Moonlight lit the hallway faintly, but once they were in the kitchen, Gordy had trouble seeing a few feet in front of his face.
“Nothing electronic is working. Not even my flashlight,” Sasha muttered. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
“Don’t you have potions that could light our way?” Adilene asked.
“Not with me,” Sasha said.
Max nearly knocked Adilene over as he suddenly pushed past her.
“Where are you going?” Adilene reached for his arm, but her fingers only grazed his shirtsleeve.
Thudding against the wall, the terrier yelping in surprise, Max vanished into the hallway. A couple minutes later, a soft light emerged from his bedroom as he returned, no longer toting Corn Chip in his arms but instead carrying two dozen glow sticks, several of which had already been cracked open.
“Why do you have so many of those?” Sasha asked.
“For trick-or-treating,” he answered matter-of-factly. “Duh.” He turned to Gordy. “I had to lock Corn Chip in her kennel; she bit me.” Max rubbed the back of his fist where the tiny pinpricks of Corn Chip’s insignificant fangs had barely dented his skin.
Max cracked another stick, and a luminous yellow glow lit up the kitchen. The artificial lights bubbled as Gordy and the others vigorously shook their glow sticks and then slipped the elastic loops attached to the ends over their heads, wearing them as necklaces.
“Now what do we do?” Max asked.
In response, Gordy handed him a Booming Ball, freshly selected from his satchel. Max stared down at the glass bauble, which was the size of a baseball and oozed an iridescent light, uncertain of how to hold it. Gordy passed a Torpor Tonic to Adilene and was reaching for another bottle to offer Sasha, but she held up her palm.
“I’ve got my own weapon,” she said, brandishing a container of fluorescent blue liquid with red blobs swirling inside like a miniature lava lamp.
Something heavy hit the front door, and Gordy tightened his grip on his satchel. The knock rang out again and again, the wood splintering from each blow until the door fell off its hinges.
Steffan the Seventh entered the house. Dressed in loose-fitting clothing, he was tall and angular, as if he possessed a few extra elbows and knees. His patch bulged over his right eye—a patch that could be concealing a deadly potion.
Steffan immediately spotted Gordy, and he hurled a bottle through the air toward the four of them. The vial swooshed over Gordy’s shoulder, striking the far kitchen wall. The liquid splashed into a web, and deadly thorns sprouted, the tips glistening with poison. The thorns punctured the cabinets, shattering Mrs. Pinkerman’s floral dishware.
“My mom’s going to flip out when she sees that!” Shouting a war cry, Max turned and fired his Booming Ball. The bauble struck the floor a few feet from Steffan, sending a rushing wave of air in all directions. The force of the Booming Ball uprooted Mrs. Pinkerman’s couch, which became lodged in the wall.
“Drams?” Steffan inquired dryly, one eyebrow rising above his eye patch. “This should be fun.” But before he could select another weapon from his arsenal, Gordy sprang into action.
Selecting a new concoction from his satchel, Gordy threw a triangular-shaped bottle at Steffan’s abdomen. The glass shattered, and the Scourge cried out, only to have his voice instantly quieted as a column of smoke enveloped his body. Gordy and the others shielded their eyes until the smoke dissipated.
“What did you do?” Max gaped into the living room, laughing in surprise.
Steffan the Seventh was enveloped within a human-sized glass bottle, complete with a corked lid, like an enormous action figure trapped within its packaging. After several seconds of confusion, Steffan finally realized what had happened and pressed his splayed fingers against the glass.
“Did you make that one up yourself?” Sasha asked, impressed.
Gordy nodded, flashing Max a smile. “I’ve been waiting to test it out. It needs a name, though.”
“Already got you covered,” Max replied, winking at Gordy. “The Aladdiner.”
“The Aladdiner?” Adilene asked dryly.
“You know? Aladdin? Genie in a bottle?” Max looked at the others for confirmation. “It’s perfect.”
