The Elementalists

by C Sharp

  Directly ahead was a steel door with a plaque above it that said “MEAT ME.”

  Chloe rolled her eyes, but Stan zoomed in on the door. “Uh-oh,” he said as Chloe followed his focus to the oversized combination padlock that Richard Roberts had kitschily, but very effectively, placed on the door’s handle.

  Stan panned from the lock back to Chloe’s face. “Your pal Liz might have mentioned this part,” he suggested.

  Chloe shut her eyes and shook her head. “This isn’t going as smoothly as I’d planned.”

  “What?” asked Kirin.

  “There’s a lock on the door.” Chloe walked over to the door and tested it just to be sure. “It’s a combination lock,” she added, lifting it up to get a better look at the old-timey design with a big ring loop and a hundred-number wheel.

  Kirin sighed over the phone. “Does it have a master-key hole at the bottom?” he asked with an audible wince.

  Chloe swung it up higher and allowed herself a smirk. “Yes, it does.”

  “Okay,” he said, thinking out loud… “Do you think there’s any way we could get Liz to make that diversion again?”

  “Well, I suppose I could tr—” Chloe stopped talking abruptly and craned her head toward the wine cellar. Stan swung the camera in that direction as the sound of scuffing footsteps grew.

  The two scrambled through the door to the Man Cave and darted toward the shelter of the pool table just as a girl’s voice hissed Chloe’s name in the foyer.

  “Chloe!” Liz called out a little louder as Chloe got back to her feet and emerged from hiding.

  “I’m here,” she answered.

  As Chloe stepped back into the foyer, Liz shrieked. Chloe remembered the ski mask and yanked it up from her face. “Liz, it’s me.”

  Liz met her eye with a look of extreme disapproval. “This has got to be the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure that one’s going down next week,” she admitted. “But you didn’t mention that the door was locked.”

  Liz noticed the lock for the first time as well. “Oh! It wasn’t the last time I was here,” she said in her defense. Then she noticed Stan, still in the ski mask, with a video camera trained on her. She raised an eyebrow and turned back on Chloe. “What’s going on with you, Chloe? And why are you trying to steal Mr. Roberts’s meat anyway?”

  “It’s a long story,” Chloe deflected. “But I promise you that there’s a really good reason for everything and that Mr. Roberts has it coming.”

  Liz tried to keep her frown, but Chloe could tell that she was softening. “You really are a crazy person, you know that?”

  “Yes,” Chloe accepted. “I’ve come to recognize as much in the past few months, but I still really need your help.”

  Liz shook her head and tried to summon the strength to say no. “I don’t know the combination, and I have no way of getting it.”

  “I’ve got someone on my team who can pick the lock if they can get here,” Chloe declared.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Kirin countered in her ear, though Chloe pretended to not hear him.

  “What do you think the possibility is that you give it a couple minutes and then turn those lights off again?” Chloe put on her best pleading smile…

  “You’re kidding, right?” asked Liz with a snort.

  Chloe shook her head as Stan zoomed in for dramatic effect.

  “You’re bonkers! We’re all going to get caught for this,” Liz whined, though Chloe’s contagious enthusiasm for adventure had already infected her.

  “I know it may not seem it, but this is important, Liz; the most important thing I’ve ever done,” said Chloe.

  “Uh-huh, like the Indian arrowhead project? Or maybe that time we had to spend a whole month looking for those little cube-shaped rocks up in the hills?”

  “Devil’s dice,” Chloe muttered. “We were charting the geological spread pattern.”

  “Whatever, I don’t want to know.” Liz started back the way she’d come with an exasperated groan. She gave a last look over her shoulder. “If you get caught, I’m not involved.”

  Chloe held up Stan’s scout’s honor salute. “I don’t even know who you are.”

  Liz walked away with a dramatic sigh echoing about the vaulted ceiling of the wine cellar as Chloe and Stan shared a look—that was close! She lifted the microphone to her lips. “Kirin, leave the grappling hook someplace easy to find and move to the back corner of the patio.”

