by Jae Vogel
“Well,” he said to Lilly. “Here we are. All this trouble just to get to the door of a pharmacy.”
“I expect someone to try and stop us right now,” she said. “Let’s just go inside before anything else happens.” Lilly pulled the door open and they stepped into the pharmacy.
Chapter 11
Inside was a typical cheery pharmacy. There was the counter near the door and rows for medicines along the walls and inside the store. In the back, they could see the dispensing area. But no one was inside it. It was still late in the day and most of the customers had gone home.
But not the pharmacist. She was waiting for them by the entrance.
“Glad to see you dealt with that thing,” she said. “Taking the bull into a china shop where it would freeze over all the things it didn’t want to break. Brilliant. I hadn’t even considered the possibility. I guess you must be Dion?”
“Yes,” he told her. “I’ve been trying to see you all day. As you may have noticed, there were people who wanted to stop me along the way. At least they finally gave up.”
“They will never give up,” Athena corrected him. “Till the day you pass into the next world they will hound you, pursue you or try to get you to work for them. You can never rest easy so long as you live. If you remain a mere worker, they may ignore you, as they will ignore her.” She gestured to Lilly. “As they will ignore her. I know you’ve taught her some of the basics. There are few who know them, but they don’t know much so they’re no threat to anyone. Do you still want to become an elemental master? Because your normal life ends today if you do become one.”
“I’ve never had a normal life,” he said. “And yes, I still want what I have worked toward all these years.”
“Fair enough,” the pharmacist said. “The store is empty save me. I sent everyone home when I realized what was taking place outside. I even sent my customers away to other pharmacies for the evening because I told them we would be closing early. So we will be alone inside. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I am sure.”
“Good. I only have to ask twice.” She turned to Lilly. “You will have to leave, child.”
“Why? I’ve come so far… and I don’t get to see him anointed?”
“It’s not for someone to see who isn’t part of it. Perhaps one day you will be part of this, but today is not that day. Now please go outside.”
Lilly stepped out the door and closed it behind her. She heard the lock turn in the door. As if she needed any further humiliation. She sat down at the nearest table in the hall and waited. What could be taking place in there that would take so long? Nothing strange seemed to be happening. She saw no flashes of light behind the glass. Nor did she see any clouds of smoke roll under the door. Wasn’t there supposed to be the chanting of monks and angelic voices coming from the inside? But the pharmacy was still and quiet. The light was out even though the “closed” sign was in the window.
“There is a very good reason he has to be alone in there with her,” a voice said to Lilly from across the table.
It was Edward. Again. This time he wore a pair of jeans with a popular band t-shirt, and a pair of leather high-tip basketball sneakers to complete his ensemble.
“You again,” she mumbled. “Where were you when the bull attacked us? That thing could have killed us both.”
“I thought I made it clear. I’m not allowed to interfere. I can give advice and point you in the right direction, but that is the extent of it. Even Dion’s grandfather was allowed to intervene when Karanzen tried to block you the last time. I can’t do that. You should know the officer will be wary the next time he encounters you. No matter what he has become over the years, Dion’s grandfather scared him badly. He knew things the officer would like forget.”
“You could have warned us about the bull.”
“Too much interference, like I said. And the Earth Element Grandmaster was there to take it down if it did get out of control.” He leaned over and looked at the tableware shop. The doors were still open and the plastic bull was still inside. The manager and employees had a tape measure and were marking lengths. “Maybe they will be able to use it. I’m sure she’ll spend the rest of her life trying to figure out how it walked into the store under its own power.”
Lilly glanced over at the front of the pharmacy, still closed, and noticed the metal platform with the coin box was gone from the front. This had been the same platform the bull was mounted upon when she first saw it.
“What happened to the platform?” she said to him. “It was there when the bull appeared.”
“Doesn’t serve a purpose anymore,” he told her. “The ghouls probably took it away trying to get back in the good graces with the mall management. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the ones who placed it there. They have all kinds of ways to get around the mall you don’t know about. But not to worry, they won’t interfere with you a third time unless they’re ordered to do it. And I don’t think that will happen because their usefulness it limited.”
“Edward!” another voice cried out.
They looked up to see Baron Sam approach with his chef’s uniform over one arm. He wore a casual set of clothes, but had his top hat in the other hand. “It has been a long time! What brings you to this part of the world?”
“I have had the dubious honor to be assigned to this beautiful young lass,” he explained to the baron. “And her equally handsome lad. They have the questionable asset of my help when they need it, even if it is seldom appreciated.”
The baron let loose a laugh, which echoed through the hall. “Trust me, young lady,” he said to her, “he means well and is quite harmless. I see he’s learned to dress better this time.”
“This outfit wasn’t my idea,” Edward said. “It was their mild suggestion I try and fit in better when I make an appearance. I looked in on what a person of my age and experience is supposed to wear and the shock was more than I could stand. This is the best compromise I could come up with.”
