Authors: David Sakmyster
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban
The tendrils converged on the near doors. With perfect timing, they pulled open for Solomon, allowing him to pass—after he stepped over the agent’s body. The doors slammed shut behind him as he stood in the back and looked around as the congregation went about their incessant arguments and bickering, translating all the nonsense into more meaningless observations on a world they all thought they had a chance to control.
Solomon laughed to himself, and then louder as he felt the chamber walls shudder.
He raised his staff, closed his eyes and let his mind drift up.… Up through the domed ceiling, past the buildup of snow and ice the roof had never been meant to sustain, and then out into the cold to become one with the winds, the storm and the elements.
Chapter 10
In the Columbia Medical Center, Mason woke groggily, wincing with a brutal headache. When his vision cleared, he could make out that he was in a recovery room, but that was all. Something wasn’t right. It was dark, but a light kept flashing from outside the open door, scattering shadows inside. He looked at his arms: no IVs, that was a good thing. He felt a bandage on his forehead, and as he sat up his ribs cried out more in stiffness than pain.
All in all, not too bad. Probably just blacked out for a bit, and they were observing him for a concussion.
Gabriel!
How was his son? Had to find out. He swung his legs over the side, and in the next flash of light, looked for the nurse call button and hit it.
He wasn’t going to wait. Quickly he located his shoes, but as he stood up he had to lean back again as a wave of dizziness almost overcame his senses. Maybe they had given him some sedatives or some painkillers? Shaking his head, he took a deep breath and tried again, but first he looked out the window where a sudden flash illuminated the surroundings. He had to blink and look twice, then shuffled to the window, and cupped his hands.
Trying to pierce the gloom, through what he finally realized was a near whiteout, he could barely make out twinkling lights of the neighboring buildings. A sudden burst of light and a rumbling shook the window.
Thundersnow
! A winter thunderstorm, rare but not unlikely especially with these kinds of conditions. They were in a synoptic pattern of strong upward motion within the cold section of an extra-tropical cyclone system. Thermodynamically, it wasn’t different from any other type of thunderstorm, but the top of the cumulonimbus was much lower, and it was usually followed by—
Hail! Major pellets started bombarding the window, sprayed like bullets from a submachine gun. He jolted back, bumped into the bed, then spun around it as another flash lit up the room. The hospital had apparently lost main power and was on generator backup. That would also explain the lack of response to his call, he thought, as the orderlies were likely helping the more desperate patients.
He slipped on his sneakers and made his way out into the hall.
Empty. Monitors beeping somewhere, but it was too surreal, like a scene out of a
Halloween
movie.
“Hello?”
More dim lights flickered and windows shook and cracked, and from somewhere an arctic wind rushed past him. He approached the desk, seeing a clipboard and a list of names and rooms. He turned it, and tried to read if Gabriel’s name was on it.
Another gust of wind, this one intense and full of snow. It tugged the clipboard from his hands and sent it slamming into the far wall. He turned against the blast, squinting as an onslaught of small ice crystals blasted toward him, seeking his eyes and stinging his cheeks.
The stairwell door was wide open.
He went to close it and tugged at the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge against the gale. Preparing to try again, Mason saw something that caused him to step on ahead, through the door and onto the stairs.
—following the large bare footprints made recently in the fresh snow coating the stairs.
Bare footprints, along with a circular indentation beside them.
A patient ascending the stairs. A patient who hadn’t bothered to put on his shoes, but had thought to pick up his staff.
O O O
The rooftop doorway was open and every level he ascended turned more frigid, the wind stiffer and the flakes stronger and sharper until Mason was sure they were drawing blood.
Turn back
, he thought, but it was spoken with a subdued voice, drowned out by the howling wind, and before he knew it he was stumbling out into the blizzard. In the whipping winds, following the footprints was all but impossible—if they still remained in the rising drifts. He couldn’t make out anything more than a few yards ahead. But then something moved: just a blurred shape, backlit against another sudden flash of lightning. A shape of a man, shirtless, both hands raised to the sky, holding a staff between them.
