Shipwrecked & Horny: A What Could Possibly Go Wrong Bad Boy Romance (Bad Boys After Dark Book 10) by Gabi Moore (34)

Dion knew something was about to be revealed in the puzzle. Why had he chosen to go inside this store? If he’d gone into another one, would the message have been delivered a different way? He decided it was a matter of fate that he’d picked up this puzzle in this store and continued to help Lilly.

Sean and Emily found themselves in Mad Larry’s Great World of Sound in the next store.

Sean enjoyed visiting record stores as they always carried the vinyl albums you never heard on the radio. Sometimes it was a good idea to take the right amount of money if you had a purchase in mind. Some time ago, he’d found a record he wanted to buy for an upcoming concert, The No Band, and was on the point of giving the clerk the money when he remembered he needed to get his hair cut that day. He excused himself and went to the bank to get some more cash. When Sean returned, the album, the only copy they had in the entire store, was gone, sold to the next customer who’d walked into the store.

Emily had her favorites as well. She and Lilly were big fans of a British singer named Stew Rodgers who’d enjoyed some chart success on the AM radio. They’d seen him in concert a few times and looked forward to another tour he was supposed to make in next year. She looked around to see if there was anything that interested her in the cut-out bin.

But, as she looked over the albums, Emily couldn’t find a single one that interested her. She remembered these particular bins tended to stock one-hit wonders and albums by bands that never went anywhere, but you could find some good ones every now and then. She’d even landed a difficult to find record from Seta Penfield last year at a record shop in downtown Scipio. She remembered the clerk at the store grumbling about how he’d had his eye on that one too.

“Have you ever heard of any of these bands?” Sean eventually said to her as they scanned the collection in front of them.

The albums were displayed so they could see them in their twelve-inch glory with the big pictures on the covers. They didn’t appear to be some garbage operation, each one was produced with loving care and the artwork on each album was excellent.

Emily walked over to the wall, withdrew one album, and looked it over. She saw a complete list of credits and musicians on the back. None of whom she recognized.

“Not a one,” she told him. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any of these bands on the radio. Not even the FM stations play them. They don’t look too bad, but how are you supposed to buy a record by someone you’ve never heard before? There used to be listening booths, maybe someday they’ll be back.”

Meanwhile, over at the game store, Lilly was busy finishing the puzzle. Dion had stood next to Lilly and helped her with the final assembly process. To watch Lilly work at putting a puzzle together was miraculous. She would pick up a piece and instinctively know if it was one she wanted right away, or one not to use. Lilly would place the unwanted pieces on the part of the table furthest from her and then return to the main pile. By the end of the half-hour, the huge puzzle had taken shape. People would stop by and watch her at work, but people didn’t comment as they realized she was in some kind of meditative state as she worked.

“It’s because this is a tax loss store,” the manager of Mad Mike’s said to Sean and Emily as they looked at the wall. “You won’t find these bands anywhere but at this store. Some are pretty good. It’s a shame we can’t sell many of them, but no one really cares.”

“I don’t get it,” Emily said to the man. “What is the purpose of a store that sells records that no one wants to buy? Don’t you have many sales?”

“We get them all day,” he explained, “but not too many. People come in here, buy what they think is a popular group, then they bring it back. I have to refund their money all the time. Some of them do stay with the purchase.”

“What’s a tax loss album?” Sean asked the man. This place was too strange, even for this mall.

“The tax laws are funny,” the man began. “They take so much out at one level, that it makes sense for the record companies to dump cash on bands which no one cares about so they don’t end up at the next level. They have to show on the books money was spent on new acts, but no one expects them to make a dime. The public is fickle and no one wants to take a chance on an unknown act, no matter how good they might be. So the record company finds a tape, has it pressed to vinyl, matches it with a snazzy cover and then it ends up here. We always lose money and they are able to show on the books the excess cash was burnt up. The band gets a break, the record company blows some money on a new act, everyone wins but the government and no one cares about them.”

Emily cocked her ear. “But I heard that song on the radio last week. Don’t tell me that band is a tax loss band.”

“Of course not, we have to sell something to stay in business.”

Dion watched as Lilly placed the last piece of the puzzle in place. She stood back and looked at it. Too bad no one else was in the store to see her accomplishment.

They looked down at the image of the fire in the fireplace. It was taken from a painting, not a photograph. The colors were vivid and jumped out at them. Dion looked up to see the manager come over and look at what Lilly had managed to do.

The only thing missing from the scene were the puzzle pieces, which were strategically removed from the puzzle box by someone. They had done this in a very clever fashion so that the missing pieces spelled out a word in the middle of the puzzle.

Looking at them from the center of the fire in the fireplace was the word “Atziluth”. The word was plain to see, although some of the letters were a little bit rough because of the sharpness of the corners.

“Atziluth,” Lilly said. “What does it mean?”

In the record store, Emily and Sean remembered they needed to return to the concourse and wait for Dion and Lilly.

Sean checked his wristwatch and gently tapped Emily on the shoulder. His fiancée was busy talking to the record store manager about the unheard music and bands which would fade into the lost past.

“Someday they will be rediscovered,” the manager told them as they left the store. “Too much good music in here for it all to be lost. I feel it in my soul, but it might be thirty or forty years before anyone rediscovers these bands.”

They came around the corner and encountered Dion with Lilly, who were ready to continue the quest. Lilly had a strange look on her face.

“How was the record store?” Dion asked them. He seemed to be concerned with Lilly’s state of mind.

“It was good,” Emily said. “Good if you like stores which sell records no one wants to buy and is supposed to lose money for the owners. This mall is filled with stores which can’t exist anywhere else.”

“It’s one of the reasons it’s here,” Dion said.

“So what did you find in your game store?” Sean asked Dion and Emily. The sun was streaming into the large window next to the concourse.

“Nothing much,” Lilly answered for him. “Just a puzzle with a mysterious word which became visible when you put it together.” She stared off into space.

“Word?” Lilly asked. “What word?”

“Atziluth,” Dion said. “It’s the term for the part of the universe the mall represents. It stands for the archetypical word of emanation. The part of the universe where we now stand.”

“So how does it all figure into the work we are trying to accomplish?” Emily asked.

“I’m not sure. I know it has something to do with my quest, but how it all figures into it, I don’t know. I’ve memorized the word and its spelling because we just might need it later. Everybody remember this word in case we need it.”

“Do you think someone sent it to us to help?” Sean asked.

“Not sure about that one either,” Dion said. “It could be, but they would have had to know I was about to go in this store with someone like Lilly who likes to put puzzles together. What if I’d chosen another store? The manager told me the box arrived a few hours ago and was brand new. It’s the only one she got of this particular puzzle and she’s taken it off the shelf until they send her a replacement with all the pieces.”

“This isn’t something I expected would happen,” Dion told his friends. “For all I know, someone could be setting us up for something bad. I need to consult the elementals before we move forward.”

Chapter 7

Dion looked up in the air and saw a few air elemental sylphs floating around the rafters again. As usual, they’d blown into the mall because someone had left a door open. They didn’t want to be in the “fire” section and felt very uncomfortable in this part. Dion understood they could only give him what information they possessed, but perhaps they’d seen something.

While his three friends watched, he brought them down to his level and silently asked them a few questions. The sylphs spun around him invisible to the rest of the mall and told Dion what he needed to know. Once again, he went to the nearest door and opened it to allow them to leave. Next, he walked back over to his companions.

“Did you find anything out?” Emily asked him. All she saw was Dion standing in the middle of the mall while the sylphs were in conversation with him. The air elementals hadn’t wanted to make themselves visible while they conversed with their friend.

“The mall security guards are all gone,” he told them. “They told me the guards were all assembled an hour ago and sent packing. I don’t know how Karanzen plans to maintain security in this place unless my uncle already has a new team handpicked. Guess we’ll find out soon because there is no way he is going to leave this place unprotected from shop lifters and thieves.”

They walked a little bit further and noticed the foot traffic increase inside the mall. As the end of the week loomed, more people arrived to take advantage of the spring sales. Dion and the rest of his friends stopped as the human traffic was difficult to cross.

“I think we need to split up for a bit,” he told them. “Emily, why don’t you and Sean wander around for a while? We can meet up here in a few hours or so. I don’t like the way this place feels and I’m worried my uncle has planned something I can’t anticipate.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Emily agreed and walked off with Sean.

“I’m not sure about this,” Lilly told Dion. “We could find ourselves trapped here or the same could happen to them. Are you trying to separate us to bait your uncle?”

Dion reached out and took her hand. “I don’t know what my uncle is up to right now. I can’t sense him; he’s shielded from me. Even though he lacks the four elemental abilities I am about to master, he still has mastery of the aether and it makes all the difference. So, no, I don’t want to use us as bait, but I have to find out more about what is taking place here before I can obtain the full powers of the fire element.”

Dion and Lilly soon came to a movie theater. “Now that is funny,” Dion said. “There was one of these outside the mall. Why would there be another one here? It would just compete with the business?”

Lilly looked up at the marquee of the cinema. “Solar Theater,” she read. “I’ve never heard of this place. Must have just opened. I wonder what’s playing?” She walked up to a movie poster mounted in a case attached to the wall and noticed it was for an older film.

“The Final Man,” she read aloud to Dion. “It stars Kane Welles and Plasma Players. Now what do you know? I thought we studied Welles in school and I never heard of this movie. Have you?”

“I can’t say it sounds familiar, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ll bet this theater wasn’t here yesterday. Oh, look at the sign, it’s closed for repairs.” A large sign blocked the entrance, which was still wide open.

Dion walked into the lobby and looked around. Two boxes of fresh popcorn faced him on the counter of the snack bar, which was a little weird as the concession stand was empty of any product. From inside the movie theater he could hear the sound of music playing. He heard the footsteps of Lilly as she joined him.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? We supposed to go inside and watch the movie.”

At the same time, Sean had discovered a store that held great interest for him: an electronic appliance store. “Azmuth Electronics” said the name over the door and he could see an entire wall of the latest twenty-five inch televisions as they played a variety of shows broadcast on all three networks. There were even a few which showed public television and the local UHF channels. A few sales clerks floated around and talked to prospective customers, as they did everywhere else in the mall stores.

“Let’s check this place out,” Sean told Emily. “My dad was talking about buying one of those things which can move the antenna for the TV. They might even have one here.”

“What good would that do him? So the TV antenna moves, then what? You get the same channels.”

“You change the orientation of the antenna, you get better reception,” Sean explained. “Doesn’t your dad ever fool with the antenna to get the out-of-town signals in better?”

“No, he usually just swears at it.”

Sean ignored her lack of interest and pulled Emily inside the store. She tried to look curious, but all the electronics appeared stale to her.

On one side of the store were the latest turntables and audio receivers with separate attachments for cassettes. Sean seemed excited, but she wondered what happened to the eight track players. Didn’t her father used to have one in the car? Couldn’t you play them in the house too?

“Cable is coming,” she overheard one man say to another. “It will be the next big thing.”

“How can you be so sure?” the guy with him stated. “How are you going to convince people to pay for something they are used to getting for free?”

“Less commercials for one,” his companion argued. “Better reception for another. Imagine a TV screen free of static and you don’t spend all night trying to get your picture adjusted.”

“It will never fly. The township will flip when they see the cost of putting all those cables underground.”

“They’ll find a way to pass the cost onto the subscribers. You just watch.”

She heard them fade into the distance as they walked to look at another display in front: recordable televisions. She watched Sean drool over the endless possibilities as a person could record their TV show and watch it later. As far as she could see, it was another way to make money off people with too much to spend. Besides, the video recording machine appeared to weigh a ton. Who would want something like that in their house?

“Are you finished?” Emily asked Sean. “Can we go look at something else for a change?”

“Sure, but let’s find out where the antenna turning things are, I want to tell dad how much they cost. You know, there’s a guy who lives down the street from us who actually installs antennas. Might be something for me to think about someday.”

Emily rolled her eyes and continued walking with him. They both crossed the wall of TV’s at the back of the store and halted.

A continuous row of the same elderly actor delivered the same line at the same time. The effect was mesmerizing and they stopped to look at the bank of televisions. But they didn’t notice no one else was in the store. For some reason, the other customers suddenly felt as if they needed to leave at the same time. The electronics store was void of anyone but them.

“I think we are the only people in this theater,” Lilly said to Dion as they seated themselves toward the middle of it. “I don’t see another person in here.”

“The sign did say it was closed for repairs,” Dion reminded her as he handed her a box of popcorn. “Sorry if there’s too much butter on this one, but I can’t stand it on mine.”

The curtains rolled open to reveal the blank white screen. Dion wondered why they still used curtains on movie theaters. The stage in front of it was almost nonexistent, just a few feet in length. There would be no scene changes that the curtains needed to conceal. It was one of those strange and odd things, which people linked to action, such as the teletype sounds on breaking news stories even though the mechanical teletype machines had faded into the past. Would future radio stations insert scratch sounds into audio tape to make it sound “real”?

In the background, he could hear the whirl of a movie projector starting. This meant someone had to be in the theater besides them because a movie projector implied a projectionist. Or did it? Nothing about this mall was as it seemed. He didn’t recall a movie theater listed in the fire element section, but the map was too damaged to check again.

The presentation went directly to the movie. Dion expected a few coming attractions, but no, the black and white titles started up right away. Too bad, Dion could only imagine what sort of features would accompany this one. There was a brief blip and the soundtrack started as the projectionist made the final adjustment.

After the credits, which looked similar to the last four movies this director made before 1940, the movie cut to the main action. There was a boardroom where several people debated the direction of a company until an elderly man ordered a younger son to leave. All was halted when another son offered to give his share in the company to someone else.

“Have we seen this one before?” Lilly asked Dion. She leaned up against Dion and tried to forget where they were.

“Another version, but I like the actor who is playing my uncle.” Dion leaned back and munched some more popcorn. This one was going to be interesting.

They watched as an intrepid reporter attempted to put together the story of Seth Bach and his attempts to steer his father’s company to new heights of glory. The skyscraper he wanted to build was the perfect stand-in for the mall.

Dion admitted the production was quality, even if it was somewhat dated due to its post WW2 setting. He didn’t care much for the two actors who portrayed his parents. And the child actor who played Dion’s role didn’t look like him at all.

Sean and Emily stood captivated by the wall of television. There had to be at least forty of them in the back of the store and they were tuned to the same channel. This seemed odd, as the TV’s showed different programs when they entered the store. However, every single one of them was now tuned to a show about a family that had problems. They had walked up to the TV bank as the show was in progress, so there was no way to know what was before them. Sean thought it looked familiar, but he didn’t recognize any of the actors or the setting. Emily was entrapped by it as well.

The show took place somewhere in the Midwest and involved several families. The action continued to flip between the two settings. One family consisted of two parents who were busy with a spunky girl child while the conservative dad fought to understand his liberated wife. The other family had several children with a super-religious wife and blue-collar husband. The laugh track was frequent and annoying. Sean couldn’t understand why the laugh track activated every time one of the kids said something profound.

There was a break for a commercial and Sean turned to Emily. “Have you ever seen this one before? I watch TV in the evening too, but don’t think this show is one my parents watch.”

“Never seen it before,” she said to him. “What are these commercials about? What the heck are they selling?”

The first one was for a new drug that removed painful memories and featured a mother who had abandoned her family. The second was for a midnight meal that mechanics could fix while working the graveyard shift. The third was for a local museum that never opened. As soon as the one for the museum faded, the show resumed. There was still nothing that identified the TV show, which had to be some kind of comedy on account of the laugh track.