  “Crap,” was all he said in response, though Chloe could already hear the wind and heavy breathing of running.

  Chloe and Stan returned their focus to the lock, as if jointly willing it to open. “This is going to work,” Chloe added, just as the door to the patio swung open behind them and a wet and shivering Ezra burst through with an undersized towel clutched tightly around his shoulders.

  Chloe and Stan froze as he slammed the door shut behind him. Then Ezra noticed the two masked figures lurking in the dark on the other side of the room. “What the hell is this?” His eyes met Chloe’s deer-in-the-headlights gaze.

  “Hey, Ezra,” she answered lamely before fumbling the ski mask the rest of the way off her head. Stan didn’t help any by hiding behind the camera as it continued to roll.

  “Crap,” repeated Kirin from afar as the sound of running stopped.

  “Chloe, what are you doing here?” Ezra asked with a disturbing calm.

  Chloe chuckled nervously. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “You ignore my texts and phone calls for a week and then break into my girlfriend’s house during a party,” accused Ezra.

  “She’s your girlfriend now?”

  Ezra was seething beneath his composed mantle. “Everyone is talking about you, saying that you’re crazy and a terrorist and that you attacked a cop in school and got taken away by the Department of Homeland Security. But I’ve defended you, every time, because I knew you wouldn’t be involved in anything that stupid and reckless… But here you are, not one week later, with…” He locked eyes on Stan and looked for a moment like he might reach out and smash the camera. “That’s Stan Strakowski beneath that mask, isn’t it?” he said with a hard point.

  “Hey, dude.” Stan popped out from behind the camera with a little wave.

  Ezra threw his hands in the air. “I give up!” he declared before striding to the wine cellar, where he claimed the first bottle he came to. He turned back toward the door. “You know what, Chloe, go right ahead and do whatever it is you came to do. I don’t give a damn anymore.”

  “Ezra, please,” Chloe said, stopping him with his hand on the doorknob. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what’s going on; I couldn’t risk getting anyone else involved.”

  Ezra was listening.

  “I’m kind of in a lot of trouble, and because of me, so are Stan and Kirin.”

  He turned back to face her, but his eyes swung over to the camera. “Why the hell are you filming this?”

  Stan was getting ready to answer when Chloe cut in. “I asked him to do it.”

  “Well, not really,” added Stan quietly, though Chloe just kept on talking.

  “A friend of mine needs me, someone who doesn’t have anybody else. I can’t explain why, but to save him, I need a lot of organic meat that I can’t afford on my own… So I’m taking it from the rich asshole who ruined my father and allowed me to be interrogated in a holding cell for two days on his property.” Chloe’s anger swelled. “And I’m sorry, but he’s also a shitty father to your girlfriend, and unless she wises up to it, she’s going to turn into an asshole, too!”

  “Why are you telling me all of this now?” he asked quietly.

  “Because I need you to not tell Kendra about this when you go back up to the pool, and I need to walk out of here with the meat behind that door without getting caught,” she said.

  Ezra glanced to the door and then back to Chloe. “How are you planning to get past the lock?”

  “I have s
omeone coming in who can pick it,” Chloe stated just before Kirin started laughing in her ear.

  “And how are you gonna get this mysterious someone in to do it?” Ezra pressed.

  “A window?” she lied.

  “They’re all alarmed; the security system on this place is no joke,” he countered.

  “We have someone inside who can turn off the lights,” Chloe admitted.

  “Ah, right.” Ezra nodded to her. “I guess you have it all figured out.”

  “No, not even close, but I have no choice,” she locked her gaze on his and neither of them wavered. Stan kept rolling as the silence stretched on.

  “10—17—1,” Ezra finally said as he turned back toward the door.

  “What?”

