Will nodded. In one swift move, he lunged between the demon’s legs for the relic. The seven heads followed Will’s movement, necks straining downward and under the scaled legs. Their wicked eyes watched Will take hold of the reliquary’s gold base. He rolled to his side and found his feet.
“Good lad,” Balor sang, his head cocked beneath the gray legs. “We have a deal, then! Throw the filthy thing into the pit over there.”
The relic began to glow an electric blue in Will’s hands. His whole body warmed and he could clearly see the demon once again.
Aunt Lucille struggled on the wall, pulling on the tendrils that held her fast. “You have it now. Go. Go, dear,” she gasped.
“No, Aunt Lucille. The prophecy said I had to drive it away with belief and a pure heart.” He pressed the relic against the rubber band–like strings covering her wrists and ankles. The neon tentacles instantly recoiled, releasing her. “I believe, Aunt Lucille.”
BLUB…BLUB…BLUB…Five Stickers stood behind the demon, advancing toward the pair.
The Beast’s seven necks extended to their very limit. In one undulating movement the heads whirled, as did the entire grotesque body, to face Will.
“Back, Leviathan!” Will cried in a strong voice he hadn’t expected to produce. He brandished the relic in front of him like a sword. A slim blue light emerged out of the top of the reliquary, striking the demon in the stomach. It staggered backward.
“What about our deal? Our friendship?” Balor cried. “Speak! Won’t ye even speak to us? Where is yer pity? Killer! Plunderer! Just like all the Wilders before yeh.”
“Not one word,” Aunt Lucille cautioned Will.
“I hear you,” he responded. Hard as it was, Will remained silent, directing the relic’s blue light at the writhing creature. “I’m not sure what I’m doing.”
“You’re repelling him. Keep it up.” Lucille stood behind him on feet that had gone numb, shaking her sore hands. She could feel little below her elbows. With great effort she repeatedly made fists. Then, placing her fingers in the triangle formation, she aimed her red-and-white beam at the Stickers. One by one they were reduced to steaming statues of ash.
“You’ll have to show me how to do that sometime,” Will muttered out of the side of his mouth.
Aunt Lucille did not respond, but followed Will’s lead, turning her beam toward the demon. “Reppéle, Domini, virtútem diáboli, fallacésque ejus insídias ámove,” Lucille said with vehemence, “procul ímpius tentátor aufúgiat.”
“Will, she’ll take control of yeh the first chance she gets. She’ll manipulate yeh to do her biddin’. Is that what yeh want?” The demon teetered backward, stumbling toward the black pit and the broken altar.
Back, Leviathan! Will so wanted to yell. And though he didn’t, the moment he thought it, the Beast flew against the rear wall and slipped into the bubbling black Hell Mouth. Will could feel a power surging through his hands.
Her blast never yielding, Aunt Lucille continued to mutter strange words the boy had never heard her speak before.
“Leviathan will not be controlled by an insolent child and an old hag,” the demon swore, all the voices speaking in unison. It dug claws into what remained of the broken altar, trying to stop its descent into the black pool.
“Perilous Falls is flooded. Others will come, Wilders! Others less kind than we, Will!” The black tarry waters began to swallow the Beast. Its unyielding claws snapped off the last bits of the altar, dragging it into the pit.
Will edged closer to the demon, keeping the blue ray of the relic trained on Balor’s head. Leviathan’s multiple faces sank beneath the surface of the pool.
“Where is yer sympathy? Yer mercy, Will?” Balor asked in his most sorrowful voice. Then, raging, he screamed, “We’ll be watching yeh!” Balor’s diseased eye opened. Aiming the relic’s beam on the sickly pupil, Will looked away. Though she could see nothing, Aunt Lucille also averted her gaze.
Consumed by the black liquid of the pit, only the horns on Leviathan’s last head were still visible. Will pressed the relic against the highest horn until it vanished. Within seconds the center of the black liquid turned hard and the entire pit transformed into gray concrete.
“Not bad for an insolent child and an old hag with a musty museum,” Aunt Lucille said, dropping her hands and throwing her head back in exhaustion. She laughed in her knowing way.