The next opening scene featured the little girl who wanted to know when her mother was going to return. “Not anytime soon,” her father said to the sound of much hilarity. “Mom is out doing her thing and we’re not going to see her for some time. The scene shifted to the religious family in their Sunday best, probably on their way from church, although it appeared to be late in the evening. “And another thing,” the mother was howling to her bored son in the backseat, “you will show some respect to us in the future. When we get home you are going to show your father you’re a worthy son.” The father appeared to be equally bored, but did a better job to keep it hidden.

“I am so looking forward to getting out of this place,” the sounds of the son echoed in his thoughts. Funny how television could tell you what someone was thinking just by using voice-overs.

“It’s not the most effective way to trap someone,” Dion mentioned to Lilly as he finished his popcorn. “I can think of several ways which could do the job better.”

“What is the whole point of this movie?” Lilly asked him. “Does your uncle think you can be fixated on your life story? I don’t get it.”

“He’s trying to buy some time,” Dion explained. “With me out of the picture, it allows him to come up with another plan. For instance, he’s just found a way to isolate us from Sean and Emily. Now with Sean and Emily somewhere else…”

The look on Dion’s face changed as he realized the implications of what he’d just said. This meant Sean and Emily were vulnerable to whatever machinations his uncle had created. Neither one of them was an elemental worker and they’d be easy targets. A perfect way to get at Dion.

Dion shot up in his seat. “We have to get out of here!”

“What’s wrong? You seemed fine a minute ago.”

“I know why we were lured into this place. My uncle wants to get at Sean and Emily. He can’t do much to me, but they’re vulnerable.”

Tears flowed down Emily’s face as she watched the little girl on TV wander alone in the backyard of her parents’ house. There would be no more talks with her mother now or in the future. She felt so much alone and mouthed the dialogue with her. She stood transfixed by the wall of televisions, which were all tuned to the same humiliating comedy show.

Chapter 8

Sean started to ask Emily what troubled her when he turned to see a new scene on the TV’s.

Now the son was stuck in the living room of the house as his mother hurled invectives against him. She accused him of a lack of respect to her and his father. He refused to say a word. His father wanted to know why he has no interest in sports, as he made a suggestion that Sean’s obsession with books was part of a deeper problem. Before them was another “progress report” from the junior high school which showed a lack of his interest in the subjects he was forced to study. The laugh track reverberated with guffaws every time the mother screamed another curse against the boy.

Sean stood in silence, his hands shaking as he watched his life story played out for the world to see. Emily was unable to help him as she was still in shock over the scene of her own life, which ripped out her heart.

And in the background of the store, a figure watched them frozen in place. It nodded in approval. It cost him a lot to have this drama performed, but it had played off nicely. He wondered about the film that played out in front of Dion. It should keep him busy for a while too. It was good to see a plan work out so well.

The theater door was locked when Dion reached it. He placed one hand on the bar to the set of glass doors and pushed. They refused to budge and he realized his uncle had done his work very well. Dion tried to force it some more, but the doors wouldn’t move. He banged on them a few times until Lilly came up behind him.

“I should have suspected this,” Dion said. “I don’t see anything around here we can force them open with.”

A thought came over Lilly. “Doesn’t there have to be someone in the projection booth at all times?”

Dion and Lilly found the stairs, which led to the booth in a few minutes and rushed up them two at a time. The door to the booth was open and they ran inside.

It was abandoned. The projector was playing on automatic and the film reel had a lot to go before it would reach the end. Dion looked at the reel and noticed it was still at the beginning, although they’d been inside the theater for a good thirty minutes. Something told him this wasn’t an ordinary projector and the reel would continue to run indefinitely if allowed.

“No one here,” he concluded. “They must’ve left earlier. Let’s see if we can find another way out.” They raced back down the stairs.

Dion rushed past the doors when he noticed something outside the theater. He stopped and grinned when he saw an old friend who could help him out.

The plastic bull connected to a coin box and was now repaired. Someone had placed it in the children’s play area outside the theater. This was the same bull which was used to house earth elementals and sent against him earlier in the quest. All he needed to do was find another earth elemental and send it back into the animatronic bull situated outside the theater.

Dion closed his eyes and concentrated. He found a few earth elementals moving around beneath the foundation of the mall. They weren’t inside the mall, but they could still make contact with him and be useful. They didn’t want much and Dion made a payment to them in advance. He could handle the remainder when the job was completed, he let them know. The elementals agreed and moved from the ground beneath the mall and into the plastic bull that sat unused on the platform next to the coin box. None of the children playing around it paid the bull much attention, but this was all about to change.

One mother watching her child in a plastic locomotive almost dropped her purse when the bull stepped off its platform and walked over to the door of the theater. The kids in the play area cheered it on, unaware of how it functioned.

The bull trotted over to the door and dropped its glossy head down to the level of the two handles on the other side. The door to the theater was not just one door, but two half doors which had handles on the mall side. The release bar was built to the inside of the theater for safety reasons. In an emergency, people were supposed to be able to push down on the bar and the door would release. Today, however, the bars didn’t function as they should.

As a small audience gathered around the plastic bull to watch it at work, Dion opened his eyes, the instructions to the earth elemental inside it now complete. He’s followed it up to the door to make sure it knew exactly what to do. The last thing he wanted to encounter was glass flying from the door if the bull charged.

The bull placed its horns down to the handles on the mall side and slid them into the grips. It reared back just enough to test them and then grunted. The next thing it did was to pull back hard on the handles and yank them back toward its synthetic neck. Plastic didn’t take such stress under normal circumstances, but the bull could hardly be considered normal.

There was a screeching sound as the aluminum door handles began to give way from the force generated by the bull. Dion stepped back and took Lilly with him as he waved people away from the door. The audience realized what was about to happen and moved back from the sound.

A loud pop came from one of the glass halves as the door began to move backwards and follow the motion of the bull. The glass cracked, but remained intact in the door. Both halves parted slightly as the metal frame yielded to the strength of the artificial bull when it forced its way back. The doors swung open as the plastic bull shot backwards.

It stopped a few feet from the door to make sure Dion and Lilly were safe as they emerged from the door. One of the door halves swung on its hinge as they passed it by. Dion watched the bull walk past the crowd of curious shoppers and stand back on the platform for the ride. It became still and assumed its previous position as the earth elemental left it and returned to the layer of soil beneath the ride in the children’s section.

Of course, every single kid in the mall near it lined up to ride the bull. They would be a little disappointed, but there was nothing he could do about that.

They found Emily and Sean a few minutes later. Dion somehow just knew they were going to be located inside the electronics store. There was a sign telling the public as to how the store would be closed for a few hours, but it opened when Dion put his hand on the door. Whatever he’d done to the other door had transferred to him and this one had no desire to be busted open.

Emily and Sean were in the back of the electronics store starring at an endless bank of televisions, all which showed static on the screens.

“What are they starring at?” Lilly asked him. “There’s nothing on the TV’s.”

“There doesn’t have to be,” Dion explained as he grabbed Sean by one shoulder and pulled him away. “It’s what they see in their minds. You lead Emily out; she won’t come unless someone takes her hand.”

A few minutes later, the four were sitting at a table next to a vending machine. Dion had brought both of them some coffee to drink. It took another few minutes, even with the coffee, for the effects of the TV’s to wear off, but they soon blinked their eyes and showed signs of recognition.

“Where were we?” Emily asked Dion. “A few minutes ago I was staring at a TV and then I don’t know what happened.”

“Same here,” Sean said. “I was doing the same thing and I don’t remember what happened afterward. Something about a terrible comedy show on that was so depressing.”

“Yeah,” Emily agreed. “Something like that too. What happened to us?”

“It sounds like a dirty little trick my uncle would pull,” Dion said. “He tried to do the same thing in a theater by showing a movie that was a veiled reference to my own life. I recognized what he was up to and left. The door was locked on the theater, but we were able to get it open. The door to the electronics store wasn’t locked to me. I walked in and found you two starring at some blank screens. He wanted to trap us in a reflection of our own fear. It didn’t work, so he’ll come up with something else.”

The rested for a while and watched the shoppers continue to file through the mall. A few minutes later, they watched a maintenance crew come and work on the door the plastic bull yanked open for Dion. The line to the bull ride died down when the kids realized it was never going to walk off the platform on its own.

“We need to go see Hobbs,” Dion said. “He’ll have what we need if we run into any other opposition in this part of the mall.”

“It’s a long way back to his part of the mall,” Lilly said. “Do we still have time to reach out to him?”

“You have to know how to get there quickly,” Dion explained. “For instance, that door over there works anywhere in the mall. It’s one of the special passages which run all over this place.”

They walked over to the door from the table and let Dion open it since he seemed to have a good relationship with the hidden parts of the mall. The door opened to reveal another long passage, but there were a few cryptic symbols on the transom, which Dion recognized. He looked at them for a few minutes and looked back to his friends.

“This one will take us right to the exterior of Hobbs’ store.” Dion held open the door and they walked inside the dim passage.

Lilly heard the door shut and lock behind them. “How is it you can open this door and it locks on its own?” she asked him.

“It recognized me.”

It took them another five minutes to find the door that opened to the outside of Hobb’s store in the other part of the mall. Dion examined a few other doors and looked at the markings over them as they passed. None of them could recognize the writing or what the cyphers meant, but they didn’t want to waste time by asking Dion how he knew. As in everything else, Dion had a knack for finding his way around the mall.

Once the last door opened, they emerged to find themselves back in the section of the mall where Hobbs and his store of curiosities was located. He’d provided Dion with all kinds of things he needed on his quest. They didn’t worry he might have another tool Dion would need.

When the door opened, Sean stopped and looked at the girl sitting across from the door at a table in the hallway. She had to be in her twenties, but was very tiny. At first, he thought she was younger than him, but her voice gave her away. She held some small object in her hand and appeared to be talking into it. Her hair was short, cut almost in a pageboy style, but seemed to have a pattern he hadn’t notice before. She was fair of skin and had deep blue eyes, which she used to train on him.

Emily yanked on his hand and Sean tried to figure out if the object the woman held was some kind of recording device. He wanted to look at her longer as the dress she wore seemed natural and not the sort of pattern he saw anywhere around his neighborhood, where the clothing material tended toward polyester. She had the largest copper medallions dangling from her tiny ears.

Finally, Emily pulled him along and he broke contact with her eyes. Sean continued on with the rest of the group.

“You have a fiancée and don’t you forget about it,” Emily whispered into his ear.”

The girl who talked into the rectangular object watched the group vanish into a store and returned to speaking into it. “What year did you say this was? Really? I need to put this thing away because they won’t have anything like it for another twenty years. See you in five minutes.” She placed the object into a purse she carried and vanished down the hall.

Chapter 9

Hobbs, the troll who supplied Dion with so many things, was waiting for the group when they stepped into his store. It resembled any other combination book and music store with too many psychedelic posters. However, the owner could get you anything you might need to battle or control the rogue elementals who wandered in silence through the mall. Dion even had a line of credit with him.

“I was expecting you today,” Hobbs told him. “A package addressed to you arrived this morning, so it only made sense you would be by for it later in the day.”

Hobbs reached below the counter and pulled out a box with postal labels all over it. “This one came from overseas, so whoever sent it must be using a crystal ball. It has to be a good one too, because none of the ones I carry see that much detail.”

“Let’s see what’s in the box,” Dion said as Hobbs began to open it up with a letter knife.

Lilly noticed it wasn’t a regular letter opener, but one made of silver with mystic symbols on it. She guessed it came in handy if the box contained something the sender didn’t want on the run once it was free.

Emily noticed a small terrarium near the wall and went over to see what it contained. She walked over to it and looked inside. There were ten large rodents in it, but they seemed to be gathered around something in the middle. At first, she thought they might be artificial, but the creatures all turned and looked at her simultaneously. She was startled to notice they were joined at the tail.

“Don’t get too close to that tank,” Hobbs yelled to her. “They don’t like to be bothered.”

“What is it?” she asked. The rodents started to move at the same time to the other side of the aquarium. She wondered how they used the exercise wheel in the opposite end of the tank.

“A rat king. Like I said, don’t get too near to them, they get anxious around people. The man who bought it from me is supposed to pick it up today. You don’t want to know about all the regulations I had to go through to get it brought into the country. Damn customs officer acted like I wanted to import Black Death.”

The postage box was opened a few minutes later and Hobbs poured out all the packing material and picked up the shipping manifest as he pulled out the contents of the box. He carefully sat it down on the counter so everyone could look at it.

“I think I’ve seen one of these in a church,” Emily said as she went over to the counter and looked at the object.

It was about five inches tall and made out of brass. About the top of it was engraved a seven-pointed star with words around it in Greek. It was oblong and had holes punched into the top. The top portion was removable and was attached to the bottom with a series of chains. It had a small stand on it and a wooden handle on it so it could be carried across a room when in use. The top cover was to keep wind from blowing out the coals, which were placed in the bottom of the brass container.

“What is it?” Lilly asked as she bent over the object to look at it.

“It’s the censer,” Dion said. “The one for use in the fire elemental part of the mall. See? The coals go in the bottom. It doesn’t work unless lit, so I’m going to need some charcoal from you Hobbs.”

“I have just the thing,” Hobbs told him as he brought up a small package and shoved it to Dion. Next, he followed it with a pack of matches. “I know how you feel about smoking so I went out and got you some of these too. The charcoal is mixed with gunpowder so it’s self-igniting. I’ll put it on your bill.”

“Is this the kind Edward told us about?” Lilly asked him.

Dion nodded.

“You can use this against fire elementals?” Sean asked Dion. He couldn’t see how it could be used as any kind of weapon. “What happened to sacred swords and knives?”

“You pick the right tool for the right job,” Dion explained. “It just so happens this little censer is what you need to contain a fire elemental. It works on everything from random spirits to full-fledged salamanders. All I need to do is light the charcoal inside, toss in some frankincense and it will pull any fire elemental into it from a hundred foot radius. Oh, shoot.”

“What’s wrong?” Lilly said.

“I need frankincense. Do you have any, Hobbs?”

The small man vanished behind the counter and came up with a small bag of amber crystals. “I have only the best. Blessed by a holy man in a monastery outside Beirut.” He shoved it toward Dion who took the bag and placed it in the pocket of his jacket.

“Thanks, Hobbs. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

“Always glad to be of help.”

Dion bade his friend and supplier farewell and then left the store with his companions. They went right to the door for the passage they used to take them to Hobb’s store.

Just as before, Dion opened the door and held it for his friends to pass in front of him. He waited until they were all inside, which allowed Sean time to check for the little woman who spoke into the tiny rectangle. Dion closed it behind him as he entered it.

This time the door opened into a huge department store.

Dion and his friends looked around. People were beside them busy with their shopping as usual, and didn’t notice their sudden appearance. Dion turned around and looked behind him. Perhaps he’d grabbed the wrong door.

There was no door behind them.

“Where are we?” Lilly asked. “I didn’t even see the corridor we took the last time. What happened?”

Dion rubbed the back of his neck. “This sometimes happens. These temporal passages don’t always work like they’re supposed to work. I just hope we ended up inside the same mall we left.”

“What do you mean?” Emily said. “The door opened right up to this place.”

“These things don’t work on physical reality. They can dump you just about any place if they’re not functioning right. I’ve heard stories of people ending up in the middle of a jungle after they used one to get around in a building. The temporal authority is supposed to adjust them every month, but I’ll bet my uncle paid someone off.”

“So we don’t even know where we are,” Sean said.

“I don’t think we’re too far away from where we started,” Dion explained. “Look at the people around us; they seemed to be dressed the same way were.” He looked at his wristwatch and compared it to the one on the wall. “Same time too. I don’t think there is much to worry about.” He walked over to a lady shopping with three small children. He tapped her on the shoulder and asked for the date.

