by Dan Jolley
Who would I have become if I’d had to stay trapped in my room?
All the insults, all the rudeness, every horrible thing Jackson had said and done, all made so much more sense to her now.
Jackson struggled against her, but only for a moment. Lily thought he might have been simply tolerating the hug, until his arms crept up and encircled her. Timidly. As if he wasn’t sure how to do this. He pressed his face against her collarbone, and she felt a tear slide down onto her skin.
Quickly, and without looking up at her, Jackson let her go and turned away and splashed his face with water from the sink. Wordlessly, Lily handed him a nearby hand towel. When he’d dried off, he propped himself on the counter with both hands, his shoulders tensing. “It would, in my opinion, be unnecessary to relate the details of what I told you to Brett, or Kaz. Or anyone . . . ever.”
A smile found its way onto her lips. “Pinkie swear?”
Jackson frowned. “I do not know what that means.”
Lily turned and leaned against the counter beside him. “I can tell it bothers you when you get called Ghost Boy. Right?” Jackson grunted. She took that for a yes. “Well, when I was seven, I, uh, I had to stay indoors for a while. Like, most of a year. You know what everyone started calling me? They called me Kermit the Hermit.”
Jackson stayed facing the counter, but he turned his head enough to look up at her with one eye. “That must have been . . . um. Difficult for you?”
She ran her fingers through her hair. He’s making an effort. “Tell you what. I won’t say a word if you’ll think about making an effort to be, maybe, a little nicer.”
“I seem to recall telling you a few moments ago that I . . . have had very little practice at that.”
“It’s pretty simple. If you’re talking, and the person you’re talking to looks like they want to knock your head off, you might want to stop talking. Maybe even back up and apologize.”
Jackson straightened up and faced her, and he surprised Lily almost speechless by grinning at her. She’d seen him sprout nasty, contemptuous smiles before, but never an actual, honest-to-goodness friendly grin, brief though it was.
“I accept the terms of your proposition, Miss Hernandez. I will make an earnest attempt at being . . . nicer.”
She grinned back. “Good. And for the last time, call me Lily.”
Jackson was about to say something else, but Kaz popped around the corner from the dining room. He had circles under his eyes, and his shoulders looked sort of limp, as if he’d just completed some exhausting feat. “There you two are! Mom and Dad believe me—finally. They’re leaving for my aunt’s place in Santa Barbara. So . . . let’s get going!”
His face somber again, Jackson nodded. “Yes, we do have a comrade-in-arms in peril, do we not? Let the rescuing commence!”
Kaz stared at Jackson for a few seconds, said, “Okay, whatever,” and left the kitchen.
Jackson turned to Lily, his eyebrows and palms raised in bafflement. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. He’s just confused ’cause you didn’t say anything nasty.”
As Lily steered Jackson out of the kitchen, he sighed and said, “This is going to take a great deal of work.”
A few minutes later, Lily stood with Brett and Jackson in the Smith family’s driveway, her hands shoved in her pockets and her line of sight pointedly not directed at Kaz and his parents, who stood on the house’s front porch, in the middle of a tear-filled good-bye. Beside her, Brett toyed with the Wright family ring, which he’d taken from the pocket of the now-defunct Fake Kaz’s hoodie.
Lily already felt pretty rotten that they’d had to drop this bomb on the Smiths and then bail. That rotten feeling got worse when Brett turned to her and said, “We need to get out of here. All of us. Before Kaz starts wavering.”
Lily went to Kaz, who had just managed to pull himself out of his mother’s embrace. “Kaz, we gotta go.”
Kaz looked from his mother to his father and back. “Promise me you’ll leave right away. Promise me.”
Mr. Smith nodded. “I promise. The girls are already packing.”
“I love you both.” Kaz turned to Lily, and under his breath, said, “Get me out of here before they guilt me into staying.”
