The Shadow City

by Dan Jolley

  He pulled his gaze away, scrambled to his feet, and ran to his uncle.

  “Uncle Steve! Are you okay?”

  Both of Uncle Steve’s eyes had blackened, and blood poured down over his upper lip. “It broke my nose,” he said, his words a little mangled. Steve felt the tip of his nose very gingerly, squeezed his eyes shut, and with a sharp motion snapped something back into place.

  Gabe gawked at him. “Did you just set your own broken nose?”

  Uncle Steve groaned as he got up. “What, you think that’s the first time I’ve picked a fight with a giant mind-reading monster from Arcadia?”

  Gabe had no idea whether his uncle was joking or not. Aria still stood nearby, watching them both, her expression calm and unreadable.

  Gabe heaved a long sigh. His family was never going to be normal. But they were his. He glanced back to where the horrific creature once stood. And they sure get the job done.

  “Come on,” Uncle Steve said, carefully holding a handkerchief to his still-bleeding nose. “We have a breach to find.”

  As they finally approached the top of the spire, Aria tilted her head up again. “I can feel it.” A few minutes later they found another towering set of doors. They shoved them open and stepped out onto the roof of Alcatraz Citadel.

  They were so high up, Gabe felt like he was on a plane. The bay below them and the city beyond it looked so tiny, they didn’t even seem real.

  “Careful,” Uncle Steve said. “I can keep the winds more or less under control, but don’t get close to the edge.”

  Aria said nothing. She just glided out toward what they had all been searching for. The breach. A golden crack in the air, about three feet off the ground. Gabe and Uncle Steve trailed after her, and as he got closer to it, Gabe realized he could see the blue sky of home through it.

  “This is it!” Gabe felt like laughing. “There’s Earth! It’s right there!”

  Aria circled the breach, calmly examining it, and Gabe’s heart plummeted when she reached out and passed her hand right through the gap, as if waving it through a hologram. “It is not a doorway, Gabe,” she said dreamily. “You cannot climb through a sunbeam.”

  The red sky churned angrily overhead.

  Gabe turned to Uncle Steve. “What do we do?”

  Steve pulled the Mirror Book out of his jacket. As he did, something seemed to catch his eye. “I don’t know. But they might.” He nodded toward the breach, and when Gabe saw what he was looking at, he let out a whoop of joy.

  Gabe might not have been able to cross through the breach, but he could certainly see through it, and there, waving to him from the other side, were Brett, Lily, Kaz, and Jackson. Gabe waved back. “Can you hear me? Guys! Can you hear my voice?”

  Lily stepped forward. Gabe’s heart did a sort of clumsy backflip in his chest. “We can hear you! Are you okay?” He had to strain to make out her words. It was like shouting down a wind tunnel.

  “We’re okay! We’ve got the Arcadia version of the Emerald Tablet. It’s called the Mirror Book, and—”

  “Gabe, listen!” Kaz bustled up beside Lily. “We’re going to try to get you back! We’ve got the apographon—sort of . . .” He held up the replica’s decapitated head. “We’re going to try to swap it for you! Okay?”

  Gabe wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but Kaz didn’t give him time.

  “Just sit tight, all right? We’re still setting up!” He scampered away from the breach, digging around in his backpack. Gabe could see Lily and Jackson helping him, arranging things in a circle.

  “Gabe?” Brett stepped forward.

  His friend’s appearance took Gabe off-guard. It looked like Brett had lost a good ten pounds. His skin had taken on a grayish tone, and there were dark circles under his eyes. But more than that, Brett looked . . . sad. Like someone who’d cried so much there weren’t any tears left anymore.

  “Gabe, I need to apologize to you.”

  Gabe glanced around. Uncle Steve and his mother stood several paces away, talking quietly, the Mirror Book held between them.

  “Don’t. Brett, it wasn’t your fault.”

  “But it was! I’m so sorry. I’m the one who tricked you all into doing this. I’m the one who got you stuck over there. I started all of this because I was trying to see Charlie again.”

