by Gabi Moore
“This is Matt,” an all-too-familiar voice said on the other end. “Guess what? Dion and his intrepid crew are already inside the mall. Were you aware of this?”
“How could they have gotten into the mall?” he exclaimed on his end. “I’ve had men all morning checking the lot. They all have his picture. I don’t believe it!”
“It’s not a matter of what you believe. Dion is in the mall and headed to the final place he needs to go. I’ve already relieved your crack troops, but don’t worry; we have a team of replacements on their way. They should be arriving in a few minutes, but until then you better pray there’s no trouble it he mall because you’re now all the security we have. Don’t worry about your job, it’s still secure, for now. The new men will report to you as soon as they arrive. We can’t take any more chances. Sorry, but your crack team didn’t work out so well.”
“Who are these guys?” Karanzen demanded. “Are they trained to deal with mall security? Because if they aren’t you will be in worse trouble than you were with my guys. At least my guys knew the mall lay-out.”
“Don’t you worry about them. You’ll quickly see why they’re important. Just allow them to do what they’re supposed to do. They’ll take care of this damn kid and his friends.”
“You better be right. I don’t need any questions about my own status.”
“Oh, shut-up and do your job for a change.” The call ended.
Karanzen placed the receiver back on the phone and tried to concentrate. But all he could see was the Chosin Reservoir again and an endless wall of Chinese soldiers. He ran as hard as he could and heard his men yell in the distance. There was a sound of random rifle fire and all was quiet. He concentrated hard and the scene vanished and he was still back in his office.
The vestibule, which would take them into the mall, loomed before Dion and his friends. It was the final chamber they needed to enter before the door to the mall. It didn’t appear to be much on the inside. In fact, it was little more than a broom closet for the maintenance crew. But they had no clue as to what waited for them on the outside. Dion stood there in his jean jacket, in an attempt to figure out what to do next. The map had failed to show him the exact location of the Fire Grandmaster’s store. There were close to a hundred shops in this part of the mall. For all he understood, there could be a hundred security guards outside the door, each ready to beat them all to a pulp to keep him from finishing his quest. Or there might be nothing at all.
“So are we ready to go out there?” Sean asked Dion. He too had no clue as to what lay behind the door. All he was told was that the final part of the mall was outside.
Sean still had difficulty realizing this mall was like no other in the world. Yes, it was a big shopping mall with multiple anchor stores, but the mall was built over the abyss, which linked this reality with the beyond. Seth Bach, he was told, had built it to channel the tremendous energy he could harvest from the abyss. Energy that could make him more powerful than any man on the planet. Or any man in history for that matter. He’d kidnapped Dion’s parents and held them inside the tower to keep his nephew away, but his plans merely drew Dion closer. And with his multiple elemental abilities, Dion was a foe unlike any other than his uncle had encountered. Or ever would encounter.
“Almost,” Dion told him. “I have to check one final thing. Just give me a minute.”
He walked over to the wall and searched for something attached to the ceiling. Dion reached up and pulled down a small box, which was attached to the upper wall and opened it. He pulled a wire loose and set it on the ground.
“Fire sensor,” he told his friends. “It will trigger an alarm if it detects any unusual amount of heat in the room. I need to light a match to get some information and I don’t need this thing going off. Somebody remind me to reset the alarm before we leave.”
“I will,” Lilly said.
“Thanks,” Dion said as he fished around in his pockets. “I hope I remembered to bring these things because if I didn’t, we may have to go back. Ah, there they are!”
Dion held up a pack of matches. They were a standard pack which could be found anywhere at any store or bar in town. “I need these to get some information.”
Dion took out one match and struck it on the strike board. The matchhead instantly ignited with the blue and yellow flame casting shadows across the dim light of the room. The flame climbed up the thin matchstick and began to crawl to Dion’s fingers.
“That’s enough!” Dion snapped at it and the fire elemental jumped off the matchstick and landed on the floor.
“I need information,” Dion said to the flame on the floor. It stood there and burned without any sign of fuel. The flame soon grew to a foot in height.
Next, the flame shaped itself into the form of a human. Since it still burned, the shape changed while they looked at it. However, it merged into the overall outline of a humanoid shape, complete with eyes and mouth. The fire on the top of it formed into hair.
“What do you need, boss?” the fire said to him. “I’m your man, just tell me what you need and I’ll run it past you.”
“How many guards outside the door?” he inquired of the flame.
“Just let me check,” the flame told him and shot to the door. It shrank in size and slipped under the door before returning to them.
“It’s groovy,” the flame announced. “Dig it man, no cops, no guards, just a hall full of squares flipping their lids.”
“Thank you,” Dion spoke to it. “And by the way, where did you learn to talk like that?”
“I was at a boutique downtown near the college. Plenty of cool cats down there.”
“One final thing I need of you,” Dion told the flame.
“Fire away, heh, heh.”
“Who is the Fire Element Grandmaster? I need to see that person.”
“Michael Hades. He should be in the map listing.”
“Thanks,” Dion said and waved his hand over the flame creature. The flame shrank in size until it disappeared. “Time to send you back.”
