Sorceress Super Hero

by Darius Brasher

  Those are called spotlights, Puck said, speaking slowly, as if I would not understand him if he spoke normally. They’re used to light things up at night.

  I shook my head in irritation. “I’m not talking about the spotlights. There seems to be a glow coming from underneath the monument itself.”

  Maybe, Puck said dubiously. Or maybe you’re so anxious to find the Spear that you’re starting to imagine things.

  It’s not my imagination, I said, though I was already starting to wonder if Puck was right. The glow was so faint, it could have just been my overly sensitive imagination exerting itself.

  I closed my Third Eye. The magical world faded away. Though the Washington Monument’s night lights were still on, the faint glow which had seemed to come from under the structure had disappeared.

  I started to get excited. “That’s not my imagination,” I said triumphantly. “Maybe it’s the Spear.”

  Maybe. But let’s not count our chickens before they use the Spear’s tip to hatch.

  “Only one way to find out.” I opened my Third Eye again. The glow at the base of the monument reappeared.

  I dove down, toward the ground. I passed through the stone base of the monument as if it did not exist. I was underground. Even down here, colorful eddies of magical current swirled around me. Straight down, hundreds of feet below the monument, was a whitish-gold glow. From up here, it looked like the light at the end of a tunnel.

  Okay, now I’m cautiously optimistic, Puck said.

  I continued straight down, toward the glow, passing through the ground like I was some sort of superpowered earthworm. If getting paid for finding the Spear did not work out, I could always try gold mining.

  I passed through countless tons of soil and rock before arriving at the source of the glow.

  Whatever it was, it was big, the size of a very large room. It was vaguely ovoid, shaped somewhat like an egg. It glowed, though its light was not blinding the way the light from the Ark fragment had been. The glow did not seem to emanate from the surface of the thing itself, but rather, from inside the thing. It was as if a lit candle had been sealed inside an egg, making the egg’s shell luminesce.

  That’s certainly not the Spear of Destiny. Unless the Spear of Destiny is a supersized ostrich egg.

  “It might be inside, though,” I responded. Increasingly excited, I continued to descend, intending to see if my optimism was justified.

  “Ow!” I exclaimed. My head had bounced off the surface of the glowing thing like I was corporeal again and had done a swan dive into an empty pool. The collision hurt and startled me so much that I struggled for a moment to maintain my spirit’s mystical tether to my physical body.

  “How did I not pass through this thing?” I asked Puck once I recovered sufficiently. “I thought I could go through anything in my astral form.” I poked at the glowing thing cautiously with a finger. My finger met with solid resistance; there was no give whatsoever. It was like poking a brick wall.

  I have no idea, Puck said. His voice was filled with wonder. I’ve never even heard of anything that can keep out somebody’s astral form. And I’ve heard of just about everything. This thing must be enspelled with some next-level kind of magic.

  I slowly but carefully flew through the ground around the massive ovoid, running my hands over it, probing for any kind of opening.

  When I finally finished, I concluded there was not one. If the Spear of Destiny was inside—and I didn’t know what could cause this kind of Third Eye glow if it wasn’t a holy Relic—I couldn’t get to it.

  If the Spear is inside, it might as well be on the dark side of the moon for all the good it’ll do us. As much as it pains me to admit I don’t have any idea how to get inside, I don’t.

  “I do,” I said grimly. I started to rise, heading back toward the surface. I needed to get back into my body and make a phone call.

  I sighed, not looking forward to the call. I hoped the world appreciated the sacrifice I was about to make for it. As I had thought when I didn’t fling my Louboutins at Willow, I wondered when someone was finally going to show up to hand me my much-deserved humanitarian award.

  * * *

  Ghost carried me in his arms as he flew high in the air toward the National Mall. He was covered from head to toe in his usual off-white costume and cape. I wore all-black, except for Puck. Ebony and Ivory, the Dynamic Spear-Retrieving Duo. I doubted the title would catch on. It hardly rolled off the tongue.