“It looks good on you,” he said. “Well, I must be off, much to do tonight, many celebrations to attend. I have business down south and may not be back for a few weeks. No matter, the staff can manage the restaurant well enough in my absence.”
He walked down the hall singing a tune that sounded vaguely French to Lilly.
The light went out in the pharmacy across the hall and the door to it unlocked. Lilly watched as it the glass door opened and Athena West emerged.
Where was Dion? Lilly wanted to know. Had something gone wrong? After what they had endured, she was afraid for him. It was bad enough she wasn’t allowed to see what took place on the inside. They had gone through so much today, and now she had to worry that something had gone wrong with the process by which he would acquire full earth elemental powers.
However, right behind the pharmacist walked Dion. He looked fine, although a little bit tired. She expected it after what they had endured today. He looked at her and smiled, and then Lilly knew everything was fine.
Dion hugged the pharmacist who turned and locked the door behind them. She waved at Lilly and continued down her way to the exit; soon she was gone. Dion walked over to the table where Lilly sat with Edward and seated himself.
“I see we’ve been granted full earth elemental power,” Edward said to him. “I can feel it just from where I sit.”
“Were you scared?” Lilly asked Dion.
“Not in the least. It was more of a final examination than anything else.”
“So what happened?” Lilly asked.
“I’m not allowed to tell, and if I did say anything, Edward here would report me.”
“You don’t have to worry about me, my lad,” Edward laughed. “The secret chiefs have many ways of discovering who keeps quiet and who does not. Fourth power of the sphinx was silence, remember.” Edward noticed the frown on Lilly’s face. “If he expects to obtain the other elemental powers, he must remain quiet about what took place. Should he reveal
anything important, they won’t allow him to have more. It’s always been that way. It’s why I was never a candidate. I tended to write and publish everything.”
“She also told me my parents are held in the center of this mall,” Dion told them. “That has nothing to do with anything initiatory. I don’t think such information revealed will be held against me.”
“Nor should it be,” Edward told them. “Oh well, my time is short, as the ghost said.” He pulled out the round watch on a chain from his pocket. “Just about time for me to go. I have to deduct it from the total time allowed, but I wanted to be here to see him get his first degree, such as it is. I must be off.” And, as before, he vanished.
“I wasn’t surprised to see our Greek Chorus waiting for me,” Dion told Lilly as they looked at the empty chair recently occupied by Edward. “I did a double take over his choice of clothes. It really doesn’t suit him.”
“That outfit didn’t suit anyone,” Lilly made clear.
“So what can you do with the earth elementals now that you have full power over them?” Lilly asked Dion. “Maybe you can make those ghouls apologize to Emily for kidnapping her.”
“I think Emily doesn’t want to be around those ghouls ever again. So long as I am in the vicinity, she won’t have to worry about them. They know by now that I’ll bind them underground if they ever try something like that again. But I doubt it will happen as they were put up to the deed by the mall management.”
“You learned this from the pharmacist?”
“It’s obvious. Can’t you see it? Whoever runs this mall doesn’t want me to obtain full elemental abilities. They are doing what they can to throw up walls and prevent it. As long as I’m here with just a few abilities, I’m not a threat. If I obtain full elemental powers, I could be a credible threat to whatever they are trying to do with this mall. What they really worry about is what happens if I can work the fifth element.”
“Why?”
“Because then they will have no power over me at all. And I will have authority over them, which is something they can’t bear to contemplate. So they will stop at nothing to keep me from my quest. It’s why all the Elemental Grandmasters are in this mall. They enticed them here so they could be kept under watch. The management built this mall as a fortress to keep me from reaching out to them all. They couldn’t just lock them up, so they built a secure facility where they could monitor any entrance to and from them. Now they are really worried because if I can reach one Elemental Grandmaster, I can reach all four. And with all four elemental abilities, maybe I’ll be able to get the fifth and then they’ll be obedient to me.”
“They built this entire mall to stop you from finding them? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper just to find a way to take you out years ago?”
“There is a limit to what they can do. Work any kind of violence on an elemental worker and the rest find out about it. Then they would have every elemental worker turn against them and hunt them down. They wouldn’t last long with every elemental turned against them. So they decided to secure the Elemental Grandmasters here by guile in hopes they could keep them away from me until their plans were realized.”
“What kind of plans do they have?”
“I don’t know. But it can’t be good if they are willing to spend so much money and energy to build this mall to keep me out of it. I think whatever they are doing is coming to a head because why else would they go to these lengths to keep me out of the mall?”
“I think that is a good enough reason to leave,” Lilly said.
As they walked out of the mall, Lilly and Dion noticed the few cars remaining in the parking lot. It was after nine in the evening and everyone who worked there was almost gone. The night was full of stars, as it was a dark night without a moon.
Lilly put her hand in Dion’s as they went outside and stopped to look at the countryside. It was still a rural area with plenty of room for new developments. The interstate was visible in the distance and it was lit with the headlights of cars going back and forth between the major cities it connected. The cool night air had settled in over the ground as well.
“Do you need a ride?” Lilly asked him.