“I didn’t think you had fire ability,” Sean said to him.
“I don’t have all my abilities,” Dion explained. “It’s why I have to see the elemental grandmaster to get the final power. I can still work with lesser fire elementals provided they want to help me. As you saw, that little fire spirit wanted to be useful. Too bad I couldn’t keep him around longer. You can’t stick an elemental in your pocket.”
“You asked me to remind you about the fire sensor,” Lilly told Dion.
“Oh yes.” Dion replaced a wire on the one he’d taken from the ceiling. “It works fine now.” Then he brought out the map once again. He found another table in the vestibule where it could be spread out and examined.
“Isn’t there any kind of directory for these things?” Sean asked Dion as the four of them poured over the map.
“A few basic bits of information,” Dion said. “Not enough to find the right location. I should’ve been specific when I asked the fire elemental what I needed to know.”
“Can’t you bring it back?” Emily asked him. “I mean, is there any rule which says a fire elemental can only be used once?”
Dion stopped perusing the map and turned to her. A strange look came over his face. “As a matter of fact, there isn’t. It’s not a good idea if you can’t bind them because fire elementals tend to burn things up. The smaller ones are the most playful and don’t understand how dangerous they can be to humans. But no, I suppose I could bring back the one I just released.”
Dion reached back in his pocket and took out another match and struck it after concentrating for a few minutes. The flame, once again, grew bright on the stick and fell to the floor where it grew in size.
“You need something else, daddy-o?” the fire elemental asked him. “Just let me know, but make it quick because I want to make the scene with a water pipe.”
“You didn’t tell me which store I could find the elemental master at. I need to kn
ow.”
“You didn’t ask, pops. I’ll show you right now.” The flame leaped on the map and bounced over to a schematic of a restaurant. As the flame cast light on the map, Dion leaned over and read where it sat.
“Texas Style Chili,” Dion read off the map. “It would figure. You may leave now.”
“I’m booking on out of here,” the flame announced and vanished.
“A chili parlor,” Sean said. “It makes sense. He’s been putting fire in people’s guts for a long time.”
“My dad used to go to his place downtown before he moved it into the mall,” Emily said to her friends. “He told me the food was good, but you needed to hit an ice cream parlor when you left.”
“At least we know where it is,” Dion said. “I’ll have to roll this map up and… hey, does anyone smell smoke?” Dion looked down and saw a big black hole in the middle of the map where the fire spirit had rested before it left. The hole expanded as he looked at it and sent up clouds of smoke as it consumed most of the papyrus.
Fearing it would set off the fire sensor, Dion yanked off his jacket and beat out the smoldering map before it could spread any further. The smoke alarm stayed quiet, much to his relief. Soon the smoke was drifting down into the subbasement, but the map was ruined.
Dion held up the map. Just about an entire section, which covered the fire part of the mall, was destroyed. A few stores and passages were readable on the sides, but most of it was gone. What the elementals hadn’t managed to steal, the fire had burnt.
“Ruined,” Dion said as he looked at it. “The map is useless for this last section. Now I remember why it’s not a good idea to use the same fire elemental a second time. They like to have fun at your expense.”
Dion sighed and rolled up what was left of the map. He put his jacket back on and returned the remains of the map to the inside of his jacket.
““It wasn’t a total loss,” Lilly said. “At least we know where you can find the elemental grandmaster. Is there still the clock tower part on the map?”
“The map never covered the clock tower,” he explained to her. “When I go into it, I will have to do it alone. We might know where to go today, but the map was useful if we ran into trouble. It’s not going to be of much use in this section of the mall since it was burnt away.”
“But it doesn’t change a thing,” Dion continued. “We still need to get inside the rest of the mall.” He pushed on the door into the mall and it opened with ease.
Chapter 5
The four of them stepped into the mall just under an escalator. Once they were inside, Dion closed the door and tested it. Locked. The door was set to lock on closing to keep people from venturing inside. Whoever set the lock didn’t anticipate anyone invading from the other side.
Other than the red color, it resembled every other part of the mall. The window looked into the parking lot. Since they were on the opposite side, they couldn’t see the grove of trees where the Naiads waited for their boyfriends. They could see the highway, which made the mall attractive to merchants.
Lilly wondered what would happen to this mall the day another highway or mall was put in place. It too would lose stores and die. It seemed to happen everywhere. A new shopping district would open and an older one would die off. Was it the product of evolution or something else? She couldn’t tell and didn’t much care.
“So, where do we go to find this chili place?” Emily asked Dion. “Do we make a right here at the main concourse?”
“It’s what the map said.”
Michael Hades was supposed to be the master of Southwestern chili. His restaurant in downtown Scipio was a landmark for years. The local choice of eating establishments in Scipio tended to the exotic only in the way of Italian foods, as the Italians had brought with them their love for spices when they first showed up at the turn of the century. For the longest time the other big non-English speaking group in town was German, but the town’s German themed restaurants had never taken off at the time. Most of them were integrated into the local beer halls located just outside the auto plants.
