by Jae Vogel
“We could be walking into a trap,” the captain said to him. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone was kidnapped so that someone else was lured into a rescue.”
“It’s been tried twice this week. My uncle has something else up his sleeve and he’ll try it by a different method.”
The captain sighed and continued to walk with them. He was concerned Salacia hadn’t appeared when she was supposed to be there. Granted, she was never so punctual, but now he was worried. It was a good thing he’d traveled out here to check up on her. The letters were few over the past few years. She seemed excited about the new store, which was opening at the mall, but the general tone of her letter made him check in with some of the immortals he still talked with. When he learned of the mall’s location over the abyss, the captain decided it was time to go out and check on her himself.
They stood outside the aquarium supply store and looked at it. The front façade was decorated with fish and creatures of the deep. Dion thought it a little odd the pictures they’d chosen were of sea predators: sharks, eels and stingrays. If he needed a sign that the store represented the abyss, the picture on the window of the Marianas Trench was it. The lighting was not the bright spotlights used for most stores, but a series of ultraviolet lights, which reacted to the fluorescent colors on the doors to give a spectral appearance. It was impossible to see inside it, which Dion knew had to be intentional. He watched the lights turn on and off slowly, bringing the ghosts of the deep into play with each cycle.
“You wanted to know my plan,” Dion said to his friends. “Well, here it is. I’m going in there. Alone. Give me an hour, if I don’t come out call the police. I don’t think they’ll be able to do much good, but it’s the only idea I have at the moment.”
“I don’t want you to go in there alone,” Lilly said as she grabbed hold of his hand.
“I know, but I have no idea what is on the other side of those doors. My uncle has done everything he could do to stop me from obtaining my elemental powers and he his prime plan failed spectacular today. I don’t know what he’s planned for the backup, but he had his elemental harpies haul the chess club inside there somehow. I have to get them back and only I can do it.”
“What happens if Karanzen makes an appearance with his bully boys?” Sean asked him.
“Just try to hold him off until I get out of there or an hour has passed. I’m sure you can think of something. Threaten to call your parents’ lawyer or something. The important thing is to get of them out of there and then locate Salacia Delphi. Captain Gabriel, if you see her out here, can you hold your ex-wife long enough for me to get back?”
“I don’t think it should be too much trouble.”
“Good.” Dion turned to the rest of the group. “I’m depending on every one of you. Stay put until I get back.”
He checked his wristwatch and pushed the doors open.
Chapter 12
The inside of the aquarium store was dim. The vestibule was lit by glowing fish drawings in fluorescent colors illuminated by the ultraviolet lights on the ceiling. He heard the doors close behind him and looked inside, but didn’t see anyone. The counter seemed vacant.
Behind the counter stood endless rows of tropical fish tanks. In front of them were the supplies, which could be found in any store of a similar size. Dion stepped in and listened. All he could hear was the continuous sound of air pumps running. Every now and then, something bubbled in one of the tanks. He walked over to the nearest tank and looked inside.
It was a scorpion fish, one of the deadliest and most beautiful fish on the planet. The fish was a symphony of color and textures, but it also carried a poison most people with the wrong allergy would find fatal. In the tank next to it, he noticed a lionfish, followed by a big tank with a puffer fish in it. The entire row of tanks contained venomous fish.
Dion saw a shadow move in the distance and checked his coat to make certain he’d brought along the cup from Hobbs. It wasn’t very large and Hobbs had never lied to him yet. If he said the cup would bind a water elemental, he was right. It was simply a matter of getting to the elementals his uncle had used to capture his friends.
He walked a little further back and saw a huge round tank in the middle of the store. The tank was gigantic, almost the size of a swimming pool. A diver could easily fit into it. Coral and other salt-water creatures swam inside it, but there had to be another reason it was in the store. Dion looked inside the tank, which was lit from the bottom, and saw a full-grown shark swimming around. It was impressive, but not what you expected to see inside an aquarium supply store.
Another shadow was just out of his vision and Dion realized this one was further up front, closer to the door. They were entrapping him by allowing him to walk further back into the store. Whoever they were, they were working in cahoots to lure him to the back of the store. Dion closed his eyes and tried to see if he could feel any elementals in the store. He couldn’t, which meant there was some kind of background activity to limit his abilities. His uncle had rented this store to be a trap and he was inside it.
He saw a face on the other side of a large tank and it was gone. Dion recognized it; the face was one of the three elementals who’d raised him until they tried to attack him. He couldn’t remember much about the three women who turned out to be water elemental nymphs, but he did know they were very powerful for an elemental of their class. He walked around to the other side of the tank, but no one was there.
There was another shadow further down the aisle between the tanks and he followed it. Behind him, Dion heard a very feminine laugh. They wanted him to know the aquarium store with its black light was their domain. He still hadn’t seen a single person inside it. Where did they hide the captured chess club and girlfriends?