“Same date as when we last used the door,” he returned and told his friends. “We’re simply in a different part of the mall than where we want to be. All we need to do is find our way outside and I can continue on the quest. Shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

No one was familiar with the name of the department store- Crowley’s- but there were many stores inside the mall they didn’t know about. The four of them spread out and tried to figure out the best way out of the store. They were in some kind of huge furniture center where tables, chairs and desks made it hard to get around. As a matter of fact, it appeared the entire floor level was dedicated to furniture.

“I didn’t know there were so many bedroom sets to choose from,” Lilly said. “This place is full of them. How many levels are in this store? Are you sure we’re in the same mall?”

Dion walked over to a window and looked outside. This had to be the same place. He could even see some cars in the parking lot he recognized from the last time today he’d looked out the window. There were in the same mall at the same time of day they’d crossed through the door. He simply had no idea what part of the mall they were inside. Other than the red color, which predominated and told him they were in the section dedicated to the fire element, he didn’t know. With the map partially destroyed, there was no way to be sure.

“So no one knows where we get to the main floor,” Lilly asked Dion. “I’ve never been inside this one before, I’m guessing it’s connected somewhere to the rest of the mall, but who really knows for sure?”

“You ever been in this one?” Sean asked Emily.

She tossed her hair to one side and turned to look back at him. “No, it doesn’t look familiar at all.” Emily crinkled her nose and looked over at a perfume counter. Women in black were busy trying to attract the attention of shoppers who wandered by.

Dion was about to say something when he noticed a security guard wandering inside the building. This was not one of Karanzen’s usual goons, this man was different, and he had a look of steel attention to him. He scanned the store with intensity, as if he was searching for something. Even the uniform he wore wasn’t the same as the normal guards in the mall wore. This man was from some kind of outside contractor service. Where were the usual guards who gave him so much trouble?

Dion still had the censer with him. He was carrying it in a plain paper bag, which Hobbs used to place it inside. Hobbs didn’t care for designer bags our anything else with his logo on it. His feeling was that the reputation of his shop was all he needed to make it successful. Since he was the only person in the United States who could get you certain items, word of mouth propelled him along. Dion had been there one day when he was placing a selection of arrows away from prying eyes.

“Silver-tipped,” Hobbs told him. “Works against werewolves, but I’m only supposed to sell them to people in law enforcement.”

Dion checked the censer inside the bag and made sure it was still intact. The charcoal and incense packages were next to it along with the matches. If any elemental in this section tried to make a run at him, he had adequate protection. It all depended on how fast he could get the charcoal lit and the incense in the chamber. Some elementals communicated by smells; they would be able to detect the censer from the other side of the room.

“Did you notice the guard,” Sean said as he slipped up to him. “Something about that guy worries me. He doesn’t seem to be one of the usual ones Karanzen’s had around him. Does he work for the store?”

“Outside contractor,” Dion said. “Check out the uniform. Not the same one Karanzen’s men wear. Something odd about him.”

Dion closed his eyes and left the visible circle of time where the store sat. His body might remain there, but it allowed him to see things not visible at the level where he stood. He avoided any examination of the store and focused on the security guard who was just at the edge of their visual range. And then he knew exactly what they were up against. Before he returned to his body, he looked out into the floor of the store where the guard was located and saw two more security guards. They all had the same characteristics.

Dion opened his eyes and looked at his three companions around him. “They’re salamanders. The security guards in those new uniforms are fire salamanders.”

“A little big for a salamander,” Lilly snickered.

“Elemental salamanders come in all sizes,” Dion told them. “I think this store might be another trap. My uncle has diverted us here and he doesn’t want to let us out.”

“He can’t keep us in this place forever,” Sean said.

“He doesn’t have to. All he needs to do is keep me busy while he continues to cook up some scheme. This department store is part of his plan.”

The four of them moved to another section of the store, this one that also sold furniture, but of a different suite. They moved around older styles of cabinets and tables, still tracking the movement of the security guards. All of the new guards appeared to be related and wore the same grey uniform. The all had red hair and wore peaked caps. None of them was using their radios for communication.

“What do we do about them?” Emily asked. She was behind a large shelf and tried to get a glimpse of the new guards without giving away their position.

“I can bind them with the censer if they get too close. All I have to do is fire it up, drop in the incense and they’ll rush to it in their natural form. I’m hesitant to do it, though, because their natural form is a ball of fire. Imagine what would happen if you had fire balls shooting across the room.”

“A lot of wood around here,” Emily agreed. “They could set this place on fire.”

“Exactly. I don’t want that to happen. My uncle knows it too and it’s why he’s sent them. Plus they’re elementals and he has bought some kind of control over them.”

“I see an escalator,” Lilly said. “Why don’t we head for it and check out the lower level. If nothing else, it will force them to follow us.”

Dion agreed and the four of them went down the moving stairs. In a few minutes, they were at the bottom of the escalator and looked up to see three of the new security guards starring down at them. As they headed away, the four friends could see the security guards walking down the escalator steps to follow them.

“I swear their eyes were burning,” Lilly said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” was Dion’s response. “They are born of fire, so what do you expect?”

The second floor was dedicated to bathroom furnishings. Amongst the towels, bathtubs shower stalls, they meandered around it, trying to find a way out and to stay ahead of the guards. This was not the easiest thing to do since the guards seemed to slide around the displays on the floor. Dion realized after a while they were slowly boxing them in with their technique. They didn’t want to catch them so much as to force the group to remain on the floor with no hope of escape.

This became evident when the number of security guards increased to eight.

Dion had led them to a display of a traditional bathroom where the shower was separate from the tub. The towels were all neatly folded in some free standing cabinets and the paint on the fixtures smelled fresh from the factory. This was a display some visual expert created with a great amount of love and devotion. It was also big enough for them to take refuge from the security guards.

Dion stepped behind the rear of it and looked out at the floor behind him to see four more guards at the line of the wall that had them under close observation. The guards did their best not to appear interested in the part of the floor where they stood, but Dion knew otherwise. He also understood they’d count them off. There would be no way they could exit the floor without encountering one of the elemental guards.

“We’re trapped,” he said as he returned to the display where his friends waited. “The entire place is surrounded by these new guards.” He sat the bag down he’d carried around on the toilet and looked at the censer inside. “I just might have to light this thing to get rid of them.”

“Are you sure that is such a good idea?” Lilly asked. “Didn’t you say they might revert to their original forms and set the place on fire?”

“It might be the only thing we can do. I’ll see about bringing them closer. If they are standing about five feet from me, when I fire up the censer it might be safe to use it.”

“And then we’d be surrounded by eight fireballs,” Sean said. “Not really a good option.”

Dion rubbed his head and looked around the corner at the guards on the wall. Still there and not moving. The guards had them surrounded. “I’m not sure we have any options left. They don’t appear to move and I don’t know what will happen if we make a run for it.”

As Dion sat there and tried to come up with a plan, the light around them began to fade. Soon it was absorbed by the darkness, which enveloped them, and there was nothing that could be seen. This had happened before, so Dion wasn’t afraid. Soon, the light returned and increased in intensity so they could see where they where.

They were in a library. It was not part of the mall and a fire blazed in the fireplace behind them. Outside, it was snowing and the drifts where high in the moonlit night. Dion looked around and saw the same big stuffed chairs, paints and books as before. He knew where they were before the door to the room opened.

Chapter 10

Once again, the door opened to reveal Edward in a smoking jacket with a glass of something in one hand. He shut the door behind him and waltzed in without a care in the world. He looked at them and sighed. It was plain to Dion he didn’t care much for visitors and only brought them here when it was an absolute necessity. He seated himself on of the stuffed chairs and motioned for them to sit down in the others.

“Welcome again,” Edward said. “You were trapped in that store and I am forced to break protocol and intervene again. The last time got me in a lot of trouble; I suppose my superiors will be furious at me for doing the right thing for the wrong reasons once more. However, I wasn’t about to allow you to be stranded in that hideous store forever. Trust me, you weren’t going anywhere. Those fire salamanders have long lifespans and would’ve guarded you for three lifetimes if so ordered.”

“We owe you our thanks, Edward,” Dion said. “I get the feeling it will be our last meeting.”

“You are most correct on that observation. I have used all my allotments up and then some to bring you here. But, to the subject matter. You were in a store, which didn’t have any exit you could have located. The shoppers were from a time similar to yours, but not exactly the same as your mall. The shoppers knew how to get around inside it, even if you didn’t. Your uncle played unfair by confusing you with the passage redirect. I have just showed him there are people who can play even worse. I will send you back to the fireside of the mall where you stood before you decided to pick up the censer.”

“What you need to understand,” he continued, “is that each of these elementals has a particular stone which attracts them. The gemstone, which appeals most to the salamanders, is a fire opal, as I have said. I’m going to send you back close to a jewelry store where you can get what you need to counter anything they try to do without causing a bonfire. Just be careful because opals crack if you drop them and a broken gemstone will have no functionality.”

“Got it,” Dion said.

“Thanks for your help, Edward,” Lilly said to him. She got up, walked over to Edward’s chair and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He tried hard not to blush.

“Be gone, my lions!” he said and they vanished.

The light resumed around Dion and company to reveal themselves back in the mall. They were in another store. Not the big department store from where there was no escape, but another one. This was a small store in the main red elemental section where the concourse was easily visible from the window. They blinked and looked around.

The man behind the counter looked at them in fascination. He was bored that day, but the universe burped five seconds ago when four young people materialized into his store. He was the only one to see them because he’d been left alone by his manager. One minute he stood there and wondered when someone would come into the store and buy something, the next he faced four young kids. Either a miraculous event just took place or he was on the point of losing his mind. He betted on the second option.

Dion looked around and decided to make sure. “Is this the Fromatius Mall?” he asked the man behind the counter.

There was no point in denying what just took place. The man was there when they transferred in from Edward’s study outside the time circle. Dion needed to make sure was that it was the right time circle.

“Yes it is,” the man told them. “And you are on Earth. Do you want me to call the president?”

Dion starred at him in disbelief. This one was going to be a challenge. “No,” he told the man. “That will not be necessary. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“Hiram,” he told Dion. “Hiram Abendroff. Are you from the other side?”

‘No, we are from down the road. You possibly noticed our sudden appearance. It’s from a test being conducted and you need to keep it quiet. Top-secret government stuff. What do you sell here?”

“We are the finest tableware company in the country,” Hiram boasted. “You will find five place settings, seven place settings, fork, spoons, kitchen knives, pie knives and dish packs. If it needs to be on the table, we can supply it for you.”

Dion and his friends began to look over the selection of forks and spoons in the store. Most were laid out in a display case where they could be picked up and examined. Most had numbers stamped on the back.

“So what’s with the numbers on the back of the silverware?” Sean asked.

“Tableware,” Hiram corrected. “Nothing we make here is from silver. You are using the wrong term. What we sell is made from stainless steel. The numbers you see show the percentage of nickel and other alloys used in the manufacture of the steel.”

“Thanks,” Sean told him. “I learn something new every day.”

“I thought, perhaps, you might be from the other side because his return was predicted a long time ago,” Hiram continued. “You made me hope he was about on his way back and you a vanguard.”

Now all of them turned and starred at the little man behind the counter. Finally, it was Emily’s turn to speak.

“We didn’t mean to startle you, sir. Exactly what are you talking about?”

“This company, Anita Tableware, was founded by the Reverend Charles Obadiah over a hundred years ago. He was a minister who predicted his return from the other side someday. We have suffered through much to keep this company running because we want to be here when he returns so he can use it as a base of operations.”

“I see,” Dion said to him. “So you expect him to return from death and reestablish himself on Earth?”

“He never left a successor. The church became a corporation fifty years ago when we decided his time to return might be longer than we hoped. Since then, we have established stores across the world which sell our fine tableware.”

“I have to admit,” Lilly said as she picked up a butter knife, “they do look good. I like this style. How many do you have?”

“Four hundred and thirty-six,” he told her. “What you are looking at now was personally designed by the Reverend’s senior wife. She spent five months working on the pattern with his other wives until they came up with the design. It’s one of my personal favorites.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we are merely human,” Dion said. “Just don’t talk too freely about what you saw. Like I said, top secret.”

“Of course. I will wait for another day to come. We have waited a long time, I can wait much longer.”

They thanked him for his time and quickly vanished out the door.

“Well, that was more than a little odd,” Sean said to his friends. “I guess he thought the prophet had returned and it was us.”

“Must’ve been quite a let-down,” Lilly said. “I could see the disappointment in his face.”

“He’ll go on hoping,” Emily said. “I wonder if he’ll spend the rest of his life waiting. I’m sure many people already have.”

“Sometimes the waiting is the most important thing,” Dion said to his companions as they headed down the hall. “So long as people like him have something to look forward to, they have a reason to get up in the morning. It’s easy to laugh at them, in spite of what we’ve already seen here, but so many people don’t have a reason to live, I’m glad when I run into someone who does. As for me, I still need to obtain full powers for the fourth element of fire.”

“But anyway,” Dion continued, “the next thing we have to do is find the jewelry store which sells the fire opal. It was supposed to be around here. At least Edward promised us we’d be dropped near the place that sold them.”

They stopped and looked around.

The concourse was full of stores and it was difficult to tell which one was a jeweler’s at a distance. The scanned the line of stores. Meanwhile, the shoppers continued to walk past them.

“I’ve hated shopping ever since I was a kid,” Sean told Dion as he kept one hand on Emily.

“Why is that? “ Sean asked him. He peered down one side of the concourse where it seemed one of the stores might be a jeweler.

“I saw Santa Clause wipe blood off a kid.”

Dion whipped around. “What did you just say?”

“I was six years old at the time but I never forgot what I saw,” Sean told him. “It was Christmas and we were in my dad’s car waiting for my mom to come out of one of the department stores at a plaza. There was a guy inside playing Santa Claus for the holidays. Kids would go in with their parents and get their picture made. Some kid broke away from his parents and hit a glass window, busting his head. Then Santa Claus went over and fixed a bandage to his head while they waited for the ambulance to show up. I hear the kid turned out all right, the head wound looked much worse than it really was, but you can imagine the shock to a kid who had to see that. I’ll be a lot of kids continued to believe in Santa Claus for years longer than they normally did.”

“I don’t think I ever had a Christmas memory that was bad,” Dion said.

“There it is!” Lilly shouted and pointed down the concourse. “I see it!” They turned in the direction she pointed to see a large plastic diamond turn on an axis over a store.

It only took them a few minutes to reach the store, even while they constantly checked for any signs of security guards it the background. There were none, at least no one interfered with them and they reached the jewelry store without trouble.

Once inside they were greeted by a tall man in his twenties who was dressed in a suit and tie.

“Thank you for coming into Plus Diamonds,” he told them. “Is there something special I can help you find?”

“I’m looking for a fire opal,” Dion said. “Do you carry those?”

“I believe we do.” The man slid behind a counter. He extended a hand to Dion. “Ted, I’m the manager at this branch.”

“Glad to meet you, Ted, I’m Dion and these are my friends.”

Ted unlocked the glass case with a key on his ring and pulled out a selection of them mounted on a small rack. He sorted through the gemstones on the rack and pulled a ring off after he’d glanced at them carefully.

“This is one of two rings we have and it is in a sterling silver setting. Note the fine work that has gone into its construction. We can have it sized to specification, but it will take a week because our jeweler comes by every three days. I can size you right now or you can bring it back later to have it done with a sales slip.” He handed the ring to Dion.

Dion held it to the light and looked at the pattern in the opal. It was a brilliant red and just what he needed according to Edward. He gave it to Lilly to try on. It fit her to perfection. The ring matched the glow on her face. Lilly went over to mirror on the counter and examined it on her hand. She turned and smiled at Dion.

“I’ll take it,” Dion told the manager.

“Good, an excellent choice. Let’s take it to the counter and I’ll ring the sale and get you a box for it.”