Gabriel turned and in the next prolonged flash of light, his snow-shrouded eyes shone clear as day. “Hello father!” he shouted over the wind. “Out for a little rooftop stroll?”
Mason partially covered his head. He had to get Gabriel back inside. Clearly he was in shock, delirious and a danger to himself, standing out here on the roof’s edge in this storm. “Gabriel—!”
But then he sensed a change in the air pressure, direction and force of the wind. Something so sudden and swift, it was as if someone had grasped the storm and directed all its fury toward a new adversary.
The near white-out lifted so suddenly he started to doubt his sanity, or at least wonder if the medication he was on was causing hallucination. Too surreal, now the view was clear like the purest high-definition TV, and he could see for miles: lights and facades of the high rises nearby, the business center and water tanks and small patches of trees on top of buildings.
Maybe I’m dreaming
, he thought, and this was the moment where the dreamer, knowing he’s dreaming, could enter a state of lucidity and start to control the dream itself.
He’d have to try that some time, but right now, unless he woke up fast, they were all in danger of freezing to death, especially Gabriel, who—
—who, it seemed, had to be a central character in his dream. His knees bent, staff held out front with both muscular arms tensing as if against a superior resistance. The entire localized storm seemed to funnel directly from the center of his staff outward, expelling the matter like a giant snow gun. Expelling it above and down First Avenue—a twisting, nearly horizontal funnel of snow and ice.
Mason teetered on the edge of sanity and delirium, barely in control of his own motor functions. He couldn’t speak or move, only watch with hawk-like focus. And in true avian fashion, his vision swept the panoramic view and caught not only this funnel, but ten others: all snakelike undulating cyclones of wind, ice and winter fury, converging from all directions in a radius around one building.
His vision magnified as if in a sniper’s scope, and he zeroed in on the target: a circular copper dome atop a squat trapezoidal structure beside a very familiar outline.
The United Nations.
Chapter 11
Solomon sensed the weight and strain on the dome above, even as the five-hundred-some delegates and translators felt the walls shake. Water droplets sprinkled like the mist in a spring shower, and to his right he saw the tech team in the control room stand up.
Just two of them, and it looked like they were about to go for the alarms. It wouldn’t be in time, but Solomon took no chances. A wave of his staff and the outer windows turned to frost, encased in thick ice, and as he dropped his arm, the ice compressed and shattered the glass, blasting it inwards and tearing through the men. Jagged shards embedded into their flesh and they went down without even a chance to cry out.
Solomon strode farther into the hall, where the commotion grew in volume. Almost two hundred different languages and accents raised in alarm as faces turned skyward, following a horrible metal-on-metal scraping, torturous cry.
More dust-like debris fell along with water, and then snowflakes—lazy and thick—circled gracefully down in a cone-shaped pattern. And a hush fell over the crowd. It almost seemed magical, a fairy-world mirage or special effect. A few faces looked back to the control room to see if it in fact might be something designed for their entertainment.
That was when the screaming began. The sight of the shredded control techs, all that blood and melting ice.
The screaming started, but didn’t last long. In the next instant, under the weight of ten concentrated cyclones bearing down with heavy ice and snow, all building and piling upon the dome … it vainly struggled against the pressure, then buckled. The seams struggled to hold, then the massive supports bent, cracked, sparked like a series of fireworks, and then shattered.
Everyone directly below the dome disappeared in an instant and an incomprehensible blur of metal, ice and snow. Solomon stepped onto a chair to survey the damage. He couldn’t see the stage through all the winding, snaking whirlwinds ripping in through the gaping hole in the roof. It looked like a great frost giant had torn open the ceiling and shoved both hands inside, seeking warm, tender flesh.
Solomon was here only to guide those seeking fingers.
He moved his arms, twisting and turning the staff, stirring up the air. He started humming an ancient nature song, chanting to the elements, speaking their language and promising sacrifice.
Promising blood.