The first one met him at the end of the aisle where the wall stood. According to the map, there should be another room beyond it. Plenty of space for a twenty or more people to be held and not create too much of a problem. The nymph stood there in her uniform with a sinister smile on her face. Dion couldn’t imagine what kind of twisted ability was employed to take carefree water elemental and turn it into this creature.
“Where are my friends?” Dion asked her. “You’re holding them in this store, aren’t you?”
She laughed and darted to the next row of tanks, daring him to follow her. Dion walked over to it and found the row empty. It didn’t surprise him. The elementals were in their own environment. And one of these tanks could house them and allow for their escape. They could be used to imprison them too, but first you had to find out which tank they were inside.
He saw a figure on the other side of the aisle waiting for him. The nymphs didn’t even try to hide right now. They wanted to be found. Dion crossed over again and followed the lone figure down the aisle in the direction of the shark tank. I only made sense they would lead him there.
All three of the nymphs were waiting for him at the junction of the aisles were the shark tank was situated. The stood close together and smiled. They’d manage to shed their uniforms and were covered in their long black hair. All three were dripping with water and covered in seaweed as well.
“So what did he offer you? Dion said to them. “What did he pay you to capture those innocent people and hold them here? You took the Naiads who were with them too, didn’t you? There are only three of you. Three against one human and one Naiad you can manage. But what happens when all of them are freed? How will you contain their rage when that happens?”
“You think you are so powerful and high,” the first told him. She stood in the center and glared in Dion’s direction. “All those years your parents forced us to work for them. Don’t you think we hated every minute of it? Do you think your parents might’ve considered us and how we felt turned into slaves? At least your uncle is paying us. What did we ever get from your parents?”
“Why did you turn on me?” he demanded. “Who was the woman you were talking to before you came at me? I remember her;
she was older than you were. A lot older than any of you, almost an elderly woman.”
“She doesn’t always appear that way,” another one of the nymphs said to him. “Sometimes she appears as young as we are. Sometimes much older than what you thought.”
“She’s an immortal,” another one said.
Dion realized they were moving out to each side to make it difficult for him to focus on any particular one of them. The air sylphs have tried the same technique the day before. This time they surrounded him in a matter of second and began to walk in a circular pattern around him.
“The truck driver was an immortal too,” another one of the nymphs giggled. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you that? You think the only reason you have such ability is the reason your parents told you?”
The nymphs began to move rapidly around him. Dion realized what they were trying to do: confuse him. If they could trap him in the aquarium store, he couldn’t get to the next stage of his quest. They needed to control him and keep him here for his uncle. They couldn’t do it for long, but if his uncle needed him out of the picture, they didn’t need to imprison him here very long. Quite possibly this was the same way the water elementals had imprisoned is friends.
Dion felt dizzy. Just as if the last time he had to wait and make the elementals think he was trapped and had no way to respond. They didn’t know about the cup he had inside his jacket. If they started whatever practice they’d used to imprison his friends on him, it would cause them to momentarily expose a weakness. A weakness he could exploit.
He felt the moisture in the air. Whatever the nymphs planned, it was about to happen. In his mind, Dion began a countdown again. He needed to make them think they were in full control at this point. And why not? They’d used this technique against the members of the chess club and their girlfriends. If he was just another mortal, shouldn’t it work too?
Dion felt a power surge as they stopped their movement. This was supposed to disorient him enough so they could entrap him, but they hadn’t counted on what he had inside his jacket. He pulled the cup out of his jacket and raised it up into the air the moment the energy was at its peak.
Dion spoke the words he’d memorized.
There was a flash and the nymphs were gone. The cup was hot, so hot it threatened to burn his fingers. The energy the nymphs summoned to entrap him was dissipated into the cup. He needed to get into some place cool before it turned red hot. Dion looked at the shark tank in front of him and hurled the cup into the middle of it.
The metal cup hit the water as steam rose up from it. He didn’t think it would hurt the shark, but he had no options at the moment. He watched the cup sink to the bottom, water boiling around it as it went down. The shark momentarily ceased to swim around the tank and made a detour to the sinking cup. It felt the heat, which radiated from it, and made a U-turn back to the walls of the round tank where it resumed its circular swimming pattern. The cup sat on the bottom of the tank as the heat rose to the surface. Dion walked up to the thermometer on the side of the tank and looked at it. It might rise a few degrees, but the shark would be fine.
The elementals, on the other hand, were in a worse state. The cup was designed to trap elementals inside it, but the nymphs had magnified its ability by their generation of a power cone. The focus of the cone ended up being the cup, instead of Dion. When the apex of the cone touched the cup, it pulled them into it. Now there were permanently trapped inside the cup, which was a hunk of fused metal after the heat flash.
Dion heard a rumble behind him and turned to the wall at his rear. It was dematerializing as he stood there. Whatever force the nymphs used to keep it in place was gone since they were trapped inside the remains of the cup. The wall became translucent, then transparent and finally it was gone. What remained in its place was the room on the other side, which was filled with supplies for the store.
