by S. A. Beck
Isadore produced four flashlights, sharing them out with Corbin and the McKay twins. They shone the light through the doorway.
What they saw there almost made Jaxon scream.
Beyond the doorway stood a large, arched room. The back half was sectioned off with heavy iron bars reaching from floor to ceiling. A small gate with a heavy lock was the only way through. Chains and manacles hung from the back wall.
“A slave pen,” Jaxon whispered.
Peering around, they saw that to the left of the cell a passageway continued into the darkness. It felt like the artifact was that direction. Orion led them that way.
Jaxon got in front of him. Orion stopped. She couldn’t point with her hands secured behind her back, so she jabbed her chin in the direction of the slave pen.
“See that? That’s what Mars Sans Pitié did with his power. He enslaved people, including our people, and sold them like products. Is that what you want?”
Something flickered in Orion’s face for a moment, a trace of emotion. An instant later it was gone.
Orion merely shrugged.
“You won’t get far with him,” General Corbin said and laughed.
“Yeah, you’ve already enslaved him, and now you want to enslave the rest of us!” Jaxon shouted.
“Keep your voice down, kid, or I’ll have Isadore gag you. As for being enslaved, the American people are already enslaved. They’re slaves to their televisions and advertising and consumerism and their easy lifestyle. They’re slaves to their ignorance and weakness, and all the time they’re talking about how free they are. When I’m in charge we’ll have order, and we’ll make the people strong again. Sure, they’ll still be slaves, but at least they’ll be slaves who accomplish something. I’ll do great things for the country, and the world. You think we can solve problems like the terrorism threat and the environmental crisis with a weak and divided government voted in by an ignorant populace?”
Jaxon scoffed. “You trying to tell me you’re doing all this to save the whales?”
General Corbin smiled. “Environmental degradation is a threat to national security. I’m no tree hugger, just a pragmatist. If a species goes extinct, we can’t exploit it anymore. Too much pollution and we get lung cancer, no matter how rich and powerful we are. But enough talk, let’s dig up whatever is here. I want my place in history, and Isadore here wants to be the richest woman on the planet. The McKay twins will get a nice bonus too.”
“You’re doing all this for money?” Jaxon asked her former foster mother.
Isadore’s eyes shone. “Billions.”
They moved down the corridor, startling a few mice that scuttled away from their lights and footsteps. The passage turned, opening up into a small room. Moonlight shone through slits in the walls from which the guards would have once fired guns. Their flashlights settled on a spiral staircase at one corner of the room, heading down.
At its bottom they came to a large, vaulted cellar. Their flashlights could not penetrate to the far end. From somewhere unseen came the sound of dripping water. The air was dank, and moss grew on parts of the wall and floor. A few tendrils of vines poked through here and there. Nature was trying to reclaim this sad place.
She could feel the artifact. It wasn’t far off. They moved a little through the darkness and saw the rest of the cellar. It was featureless and empty, probably once a storehouse for weapons or food or slaves. Along one wall she saw a row of rusty shackles. Not far beyond that, she knew, lay the artifact.
Orion hurried over to the spot. He stood on a flat stone floor, staring down at his feet.
“It’s right below me,” he said. “But I don’t see any sort of seam or opening. It looks like Mars Sans Pitié set these stone blocks and mortared them together to keep anyone from knowing where his artifact was.”
“Then how could he get at it?” Isadore asked.
Corbin shrugged. “Maybe with a power we don’t know about. Let’s get to it.”
Corbin and Isadore set down their duffel bags and opened them, pulling out picks and shovels. One of the McKay twins gestured at Jaxon to move over to the wall where the shackles were.
“You set there, luvvie, and don’t move a bloody muscle. Pity them chains are too blighted to snap onto you.”
Jaxon did as she was told. The twins moved over to where the others stood and took the picks Corbin was handing out. Isadore pulled a pistol and stood in front of Jaxon.
“Any trouble and you know what happens,” Isadore told her.
The men got to work. The cellar echoed with the clink of iron on stone as they hacked their way through the floor.
Jaxon rested her back against the cold wall, old slave shackles lying to either side of her. Her hands, cuffed behind her back, groped around the stone. She felt a smooth, damp bed of moss right by her. Studying the wall, she saw a few roots of creepers had pushed through, seeking out water. Plants could push through anything given time. She had always known that but had not really thought about it before.
Orion and the McKay twins smacked at the stone with the picks, breaking off pieces that Corbin shoveled away. They made good time, Orion doing more work than the other three combined.
It wasn’t long until they got down to what they were looking for.
A final stroke of the pick, and instead of the sharp crack of metal chipping stone, she heard an echoing thud as it broke through into a cavity below. Corbin ordered a halt and peered through the hole with a flashlight.
“It’s there. Careful not to hit it.”
The men resumed their work, chipping away at the edge of the hole. Jaxon looked away. The scene was too distracting and she needed to focus. She pressed her hand against the moss and felt a tingling in her palm as she began to pass some of her energy to the plant. She felt it grow and spread, still hidden behind her back so that Isadore could not see it.
