by Gabi Moore
“Go ask around. I guess this makes me your half-uncle. I don’t care. Jupiter’s wife found out and tried to have you killed. She can control water elementals too because she is an Olympian. It almost worked, but Jupiter thought she might try to hurt you someday, so he paid one of the men to follow you. He acted as protection until you were big enough to take care of yourself. Even wonder why that truck just happened to be there at the right time? It’s because the man driving it worked for your real father who didn’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Get out of here, uncle!” Dion thundered at him. “You can forget about my allowing you to keep the mall after I rescue my parents and the grandmaster. I will see you are stripped of everything you have!”
“All you have to do is ask around,” Seth Bach laughed as he vanished.
Dion stood in place and swore at the empty space where his uncle had stood. This could be a trick to make him stay away from the tower. But if his uncle was lying, why had he done it in such a way that would allow Dion to check up on what he said? It would be very easy to look into it. His uncle had to know this and had to know that Dion would check up on him. Which meant he had to know that he was right.
If it was true, why had none of his parents told him what happened? Why did they let him go through life and assume he was his father’s son? Were they eventually planning to tell him the truth? He could understand if they hadn’t wanted to talk about such shame on the family. However, he was eighteen. Couldn’t they could have broken the truth to him years ago and prepared him for this? Why did they force him to hear it from his uncle, the man who had imprisoned his parents and forced him to come here in the first place? Dion stood in place and felt the anger inside him.
“Dion!” Sean yelled. “Lilly’s hurt!”
Dion turned around and saw Emily and Sean holding Lilly between the two of them. She was bleeding from a gash to the head and blood was all over her clothes. Horrified, Dion ran to her and tried to stop the blood flow. He could see it wasn’t as bad as he thought, but she still would need stitches to get the wound closed.
“What happened?” he asked them.
“I don’t know,” Emily said. “When you got rid of that thing, we couldn’t find her. Sean and I looked everywhere and found her lying on the bank.”
Lilly’s eyes opened up and she looked at Sean. “Is everyone alright?” she asked him. “The last thing I remember was that monster sending its arms everywhere. It hit me and I went flying. Guess I hit my head on something. Ow, everything hurts.” She looked down at her clothes in the firelight. “Oh, my parents will not be happy.” She blinked again. Dion realized they needed to get her to the hospital because something was wrong with her head.
“We’ll take my van,” Dion said and placed one of her arms around his shoulder. He turned to the partygoers. “You’ll have to break things up. Lilly needs to get to the hospital. The police may come around here and snoop around because I’ll have to tell them she slipped and fell. I suggest you tell your girls good night and get home as soon as you can.”
“Sure thing,” Ken said. “Call my house and let me know how everything went.” He turned back to the assembled Naiad sisters and their boys. As Dion walked away, he could see they were sad to hear the news, but understood the party would have to end.
Dion had Lilly in his van and out on the road ten minutes later. Right then, all he could think about was the hospital and making sure he got Lilly there without any problems. Emily sat in the back with her and kept a towel on her head. She constantly talked to her to keep Lilly awake. Dion tried hard not to roar past any of the cars on the highway, but he was concerned about getting her to the hospital. The nearest one was five miles away.
He planned to call her parents as soon as she’d been admitted. He hoped they wouldn’t be too mad at him, but wouldn’t blame them if they were. What a way to announce an engagement: in a hospital bed. This was a fine thing to happen on the day before he needed to go into the clock tower in the middle of the mall and rescue his parents and the grandmaster. His uncle hadn’t planned this to happen, but he’d created the events by unleashing the monster from the abyss. Dion’s blood boiled when the thought about what happened.
They had all rehearsed their story before leaving. Dion and friends had left the mall later and noticed some people they knew by the creek. They went down to see who it was and Lilly slipped on the mud. When she fell, Lilly had struck a rock and they left immediately to get her to the hospital. Thank God, none of them had anything alcoholic to drink at the bonfire because it would make the cops suspicious if they did. Dion assumed the cops would get involved. They always did in these kinds of cases. He hoped they would merely announce the creek as off limits and leave it at that. If they decided to question each of them separately, the story might fall apart. He wasn’t even sure how much Lilly remembered what she was supposed to say. She was still somewhat delirious when they talked it over.
“How’s she doing back there?” Dion called to Emily.
“I’m fine,” Lilly said to him. “My head hurts, but do you really have to go to the hospital?”
“Your parents will take you there even if I drop you off at your house. At least this way, they’ll realize I’m responsible. At least I hope they do.”
Dion gave the van some gas and it lunged forward. He glanced back and saw the bleeding hadn’t stopped. He couldn’t tell how much blood she’d lost, but it didn’t seem to be that much. He swore and wished his elemental powers extended to healing. For all the forces he controlled, there was nothing he could do to cure a sick person. The powers of elemental manipulation didn’t include an ability to stop injuries or disease. It was a sick joke that he was the master of four elements, but still had to take his injured girlfriend in a van himself when she’d been hurt.