“Did I kill it? It’s gone, right?” Will asked, clutching the glowing relic.
“It’s gone for now—and you’ve closed up the Hell Mouth. But we’ve only repelled the demon. It’ll take a Vanquisher—an exorcist—to lock the beast away. We’d better help Tobias.” She turned her attention to the unconscious groundskeeper slumped on the floor. When the demon was drowned in the pit, the tendrils holding Shen had retreated, causing the wounded man to fall into a clump.
“Is Mr. Shen going to be okay?”
“Touch him with the relic, dear.”
Will did as he was told. The reliquary’s blue aura intensified. Tobias Shen let out a pained gasp and bolted into an upright position.
“Stay still, Tobias. We’re going to help you out of here,” Aunt Lucille said.
“Did you get the relic? Where is the demon?”
“It’s gone. And Will has the relic.”
The boy moved it in front of Mr. Shen, who noticeably relaxed after seeing the illuminated reliquary.
“It agrees with you, Mr. Wilder—you could be your great-grandfather’s twin in this light,” Shen said weakly, his swollen, bloody lips forming a smile. “Now we must secure the relic in St. Thomas Church once more. Very quickly.”
“Not so fast, Tobias.” Aunt Lucille turned her attention to Shen’s blood-soaked trousers. She took Will by the wrists, directing the relic toward Tobias Shen’s battered legs. He quivered at the touch.
“It’s very warm. Ohhh. Look, look.” In amazement Shen ogled his bent limbs. The bloodstains dissolved from the gray pants, and his legs straightened. The pain that had afflicted him for hours melted away.
“Keep it there for a moment, dear,” Lucille instructed, closing her eyes, a hand on Will’s back.
Will could have stayed there all day, watching the old man revive and feeling the surging warmth pass through his hands into the reliquary. Tobias Shen’s lips returned to their normal size, and the gashes on his head and face closed. A peace filled the chamber, which only moments earlier had reverberated with chaos.
“That ought to do it,” Aunt Lucille said, tapping Will’s shoulder. He lowered the relic solemnly, extending it toward Aunt Lucille.
She refused its touch. “I’ll be all right.” She straightened her long neck and tugged at her collar. “There is not a moment to waste.”
“Let’s go,” Shen said, bouncing up and striding to the exit. “We have been spared for important work. Come, come, come. We must get the relic to safety—inside the Keep. Now.”
“We’re right behind you, Tobias,” an exhausted Aunt Lucille said, rising. She winced as she walked. Each step felt as if she were being impaled by broken glass. Her hands didn’t feel much better, but she soldiered on.
The trio hastily abandoned the soggy chambers of Dismal Shoals. Outside they discovered Bartimaeus sitting inside the rocky niche, exactly where they had left him.
“Go ahead, take ya time,” he called out sarcastically from the grotto, black beads in his hand. “Good to see y’all relaxin’. Probably gives you comfort knowing I’m out here doing the heavy lifting while y’all were playing around inside.”
They laughed and helped Bartimaeus into the Stella Maris. Once everyone was on board, Aunt Lucille situated herself in the captain’s chair and turned the boat upriver toward St. Thomas Church.
Along the riverside, cloaked by trees, a camouflaged military vehicle observed their leaving. Behind tinted glass, a long-lens camera repeatedly snapped images of Aunt Lucille, Bartimaeus, Tobias Shen, and Will exiting the wrecked temple and boarding the boat.
“What’s the Wilder boy carrying?” Crinshaw asked.
Mayor Lynch brought a compact pair of binoculars to her eyes. “It’s some kind of gold sculpture. One of those superstitious voodoo things Lucille keeps in that museum of hers, I’m sure.” She tossed the binoculars aside with annoyance. “Now, will you all explain to me what Lucille Wilder, a couple of old guys, and Dan’s kid are doing in a cave during a thunderstorm? Because I would love to know. And why are they in the exact cave where all these murderous crocodiles are coming from? That is the location you all traced those crocs back to, right, officer?”
