We arrived on Johns Island early for the eclipse, and found it crawling with people, all angling for a spot at Angel Oak, all being turned away due to a scheduled “private event” that closed access to the mother tree.
I drove, with Lukas up front, Emma and Calista in the back. As we sat in traffic, Calista cracked a window. “Ugh. This entire island is crawling with shifters,” she complained. “No offense, Lukas, I mean the furry kind.”
“None taken, Cal.”
“Are they are trying to get to Angel Oak to sacrifice themselves to Ezekiel, or to protect him?” Emma asked.
“Whatever reason they think they’re going, if things go according to Ezekiel’s plan, it’ll be a bloodbath.”
When it became obvious we weren’t going to make any headway, I pulled over into a Piggly Wiggly parking lot and we began to walk. After the third catcall, a perturbed Calista announced that she’d take us the rest of the way.
We took of to a mix of astonished stares and gasps and knowing nods. The paranormal element out and about on the day of a major eclipse was considerable.
Calista intended to take us all the way to the tree, but Lukas spotted Dr. Ibis and Palmer approaching the gate, so she took us down there.
Palmer and Lukas embraced, we each hugged Dr. Ibis, and we proceeded down the tree-lined path. Two large, shaggy men blocked the road, but it took only a glance from Calista to convince them to give us a wide berth.
To everyone’s surprise, twenty minutes from the arrival of the eclipse, we found Angel Oak completely deserted.
36 Emma
Lukas, Palmer, Briar, Calista and Dr. Ibis joined me at Angel Oak. The anticipated showdown with Ezekiel Walker, however, seemed unlikely to materialize, since we were alone.
We fanned out, each in turn communing with the tree. I ran my fingers along a branch so heavy it lay on the ground, marveling at the sheer size of her.
Briar and Lukas walked hand in hand admiring the tree, while Dr. Ibis found a seat on another low branch and began to eat a long piece of saltwater taffy. Palmer ignored the “No climbing” signs and leapt from one branch to another until he was over twenty feet from the ground.
Calista stood silently staring at the three from a distance until she quietly remarked, “They’re here.”
Three blacked-out Navigators crunched their way down the driveway, coming to a stop just outside the entrance.
Ezekiel exited the second vehicle, accompanied by a wizened old black man in a black suit and top hat, slumped over in a wheelchair. They were escorted by four small mountains disguised as men, each dressed in black suits that barely contained their bulging physiques.
Ezekiel waved his hand, and the backs of the first and third SUVs swung open. From the back of each came a crystalline casket of sorts, one containing Aleta, the other Virginia.
As they crossed the threshold into the area near the tree, our group came together.
“Are they…?” Briar couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“They yet live,” Dr. Ibis confirmed. “But if Ezekiel has his way, thy won’t be in that condition much longer.”
Ezekiel and his people payed us no mind. They walked directly to the trunk of the tree, where the containers holding Aleta and Virginia settled gently on the ground.
His four hulking bodyguards split into pairs, standing watch over the caskets, while Ezekiel walked toward us.
“Am I mistaken, or are you short a Belle?” Palmer seethed, and took a step forward, but Calista stepped in front of the merman and raised a hand to indicate that he should exercise patience.
“You have something that belongs to us,” Calista responded. “In fact, three somethings.”
Ezekiel feigned surprise. He paced a bit, deep in thought. “Something that belongs to someone else… hmm… oh, yes, on that subject, my associate, Papa Gefrard,” he signaled to the man in the wheelchair, “has misplaced his mind. It occurs to me that one of you might have it. I urge you to return it at once.
“That’s the houngan,” Dr. Ibis whispered to us.
“You seek to parley?” Calista challenged. “Accepted. One filthy houngan brain for Aleta Indigo, Virginia Embers, and our friend Fiona. Oh, and to sweeten the deal for you, I’ll let you leave this place alive. It’s an offer that won’t be repeated, and I’m open to no negotiation.”
Anger flashed in Ezekiel’s dark eyes.
“You’ll restore Papa Gefrard because I say so. The lives of the twins are forfeit. Dr. Ibis has likewise meddled in my affairs for the last time.