It only took a few more minutes for them to conclude the transaction and soon Lilly was leaving the store with the ring on her finger.

“You see,” the manager said to one of his clerks who’d come out of the back room after the sale was finished, “this is why I like my job. You saw the look on her face? The glow lit up the entire store.”

“I thought we’d never sell that thing,” the clerk replied to him. “It’s been in the case for the past five months. At least I don’t have to count it tonight for inventory.”

“So this ring will repel the fire elementals,” Lilly said as she held it up to the light while they walked down the concourse. “Thank you for giving it to me, Dion. I know you bought it for protection, but I’m glad you allowed me to wear it just the same.”

“I can’t imagine anyone more deserving,” he said. “You’ve been with me all the way through this quest. I just want to finish getting my parents back.” He stroked her cheek and she looked up at him with big eyes.

“So when do we get to see the ring in use?” Sean asked Dion. “I didn’t get to see you take out the bull on the first day. Will it work something like that?”

“It depends on the elemental,” Dion said. “My guess is that it puts them in a holding pattern, but we’ll know the first time any of the fire elementals makes a run at me.”

‘I think we might just find out real soon,” Emily said. “Look to your right.”

Coming down the side passage was a detachment of five of the new security guards. All wore the same grey uniforms they’d noticed earlier and had a build close enough to each other to be family. The red-haired guards marched down the hall, carefully sliding past the shoppers and doing their best not to be noticeable.

Shoppers turned with curiosity and agitation as the guards marched past them. A group of uniformed men was bound to attract attention. Several young mothers grumbled and pulled their kids out of the way as they guards slid past. A few more shoppers stopped to try to figure out where they were headed. One man jumped out of the way so he wouldn’t collide with them.

“You think we should move?” Sean asked Dion. “I get the funny feeling they’re headed for us.”

Dion started to agree and turned to see three more coming from the north of the main concourse. This group, also with red hair and wearing the grey uniforms, were focused on him. There was no question the elemental security guards wanted to capture them. Lilly’s fire opal ring was about to be put to a trial run.

Dion considered using the censer, but there were too many people in the concourse. He still didn’t know if it would create a wall of fire when activated. He might lure them outside and try to use it where the heat wouldn’t be a problem. Dion turned and looked for an exterior door to the parking lot, but couldn’t find one. He would have to try to use the ring. Edward claimed the fire elementals could be bound by the use of it.

Time to find out.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Dion said to the elementals as they surrounded him. “I don’t see Officer Karanzen anywhere. Is he still employed by the mall?”

“I haven’t been fired yet,” a familiar voice announced through the crowd. They looked up to see Karanzen pushing his way through the group of shoppers that surrounded them. He was wearing the same uniform from yesterday. Whoever had brought the elemental guards in hadn’t insisted he change his uniform to meet the new style.

“Did I tell you guys to do this?” he said to the guards in grey. “In case you haven’t been informed, I am still the post lieutenant and you take your orders from me.”

“You didn’t summon us,” the guard nearest to Karanzen said. “Therefore you do not tell us what to do. We were instructed to isolate these four. They are now isolated. We await further instructions on what to do with them.”

“Are you as stupid as you look?” Karanzen asked him. “You’re causing a major scene here in the mall. Now get out of the way, I’ll deal with them, it’s my job. You are scaring the shoppers with your attitude.”

The guard bent over to Karanzen and looked directly in his eyes.

Karanzen was back in Korea. He huddled under a snow-covered slope. In the distance, there was rifle fire and he could hear voices in Mandarin all about him.

Dion watched as the security chief went into a catatonia. Whatever the elementals could do, it was tied into whoever summoned them. He betted on his uncle, but did his uncle know about the power of a fire opal?

“Lilly,” Dion whispered to her. “Your ring. Raise it up so they can see it.”

Lilly stepped forward and brought her hand into the air. The gemstone in the ring caught the light from the window and tossed a reflection across the fire elemental salamanders as it struck them. Now Dion and his friends would find out what it could do.

All seven of them froze as the plastic bull had done days earlier. But unlike the plastic bull, they walked forward to Lilly and fixed their gaze on the ring. Like the bull, all of them were mesmerized and fixed their attention on the fire opal. The guard who’d stared at Karanzen turned to it and his eyes glazed over.

“Tell them to safely leave the corridor,” Dion further whispered to Lilly. “Safely. I don’t want any burning pillars.”

“You see this ring?” she asked them to be sure. All of the guards nodded to her.

“Return from where you came in safety,” she commanded. “There are to be no fires.”

There was a pop and the security guards were gone. The shoppers who were gathered around shook their heads, unable to believe people could leave so quickly. They glanced around, saw no circle of guards and went about their business.

“Where did they go?” Karanzen asked them, still coming out of his gaze. He too glanced around and didn’t see a thing.

“Lilly sent them away,” Dion told them. “Guess they listened to some of us.”

Karanzen grumbled about amateurs who tried to upstage him and walked away. The four stood in place and watched him leave.

“Still leaves more of them,” Dion said. “If they were summoned, it had to be in a group of twelve.”

“So there are more salamanders out there?” Sean asked him.

“Yes, and my uncle can get more if he wants to do so. He can get just about all he needs until I have full powers. There isn’t much we can do to stop him, but it will take him some time. If he knows what happened, and we can assume he did, he’ll be ordering up some more fire elementals. I don’t know how effective the ring is against more than seven at a time, but I’m speculating it’s not good for real big groups. We may find out soon enough.”

Chapter 11

Karanzen slammed the door to the antechamber where his office was located and walked inside. He looked at the empty secretary’s desk and wondered when they would hire one for him. Right now, everything clerical went through the clock tower and no one was allowed into Seth Bach’s Holy of Holies. It was written into the rental contracts that no one was allowed into the “Central Administrative Center” unless given written permission from upper management. There was a small office outside it where a staff processed payroll all day and did the legal dance needed to keep the various local governments happy, but no one even considered approaching the clock tower interior.

He opened the door to his office and started to walk inside when he heard a cough from inside. Karanzen reached for the light switch and turned it on to see Matt, Seth Bach’s toadie, sitting behind his desk. Matt had a folder in his hand and Karanzen didn’t have to ask to find out what it meant.

“Hello, Karanzen,” Matt said to him. “I’ve talked this morning to Seth Bach personally and we’re in agreement that you just don’t fit in around here. You have failed repeatedly in an important security task to keep a dangerous group of people from entering this mall. We can no longer afford to keep you as part of this company. You can’t do the most essential part of your job.”

Matt dropped the folder on the desk. “You’ll find all the necessary legal documents in her which will give you a thirty day severance package and allow you time to find another job. I’m sure you will agree this is a most generous offer. All you need to do is sign it and clean out your desk. Take your time cleaning out the desk because I’ve decided to devote the entire day to helping you get your things out of the building.”

Karanzen stood there, unable to believe this smarmy little toad was dismissing him from the mall. There had to be some kind of mistake. He’d talked to Seth Bach recently and no mention was made of instant termination. What was going on here?

He ignored Matt and went over to the desk, grabbing the phone from the other side. Karanzen punched out the emergency number for the clock tower, but the phone continued to give him a dial tone.

“You are wasting your time,” Matt informed him. “The phone now runs direct to the tower. If you can’t dial a number it means they don’t want to talk to you.”

“Who are you to come into my office and give orders to me?” Karanzen yelled at Matt. “I have served in places where they would’ve fried you up on a plate. The only reason you are here is because you do Seth Bach’s dirty work for him.”

“Indeed I do. As a matter of fact, this whole rapid dismissal was my idea. I told Bach it was a better idea to get rid of you and find someone else.”

“What did he say when you came up with it?”

“He gave me full support; notice the signature at the bottom of this letter.” Matt held it up so Karanzen could see it. There it was: the cursive handwriting of the mall owner.

The now former security chief looked down at the corporate tool beneath him and thought about the many things he could do and no one would be the wiser. However, someone had to know he was down here. Which meant the little dung pile would be missed. The sort of thing Karanzen wanted to do only took place in movies and TV shows where rain coated police detectives hummed the conclusion twenty years later. Real life was undergoing the humiliation of leaving the office with a pile of boxes in his hands.

He knew it was about to come to this. The mall management hadn’t listened to him and refused to do what was needed to keep Dion out. The kid managed to get in somehow and was on his way to meet the last elemental grandmaster. There was very little he could do right now other than plant something on Dion and call the cops. He wasn’t above doing that; it had worked for him several times before. He couldn’t unleash his own supernatural abilities on Dion since the kid was an advanced elemental master. Right now, the only one who could oppose him at that level was his uncle.

“I still want to talk to Seth Bach,” Karanzen said. “I want to hear from him personally that I’m sacked.”

Karanzen handed the phone to Matt. “As a matter of fact, I want you to call him on whatever secret number you have at your disposal. I’m sure you have an unlisted line that you can use. Since you are such an important person around here, Matt, you should have no trouble doing it.”

Matt hung the phone back up on the cradle. “I don’t think so, Karanzen. He no longer wants to speak to you. Your term of service is over, don’t you get it? Now just pack your things up and get out of here before I have to call the police.”

“Call the police?” Karanzen returned to him. “I think they are the last people you would want to come here. What a scene in the parking lot it might make! Former security officer led off in cuffs because he failed to keep one young kid out of the mall. People might want to know why this local kid was supposed to be kept away from the mall. They might learn he is related to the man who owns this mall. I could see all kinds of trouble from the police because of me.”

“You have more to lose than anyone here, Karanzen. You forget we have all your service records on file. You want us to make them available to the right people? I think some of the men you abandoned in Korea might still have families around here. They’d like to know the full story of what happened at the Chosin Reservoir.”

“I’m sure they might,” Karanzen countered. “Just as all kinds of federal agencies might want to know about the abyss this mall sits over. I’m sure you’ll have all kinds of people want to come here when they learn the mall is located over a gate to hell.”

Karanzen sat down in a chair next to the desk and looked at Matt. “So why don’t you call the big man and get him on the phone and we can talk like adults. I don’t know why he has to send a boy to do a man’s job.

The door flew open to the antechamber and Karanzen got up to see who it was. He assumed it was one of his dismissed guys on his way back to pick up a missing personal item. All of this would have run smoother if he had his own clerical support, but, like everything else, Seth Bach wanted it all to run through the clock tower. In the beginning, he was told there would be more help as needed, but it never seemed to materialize. Karanzen decided it had to do with budgetary concerns as the early stage, but he noticed items his employer wanted that didn’t generate profit could always find a place in the budget.

“Just wait a minute,” Karanzen said to Matt. “Somebody’s walked into the office and I need to see who it is. Don’t you go running off now.” He turned and walked into the main room.

The door was still open when he walked into the next room, although there was no one in it. The outer office appeared to be in the same state he’d left it earlier in the day. The same faded curtains were against the wall, although it didn’t have a window. Most of the files were kept in his office, so there was none of the bulky cabinets in most places which carried out the same function. He looked down at the floor and realized it needed cleaning, but the condition of the office was not in the front of his mind.

Karanzen walked over to the door and placed his hand on the knob. Who had tossed it open? Was it some kid trying to cause trouble again? Just let them try to maintain order around here without him keeping things under wraps. He could see Matt in a uniform as he attempted to explain to a ten-year-old kid that he couldn’t walk out with whatever he wanted. Or break-up a fight between a clerk and a customer who got in his face. This is what they employed him to do and his team was experts in keeping incidents under control. What would happen when those red-haired zombies were in charge? No one would even consider the mall if they were all over it.

He decided to have a look in the hall before he closed the door. Just maybe there would be some punk in flight down the hall. Usually the little miscreants weren’t smart enough to consider what would happen If he caught up with one of them.

The whole world seemed to change faster than he could manage. Just the other day he’d ran into a lady in the parking lot living out of her car. Her only companion was a small wiry dog. He’d noticed them parked out on the edge of the lot and walked over to see what they were doing there. This was before the entire parking lot was under his guards’ surveillance, but he was still trying to keep that kid Dion out of the mall when he saw her.

The lone car, a station wagon, struck him as a little bit strange as it sat out there by itself. Instead of sending one of his guys over to check it out, Karanzen decided to look into it himself. The car wasn’t in the best shape, but he’d seen worse ones in the lot. Even owned by people with money.

As he approached the car, Karanzen heard the dog yapping at him. He nodded at the person behind the wheel, unsure of what sex they were. They driver was slight and had an army cap on, but didn’t appear to be a veteran.

“That’s a pretty dog,” he said to her. “Are you okay? Do you need any help?”

“Oh, no,” the driver laughed. “I just came by to pick up some clothes.” By the voice, he could tell he addressed a woman. She had her head shaved close, something he’d never seen before, but it was hard to tell with the cap pushed down on her head. Her ears were pierced in several places, something else he’d never seen before.

Karanzen petted her dog, which seemed friendly enough. After a few minutes, he deduced she was some kind of traveler who went from one campsite to the next. She was young enough to have the luxury to wander the earth. He would have liked to discover her backstory, but there wasn’t time. He told her to check in with the security office if she needed any help, but the woman assured him her car was in excellent shape. As a matter of fact, she was a part-time auto mechanic.

Karanzen had her on his mind as he stepped out into the hall. He was thinking about the woman when he looked down the hall and encountered the mob of security guards, all of whom were dressed in grey with red hair. There had to be about twenty-four of them in the hall outside the office.

Before he could say another word, the guards shoved him back into the office. The sheer force of the bodies sent him flying backwards into the wall on the other side of the room. Karanzen slammed into it as the guards flowed over him, grabbing his arms and pinning him in place. Any six of them he could’ve handled, but he was outnumbered by the mob. As he swore curses on their future and past generations, the guards grabbed him and pushed him along into the inner office. His inner office, which was occupied by Seth Bach’s chief stooge, Matt.

“I told you,” Matt said to the struggling form of Karanzen, “things have changed in the way this mall is administered. You are no longer in charge of security. You’ve forced me to take drastic measures and now I have to decide what to do with you because you wouldn’t go. Why did you force me to do this?”

“Do what, you little punk?” Karanzen struggled to say something to Matt. “Tell these creeps to let me go or I’ll show you what I can really do.”

“I’m afraid you still don’t understand, Karanzen,” Matt sneered. “You are no longer able to give anyone a scare. Don’t you realize who we are?”

Karanzen looked at the crew around him who held him in place. They were all elementals. It was the only explanation he could come up with. The new guards had to be some kind of fire elemental.

“They’re all fire salamanders, aren’t they? I should have figured out by the way they looked. The temperature is already too high in this place. You’ve found some cheap elementals to work security and think you got a good deal on them. Well guess again, Buck-o, because they will never replace humans for the job. I don’t care how hot this place can get because the temperature doesn’t affect me. What happens when you get a whole room full of them in your glorious mall? They’ll set off every fire alarm in the place. What happens when they decide they don’t want to play by your rules any longer? You’ll end up with the entire mall in flames.”

“You just don’t like it you’ve lost another command, do you? “You’re done, old man. We no longer want or need you in this place.”

Matt was another kind of elemental, one Karanzen didn’t have any experience with. Matt was a sphinx, but the security chief didn’t know it. Just as Karanzen kept his real form private, so did Matt. His natural form was part lion and part eagle. Matt guarded the tomb of a pharaoh from beyond the circles of time and did so for the ten thousand years. He did his job so well, no one dared approached the tomb during the time he kept watch over it. It was a dull job, but he enjoyed it.

Every few years, someone was stupid enough to try to pry into the tomb. Matt would eagerly await their approach and hide himself behind a rock or in a sand pit. There were plenty of those in the valley where he dwelt. Once he got the job, the management preferred he didn’t bother them with the petty details on how many tomb robbers were intercepted or what he had to do to eliminate them. Should any they’re make it past his watch, his career would be finished and he sent back to the abyss... So long as he kept them out, he could always count on employment.

