“It’s you,” Cecily declared.
Yes, Devon thought. It is.
After school the next day, he told Cecily he had to see Rolfe. Finding the costume had cinched it for him. “I’ve got to know about my heritage,” he said. “It’s time. I need to learn the truth of the Nightwing.”
“But Devon, the danger’s passed. Alexander is okay.”
He shook his head forcefully. “Cecily, I don’t believe for a minute that Jackson’s gone for good. He’s just biding his time.”
She sighed. “I’m past the point of doubting you, Devon.”
“Cover for me?” he asked. Cecily nodded. He snuck off down the cliffside staircase and hurried into town.
He recognized Roxanne at the front desk at Fibber McGee’s. “Good afternoon, Mr. March,” she said, her voice warm like syrup.
“Hi,” Devon said. Roxanne’s golden eyes seemed to glow. Devon wondered exactly what her story was: Rolfe had hinted she was something special. And not just on account of her awesome body, which was right then encased in a form-fitting gold satin dress.
Devon’s mouth had gone a little dry. “Is … is Rolfe here?”
“He’s at the house,” Roxanne told him.
Devon sighed. It was too far to walk.
“That doesn’t matter, not to you,” Roxanne told him.
He looked at her oddly. “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”
She smiled. Her eyes glowed. “That it’s too far to walk.”
Devon was astounded. “How—how did you know I was thinking that?”
Roxanne laughed gently. “Just click your heels, Devon March,” she said, the cadence of the islands in her voice. “Isn’t that how the fairy tale goes in your culture? Click your heels three times and you will go where you want to go.”
He didn’t know what to think. But he knew he could do it. He knew he had the power. He remembered how he’d leapt onto D.J.’s car as the demon drove it off down the road. Rolfe’s house was much farther away—three, four miles—but that didn’t matter.
“Not to you, Devon March,” Roxanne repeated.
He looked up at her. She smiled.
Then he closed his eyes.
When he opened them he was in Rolfe’s den, the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the glass. Rolfe was sitting in a wing chair with a book in his lap. He looked up at Devon without much surprise.
“Getting the hang of this sorcery stuff, huh?”
Devon blinked. “Guess so,” he said, then looked down at himself, dissolving into laughter as he realized how easy it had been to transport himself from the restaurant. “Okay, that was totally awesome!”
“I was wondering when you’d pop by,” Rolfe said, closing the book. “I figured sooner or later you’d appear.”
“Can I do that all the time?” Devon asked excitedly. “Heck, I won’t need to get my driver’s license!”
Rolfe smiled. “I’d still sign up with the Big-A Driving School if I were you. Leaping around through time and space isn’t exactly the best way to take a girl out on a date.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Devon said, grinning. “I think Cecily would be mighty impressed.”
Rolfe raised his eyebrows. “That’s just it, Devon. It’s not about impressing anyone.”
Devon remembered how embarrassed he was when he’d tried to show off his powers to Suze back home. He sighed, approaching Rolfe. “There’s just so much I gotta know.”
The older man nodded. “That’s why I’ve been reading through all of my father’s books again. But words on paper simply can’t tell you everything.”
Devon sat down in the chair opposite Rolfe. “But can they tell me about what I am? I mean, what is a Nightwing? Like, is my blood the same as everyone else’s? My bones?”
“You’re the same as anybody else, Devon. Except you have something special.”
“But how is it passed? Through the genes?”
Rolfe smiled. “Good question. I’m not sure science could explain it. But it is passed from generation to generation. And has been, for almost three thousand years.”
“The Nightwing have been around that long, huh?”
“Oh, yes. There’s so much history in these books—ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, Celtic Britain, the Crusades—the Nightwing sure got around.”
“And no other warlock or sorcerer has powers as strong as a Nightwing?”
“That’s right. The powers of the Nightwing are unique, though if one chooses, they may share their abilities with a spouse or a close comrade. Sometimes this is temporary; other times, with great ritual, the sharing of power is made permanent. Often, when a Nightwing marries, he or she will give their spouse the power as well.”