“I’m a reasonable man, thought. Calista, you may go once you’ve released my associate’s mind. And you may take the young merm… well, the former merman with you. Palmer Martin, is it? He’s single now, no? Maybe the two of you can comfort each other. The world will be very different soon.
“Can you feel it? The power? It’s intoxicating, is it not?”
I could feel a tingling in my extremities as ripples of magical energy coursed through me. It was beginning to happen. The eclipse was close.
A misty rain began to fall.
“Do you want your friends, Calista?” Ezekiel taunted. “Come and get them.”
At the predetermined phrase, the four men with Ezekiel shifted. Two of them into black bears, one into a large wolf, and the last into a mountain lion. The beasts paced near the trunk.
“Enough!” Calista declared. She levitated, and Ezekiel matched her.
They met fifty feet above us. Waves of energy radiated from them, enough initially to knock all of us off our feet, including the shifters.
Neither of them moved, as their minds did battle, trying to telepathically dissect each other.
Palmer and Lukas regained their footing as Ezekiel’s shifters did, and they charged into a violent confrontation.
Despite losing their ability to change, our mermen possessed blinding speed and strength beyond the scope of ordinary men.
Lukas and Palmer attacked the larger bear first, Lukas leaping onto a branch and then down onto the bear’s back, trying to establish a choke hold. Palmer stood in front of the bear, avoiding paw slashes and delivering his own blows. Between the two of them, the bear was actually staggered, but their victory was short-lived. Lukas found himself tangled up on the ground with the mountain lion, and the second bear would have knocked Palmer’s handsome face clean off his shoulders if he hadn’t ducked and rolled at the last possible moment.
The wolf climbed the tree, taking the branches two and three at time reaching a height at which he could attack Calista. He leapt for her, teeth bared in a snarl, but she raised a hand and “caught” him in mid-air before sending him crashing back into the tree.
“I think I can awaken Virginia and Aleta, but I need time. You two have to do something about those shifters,” Dr. Ibis instructed us.
“Bad kitty,” Briar said, doing something to the mountain lion that made it howl and retreat. The bears had begun to batter Palmer, so I turned my attention and amplified abilities to them. In an instant, they were both on their feet, good as new.
The sky began to darken as the eclipse went into effect.
“Foolish girl,” Ezekiel shouted, and Calista found herself slammed into the lead Navigator. “Ah, ah, none of that,” He called out as he neared the ground, sending Briar and Dr. Ibis flying across the lawn.
Calista’s comeuppance cost her control of the houngan, and the man in the wheelchair rose to his feet and stretched as if he’d just awakened from a deep sleep.
From the third Navigator, two men I recognized from Martha Lou’s as lizard men led a terrified Fiona across the lawn toward the trunk of the Angel Oak.
I tried to extend my healing energies to Aleta and Virginia, but it did no good.
All our heavy hitters had been eliminated, and the werebears were more annoyed by Palmer and Lukas rather than suffering any sort of damage.
If things weren’t hopeless, they were on a first-name basis with the emotion.
“Shall I tak
e her, Ezekiel?” The houngan asked, all the while leering at me.
Just then, the lizard men and Fiona reached Ezekiel. One of them presented their master with an odd sort of dagger.
“Do you know what this is, Papa Gefrard?”
The voodoo man shrugged.
“It’s a dragon’s tooth. Set in sterling silver. Razor-sharp and with some interesting properties. It can cut through anything, for one,” Ezekiel swung it through the air and then held it up, admiring the craftsmanship. “Second, when I kill someone with it, I gain any supernatural abilities they may have had. Interesting, no?”
“Fascinating,” he replied. “Now I’m going to possess the healer before she has a chance to help any of her friends. The eclipse is here.”
“All you’re going to do,” Ezekiel replied, “is taste this blade.” With that, he plunged the tip into the houngan’s throat, the older man collapsing to the ground, his top hat rolling away.
“There, girl, I saved you. Being held under a houngan’s sway is no laughing matter. You should thank me.”
Day became night as the eclipse went full. Paranormal activity aside, it was downright eerie.