The man in the driver’s seat nodded crisply. “Yes, ma’am.”
“That is curious. Killer crocodiles attack our townspeople, but Lucille and her merry men go in and out of their breeding ground without so much as a scratch. Are they raising those things? It’s all very curious.”
“Maybe they were out in the boat and got swept downriver, Ava,” Crinshaw offered, stroking his mustache. “Perhaps they were seeking shelter from the storm, which seems to be lessening now.”
“Noooo,” Ava Lynch droned. She was lost in thought, her eyes flatly staring out at the Stella Maris gliding on the rough waters. “Lucille Wilder is responsible for all of this somehow. She has a lot of explaining to do. Not to me, mind you—to the people of Perilous Falls. They deserve answers.”
Sitting in the passenger seat next to Aunt Lucille, Will tightly gripped the reliquary as they proceeded up the Perilous River. The change in the river amazed him. As the Stella Maris moved along, the choppy waves on all sides calmed. Will could see the shoreline receding from the nearly topped levees. Overhead, black clouds separated, permitting the sunshine to burn away their edges.
In the aftermath of the battle with Leviathan, Will was anxious and filled with questions.
He turned to his aunt Lucille, who struggled to keep a firm hold on the steering wheel with her injured hands. “So what happened to Levia—you know, the Captain?”
“Don’t personalize it that way. It’s a demon. A cruel deceiver. What was that name it gave you?”
“Captain Nep Balor.”
Aunt Lucille released a trilling laugh. “Nep Balor? Neptune Balor. Could have been Poseidon Balor. The Aztecs called this one Atl, the Illyrians, Rodon. The demon has gone by many names—mostly those of pagan sea gods. The only name that matters is the true one. The one it responded to. The one you used to control the serpent.”
“But where did he—uh—it go?”
“Back to the underworld. It has been weakened. But you heard what it said. You read the prophecy: others will come.”
“Look, look at the Bottom Dwellers,” Mr. Shen yelled from the back of the boat, pointing to the shore.
The creatures charged over the banks toward the river in a frenzy. They seemed to be gasping for air as they stampeded over one another. Fighting their way into the water, the Bottom Dwellers belly flopped into the river and disappeared from sight.
“Where are they headed?” Will asked, looking over the side of the boat, bracing for their sudden reappearance.
“Back where they came from,” Bartimaeus said from the bench seat at the rear. “Without a demon to keep them goin’, they’ve got to find a power source. They’ll swarm near Wormwood, I expect. Don’t worry, they’ll be back.”
“I’m not worried. Aunt Lucille can always roast them with her death ray.”
Lucille grinned, steering the boat. “It’s not a death ray.”
“Then what is it?” Will asked.
“Rebutting illuminance. That’s what the old books call it, anyway. It’s merely spiritual light that repels evil. I told you we all have gifts. The illuminance is mine.”
“Can you teach me to do it?”
“No, dear. It’s a gift. One I didn’t even know I had until I was confronted by a demon. I was about thirteen. Walking home one night from a friend’s house, the beast set upon me. It slashed at my arms and threw me to the ground. Of course I couldn’t see it. I screamed and put my hands out in self-defense—what else was I to do?—and the illuminance appeared. The beams went in all directions. I torched a number of trees behind the house, ruined a fence. My mother was not happy. It took me many months of training to control it. Daddy helped quite a lot….”
Lucille slipped out of her raincoat and deftly steered the boat around the boulder tips jutting from the water. Every so often she slowly stretched her hands. From the way she bit her lip each time she made the gesture, Will could see she was in pain. After a long pause, Aunt Lucille continued, “Gifts must be honed, Will. Mastered and understood. Or they are of no use to anyone. After seeing what you did with the relic, it is your time to be trained.”
“Trained at what? Trained where?”
“At Peniel. At the archabbey there. It’s where the Brethren live.”
Raising a brow, Will asked, “They live in the museum?”
“Below it, around it, above it—yes. It is the community house of the Brethren. They’ve been there since the founding to protect the relics and the artifacts within. It’s the main citadel in this part of the country—and our most important defense against the Sinestri and the Darkness.”