  “10—17—1,” he repeated. “It’s the day Kendra was born and the combination to all the locks in the house.” He returned his hand to the doorknob. “Tell your man not to bother, and use the lights-out for your getaway.” The door opened quietly.

  “Thanks, Ezra,” she called out in a whisper.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he whispered back.

  “Me too,” she admitted before the door closed.

  She slowly brought her hand back to the microphone. “Did you get all that?”

  “Yup,” Kirin answered stoically.

  “We’ll meet you at the back corner with the haul.”

  And by the time she turned around, Stan had already opened the lock. He was grinning like a fool as he swung the camera back to Chloe for the reaction shot.

  • • •

  On Monday night, the sky shimmered with bands of green and red light. Chloe had never seen an aurora before in real life, though she’d sought out videos online and had always dreamed of one day traveling to the far north to see it for herself. It was far more beautiful than the little screen on her computer could share.

  She stood in her backyard and looked up through the leafless branches of the oak that lorded over the property. Another ripple of green danced across the stars. Her neck was beginning to ache, and her teeth were starting to get cold since her jaw had dropped minutes before.

  The news said it was the globally visible effect of a strong solar flare, sending charged particles into the upper atmosphere to collide with oxygen and nitrogen molecules in a vibrant release of energy. Satellite transmissions had been intermittent throughout the day, and Chloe hadn’t had cell phone service in hours. Even the cable feed had started to pick up bands of disruptive static.

  But most striking was that for the first time in over a week, Chloe had started to feel the stirring of Uktena in her mind again. With her eyes closed, she thought that she could hear the ponderous flow of his breath, slow and gravelly, like the distant rolling of boulders. And earlier at school, as she was pretending to pay attention in English Lit, her leg had lashed out suddenly beneath her desk. Her toes had curled involuntarily in her shoe as she felt the dragon’s back claw clench and retract. She’d looked up to realize that she’d moved her whole desk a few inches across the floor with a loud scrape. Wary eyes had swung to her from every direction, but most shriveled away to avoid her returned gaze.

  She dropped her focus from the colorful sky to the Daedalus Group security goon in the black Suburban parked at the side of the road across the street. He was pretending not to notice her as he sat in the idling truck, looking at a magazine that hadn’t had a page turned in ten minutes. Her gaze drifted past him to the dark woods on the other side; she couldn’t see anyone there. Good.

  Sinuous ripples of red drew her attention skyward again, followed by a dramatic burst of emerald green. As Chloe heard the automatic window of the Suburban sliding down, she turned away to walk toward the ruin of the barn and the taut line of caution tape that surrounded it. She scuffed down the driveway, kicking little pebbles that skittered across the frost-coated lawn as she followed the bright yellow tape toward her house. She glanced over her shoulder and caught the eye of her observer before they both looked away furtively. Just to be sure she had his attention, she bounced her hand along the plastic band every time she passed the word CAUTION. The whole line shook with every hit. With a last look over her shoulder, she stepped to the shadow of the oak and ducked under the barrier.

  She started to count in her head, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, as she traversed red splinters of barn and upended farm equipment. She heard the opening of the SUV’s door on the count of six Mississippi and continued quickly toward the jagged opening where the barn door had been. She stopped for a moment at the threshold and raised her wrist with a button push and a beep. The stopwatch began counting on an old Casio watch that she’d found in the back of her mom’s nightstand. The light of the aqua blue screen faded as the digital count reached 00.00.10.

  Half of the doorframe still stood, and the flashlight was still hanging by a nail on the side of the entrance. She grabbed it and switched it on as she stepped to what was left of the hay-strewn floor.

  The piles of tires had been knocked over, and the old tractor had been thrown fifty feet past where the left wall had been. It rested now on its side against the little cherry tree that dropped pink petals across the yard every spring. Deep gouges had been torn in the trunk from the impact.

