The Shadow City

by Dan Jolley

  The orderlies were wearing Tasers in belt holsters. Gabe remembered that most of the patients here had violent tendencies, and he felt a pang of unease. “Okay, the doors are open. Let’s go. We don’t know exactly how much time we’re gonna have.”

  Brett said, “Sounds good to me.” He eyed Kaz speculatively. “If Aftershock McShakesalot here can keep himself in check.”

  “I said I was sorry.” Kaz shoved his hands in his pockets and let his shoulders slump.

  Gabe cleared his throat. “Let’s keep moving. Brett, are you ready? Can you get us in without anybody noticing?”

  Brett cracked his knuckles, all cocky grin and white teeth. “Watch and learn, my young apprentice!”

  Gabe returned the grin. Same old Brett.

  They crept through the shrubbery, skirting the confused crowd of anxious inmates and employees as they headed for the big fountain in front of the hospital.

  “Okay,” Brett said, glancing around, “stay close to me.”

  Brett closed his eyes, and a sheet of water flowed up and over the lip of the fountain. The water encircled all five of them and, between one heartbeat and the next, sprang up above their heads, containing them inside a hollow column. Gabe peered through the thin sheet of water at the near-perfect mirror of one of the institute’s windows, and where their group stood he saw . . . nothing.

  Through tricks of light and reflection, Brett’s water column had rendered them invisible.

  “Come on.” Brett gestured toward the hospital’s entrance, his eyes open again. “Keep together as you move, and don’t touch the water.”

  Stepping carefully, they edged toward the door, and the column of water glided along with them, keeping them hidden. Gabe had known what to expect, since Brett had been practicing this trick in the tunnels while Kaz worked on his “minor tremor” ritual, but seeing it in action? Gabe could barely believe it.

  For a short time, Brett had been trapped in Arcadia, too—but Greta Jaeger had helped Gabe and his friends figure out how to rescue him. Brett had told them only bits and pieces about the time he’d spent in the dangerous, shadowy, magickal version of San Francisco. From what little Brett had said, the dark city sounded even worse and more bizarre than Gabe had imagined. His time there had left Brett more introspective, but it also seemed to have focused him. This water illusion was easily as slick as anything Gabe had seen Greta pull off, and she’d had decades more practice. It made Gabe wonder what he might eventually be capable of himself.

  Once they were out of sight of the door, Brett let the water column fall. It left a sizable puddle on the floor, though not even a single drop splashed onto their feet.

  Kaz scampered over to one of the computers at the front desk, looking up Greta’s file. Peering over Kaz’s shoulder, Gabe was glad to see that Brookhaven hadn’t reassigned her room. They could only guess how much the hospital—or anyone else—knew about what had happened on Alcatraz two days ago.

  “Got it,” Kaz said. “Let’s go. Elevators are this way.”

  Sweat glistened on Lily’s forehead as she concentrated on the lock in Greta’s door. Gabe peered over her shoulder. “Are you sure you can do this?”

  She looked up at him with one raised eyebrow. “The next time we need a building burned down, you’re our guy. But this takes finesse.” Turning back to the lock, she added, “Now please. Let me work.”

  The air stirred around them as Lily’s eyes turned silver-white. Listening hard, Gabe thought he could hear a series of tiny clicks from inside the barrel of the lock. Lily was right. This did need finesse. The best he could’ve done was melt the lock out of its bracket. Lily sighed and stood, eyes back to normal, smiling but a little shaky. “Go on in. It’s open.”

  Lily and Brett both have me outclassed in the precision department. But Kaz’s almost-out-of-control quake from earlier gave Gabe a tiny bit of perverse pleasure. At least I’m not the only screw-up in the group.

  Brett led the way in. Each of them had a tiny flashlight—Jackson had all but worn out the battery in his, he’d played with it so much in the tunnels—and they directed the beams to the desk just inside the door.

  Gabe wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but he’d definitely been expecting something. Instead, the desk was bare, and the small bookshelf next to it stood empty. No papers, no books, definitely no journals detailing Greta Jaeger’s research into the nature of Arcadia and the people trapped there.