He grew to play with his victims after a few thousand years. The first thousand or so he spent perfecting his technique. It wasn’t for at least the second hundred years the humans learned to quit the direct approach to his jurisdiction. The poor pharaoh was only dead five days when the first fools decided to break into the tomb and loot it.

They didn’t even make it to the front door.

Matt remembered that one very well. One man had a mattock over one shoulder and a rope coiled around his body. Another carried several bags with him, as they intended to use them to haul off whatever gold could be claimed. It was night when they approached the tomb and Matt let them walk within ten yards of it before he made his move. After all, the men might have been in route to some other tomb. There were plenty of tombs in the valley, which didn’t employ supernatural guards. Most were looted soon after their occupant was interred. Some of them couldn’t afford the cost of the upkeep and they fell into ruin. Some had guardians that did little more than harass the thieves.

But the pharaoh who hired his services could afford the best and made sure he had the most effective security he could buy. So when the first thief approached the tomb, Matt was ready. The man pleaded with him, but Matt would have none of it. He knew the law and what happened to tomb thieves who broke it. If he hadn’t taken the stories seriously, perhaps others would in the future. In fact, when Matt sent the bodies back to the next of kin, no further tomb thieves attempted to break into the Pharaoh’s crypt for another five years.

But it never stopped them. Eventually someone would get the bright idea they could dance into the tomb and take whatever they wanted. And then Matt would appear. By then, it was too late. Only once in the years had he overlooked the sins of a tomb thief. He remembered her very well because he stopped her from walking into his territory.

Each of the tomb guardians had a specific area they monitored. There were no guardians at any of the tombs next to the one he watched, so Matt spent many evenings sitting on top of the pharaoh’s tomb and watched thieves break into the ones next to the one he guarded. They quit doing it after the first thousand years because everyone knew they were empty by then. The thieves would stare at the tomb he watched, decide it wasn’t worth the risk when they saw the bones that which surrounded it, and leave.

But one young lady decided to make the attempt five thousand years into the job. Matt watched her walk up the trail and stop to look at the bones he used to decorate the perimeter. Bones lasted a long time and served as the best “Keep Out” sign imaginable. He could see her think about it from his location. As she put her foot on the line etched in the sand, Matt made his appearance.

“You really don’t want to do that,” he told her. He’d used his standard human form, because it seemed she should have the option of using free will to determine whether or not to cross the line. As long as he gave her a warning, he might as well do it in human form.

She was startled and backed up. “Why is that?” she asked him.

Matt gave her credit. She didn’t panic and run as he’d expected.

“Because if you don’t, I get to eat you,” he informed the potential tomb robber. “There hasn’t been anything of value in the tombs around the one I watch in thousands of years. But the one I watch is still intact since I’m on a long-term contract. Now turn around and leave before I change my mind. You have crossed the line and it’s within my contract to consider you fair game.”

The woman turned and fled. He never made the same offer again for some reason.

“So you’re also an elemental,” Karanzen said to the grinning figure of Matt. “I can’t imagine how he got control of you. At least these ginger boys have an excuse; he’s worked some kind of spell over them.”

“Some of us don’t have to be bound,” Matt said. “Trust me, I like this job better than the last one I had and the pay isn’t too bad.”

It was sometime during year eight thousand that Matt decided the job was no longer fun. The idiots who approached the tomb thinned out by year five thousand and he was forced to get creative by year six thousand. He came up with the questions by year seven thousand. As a sphinx, Matt had access to all manner of forbidden knowledge the humans didn’t. It dawned on him that to allow the robbers a chance to answer a question would make the assignment interesting for a change. He consulted a few other sphinx guardians who told him they’d done that too for several thousand years and only once had a human beat them.

Matt liked those odds and compiled a huge list of questions to ask anyone he caught who attempted to break into the pharaoh’s tomb. Since he knew ten other sphinx guardians who’d done the same thing for thousands of years, it didn’t take him long to come up with his list.

The way it worked was simple. If a thief answered his question correctly, they could live. They wouldn’t be allowed to take any treasure with them; such a thing would violate his contract. But they could live to tell their friends and family what happened when they ventured into the land around the forbidden tomb. If they guessed wrong, the thief was added to the pile of bones which surrounded the tomb.

For some reason, no one ever answered the questions he put to them correctly. Ever riddle he hit them with was answered wrong. This puzzled him for a long time until Matt realized the thieves were not from the most educated classes.

One day, a man appeared at the entrance to the tomb. The bones formed an entire wall around the pharaoh’s tomb by then and Matt was forced to wait for the occasional fool who tried to scale them. He hadn’t had a break-in attempt in months. The last victim agonized for two hours over the question he put to him and Matt was forced to end it when it was painfully obvious he didn’t know.

The man pushed the bones aside and walked into the perimeter of the tomb’s territory. Matt watched him come over the rise from the next tomb, which was crumbled by neglect, when he saw the man walk past the wall. Thrilled to have some new entertainment, Matt appeared next to him in full terrifying sphinx form.

“If a ship sank on the border between Egypt and Libya,” Matt asked him. “Where would the survivors be buried?”

“The survivors would not be buried anywhere because they survived,” the man said to him with a big smile on his face.

Matt was stunned. Never before had anyone answered one of his riddles correctly. He’d used that one twelve times, but no one ever figured out the paradox inside it. Perhaps the sudden appearance of a sphinx unnerved them, but they never once got it right.

“Very good,” Matt told him. “You get to live. You should also know that you are the first person who has ever solved one of my riddles.”

“You must have some really stupid people coming in here,” the man said to him.

“You have to wonder how bright a person is that would rob a tomb guarded by me,” Matt agreed. “And they all know I’m guarding the pharaoh’s tomb. What idiot tries to make it past me just for a chance at some gold cups?”

“Quite a few from these bones.”

“Now please go,” Matt said. “You get to live because you solved my question. Stay here any longer and I’ll have to eat you.”

“I’ll go, but can you answer one of my questions?”

“I’ll certainly try.”

“Would you like to come and work for me? I could use a good sphinx.”

And so Matt the sphinx made the acquaintance of Seth Bach, the builder over the abyss. He ended up going to work for the real estate developer and found it much more rewarding than attacking people who tried to raid tombs. The clientele might be the same, but they were easier to deal with once you didn’t have to eat them.

“So you see, Karanzen,” Matt told him. “They answer to me now. All I have to do is tell them to get rid of you and you’ll be a pile of ash. So why don’t you just leave the mall peaceably and not cause me any problems?

“Who said we work for you?” one of the security guards snapped at Matt.

“Who else could you be working for?” he demanded. “Seth Bach summoned the last ones. He’s summoned you too and I work for him as well in the operations department. This means I have dominion over you. Case closed.”

“It doesn’t work that way because we weren’t summoned by your boss,” one of the other security guards said. “Since he didn’t call us up, he can’t put us down. So no, we don’t have to follow your orders.”

“Then what are all of you doing here?”

“We want to know what happened to our comrades who were summoned here and disappeared. A few of them made it back after encountering a young lady with a fire opal. How did she know fire opals could put us in a daze? Your master brought us here to deal with some young kid, or so we were told. It seems the target was not as easy as we were told. We want our friends back before we do any more jobs for him. Since they were sent down here, it was the reasonable place to look for them. Now tell us where we can find them!”

“Looks like you little plans have run into an iceberg,” Karanzen told Matt. “Guess I don’t have to worry about the consequences because I don’t work here anymore.”

“You can’t talk to me like that!” Matt snapped at the security guards. “Do you have any idea what I can do to you?”

“Do you have any idea what our combined strength can do to you?”

“I’m a sphinx, you idiots. I’m made out of stone. This is just a convenient form I use. This form is made out of stone too, although I look just as human as the next man does. Now get out of my way. You can’t burn stone!”

“Ever see molten rock? Lava? Magma? I think you should reconsider.”

“Boys,” Karanzen said. “I am out of here. Matt, have fun, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.”

The next second, Karanzen was gone, replaced by a cloud of flies. The flies buzzed all over the back office and spread everywhere until they pulled together and swarmed out of the room. In a few seconds, the flies could be heard in the hallway as they made for the nearest outside exit.

“So what happened to them?” the security guards said to the human version of Matt, whom they had cornered in the office. “Talk or we turn this entire wing of the mall into a volcano. And we can do it.”

“I don’t doubt you can,” Matt told them, “but you’ll have to deal with someone else as I’m needed elsewhere.”

And he vanished. The chair behind the security chief’s desk was empty.

“You forgot to tell us he could do that,” one of the security salamanders said to their leader, who had stood directly across from Matt before his disappearance.”

“Guess that leaves the kid they were supposed to corner,” he said. “We’ll need to find him if we want to know what happened to our people. Anyone know where he might be?”

“I’d expect it would be in the fire element section of the mall,” another one of them said.

“Okay, let’s go find him.”

Chapter 12

“Dion, you are in great danger,” a voice said to his left. Dion turned to see the form of his grandfather standing next to him. The old man had appeared out of nowhere, but he was used to it by now. Even his three companions didn’t find the sudden appearance to be of much issue.

“I’ve been in danger ever since I began this quest,” he told the older man. “What could possibly be worse?”

“Fire elementals. Salamanders are on their way here. You need to get out of the building right away. Take the nearest emergency exit. I’ve disabled the alarm, you can use it with your friends to leave the building.”

“Why can’t I tackle them inside the mall?”

“Too risky. They might burn the entire mall down in their anger. Several of their number was lost when your friend with the fire opal banished them today. They want to know where their companions are, but there is no way to know because the opal caused them to lose their sense of direction. Just get out now. I have to go. Bye.” And his grandfather vanished.

Dion turned to look at the emergency exit door on the other side of the concourse. He was close to this final destination, but he could not ignore this threat.

“We have to get out of here,” Dion told his friends as he took Lilly by the hand and hauled her to the door. Sean and Emily followed them.

Minutes later, they were outside the mall. Dion walked around the perimeter of the mall and saw no sign of the security guards. He walked with his friends and headed in the direction of the parking lot. There still were quite a few empty sections in it.

Dion walked around in the lot and waited. If his grandfather was right, they would be here very soon. He couldn’t understand why they held him guilty for the loss of the other fire elementals, but these creatures were not known to be the most rational of beings. At least he still had the censer in the bag next to him.

“You want me to hold the bag?” Lilly asked him.

“No, I’ll hold onto it for now.”

Sean stood there in the parking lot with Dion and waited. He seemed to feel something was about to happen. It wouldn’t surprise him. Nothing in this mall made the least bit of sense. He stood there with Emily and waited. It was hard to think of her as his fiancée, but Sean slowly adjusted to the idea. They had been through so much these past few days and knew more about each other than he’d believed possible before the adventure with the air sylphs. It wasn’t over yet and he wondered how Dion would deal with this latest challenge.

They were both about to find out.

Two minutes later the security guards poured out of the same door Dion had taken with his friends to leave the building. Dion counted at least thirty of them and the shoppers entering the mall stopped to look at the grey mob that flowed out to the parking lot. The security guards spotted Dion and company. They made a straight line to them. Dion stood his ground and watched the horde of elemental fire salamander’s march across the lot in their direction.

Fifty feet from contact, the salamanders fanned out into a pattern which enveloped Dion and his friends. As the sylphs had tried before, the fire elementals moved into position rapidly and had them completely surrounded in seconds. This time they executed the maneuver with perfection and the four of them were in the middle of a fire elemental mob. Dion knew that all the salamanders had to do was increase the temperature slowly enough and they would be cooked.

“Where are the ones you sent back?” the fire elemental nearest to him demanded. They all had names, but Dion lacked the time to learn any of them.

“Didn’t they return to your realm?” he asked. “They were sent back to wince they came. I assumed it was your realm.”

“Enough of the jokes, kid,” the elemental who faced him thundered. “We’re here on our own. We don’t work for your uncle so we don’t care what happens to your or anyone else in this mall. Now tell us where they can be found or learn what a fly under a magnifying glass feels.”

“Are you threatening me?” Dion placed his hands to each side and concentrated.

The fire elementals began to glow. Each one of them started to heat up and even at the distance they stood from Dion and his friends they could feel the heat rise from them and began to work its way toward them. The asphalt in the parking lot started to buckle and the painted lines on it began to change from a bright yellow to an ugly brown. Sean could feel the sweat on his brow began to drip off his face.

It lasted just long enough for the heat to become uncomfortable. Lilly looked to Dion with fear as the elementals began to burst into fire around them. She found herself in the middle of pillars of fire and no way to escape. Surely, Dion had to do something, didn’t he?

A clap of thunder changed everything. She felt the cool breeze of spring roll through the parking lot as the sky darkened. Seconds later the rain began to fall. First, it was just small drops but in minutes, it turned into a torrential downpour with sheets of rain that drenched the earth. The fire elementals began to send up clouds of steam as the rain washed over them. Lilly saw the glow on each of them recede in the path of the rainstorm and fade. She too was drenched from the storm, but at least it felt cool inside their midst, not deadly hot as it had felt moments ago. Soon, the salamander elementals were back to their human form in wet grey uniforms. They continued to stand in place as the rain pounded them.

A large puddle of water gathered around Dion and friends were they stood and turned into a small pond. It encompassed the elementals as the water began to flow up from the ground. They were in a part of the parking lot where there weren’t too many cars, but it was plain to see the water had cooled the fire elementals to the point where they couldn’t do any further damage.

“You want this to continue?” Dion asked them. “You know I can freeze each of you in place if I desire to do so. I’m thinking it would be a good time for all of you to leave.”

There was a flash of light and the fire elementals were gone. Dion closed his eyes, concentrated some more and the sky began to clear as the clouds dispersed. In a few minutes, the storm was over and the rain ceased. The clouds rolled back and the sun returned to the sky. As the water sank back into the earth, the ground around them began to dry.

They were soaked. All four were in the midst of the storm which Dion had unleashed. Sean and Emily knew better than to complain because Dion had saved them all. Had the elementals increased their heat output, they would have all cooked by now. Once again, he’d found a way to thwart the elementals, although this time it appeared they weren’t under the control of Dion’s uncle.

“What are we going to do about our appearance?” Lilly asked Dion. “We can’t go back in the mall soaked the way we are.”

“Give me a second,” Dion said. “There have to be a few fire elementals left around here. The salamander’s display should have attracted some attention.” He concentrated until he found one nearby and made a deal with it.

A small fireball leaped from the ground and into the air. Seconds later, it had bloomed over them and sent radiant heat down on all four. With the help of a few air sylphs, Dion was able to direct enough drying heat on him and his three companions to get the water out of their clothing. It felt as if they were in a big clothes drier, which in fact they were.

“I assumed you would use that censor against them,” Lilly said to Dion. “But you didn’t. Care to tell us why?”

“I don’t think the censer will work more than once,” Dion explained. “Plus, I don’t think I could have made it work in enough time. In any event, we still have it to use if we need it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sean said. “I don’t want to tangle with those creeps again.”

Dion felt the warmth from the small fire elemental pour over him and considered what his next move might have to be. His uncle was deadly serious about taking him down or at least keeping him away from the final elemental grandmaster. The salamanders might be running independently, but they still wanted him out of the way. They didn’t trust anyone and held him responsible for the loss of their comrades. Where had those other elementals gone when Lilly banished them with her fire opal ring? He assumed the realm of their birth, but might they have decided to venture somewhere else? There was no way he could know.

“Is everyone dry?” Dion asked his friends. They nodded.

“I’m dry,” Emily told him, “but I feel like a mess. I’ll have to have my hair redone soon. That storm ruined it.”