“But Jackson didn’t give Emily any powers,” Devon said.
“Oh, no. He was far too selfish to do that. But his brother gave them to his wife.”
“The lady I’ve never met? Cecily’s grandmother? She has powers?”
Rolfe sighed. “She did. Remember that sorcery and magic was repudiated at Ravenscliff.”
“Yeah. Now I’m the only one left with it. Which I think is too bad, because I don’t know if I can stop Jackson all on my own.”
Rolfe raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think he’s gone, either, Devon.”
“If I’m going to fight him, I need to know everything about what I am.” He paused. “About the Nightwing.”
Rolfe stood and walked over to his bookshelves. Lightning crackled over the white caps of the waves below. Funny, there was no storm earlier, Devon thought.
“There are books here you should read,” Rolfe said. “They’ll tell you more than I can.” He slid one in particular out from the rest. It was covered in gold leaf. Devon recognized it from the room in the East Wing.
“This,” Rolfe said, “is the sacred text of the Nightwing. It’s called The Book of Enlightenment. It has been passed down for centuries, begun by Sargon the Great himself.”
“Sargon the Great?”
Rolfe nodded. “The first Nightwing of all. Nearly three thousand years ago.”
Devon remembered suddenly the children’s books in the basement at Ravenscliff. “I saw that name. Sargon the Great. It was a kid’s book—Sargon and some other guys. Vortigar. Brutus.” Strange how he could remember the names. “And a girl, too. Diana.”
Rolfe smiled. “All great Nightwing of the past. All part of your heritage, Devon.” He laughed. “Those books were mine. I can remember reading about all their exploits. Brutus sailing to ancient Britannia, finding a Hell Hole in the middle of the ocean, slaying the sea demons …”
“Cool,” Devon said.
“But greatest of all was Sargon, the founder of the Nightwing. So great was he that the gods decreed that no Nightwing would again have such unlimited power until a hundred generations had passed.” Rolfe looked at Devon solemnly. “The hundredth generation, I suspect, has arrived with you, Devon.”
“Me?” he asked in a little voice.
“Actually, I’m certain of it. It was an event that was long awaited. It was anticipated that the hundredth generation would arrive sometime at the start of the twenty-first century, and shortly before he left, Thaddeus told me he had received word that finally a child had been born.” Rolfe smiled. “He must have meant you.”
“Me,” Devon whispered.
“Check this out,” Rolfe said, handing him The Book of Enlightenment.
Devon felt the electricity in his hands as took the book from him. It seemed to weigh a ton. “I’m supposed to read all of this?” he asked.
“Eventually,” Rolfe said. “But for now, since we’re pressed for time—” He took the book back from Devon and set it on the table. “Tell me, Devon. Did Thaddeus ever wear a ring? With a white crystal embedded in it?”
Devon thought. “No,” he said. “I don’t remember ever seeing one.”
Rolfe nodded. “I’m not surprised. He was trying, for whatever reason, to keep all knowledge of your heritage from you.
But every Guardian has a crystal. The Crystal of Knowledge. The Guardian’s crystal holds within it all the ancient alchemy and history of the Nightwing. In its center is the knowledge that you need to learn. I remember Thaddeus wore his in a ring. But what he did with that ring after he left here, I don’t know. ”
Devon felt desperate. “So without his crystal, what can I do?”
Rolfe winked at him. “You’re forgetting, Devon. My father was also a Guardian.”
“So he had a crystal ring, too?”
“Not a ring. My father was a gardener. He kept his crystal on a stone pedestal, surrounded by tall flowers. I remember as a very young boy being mesmerized by it. How my father’s crystal shone in the sun, the spectrum of color that reflected off it. I remember birds that would hover above it, seemingly caught by its magnetic pull. Butterflies, too. Hummingbirds.”
He turned, withdrawing from a shelf a gleaming white crystal, about the shape and size of a baseball. Devon blinked, as if the crystal were emitting a powerful light. But it wasn’t. At least, not a light that he could physically see.
