Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1)

by S. James Nelson

  The glowing lines of red still covered Beulah’s face. Other lines extended down her arms and across her torso, as if drawn on the body-tight black suit she wore.

  I nearly asked Marti what all the lines were, and if they were brink, but stopped. Everything else in the room caught my attention.

  Monitors displaying various scenes of people, rooms, swimming pools, and beaches hung in the air, covering every inch of the walls They just hung there, suspended, bobbing up and down. But that wasn’t what amazed me most.

  A web of lines connected the screens, like ultra-thin lasers, only more solid, as if strands of luminescent blue fishing line stretched from the center of one monitor to another. They actually entered the screens, and each monitor had a line going from it to at least half a dozen other monitors.

  Marti started forward. I thought the lines would bend around her head, or wrap around her like spider webs. But she stepped right through them, as if they really were lasers. Crazy thing was—her head didn’t stop the lines. They seemed to continue right through her head, uninterrupted.

  Beulah smiled and nodded at me and Marti, but not in a particularly friendly way. She spoke loud enough for us to hear over the techno music pumping the room. “Good to see you again, Marti. Van Bender—nice to meet you.”

  I smiled, not sure if I should speak. Beulah was a large woman. Not fat, but well-muscled. A foot taller than me. She could probably snap me in half with her teeth.

  Marti started toward the door past Beulah. “Thanks, Beulah. See you in a little bit.”

  Beulah continued to smile as she swiveled her stool, leaned forward, and extended a thick arm out between two of the pillars, to block Marti’s path. Marti stopped and looked at Beulah with surprise.

  “Both of you,” she said, “are to go straight to the patio. The Bamboozlers want to meet with you.”

  Marti frowned. “We’re kind of in a hurry.”

  Beulah leaned back, pulling her arm out from in front of Marti. She nodded toward me, and pointed at the orange flame in one of the bowls.

  “I don’t know that we can let him in. The Council has tightened security since people started disappearing.”

  Marti laughed. It was fake. Forced. “He’s Richie Van Bender. Harmless.”

  “Exactly,” Beulah said. “Van Bender.”

  She said my last name as if it bore special weight. I didn’t get it.

  She grunted. “No way around it. We have instructions that all newbies must get approval from the Bamboozlers. And he’s more special than your average newbie.”

  Marti frowned and nodded. “Okay, we’ll go meet them.”

  I had loads of questions for Marti as she continued on toward the door, walking through the lines of blue. At the other side, she turned back to me.

  “Coming?”

  I looked from her to Beulah to the lines of blue, and swallowed. Figuring I had nothing to lose at this point, I stepped forward, half expecting to feel the threads penetrating my head.

  But I felt nothing. I gave Beulah a stupid grin as I walked past. In a moment, Marti and I had exited the room, and I nearly asked why I was more special than others.

  But once the door shut behind us, Marti didn’t wait an instant to grab my hand and start running.

  “ We can’t go to the Council. We don’t have time.”

  Chapter 20: 50 MPH down a hallway

  I had no idea that I was meeting the person who would save my life.

  -Roger Airs

  We ran down a wide hallway with earthy walls—like they were made of adobe or at least covered in something like stucco. Thick ribs of stone arched from the walls to support the ceilings. Red rugs ran along the middle. Torches hung along both walls, casting a flickering glow over the area.

  “Did we teleport through time, or something?” I said, trying to keep up with her.

  “We didn’t teleport. Come on—we need to get the diffuser.”

  “But you just promised Beulah—”

  “I know. We’ll have to beg forgiveness later. We’ve got to get that diffuser and get out of here.”

  “Why did she say I was special?”

  “If only we could get a limo.”

  A moment later, she started to round a corner, but jumped back with a squeal of alarm. She flattened against the wall and threw her arms out, to push me against the wall.

  A cart came around the corner, whooshing by. It sat low to the ground, and had two bucket seats like a sleek bumper car painted gaudy green. It proceeded down the hallway, heading away from us. Not only did it not have any bumpers—just a smooth, aerodynamic body—but it also didn’t have any wheels. It hovered about six inches off the ground. A man sat in one of the seats.

  About twenty feet past us, the man said, “Stop!” And the cart halted in front of two doors on opposite sides of the hallway.

  “Good!” Marti said. “Maybe we can use that one!”

  She stepped away from the wall and motioned for me to follow her toward the man and cart. She looked back at me with a stern expression.

  “We can’t get caught up in a long conversation, but we need to be friendly.”

  We reached the man as he got out of the cart. The vehicle rose about three inches as it stopped bearing his weight. His face brightened as he looked at us.

  “Marti!” he said. “Good to see you!”

  He wore grungy jeans and a golden t-shirt, and had shaggy brown hair. And eyebrows. Enormous eyebrows. More like eyebrow, as the two of them merged into a single eyebrow. At the ends, they turned upward, giving him a devilish look. He looked familiar. I should have been able to remember eyebrows like that.

  “Roger!” Marti said.

  They embraced like old friends.

  Roger? My heartbeat hastened. This was Roger Airs, the lead singer and guitarist of a British rock band that had recorded some of the biggest albums of the seventies and eighties. Some of the first things I’d learned on the guitar were riffs that he’d recorded.

