“Quiet!” Aldron said angrily. “You speak of saving others when it is you who needs saving. Tell me Gabriel, how will you get back to the mundane world?”
“I don’t know! It just happens. I suppose I’ll just wait for it to happen again.”
“It may never happen, if you don’t learn how to control it,” Aldron said. “And if you’re here long enough, you won’t be able to return anyway. Your body will change. It will adapt to this environment, and soon you’ll be like me, trapped here forever.”
“You’ve said that twice now,” Gabriel said. “Why are you stuck here? What happened?”
“Because my body has changed, I am now just like the shadowcreatures. I cannot stay in your world for more than a short period of time. Any longer, and I might be destroyed.”
“How did that happen?”
“Just by being here, Gabriel. This world changes you.” Aldron gave Gabriel a hard stare when he said that to emphasize the importance of his words. “Now then, first I must show you how to survive. Then you must bring the orphans here, and I will teach them as well.”
“The orphans?” Gabriel eyed him suspiciously. “I don’t want the orphans to have anything to do with this.”
“If they do not learn, they will die. How would you like that on your conscience, Gabriel?”
Gabriel glared at him. It appeared that he didn’t have any choice but to do what he was told. “Fine,” he said. “Teach me what I need to know.”
“All right. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. I want you to use your senses. Reach out to the world. I want you to feel the rhythm of the life around you, just like the beat of your heart.”
Gabriel tried to open his senses. The air in the cavern was frigid and it smelled like moss and mildew. The stone floor was hard and cold against his skin. In the distance, he heard the trickle of water and the steady sound of dripping. He pushed these thoughts away, trying to focus. He was supposed to feel it all with his mind. He was supposed to find some sort of rhythm, according to Aldron. But what did that even mean? How could the world have a rhythm? Everything was different. The movement of the air, the dripping of the water… these things couldn’t possibly be connected, but-
And then he felt it. It was a creeping sensation that moved up and down his skin, like warm water in a bath. Only there was nothing around him, or at least nothing that he could sense with his normal perception. “I feel it,” he said in a whisper.
“Yes,” Aldron said. “Describe it to me.”
“It’s thick, and it flows like water. I feel like I’m standing in a river or something, and it connects everything.”
“Yes, that’s it!” Aldron said, his voice rising with excitement. Gabriel opened his eyes.
“It’s the Shadow, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve felt this before, in a way. I’ve noticed it when I was around shadowcreatures. But why can I feel it?” He thought of what the scientists had done to him, how they’d injected him with Shadow DNA. “Am I evil?”
“No, dear boy. What you’re calling the Shadow is really just a force of nature. It’s like gravity or magnetism. You can’t see it, but you can feel its effects. It is neither good nor evil, just a force that some of us can use. It’s how we use it that determines if we are good or evil.”
“I don’t understand,” Gabriel said. “If this is the Shadow, then it must be evil.”
“You have it wrong. The Shadow is not a real thing. The Shadow is a group of people who’ve been using this power to their benefit, without any care as to what happens to the rest of us. If they could, they would use this power to enslave your world just as they’ve done with this one.”
“So if this… this force isn’t the Shadow, then what it is?”
“It’s magic,” Aldron said with a twinkle in his eyes. “And you’re going to learn to control it.”
“How?”
“Gabriel, you are our only hope to defeat the Shadow. I must tell you up front that learning to use magic won’t be easy. That’s why I need you to commit to it now. You must promise me that you won’t give up on your studies. Sometimes it will be difficult, sometimes it might even be painful, but it is necessary to master these abilities or you will not be able to defeat the Shadowlords. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Gabriel said. “I’m ready. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Good. Then close your eyes, and do as I command…. Picture the energy around you, moving through the environment like ripples of water. It may help to imagine that you are underwater, because the energy surrounds you in the same way.”
“I feel it,” Gabriel said. His pulse quickened a little as he felt the tiny prickles against his skin, like a warm breeze washing over him.