  Frustrated, Gabe was about to say a very rude word when Kaz sucked in a quick breath. The beam from Kaz’s flashlight had swung over to the bed—and illuminated a human-shaped lump underneath the covers.

  What the . . . ?

  Goose bumps sprang up on Gabe’s arms and ran down his spine. Maybe the hospital did reassign Greta’s room? Had they missed whoever this was in the evacuation?

  He sucked in a breath. Or maybe it isn’t a patient at all . . .

  Gabe raised his right hand, palm up. Energy from the electrical wiring sparked and crackled around him, and he drew it to him, drew it into him. A marble-sized ball of flame manifested in the air above his palm, ready to grow much larger if need be.

  Lily was the first to move. Still silent, she crossed the room, took a deep breath, and grabbed the corner of the sheet. Before Gabe could say anything, she threw the covers back.

  Greta Jaeger lay on her side on the bed, peacefully asleep. Illuminated by the flashlight beams, wisps of fine gray hair fell across her deeply lined face.

  Lily jumped backward as if the older woman were a rattlesnake.

  “It can’t be.” Gabe tried to keep his voice from quavering. “I saw her die! We all saw her die! It can’t be!” But, oh, did he want it to be.

  “You know that to be true as well as I do, Gabriel,” Jackson said, striding forward. As he passed by, Jackson gave Gabe a brief but effective glare and murmured, “We were both right there when it happened, weren’t we? I remember it so very well.”

  Gabe’s heart clenched in a pang of shame.

  Back on Alcatraz, Gabe had tried to throw Jackson into the rift that led back to Arcadia. Greta had managed to stop him from making this terrible mistake, but that was what got her stabbed by an abyssal bat. If not for Gabe, Greta would still be alive, and Jackson knew it. The others had no idea, but Gabe wondered how long it would be before Ghost Boy decided to clue them all in.

  Jackson prodded the sleeping figure in the shoulder with one stiff forefinger. “Old woman. Wake up.”

  Kaz said, “Hey! Show some respect!”

  Jackson gave them all his favorite condescending smile. “I might. If this were a human.” Jackson swirled one hand in the air, and pure, golden light—the visible manifestation of magick—lingered there, forming into a mosaic of glyphs. The glyphs dropped, glimmering, and sank into Greta Jaeger’s body . . . which immediately turned translucent, shimmering with a bluish glow. The effect was ghastly. It looked like Greta’s skin and shape were molded like magickal clay around a vaguely human-looking dummy.

  Kaz and Lily both gasped. Brett just squinted, staring at the shape on the bed as if studying it.

  “Who . . .” Lily swallowed and started again. “What is that?”

  “I felt the magick coming off it as soon as we walked into the room.” Jackson sniffed. “It’s an apographon. The word is Latin, and it means ‘copy’ or ‘replica.’ I surmise Ms. Jaeger constructed it using her mastery of elemental water, though I cannot imagine water alone producing something so intricate.”

  Brett snorted but said nothing.

  Gabe chewed on his lower lip. “Hey, Brett. If Greta hid any water glyphs around, do you think you could find them?”

  Brett cocked his head. “I don’t know. Let me give it a shot.” He moved to the center of the room, closed his eyes, and slowly raised his hands. When he opened his eyes again, it was his turn to gasp.

  “What?” Lily rushed to her brother. “What is it?”

  Brett turned in a circle, mouth hanging open.

&
nbsp; “What?” Lily demanded.

  “There are glyphs all over the walls!”

  Kaz said, “Yeah, but they’re water glyphs, right? None of us can see those.”

  Jackson sighed. The condescension came through loud and clear. “Here,” he drawled. “Allow me to pull the wool from your eyes.” Jackson’s own eyes shimmered and turned a solid, glowing gold.

  The room came to life.

  Column after column of waving, looping script covered the walls, flowing and surging as if in a current. Gabe couldn’t actually understand the water glyphs, but just looking at them felt like dipping his feet into a cool, soothing stream.

  Gabe couldn’t deny some grudging respect for Jackson’s magickal abilities. Not even Greta had known exactly what he could or couldn’t do; Jackson and his ability to wield pure magick was unique. Gabe’s nose wrinkled. Yeah, and uniquely irritating.

  “So, what do all these say, Brett?” he asked. “Can you read them?”