Lily said “I’m sorry” to the Smiths and led Kaz down the steps and back to Brett and Jackson. “Brett, do you think you can do that invisible water thing if we’re in the air?”
Brett raised his eyebrows. “What, we’re gonna fly? I thought you were worried the illusion wouldn’t work with the wind?”
Lily reached out to feel the breeze. “The air and I had a talk earlier. I think I understand it better now. And this will be faster than Jackson’s disks. No offense, but we need to get to Gabe ASAP.”
Jackson shrugged, almost pleasantly. “None taken.”
Brett grinned toothily. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” He handed the Wright family ring to Kaz. “Try not to lose it this time, okay, man?”
Kaz stowed the ring safely in his backpack as Brett narrowed his eyes at a sprinkler head. The sprinkler’s seal popped, spraying water all over them. Except the water never touched them—instead it curved around them, rapidly solidifying into a spherical version of the cylindrical water curtain Brett had used on them twice before. “I’ve got it, Lil. Any time you’re ready.”
Lily concentrated, summoned up a broad cushion of air, and they left the driveway, soaring smoothly upward and away from the Smith family, out of the neighborhood. Kaz’s eyes never left his house, even as it dwindled to a tiny speck behind them.
“Thrilled as I am to be plunging headlong through the air again,” Jackson said, “I have to ask—Lily, can you maintain this method of travel all the way back to Alcatraz?”
Brett spoke up. “We’re not going to Alcatraz.”
It was a little challenging to talk and maintain the air platform at the same time—at least it was for her; Brett seemed to be doing his part with no problem—but Lily asked, “What do you mean? The bats took him to the island, didn’t they?”
Brett nodded his head in a different direction. “I think that’s what we’re looking for.”
In a detached voice, Kaz said, “Funny . . . I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never been there a single time.”
Lily finally saw what they were talking about. A glimmering, unmistakable golden halo encircled the top of the Transamerica Pyramid, standing out in stark contrast to the low, angry storm clouds beyond it. Brett said, “That’s our target. That where the Dawn is, so that’s where Gabe has to be.”
Lily swung their course around to head for the massive skyscraper.
“Okay. This is it.” Brett turned from the stairwell door and looked each of them in the eye. “Everyone good? Are we ready to do this?” He lingered on Lily. “Sis? You’re not worn out?”
Lily shook her head. They’d decided not to use the elevator for fear of alerting the Eternal Dawn that someone was coming, so that had left the stairs. So many stairs. So. Many. To keep them from being half dead of exhaustion by the time they reached the top, Lily had carefully guided the flow of air so it not only gave them a boost with each step they took but also supplied them with more oxygen than normal. Consequently, they were about to step out onto the skyscraper’s top floor, but they felt as if they’d only taken a brisk walk around the block. “I’m good to go, Brett. Everybody just . . . be careful, okay?”
Brett said, “On three.” He counted down, and as he did, the air crackled around them. All their eyes changed. Kaz, his energy restored since the destruction of the apographon, seemed to tremble with power. Anticipation threatened to squeeze Lily’s heart right out of her chest. There could be anything on the other side of that door! Another leviathan! Two leviathans! What are we even doing up here?
Brett reached “three” and pushed the door open—and a pair of hunters howled and launched themselves through it, jaws cranked open wide, horrible fangs ready to sink into vulnerable flesh.
The four of them piled out of the stairwell and paused. Brett pointed off to their left. “I can hear chanting! This way!”
As they rounded a corner, three members of the Dawn, dressed in full robes and with long, serrated daggers in their hands, rushed out to meet them. Or they tried to. They had taken no more than two steps before Kaz snarled, and the concrete of the floor ripped up through the carpet and clamped around their feet like heavy stone fists.
Brett pulled a column of water out of a pipe—wrecking a small section of the wall to do it—and used the twisting, curling element to smash the weapons out of the Dawn members’ hands. Jackson then sent three fist-sized golden spheres rocketing into their jaws, and the cultists crumpled to the floor.