“Excellent. Now imagine how this energy connects to you, how it moves through your body. I want you to latch on to it. Don’t let it go…”
Gabriel gasped and doubled over in pain. He relaxed his thoughts and the feeling dissipated instantly “What was that?” he said breathlessly.
“Your body is not accustomed to the flow of energy. You will feel it most acutely in the beginning. Close your eyes and try again.”
Gabriel did as he was instructed. He saw the energy in his mind’s eye; saw it flowing around and through him. Once again, he tried to grab it and hold onto it. The pain immediately returned, but he clenched his jaw and firmed himself against it. He would do whatever was necessary to defeat the Shadowlords.
“Good,” said Aldron. “Now you will learn to move back and forth between worlds. As you feel the energy flowing through your body, you must grasp it with your mind. Hold on to it. No matter what happens, you must not let go. Do you understand?”
Gabriel nodded. With his eyes still closed, he focused his mind on grabbing the energy as it moved through him. Jolts of pain instantly ran through his body. His muscles seized up involuntarily, and a cry escaped from his lips.
“Good!” Aldron encouraged. “You are doing well. Hold the energy now… hold on to it!”
Gabriel felt the tide washing over him, like a tsunami carrying him away. The world seemed to twist awkwardly, and nausea nearly overcame him. He became aware of a force, a pressure against his chest making it hard to breathe. The pain became so overwhelming that Gabriel wanted to cry, but he fought it. He held onto the energy as the world twisted away maddeningly. And then, suddenly, it was gone.
Gabriel opened his eyes and blinked. He was standing in his room, back inside Black Mountain. He reeled with vertigo and steadied himself by grasping the bedpost. His guts clenched up as a wave of nausea washed over him. A heavy hand clamped down on his back. “Good,” Aldron’s voice said in a whisper. “You did very good. Soon you will do this with very little effort.”
“That was the worst thing I’ve ever felt,” Gabriel said.
Aldron smiled. “You are strong, Gabriel. Few could do what you do. Be patient with the training. All will be rewarded. Trust me. Come now, before the night is over, there is something else I must show you.”
This time Gabriel simply closed his eyes and Aldron did the hard work. Gabriel still noted the same sensations of falling, of being carried away, but he knew not to fear the sensation. A wave of energy passed through his body and Gabriel’s skin felt numb and tingly. Then, he opened his eyes and saw Aldron standing over him. They were no longer in Gabriel’s suite. They were back in the cave in the Shadow world.
Gabriel shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. He still felt slightly tingly, as if there were tiny spider webs all over his body. “That was weird,” he said. “It feels different when you do it.”
“Yes, that’s perfectly normal. You’ll find that with experience, these sensations disappear. Soon, you’ll barely even notice the change.”
“I feel different this time. I feel… energized. Why is that?”
“Because you didn’t expend any energy. I carried you through the stream. You were submerged in it. The effects won’t last.”
“What is
it?” said Gabriel. “It felt like water pushing against me.”
“It is a form of energy. It moves and flows throughout the universe, but it is concentrated in the Shadow world. In the mundane world, the effects are very subtle.”
“But it’s there, too?” Gabriel said. “There’s magic in the real world?”
“Yes. Have you ever heard of chi?”
“Chi? As in Tai-Chi, the martial art?”
“Yes, exactly. In Japan, martial artists meditate to feel the effects of chi. They use it to make their bodies stronger, and healthier. In India and the Mideast, they call this energy prana. In the west, we simply call it magic.”
Gabriel thought about the martial arts masters he’d read about, and the monks who spent their entire lives mastering the powers of chi. Some of those people could sleep naked through a snowstorm. He’d seen pictures of a tiny Japanese martial artist lifting two football players at once, one on each arm. Obviously, there was something to Aldron’s theory.
“Why is the magic so weak in our world?” he said.
Aldron looked him up and down. “I will show you,” he said. “Follow me; it is time for another lesson.”