Ezekiel telekinetically lifted the lids from the two caskets.
Lukas fell to the werewolf, who’d recovered from Calista’s attack. Palmer was exhausted, but still managed to avoid a killing blow.
Ezekiel, drunk with power, and soaking in The Spectral via the rift opened by the eclipse, walked over to the nearest lizard man and slew him without warning, cutting his throat with the blade. He froze the second with a glance and plunged the dragon’s tooth into his chest.
Ezekiel turned to look at me and transformed into a lizard. He couldn’t help himself but to test his new abilities, like a child with new toys on Christmas morning.
He laughed, a deep, rich laugh of victory.
The werewolf and lion both fled. The bears stayed and were slain by a wave of Ezekiel’s hand.
Fiona ran away, toward where Dr. Ibis and Briar had been “thrown.” Ezekiel didn’t seem to care. I found myself frozen to the spot, unable to move.
The entire time, I’d been focusing my healing energies on Aleta and Virginia, trying desperately to fix whatever ailed them.
“I should have had this crafted into an axe,” Ezekiel commented.
He started hacking away with his knife at the massive trunk of the Angel Oak, and with each cut, a bluish sort of smoky energy seeped out of the tree and seemed to enter him.
Wind began to whip through the branches, and thunder crashed violently. Hailstones pelted the Earth as Mother Nature itself seemed to object to Ezekiel’s actions.
Ezekiel’s blade lived up to his boasts, going through sections of the trunk like a steak knife through a banana. He was a quarter of the way through the trunk when I took advantage of his distraction, scrambling to get next to Virginia. I put both hands on her face and willed her to wake up, to fight through whatever Ezekiel and his voodoo man had done to her.
“Good idea,” he commented when he saw what I was up to. “They should see this.” Ezekiel turned a palm skyward and made a lifting motion. Virginia and Aleta were awake.
“Ezekiel!” Aleta screamed. “You have to stop!” She went to climb out of her box, but Ezekiel swept his hand back down and she was forced back inside the casket, with the lid returning to its place.
The weather felt like a category five hurricane. The rain and hail came down sideways, and the wind made it difficult to stand.
Virginia sat up and smiled at me, amidst all the chaos. “Goodbye, sweet girl. I apologize, but it’s the only way. Take care of your sister, I owe her years of love.”
Somehow, I could hear her clearly despite the howling wind.
“What do you… Virginia, no, I can’t… you can’t…”
She was gone. She kay back down in the casket, shimmered, and vanished.
Aleta banged her fist on the side of her box and hung her head.
Ezekiel hacked away in a frenzy, oblivious to Virginia’s disappearance. The great tree groaned and swayed.
“Ezekiel? Momma? Can anybody hear me? Aleta?” A small voice called out from behind me. A boy’s voice. “What’s happening? We gotta get in out of dis rain!”
I turned to see a slender boy, somewhere in his mid-teens, wearing rags, limping across the grass.
In an instant, the rain and wind ceased, and everything went calm.
“Ezekiel, is that you? What kind of tree dat is?”
Ezekiel turned slowly, his jaw hanging open. “Em-Emanuel?”
“What happen to you, brudder? How you got so big?” The boy asked. He spotted Aleta in the box and looked baffled. “Is dat Aleta? Wha’ you done to her? Mr. Walker find us out here he gon’ whip us fo sho.”
“Emanuel? How… Is this one of your tricks, Aleta?”
“No,” Aleta replied. “He’s real. Oh my God, he’s real.” Aleta covered her mouth with her hand and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Emanuel couldn’t have been more confused.
Ezekiel stopped his work on Angel Oak, leaving it swaying and ready to topple. He cast his knife aside and ran to Emanuel, stopping short to look him up and down. Under any other circumstance, it would have been a heart-wrenching reunion.
Palmer Martin spotted the dragon’s-tooth blade on the ground and made a break for it.
He covered the ground at speed which would make an NFL wide receiver envious, picking up the blade, leaping to where Ezekiel and Emanuel embraced, and sinking it into the center of Ezekiel’s back in one motion, all the way to the hilt. He pulled down smoothly, rending Ezekiel nearly in two.