  Brett’s eyebrows pulled together as he stared at the walls. “Yeah, I think so . . . give me a minute here . . .”

  Lily jerked away. “Ew! Brett, did you just spit on me?”

  “Huh?” Brett pulled himself away from the glyphs to look at her. “What? I did not.”

  “Oh yeah? Then why is my arm wet?” Lily held up the arm in question and shined her light on it.

  And froze.

  Gabe whispered, “Oh no.”

  It wasn’t spit that had landed on Lily’s arm. It was a glob of golden slime. The kind that coated the creatures sent by the Eternal Dawn.

  Jackson’s eyes flared gold again, and Kaz started swinging his flashlight wildly around the room as his voice rose to a near shriek. “Where is it where is it where is it?”

  Gabe called up another ball of flame. If there was a hunter or an abyssal bat somewhere in here, it was about to get flash-fried. He froze in place when he saw something behind Lily. Something that looked like . . . a tentacle?

  Something coming down from the ceiling.

  Gabe raised his hand toward the ceiling, expanding the fireball, and its dancing red-gold light illuminated a creature straight out of Gabe’s most terrifying nightmares. With the shape of a manta ray and the tentacles of a giant squid, the creature was also partially camouflaged. Its color and texture mimicked the acoustic tiles that made up the ceiling. But the light from Gabe’s fire stripped the camouflage away, revealing its skinless, gold-slime-covered body.

  2

  “There!” Gabe screamed. “On the ceiling!”

  He was about to bathe the creature in flame when two of the tentacles lashed down, wrapped around Lily and Kaz, and yanked them flailing and screaming off their feet.

  “Careful!” Brett barked in Gabe’s ear. “You’ll burn Kaz and Lily!”

  Near the window, Jackson Wright had conjured a golden disk the size of a hubcap, and whenever a tentacle got too close, he used the disk like a shield to bash it away, his face a mask of mingled fear and hatred.

  “Get me down!” Kaz gurgled. “It’s squishing me!”

  Lily might have been trying to talk, but one ooze-covered tentacle had wrapped around her head, covering her mouth. Her eyes blazed silver, and wind whipped savagely around the room, but it had no effect on the creature and only made Gabe’s eyes sting.

  And the creature itself was growing larger. Its ray-like body made horrible squelching noises as it spread out across the ceiling, and one flap of slimy skin slapped down over the doorway, blocking it even as it darkened to match the grain of the door’s wood.

  Gabe struggled to keep focus. Brett was right—if he lost control, the way he had when he burned down the university building where Uncle Steve taught, he’d char Kaz and Lily to cinders. And maybe Brett and Jackson, too.

  “Brett! Cut Kaz and Lily loose! Then I’ll hit its body!”

  Brett nodded, and the small sink in one corner of the room exploded into porcelain fragments as a stream of water as thick as Gabe’s wrist shot out from the pipe. Brett guided it with deft motions of his hands, and the stream split in half and narrowed at the ends into blades like giant X-Acto knives.

  The blades sliced through the tentacles holding Kaz and Lily—but two more tentacles grabbed them before they even hit the floor.

  How many grabbers does this thing have? Gabe grimaced as he saw new ones emerge from the sheet of slime. As many as it needs! Okay. Concentrate.

  Gabe jabbed his right index finger toward where he thought the creature’s brain would be. A beam of fire no broader than a pencil lanced up and carved easily through the creature’s flesh, but the tissue around the point of impact closed like water around an oar.

  “You’re going to have to do some actual damage, Gabriel,” Jackson shouted. “Why are you holding back?”

  Gabe wanted to scream at Jackson, but he kept his voice to a frustrated growl. “Because I’m trying not to kill Kaz and Lily!”

  From near the ceiling, dangling upside down from a repulsive tentacle, Kaz shouted, “Right! Yes! Good plan!”

  Lily’s mouth was free now. “Gabe! If you don’t cook this thing, it’s going to kill us anyway! Now hit it!”

  Of course she was right. Struggling to still his mind and focus, Gabe dragged in electrical power from throughout the building, and his eyes became flaming, boiling suns. His voice came out like the roar of a blast furnace—“Get ready to hit the floor!”—and he unleashed twin spouts of flame from his hands that tore through the creature’s body, blackening its flesh.