Chapter 15
Jodi woke several hours later to the sound of the TV blaring in the living room. She glanced at the alarm clock. It was twenty minutes to seven. She groaned and put a hand to her forehead. It’s all real, she thought. I was so hoping it had just been a dream.
She rolled out of bed and paused as she saw Mr. Oglesby’s cane hanging from the bedpost. “That’s odd,” she said. “How did that get here?” The last time she remembered seeing it was on the bus. She shook her head and decided Pete must have put it there.
She went downstairs to off turn the TV and found Pete sleeping on the couch. He’d rolled over the remote control, and that was why the TV had turned on. She smiled sympathetically. Pete could have slept in a nice cozy bed upstairs, but instead he’d fallen asleep in front of the TV. He’d probably gotten that habit from being alone so often. Pete’s parents were busy politicians and socialites, and they were hardly ever home. It had been more than a year since he’d seen them. Part of that was because shadowfriends had grabbed them and taken them captive, but most of it was just because they were too busy and too self-absorbed to care about poor Pete. Jodi pulled the remote out from under his elbow and turned the volume down. She pulled his blanket up over his shoulders, and Pete smiled in his sleep.
Jodi stepped into the adjoining suites to check on the orphans, and found two nannies in each room. They smiled and quietly assured her that the children were still sleeping. Jodi thanked them and quietly returned to her own suite. She checked the fridge in the kitchen and found it fully stocked, so she decided to cook some breakfast. She decided to make pancakes and sausage, because she knew that was Pete’s favorite. Gabriel liked it too, but Gabriel would eat just about anything you put in front of him. That boy had an appetite like a wild animal.
Eventually the smell of cooking food woke Pete, and he wandered over to the kitchen. Jodi slapped a plate down on the counter in front of him. He was still wrapped up in his big, cozy blanket. “Sausage, my favorite!” he said.
Jodi smiled. She set another plate next to it. “Before you dig in, why don’t you wake up Gabriel?”
“Sure,” Pete said. He disappeared upstairs. Jodi pulled the last two pancakes off the griddle and shut off the stove. She was in the middle of making a plate for herself when Pete stepped out onto the balcony and frantically said, “He’s not here!”
Jodi stepped out of the kitchen so she could see him up on the balcony. “What?”
“Gabriel… he’s not here.”
Jodi rushed upstairs. The covers on Gabriel’s bed were mussed up, but the bed hadn’t been slept in. She rushed out into the hallway to check the bathroom.
“He’s not there either,” Pete called after her. “I already checked.”
They stood there for a moment, staring at each other. “Where do you think he is?” Jodi said. “Do you think Starling took him?”
“I don’t know,” Pete said. “What about the shadow-thing? You know, the thing he did the other night in the kitchen?”
Jodi nodded, remembering the odd event. “Could be… or maybe he just got up early?”
“He does that,” Pete said. “Gabriel doesn’t sleep much.”
“Right, the assassin thing… maybe he went for a walk.” She stared into Pete’s eyes for a moment, a sense of unease growing in the pit of her stomach. “Do you think Starling took him?” she said again.
“I don’t know,” Pete said anxiously. “You already said that.”
Jodi tried to get a hold of herself. She sounded as terrified as Pete looked. But what if something had happened to Gabriel? What would they do? What could they do? They were little more than helpless captives inside Black Mountain. She bit her lip. “I bet it was Starling,” she said. “I bet she did something. I don’t trust her. I can’t stand the smell of her.”
Pete narrowed his eyebrows. “You what?”
“Nothing. Come on, let’s go find him. He’s got to be here somewhere.”
Just then, there was a knock at the front door. “Hi, it’s me!” Commander Starling called out. “Are you kids awake?”
Jodi rushed over to the balcony. “We were just about to have breakfast,” she said. “Would you like some?”
“Thanks, but I already ate,” Starling said. “I’ll drink my coffee while I wait for you. Hurry up though, ‘cause we’ve got a big day ahead of us.”
Jodi shot Pete a look. “She doesn’t know,” she whispered.
