The last of the flames from the three trucks came together into the tall orange blossom that I'd been expecting, and dreading. Then it leaned toward us, kind of like an old friend.
Before Beta could say anything, though, Joe piped up.
"What, you guys didn't want to park at the visitor center?" Chapter 77
"HELLO, DANIEL." Beta sounded amused, even cheerful, but I could hear the menace underlying his words. "I must say, your note surprised me. I've spent fourteen hundred years thinking about how exactly to repay you for nearly destroying me, without ever thinking I would actually get the chance to. What luck!"
"I'm the lucky one," I said. "Now I get to finish the job that started in the Dark Ages."
He sniffed. At least I think that's what it was. "Maybe I should thank you, Danny Boy. When you forced me underground I had a lot of time to ponder the vicissitudes of life, and I realized something. Why burn a few paltry houses, or a few insignificant people, when I could have a huge, villainous army do the work for me?
"By the time I was strong enough to come back to the surface, I realized it was time to change my methods. Monsters were out, commerce was in. Cyndaris needs fuel, and Earth has lots of it. Have you noticed?"
"I've seen your so-called 'fuel,' Beta. You can't do that to the planet I love."
"The planet you love? Well, you're really going to like this bit of news, then. When my ships get to Cyndaris, you know what the cargo gets used for?"
I shook my head, knowing I didn't want to hear the answer. Actually, I didn't think there was anything Beta could say that would lower my opinion of him any further. But I've been wrong before.
He cackled. "Fast food, Daniel. Bottom-of-the-barrel grub. But what can I say? There are a lot of folks who don't care what they eat, as long as it's cheap and unhealthfully delicious. And fuel matching that description is just lying around for the taking on Earth! I would have to be an idiot not to take advantage! Over one billion burned , that's my motto. Should I give my ad agency a bonus? Or fire them?"
Funny how the aliens on The List never seemed to want to be artists or doctors. It was crappy movie producers, crooked used car dealers, sleazy defense attorneys, smarmy ad execs. And now this.
I gritted my teeth so tightly that it hurt. "Figures that after a thousand years the only thing you would have learned is how to be a lousy cook."
"Oh, I've learned a lot more than that. You and the boy king were lucky when you faced me more than a millennium ago. I was fresh out of a time portal, little more than a p ile of embers. Now I'm a thousand and a half years older, wiser, and stronger."
I shrugged, purposefully nonchalant. I had the inklings of an idea forming in my head. "You don't look that impressive. I mean, come on. The dragon Arthur fought was bigger."
"Is that so? Well, watch this. Or just close your eyes, and feel the heat"
Chapter 78
BETA HUFFED AND PUFFED, his flames pulsing in giant waves. Slowly, the shadowy face in the flames turned yellow, then brilliantly white.
The flame weavers standing closest to him took several steps back. A few shaded their eyes with their hands, which immediately began to blister and ooze.
As he got brighter, I noticed something particularly weird: the rest of the field was disappearing into darkness. The fires that dotted the plain were on the move, streaking toward Beta, joining with him. He towered higher and higher. Then his core became so bright that it hurt to look at him.
Soon he was the only light source for miles. His flames crackled high above me, at least fifty feet in the air. Stonehenge is large in scale, with the tallest stones more than twenty feet high. Beta made it look like a toy model.
"You want big? I'll show you big." As he spoke, the roar and whistle of combustion tripled in volume until it was like a rocket being launched.
The human servants closest to him began to stagger. One man fell on his knees, then another. A woman fell to the ground, shuddering. Soon the whole field was full of prostrate figures, twitching and jerking.
And then, in a grisly reversal of what I'd witnessed at the Faust metal workshop, each body began to glow as Beta took back the fire from his followers.
"Is this big enough for you? Am I a worthy opponent now?"
Chapter 79
MY PLAN had worked too well. One enemy was supposed to be easier to deal with than a hundred, right? Wrong. I felt like a fool.
I clenched my fists and took a step back. Tm ready," I yelled. Yeah, ready to get melted faster than the witch from The Wizard of Oz.
"You know," said Beta conversationally (if there's such a thing as a conversation with a fire bigger than a building), Tm glad my flame weavers weren't able to wipe you out sooner. You know that saying? Play with fire? Now we're going to get to play in so many interesting ways."
Suddenly he leaned over--but not over me. Over Dana.
The force of his fire blew her hair back from her face. Especially with Beta's spotlight shining on her, she looked i ncredibly beautiful. Even though Dana couldn't help shrinking back from the intense heat, her expression was defiant.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said.
"What was that?" Beta's flames lowered till they were just brushing the tops of the standing stones at the edge of the monument.
He didn't know that Dana was right, because Beta didn't know me. Messing with Earth is a good way to get on my bad side. But messing with Dana--that was the last straw.
I jumped in front of her, my arms folded. "Stand back," I whispered. "Get behind me. Please don't argue."
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Fighting fire with fire," I said.