Dion looked up at the small elemental over him and gave it permission to leave. The fireball condescended into a small sphere and then a flame no bigger than a lit match. A single spark fell to the ground and rolled away. He watched it as the trail of smoke zipped across the parking lot and was soon gone.

“Of all the elementals you’ve run up against here,” Lilly told him. “Those have to be the worst. They are the most dangerous ones. You can’t argue it.”

“They’re all potentially dangerous,” Dion said. “It all depends how you work with them. I’ve done it on a small scale all my life, so I know what to watch out for. An ordinary person and could get into some very bad trouble.”

“Lilly,” Dion continued. “You’ve been with me the entire week through this quest. You could have left at any time, but you’ve stayed with me. Why?”

“I can’t help but notice how you’ve carried yourself all the time,” she told him. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

“You’ve got college already planned, haven’t you?”

“Of course, haven’t you?”

“Depends on what happens today. So much has to do with rescuing my parents. I don’t think beyond what happens until I can get them out. And I want you to keep that ring, by the way.”

Lilly looked up at him and didn’t know what to say. “Why? Don’t you want it back? It’s expensive?”

“You can keep it until I get you one of gold.”

Lilly threw her hands around Dion’s neck and kissed him. “That is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“I figure it gives you and Emily enough time to start planning,” he told her. “We can make it a double wedding.”

Lilly held on to him and didn’t know what to say. Although she’d known Dion the entire school year, she hadn’t been close with him until this week. What would her parents’ say? And did she care?

At that very moment her joy was so intense she failed to notice the swarm of flies, which appeared out of nowhere.

The flies buzzed all around them, but failed to land on any one of them. Soon, the cloud of flies was so intense it was hard to see and the noise they made drowned out any sound over five feet away. They were still alone in this part of the parking lot and didn’t have to worry about anyone else. The cloud of flies pulled back and formed a shape next to them as it condescended into a human form. They stood and watched as the manikin made of flies slowly transformed into a human.

It was Officer Karanzen. He was still in his uniform.

“You don’t have to worry about me anymore, Dion,” he told them. “Your uncle no longer needs my services. He’s decided to replace me with some fool named Matt, who’s an elemental himself. I guess he thinks it will save him money. He even got rid of my staff and replaced them with that crew with red hair.”

“You may not believe me, Officer Karanzen,” Dion said, “but I am sorry to hear this. When did you get the word?”

“About fifteen minutes ago. Right before those bumpkins tried to take you out in the parking lot. When I found out they were in charge, I left the office.”

“And now they work for no one,” Dion said. “Something my uncle has done made them very angry. You really don’t want to get a creature made of fire mad at you. Even if you have the power of the fifth element.”

“That corporate kid Matt is one of them too. Not from the fire elements, but from the abyss, the realm of the aether. He’s a sphinx in human form, I found out. I think he used to guard a pharaoh’s tomb until you uncle found him and made a good offer.”

“Something else I will have to consider. So where do you plan on going next, officer?”

“I’m not sure right now. Because of my condition, as I like to call it, I can go just about anywhere I please. I want to get out of this place as soon as I can. Too many bad memories.”

“I can understand how that would happen. It doesn’t have many good ones for me either.” Dion looked at Lilly. “Well, a few, but not too many.”

Lilly beamed back at him.

“You take care, kid. And watch out for your uncle. The man is terrified of you, but he won’t admit it.”

Karanzen began to melt into a diffuse form that turned into the cloud of flies a few seconds later. They stood and watched as the cloud broke down into its individual parts and swarmed across the parking lot. In a few minutes, it was over the field, which surrounded the mall, and then it vanished.

“What do you think will happen to him?” Lilly asked Dion.

“I really don’t know. But I do know one thing.”

“What’s that?” Sean said.

“I need to get to the Hades restaurant and chili parlor. Right away.”

Chapter 13

By the time they were back into the mall, the crowd watching the engagement between the security guards and Dion was gone. Once the security guard fire elementals vanished, so did the onlookers from the concourse. People would go home and talk about some kind of “altercation” in the parking lot, but it would die down in a few months. No one really had the time to worry about such things.

They walked through the entrance door to the mall and continued in the direction of the chili parlor.

Even without the map, Dion could find the Hades restaurant where the best chili in Ohio was served, as the advertisements proclaimed. The smell of cumin filled the air as they approached it and the scent of cooked red beans mixed with the brown meat scent in the air. As usual, there was already a line formed outside the place.

The exterior of the restaurant was designed to resemble a small cantina far south of the Rio Grand. Michael Hades claimed he’d passed such a place on his way north when he fled from the vengeful army of Don Gordo after he’d memorized the sacred recipe. On some nights when the place was slow, he would elaborate on the story and tell people in the restaurant a most amazing tale.

In the elaborate version of the story, Hades had two horses shot out from under him by the guapos who vowed to bring him back to the Padron’s justice and restore his family honor. Under the light of the full moon, he’d crawled across the barren lands outside a remote town near Savona where he happened on the lone cantina. Once inside he was forced to use his charms and impress a mere kitchen maid who worked there. She hid him in the basement for the night until the gunmen from Don Gordo had passed by and no longer searched for him. From there he returned to Ohio and soon had the restaurant up and running, he paid coyotes at the border tenfold the money they usually received to smuggle people across the Rio Grande to bring her to El Norte. He celebrated her arrival with a huge wedding where peace was declared between the various factions in her town. Even Don Gordo was so impressed he called off his guapos.

If you lingered around the restaurant long enough, after Hades left for the day, the help might tell you their version of the story. They would tell you how he found the cantina design in a comic book and used it as the front piece for his restaurant. His lovely senora wife was from Albuquerque and her family had lived there six generations. Far from being a lowly kitchen maid, her father owned the largest grocery store in town and she’d attended private schools until leaving for college. Mr. Hades was forced to promise his future father in law many grandchildren before he would even consider the marriage. They had three children who worked in the family restaurant, two more at home and another one on the way.

Michael Hades was out arranging the menu display when Dion walked up to him with his friends. The other three hung back as they knew this was a private affair between him and Hades.

“Hello, Mr. Hades,” he announced himself to the restaurant owner. “I’m Dion. I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Dion,” Hades spoke to him. “So is it true your uncle had you create this entire mall at night by levitating blocks of stone from the big quarry in Scipio?”

“If I could do that, Mr. Hades,” Dion said, “I wouldn’t need to come and see you about obtaining full authority for the power of the fourth element.”

“I see. So where do you come from?” He placed both hands on his hips and tried to look the part of an elemental grandmaster, although it was difficult as he wore a white apron and a chef’s hat.

“California, sir. My parents were abducted by my uncle who owns this mall and are held prisoner inside the clock tower. Only I can rescue them.”

“Why is it only you who can rescue them?”

“I will have all four elemental powers should you decide to grant the last one to me. I have possessed the ability to manipulate all four elements since I was a young child, but nothing I ever did had much power. Until I met the other elemental grandmasters, I could only make small things do casual manipulations. Now I have full authority over the first three elements and I will have the fourth with your approval.”

“And with these four elemental powers you will be able to free your parents?”

“No, sir. I need the fifth element to free them. I can only gain the fifth elemental power by entering the clock tower where they are held. But to do that I need all four elemental powers.”

“I see. And where is this fifth elemental grandmaster you hope to find? In the clock tower I assume?”

“No one knows. It is so rare anyone masters the fifth element that few people even know there is a fifth element grandmaster. My uncle gained the power of the fifth element when he by-passed the other four. All he knows is the fifth element. If there is a fifth element grandmaster, he or she will have power over the aether and the abyss. I will have to find him or her inside that clock tower before I can locate my parents.”

“But what if he or she isn’t in the clock tower?”

“Where else would that person be?” Dion asked him. “My uncle lured the other four elemental grandmasters to this mall so he could trap me. He must have the fifth one concealed inside the tower too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has the fifth elemental master trapped in it too.”

“Well and good, Master Dion,” Michael Hades said. “But we must attend to these matters in private. It’s not a good idea to talk about them in front of the uninitiated.”

“I agree, sir. Give me a few minutes to talk to my friends.”

Dion walked over to the other three. “This should only take an hour,” he told them. “Just wait out here, my uncle won’t dare to try anything while I’m inside with the Fire Grandmaster.”

Lilly put her arms around him and gave Dion a big hug. “You come back to me safe!” she whispered to him.

“Don’t worry. I will.”

Dion walked back and vanished inside the restaurant with Hades. Lilly stood and watched him go. When he was inside the restaurant, she turned to Emily. “He wants to marry me,” she said.

“What? That’s wonderful! We can make it a double wedding.”

“That was Dion’s idea too,” she told her, tears streaming from her eyes.

Dion followed the restaurant owner through his chili parlor as they headed for the back office to complete the interview. He stopped at a young man about Dion’s age and spoke a few words in Spanish to him.

They continued on down the restaurant.

“That was my oldest boy,” he explained to Dion. “I told him to leave us alone for an hour as I have some important business to attend. He favors his mother in temperament, but I think someday he’ll be a good fire manipulator someday. It takes time, as you well know. But right now, I have him to the point where he can summon some lesser fire elementals and they’ll roast an entire slab of lamb in the kitchen. Saves a fortune on gas bills.”

Hades opened the door in front of them and allowed Dion to enter his office in front of him. He turned on the light and allowed Dion a chance to see what was inside the office while he locked the door from the inside.

“Take the seat in front of the others,” he instructed Dion. Dion walked over to the single chair situated in the middle of the room and seated himself.

In front of him were the other elemental grandmasters. He’d met each one over the past few days and obtained the full elemental powers from each one. Today he hoped to obtain the fourth one.

“Welcome, Dion,” the pharmacist said to him who gave him his first elemental power, that of earth. “We’ve waited for you today. None of us worried you wouldn’t make it this far, we’ve been very impressed by your performance. But we need to see a final demonstration of your new abilities before we can allow Mr. Hades to give you the full fire elemental power.”

“There is a reason the final elemental power we can bestow on you is fire,” the hobby storeowner announced. “It is the most dangerous of the four. We cannot allow you to have this ability unless we are certain you will use it to establish balance in this reality. We cannot give the ability to set the world on fire to the wrong person.”

Dion sat in the chair and nodded.

“In order to allow Mr. Hades to give you this ability,” the woman who owned the pool supply shop told him, “you must show us what you can do with the talents bestowed on you so far.”

“Note that there are four basins in front of you,” Michael Hades told him. “The first has earth in it, the second has water, and the third is empty as you have plenty of air in the room to work with. The fourth and final one we will tell you about if you satisfy us with the first three. We want to see what you can do with the first three basins, before we proceed.”

“I understand,” Dion said. “Give me some time and I will do what I can.”

Dion sat in the office before the four grandmasters and closed his eyes. This was the final test of sorts. He needed to prove his good intentions before they would allow him the fourth power. Sitting here in front of them in this small restaurant office was not quite as glamorous as the storybooks would have it, but he’d come far to obtain this fourth ability. His parents were dependent on him and he needed to get them out of the tower.

Dion concentrated hard. There came a grinding sound from the first tray and as cloud of dust began to rise from it. Soon, the dust condensed into the figure of an animal. The animal was visible as a bull, the same one that Dion kept running into, since he contacted the same earth spirits that were originally trapped in the bull to animate it. They created a bull made out of clay, which, due to the small amount of dirt, was life size, but hardly weighed anything. The bull walked out of the tray looked around the office, bowed to the grandmasters, turned to Dion, bowed to him, and then returned to the tray. Once it reached the tray, it returned to its form as a cloud of dust and descended into it. There were no dust particles anywhere in the office after it settled into the tray.

“Very nice,” The pool storeowner said to him. “Now let’s see what you can do with the tray of water.”

Once more, Dion closed his eyes and concentrated. All he could think about was the water Naiads and how innocent they seemed. Of all the elementals he’d encountered in his time at the mall, they had been the easiest to work with. The Naiad sisters were so sweet, it made you wonder why humanity had to come in existence and ruin everything. They weren’t as innocent as they seemed; no sentient being could be clueless and survive in the reality that was Earth. He worried that the chess club would have more than it could handle adjusting them to the ways of the world. But to see the Naiads in their human form choose one boy after another was something he could be proud of all his life.

As Dion thought about the innocent water nymphs, one of them suddenly appeared on the edge of the tray. The water stirred and from it raised a beautiful young woman covered by her long hair. She looked around as she surfaced from the tray and laughed. It didn’t make sense; there was very little water it the tray, but it was all the elemental needed to bring itself forth. Dion recognized the form of Cynae who turned to him and giggled. She blew him a kiss and vanished beneath the still water in the tray.

“Now that was something else,” the hobby storeowner said to him. “I heard about those girls. I can’t believe they live over in the creek now.”

Dion wanted to tell him that they wouldn’t be there much longer, but it was time to work his abilities on the final tray for which he had full elemental abilities. He closed his eyes and concentrated once more. There were a few sylphs in the room, they were always about if you knew where to find them. They were very easy to work and Dion had a few of them start up right away. They liked to help him whenever there was an opportunity.

A breeze began to move around the room. Soon it turned into a light wind. Dion was able to get the sylphs to stop the air currents at this point because he didn’t want a hurricane unleashed in the restaurant office. The wind slowly died down and then it was calm again. There was no need to do anything elaborate with the sylphs as they could be counted on to make the air move. To create a humanoid sylph would be a waste of talent and energy and his judges would not look favorably on it.

“Pretty good wind, son,” Michael Hades noted. He still wore his apron and chef’s hat. The wind had not blown it off his head. “Now if you will excuse us, please step outside the room we need to talk about a few things.”

Dion stepped up from his chair, went to the door, unlocked it and let himself out into the dining area. He shut the door behind him. Now would be the time to render an opinion. All he had to do was stand there and wait.

Very few people were in this part of the restaurant. Hade’s staff must’ve been informed to keep it free and away from interference.

Dion stood in silence and waited. There was nothing else he could do. He hoped his demonstration of his ability and his performance would make the grandmasters look favorably on his quest. But he wouldn’t know until they made up their minds.

He waited for a good fifteen minutes until the door opened and the face of the pharmacy owner peered out at him. “You can come back in, Dion.”

Dion stepped back into the room and locked the door behind him. The pharmacist was back in her chair and he realized they wanted him to sit back in the one where he’d sat before. Dion walked back over to his chair and seated himself.

“We have carefully considered your actions this week,” Michael Hades began. “There were some concerns about the flooding of the parking lot. We were also worried about the casual use of an earth elemental in the plastic bull in front of so many people, but the situation did warrant the use. Therefore, we have decided to award you the full abilities of the fire elemental. Stand up, Master Dion!”

Dion stood up in his chair as the others did the same.

Michael Hades walked over and took him by the hand. “Do you swear by the Master of Time not to use this ability for personal gain or to accept monetary payment for the gift which is about to be granted you?”

“I do,” Dion replied.

“Do you swear to use your skills to provide aid and comfort to those who need it?”

“I do.”

“Do you swear to use your talents to fight evil in all its forms?”

“I do.”

“Then make the fire in the final tray dance.”

Dion closed his eyes and brought out the smallest fire elemental he could find inside the last tray. It was metal, so there was on danger of it burning through to the floor. He noted the tray was placed on top of a stone platform. The wood burst into flame and Dion made certain there would be as little smoke as possible from the burning wood. He allowed the flame creature on top of it to dance all over the burning wood, which he kept at a temperature so hot it was reduced to ash in seconds. A few minutes later, the flame was gone and the small fire elemental with it.

“I hereby proclaim you a master of the fire element,” Michael Hades said. He gestured back at the chair. “Please sit down. And don’t worry, I’ll sign the forms today and you’ll get your copy in the mail next week.”

“Have you thought about what to do with your abilities from here on out?” the pharmacist asked Dion.

