Under Wicked Sky: Book 1

by S. G. Seabourne

  Terry took aim.

  “Dylan, stop him!" Lilly commanded.

  Terry had a least three inches over me. There was no excuse for what I did next. I reached out and grabbed for the barrel of the rifle. Stupid spot to be in. I was on the wrong end of a loaded weapon. I tried to push the barrel down as Terry strained to bring it up.

  “Terry, let it go,” I said, almost begged. “We can board up the window.”

  “Is that what you want to do for the rest of your life? Hide and hope they don’t find you? Well, I don’t!” Terry sidestepped and shoved me hard. I lost my grip and Terry stepped past.

  "Is he going to kill that griffin, too?" Ben asked, sounding hopeful.

  Terry brought the rifle to his shoulder. The gunshot was thunderously loud in the house. The black and white staggered to the side. Terry fired again, and the griffin went down.

  Behind us all, baby Jane wailed in fear.

  "Shut her up!" Lilly yelled. "They’ll hear!"

  Terry snarled something and discharged the spent round out of the rifle. He reached for the box of ammo, which sat on a side table. “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he said in satisfaction.

  As he reloaded, a giant brown griffin landed on the deck. It didn’t immediately start tearing into the carcasses like the black and white had. Instead, the brown turned its head to stare with slit irises through the broken door at Terry.

  It charged.

  Terry fired a third time, and the last remains of the glass door shattered into a thousand pieces. But either Terry missed, or the griffin was too enraged to stop. He crashed right through, finger-length talons ripping the carpet.

  Luck more than anything else saved Terry as the griffin tripped on caught talons, and toppled over the couch. Terry ducked and scrambled back, inches away from being disemboweled.

  "Run!" he yelled. “The basement! Go! Go!"

  I turned and pelted down the hall. Over my shoulder, I saw Terry stop long enough for one more shot. I didn't see if it hit, only heard the griffin shriek.

  But it had been the last crumbling rock that fell away before the dam fell away. There was a sound of shattering glass as windows broke. More griffins were coming.

  Even though Terry was behind us, his longer legs carried him faster. He was on my heels as we made it to the basement door. The girls went in first, Terry and I, last. We slammed the door shut and I turned the lock on the knob, for all the good it would do.

  On the other side, the griffins raged.

  Baby Jane’s screams were almost as piercing as griffin cries. "Merlot, shut her up!" Lilly yelled.

  "I don't—I can't—" Merlot stammered.

  Lilly rushed forward and clapped her hand over the baby's mouth. Jane’s scream cut short. Probably more in shock than in fear. Merlot snatched the baby away.

  "Don't touch her!"

  Something slammed hard against the basement door.

  "Get in the far corner," Terry said. He held the rifle halfway up, though I wasn't sure what he expected to do if they broke through. Gunfire and more blood would attract even more griffins. "Lilly's right. I don't care what you have to do, but keep the baby quiet. Dylan, don't just stand there. My baseball stuff is in the corner. Grab the bat."

  As pissed as I was at Terry, his instructions at least made sense. I grabbed the bat and stood ready.

  The door rattled again.

  Clarissa stood a couple feet away, a pool stick in her hand. Beside her, Ben clutched a cue ball as if ready to throw it.

  Whatever makes you feel better, buddy, I thought.

  The living room was right over our heads. The ceiling shook and modes of dust drifted down after every hard thud. Wood snapped and more glass shattered. Then, other high griffin voices joined the fray, all attracted by the blood and chaos inside.

  We can’t die like this, I thought. I reached for that strange surety I’d felt when the griffins were attacking me and Merlot’s car. The power that had hidden us.

  It wasn’t there. My head pounded from the effort. I felt used up. Maybe there was a limit, or maybe it had never been there at all.

  "Can they get in?" Ben whispered. “Are they going to find us?”

  Clarissa shushed him.

  I couldn’t hear the baby anymore. I risked a glance to the corner to see that Merlot had wrapped herself and Jane up in a big, wooly blanket. She rocked the baby back and forth.