Pete looked wary. “Then where could he be? Wait… what if he took off?”
“Took off? You think he tried to escape?”
“I don’t know, but if he did, we can’t let her know!”
Jodi closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Just act normal.”
“What? And then what?”
Jodi blinked. “I have no idea.”
They both walked casually down the stairs and into the kitchen. Starling watched them as they settled onto the stools at the counter. Pete stuffed a sausage in his mouth. “It’s great,” he said. Jodi smiled awkwardly.
“Isn’t Gabriel going to eat?” Starling said.
Jodi locked eyes with Pete. “Umm, he’s not up yet,” she said.
“I’ll just go get him up,” Starling said. “We really have a lot to do today.” She started for the stairs, but Jodi jumped up and cut her off.
“Wait!” she cried. “You can’t go up there. He’s… he’s not feeling well. I think he’s sick.”
“Oh, well I better check on him if he is sick. We have a hospital just downstairs-”
“No!” Jodi said. “He’ll be fine! I mean… umm, what I meant to say is, I’m sure he’ll be okay because he just needs to get some more rest.”
Starling glanced at her wristwatch. “All right,” she said. “I’ll give him another twenty minutes, but that’s all. Then we’ve got to get moving, sick or not.”
Jodi settled back onto the stool next to Pete and shoveled a bite of sausage into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, but she didn’t even taste the food. She was too worried to think about anything else.
Chapter 16
Aldron led the way back to the lake, but he didn’t stop there. This time he guided Gabriel through a series of narrow tunnels. They walked for some time, and Gabriel was out of breath by the time they finally emerged from the mountainside. What Gabriel saw as he stepped out onto the rocky slope reminded him of a scene out of The Lord of the Rings. The land that spread out around the base of the mountain was a rough, rolling terrain of short but steep hills and dry, barren earth. A forest of gnarled pines rose in the distance but they looked dead and decaying.
Everything looked dead, except for the sky.
Overhead, Gabriel saw the black expanse of space filled with foreign stars. He didn’t see just one moon, but two. He saw a planet hoverin
g in the distance, and it was close enough that he could make out the shapes of mountains and oceans. The landscape was black and marbled with glowing veins of red lava. Black smoke-like clouds filled the sky, and lightning flashed back and forth. The view was so surreal that Gabriel stopped in his tracks and stared.
“The eternal storm,” Aldron said. “The planet Niburu was once blue and beautiful just like Earth.”
“It’s all so… different,” Gabriel said, his voice filled with awe.
“Thousands of years ago, the universe was one,” Aldron said. He settled down onto a flat rock and gazed up at the sky. “Once, there was only one world.”
Gabriel pulled his eyes away from the stars so he could look at the older man. “You mean the Shadow world was once part of our world? Like they were combined?”
Aldron nodded slowly. “They were whole,” he said. “Not combined, but rather complete. You see, nature itself tells us that in order to have balance, we must have opposing energies. Day and night, good and evil…”
“Yin and Yang,” Gabriel said.
“Of course.”
“But I thought that was what the Shadow world was. I thought it was the dark energy, the evil that was the opposite of our world.”
Aldron cocked an eyebrow. “You think the Shadow world has a monopoly on evil?”
Gabriel lowered his eyes. He thought about the terrible things he’d seen on the news; about corruption and war, violence and poverty. “I suppose evil is everywhere ,” he said quietly.
“Indeed. But so is good. Even here, in the Shadow world, there are forces of good.”
Gabriel snorted. “You must be joking. I’ve seen shadowcreatures. I’ve fought them.”
“So you have, but have you ever seen the free creatures of this world? Have you seen the peasants who work in the mines, or the animals who must forage this miserable terrain for food?”
Gabriel was speechless. It had never occurred to him that the Shadow world might be anything but evil. He’d never heard anything like this before. Of course, who would have known? The only humans who’d ever crossed over into the Shadow world never came back, or if they did, they went insane. As far as Gabriel could tell, no one really knew what the Shadow world was like.
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