It was the only thing I could think of that might work, and something I'd never tried before. I concentrated hard, really hard. This was going to be interesting, to say the least.
Suddenly I started to grow and wondered if I could stop my latest brainstorm. In just a few seconds I was about 120 feet tall and I towered over Beta like a big brother.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my sleeve. "This seems a little less unfair, don't you think?"
Beta hissed and reared up, almost matching my height. "Daniel, let me tell you something. Against me, there is no such thing as a fair fight. Your idea is clever, but let's face it. It just means there's more of you to burn"
Chapter 80
BETA DIDN'T WASTE any more time on idle chitchat. Suddenly he was a firestorm headed straight for me. I dove and rolled out of the way, but I'm sure I still suffered third-degree burns all over my colossal body.
"Hot enough for you, Danny?" Beta asked, and laughed like hundreds of hyenas on loudspeakers.
He was gathering strength again, and I waited for something else to happen, anything besides my eyebrows and possibly all of my hair slowly getting singed away.
"Funny you picked this particular place," he mused out loud. "It reminds me of the first time I came to this country. Ah, the memories."
"Don't tell me you get sentimental about the places you destroy," I said, keeping my distance as best I could.
"Things were different back then," he continued. "I was burning mud huts instead of oil refineries. But England's always been one of my favorite places to terrorize." He sighed nostalgically, still edging closer to me.
"But all earthly things must come to an end, and eventually England will have served its purpose. Then it's off to somewhere else, and somewhere else after that, until this planet is a husk filled with ashes. I wouldn't worry, though. You'll be gone long before that happens."
I steeled myself, quickly coated both of my hands with carbon dioxide, and reached for Beta the way a cowboy reaches for the bull he's trying to wrangle.
Bad idea.
Worse than bad.
Worse than I could have imagined--by a factor of about a thousand. And that's saying something, because I figured grabbing him would be like sticking both of my hands into a blast furnace. Unfortunately, Beta was a blast furnace that knew what
it was doing. Pain shot through my body like dozens of lightning bolts.
I let go and staggered backward. I had no other choice.
UI know, I know. I'm hot," Beta said. "If I could, I'd let you burn for a couple thousand years. It's the least you deserve. Flesh is so pitifully frail, though. Under the circumstances, I guess thirty minutes will have to do."
My arms, my chest, my legs, my back, ached. At this point, I wasn't sure if I could survive for five. It was so hot that the ruined stones around us were glowing a dull red.
In fact, the sky was glowing red, too.
No. That wasn't it exactly.
It was morning. The sky was glowing because the sun was rising.
And as the first rays hit the monument, something else happened.
Look to the sky, look to the sky. Wasn't that what Merlin had told me?
Chapter 81
FAR OVER MY HEAD, another sun had appeared, a hazy, red, shimmering orb hanging a thousand feet or so in the air. I'm not kidding you.
It was so faint I could barely see it. But I could sure feel it. Even with Beta's flames close enough to touch, this second sun felt hot enough to melt glass.
The combination was too much for me by a couple hundred degrees. I collapsed onto my knees, gasping, staring upward, praying for somebody to come by selling umbrellas.
"So. You've decided to accept your fate?" Beta trailed off for a second, then began again, speaking more softly now, in a sort of rustling growl. "Finally you understand that you can never win. I'm too powerful to be extinguished now. Too hot to... to..."
Beta was silent for a moment, as if he was at a loss for words. His flames stopped closing in on me. I had a feeling he was looking up, too.
Look to the sky, Beta. Look to the sky.
"What...?" But the word came out slowly, in a low drawl this time. He sounded detached, almost hypnotized by the ball above us.
Was this Stonehenge's secret? The circle of stones, heated by Beta's fire, was reflecting the sun's rays, projecting them directly above us. Even in its ruined state, it somehow acted like a giant lens, focusing the sun's heat into a single intense point.
And that heat was attracting Beta like a magnet.
"The ssssun?" he hissed. "Thoussssands of yearssss. How did I not ssssee it before?"
Beta's flames seemed to be reaching for the second sun. In just seconds Beta had become a column above me, hundreds of feet tall, drifting up as steadily as if he was on an elevator.
As Beta reached the transparent sphere overhead, he flowed into it, filling it with his flames. The hazy red ball became a burning white one. It really was like there were two suns in the sky, one just barely over the horizon, one blazing directly above me.
Beta flickered and spoke haltingly. "Wasss it you who made ssssomething ssso..."
As he struggled to finish the sentence, a sound came that was louder than any thunderclap I'd ever heard.
Then Beta's flames shot across the sky in a narrow line, straight toward the rising sun, the real sun. The fiery alien looked like a burning orange laser beam. A single word came to me. "Beautiful?" The sphere of heat overhead was suddenly empty again. The stones around me slowly cooled.
I guess that meant Stonehenge had done its work. It had sent Beta into the one fire even he couldn't handle: the sun. Beta was a pillar of flame, streaking across space, right into the heart of our solar system. I raised my hand in a painful salute. "Good riddance, Number 3. You're officially off The List."