  Lilly sat nearby them both, weaponless, her face tilted up to the ceiling. Watching.

  A feeling of unreality settled over me, like I was watching the whole scene on a TV screen. Maybe it was shock, but I could swear in the distance I heard... Was that the ocean?

  I licked my lips and tasted salt.

  Oh no, I thought. I was doing it again. I was going away.

  Comforting blackness crept into the corners of my vision, tunneling the world into a tube. It took all my willpower to turn to Clarissa. I had to warn her because if the griffins broke through, I wasn't going to be there to help.

  I met her green eyes, and saw her lips move. I could not hear what she said.

  The bat fell from my numb fingers. I knew I was falling, but I never felt myself hit the floor.

  ****

  Once again, I stood on a beach.

  For the first time, I knew that this was a dream. No, a vision. My body was back in Lake Tahoe. Griffins were trying to break into the basement. Maybe they already had. What would happen to me, here? Would the world just fade away? I hope it didn’t hurt.

  But whatever was happening back there was out of my control. I had wanted to induce a vision, and here I was. Now, I had work to do. I had to find my uncle.

  The sea and sky were both a vivid blue, one mirror reflecting the other. I was alone on the beach, so I figured I would walk in the direction of the cave.

  Only, when I reached it, the black upthrust of rock was completely covered by high tide. I stood on the wet sand and watched the waves roll in and out, at a loss of what to do. A high wave washed over the toes of my sneakers. The water felt cold and real.

  I could swim out there, but the cave was underwater. It must be only visible during extremely low tides.

  There was a super moon on the day of the turning, I remembered. Would that affect the tide? Yeah, of course it would.

  Turning from the water, I shaded my eyes against the bright sunlight to see my uncle’s house on the bluff. Larger than the Lake Tahoe house, it was built decades ago to my grandfather’s specifications. My grandfather was the one who made the family fortune. He left the reservation, and braved racism to go to school to become an investment banker. I never met him, but my father liked him, so I figured I wouldn’t have.

  I stared hard at the house. Then, in the blink of an eye, I stood in front of the red, faded front door.

  “Okay... I can teleport in visions, I guess.” I turned in place, but there was no sign of anybody around. “What am I supposed to do, now?”

  Wasn’t I supposed to have a... spirit guide, or something? Most of what I knew about these kinds of visions were from movies and TV. Father never believed in the spiritual, and in mom’s tribe it was taboo to speak about certain kinds of magic. Uncle never talked to me about this, either. Not that I could remember, at least.

  Or maybe it wasn’t a vision at all. Maybe I was just crazy.

  Either way, I didn’t go into the house. I didn’t know why, but it felt wrong. Instead, I walked across the small concrete courtyard to the garage/airplane hangar.

  My grandfather had been an amateur pilot, though no one else inherited his love of flying. The hanger door stood open. It felt inviting in a way that the house did not.

  When I was a kid, the hangar had been stuffed full of old cars and whatever bits of junk and curiosities my uncle had thrown in and forgotten about. Half–done craft projects, broken dream-catchers and drums, and weird stuff he’d picked up traveling all through the world and learning about different cultures. I remembered a creepy broken totem with an eagle�
�s head on top.

  All of that was gone. In its place were aisles upon aisles with shelves stuffed full of supplies. Canned food, seasoned wood, sheet metal, and sealed barrels of what I assumed were water. I walked down one row at random and picked up a foil package stamped MRE. Turning it over I read an expiration date five years in the future and an ingredients list a paragraph long.

  A cold chill crawled up my spine. I wasn’t smart enough to imagine all this detail. The foil packet had weight in my hand. It felt real. Was I really here? Or was I in the Lake Tahoe house?

  Setting the MRE aside, I walked through the hangar to the other side. The door stood open there, too.

  Beyond, the land fell away at the edge of a bluff. My uncle stood there, his back to me as he gazed out to the ocean.

  I joined him.

  When my uncle spoke, he sounded sad. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.”