And the members of the chess club with their Naiad girlfriends.
The young men were hazy and acted as if they’d just waken from a deep sleep. The rubbed their eyes and looked around, unsure where they were. The Naiads, on the other hand, knew exactly what had taken place. They were angry. Dion found himself facing a group of confused guys and a furious collection of young women in swim team tracksuits. He could see the fire in their eyes.
“Where are they?” the Naiad called Cynae demanded. “We want them.”
“There was only three,” one of her sisters roared. “We’ll have to divide them up. I’ve got a beach infested with lamprey’s I want to introduce them to.”
“They’re sealed in the cup I used,” Dion said. “The cup overheated when they tried to trap me too. It’s at the bottom of the shark tank.” He pointed to the mass of metal at the bottom, some heat still waffling up to the surface.
The Naiads formed a group around the tank and looked in.
“They can’t get out from it,” Cynae pointed out. “Unless some idiot allows them to leave. I don’t think too many people will attempt to enter the this tank.”
“It has to be cleaned sometime,” another one of the Naiads said. “What if someone finds the cup and doesn’t know what it holds?”
“I don’t think we can risk letting them out,” Cynae agreed. “At least not this century. Who wants to go in there and get it?”
Four of the elementals leaped into the shark tank and dissolved into their water from the moment they hit the surface. The water churned as they went to the bottom of the tank and returned to the surface. The only thing Dion could see was the melted mass of the cup rise to the surface. Once it was on the top of the water, the Naiads returned to their human form and climbed out of the tank, water dripping everywhere. The shark had moved away from them when they hit the water, as it instinctively knew to avoid the water elementals.
“So how do we decide who gets to take care of them?” Cynae asked the four Naiads who’d sank to the bottom of the tank to get the melted cup.
“I’ll hold it for now,” the one who grabbed it from the tank said. “Someone else can get the honor to dispose of it when this is all over. I’d like to dump it in the Sahara Desert, but we’ll put it to a vote.” She unzipped a pocket on her tracksuit, slid the mashed cup inside it, and zipped the pocket back up.
The chess club had stood in amazement while the elementals transformed as they hit the water. It was hard to say anything to a girl you’d fallen in love with who was forced to see you hauled off by what they assumed were security guards. They stood there, mouths open and quiet. The elementals were still gathered around the tank, their anger only a few degrees lower.
“So can anyone tell me what happened before I arrived?” Dion asked them.
“I was in an ice cream parlor with James when the three of them came and ordered us to come along,” Cynae said. There were three of them and I didn’t know what they might do to James, so I came along. The next thing I know we were here. I don’t remember a thing until you broke the barrier they used to keep us here.”
“Is that pretty much what happened to the rest of you?” Dion asked the other Naiads.
They nodded.
“They were the fall back plan in case you changed your mind,” Dion explained. “I would expect we won’t have it easy once we leave this place. My uncle is determined to keep me from meeting up with Salacia Delphi.”
“Did I hear someone call my name?” a voice from behind the cluster of chess club guys called out. The bodies parted and women who appeared to be Greek and in her thirties stepped through the crowd.
Chapter 13
“You are Salacia Delphi?” Dion asked the woman.
“I don’t know any other ones,” she responded. She wasn’t very tall and her hair was short and curly. She wore a dress with a suit jacket over it.
“How did you end up here?” he asked her. “I’ve been waiting all day for you outside your store on the other end of this part of the mall.”
“Sorry, I was late. Traffic on the interstate and I had to pick up some
parts from the shipper. I got here an hour ago and was on my way back to the store when three women in security guard uniforms pulled me aside and wanted to talk. Next thing I know I’m here. Is that what happened to everyone?”
“Yes. You were captured by some rogue elementals working for the guy who built the mall. I’m an elemental worker like you, but I can work all four elements. I already have full powers on the first two; I need your initiation to work the third.”
“All four? Haven’t run into anyone who could do that in a long time. You should try for the fifth if you can get all four. There haven’t been many people who could work the fifth in history.”
“My uncle is one of them, but he did it the wrong way by not getting his authorization to work the first four.”
“Not good,” she said to them. “I’ve heard bad things about people who went in that way to get the fifth. It never ends well.”
“I’ve heard that too,” Dion agreed. “I guess my uncle is proof enough of it.”
“Well, now that we’re one big happy family here,” she said, “perhaps you can introduce me to all these fine young people.”
Dion quickly introduced her to the chess club and the elementals in the form of young women with them. He could see her eyes widen as he told her the story of what happened before she arrived. He neglected to tell her about her former husband, Captain Gabriel, who stood outside and wanted to see her too.
“I can’t believe what you did,” she said to him. “But you made the best decision anyone could’ve done in this situation. I’ll have no trouble granting you full water elemental powers, but we need to get back to my store so I can do it in the office.”
“Door is in that direction,” Dion told her. The combined group filed out through it.