“The Guardian’s crystal holds immense power,” Rolfe was telling him. “It will give you the answers you seek. But it might be a little—well, intense.”
Devon smirked. “So, in other words, it might sting a little.”
“Or something,” Rolfe said.
Devon laughed. “Like I should be afraid of a rock when I’ve had demons at my throat?” He held out his hands. “Bring it on.”
“Hold it in your hands, Devon,” Rolfe told him, placing the crystal gingerly into the boy’s palms. “Hold it and see.”
Devon felt its cold smoothness roll against his palms. He looked down at it. Nothing happened. “Is there any spell you have to say?” he asked. “Any incantation or something?”
“Not that I know of,” Rolfe told him.
“Bummer,” Devon said. “I was hoping for a little hocus-pocus.”
“Oh, I think you’ll get it,” Rolfe said.
Devon looked down again at the crystal. He was about to say something else when, all of a sudden, he was no longer there—no longer in the room, no longer in Misery Point, no longer anywhere he recognized. Devon sensed he was not even in the same time or place, maybe not even on the same planet, as he was just moments ago. He was surrounded by blue light, just as he’d been in the East Wing. And the man he’d seen there—the white-haired man in the flowing, star-studded purple robe—was once again speaking to him:
“Know this: that the world is far older than anyone can imagine. Once, well before the coming of the Great Ice, the world was inhabited by Creatures of Light and Creatures of Darkness, battling each other for eons for dominion. Their masters were the elemental gods—of Fire, of Wind, of Sea, of Earth—omnipotent rulers of nature, neither good nor evil. It was left to their shifting, roiling creatures to forge the battle lines. As the ages passed, and the time of the Creatures fades farther and farther into the dim recesses of time, they have come to be known as Angels and Demons.”
“Angels … and demons?” Devon asked, his voice small and faraway, not even seeming to come from his own throat.
“Yes, child.” The man bore down upon him. He looked old, terribly old, but his eyes burned with a blue fire. “But these are not the creatures of your Sunday school catechism. Their shape was inconsistent, their powers various, and their allegiances to many and diverse gods and devils.”
Devon pulled back. “But what do they have to do with me?”
The man’s eyes grew wide. “Came destruction from the sky in the form of fiery rain, and then the Great Ice moved across the globe! The masters had grown tired of their battling Creatures and banished them to a realm of lower vibration. There, without the interference of the elemental gods, the Demons quickly bested the Angels and created the kingdom of Hell!”
“Hell Holes,” Devon whispered.
“Every culture that has evolved since has recognized the existence of this place in its religions and mythology—the underworld of the damned.” The strange old man loomed over Devon, his blue eyes blazing. “While the Demons there reign supreme, they still seethe in fury over their loss of Empire in the world above. The world of Man.”
“They want to get it back,” Devon said.
“Yet as Man evolved, some came in touch with the old elemental Knowledge. These mortals came to be known by many names in many cultures: wizards, medicine men, shamans, priests, witches, sorcerers, alchemists. Through the old Knowledge, they were able to manufacture some semblance of the powers once wielded by the Creatures. Such powers they used for their own ends, both for good and for evil.”
Devon felt himself being drawn away, but he struggled to listen to the last of the old man’s words.
“Of these enchanters, the most noble, powerful and feared have always been the Sorcerers of the Order of the Nightwing. Only the Nightwing have discovered the secret of how to open the portals between this world and the one below, the realm of the demons.”
The blue light obliterated everything else. Devon felt himself being whisked as if down a long chute, every fiber of his body pulled by an unseen force, a giant vacuum through time and space. He couldn’t catch his breath. He feared he might suffocate, and he started to panic—
But then he landed, with a thud, on a grassy plain.
He could breathe again. But Devon had no time to think: above him roared an enormous demon, scaly and dripping wet. It raised its head on a long dinosaur neck, flaring its gigantic nostrils. It opened its mouth and belched a spear of fire.
