wailed, making my skin crawl. “No!”
“Gabriela, what is it?” Mom was obviously as creeped out as I was.
“The shadow blades…” she started, sounding as if she was crying.
“They…they…are like poison to any living thing. One scratch is fatal.”
“I’ll call nine-one-one,” said Mom, fumbling for the phone.
“And tell them what?” asked Bisavó, her voice still tearful. “That your son has deadly shadow magic in his blood? His hurt is supernatural. Doctors can do nothing. Who is the local curandera?”
There was far too long a pause. “I don’t know of any. There may be one in Merced…”
“He’ll die before we reach Merced,” Bisavó insisted. “Think, Carolina! Think! We have to find a closer one.”
“I don’t know of any!” Mom almost shouted in frustration.
“I’m OK,” I said quietly. “I feel fine.”
That caused a momentary pause in Bisavó’s plunge toward hysteria. “You should already be feeling something. Maybe the blood means you got injured some other way. We need light in here.”
“I’ll reset the breakers,” said Mom.
“But the screaming—” I started. Someone was reaching epic levels of terror, and I didn’t want Mom to go outside until we knew what was happening.
“I created the screaming,” said Bisavó. “It was to get the police to worry about something besides your full-of-holes story. Carolina, the breakers, now!”
Mom fumbled back through the kitchen and toward the back door.
Bisavó still gripped my arm hard enough to cut off circulation. “You can let go now,” I said gently.
“Pray; pray the blood is from something else.” Her grip loosened a little. She seemed determined to hold on to me, as if she could keep me from dying that way.
Dying? She must be wrong about that; I still felt fine. Her certainty was a little frightening though. People my age did sometimes die, obviously, but it’s one thing to know that intellectually. It’s completely different to accept it emotionally.
In a couple minutes the lights came on, and none too soon. Bisavó’s hands trembled on my arm, and that didn’t help my state of mind. Nor did the incessant screaming outside, though at least now I knew it wasn’t real.
Bisavó looked at the small cut on my arm, seemed uncertain, and frantically searched of the room.
“What—” I started.
“The blade!” she said. “I have to find the blade!”
Mom returned and helped. I just kind of stood there like an idiot. My brain was playing catch-up. Everything I thought I knew about the world was dissolving right in front of me, and I wasn’t yet sure what would replace it. Mostly I just wished I could go back to this morning and relive the day with no shadow assassins in it.
“Is that it?” asked Mom.
“Yes, but don’t touch it!” Bisavó cautioned. She bent over something in the corner, and I walked over to see.
I blinked a couple of times. There was something, but it was hard to see in the light. It looked like a random piece of shadow somehow sharpened to a point. Something else glistened along its edge.
“Blood! It has blood on it!” Bisavó was back into full-on panic mode.
“I feel fine!” I protested again, but neither Mom nor Bisavó were paying any attention to me.
“Can’t you do something?” asked Mom.
Bisavó had started crying again. “We Encantado don’t have healing powers!”
“I’m fine,” I said more loudly. Still no response.
“Could we just…cut off the poisoned part?” asked Mom.
“The shadow poison has attached itself to his life-force,” managed Bisavó, between sobs. “Even cutting off the arm would not save him now.”
Cutting off the arm?
“I’m fine!” I almost shouted. “If some poison were in me, shouldn’t I feel something?”
Bisavó looked stunned for a second. Then, after wiping her tears, she looked at my arm again.
“There is something there, Lucas,” she said, “but it is strange that you feel nothing. I have heard of people dying in less time than this.”
“Doesn’t that mean I’m fine?” I asked.
“This minute, yes. At any moment, however, the poison could start to work.”
“You said yourself people usually die right away!” I said accusingly. She almost sounded as if she were making up rules as she went along. Maybe she didn’t really know what she was talking about.
“I can sense foul magic on the blade, and I can sense the same magic in your arm. Why it hasn’t started to work yet…I’m not sure. That doesn’t mean the danger isn’t real, Bisneto; it just means we might have more time than I thought. Perhaps this blade’s magic was designed for a human, and since, you have some Encantado ancestry, the power will take a little longer to manifest itself.”
I was tempted to answer that explanation with expletives. Bisavó seemed to be scaring us all for nothing. I had been scratched by the deadly blade, but I was fine. Why couldn’t that satisfy her?