  The wind screamed in my ear like a banshee. My hair whipped into my eyes, and the bright sun and rushing wind made me squint. I wished I had thought to bring a scrunchie and some sunglasses. Better yet, goggles like the ones early aviators wore when they flew planes with open cockpits. In my defense, I had never flown before. Well, not without either an airplane around me or me casting an astral projection spell. I did not like it.

  Weee! Puck exclaimed. This is fun. Flying’s the best!

  I did not respond. I had already told Ghost too much about the magical world without adding a telepathic 600-plus year-old magic cape to the list. Besides, I did not share Puck’s enthusiasm. I felt like Lois Lane in Superman’s arms as Ghost zoomed toward the Washington Monument. I had become a cliché. It was mortifying. I’ve always empathized with Superman more than I ever did Lois. The powerless chick who needed some big strong man to come save her was not my cup of tea.

  Before I rendezvoused with Ghost, I had told Daniel I had a lead on where the Spear might be, but I had not told him where. The argument we had about me saving the students at Howard still troubled me.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Ghost said. He almost had to shout to be heard over the wind despite the fact I was inches away from him. I already had my cell phone and leather gloves in my pocket; I’d have to add an ear trumpet along with a scrunchie and goggles to my hanging with Heroes pre-flight checklist. “In exchange for you helping me locate Millennium, you need me to phase you deep under the Washington Monument and into a hidden chamber which you believe contains an ancient spear that pierced the side of Jesus Christ as he hung from the cross.”

  “Repeating it over and over isn’t going to change my answer,” I said, irritated not only by the fact I was doing a Lois impersonation, but also by the fact I had been forced to ask this Heroic kidnapper for help. If the Boston Strangler had the Metahuman power to move through solid matter, I would’ve called him instead. “Yes, that’s what I need. You want me to draw you a picture to make it clear so you’ll stop asking me?”

  Maybe you should be nicer to the guy who could drop us like a girlfriend who won’t put out, Puck suggested nervously. If you go splat, I’ll feel it too.

  “I’ll demur on the picture and settle for an explanation,” Ghost said. “Whatever happened to you not knowing anything about magic and magicians?” Thanks to Ghost’s featureless mask, I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or looking where he was going. What if he hit an airplane while not watching the road? Uh, I meant the sky. What if I became a smear on an airplane windshield on my way to save the world? Embarrassing.

  “Circumstances change,” I said. “I’ve decided this is an instance where I need to look out for others before I look out for myself. Though I must admit I’ll get into even more trouble than I’m already in if you tell people I’m the one who told you about all this stuff, so I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it under your hat.”

  Cowl, Puck corrected me. I wanted to tell him to be quiet so badly it was a physical ache.

  “Tell people?” Ghost laughed. “Who in the world would I tell? If I told people a magical holy spear was hidden under the Washington Monument, the Heroes’ Guild would relieve me of duty and send me to a psychiatrist. Believe me, I’ll keep this between us.” Ghost paused. “On an unrelated note, that’s an interesting cape you’re wearing.”

  “It’s a cloak, not a cape.”

  Darned right I’m a cloak. Set him straight Sage.

  “Sometimes I get chilly,”
I added. “Thin blood, you know.” My cloak cover story would have made a lot more sense if it weren’t the middle of summer.

  “Uh-huh,” Ghost said noncommittally. “It’s strange, but your cloak bears an eerie resemblance to a Japanese artifact that was recently stolen from a nearby art gallery. For some reason, the security footage from the night of the theft all got erased.”

  I’m not Japanese, Puck said derisively. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

  Finally, the Conclave’s Suppression Division was doing its job right, I thought. If only it had been more on the ball when those gargoyles attacked. Maybe I wouldn’t be in the arms of a Hero right now. Big, muscular, sexy arms, I thought wistfully, before chiding myself. Betrayed by my man-hungry glands yet again.

  “Is that a fact? Wow, what a coincidence.” I gave Ghost my best wide-eyed innocent look. It was a hard look to pull off when you were squinting, not innocent, and had mostly forgotten what innocent looked like.