And then I fainted.
Chapter 82
FOR THE FIRST TIME in what seemed like centuries-- and it sort of had been--I felt something cool and refreshing on my forehead.
I opened my eyes.
Sweet Dana was bent over me, wiping my brow with a damp cloth. As she saw me come to, she sighed. "Thank God, you're tough. You had me worried sick, Daniel."
"Did Beta--" I began, and coughed. My throat felt like I'd eaten hot charcoal briquettes, several bags' worth.
"Don't worry. It was all just a bad dream," said Joe soothingly from behind me, and then he chuckled. "Nah, just kidding. You shot that freak right into the sun. Well done. You're getting better and better, buddy. Did you catch my joke there--well done?"
We all looked up. It was still early, and the sun was low in the sky. There was no trace of either Beta or the reddish hot spot that had led to his sudden departure from Earth.
"You think hell survive up there?" said Dana after a while.
I shook my head. "Beta's hot, but the sun is hotter. I think it would be like trying to get a glass of water back after pouring it into the ocean."
I sat up finally. My head felt like it might have a big lump on the back, but I couldn't rub it. My hands and wrists were swollen and raw and already blistering.
"We're lucky Stonehenge was still in good working order," Dana said, and looked around.
"Yeah." I sighed. "Even with half the stones missing, it was enough. Payback. Four thousand years in the making. Worth the wait."
"Three cheers for the ancient Brits," said Emma, eyeing Joe like she was daring him to mention the druids.
"By the way," said Willy, nodding at the fields beyond the monument, "what are we gonna do about them?"
Around the trucks still parked on the grass, Beta's minions, hundreds of them, were tossing and turning, and looked to be in some real pain. Quite a few were just sitting, holding their knees, rocking back and forth.
"I think they'll be all right eventually. They'll just have to get used to living their own lives again," I said.
Dana smiled at me. "Well, I hope you're proud of yourself, Daniel. You saved the world, again. Or at least England. Now, didn't I remember someone saying something about a vacation?"
She pulled me to my feet, and the five of us walked slowly back to the rental van, still parked in the visitor center lot where my father had left it. As we piled in, I looked back. Salisbury Plain was streaked with tire tracks. The ancient stones were scorched and blackened, and in the middle of them was a huge crater.
When the English Heritage people got here in a few hours, they wouldn't be too happy. Which was a shame, in a way, since Stonehenge had finally completed its task.
It had saved England.
EPILOGUE:
ANYONE FOR CHOCOLATE CROISSANTS?
Chapter 83
WHOEVER SAYS that the English Channel is too bloody freezing cold should go up against a Cyndarian like Beta sometime. After the battle at Stonehenge, I couldn't get enough of the cold. Ice cream, air-conditioning--and now an invigorating swim.
It's twenty-one miles from England to France, and the best swimmers in the world can do it in about seven hours. At the rate we were going, we would do it in less than two.
We were cheating, a little: I'd made wet suits to keep us a bit warmer and help us float. But, hey, it's not like we were trying to break any official world records. This was strictly off-the-books stuff. Like everything I do.
I was feeling quite a bit better. My mother had taken good care of me, and my burns were mostly healed. Yep, that fast.
Still, I didn't think I'd be doing much baking for a while.
"I don't really get it," said Joe between breaths. "Even if Stonehenge was built to be some kind of thermal lens, like you say, how did it shoot Beta into space?"
"I'm not sure it did," I said, turning on my side. "He almost sounded like he wanted to go. Like once he felt the sun's heat, he couldn't help it. A moth to a flame, or something like that. What do I know about thermonuclear physics?"
Joe shrugged, which made him sink, and whatever he said next came out as bubbles.
"All right, I've got a better question," said Dana, changing the subject. "What part of our vacation are you guys looking forward to the most?"
"No question. Lunch on the Champs-Elysees!" said Willy. "The French do their meals right. A little pate, a baguette, some fantastic cheese, and those folks never seem to get fat."
"The best pastries in the
world," said Emma. "I could go for a chocolate croissant."
"I can't wait to get there," said Willy. "I know... last one to France foots the bill!" On that note he launched himself into an energetic freestyle. As if they could already smell the food, Emma and Joe took off after him.
Dana, floating lazily on her back, smiled at me. "You know, Daniel, that fight the other night gave you an incredible tan. In Hollywood they'd shell out big bucks to anyone who looks as good as you do."
I cocked my head at her. "You think?"
Dana's eyes twinkled. She flipped over again and dove underwater with the grace of a dolphin, kicking hard to catch up with the others before she came to the surface again.
"No, not really, Daniel," she called back to me. "It anything, you look like you should be headed to the nearest burn ward." She laughed--a sound that was better than music, even Mozart.
It was like a kind of magic.
A kind of magic that even Merlin couldn't touch in a million time-warped years.
And neither would any other alien, ever.
I swear.
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