  I didn’t know how to feel. Relieved that he was speaking directly to me? Pissed off about what he had pulled in the cave? Grateful he had chosen me to save? Or scared about what was to come? I felt all of it, and more.

  “Uncle, I don’t know what to do.”

  He heaved a tired sigh. His face was still turned away from me. “You may ask three questions, only.”

  Why? I almost blurted, but held back.

  My first instinct was to ask the obvious question. The thing that had been on the tip of my tongue since the turning: Why had this terrible thing happened?

  The thing was, the most obvious question wasn’t the best question. I burned to know why the world had flipped on its head and gone insane, but in this moment I knew I had to think like Lilly. I had to be analytical.

  “When you made me drink from the tide pool, you said it was to keep me from turning. Will that cure the others, too?” I asked.

  “There are places of protection scattered throughout the world—places where Medicine is strong.” My uncle waved a hand to indicate the airplane hangar, the huge house, and the beach. “I’ve built this sanctuary for you, your sister, and Terry. It is not perfect, and I’m afraid I could not include everything. But here, the unbalanced ones cannot find you. Here, there is a cure for those who have not yet succumbed. Here, you will be safe.”

  I was starting to think Uncle never answered a direct question in his life. And unbalanced ones? He’d dropped that tidbit on purpose. It was important. But I had other worries. “Big Sur is hundreds of miles away. You don’t understand what it’s like out there. I almost got eaten today. They are right outside the door—” I stopped and glanced quickly at him, hoping he hadn’t taken that as one of the three questions.

  My uncle just waited patiently, hands clasped in front. His face turned away.

  No, I thought, suddenly. This isn’t my uncle. My uncle is dead.

  I didn’t know if this was a piece of what my uncle had been, or if I was speaking to something else that had taken my uncle’s form. All I knew was that this thing wore my uncle’s face, but it was not him.

  Coyote? I wondered. I knew the stories of the trickster. He was universal in most of the tribes. The coyote was known to take shapes of people, and receiving his help was almost always the definition of ‘be careful what you wish for’.

  Then, I knew what my next question had to be. It was important, though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. “High-powered electronics have stopped working.” It wasn’t technically a question, but my uncle nodded anyway. “My laptop, Lilly’s laptop and her phone. What does that have to do with what has happened to the world?”

  He turned his face to me. His eyes were sunken pits, black and dead around the edges.

  “It is one of the fundamental truths of this universe. Natural magic and the things that sentient beings create using tricks of physics instead of their own skills, such as high-powered electronics, are not compatible. As magic seeps back into the world, these human things will cease to function and degrade. Such is the nature of balance.”

  I let out a long breath. That had definitely raised more questions than it did provide answers.

  As my uncle spoke, the world began to dim around us as if the sun were a light burning out. The shadows lengthened until I couldn’t see the ocean, the edge of the bluff, or the airplane hangar. It was as if all of the light had collected below my feet.

  I stood knee-deep in a glowing pool—no, it was the tide pool. The same tide pool that uncle had taken me to as a child. It glowed a blue so vivid it was neon.

  I had one more question, and I had to make it good.

  If you were me, what would you ask, and what would be the answer?”

  The thing that was not quite my uncle, smiled. It was the smile of an old, wise predator. “That is technically two questions, but since we are family,” the thing paused as if it knew I had figured out its secret, “I will allow it.” He tilted his head. “If I were you, I would ask when the window to enter Sanctuary closes. And if I were me, I would reply that you have until noon of June 22nd.”

  What day was it now? I had lost track. “And if we don’t make it?”

  He only smiled. That was one question too many.

  “I’m scared,” I said. The words came from my heart. “Other people have joined us, Uncle. Clarissa, and Ben, and Merlot and the baby. I don’t think I can get them all here. No one ever listens to me. My father said that I was weak, and you know what? He’s right. If I tell anyone what you’ve told me, what I’ve seen here, they will think I’m crazy.”