“I’m pretty sure it’s about to get bad, guys,” Lily said, her eyes on Jackson. “Think you could hook us up with a boost?”
“Done.” Shimmering lines of golden radiance reached out from Jackson’s body to Lily, Kaz, and Brett, and Lily immediately felt her elemental power grow.
“Come on!” Brett called, apparently abandoning any hope of sneaking up on the Dawn.
As powerful as Lily felt—as powerful as she knew they all felt—she didn’t really care about losing the element of surprise. All she wanted to do was rescue Gabe.
And keep the rest of us from getting hurt. Even Jackson. Since their conversation in Kaz’s kitchen, she’d felt sort of responsible for him. We’re all getting out of this.
With Brett leading the way, they bounded up a short flight of stairs. Lily saw a small, metallic sign at the base of the stairs that read “Conference Room,” with an upward-pointing arrow, and the four of them emerged into a broad, spacious room with floor-to-ceiling windows lining all four walls.
In front of them, silhouetted against the vast, panoramic view of the city below and lit by the circling magick halo above, Primus and about thirty members of the Dawn had Gabe strapped down to a makeshift altar. Gabe’s eyes were closed, and his head lolled to one side. Lily heard herself gasp—she’d expected him to be restrained, but he looked really out of it. We have to get him out of here! Hunters prowled through the crowd, winding around the cultists’ legs and panting.
Poised at the altar, Primus chanted in the Dawn’s horrid, buzzing language. She held a slim silver dagger high in her right hand, and in her left, the Emerald Tablet glowed like a lantern.
Lily’s power blazed within her, and with a single gust of wind she sent ten Dawn members tumbling feet over head away from the sacrificial ritual.
A cultist screamed, “Stop them! Don’t let them interfere!”
The cultists produced knives and guns and charged at them, but five fell immediately when the concrete of the floor surged up and grabbed their legs. One man screamed, and Lily thought she might have heard a shinbone break.
Jackson darted past her, throwing out glowing golden disks and spheres as fast as his hands could move. They cracked against ribs and arms and faces, and five more cultists fell, groaning and clutching the places where the solid-magick projectiles had hammered into them.
But Primus had kept chanting, and now she raised the silver dagger above her head. Lily reached deep into the air, and, with a scream that sounded like the violent wind of a catastrophic thunderstorm, she unleashed a colossal pulse of air upon Primus and the remaining cultists.
It wasn’t just that the robed men and women careened into one another, and into the floor, like bowling pins after a strike. Lily had spent the time climbing the stairs learning how to feed extra oxygen into the air. Now she flexed her elemental muscles in the opposite direction and forced almost all the oxygen away from the Eternal Dawn.
Let’s see how well you can chant without any oxygen, you creeps!
Primus gasped for breath, grabbed at her throat, then dropped the Emerald Tablet and staggered backward. Lily sent fresh, revitalizing air into Gabe’s lungs as she sprinted to the altar. Gabe’s eyes flickered open, but she could tell at a glance there was something very wrong. “Gabe! Gabe, are you okay? Can you get up?”
She had to put her ear close to his lips to hear his whisper: “Sh . . . shackles . . .” Of course! Duh! A pair of gray metal cuffs bound Gabe’s wrists to the altar, and as she opened the clasps to free him, odd runes flared to life and died on their surface. Gabe struggled to sit up, and he gave her a grateful smile as she slipped an arm around his shoulders to help him. “Cavalry’s . . . what you guys are . . .”
She smiled right back, her legs weak with relief that he was okay. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here. I think I can blow out a window and just . . .”
But Lily couldn’t finish the word. She couldn’t breathe! She tried to say, “What’s happening?” but the words only came out as bubbles. The world clouded over, blurred and distorted and cold . . .
She turned her head to see Jackson and Kaz to her left. Both of them hovering about a foot off the floor.
Both of them encased in spheres of water.