“My first order of business is to penetrate into the clock tower tomorrow and rescue my parents. I need to obtain the fifth and final element to do that. What can you tell me about the fifth element grandmaster?”

“She vanished into the tower the moment it was built,” the hobby storeowner told him. “No one has heard anything from her since she was lured into the tower soon after it was completed. If you go in there after her, be careful. None of us knows what is inside that tower. All we know is that your uncle had it completed first and according to his personal plans, which are long vanished. But we do know she is still inside. We don’t know anything about her situation.”

“You haven’t told me anything about the fifth element grandmaster,” Dion said to them. “You sit there and talk about her, but I have no clue who she is.”

“Her name is Mary Phologostron,” the pharmacist said. “She ran a travel agency, but she turned down every attempt your uncle fielded to get her to relocate her office from Scipio to the mall. A few months ago, he lured her into the clock tower on the pretext of a meeting to discuss travel plans for his employees. This is the last we have seen of her.”

“What does she look like?” Dion asked. “It would be helpful if I have some idea who I’ll need to find in this place.”

“She’s a white lady,” the pharmacist told him. “About thirty years of age. She wears horn rim glasses and is of medium build. Nothing special about her. She has long black hair if this helps you.”

“At least I’ll not be trying to find a bald man in his fifties,” Dion told them.

“This meeting needs to be adjourned,” Hades announced as he stood up from his chair. “I have a business to run and I’m sure the rest of you are in a similar situation.”

The grandmasters shook Dion’s hand and welcomed him to their ranks. In a way he was about to become a grandmaster himself, should he could obtain the powers of the fifth element. The title was more of a courtesy than anything else.

His friends knew what had taken place the moment he met them outside the restaurant. Lilly had a look of relief on her face. Both Emily and Sean congratulated him by pumping his hand and slapping him on the back.

“Where to now?” Sean asked him. “You have all four powers. Will you try and get the final one today?”

“No, too much to do before I try to enter that tower. We need to get back home now that I’ve fulfilled today’s objective.”

“I think we might have to put a delay on that,” Sean said. “Look who’s back in action.”

The grey suited security guards poured down the grand concourse in their direction. This time they didn’t even bother to try to act as if they were in the mall on official business. They pushed people out of the way and marched in step toward them until they reached Dion and company. The grey security guard fire elementals surrounded them and glared in anger at the four young people who stood in the concourse.

“We found them,” the elemental who appeared to be the leader of the pack said. “Your little trick sent them into another circle of time and it took us a long time to get them back. We just cut a deal with the man who owns this mall. All four of you are to come with us this very minute.”

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Dion made clear. He looked at the crowd of security guards who surrounded him and smiled. They had no idea he’d been awarded full fire elemental powers.

“I think you will,” the salamander said and the air began to heat up around them. Dion could feel the subtle energy shift from the salamanders in human form into the air.

Dion raised his hands and the room became cooler. Much cooler. Soon the atmosphere in the room was back to normal and the salamanders stood there in amazement.

“Do you understand now?” he said to them. “It doesn’t matter what kind or form of deal you have made with my uncle. I have the full powers of the fourth element and can bind you in any way I choose. Now why don’t you just leave before I find some volcano to send you into for the next ten thousand years?”

The security guards looked around and saw the crowd of people watching them carefully. There would be no way they could merely vanish and leave the room. Too many people would see it happen up close where it couldn’t be explained. The lead elemental turned and walked back the way he came, followed by the other fire elementals. This time they didn’t shove people out of the way, as they had done before. As they vanished around the corner, the final elemental in their grey suited uniform turned back and looked at Dion before he continued on his way.

“Looks like your uncle will need some new security for this place,” Sean said to Dion. “And he better get it soon because it won’t take very long for every booster thief in town to learn the mall is wide open. The local cops will get tired of doing the job for him real quick.”

“My uncle isn’t thinking past this week,” Dion said. “He wants to keep me away from the tower for a few more days. I don’t know what he’s planning, but it involves this mall and the abyss. I need to get into that clock tower tomorrow, find the grandmaster of the final element, and free my parents. I’ll deal with him along the way.”

The light began to fade around them once again, which meant they were about to be transported to somewhere else. Dion was used to it by now, just couldn’t figure out who made it all happen. If it was his uncle, he needed to be ready for a challenge. But he didn’t think so. There was a limited amount of things a person could do outside this time circle and if his uncle wanted to do him harm, it would happen in this time circle.

“I’m starting to get sick of this,” Sean told to his friends as the light of the mall faded and became dark.

“Me too,” Lilly agreed. “I wonder who wants us this time?”

Chapter 14

No sooner had Lily spoke the words than the light began to return. It grew in brightness and, as Dion expected, he felt the warm sand beneath his feet. They were in the Ancient Egypt of another time circle with the pyramid construction in the background.

Dion looked down and found the clothes of an Old Kingdom court official on his body. His friends were dressed the same, with the girls wearing the sheer wraparound dresses from his time. Their hair was layered and coated with a fine sheen of oil for protection from the hot sun. Lilly held a staff in one hand and had a bright feather in the headband that kept her hair in place.

“You are quite the vision of an Egyptian landscape,” he said to her. “I wonder what time it is?”

“Ask him,” Sean said as he pointed up at the sky.

Dion looked up at the heavens and saw the large beetle pushing along the solar ball. Directly behind it was the boat with several figures in it. He couldn’t tell, but the boat was cutting to the left of the bug, as if it wanted to find a way to get around it.

“Four in the afternoon,” Dion said. “Right on schedule.

“Hello, kids,” a voice said on front of him. It was Mr. Jehuti once again with his wife. They were dressed the same and stood directly in front of them. Mr. Jehuti held a scroll in one hand, while his wife held a case of pens. It had to be something to do with their station.

“We needed to bring you for the final confirmation,” Mr. Jehuti said. “We can’t do this part anywhere near your time circle. It has to be done here.”

“I thought it was all over and done with once I obtained the fourth element,” Dion said to them. “At least this is the impression they gave me.”

“We still have a few more things to do,” he explained. “I know you are ready to go into that tower tomorrow and need to plan for it, but we have to go over a few formalities so the first four elements will be under your control back on your home world.”

“So what do I need to do?”

“You don’t need to do a thing. All you have to do is accept their loyalty.”

“Loyalty of whom?” Dion asked.

“Their loyalty,” Mrs. Jehuti said as she stood next to her husband. She pointed in the direction of the approaching procession.

The procession was made up of all kinds of figures who were barely visible at the distance. The procession was chanting something, but at the distance, it was impossible to hear what they were saying. It was only when they came into hearing range that Dion could hear what they were saying. The column was chanting his name over and over again. In the rear of the procession, three women slapped cymbals together to keep the beat in sequence.

In front of the column were figures made out of dirt, the representatives of the earth elementals. Behind them were the air sylphs who bounced around in the form of dancers. Directly bringing up the procession were the water elementals who appeared to be some kind of river nymphs and were singing in Ancient Greek. Finally, the fire elementals, in their human salamander form, came in from the rear. The cymbal players were salamanders.

“We offer our support to the man who has attained the four elemental powers,” the earth elementals spoke to Dion as they marched forward. They bowed and broke apart as they became part of the sand on the ground. Dion gave him his thanks as he watched the ground break apart and rumble as they continued on their way.

“Just let us know when we’re needed,” the dancers chanted as they bounced on the ground in front of him. Seconds later they took to the skies in their sylph form as Dion thanked them and accepted their support. He watched them travel to the sky as air currents.

“Hello, Dion,” the water elementals said to him. “We’re here for you too. Do you think you can find us some nice young men like you did for our Naiad cousins?”

“How could I refuse such beautiful women?” Dion laughed at them. “I will find you some virile young men who would be clad to offer companionship to you. The world is full of such men.”

They clapped their hands for joy and poured into the ground as they took liquid form. Dion watched the water return to the desert and wondered what would become of the world if every young man knew he could have a companion of such beauty.

When it was the salamanders’ turn, Dion realized they were the same fire elementals who’d caused him such trouble in the mall. They stood there with folded hands until the cymbal players quit clanging their instruments together.

“We are sorry if there were any misunderstandings,” their designated leader said. “We were only doing what we knew how to do to protect our own interests. Know that you will always have our support in the future.”

“All misunderstandings are in the past,” Dion told him. “Let’s move onto the next level.”

He watched as the salamanders burst into flames. The individual fires merged together and rose to the sky in a series of pillars, which were soon blended into the sky in a rainbow of brilliance. Dion sat there and watched the fires turn into flaming rockets as they rose higher than the solar boat chasing after the sun bug. The flames reached up to heaven and soon were beyond the visual range.

“But you know,” Dion said as he turned to Mr. Jehuti, “this still leaves one more series of elementals which I need to reach. And I have to encounter them tomorrow. What form will they take?”

“The aether elementals have the form of a sphinx,” Mr. Jehuti explained. “They are ferocious and the ancient pharaohs used them to guard the tombs and treasure. For some reason, they disappeared in your circle of time and the remains of the kings of Egypt were plundered. That has not happened here. Come with me. It is okay to leave your friends alone for a moment?”

Dion turned and looked at them. Lilly was playing with the ring he gave her. Sean shrugged.

“I don’t see as there will be a problem leaving them here,” he told the newsstand owners.

The couple came over to him. Each took a separate hand. Dion flew across the sands of the desert. He flew across the Nile River and passed more barges with building material headed up the river. They passed over the sands where the traders rode their camels across the hot sun to deliver their goods to the remote settlements across the Northern African landscape. The colors melded into endless patterns of yellow and red. This was not the same smoke-filled polluted landscape you would find on Earth, but an entirely new place that was outside the realization of normal humans. Dion closed his eyes and felt the wind rush on his face as he flew along with the couple who carried him aloft.

“What are you?” Dion asked them. “Are you from Mt. Olympus too?”

“No,” Mrs. Jehuti told him. “We are from another place. We are from the Abode of the Blessed. It’s the same idea for a different class of immortals.”

Soon a vast necropolis rose up on the ground before him. The couple who held him flew down to circle around it, as they searched for a particular location.

Dion could see many of the tombs below him were intact, although there were a few locations, which were crumbled into dust. For some reason, this vast tomb complex was not plundered like the ones back home. Dion felt they were about to show him why this was as the two found a large tomb and began to circle it. Satisfied, they swooped down to the ground. When the ground was beneath their feet, they let loose of Dion and allowed him to relax for a few minutes so he could see the landscape in front of them.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Where you always wanted to be, Dion,” Mrs. Jehuti said. “The very place where history began. Here it stays the same. Every day the sun raised in the sky in the form of a solar ball pushed by a small beetle and pursed by a holistic boat. The civilization stays the same.”

“What did you want me to see?” he asked her. “There has to be something important here or you would not have brought me to this location.”

“I want you to see what you will encounter when you go into that tower tomorrow. You need to see what sort of creatures are found in the aether. This is one of the deadlier ones, I admit, but you need to be aware of the worst that can happen. It has been my experience that the worst that can happen is the worst that normally does happen.”

They walked to the tomb, which rose high in the necropolis. It was night for some reason. They had left in the middle of the afternoon, but the place where they now stood had no relationship to time. It could be any point in the past or present, as in this time circle, all were equal. Dion heard the sand whisper at his feet as they slowly walked to the tomb.

Around the tomb was a short wall. It was more of a line of desert plants that grew in a definite pattern around the tomb. The tomb itself was nine feet high and ten by ten feet at the base. It was covered with intricate hieroglyphs, which displayed important events in the life of the court noble who’s been entombed thousands of years ago. Dion couldn’t tell how old the tomb was since the dry weather made the degradation of the tomb a slow process. If it were a wet climate, he would be able to notice the crumbling stone and moss which grew across the walls. But here, that was not a factor in the destruction of the tomb.

They stopped at the hedge line and waited. Dion wanted to ask them what they were waiting for, but he had an idea they would soon find out.

There was a loud thump as a large object fell off the roof of the tomb and landed in front of them. It wasn’t easy to see what it was in the dim light of the moon and Dion was forced to strain his eyes to get a better look. The object rose from the sands and looked up at them.

At first, he thought it a lion. The creature stood on four legs, but it seemed to be made of the parts of four or five animals. To his shock, Dion realized he was staring at the face of a human. It was a human head but it was attached to the body of a lion which had wings folded across its back.

“Do you wish to enter?” it asked him. “You are welcome to enter the tomb and abscond with whatever treasure you might find. However, to do so you must answer the question I put to you.”

“What happens if I don’t want to enter the tomb?” Dion asked it.

“Then you may go in peace. I encountered you before you sat foot on my territory. You are not my responsibility.”

“And what happens if I do want to answer the question and am proven wrong?”

“That is so very simple,” the creature said. “I get to eat you.”

“I’m not interested in entering your tomb.”

At that moment, Mr. and Mrs. Jehuti stepped up to the level of the hedge line and spoke. “Hello, Frank,” they said to the sphinx. “We wanted you to meet Dion. Dion, this is Frank the Sphinx. He’s guarded the noble’s tomb for the past three thousand years.”

“Why hello to you too,” the sphinx replied. “I wondered what this youngster was doing running around by himself so near to my line of control. He didn’t have the look of the average tomb raider.”

“What does the average tomb thief look like?” Dion asked. The sphinx was busy pawing the ground.

“Oh the usual,” it said to him. “Desperation. Hunger. Fear. It takes a combination of all three for someone to work up the courage to get past me.”

“Has any one ever made it past you?” Dion asked him.

“Not since I’ve had this job. Every few years some idiot thinks he can get past me. I’ve had people show up with dictionaries and scrolls to look up my challenge questions. They never succeed. I’ve been at this a long time and do my homework. I like my work and intend on keep this position. The contract won’t run out for another two thousand years. I plan on staying here as long as I can.”

“How has the valley been since we were here last, Frank?” Mrs. Jehuti asked him. “It has to be, what, five hundred years since we were here the last time?”

“About that. I lose track of the years. If I didn’t have to punch a time clock I’d forget how many hours I put in each week.”

“Someone else watches the tomb to spell you?” Dion asked.

“Oh, no, just me, but they want me to keep track of my hours just the same. I think someone down at the central office keeps track of the hours I put in so they can do some kind of rate study. The bean counters will always end out on top. They keep telling me I need to be more efficient in my work, but I don’t know why. There hasn’t been an intrusion attempt in the past hundred years.”

“What about the other tombs,” she asked him. “Any problems as far as they are concerned?”

“Not really. We had a break-in last month when some fool decided to go in for the treasure in a pharaoh’s tomb. The tried to use some kind of battering ram. I sat outside and watched it all come down. These casual break-ins relieve the monotony. You always know when they are about to happen, because the local thieves will start to show up and cruise around the outside of the valley trying to find an entrance point. I’m sure they have plenty of information on what’s inside here. They keep it in a library or something. Each year one of them gets a little bit closer to a horde and it forces us to keep up on what they’ll try the next time. Every now and then, a civilization falls and they go back to zero. But they’re clever enough to keep trying. I give them that; they never do give up over the years. I suppose a fortune for an emperor or is enough to tempt most people. Keeps me employed at least.

“Do you know of anyone who’s come around lately trying to get the guardians to break contracts and work for them?” Mr. Jehuti asked him. “We think someone has hired a bunch of your kind to work for him in our time circle. I wanted Dion to meet you because he needs to know what he might run up against.”

“You sure know how to pick your targets, kid. What is so important that you need to go up against one of us?”

“My uncle is holding my parents prisoner to keep me from interfering with his plans. He’s also kidnapped the Aether Elemental Grandmaster. I have full powers on four of the five elements. My uncle has the fifth, but he lacks any of the elements prior to it. I need to rescue the fifth elemental grandmaster so I can obtain the power of it and rescue my parents.”