Jaxon concentrated on what she wanted. She had never tried something this complex before. Plant tendrils popped through the wall behind her, the little sound masked by the digging nearby.
The tendrils brushed against her wrists, tickling her as they worked their way to the handcuffs. She imagined them moving into the keyhole, then expanding to work the lock and open it.
For a moment nothing happened. The tendrils grew thicker, and she heard a soft metallic creak, but the cuffs did not open.
Corbin knelt over the hole in the floor and reached inside, the flashlight illuminating his eager face.
“I got it!” he cried out.
The sound of his voice masked the sound of the handcuffs opening and falling off her wrists. Isadore glanced over at her boss as he pulled out a small wooden chest. Corbin opened it, eyes wide, and pulled out a thin circlet of gold. It reminded Jaxon of paintings she had seen from the Middle Ages. Nobility used to wear them around their heads.
Now or never, Jaxon thought.
She summoned her strength, pressing both hands against the moss on the wall. She disregarded her own safety, her own limits, as she brought forth the power of all the plants nearby.
A strange crackling came from the walls and floor as green tendrils burst through. Her captors cried out, looking all around in wonder.
Isadore was the first to figure out what was going on. She turned and pointed her pistol at Jaxon.
Too late. The tendrils shot out of the ground all around the assassin, wrapping around her body like a net. They dragged her down as she fired a single shot. The bullet panged off the wall and the sound of the gun echoed through the cellar.
Then she was held firmly on the floor and she couldn’t fire again.
The others were having equal trouble. The McKay twins slashed at the tendrils with their razors but couldn’t get entirely free. Corbin struggled as two thick vines wrapped around his wrists, keeping him from drawing his gun.
The thickest tendrils wrapped around Orion, breaking through the stone floor to encase his feet, twine up his legs, and grab his arms.
Orion’s muscles
heaved, and with a great tearing sound he broke free. A second later more plants shot up to grab him, and he had to stop to rip them apart as well.
Jaxon’s head spun, and she realized she had already overtaxed her energy. She was surprised she had been able to do this much. Back in the desert making a single seed bloom had nearly knocked her out.
But that had been an ancient seed, preserved for millennia in the desert sands, and she had been in the dead land of the Sahara Desert. Here there was moisture and soil and plants eager to grow. She wasn’t bringing anything to life, she was merely encouraging them.
Even so, she couldn’t keep this up for much longer, and when she faltered, Orion would break free and kill her.
Jumping to her feet, she ran for Corbin. She had to get that gold circlet.
One of the McKay twins leaped forward, nicking her in the side with his razor before the plants pulled him back. Jaxon winced and kept going. Orion saw where she was headed and moved for Corbin too, fighting plants every step of the way.
Jaxon got there first, barely. She grabbed the circlet and yanked it out of the general’s grasp.
Then she ran.
She ran out of the cellar, the sound of tearing plants echoing through the dank stone room. She ran into darkness, the flashlights of her captors a receding pool of light behind her.
The cellar rang with the sound of a gunshot, and a bullet cracked against the stone some distance to her right. Three more shots chased her, but now that she had plunged into the shadows, whoever was firing had to fire blind.
She slammed into a wall, fumbled along it, and found the spiral staircase upwards. She felt weak and lightheaded from the exertion of using her powers, but she couldn’t stop now. Fear gave energy to her legs.
Jaxon stumbled up the stairs as flashlight beams probed the darkness behind, searching for her.
When she came to the top of the stairs she entered full darkness. Her captors, who could see, would soon catch up to her. Moving by memory and feel, she hurried down the corridor as swiftly as she dared and entered the slave pen, where some feeble moonlight filtered in from the open doorway.
She made for it, burst into the courtyard, and desperately looked around her.
On the opposite corner of the fort stood one of the bastions, overgrown with ivy and other plants. It had partially crumbled and nature had taken over. Bushes grew on its sides, anchored to the old stone, and flowers bloomed out of crevices in the rock. A doorway beneath it led into darkness.
She ran for it, half tripping from weakness, and made it into the shadow of the doorway just as the flashlights shone in the slave pen behind her.
Jaxon stepped further into the shadows of the doorway, her breath coming in great, panicked gusts. She sensed an open space behind her, a room perhaps, but with no light she didn’t dare move any further inside. There could be snakes or a hole in the floor or any number of other dangers.
Her pursuers emerged from the opposite doorway. Orion came first, then Corbin and Isadore with pistols in their hands. The McKay twins strode calmly after them, their straight razors gleaming in the moonlight.
They stopped in the middle of the courtyard and looked around, searching for her.
“I’ll find her,” Orion said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Atlantean pendant that helped a Keeper of the Texts find his people.
As Orion put it around his neck, Jaxon put on the circlet.
And everything changed.
Suddenly she felt no more fatigue, no more fear. Suddenly she could feel every plant on this island, felt as if she had roots seeking water, and leaves catching the breeze, and flower petals folded up for the night awaiting the sunrise to open again.
And she knew that she had power over all of them.
No, power was the wrong word, because she didn’t really control them. She merely guided their growth.
And grow they did.
The bushes growing on the bastion spread to make a dense thicket to shield her, the vines extended and shot forward like snakes, reaching for those who would do her people harm.