  “Uh-huh,” Ghost said again. I didn’t have to see his face to know he wasn’t buying what I was selling. “A couple of nights ago, a masked woman who wore a red cloak and matches your description was seen putting out a fire at Howard University. She appeared to have superpowers. She saved a lot of lives. But I suppose that’s just a coincidence too.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth. It’s just a coincidence.” I was not going to tell Ghost any more than he needed to know about the magical world or my recent exploits. He’d likely pat me on the back for saving lives and then turn me in for stealing the Cloak of Wisdom. I knew his type. Literally super sanctimonious.

  Ghost said, “There’s an expression in my line of work: If there’s more than one coincidence, it’s not a coincidence.”

  “Oooh, super sleuth aphorisms,” I squealed in my best breathy Willow Wilde impersonation. “Tell me more Mister Detective Man.”

  The fabric around Ghost’s mouth twitched. “You know, I can’t decide if I really like you or if I really despise you.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  I gotta be honest, Puck said. I wouldn’t have guessed you knew the word “aphorisms.” Fortunately, due to Ghost’s presence, I did not have to dignify that with a response.

  We arrived at the Washington Monument. We hovered high in the sky over it, but underneath the cloud cover. The tourists who swarmed the Mall looked like ants from up here.

  So we would not freak people out when we dove down toward the Washington Monument, Ghost turned us invisible. Or at least he said he did. From my perspective, we were still as visible as my donut top was when I pulled my shirt off. I wondered if Puck knew a chub reduction spell. Only the deluge of mockery I would open myself up to kept me from asking.

  Ghost plunged straight down. We dropped next to the tall marble monument like it was a plumb line. It felt like we were going to splatter on the ground like a dropped watermelon. Though I knew we were in no danger, it was hard to stifle a scream. Millions of years of human evolution had programmed my instincts into believing falling from a great height was a very bad thing.

  We passed through the ground like it was made of thin air. We plunged into complete darkness. Ghost had warned me about that. There was no light underground, after all.

  I’m not having fun anymore, Puck said, sounding nervous. It’s dark and scary down here. It reminds me of where I go when you take the cloak off. I want off this ride.

  I opened my Third Eye. The glow I had detected deep under the monument flicked on like it had been turned on by a light switch. The glow was not as vivid as it had been in my astral form, but now that we were deep underground, I could see it, albeit very faintly. I never would have spotted it from aboveground if I hadn’t figured out how to astrally project.

  I still felt Ghost as he cradled me in his arms. He was as tangible as he had always been. The rock and soil we passed through was not tangible, though I vaguely felt it as we passed through it. It felt like someone gently blowing on my hand, except all over, even on my insides. It was creepy.

  We were right on target to hit the glowing structure. Since I couldn’t speak to Ghost while we were intangible, and he could of course not see the underground structure, I squeezed his right arm in the pattern we had worked out while flying to the Washington Monument.

  As per my non-verbal instructions, Ghost slowed his descent. We were almost on top of the glowing ovoid structure. Thanks to my earlier collision with the structure in my astral form, I halfway expected us to bounce off the glowing structure like a dropped ball.

  We did not bounce off it. We passed through the surface of the structure just as easily as we had slid through the dense earth.

  CHAPTER 21

  The egg-like structure was hollow. Once we were through its wall, blinding and painfully bright magical light stabbed at me like thousands of razor-sharp daggers slicing through me. I gasped in pain. It was like when I had looked at the Ark fragment with my Third Eye, only more so.

  I hastily closed my Third Eye. The searing light disappeared.

  “Are you all right?” Ghost asked. I realized he had already asked a couple of times, but I had been so overwhelmed by the magical light that had slammed me, Ghost’s concerned question hadn’t registered.

  I also hadn’t realized Ghost had brought us to a halt. We were standing. I leaned against a wall of the hollow structure, with one hand on the wall, and the other on Ghost’s broad muscular chest.