“What do we do now?” asked Mom. “We might have time to find a curandera…”
“Since we do seem to have more time than I thought, I have a better way to use it than hunting for someone who may or may not be powerful enough to do the job,” said Bisavó. “I am owed a rather large favor by one of the best healers I know of. Given a few minutes, she may be able to reach Lucas or bring Lucas to her, and she will be able to heal him; I know she will!”
Much to my surprise, Bisavó produced a cell phone from her purse. I don’t know what I expected. Telepathy maybe or smoke signals or pretty much anything less modern.
Bisavó managed a weak smile for me. “Modern technology has its uses. This healer is a great distance away, but I have a…what would be your term? Hotline number? Yes, I have a hotline number for her.”
She dialed and got an answer almost immediately. “This is Gabriela Golfinho…yes, of the Encantado. Coventina gave me this number if ever I needed healing. No, it is not for me; my Bisneto has been scratched by a blade of the pessoas da sombra…uh, yes, you would call them Populus Umbrae. Yes, he’s alive, or I wouldn’t be calling. Yes, I’m sure he’s wounded. Listen, I have no idea how long he has. I need help, not questions. Can’t you at least send somebody to investigate? Yes, we are in…Lucas, what’s the name of this hole-in-the-wall town again?”
Gee, how do you really feel about it?
“Madisonville,” I said quickly.
“Yes, Madisonville, California,” she told whoever was on the other end of the line. “It’s a fairly new place, just a little east of Merced.” Then there was a long pause. “What? Santa Brígida? Where’s that? Santa Barbara? That’s…how long a drive is that?”
“Almost five hours,” I said. “Why?”
“It’s a five-hour drive!” she exclaimed into the phone. “Isn’t there anyone closer? I don’t know how long he has. Don’t you understand? Oh, all right! Call me back, but make it quick!”
I sensed this was one of those times when Bisavó would rather have been on a landline, if only for the satisfaction of slamming down the receiver.
“Aren’t they being cooperative?” Mom asked apprehensively.
Bisavó sighed. “I think the fellow I was talking to is doing what he can. I’m just frustrated by the limitations of magical travel.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Isn’t it…well…magical?”
Bisavó managed a very small laugh. “Magic has its own rules…and those rules differ depending on the kind of magic. We of the Encantado can travel from the Encante to any large natural body of water, whether we’ve ever been there or not. The people I’m trying to get help from can travel by water too, but only fresh water, and they generally have to have visited the destination. They can also open a portal to Annwn, their world, and they can then open a portal from there to any place on Earth—but again, with the limitation that they have to have been there before. The man I talked to is scrambling to find someone who’s visited this area before. If he can find someone, we could get help almost instantly. If not, well, the closest healers they have are in Santa Brígida, five hours away.”
“Who are ‘they’?” asked Mom, in a who-is-my-child’s-life-depending-on kind of tone.
“The Order of Ladies of the Lake,” replied Bisavó. “There aren’t any better healers…at least, not accessible from this world.”
“Wait, you mean like the Lady of the Lake in the King Arthur stories?” I asked skeptically.
“There was always more than one,” said Bisavó. “Over the centuries, they have developed a huge organization, including a bureaucracy that handles the details when they need to work with mortals. That’s why Coventina had a phone number to give me.
“Coventina’s their leader,” she continued in response to my questioning look. “A number of years ago, I rescued a couple of the Order’s agents in Brazil, and Coventina herself, though she hardly ever leaves her headquarters these days, came in person to promise me assistance if ever I needed it.”
“A phone number seems…an odd way to do business,” observed Mom. “Why not give you some magical object as a way to contact them?”
“And so indeed she did,” said Bisavó sadly. “It was stolen from me. I should have asked for another, but somehow I never got around to it, and now I have failed Lucas!” She looked as if she were going to cry again.
“First, I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Second, you couldn’t have foreseen this kind of situation. Third, I think I can speed this process up.”
“You can?” Bisavó asked, looking at me with desperate hope.
“We know someone from the Order probably hasn’t visited Hicksville, but I can think of two ways to get together with a healer faster than five hours. We could drive to Lake Yosemite, and you could transport us through that to any other body of water, right?” I asked.
“Lake Yosemite is the way I came here, and yes, from there I can go to any large natural body of water,” agreed Bisavó.
“Great! You could transport us to Lake Cachuma. It’s in the Santa Barbara area and reasonably close to Santa Brígida. Travel time shouldn’t be more than one hour from here to the lakes and over to Santa Brígida.”
“You’ve been there?” asked Bisavó hopefully.