  “Perhaps.” Uncle didn’t seem disturbed at all. Then again, the man who had been my uncle was in and out of mental institutions. “Dylan, there is a saying that no man is an island. You have my son, and he is strong. There are things you could learn from him, and there are many things he can learn from you. But above that, think of everyone you know around you. Surely, they have strengths you can call upon. People who lead, people who know how to get others to follow, people who think of things that you cannot.”

  I opened my mouth, then stopped. I thought of Lilly, who was so brash and rude, but was able to distill problems to their base ingredients and then tackle them analytically. Hadn’t I just been telling myself to think like her?

  Merlot, who knew how to take care of Baby Jane and did her best to cheer everybody up. With everyone strung tight as a bow, a little calmness and kindness went a long way.

  Terry could be a knucklehead, but he oozed the type of confidence that made people want to follow him.

  So did Clarissa, and she didn’t have to resort to charm or being older and stronger than anyone else to do it. She was brave and selfless, and people wanted to follow her.

  Understanding, I nodded slowly.

  The room, the world itself, started to melt around me. I was aware, distantly, of my shoulders pressing against a hard surface. The floor? My body was back in the Lake Tahoe house, waiting for me.

  “No, wait—!”

  The thing smiled. “I cannot tell you for sure if you will succeed. The road to Sanctuary is twisted and full of danger. But I have hope for you, Dylan.”

  I heard the baby whimpering not too far away, and Merlot’s efforts to quiet her.

  Then, even more distantly, Uncle said, "Dylan, save my son. You must save Terry if you can. Do this for me."

  That was the most Uncle-like thing he’d said so far.

  "I—"

  My promise was lost somewhere in the mist. That's when I woke up.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  - Clarissa -

  I stepped forward the moment I caught the warning look in Dylan’s eyes. I wasn’t fast enough. His knees buckled, and I caught an arm, but he was all dead weight.

  He went down, nearly pulling me with him.

  “Dylan!” Oh no, not now...

  “What’s wrong? Is he okay?” Lilly came to my side, and I caught an expression on the other girl’s face I had never seen on her before: pinched and worried.

  “I think so. Help me get him on his back.”

>   Lilly caught me watching her. Immediately, her expression went hard again. Like a mask sliding over her face. When she spoke, her voice was derisive, “Did he actually faint?”

  Yup, this was the reason why Dylan wanted to keep his blackouts to himself.

  I shook my head and pressed my fingers to Dylan’s neck like I had seen doctors do on TV. It was hard to tell, and I might have been pressing too hard, but I thought I felt a pulse.

  “He’s going to be fine,” I said loud enough for Merlot and Ben to hear. Hard truth: If Dylan wasn’t okay, we couldn’t do anything, and it was important the younger kids didn’t get upset.

  Something slammed upstairs. More glass shattered. By the sound of it, there wasn’t going to be any windows left in the house.

  “Move him to the back of the room, just in case,” Terry said. He hadn’t budged from his spot in front of the door. He looked brave like that. Ready to defend us all in case the griffins broke through.

  But thanks to him, we had nowhere else to run. No other choice but to stand our ground.

  “How are we supposed to move him?” Lilly snapped at her cousin. “He weighs like two of us.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “He’ll come around in a couple of minutes.”

  Wrong thing to say. Lilly’s dark eyes fixed on me. “How do you know?”

  “Give him chocolate,” Ben piped up from the back. “Phillip Renner from my class fainted one time, and Miss Browning gave him chocolate because he was hypa—No. Hypoglac—”

  “Shut up,” Terry gestured to the door with the point of his rifle. Nothing had banged against it since Dylan fell, but the message to keep quiet was clear.

  I didn’t care.

  “Don’t you tell him to shut up.” In a flash, I was on my feet. My knee twinged but I ignored it. The urge to smack Terry was too strong. I wanted to grab that stupid rifle and beat his pretty face in with it.

  This is your fault. This is all your fault, and if we die here, I swear I’ll make sure you go first, I wanted to say. But I knew if I let those words out I would loosen the reins on my anger and that... that wasn’t a good idea.