Sean didn’t like spicy food, so he knew little of what made the Hades restaurant so popular. People would order the hottest chili on the menu and expect to become sensory deprived in minutes if the pot was fresh.
Michael Hades had a theory about the preparation of chili and he didn’t think a good pot of chili should be so hot it rendered your taste buds useless. He once told a news reporter a good pot of chili had an excellent flavor hidden under the spices. It should sneak up as the customer was finished with his meal. He should leave the table with flushed skin, but still have a sensation of satiety and fullness. A good bowl of chili was subtle as the snap of a whip, not blunt as the blow from a hammer. It should let you know it was there in a subtle manner, not smash you up the side of the head and stomp on your face. He wouldn’t say where his chili recipe had originated just that it was “south of the border”.
On cold winter nights, he would spin a tale to his patrons, which had him stranded off the coast of the Mayan Peninsula when his merchant freighter hit a sandbar. He would tell people how a beautiful senorita took him home to meet her father, Don Gordo, who showed Senior Hades the secret of cooking the perfect bowl of chili. He was forced to promise marriage to get the recipe, but he snuck out of the hacienda one night. An army of guapos chased him north until he reached the border crossing at the Rio Grande. He was forced to memorize the recipe before he swam the river and only with the vision of a steaming hot bowl of chili in front of him was he able to survive to reach the other side. Captured by the border patrol he was only spared the indignity of a jail cell when he could recite the final scores of every baseball world series from the years 1960 to 1970. They almost arrested him anyway when he expressed his love for the Cincinnati Reds and the border guards were all Dodgers fans. He was released only when he cooked them a pot of the secret chili recipe. To this day, the pot of his chili is kept at boiling temperatures and every night a new batch of vegetables and meat is added with the ten-pound batch of seasoning that Don Gordo gave to him.
At least this was the general outline of the story he told on cold winter nights. No one knew if there was any truth to it at all. Some people pointed out that Hades changed the story a little bit each time. But no one cared as the man was a natural born storyteller and people loved his chili. Who cared if half of the ingredients came in steel cans certified by the USDA.
In truth, Hades learned the power of fire elementals at an early age when his particular clan of elemental workers discovered his unique ability to start bathroom fires and spontaneous combustion on piles of wood. By fifteen, all his peers bowed to his innate ability to control the unpredictable fire spirits and the salamanders, which could be reasoned with, but still enjoyed burning down the occasional house.
He needed a career and a cook was the best choice. Hades used the best and most up to date cook stoves in his kitchen, but he didn’t need them. The man could cook a slab of beef in minutes by directing a fire elemental to do the job. However, the stoves were needed for the kitchen staff and the restaurant inspectors. In the summer, he gave a cookout that employed salamanders and no one ever complained about the barbecue.
Placing a satellite restaurant in the mall was a dream of his and he spent every other day at the new restaurant ensuring the quality was the same that he was known for in Scipio. The business hadn’t quite picked up yet. However, it would soon do it, he felt. It was only a matter of time until the word spread in the little community around the mall about his new place.
Michael Hades was what the locals liked to call a “ruddy man”. His hair was red and his complexion followed. He was tall and wide; sometimes he had difficulty getting out of his car. But he was a generous man and rewarded the people who worked for him in every way possible. Christmas bonuses were always big and he bragged not one cook was ever let go for lack of work. It was considered an honor in the food business to work for the man and one year in hi
s kitchen was worth the twelve you might get anywhere else in town.
Dion only knew a little bit about the restaurant they needed to find. He’d remembered the location from the now burned map. His aunt and uncle stayed home most of the time and didn’t eat out much. It was always a treat when they did. In fact, this would be the first time he’d ever visited this particular restaurant.
They walked down the concourse a bit and decided to wait before approaching the restaurant. So far, there was no sign of Karanzen’s men, but this could all change in a minute. Dion was surprised none of them lurked anywhere in the vicinity. Usually, he could spot one or two in the distance who kept an eye on him and his friends once inside the mall. Even the security cameras couldn’t watch every part of the mall and security needed human eyes to keep a watch on everyone. But today he didn’t see any of them in the mall.
“Do you remember exactly where the chili place was located on the map?” Sean asked Dion. Sean was dressed a little better than normal today with his shirt tucked in his pants. Emily had spoken to him about his appearance.
“Not exactly,” Dion said, “but most of the food places are in the same location. All we have to do is find them and the Hades restaurant will be there.”
“Emily wants to check out this record store,” he announced. “Why don’t we go inside it and meet up with you later? That way if any of us tangle with your uncle there will be at least one party left for the rescue.”
“If he strikes,” Dion told him, “we’ll be hit at the same time. But you might as well go ahead and check it out. I’m going into this game store. Plan on both of us returning here in a half-hour.” Dion checked his watch.
Sean looked at his. “No problem. See you then.” Then he walked away with Emily.
Dion watched him leave and turned to Lilly. “I don’t see how it will be problem to let them have a little time to themselves. Let’s go to the game store.”
“As long as you reach the restaurant on time. I just hope the owner is around today. He has another one downtown. What if he’s there?”