  By now my brain knew the drill. It shut down, just like it had when first encountering Marti and Nick.

  Marti introduced Roger to me, and me to Roger. Roger smiled and extended a hand.

  “How awesome are you?” he said. “Your latest single is fantastic. The guitar solo is absolutely thrilling.”

  I shook his hand. This was the kind of stuff Mom was keeping me from. Even if my stomach fluttered and I didn’t dare open my mouth because I knew that utter garbage would come out, I still loved it.

  “He’s very excited to meet you,” Marti said, as if my eyes and brainless grin didn’t already communicate that. “But we’re in something of a hurry. We can’t really talk.”

  He smiled, and with his British accent said, “No worries. We’ll catch up later.”

  Marti gestured at the little cart. “Can we take your limo?”

  “Have at it.”

  Marti leaped into the driver’s seat, behind a small steering wheel. With a smile at us, Roger pushed open one of the nearby doors. It had a sign on it that said in five lines, “Salle de bain/bad/cuarto de baño/banheiro/bathroom.”

  I watched the door shut, marveling that I’d met Roger Airs—only to have my arm nearly yanked out of my socket again as Marti grabbed my hand and pulled me down toward the right seat of the cart.

  “Get in! We’re in a hurry!”

  I got in and started to ask if she knew about my tendency to get motion sickness, and intended to ask if there were any barf bags around. But, she interrupted me.

  “Go!” she said.

  The cart lurched forward without a sound. My head whipped back, and my stomach leaped.

  “Imagine that,” she said. “The one nice person at Intersoc, and you meet him.”

  “He has awesome eyebrows,” I said.

  She grunted in agreement. “You mean eyebrow.”

  Wind whipped in my hair as we raced down the hallway. The vehicle made no noise, as if it had no engine at all. To minimize the motion sickness, I focus
ed my vision on the most distant point of the hallway.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  “To the Archive. That’s where the diffuser is.”

  “How does this thing work?”

  I leaned out over the side, to look at the bottom, again surprised that it didn’t have wheels. It was like a little hover cart. I suppose it shouldn’t have amazed me so much, with what I’d seen so far that night. But it did.

  Turns out I shouldn’t have leaned out of a fast-moving mini-limo in tight spaces.

  As we rounded a corner, leaning over like I was, my skull cracked against the wall. I sat back up, head ringing, vision blurry.

  “Nice work,” she said. “Keep your head in the vehicle at all times.”

  I could hardly see anything from the bright dots speckling my vision, but ahead of us, the shape of another limo came down the hallway. Probably moving at a million miles an hour.

  My stomach threatened to seize up.

  “Watch out!” I said, pointing.

  She turned the wheel just a bit to the right, so the cart moved almost against the wall next to me. I gripped the lip of the dashboard, and braced for impact.

  But the limo passed by us. I caught a glimpse of a woman with crazy red hair with her head thrown back. I heard a moment of wild laughter, and the distinct blaring of 80s music.

  “This is insane,” I said, holding my head.

  “Don’t be a wimp,” Marti said.

  “You’re going to get us killed.”

  My vision was beginning to return to focus, but my head still throbbed. I felt imminently sick, but exerted all my effort not to puke. How embarrassing to throw up on Marti Walker.

  I honestly think she sped up as she rounded another corner.

  After only a minute we reached a long, plain hallway with a concrete floor and unpainted plaster walls. A door at the far end bore a green “exit” sign above it. I told myself that I could make it that far, and then I would puke.

  Fortunately, at Marti’s command, the limo stopped at a non-descript door about halfway down the hallway. The door had no label. Its handle was one of those long bars that stretched across its entire length, and you pushed on the handle to open the door. Most of the time, I choose the wrong side of the bar, and end up looking like I don’t know how to open a door.

  “Here we are,” she said.

  She started to get out. Anxious to free myself from the death trap, I beat her by several seconds. She gave me a puzzled look as I leaned against the wall with one arm. I held my stomach with the other arm.

  Outstanding. I hadn’t thrown up.

  “Return to the patio,” she said to the limo.

  Again without a sound, the limo backed up. In a moment, it turned down the corner and disappeared. Breathing hard, hating my weak stomach, I frowned.

  “It drives itself?”

  “The slugs drive it. They’re spirit creatures. They carry the limos on their backs.”

  I gave her a long look, hoping for an explanation. Not getting one, I frowned at the door.

  “Where are we?”

  “At the Archive.”

  “This is the dumpiest place I’ve seen since we got here.”

  She shrugged, and as we continued to talk she pulled a vial of blue brink out of her purse and performed the now-familiar act of taking off the lid and pouring some of the substance into her hand. She drew a keyhole shape near the door, just big enough that she could close her hand, put it through the keyhole, then open it and pull it back out, thereby drawing a line from one side of the keyhole, out the back.

  “This location,” she said, “is top secret. I don’t think EPIC even knows it for certain.”

  “EPIC?”

  “Enforcement of Protocols for Intersoc Control. The police of Intersoc. Beulah is one of them. I don’t think they even know where the Archive is.”