“You mean there are other abbeys—citadels?”
“Yes. We’re all in contact, though not as close as we once were. There’s been a lot of infighting and disagreement. But you may be able to help with that.”
Will remembered the line in the prophecy about the Brethren and their broken unity. “The prophecy said the chosen one will lead them. Will I have to lead them?”
“In time…It’s very important that you receive training as soon as possible. We can teach you skills and awaken talents you’ll need to protect yourself and perhaps all of us—skills you’ll need to fulfill the prophecy.”
The pressure Will felt caused a dull nausea to roll through his stomach. “Is this like a school?”
Bartimaeus rose from the cushioned seat in the rear and hobbled forward on his crutches. “It’s individual training—highly specialized. So don’t expect a prom or a report card. If ya live and we all survive, ya passed. If we don’t—ya failed. You got me? This ain’t a regimented kind of thing. Push on over, let me share your seat. I’m old—my legs are worn out.”
Bartimaeus leaned the two crutches against the brass rails along the side of the boat. With his hips, he nudged the boy across the cushioned seat. Half of Will’s backside fell off the chair. “Kinda tight, huh?” he complained.
“But that’s a lesson right there, ya see? In community living, you learn important things…like sharing—even your chair—understanding people’s failings, seeing a little deeper than what the world sees. We’ll teach ya discernment, defense against evil, how to control your visions—”
“How to keep your hands off items that don’t belong to you”—Aunt Lucille turned her eyes like daggers toward the reliquary—“items that must be respected.” She spun the wheel hard to the left with a smile. “Aha. We’re here.”
St. Thomas Church rose up beside the boat. The Stella Maris pulled as close to the rocky shore as Aunt Lucille dared to pilot her. Tobias Shen cast the anchor over the starboard side, grabbed a line, and jumped into the receding water near the shore. He tethered the boat to a nearby tree.
Aunt Lucille waddled toward the church, moving much slower than usual thanks to her aching feet. Her algae-smudged silk pantsuit fluttered at the wrists as she spoke. “When we get inside, Will, if your father is here, let’s not share too many details of our little adventure. He has a propensity for disbelief and might not take kindly to our instructing you in the ways of the Brethren.”
Will nodded.
“Might not take kin
dly?” Bartimaeus chucked. “He might take your aunt Lucille’s head off. That’s what she meant to say—I know that’s right.”
Tobias Shen cracked a knowing smile but said nothing.
Aunt Lucille spun around at the door, removing his smirk with a withering glance. “I’d better take the relic from here.”
Will held the reliquary all the tighter. Deep down he felt he should be the one to return it to the Keep. He couldn’t bear to part with it when he was feeling so unsteady—so uneasy about the future.
“Can’t I bring it back in?” Will asked. “I took it out and I know where it goes….”
Aunt Lucille flicked the top of his pith helmet with her index finger. “You’re a Wilder through and through—head like a brick. Deliver it directly to the Keep and go no farther, dear. I don’t even want to think about the condition of that Undercroft. It’s going to take us weeks to drain those chambers and reset the security down there. Which reminds me—” Even though it ached to do so, she opened a flat palm directly before his eyes. “Where is my daddy’s notebook?”
Will held the relic under his arm for a moment while he rummaged through his backpack. Bypassing the Book of Prophecy, he felt the slim volume. Wordlessly, he placed the green lacquered book in his aunt’s open palm, then grabbed the reliquary again.
Will, Aunt Lucille, Tobias Shen, and Bartimaeus were shocked by the reception that greeted them upon entering the church. Dan quickly hid the two drawn flares he was prepared to ignite depending on who or what walked in; Marin let out a head-rattling scream of glee; Deborah thanked the Almighty, burying her face in her hands; and Leo jumped out of the rear pew, throwing both his cast-covered and cast-free arms around his brother’s waist.
“All right, Leo. Thanks. That’s plenty,” Will said, trying to shake his brother off while protecting the reliquary. “Give me some space. I’ve got to put this back in the Keep.”
Will Wilder Page 21