  Gabe shook his head. “The Dawn sent me here! It wasn’t—”

  Brett cut him off. “There’s more. There’s so much more. When I came back, it wasn’t me. It was Thorne! Jonathan Thorne was inside me. Possessing me. He rode me around like—like a freaking bicycle. And I couldn’t fight back. I tried, but I just . . . he was too strong. I tried so hard.”

  Gabe took a step back.

  His skin was crawling as if he had ants all over him. That wasn’t Brett with his nose in the Emerald Tablet. It wasn’t him putting up that incredible invisibility curtain or getting the apographon to work. He remembered how suspicious Jackson had been of Brett’s abilities, and the skin-crawling sensation got worse. Gabe assumed Jackson had just been jealous, but Ghost Boy had been right. Maybe Brett did do something to the wards at Argent Court to lead the Dawn to us!

  Gabe felt as if he’d just discovered that a stranger had been hiding in the walls of his house, watching him for hours on end. Gabe said, “Holy crap.” And when he couldn’t think of anything else to say, he said, “Holy crap,” again.

  “I’m sorry,” Brett said.

  Gabe didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone look as miserable as Brett did at that moment. He tried to put himself in Brett’s shoes. It took a little more effort than he wanted to admit. Finally, Gabe made himself say, “Look, you told me yourself. You couldn’t fight back against Thorne, right? And you tried. Believe me, I know what it’s like to not be in control.”

  Brett couldn’t seem to look Gabe in the eye. “Thorne is here in San Francisco—all of him. He’s going to sacrifice everybody in the city, man. Kill everybody in a series of earthquakes, worse than the one in 1906, and then use all those sacrifices at the same time to blow down the walls between here and Arcadia. It’s already started.”

  Gabe’s insides dropped into a distant, cold, dark place. Sacrifice everyone in San Francisco?

  He took another step back from the breach. All those lives . . .

  They’d talked about the 1906 earthquake in school. He knew how many deaths it had caused. And the city was so much bigger now. So many more people lived there.

  And all those deaths would just be a drop in the bucket if Jonathan Thorne actually succeeded in merging Arcadia and San Francisco. Arcadia and Earth.

  Gabe came to a decision. He knew he had to act on it quickly, because if he spent any more time thinking about it, he’d talk himself out of it. And this wasn’t the kind of thing he could let himself get talked out of.

  “Brett. Get everybody else where they can hear me.”

  “But . . .”

  “Just do it. Now. Please.”

  Gabe paced back and forth while Brett called their friends over to the breach.

  Lily said, “Gabe? What is it? Did something happen over there?”

  Through the breach, Gabe watched the four of them stumble as one, struggling to keep their balance. Thorne’s earthquakes. Behind them, he saw a tree topple to the ground. He knew the quakes would only get worse.

  Unless we finally end this.

  Gabe ran his hands through his hair. “Guys. Quit messing around with the apographon. You know the ritual to destroy Arcadia, right? You figured out how to fix it to account for all five elements? Well, you’ve got to do it. We’ve got to do it. Now. Get it set up, and I’ll do my part from here.”

  Kaz looked as if someone had struck him in the face. Brett turned away, and Gabe thought he saw some tears welling up. Lily shook her head violently. Only Jackson—who met Gabe’s eyes for a moment—seemed to understand.

  “Forget it!” Words had finally come to Lily. “We can get you out of there! We can save you!”

  Gabe smi
led at her.

  After all he had been through. All that his family and friends had been through. It all came down to this one choice, didn’t it? Gabe wished he could hold Lily’s hand as he spoke.

  “I’m with my family. I’m where I’m supposed to be. Don’t worry about us.” He swallowed hard. “Arcadia’s got to be destroyed. It’s the only way to save the city—and maybe the whole planet. We’re the only ones who can stop Thorne. So let’s stop him.”

  20

  Lily watched as Jackson walked Gabe through the ritual. Gabe seemed to understand, and accept, what Jackson was saying.

  Kaz was clearly having a harder time with the accepting part. “This is—we can’t—” Kaz tripped over his words. “We can’t do this! I can’t do this!” He folded his arms and set his jaw. “I won’t do this. No way. Forget it.”