Gordy knew the potion would last for at least fifteen minutes. That was if the Scourge didn’t shatter the glass first, which he seemed determined to do. Steffan started shifting his weight back and forth, trying to tip the bottle over.
Peering into his satchel, Gordy grabbed two more potions. “Okay,” he whispered. “We’ll go to the neighbors first. We’ll have to slip in the back door to surprise them, but I think I have enough to take those creeps down. They definitely aren’t expecting anyone to fight back.”
Sasha made a disapproving cluck with her tongue. “You’re not seriously thinking of taking these guys on right now, are you?”
Gordy’s brow creased. “Why not? They don’t scare me.”
“And here I thought I was the arrogant one. You got lucky with one Scourge.” She nodded at Steffan, who was still rocking his body against his glass prison. “There’s no way you’ll have the same success going up against a dozen of the world’s worst with a handful of Torpor Tonics and—no offense, guys—but these two at your side.” She nodded at Max and Adilene. “They’re not trained.”
“You know, I’m not all that excited about this either, but I can at least throw a bottle!” Max proclaimed defensively.
“Oh, really?” Sasha gestured to the webwork stretching across the kitchen wall. “What kind of thorns are those?”
Max shrugged. “Uh . . . don’t know, don’t care.”
“Well, you should. That’s called Tickling Tinik. It’s from the Philippines, but don’t believe its funny name. It’s not a good time. One prick from a single Tickling Tinik thorn and your skin will start to stretch and threaten to fall off.”
“Serious?” Adilene eyed the thorns in horror. Max inched away from the wall as well.
“Luckily for you, I happen to have ampalaya rind in my satchel. That’s the cure,” Sasha said. “But what if we get separated in the fight? Do you know the first thing about concocting antidotes with a limited supply of ingredients to counteract deadly poisons?”
Max opened his mouth as if to challenge her, but then looked dismally over at Gordy. “I don’t want my skin to fall off.”
“Me neither,” Adilene whispered.
A huge chunk of Gordy and Sasha’s Dram training had been about what to do during battles with Scourges. Max and Adilene had never been present for those lessons. Gordy could feel his desire to fight leaving him. She was right. They didn’t stand a chance against the Scourges. It was time to run.
“We’re clearly outmatched,” Sasha went on. “And they have Silt, remember? How can you surprise anyone if you can’t see them? They’ll alert the others, and we’ll get caught. But if we leave right now, we may have the upper hand.”
“How so?” Gordy could see shadows dancing across the floor back in the living room and wondered when another Scourge would appear in the window.
“Did you not hear Zelda just now? She said they were looking for a ‘her.’ Unless you know something I don’t, they’re not searching for you.” Sasha moved to the back door.
Out beyond the kitchen, the whole world seemed to have drifted into complete darkness. No lights shone from any of the homes, but Gordy could see blips of artificial illumination as potion smoke blossomed up from rooftops. Dread and hopelessness settled in his chest. The Scourges were everywhere. Where had they all come from? And why were they attacking the city?
“Thoughts on where to go?” Max closed the back door behind him, eyes darting around in panic.
Gordy knew his mom was coming to rescue them, but they could no longer wait in the neighborhood.
“I think we should go back to Tobias’s,�
� he suggested.
Max groaned. “Are you kidding me? That’s like forever away from here. And didn’t you say it burned to the ground?”
“Yes, but that’s where my mom will be, at least for the next little while.”
“None of the cars are working,” Max said. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to run that far. It’ll take us at least two days. Probably longer.”
“Maybe not.” It was a long shot, but Gordy had a hunch. He looked apologetically over at Adilene. “Try not to freak out, okay?”
Then he called out for Estelle.
Gordy didn’t know if the scooter had a weight limit, but he felt certain the four of them well exceeded the maximum capacity.