Her pursuers cried out and scattered in every direction. Jaxon focused and sent the vines after them as more vines crawled up the walls on all sides of the fort to join in the fight.
The McKay twins, who had run together, got caught on a staircase leading up to the wall. They got back to back and slashed with their razors at the plants coming at them from above and below. It was all they could do to keep free. They didn’t have a moment to spare to move toward Jaxon.
Isadore had made for the slave pen, seeking the closest shelter, when a vine caught her ankle and made her fall. The vine dragged her back to the center of the courtyard where several more vines wrapped around her.
Corbin guessed where Jaxon was hiding and fired several shots at the thicket screening the door. Bullets thunked into thick branches and snipped off leaves. One bullet made it through and hit the doorway inches from Jaxon, spitting fragments of stone into her face.
Before Corbin could fire any more shots, a wave of greenery swept over and buried him.
Orion did not have to guess where she hid. The pendant around his neck, her fellow Atlantean looked right at her and ran for the bastion.
She focused on him, sending a host of vines to grab at his limbs. His remarkable strength matched their own, and while they caught him, he was able to break free. His charge slowed to a crawl.
Yet he still moved forward.
Jaxon redoubled her efforts, sending more vines to trip him and grab him, but still he moved for her, narrowing the space between them inch by inch. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the others begin to break free. She couldn’t focus on them while expending so much effort to stop Orion. The McKay twins began to hack their way down the stairs back to the courtyard. Isadore managed to fire a poorly aimed shot at the bastion before once again having to fight the vines. Corbin heaved up from beneath the shrug holding him down, looking like some little grassy hill convulsing in a miniature earthquake.
She couldn’t deal with them now. They would still need some time to get to her. They weren’t a threat for a few more seconds. Perhaps she could stop Orion by then.
And still he approached, a determined look on his face. Jaxon focused her energies, and Orion had to stop as he fought off a dozen vines coming at him from all sides.
He did not stop long. After a few seconds he took another step forward, fought off another onslaught, and then took another step. He was almost to the screen of bushes now, Jaxon’s last defense.
The McKay twins got free first, cutting through the last of the vines with their razors. They bolted across the courtyard, ignoring the struggles of Isadore and Corbin, and made their way straight for Jaxon’s bastion.
She sent a final wave of vines at all three of them and turned her attention to the screen of bushes.
She made their branches intertwine into a thick wall with only a few little gaps to see through. Then she made them bloom all over with flowers, urging their petals to open to the night. Suddenly the entire fort became immersed in their sweet fragrance.
The three murderous men coming at her didn’t seem to notice. Orion made it to the wall of bushes and began to tear through. A few seconds later, the McKay twins joined him and hacked at the branches. In another minute they’d be hacking at her.
A soft buzzing came to her ears, growing in strength. The island’s bees had caught the unaccustomed whiff of nighttime flowers and rushed to gather their nectar. Within moments the space on the other side of the wall of bushes swarmed with bees. The McKay twins screamed in utter terror and bolted.
That left only Orion. He tore at the bushes, widening a hole he had already made and ignoring the occasional bee sting. Beyond, Jaxon could see Isadore and General Corbin slowly freeing themselves.
Jaxon gritted her teeth and focused once again. The hole in the bushes began to close as Orion had to turn his attention to fighting off another onslaught
of vines and creepers. He flailed around like a man electrocuted, continually jerking both his arms and legs to yank them free from the plants’ grasp.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jaxon saw Isadore finally break free, run over to Corbin, and help him tear away from the last of the clutching plants. She had no energy to spare to trap them again. It was all she could do to hold off Orion.
Plants came at him from all sides—from the ground, from the walls, even from the arch of the doorway behind which Jaxon hid. Stone cracked and chipped as more plants broke through, and part of the old exterior wall nearby crumbled as more vines crawled over it.
That gave Jaxon an idea. Heart racing, stomach churning, she focused on the plants just above her, the vines that clung to the arch of the doorway and the walls just inside. She made them grow, broadening their roots. Stone cracked as the relentless strength of nature asserted itself.
Orion did not notice. Freed from the attack, he tore at Jaxon’s protective wall, opening a gap that he began to push through. The plants fought back, delayed him, but he was stronger. Jaxon stepped back into the dark interior of the room, stumbling over something that made a metallic clank as she hit it. Another shackle from the time of slavery?
She didn’t have time to look. Orion broke through the barrier and stumbled into the doorway.
At that moment, the arch of the doorway collapsed.
With a resounding crash, hundreds of pounds of stone fell right on him, burying him in an instant.
Jaxon brought her hand to her mouth in shock. She blinked her eyes as the dust and grit settled, and the last fragments of stone fell away. Not all of the room had collapsed, only the area around the doorway, only the area Jaxon knew Orion would step into.
Orion had disappeared. The stones completely covered him.
She had buried him.
She had killed him.
Her stomach clenched, and Jaxon felt the urge to throw up.
Then self preservation kicked in.
Corbin and Isadore raised their pistols. Now that the barrier of plants had been torn away and the entryway caved in, Jaxon stood in full view in the moonlight.