  “Wow. That’s extreme. I assume your SOaP connections gave you the location?”

  “Of course. Not only is the location secret, but only the Council is supposed to know the spell to get into the Archive. But SOaP intelligence managed to learn all of it from your dad.”

  “My dad?”

  “Your dad. He also gave us EPIC.”

  None of this talk of my dad felt believable, but at this point what was I going to do, not believe it?

  Finished drawing the spell, she screwed the lid onto her vial of brink, put the vial back in her purse, and took out her Hello Kitty lighter.

  “Care to explain where my dad comes in?” I said.

  “It’s his secret to tell. Plus we have to hurry. In just a minute EPIC will see we didn’t go to the Council, and come looking for us.”

  I did some math, and figured that we’d left Beulah less than five minutes before. Ten minutes had passed since the alarm had gone off at SOaP.

  “Well,” I said, “will you at least teach me more about brink?”

  “That all depends,” she said, “on if you annoy me or not.”

  “That’s going to be really hard. You’re so annoyable.”

  “I do what I can.”

  She lit the keyhole spell, and the flames burned blue for several seconds before a red flash of light near the door handle made me step back and close my eyes. When I opened them, the flames had died and ash floated to the floor. Burnt cinnamon filled my nose. I was getting to the point that I would have really enjoyed a cinnamon roll.

  She placed her hand on the handle and gave me a serious look.

  “Don’t touch anything. You understand?”

  Not waiting for my answer, she pushed the door open, and we entered the Archive. It wasn’t at all what I expected.

  Chapter 21: Marti tries to sacrifice her hand

  I forget what it was like to be young and ignorant, like Richie. Being just young is way better.

  -Marti Walker

  I expected to find the Archive filled with all manner of mystical objects. Shelves and shelves of trinkets that sparkled or looked otherwise mysterious and enticing. Or, as the name suggested, I also expected to find a lot of really old books brimming with arcane knowledge. For some reason, I also imagined a tiny old woman serving as curator, snapping, “Don’t touch that!” if I so much as looked at something with interest.

  But, instead, an old black computer chair sat behind a particle-board desk—the kind you buy on sale at an Office Max for fifty bucks. A laptop sat on the desk. Foot-high stacks of flat paper folders of every color rested on the desk, as if awaiting filing. A picture of a golf course at dawn hung on the unfinished drywall. It proffered the profound truth “Success—it takes doing things right.” A simple folding chair sat opposite the desk.

  Marti sat in the chair behind the desk, placing her purse next to the computer. I stood at the door as it closed behind us.

  “This is the Archive?” I said.

  She nodded as she withdrew her phone from the purse and typed away on its screen.

  “Doesn’t that get tedious? Always updating your status?”

  She shrugged. “The fans like it. I like the fans. I keep them updated on what’s going on.”

  “What are you telling them now?”

  “Back home it’s about the time of night that I go to bed each day. So, I’m telling everyone goodnight. Then I won’t be posting anything until morning.”

  She put the phone into her purse and began to clatter away on the laptop keys, her face intent on the screen. I sat in the chair opposite her.

  “Tell me,” I said, “where do you learn the shapes for spells?”

  “Emblems. They’re called emblems. People teach you.” Her fingers continued to move fast across the keyboard.

  “Will any emblem do something?”

  “No. Only certain emblems cast a spell, and you have to get the shape right, or the spell won’t work the way you want. It’ll misfire.”

  She paused her typing, touched her lips with one hand, and mumbled something under her breath as she frowned at the screen.


  “What happens if a spell misfires?”

  She began typing again, hunching over the laptop and leaning in close to the screen.

  “It’ll have an effect similar to what you wanted, but not quite right. Some pretty bizarre things can happen when spells misfire. I once saw someone’s feet and hands trade places on their body.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “Hilarious is more like it.”

  “What else do I need to know when casting a spell?”

  She shrugged as she typed away, probably at a thousand words a minute.

  “Where you light the brink affects the results of the spell. You have to light it in the right spot, so it burns properly.”

  “Your brink was a different color than Nick’s.”

  “The potency of the brink will determine its color. The more potent the brink, the hotter the color.” Her face brightened and she sat up straighter. “Found it! The diffuser.”

  She began to sift through the folders on the desk, mumbling under her breath. After a moment, she stood and started to pull folders out. First a red, then a green, a blue, and a yellow. She laid them out on top of the stacks of folders, in roughly the shape of a cross, so two corners of each folder touched two other folders and left an empty space in the middle. She opened them. Each contained a single square of a yellow sticky note.

  “This Archive gets cooler and cooler every second,” I said.

  She sighed as if she’d put up with my remarks her entire life, and withdrew some brink from her purse.

  It reminded me of my line of questioning. “So, when you say potent, what does that mean in practical terms?”

  She poured some brink into her hand, and gave me a flat look.

  “The effects of some spells will be more pronounced with more potent brink. For example, what spells did Nick cast?”

  “He cast a spell that made my body feel rejuvenated.”

  In fact, the effect seemed to have remained—I still felt pretty good.