Sitting on the padded seat and holding on to the handlebars, Gordy muttered instructions to Estelle. Adilene sat snuggly behind him, one arm wrapped around his waist, her hand digging into his abdomen, while her other hand held a wad of Sasha’s shirt.
Sasha sat on the metal basket facing the road, potions ready to throw at anyone trying to follow them. Gordy couldn’t see where they were driving because Max’s reddening face blocked all visibility. Straddling the handlebars and hanging on for dear life, Max was trying to keep his feet from being accidentally pulled under the front tire.
“You can slow down a little,” Gordy said to the scooter, squeezing Estelle’s handlebars.
Her headlight seemed dimmer than usual, and she took to the road with a herky-jerky movement, as if trying to buck one of them off. After half a mile, Gordy warned Max to stop complaining, because he sensed Estelle getting annoyed. The scooter passed a couple of people walking along the shoulder of the road, having abandoned their inoperable vehicles.
“Everyone’s stranded,” Adilene said. “What happened?”
Gordy had been trying to wrap his brain around how the Scourges had knocked out the entire city’s power along with their cars and everything else electronic. No potion he had ever read about could cause that much damage.
Estelle suddenly began to purr, and both Gordy and Adilene jumped in surprise.
“What does that mean?” Adilene asked.
“She does that from time to time,” Gordy replied.
Estelle’s front wheel stuttered as though skidding on gravel, and Max’s head poked up, trying to peer over Gordy’s shoulder. “Do you know how uncomfortable this is?” he griped. “Are we out of gas or something?”
Gordy tapped the gauge to see if it was working. “We still have a quarter of a tank.”
The wheel jerked again, the whole vehicle wobbling to one side, and Sasha shouted, “Stop goofing around!”
“I’m not doing anything,” Gordy insisted. Estelle didn’t require actual steering. Holding the handlebars was just for balance.
Her speed dropping drastically, Estelle suddenly stopped in the middle of the road. Her headlight still flickered, but she wasn’t moving anymore. Not even an inch.
“We haven’t even gone five miles yet.” Grimacing, Max hopped down from the handlebars, giving Gordy a clear view of the road up ahead and with it, rows of city lights brightening the sky less than a mile away.
“That must be where the outage ends,” Adilene said. “Maybe we can get a taxi to drive us the rest of the way.”
“Please tell me you’re not complaining,” Max groaned. “You got to sit on the cushion for the ride.”
Adilene shrugged. “I didn’t think you wanted to hug Gordy the whole time.”
“I would’ve hugged Gordy,” Max grumbled as he started walking toward the lights.
“All right, Estelle, we just have a little way to go, and then maybe you can follow us to Tobias’s.” Gordy waited for the scooter to lurch forward, but she only sputtered exhaust.
Sasha pointed. “Can you see that?”
Gordy followed her finger. He could see a ripple in the air, but the images on the other side of it were distorted. The haze continued up at least a thousand feet into the sky and arced overhead.
“It looks like some sort of gas,” Sasha said.
“I . . . can’t . . . move . . .” Max grunted from a short distance away. His left foot was raised off the ground but appeared to be frozen. He gasped, finally dropping his foot behind him, his breath rushing out unsteadily as he looked back at Gordy. “There’s something blocking me from walking any farther.”
None of them could move more than a few feet past the point where Estelle had stopped. The air there felt solid and reeked of potion ingredients. The almost invisible haze stretched for miles in every direction as though a massive, magical dome had been dropped over the city.
Gordy heard voices from behind him and looked back, noticing the small group of people who had been walking along the road before gathering around Estelle.
“How did you get this to work?” a man wearing hospital scrubs asked. “Our cars all stopped running.”
Gordy looked at the others. “I’m not sure, really. She just . . . um . . . I mean, it just started up fine.” He hadn’t considered why Estelle continued to work when every other machine in the area had been rendered incapacitated, but then again, Bolter’s scooter operated on Fusion potions. Every moving part within Estelle functioned due to the magical properties of Bolter’s bizarre concoction.