“No… my car is that old van over there. I use it a lot to get around. Sometimes I even sleep in it. My aunt and uncle are pretty busy. They don’t have any other children at home and I think having me move in was pretty disruptive. I’ve tried not to bother them too much.”
“You mean that van?” she said and pointed to a lone car in the distance.
“Yep, that’s it. It was an old delivery van and it holds up very well. I have to do maintenance on it from time to time, but you expect these things after a while. Not hard to do if you can find a place on the side of the road to pull over and don’t leave a mess. I keep all the tools I need in the back.”
As they walked closer, Lilly suddenly noticed heads popping out around the other side of the van. Someone was staring at them from behind it. This didn’t look good, as the pharmacist had warned Dion in front of her that all manner of forces would be against Dion after he’d attained elemental mastery. Could this be some elemental trying to strike back already?
They heard a conflagration of voices behind the van and a tire began to roll away from it. Dion stopped and his eyes narrowed. “Dammit,” he said, “I just had a new tire put on that van. That’s the one I paid for last week!”
A very human figure ran after the tire and caught it. As soon as he did, a white sedan car shot out from behind the van racing at him. The car stopped and the thief threw the tire in the backseat. He jumped into the back of the car, slammed the door, and it sped away.
This last adversary was very human indeed. The tire thieves were in the process of finishing their job when Dion and Lilly made their appearance.
“That tire cost me all the money I had,” he said. “I had to use my emergency money to get the onyx necklace. I don’t even have the cash to buy gas for tomorrow.”
Lilly could see Dion fight to control his anger, but it was boiling up inside him. It was one thing for elementals to have a run at him; they resented his ability and looked upon Dion as competition. But for fellow humans to steal something so trivial, yet so important to him, was beyond understanding. They didn’t care about his situation one bit. She watched his face go rock hard as the car sped away toward the exit.
It never made it out of the parking lot.
As the car shot out toward the ramp to the highway, the ground in front of it rose up and blocked it. The car slammed on its brakes and spun out of control, barely missing the combination of asphalt and earth, which began to rumble up around it. The car stopped and they could hear yelling on the inside of it. The thieves gunned the engine and aimed for the grass berm next to the exit lane. However, as they approached it, the ground next to the wall, which had risen out of the ground, collapsed, leaving a vast pit before them.
Once again, the car spun off in another direction and stopped. This time the driver started to inch the car forward and the ground opened up directly in front of it. Fire erupted from the pit below it and the car began to move backwards.
Everywhere the car tried to go, the earth rose up or dropped in front of it until it had no choice but it move back in the direction of the van. The white sedan slowly rumbled back toward it. When the sedan reached the old van, the car came to a full stop.
Lilly looked up at Dion and saw the rage in his eyes. He fought the desire inside him. He had to keep from destroying the van and everyone inside it. This was the wrath of an operational earth element master. Dion stood perfectly still and focused on the sedan.
The back door of the sedan opened and the thief emerged. In his hands was the tire and he shook with fear. Lilly was worried the thieves were armed, but Dion’s power trumped any weapon they could possibly carry in that car.
“Put it back the way it was!” He ordered the thief.
The tire thief, knees knocking together, stepped toward the van. He appeared to h
ave second thoughts until the fire pit surrounding the car spread closer. Then he continued on behind the van. The sound of him replacing the tire could be heard from their side of it. After fifteen tense minutes, the thief emerged with the tire jack in one hand. He stood in front of Dion with the jack as if seeking instruction.
“Place it down on the ground and get back in the car!” Dion ordered the thief.
As instructed, the man placed it on the ground and slowly climbed into the car, shutting the door behind him. The car continued to idle in place.
The earthen mound in front of the exit retracted and became level with the ground. The fire inside the pits extinguished and the ground rose back up to become smooth once again. It was almost impossible in the dark to tell anything had taken place. Then ground became quiet and the rumbling, which had accompanied the movement of the earth, was gone.
The white sedan moved at a snail’s pace across the parking lot and began to pick up speed as it left the exit lane. By the time it was on the entrance ramp to the interstate, Dion estimated the car’s speed had hit in excess of ninety miles an hour. It vanished into the night, a white streak down the blacktop.
“I hope they have a good story ready if they encounter the Highway Patrol,” Dion said as he turned back to Lilly. “Are you parked on the other side of the mall? Come with me, I can give you a ride over there now that my van has all four tires.”
Lilly walked to the van with him.
Dion reached down and picked up the jack, which he tossed in the back of the van as he opened the door. The driver’s door was unlocked, as the thieves had used a coat hanger (left inside) to pull open the lock and ruffle through the inside. They didn’t find much beside the jack, but the tire was their intent anyway. He unlocked the passenger door for Lilly and helped her inside.
She didn’t know what to say. The day had begun with her watching him do small tricks with a pool of water and ended with Dion causing the earth to move around a speeding car. If ever she needed physical proof of his abilities, this was it. She quietly sat down in her seat and waited for him to start the van.