Brett stood between them, his eyes glowing an intense, deep blue-green and a truly foul grin plastered on his face. His words were distorted as they traveled through the layer of water that encased her, but Lily understood them well enough:
“You’re not going anywhere, mi hermana.”
No.
Primus might as well have stabbed Lily through the heart. It couldn’t have hurt any worse.
Oh God, no. Not Brett. Not my brother!
Brett was her rock. They squabbled and fought, but he was someone in her life she knew she could count on, knew she could talk to, knew she could come to if she needed help. Even more than her parents—she could tell Brett anything. Brett was the one who’d stood up for her when she got picked on for using her inhaler. He’d been the one who’d talked to her the whole way home from school and promised her everything would be okay. No matter how bad she felt, Brett could always make her laugh.
But now . . .
Was it possible? Jackson had been right the whole time! Brett had gotten Gabe captured! Brett had betrayed them. And now . . . was Brett going to kill them?
Is he going to kill me? His own sister? Why?
The enormity of it was too much. Lily felt as if her mind were about to crack in half.
Gabe, the only one of Lily’s friends not encased in water, lurched for the Emerald Tablet and snatched it up off the floor.
But with a hideous shriek, Primus threw herself over the altar and drove the silver blade into Gabe’s back.
Lily tried to scream. She couldn’t.
Gabe staggered, his mouth wide. He didn’t make a sound as he crumpled to the floor.
Lily’s vision began to darken around the edges. A calm, distant part of her acknowledged the truth: I am drowning. Her tears disappeared into the water as she stared, transfixed, at what was happening to Gabe.
She’d seen it before, when the same ritual was performed with Brett, back in the theater: blood flowed from Gabe’s wound, but instead of simply falling to the floor, it wrapped around his body, becoming a slick, grotesque cocoon. The blood cocoon engulfed the Emerald Tablet as well, and as it began to consume the book of power, a wave of energy exploded from it. The sight was impossible to process. It’s like . . . shining darkness. Like the deepest, blackest shadow in the whole of the universe, that somehow blazed with blinding light.
The Tablet shivered once. Twice.
And imploded.
The Emerald Tablet imploded as if suddenly sucked into a microscopic black hole, and a blast of force ripped out of the place where it had been like a massive bomb detonating. The shockwave tore into Lily, and while it hurt every square inch of her—Like being hit by a train—it also knocked her completely out of Brett’s water prison.
Lily slammed to the floor right next to Kaz and Jackson. She was lucky enough to land facing them. She could finally breathe again, but the pain of the blast was so overwhelming that she was afraid she might still pass out.
Where he stood behind Kaz and Jackson, Brett went rigid. His back suddenly arched as if he’d been electrocuted. Lily could see every muscle in his body clenching tight—and at the same time something exploded out of Gabe’s blood cocoon like a geyser. Lily watched, her face not five feet from the spectacle, and instead of passing out, now she was sure she was going to throw up.
It looked like . . . like shark chum. Like the scraps a butcher threw out at the end of a day. And it smelled even worse. Gory knots and looping ribbons of blood and flesh pumped out of the blood cocoon, splatting onto the floor, and then Brett actually did vomit.
But what emerged from her brother’s mouth had nothing to do with the contents of his stomach. Instead, long, narrow segments of . . . shadow fell to the floor. The same kind of impossible shining shadow that had exploded from the Emerald Tablet. Brett bent double, and Lily screamed, because hands, hands with too many fingers, hands made of darkness, began to emerge from between Brett’s lips and push and pull their way out of him.
“Brett!” She couldn’t scream his name loudly enough, her throat raw with fear and horror. “Brett!”
Just as the shapeless mass of gut-churning gore had piled out of the blood cocoon, the living, moving mass of darkness finished dragging itself out of Brett Hernandez . . . and as Brett collapsed, his eyes rolling back in his head, that living darkness flowed into the collection of amorphous carnage from the blood cocoon.