Soon he could see the lights of the hospital off the highway. Dion made the exit slowly as he didn’t want to topple the van on his way to the hospital. Vans were notoriously top heavy and could turn over with ease if the driver didn’t know how to handle them right. Snow and ice was a terror when it came to vans.
The van spun into the parking lot for the emergency room. Dion could see the lights of a few other cars in the emergency room parking lot. He pulled his van into the nearest parking lane to the glass doors of the emergency room clinic. He killed the engine, opened the driver’s door and ran around to slide open the door to the rear passenger side so Emily could help Lilly climb out of the van.
Two attendants at the hospital ran out with a wheelchair the moment they saw Lilly bleeding. Dion let them take over her care and they wheeled her into the clinic as the rest of them followed along. The attendants fired off scores of questions about Lilly as they took her into the hospital.
The doors flew open as Dion left Lilly with the doctors on duty. He went right to the pay phone situated next to the entrance to the emergency room and made a quick call to her parents.
“Hello,” her father announced when he picked up the phone. “Who is this?”
“It’s Dion sir, he said. “I need to tell you something. I will get straight to the point. Your daughter in the county hospital. She fell and hurt herself, but I think she’s going to be all right.”
Her father swore on the other side of the line and wanted a detailed report on what happened. Dion told him the rehearsed story and hoped her father would accept it. He seemed to believe him, but it was hard to tell over the phone. Her father told him he was leaving right away and to stay there until he arrived. Dion assured him he had no intention of leaving until he was certain Lilly would be safe. He heard her father slam down the receiver and worried he would drive too fast on the way over.
Finally, he called his aunt and uncle. His uncle answered the phone and he gave him the rehearsed story of what happened. He uncle was silent for a few seconds after he finished.
“That’s not what really happened, is it?” his Uncle Rich asked. “This is what everyone is supposed to think happened,
but you can tell me the truth. After all, I’m family.”
“You want to know the truth?” Dion asked him. “You really want to know the truth?”
“Of course.”
“Lilly was attacked by a primordial monster your brother Seth summoned from the abyss to stop me from rescuing my parents and the Aether Element Grandmaster. She was knocked to the ground before I had a chance to send it back to where it came with hot dog buns rubbed in salt. Tomorrow I have to go into the tower and get the final power I don’t have, which your brother does possess.”
“So you did get the fire elemental power today?”
“Yes, but only after using all the other elementals to keep from getting immolated by some fire elemental salamanders who didn’t like me. It’s all good, they work for me now. But the best part is what my Uncle Seth told me tonight. He claims my real father is Jupiter Olympus and that is why the crazy lady tried to get my nursemaids to kill me.”
His uncle on the other end of the line was silent, which told him what he needed to know about his lineage.
“Other than that, I’ve had an excellent day. I’ll be home after I make sure Lilly is all right. Oh yes, one more thing. If I survive tomorrow, Lilly and I will be married. I asked her today and she accepted.” Dion hung up the phone.
Chapter 17
Just as soon as Dion hung up the phone, Emily was on the pay phone. He could hear her talk to her father about what happened earlier in the evening. As planned, she used the rehearsed story.
“Guess I get to use the phone last,” Sean said to him as Dion came around the corner.
“How is Lilly?” Dion asked him. “I just got off the phone with her dad. He’s on the way over here.”
“Doctor says she’s going to be fine,” Sean told him. “They’re stitching her head up right now. Guess they’ll have to shave part of her head to sew her up. But her hair will grow back.”
Dion went directly to the nurse on duty and asked her when she would be out of the clinic.
“Shouldn’t be too long,” she told him. “My guess is that they’ll keep her in for a few days in case she had a concussion. Are you family?”
“Kind of. I’m her fiancé.”
“You’ll need to talk to her doctor. Are any other family members here?”
“Her father is on the way.”
The nurse told him to sit down and wait. Dion when into the waiting room and watched the TV screen for a while. There was some network show on about a pair of crime solving old women who were trying to stop a coven of witches. Or something like that. He really couldn’t concentrate on what was on the television with everything else around him. How would Lilly’s father take the news of both the injury and the engagement? He couldn’t imagine.
Dion looked up to see Emily walking into the room. “I just got off the phone with my dad. He’s concerned, but understands I might be late tonight. Sean is on the phone with his mother right now.”
“Did you tell your father about you and Sean becoming engaged?” he asked her.
Emily frowned and looked the other way. “No. Sean and I decided to do it later. Sean will have enough to deal with when he gets home tonight. He doesn’t need his mother badgering him about me too. She drilled him constantly about what happened and be on the phone to every other woman in her church. I went over the story several times with him. So long as he sticks to it, everything will be fine.” She sat down next to Dion.
“How about Lilly?”
“Getting the stitches put in as we speak and her father is on the way over here.”
“No, are you going to tell her parents about the engagement?”
“I don’t think so. I hope I’ll see her first before they arrive. I still have to enter the clock tower tomorrow. I don’t want to add any problems to her. I think we should keep the announcement quiet until after tomorrow.”