“Tough assignment. Good luck. Humans don’t last very long when they run up against us. I hope you have a good memory because we always pull that “question” trick before attacking. Gets them every time. I only know of one case where someone answered correctly and he was an outlier. You have any aether abilities?”

“No,” Dion said. “Power over the aether is the one ability I don’t have. I don’t think it’s a natural talent. I’ve never heard of anyone having that ability.”

“You have a task ahead of you I don’t envy,” Frank said and turned to the Jehutis. “Hey, this chat is nice, but I have to get back to work. Come by before the next five hindered years are up, could you?”

“What do you have to return to?” Mrs. Jehuti asked him. “I thought you said no one is stupid enough to break into your tomb.”

“Okay, you caught me. There’s a game on tonight. The company got me a TV to relieve the boredom and I’m a Cincinnati Reds fan. Johnny Bench is looking very good this year. The Big Red Machine might make it to the pennant.”

“We’ll stay in touch,” Mr. Jehuti told him and the couple took Dion by each hand.

Dion found himself airborne in seconds and the tomb retreating in the background. The moon was high in the sky as they flew over the sand. Soon the sun returned to the sky and they were coming down to the same location he’d left before. Dion’s three friends waited for him as they touched down on the ground.

“That was fast,” Sean told him. “Where did you go?”

“We went to see a friend I thought Dion should meet.” Mr. Jehuti said. “He can tell you about it later.”

“Do you want us to send you back to the mall where we took you?” Mrs. Jehuti asked him. “Or would you like us to advance the clock a little bit and deposit you by the van after sunset. I can’t think of any reason you’d want to spend more time in the mall, unless you need the hours to plan.”

“Drop us off at the van after sunset,” Dion said. “Do you know where it’s parked?”

“In that groove of trees. I don’t think it’s been disturbed. Any other boons you’d like?”

“Just give us our clothes back. These are appropriate for the environment of the desert, but back home they’ll think we have escaped from a costume party.”

“We can manage that with no trouble.”

The light began to fade again and Dion found the area around him became very dark. Once again, the light returned and this time they were deposited right next to the van, just as he requested. Dion looked around and found himself with his three friends. They were back in the same clothes they wore before they left the desert. Dion breathed easy since he didn’t need the explanation about the change of clothing to the parents. The immortals took care of it before, but even an immortal from Olympus or the Abode of the Blessed could make a mistake.

Dion went over to the van and checked it over from the outside. From what he could tell, it had not been disturbed.

“Well, that was a fun trip,” Emily told them. “When do we get to do it again?”

“Hopefully, never,” Dion said to her. “I hope they’ll never have cause to pull us out again. You didn’t get to see the creature I might encounter tomorrow.” Dion briefly told them about the meeting with Frank the sphinx.

“Yeah, that sounds more than I want to deal with myself,” Sean told him. “Say, what is that noise?”

Chapter 15

In the background, they could the sounds of a party in progress. There were voices of young men and women mixed with laughter. They looked at each other and walked through a side trail to see what was happening down by the banks of the creek.

They walked through the underbrush and pushed trees and saplings out of the way, as they wandered in the direction of the noise. Sean saw them first: the chess club hanging out with the Naiad sisters. He almost stumbled over a Naiad kissing her boyfriend on the ground. Dion and friends made their way to the scene of happiness as they walked down the embankment and to the shore of the creek. There was a bonfire, which blazed on the bank next to the water, and several of the chess club members where enthralling their girlfriends with daring tales of brilliant move where they captured queens and took knights from their opponents.

“No kidding,” one young man told his girlfriend, “there I was. I was playing the best guy they had at Stivers and he had me cornered. By all accounts I should have lost that one and been sent home with my tail between my legs. But he didn’t know that I had a few tricks up my sleeve he didn’t know about. Boy, you should’ve seen the look on his face when I castled right in front of him.”

“So you beat him?” the Naiad asked him. She was back to wearing a tracksuit. It was still a bit cold to cover them strictly with hair.

“Well, no, he surprised me too. I should have realized he had some tricks too that I didn’t know about. Still, when I saw the look on his face, it was worth it.” She leaned on him and placed he slender arm around his shoulders.

“Nice to see you, Dion,” the club president said. “We’re thinking about getting a present for you. As you can see, our lives have changed for the better since the girls came into it.”

“I’m glad to have made a difference. Have you talked to them, told them about the world in which you live?”

“We’re working on that.”

“You just do that,” Dion told him and looked at the scene before him. He still couldn’t believe the sight he saw. All guys who hadn’t had a date and were about to graduate high school. And there were more water nymphs who wanted boyfriends. How did he get himself into these situations?

“So where have you been all day?” the club president asked him. “We haven’t seen much of you either. Not that we’ve been bored as you can see.”

Dion shook his head. Right now, all he could think about was his parents imprisoned in the clock tower and the sphinx who guarded it. How many sphinxes were in that tower? Was there anything else from the aether in that place? He needed to focus on rescuing the grandmaster that was in there too. But nothing could stop him if he won this final round.

“So how long do you think this party will go on?” Dion asked Ken, who was one of the chess club guys who was at the party.

“Probably all night. The guys showed up a little bit ago and they’re having the time of their lives.” That minute one of the Naiad sisters appeared and grabbed him by the arm.

“Baby, I’m lonely,” she said to him as an arm snaked across his back.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Dion,” he said to his friend. “You might notice I have something else to take care of right now.”

Dion stood there with Lilly and watched as the two of them walked off and went down by the creek. They sat in the shade of the firelight and watched the stream flow gently down the banks and into the buried culvert. The school year would end soon enough and the chess club members would be attending college. How it would all work out with the Naiad sisters was something Dion didn’t want to think about. There would be many things to work out after this week, but right now, he needed to think about how he’d get into the clock tower tomorrow.

It was a long day. He’d been across the burning sands with his friends the Jehuti’s and met a sphinx named Frank. Lilly and he would be married eventually. What had made him give her the ring? He didn’t know himself, but it seemed the right thing to do and she’d proven to him this week she had the meddle to stand by him when things became bad. He really didn’t need college as his powers were almost complete, but they might someday desert him and he needed to be ready for the day. He could go far in life, but the elemental abilities might be a burden on him someday. He needed someone to be there for him, should he rescue his parents and obtain the fifth elemental power.

“So I hear you are now a fire master?” one of the Naiads said to him. She stood next to her chosen and held the young man’s hand. All this young love was touching, even to Dion.

“The powers were given to me just a few hours ago,” Dion told her. “At least I don’t have to worry about fire elementals making a run at me in the future.”

“Can you make them do anything you want?” she asked him.

“In theory I can, but I won’t do that. You don’t want to make an elemental work and hate you. Not one who can burn things down anyway. I can do a lot with them, but I have to be careful.”

“Let’s see you do something with the bonfire,” she told him, gesturing in the direction of the bonfire.

Dion turned to it and could see the small fire elementals dancing in the flames. They weren’t very large and would be thrilled to show the humans what they could do. Dion closed his eyes, had a small conversation with them, and raised his hand at a ninety-degree angle. This was the signal they should go to work.

The fire swirled together and began to create patterns in the flames. It gathered into itself and created a phoenix, then a burning turtle and finally a horse. The crowd who watched it change each time cheered when the images changed shape. It was better than any firework display any of them had witnessed before. Also, it stayed close to the ground. At Dion’s request, the flames broke into the images of the small fire spirits who danced in the flames, this time where everyone could see them. This produced plenty of gasps.

“Nice job, Dion,” Ken told him. “You should go work for one of those Las Vegas casinos.”

“Thank you for the compliment but my place is here. And I still have to go back in there tomorrow.”

“Back in there? You have four elements, I thought you’d be done by now.”

“I need one more that is inside the clock tower. My uncle is holding the fifth element grandmaster prisoner inside it and my parents too. I need to go get them out tomorrow.” He walked away with Lilly as Ken stood aghast at what he’d been told.

“I can’t believe you’re going back in there tomorrow,” Lilly told him as they watched the water from the bank. “Are you sure you don’t want us to go with you?”

“I can’t have anyone in there but me. The map doesn’t show what’s inside it. I only have a vague idea what is in there other than my parents and the Aether Grandmaster. I have to go in there alone and bring them back.”

“I wish you would let us go in there with you,” Lilly told Dion as she hugged him. “I can’t imagine being without you at this point.”

“I understand, but the battle is my own. Don’t worry; I have four elemental powers and my uncle only has one.”

“But isn’t it the strongest one?”

“The aether is the basis of the power of the other four, this is true. But he lacks the knowledge of how to use it right. My uncle obtained it the wrong way and he only has a vague idea of how to use it. It will work against him when we meet each other in there. But I don’t have any knowledge of what else he has inside the tower. I expect he’s built all kinds of traps inside it to stop me from reaching my parents. It’s why I have to reach the elemental grandmaster first. If I am given full power over the aether, he’ll have nothing to use against me. I expect he knows this and has her hidden away where she won’t be easy to find.”

Dion turned to look at the party in progress and the Naiad sisters with their boyfriends. It was a little strange what he created and he still had no idea how it would all work out in the end. With prom coming up, the chess club would have plenty to plan for and prepare. But this wasn’t his principal concern.

Dion saw a shadow emerge from the edge of the woods and work its way over to him. The shadow was without a companion and at first he thought it might be one of the chess club’s friends. The party was limited to the club and the Naiad sisters, but other people might have heard about it. Dion watched as the shadow worked its way down the bank and came up to him at the edge of the water. It seemed to have a familiar form to it.

And then he recognized the face of his uncle, Seth Bach. The light from the fire illuminated his face and Dion could see the salt and pepper hair and the expensive suit he wore. His uncle recognized Dion and slowly walked up to him.

“Lilly, please go away,” he told her. “I have something to deal with. Give me a few minutes to have a conversation and I’ll be back with you.”

Lilly could tell there was no arguing with Dion and walked away. Still, Lilly kept his image in her face as she went away. She knew something very wrong was about to take place, but there was nothing much she could do about it. She walked over to the bonfire and watched Dion stand his ground as the shadow came up to him. At that minute, she put her hand to her mouth when she realized this had to be his uncle, the man who was the source of all their troubles.

“You have done very well, nephew,” Dion’s uncle said to him. “Better than I expected. You have all four elemental powers and have eluded all attempts I made to get you out of the way.”

“That is some great praise, coming from you, dear uncle. Perhaps you can prevent my assault on your clock tower tomorrow. All you need to do is release the fifth elemental grandmaster and my parents. Do this and I’ll leave you to your mall and whatever wealth it brings you.”

“Nice attempt, nephew, but there is a bigger game played here than my little mall represents. It stands over one of the gates to the abyss, did you realize that?”

“I knew there was some talk of it, uncle. I didn’t know whether or not there was any truth to the matter. I still think you would be wise to take the settlement I’m offering you. This way you can keep the mall and your holdings.”

“Do you realize what is inside the abyss, nephew? There are horrors inside it that human minds cannot comprehend. It is said that one only becomes complete when they cross the abyss, Dion. Would you like to make an abyss crossing?”

“Not under your guidance, uncle. I think I can do it myself quite nicely when the time comes. And, from what I understand, the abyss has no physical reality in this time circle. So how is it you claimed the location was necessary for the mall? You could place it at the entrance to the abyss? Couldn’t you have placed the mall anyplace?”

“Perhaps, but this location suited my purposes. It has the right vibrations and location for my final action. Would you like to know about what I have planned over the next three days for his world?”

“Not in particular. I doubt the end result will be good for anyone.”

“Oh, it will be very good for me,” his uncle snickered. “And I’m willing to let you have a part of it. As a family member, you should have something to do with it. Even I am not immortal. You just might have that ability if you work hard enough.”

“I don’t think so, uncle,” Dion told him. “You can keep your little schemes. You can keep your mall if you return the people I ask. I think I’ve made you a fair offer, why don’t you accept it?”

“You little puke,” his uncle snapped at him. “How dare you talk to me like this? I would like to remind you, Dion that I have the power of the fifth element and you don’t.”

“Perhaps, but I have the other four, which you do not. I don’t care how you came by your full powers, uncle, but you got them the wrong way and they will be your downfall.”

“I will fall down? I don’t think so Dion. I think you should be the one to watch your step.”

His uncle, who wore a black trench coat, stepped back on the little hill and glared at Dion. Next, he closed his eyes and concentrated. Dion could feel the energy in the atmosphere. His uncle was bringing up something from the aether. He could summon some kind of element from the aether realm and had no hesitation doing it.

Dion concentrated as well. He put out orders to all the elementals in earth, air, water and fire round him. He could feel their interests in the atmosphere about him. Even the Naiad sisters let go of their boyfriends and turned to look at Dion. The chess club realized something was wrong and looked in the same direction.

Dion could see a form shimmering in the air next to the creek. His uncle smiled as something began to take form out of the aether and pull itself into the material world. His uncle had brought something down from the abyss, which contained the basic building blocks of matter. He could feel it happen in front of him.

The shimmering form slowly congealed into a solid mass. The mass became a thing of horror as it took shape in front of the crowd around the bonfire. It grew to the size of a bear. It didn’t stop growing until it reached ten feet in height. The Naiads stepped back and formed a protective barrier between themselves and their boyfriends as they had some idea of what it was about. The chess club found themselves pushed back, up toward the top of the embankment as they saw the light strike the beast down on the shore.

“What the hell is that?” Ken finally said.

“I have no idea,” said Sean, who stood next to him.

Sean watched it with curiosity. When he was much younger, his mother made him go outside and dig up some creeping vines, which were growing over her flower garden. Sean went and got the shovel to dig the roots out of the ground. The roots ran back from all parts of the vine to a central point, and then sent runners to other points in the yard where more vines grew. Sean unearthed a root ball at one place, pulled it out of the ground and looked at it. When he saw it up close, the root ball looked disgusting. It was a mass of roots, which grew from a central point. Up close, it appeared to be a mass of worms or small snakes. He tossed the first root ball in the trashcan and burned the next ones he found. It didn’t matter; the disgusting vines returned the next year and in greater quantity.

Right now, he starred at an animated root ball. At least, it’s what it appeared to be from where he stood. But this root ball twisted and turned as it found itself in an unfamiliar territory. It fell over sidewise and tried to right itself as the root ball sent out masses of vines from the center of a body that grabbed any spot they could hang onto. The first twelve of them locked onto a tree to one side, hauled the center section up, and righted it as it grew bigger again.

Dion hadn’t done an extensive amount of research on the fiends which dwelt in the abyss, so he didn’t have a clue what it was. All he knew was that it had to be a dweller of the threshold, one of the primal creatures which controlled the gate to the abyss. There were many of them beyond the gate, but few people knew about them as they never left their home.

Every so often one might gain entrance to this circle of time. Stories would spread about some kind of demon loose on the land. They usually didn’t last long in the corrosive atmosphere of the planet and would break down quickly since the things were made from ectoplasm. Dion felt a certain pulp writer had glimpsed one and it served as the basis for his horror stores. These were cosmic monsters of a terrible appearance.

As it righted itself, the beast sent out more tentacles, which meandered their way toward the light from the bonfire. The creature fed off vibrant energy and the fire was a source of it in which to feed. Dion couldn’t remember what the counter was to those things; he never had the opportunity to talk with Edward about them. He did know they were elementals, which meant there would be a way to stop it; he only had to remember what would do it. The censer he carried in the bag would be useless, so he sat it on the ground.

Two of the Naiad sisters tried to block it as the thing crawled along the ground toward the fire. Both were sent flying into the creek when the tentacles grabbed and tossed them into the air.

“Stay back!” Cynae yelled to the rest of them. “It wants the fire. Stay out of its way because there’s nothing we have here that can stop it.”