  Kaz and Lily thumped to the floor. The creature, nearly burned in half, made a sound like a hissing scream and yanked all its tentacles back into itself. But it was still blocking the door.

  Kaz stood, patting himself to check for injuries. “That was,” he gasped, “so gross.”

  The creature stayed stuck to the ceiling, looking like a gigantic, badly overcooked fried egg. The stench of its burned body reached Gabe’s nostrils. He wondered if anyone else could tell when he threw up in his mouth a little.

  “Is that it?” Lily asked. “Is it dead?”

  Gabe tried to figure out if it was breathing. Did a thing like this breathe in the first place?

  “So. Are we just going to stand here until the orderlies come back?” Jackson asked.

  “We still need to get what we came here for,” Gabe said. “Brett, take another look at those glyphs. Greta must have written them for some—”

  A sickening, slurping sound cut him off midsentence. He turned to see the smoking chunks of the creature’s flesh snap back together, splattering all of them with golden ichor. Before he could react, at least a dozen new tentacles exploded from its edges.

  Gabe would have been whipped across the room if not for the golden barrier that sprang up between him and the creature. Jackson stepped past him, hands raised to project the shield, golden eyes radiating power.

  Jackson’s barrier kept the tentacles momentarily at bay, but the creature quickly began oozing its way across the ceiling, expanding again as it headed toward them.

  Kaz shouted, “Guys, we really, really, really need a way out of here!”

  “I got the glyphs figured out!” Brett said. “I think! Let me try something!” He turned and focused his attention on the toilet. Immediately the water rose up out of the bowl, spinning and whirling, and became a liquid vortex easily five feet across. Brett shouted, “That’s our exit!”

  Gabe couldn’t tell who looked more horrified, Jackson or Lily.

  “Surely you jest,” Jackson said.

  Lily turned to face her brother. “Are you serious? You want to flush us?”

  “It’s a portal! A water portal! All the glyphs lead right to it! Just trust me!”

  Brett’s solution sounded good enough to Gabe. He had no doubt that the Eternal Dawn had left this God-awful mutant tentacle freak here in Greta’s room as a trap, and he’d guided his friends right into it. “Anywhere has got to be better than here!”

  Apparently overcoming his disg
ust, Jackson took a running leap and dived into the vortex. It didn’t look as if he’d slid down into the toilet; more like he’d just disappeared.

  He wasn’t the only thing that vanished; so did the barrier that had been keeping the creature’s limbs in check. Gabe’s eyes ignited, and the tentacles jerked back as he fanned them with flames.

  “Go, go, go!” Brett’s eyes glimmered the deep blue-green of the ocean. “I’d really like to slam the door on this thing!”

  Lily nodded and jumped in.

  “Kaz, what are you doing?” Gabe asked. Instead of making for the vortex, Kaz was scampering back toward the bed.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Kaz shouted over his shoulder.

  “Burn it hard and jump!” Brett screamed at Gabe.

  Gabe grunted agreement. One last burst of flame made the beast scream and writhe, and while it recoiled, Gabe dived into the vortex.

  To Gabe, it felt like going down a gigantic waterslide, the kind where he’d whip down the tubes so fast it’d make his swim trunks ride all the way up to his shoulders. At the end of a slide like that he’d expect to crash into a huge pool of water. But plummeting through the vortex, Gabe couldn’t tell where or even if it would end. The vibrations all around him threatened to shake his teeth loose.

  Then Gabe burst out of the portal, soaked to the skin, and slammed down butt-first onto a hard floor with an impact that made him feel like his skull might pop off his neck. Hands grabbed his ankles and dragged him out of the way—that was Lily, he saw, blinking water out of his eyes. He felt Kaz crash into him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe saw Kaz skid across the floor and careen into a wall. Then he turned to look at the watery vortex that churned and swirled on the ceiling just in time to see Brett pop out. Instead of crashing down like Gabe and Kaz, Brett landed nimbly on his feet. He grinned down at Gabe, who was still sprawled on the floor. “Nice landing, dude.” Brett stuck out his hand to help Gabe up.