  Embarrassed, I snatched my hand away from Ghost. “I’m fine,” I said. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the fireworks still going off in my head. I knew not to open my Third Eye in here again. It felt like if I did so, the overwhelming magical power here would burn a hole through my brain. It was no wonder the chamber containing this potent magic had been visible to my astral form even from high in the sky.

  When you looked at the Ark fragment, I said it felt like a truck had hit us, Puck said, his voice woozy. Now it feels like a jumbo jet slammed into us. If the Spear of Destiny isn’t here, I’d hate to be around when you actually find it. I don’t think my aching head’ll be able to stand it.

  My vision was clearing. “I’m pretty sure we’re in the right place,” I said.

  The chamber we stood in was about twice the size of my apartment’s tiny living room. The walls were spherical, forming a dome over the perfectly flat floor Ghost and I stood on. The walls and floor were made of a whitish-gold substance. Looking at it, I would have said it was metal. Touching it did not feel like touching metal, though. It was warm and pliable, like a fine leather that had been left out in the sun.

  Directly under the apex of the dome floated a massive, thick, wooden cross. The cross was perhaps seven feet tall, and its crossbeam was equally long. It was on fire, like one of those crosses the knuckleheads in the Ku Klux Klan burned. The light from the fire was the only illumination in the room. Despite the size of the fire and the enclosed space, the air was fresh and easy to breathe. The fire produced no smoke or sound. It did not seem to consume the wood of the cross.

  It was magic. Hercule Poirot had nothing on me and my deductive powers.

  The main reason I thought we were in the right place was below the hovering burning cross. Seven small mounds of the same substance as the floor and the walls were under the cross. They reminded me of the circular bases of microphone stands. In six of the seven mounds stood spears of differing designs. The ends of their shafts rested in the mounds, with their tips pointed straight up toward the ceiling.

  One of the seven mounds, one near the middle, was empty. I was so busy taking the chamber in, it took me a few moments to realize where the seventh spear was.

  It was on the floor, on the other side of the chamber from where we stood. I walked over there. Ghost followed.

  The spear that had apparently been removed from the empty mound was clutched in the hand of a tall man lying faceup on the floor. I didn’t need to consult a coroner to know the man was dead. Even Stevie Wonder could have seen it
.

  The man’s eyes were hollow and lifeless. His hair was the color of sun-bleached straw. His mouth was stretched wide in a silent scream. His skin was as gray as a storm cloud, and tight around his bones. He was literally skin and bones, like an incredibly powerful vacuum cleaner had sucked everything out of him, including the water in his body. Looking at him was like looking at a mummy. A well-dressed one. He wore a navy-blue suit, a tieless white shirt, and shiny brown shoes. The clothes, while old-fashioned and years out of style, were so spotless it was as though they had been made ten minutes ago. With the man’s body being in the condition it was, it was as if the clothes were worn by a scarecrow.

  Ghost and I stared at the man, then at each other.

  “I’ll be honest,” Ghost sad. “I halfway didn’t believe what you told me about why you wanted to come down here.” His face turned up to the burning cross hovering silently overhead. “But seeing is believing. What do you think happened to this man?”

  I warily eyed the metal-tipped spear in the desiccated man’s hand. “I’d say he came here to do what we’re here to do—retrieve the Spear of Destiny. There are seven spears to pick from. I’m guessing this guy chose the wrong one. A booby trap. Be careful to not touch anything.” I remembered how difficult it had been getting Puck out of the Sackler Gallery. “I should have known retrieving a Relic wouldn’t be as simple as strolling down here and grabbing it.”

  I bent over, peering more closely at the man on the floor. “Could this be Millennium?”

  Ghost bent over as well. “I’ve seen pictures of Millennium without the brown helmet he wore as part of his Hero costume. But this man is so disfigured, I wouldn’t be able to tell if he was my own brother.” Ghost straightened back up. “Even so, I say this isn’t Millennium. Millennium is shorter than this unfortunate gentleman. And also, remember that Millennium’s hands got chopped off during a battle with a Hero. This man’s hands are intact.”

  I’ll tell you who this guy is, Puck said. He’s Mr. Creeping Me Out, that’s who he is.