“I can see why you would feel that way,” she told him. “Do you really have to go into that tower tomorrow?”
“Yes. I have to bring this thing to a conclusion. Plus, I think my uncle is planning something. I don’t know what, but he wants me out of the way for the next week. If I don’t get in there tomorrow, anything might happen.”
Dion was quiet. He blamed himself for Lilly’s injury. If he hadn’t let her come with him today, she wouldn’t be in the hospital right now. Lilly had stood next to him all the way and been there for him these past few days. It was only a few days ago he’d encountered her as a tiny young lady standing in the lot with her shoes in her hand. Why had he allowed her to see some of the small things he could accomplish with his abilities? She would have been better off somewhere else. Lilly would make a lawyer or international diplomat a fine wife. She might have a career herself these days and end up a politician. He could imagine her on TV, with the cameras pointing down since she wasn’t very tall.
He felt she’d given up so much for him and nearly been killed several times. How many girls would have stood with him patiently as he went up against these elementals time after time? Not too many. Most of the girls at the high school didn’t interest him. All they seemed to care about as whatever rock star was popular that month. Lilly she was different.
After fifteen minutes had elapsed, Sean came into the waiting room and sat down.
“Any word about Lilly?” he asked his friends.
“Dion told us she’s getting stitches put in,” Emily told him. “Should be out soon.”
“They may want to keep her overnight,” Dion added. “Concussion and all that.” Sean nodded and sat down next to them.
“How did it go with your mother on the phone?” Emily asked him.
“About as best as you could expect. She kept asking me over and over whom I was with and was I okay. I told her each time that it was and what we agreed to say happened. I expect the preacher will be waiting on the front porch when Dion lets me off at the house tonight.”
“You want to stay over at our house tonight?” Emily asked him as she slipped her hand in his. “I’m sure my dad could let you sleep on the couch.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I have enough to contend with when I get home. If I was at someone else’s house tonight, I’d have to put up with worse.”
“And you didn’t say a word about our engagement?” she asked him.
“No, too much to handle at once. You?”
“Didn’t say a thing to my dad either, when are we going to break the news?”
“Let’s see what happens after tonight. We can always go over and talk my parents and your dad when we get the chance. No reason to rush on it.”
“Did you say you were her fiancé?” the desk nurse suddenly came into the waiting room and asked Dion. All of them stood up right away.
“Yes I did,” Dion said. “What’s happening?”
“She’s out of surgery and the doctors wanted to her to see someone who was family. Do you want to go in and see her?”
“Yes. Can all of us go inside and see her?”
The nurse looked them over. “I don’t see how it will be a problem,” she said to them. “Why don’t all of you come with me?”
They followed her as she went behind the admissions desk and into the surgery area. They walked through a place that reeked of alcohol and disinfectants as the sound level dropped perceptibly. The nurse led them to a recovery room, which had a chart attached to the door that was open. She ushered them through.
Lilly was in a bed wearing a hospital gown. She lay back and gently turned to them as they walked into the room. There were an assortment of medicines on the bed next to her and her clothes were piled up in one corner. Dion could see the white bandage wrapped around her head as she lay there. The smell of disinfectant was intense in this room.
“Are you okay, Lilly?” Dion asked her as he walked into the room and took her hand. She looked up at him and smiled.
“I’m just fine now that you are here.” She sounded weak, but Dion realized it could be the medicine that she
had taken.
“The doctor said you might be here overnight,” he told her. “They’re worried about head injuries and want to keep you under observation.”
“Will that stop you from going into the clock tower tomorrow?”
Dion was embarrassed. Here Lilly was inside the hospital with her head stitched up and all she wanted to know was would it effect what he had to do the next day. Dion squeezed her hand.
“No, I still have to finish what I started out to do this week. Things will be much better when it’s done. When can tell your parents about our plans when I come back. You should be out of here by then.”
“You want to wait to tell them until later?”
“Yes. Sean and Emily are holding off, I think it’s a good idea for us to wait as well. You still want to have a double wedding, don’t you?”
Dion could see a single tear form at the corner of Lilly’s eye and drop down to the pillow. He felt even worse at that minute, but he knew he had to finish what he’d started tomorrow if for his family. His parents had to be freed, along with the grandmaster. Only then could he return for her.
“I’ll be back for your, don’t worry,” Dion told Lilly.
There were voices down the hall and the three of them turned to see the desk nurse walk into the room with Lilly’s parents. This was the first time Dion had seen them up close and he could see the physical resemblance Lilly had to her father. He wasn’t a whole lot taller than Lilly. Her father marched up to him and starred directly at Dion in the face.
“What happened to my daughter?” he demanded. “She’s been with you every day this week and now I have to come here to the hospital. What happened?”
“She fell. Just as I told you over the phone. I took her directly to the hospital when I saw how badly off her head was. You can ask her the same thing.”
Her father turned to Lilly. “It’s true,” she told them. “I fell and he brought me right to the hospital. They waited until the doctor finished stitching me up before coming to see me.” She reached out and held Dion’s hand.