Dimly, through the ice and the wind and concentrated blizzard whirling around the hall, he saw the giant screen sparking, the glass shattering, pieces falling, and then the great emblem—the world and the olive branches hung so prominently and symbolically—ripped free of the wall as two mini-cyclones attacked it from either side. It split jaggedly down the middle, then the two halves were flung in opposite directions, each crunching into and rolling over dozens of chairs and stray delegates.
People rushed by Solomon, unaware of his presence, clouded in swirling snow. He visualized each of them as heat-sinks, seeing past their expensive suits and loafers, into their chests and their terrified beating hearts.
And he found the two he was looking for.
I see Russia, I see France.…
Almost giddy with power and doing nothing to suppress his laughter, Solomon made two crossing motions with the staff, aiming at one fleeing member, then the other.
A great rush of two-foot long icicles chipped off from the hole in the dome and hurtled down in twin paths.
Each one struck, impaled and moved through the bodies of the Russian and French delegates, puncturing flesh and bone with the force of a fifty-mile-an-hour gale. Their bodies were lifted in the air and repeatedly struck by numerous ice spears, and then dropped, lifeless and flopping onto the aisles.
Solomon lowered his head, sucked in a huge breath, and then … blew it out.
And the winds expelled back up through the ceiling. The snow followed and nine of the giant cyclonic whirlwinds withdrew from sight.
The last one lingered over the wreckage, the shredded and crushed bodies, and the few cowering at the locked doors. And then it swung over the hall, scooped up Solomon gently and whisked him up and out through the roof.
In the hall, the vines withdrew and innocently resumed their stations inside the potted plants.
And the doors opened.
Chapter 12
Mason watched with detached horror. The dome collapsed under the combined assault from twisting cyclones directed at it from ten rooftop locations in the vicinity. He could almost see the other weather-practitioners … the shamans or the sorcerers or whatever these people were, with their staves, some in grey hooded robes, standing steadfast against the elements, controlling the weather as effortlessly as adjusting the settings on a TV.
A sudden rush of pain and horror, absolute terror, primal and intense, all hit him at once. As if experiencing all the anguish, shock and pain from inside the UN General Assembly, Mason broke from his temporary paralysis, and he felt an equally sudden surge of strength, warmth and focus.
He could stop this. He didn’t know how it was happening, how they could do this, but he thought he knew how he could stop it.
Stop Gabriel, and the whole thing might stop. Break the chain.…
He moved, started to rush him, but Gabriel glanced sideways, took a little of his focus away, and the snow deepened around Mason’s feet. The icy weight slowed him down, providing intense resistance for every step. He focused on his legs and willed the heat to swell, and he felt it working. The snow gave way to slush, and his feet moved swifter. Gabriel gave him a look of concern, and his staff-hands faltered.
Mason came closer, almost within arm’s reach of his son. He was winning, and he felt it, a power surging through his blood. Overcome with the intention of ripping the staff from Gabriel’s grasp, he would break it in half and then—
But it was too late. Out of the periphery, Mason saw all the cyclones sucking backward, withdrawing from the wreckage of the UN. So fast, their work was done.
Oh no …
Mason started, but had the thought interrupted by the realization that
something
was coming back in that funnel toward Gabriel.
Something vaguely human-shaped.
The whirling cyclone, spitting out tiny hail and frosted snow, uprighted itself just before Gabriel, pushed him back a few steps almost into Mason, then roared down and exploded into wispy tendrils of cool flakes and just a light wind.
It was gone, and in its place remained its passenger.
Avery Solomon rose from a kneeling position, using a gnarled old oak staff for support.
Not the one he had been holding before
, Mason thought, finding it strange to notice such a thing at a time like this.
Solomon sent a dry glare to Gabriel, one that spoke of extreme disappointment. Then he faced Mason.
Solomon held up his staff toward Mason and spoke one word:
“Forget.”
He brought the staff up in a short, accurate arc, and then swung it hard, down across Mason’s right temple.
Everything went black.