The eclipse began to break, sunlight streaming down into the unnatural darkness, and Ezekiel Walker’s back split, blue Spectral energy pouring forth.
The blade glowed in Palmer’s hand, and he shuddered as Ezekiel’s magics attempted to take root in the merman’s body.
Calista arrived, and with a wave removed the lid from Aleta’s coffin. Aleta climbed up and out of her makeshift cell. Dr. Ibis, Briar, and Lukas shuffled over to witness the carnage.
Aleta shielded Emanuel’s eyes, pulling him away with Dr. Ibis’s assistance.
Palmer trembled and groaned as the power swirled inside him. He stretched a hand toward Lukas and Lukas fell back, his legs merging and shifting into fish form and then back again.
“Emma, you’ve got to save the Oak!” Calista shouted. The blue energy that seeped from it had gone dark, and the entire tree looked ready to fall. A call of “Timber!” and a nudge would probably do it.
I scrambled to the gash and put my hands on the trunk, willing it shut, sending healing energy into the void.
Behind me, Palmer collapsed to the ground, holding his head, desperately struggling to cope with the changes his newfound access to the full power of the Spectral were making o his body.
Calista wrenched the blade form Palmer’s hands and leaned over my shoulder, wedging the weapon as deep as she could reach inside the damaged trunk.
“Seal it inside,” she instructed. “Do everything you can to save the tree.”
I redoubled my efforts, the knotty wood mending together under my attention.
“Channel Josephine,” Briar whispered to me. She’d knelt next to me and draped herself across my shoulders. I closed my eyes and pictured Jo’s sweet smile, heard her soft voice, and I was rewarded with just enough oomph to finish the job.
The tree was saved, the threat of Ezekiel Walker was neutralized, and we’d somehow won the day.
So why didn’t it feel that way?
37 Briar
The basket was a masterpiece.
Martha Lou herself delivered it to our table, which was really a table for two wedged between two booths inside her cozy restaurant.
The fried chicken was golden, crispy, and perfect, the aroma alone made me salivate.
Every inch of available space was crammed with sides – corn on the cob, fluffy biscuits, green beans, mac and cheese, ma
shed sweet potatoes, and Hoppin’ John.
A better meal couldn’t be had anywhere in Charleston. Or anywhere, for that matter.
I sat deep in the booth, next to Lukas. Palmer was next, Dr. Ibis next to him, with Emanuel finishing off that side. Opposite Emanuel sat Aleta, then Calista, Fiona, Chantelle, and finally, across from me, Emma.
The feast was delicious and wonderful.
Conversation inevitably kept coming back to our fallen and missing friends. Josephine was gone, but many of us had received late-night visits from her, and she never seemed anything but happy.
Aleta had explained to us Virginia’s plan and whereabouts – if things had gone badly with Ezekiel, she had the ability to pull Emanuel into the present day, but only at the cost of someone switching places with him. The swap was final; no exchanges, no returns. She’d traveled back to the 1860s and pushed Emanuel forward, with no way back except to live the years again. None of us could really wrap our heads around the physics involved – was she here in the present day again already? Would removing Emanuel from the past prior to his death change the future, and consequently the present, irrevocably?
Aleta seemed not to have suffered any ill effects and was rather enjoying catching her brother up on the one hundred-and-fiftyish years he’d not yet lived.
Emanuel moved in with Dr. Ibis and Aleta on Frogmore, and Chantelle was a frequent visitor, amazed at how much of her cooking the teenager could put away.
According to Aleta, Emanuel had a quite a crush on Calista, because, well, who didn’t have a crush on Calista? We’d let Emanuel find out about Calista’s headless pirate suitor in his own time and space.
For her part, Calista was predictably nonplussed by the attention.
Palmer and Lukas were again full-fledged mermen, to Solomon Lambiotte’s chagrin. Without his most powerful ally, Ezekiel, however, he dared not move against any of us. Palmer hadn’t retained any of Ezekiel’s abilities, which didn’t bother him a bit, since he was just thrilled to be able to swim again, although he’d have happily traded his fins, and everything else, for one more day with Josephine.
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