“What is this?” asked a woman, who, like Max, stopped abruptly once she hit the invisible wall. “Why can’t I move?”
At first, everyone marveled at the strange force field hedging up the way, but then they started to panic.
“We need to get out of here,” Adilene whispered into Gordy’s ear. “We can’t be out on the street with everyone else. What if we draw the attention of the Scourges?”
Gordy nodded in agreement, but where could they go? Tobias’s home made the most sense, but that path was blocked.
“Hey!” the man wearing scrubs announced. “There we go. Someone’s coming.”
A vehicle approached, headlights shining, from the area unaffected by the power outage. Just before the car reached the point where the dome began, it braked and came to a stop.
“Can I get a ride?” a young woman behind him called. “I have an early shift in the morning, and I’m exhausted.”
Gordy saw a shadow moving behind the windshield, but no one stepped out. After about a minute, the car suddenly reversed and made a U-turn. Gordy just assumed the large group gathered in the road had probably weirded out the driver, but when another car approached and did the exact same thing, he realized what was happening.
“Distractor potions,” Gordy whispered. “There’s a gigantic ward covering us.”
“Impossible,” Sasha said. “Wards can’t get this big.”
“How else can you explain it?” Gordy asked. “Those drivers can’t see us. They probably can’t even see the road.”
“Uh, we may have another problem.” Max pointed toward Estelle and the heavyset man now straddling her seat. He was wearing a white, button-up shirt and black slacks and held a piece of luggage in his lap.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Gordy blurted.
The man held up a finger. “No need to shout. I’m just going to borrow this. I can even pay you.” He dug in his pocket for a wallet and waved the leather billfold in the air. “I have to get to the airport. I can’t miss my flight.”
“How are you going to get there?” Max scoffed. “This force field is blocking us from getting through.”
The man shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. There must be a perfectly good explanation. I just can’t wait around with you people. There has to be another way through.”
“Sir . . .” Adilene started, casting a cautious gaze at Gordy. “I think you need to get off Estelle.”
“Here’s fifty dollars.” The man extended a folded bill in his fingers. “I’ll give you my number, and we can work out a way to get this vehicle back to you fro
m the airport. You just don’t understand. I cannot miss my flight. I cannot—”
And then the man was gone.
Well, not gone.
Launched.
Estelle’s engine fired up to maximum intensity, and the man hollered as he was catapulted into the treetops above them. Everyone gasped, including Gordy. He had expected something would happen just by the sound of Estelle’s angry motor, but he never suspected she could eject someone like that. That poor fellow had been large and heavy, and now he dangled from a branch twenty feet in the air, calling out for help.
Not wanting to wait around and try to explain himself to the strangers, Gordy raced toward Estelle, the others right behind him; they climbed aboard. The onlookers watched in shocked silence as Gordy and his friends took off on Estelle, back in the opposite direction.
Back toward the Scourges.
Of all the amazing potion effects Wanda had seen throughout her life as an Elixirist, this one took the cake. No longer disguised as Akerberg, Mrs. Stitser stood in a lightweight jacket, shoulder to shoulder with Priscilla. Several yards away, a gargantuan crater easily the size of the Grand Canyon, spread out in front of them.
In fact, it was the Grand Canyon.
The Stitsers had once taken a road trip to Arizona, and Wanda could still remember the expansive, magnificent views of the natural wonder. The thin, snaking line of the Colorado River glimmered at the base of the canyon, and she could smell sand wafting in the hot breeze.
Only they were currently standing in Ohio, not Arizona, and had been just a few miles from the Pinkermans’ home, driving Tobias’s pickup truck on their way to rescue Gordy when they’d nearly plowed through the visitors’ center and plummeted to their deaths.
“Dad’s really outdone himself with his distractor potions,” Wanda said, her fists planted on her hips.
The Seeking Serum Page 13