  Jackson finished talking to Gabe and came over to them, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Lily shot him a pointed look and he stayed silent. Lily went to Kaz and put her hands on his shoulders. “Think about what’ll happen if we don’t do it.”

  Kaz’s lower lip trembled. “How can you say that? He’ll die! We’ll be . . . we’ll be killing him! Killing our best friend!”

  Lily felt tears well up again in her eyes, but she decided she’d had enough tears. She could break down later. Right now they had a job to do. “Kaz, if we don’t destroy Arcadia, Thorne’s going to smash open the walls between the worlds. Gabe will still die if that happens. Everyone will.”

  She glanced at Brett, hoping for some support, but her brother stood staring at the ground. “Red snake. Red snake. Red snake.” He’d been whispering that to himself since he’d finished talking to Gabe.

  Kaz sank to the ground and hugged his backpack to his chest. He wasn’t crying, not quite, but he rocked back and forth and ground his teeth. Lily knelt beside him, and, to her surprise, Jackson crouched down on Kaz’s other side. He looked as if he wanted to help. Lily appreciated it, but she really hoped Jackson’s less-than-tactful personality wouldn’t end up making things worse.

  “Kaz, I don’t want to do this, either,” Lily said. “I don’t want to lose Gabe. I don’t want to do this to his uncle or his mom. But we don’t have any other choice.”

  Kaz kept his chin lowered and his eyes closed and didn’t say anything.

  Quietly, Jackson said, “Kazuo, by deciding to do this we are deciding to save the world. Do you realize that? It is a terrible choice to be asked to make. For us as well as for Gabriel. But we are the only ones who can make it. We five, here in this moment. Kazuo, think of all the families in the city just like yours. All those mothers and fathers. All those younger sisters. No one should be asked to do what we must do now. But the only way to save all those lives is to let Gabriel go.”

  Now Kaz did start to cry. A low wail escaped him, and the ground around them trembled as green light flashed from between his closed eyelids. He sniffled and looked up at Lily and Jackson. “All right. Fine. It’s not fair. But all right.”

  Lily squeezed his shoulder and stood. Brett still hadn’t moved, and she went to him. “Hermano? Are you still with us?”

  Pain clouded Brett’s face. “I don’t blame you for asking.”

  “Still can’t get this ‘red snake’ out of your head?”

  “Part of the time it seems like a memory, or like I’m having déjà vu. But then other times it’s like I’ve got this scratch. On my brain.”

  Lily wanted to help her brother. She did not want to have to force a decision on him. Especially this decision. It left a terrible taste in her mouth just to say it out loud. “Brett, if we’re really going to do this, we need you.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at her sideways. “So that’s it, then? There’s no other way out?”

  “I wish there were another way,” she said. “But we can’t let Thorne do this to the whole world. Can we?”

  Brett shook his head. “No. We have no choice.”

  As if in response, another violent shock wave made San Francisco tremble. They watched as a tall building across the bay swayed and began to fall. Clouds of dust and smoke turned the air above San Francisco into a thick haze. Lily knew she couldn’t possibly hear the screams of pain and fear from this far away, but they were all too easy to imagine. She wondered if there were any people left to scream at this point, or if they’d all been encased in blood cocoons.

  Brett turned away and hurried to Kaz. Then he, Kaz, and Jackson started preparing for the new ritual. Kaz pulled items out of his backpack, while Brett and Jackson began to add interlocking glyphs of circles and shapes onto the ground. This ritual wasn’t that different from the one they had planned to use to rescue Gabe—it would only require a few adjustments.

  Lily glanced back at the breach and saw Gabe standing there, watching the whole scene. She went to him.

  “I hate this,” she called out. Her heart felt constricted, like a wound-up rubber band, and she didn’t think it would take much more for it to tear apart. “I want you to be here. I want you to be okay.”

  Gabe smiled. “I know, Lil, me too. But listen, I have to talk to my mom and Uncle Steve, okay?”

  Lily nodded. She couldn’t say anything else.

  Gabe raised one hand, and Lily tried to press hers against it, but they passed through each other. Matching mirages. Gabe gave her one last look and turned and walked away.