“Slay it! Slay the dragon!” came the chants from the crowd watching him.
Devon realized he had a sword in his hands. He thrust it upward, into the belly of the demon. Scalding hot orange blood gushed out all over his hands. The crowd cheered.
The images around him disintegrated, like a television losing its picture.
Falling again.
“It’s not difficult when the thing is as primitive as that,” someone was saying to him.
Devon struggled to see and to regain his balance. Finally, he found solid ground and steadied himself, breathing heavily. He opened his eyes. A man stood in front of him, someone he thought he recognized, but wasn’t sure.
“The ignorant ones are blundering and obvious,” the man told him. “Defeating them is no test of a Nightwing’s strength.”
Devon stared at the man. He was wearing a tunic and sandals, with long reddish hair and a beard. A sword was sheathed at his side.
“Can you not spy the demon now, child? Can you not see it? You, of my hundredth generation?”
“You’re Sargon,” Devon breathed in awe. “Sargon the Great.”
“The epithet came only after the fact, after proving myself a sorcerer of dexterity, strength and cunning.” Sargon leveled his gaze at the boy, Devon shrinking back from its intensity. “What will they call you, Devon March? The Blind? The Muddled? The Daft?”
Devon stiffened. Great founder or not, there was no reason for him to get nasty. “What do you want me to do?”
“Send the demon back to hell,” Sargon said plainly. “Can you not see it?”
Devon looked around. For the first time he took in his surroundings. They were in a meadow that stretched off to the horizon for miles unbroken by any trees or structures. Only tall grass and wild flowers swayed in the slight breeze. The sun was bright, the sky an unbroken dome of blue. Devon saw no demon, sensed no filthy thing crawling in the grass. He concentrated but felt no heat, no pressure. He turned his eyes back to Sargon.
“There’s no demon here,” he told him.
The great master moved away from him in contempt. “A Nightwing should never use only one or two of his senses at a time. You disappoint me, Devon March.”
Devon stared after him. What did the guy want? I’m new at this, he thought defensively.
Prove him wrong, came the Voice. He’s daring you to prove him wrong.
Okay, Devon told himself. So don’
t just base it on sight or feel. How else can I detect a demon?
He listened. No thrum, no vibration, no scuttling of hellish feet. He stood there in the meadow a few yards from Sargon, the first Nightwing of all, and heard no demon presence. None of his senses indicated one was nearby.
Except—
That smell.
They stink, Devon realized. That’s right: they stink. And I can smell the putrid thing somewhere. But where?
He looked around. He saw nothing. Nothing except the tall grass.
And Sargon the Great.
Suddenly Devon knew. Faster than he’d ever moved before, he lunged at the great founder of the Order of the Nightwing, tackling him down into the grass. Sargon’s eyes flashed surprise at first, then fury. His eye sockets turned yellow, his fangs ripping through the flesh of his face. A claw twice the size of Devon’s head gripped him around the middle and lifted him high in the air, holding him over the demon’s open mouth.
“Let—me—go!” Devon commanded.
But the thing simply tightened its grip around Devon’s waist, drawing him down closer to the stinking canyon of its mouth. A whole snout of fangs had pushed through the mask of Sargon the Great, dripping with blood and saliva. Devon could smell its horrid breath, feel the heat of its body. In seconds his face was going to be lunch for the snapping jaws of the thing.
“Back!” came a voice. “Back to your Hell Hole!”
The demon twisted under Devon, releasing its hold and shuddering uncontrollably. Devon toppled to the grass, while his attacker was suddenly seized as if by an unseen giant hand and flung through the sky. It disappeared into the air.
Devon looked up. Sargon the Great was standing over him.
“You passed your first test, Devon the Abecedarian. But failed your second.”
“I tried to send him back,” Devon told him. “It’s worked before.”
“Your fear was too great. These things feed off fear. They become more powerful the more fearful you are.”
Sorcerers of the Nightwing (Book One - The Ravenscliff Series) Page 23