  Swinging the beam back toward the barn, Chloe saw that her dad’s old car looked as if it had been stepped on. The roof was completely caved in, and distinct claw holes pierced the hood. She swung the beam across one of the last remaining barn windows as she heard footsteps coming down the driveway.

  She walked quickly toward the back corner, where Uktena had been sleeping, and noticed charred lines of hay across her path. A mound of ash and debris was all that was left of her dad’s old magazine collection. For a moment, Chloe thought back to the summer after he’d left, when she’d read every issue in the failed attempt to keep him close, even if only for a little while longer. She moved on as the beam found the antler and bone cairn still standing in what had been the corner. One of the walls was gone, and the scatter of shattered boards and fallen roof formed a ten-foot-tall mound of impenetrable debris around it.

  A maze of little numbered flags had been stuck into the ground, and two shapes had been drawn with bright yellow tape amid a particularly large burn scar on the floor. She stepped closer with morbid fascination and held the beam on the spot where the dead cows had been, now marked by the outline of two splayed humans with appendages bent in unnatural directions. Chloe shuddered and turned her gaze back to the beauty of the night sky as a green pulse shot across the place where the roof had been.

  A man cleared his throat behind her. “You can’t be in here,” he stated with officious certainty and the hint of a nasally whine.

  She spun around and played at being startled. “Oh my God!” she yelled. “You don’t have to sneak up on me!”

  The beam of his flashlight was much stronger than Chloe’s, and he took that moment to swing it to her face. “You need to leave the cordoned-off area at once,” he added, as if he hadn’t heard her speak at all.

  She decided to go with a different approach and squared off to face right into the light just to spite him. She’d seen him before at the pond when Uktena had destroyed the tower and again when he’d interrogated her the night of the Cow Thief—she thought his name was Mr. Fitz. “This is my property,” she countered. “So I’m actually going to have to ask you to leave, if you don’t mind.”

  “Actually, this is a crime scene under the jurisdiction of the United States government. If you don’t leave the premises after two warnings, then I’m authorized to physically assist in your removal and detain you if you become combative.” He almost smiled. “This is your second warning—you need to exit the cordoned-off area immediately.”

  He dropped his light to his feet, and Chloe could see that he was wearing a can of pepper spray on one hip and a holstered pistol on the other. She started walking back to the exit as slowly as she could manage without shaking.


  “You don’t even work for the United States government,” she said as she passed him.

  He fell in step behind her. “I’m a fully authorized civilian contractor employed by a development partner of the government and operating with a writ of authority on their behalf.”

  “I’m pretty sure this isn’t constitutional,” she added over her shoulder.

  “You’d be surprised.” He nudged her in her back with the butt of his flashlight.

  Despite the alarm bells going off in her head, Chloe stopped at the half-standing doorjamb, slowly turned off her light, and returned it to the nail by the door. She could sense his brewing impatience behind her.

  “Are you going to make me use force?” He stepped uncomfortably close.

  Chloe skittered out the door with a few quick strides before hazarding a look back at him. Mr. Fitz remained in the doorway, looking at her with those blank, creepy eyes. He reached up to the McClellan family flashlight and unscrewed the bottom to let the four AA batteries drop out into his palm.

  “You’re going to owe us for those batteries,” Chloe hollered while walking backward.

  He tossed them into the debris pile and pointed toward the vague place where they landed. “Your batteries are just over there,” he said, with a threat behind the cold surface.

  This is a man who likes to hurt people… Chloe turned and started walking faster toward the house as she felt his eyes following. She glanced at the watch again: 00:04:37. That has to be enough time!

  She ducked back under the caution tape at the end of the barn blast zone, but hazarded a last look back at Mr. Fitz from the other side. He stood leering at her with one hand resting on what was left of the doorjamb.

  “I guess your jurisdiction ends here,” she called out in challenge.

  “Yeah,” he answered, “but I’ll be watching.” He nodded toward the second-story window to her room and wet his lips in a way that made Chloe’s skin crawl.