  Somehow Lily kept herself together as she turned back to the other boys. Kaz had a notebook and several loose-leaf sheets of paper spread out around him, and Jackson and Brett glanced at them frequently as they positioned small tokens of their elements around the edge of the circle. Kaz concentrated, his slate-gray eyes flashing green. His fingers moved in intricate patterns. Matching symbols carved themselves into the circle at each elemental station. When he was finished, a ring of stone had risen up through the soil, forming a wide circle around the breach.

  Jackson caught her eye and came to stand beside her. She said, “This will work, right? Even with Gabe over there?”

  “If our research is accurate, I believe Gabriel’s participation from the other side will actually strengthen our efforts. We are fortunate that Greta and Dr. Conway had the notion to use Gabriel’s mother to the same effect.”

  Kaz’s eyes turned dark again as he looked around at Brett and Jackson and Lily. “I think we’re ready. Just one last touch, and then we say the words together.”

  Lily’s stomach tightened painfully. She glanced through the breach, hoping to say at least a few more words to Gabe, but he was too far away, talking with his uncle and his mother. She whispered, “Good-bye, Gabe.” Then to Kaz, “Okay.”

  Kaz carefully took the ring with the Wright family crest and put it on the ground directly below the breach. When it was situated just so, he backed away and held out sheets of paper to everyone. “Here. I’ve written it down.”

  Lily took her sheet of paper. She’d seen symbols like these all over the research notes compiled by Greta Jaeger and Mr. Conway, but never arranged like this. She started to say, “Kaz, I don’t know how to pronounce any of this,” but as she stared at them, the symbols began to make sense. And the more sense they made, the more it felt as if a swarm of flies had begun burrowing into her brain.

  This is the language we heard Primus speaking!

  A feeling of dread consumed her.

  She glanced up at the breach, and Gabe was back—but not looking at her. Not making eye contact with any of them. Instead, he held what looked like a silver version of the Emerald Tablet.

  That’s got to be the “Mirror Book” they were talking about. The substitute for the Tablet.

  Kaz motioned for them to take their places around the circle. Lily went to hers, and it struck her all over again—the choice they had to make, the loss they were about to face.

  Kaz started reading off his sheet.

  This is it, Lily realized. Throughout their preparations, she’d known they’d reach this moment when they’d ha
ve to say good-bye to Gabe. She still didn’t feel ready. But she knew they didn’t have a choice.

  She joined in, along with Brett and Jackson, and as they spoke in unison, Jackson’s eyes turned bright gold. He channeled power out along the circumference of the circle. Connecting them. Boosting them. Brett’s eyes shifted to blue-green, and she felt hers phase into silver-white.

  From the other side of the breach, Gabe read from the Mirror Book, his clear green eyes replaced by tiny burning stars.

  The breach shimmered, wavering. Lily didn’t know if that was supposed to happen, but she didn’t want to take the chance of interrupting the ritual, so she kept reading. She wished she understood more of the strange, twisted words they were saying.

  The ground shook beneath them.

  Was that another quake from across the bay?

  Kaz’s eyes flickered with uncertainty, gray to dark brown and back again, but like her, he kept reading. Lily hated the sound of the Dawn’s awful language so much, so much, and she wanted to stop, wanted to summon another tornado, a storm so powerful it could rip the breach open and let her bring Gabe and his family through it safely.

  She knew that couldn’t happen.

  Instead, she and her friends were condemning Gabe to death.

  She could feel tears building up, pain spearing through her.

  Finish the ritual, she commanded herself. Do it, Lily. DO IT.

  They came to the end of the page. Finally Lily was able to stop talking. The buzzing of flies in her brain died away . . .

  . . . and the Wright family ring twitched.

  The English words feeling oddly unfamiliar in her mouth, Lily asked, “Is that supposed to happen?”

  Jackson let the circle of glowing, golden magick fade as he frowned at the signet ring.

  Kaz said, “I don’t . . . know?”

  The ring twitched again, and . . . uncoiled.

  Brett gasped.

  The ring lengthened. Its smooth metal surface grew scaly. Tiny blue eyes appeared, a long, forked tongue flicked out, and the scales turned a deep bloodred.