Final Solstice (29 page)

Chapter 11

Gabriel tried to reach his boss encased in the ice, and Mason couldn’t imagine the emotions going through his son’s thoughts right now, but he also couldn’t imagine much of anything at this point.

He had failed. The world was in the throes of transformation.

Annabelle and the other druids had subdued those who had offered modest resistance, but it hadn’t taken much effort. Their will to fight was gone, and Solomon’s people, the loyal employees of Solstice, now watched the images on the projection below the altar. Some turned their attention skyward, where the winds had at last brought menacing storm clouds. Only these were far from natural, full of lightning sparks and churning flames under their bellies as they raged toward a collision with another front descending from the east.

The building shook again and a monstrously cold wind roared through the trees and up to the rooftop.

The elevator doors opened, and out raced Angelica and Belgar. Both were limping, still in the process of healing, but they were energized and ready for a battle that had passed without them. “So it’s true,” Angelica said over the wind. Her attention went from Solomon, where she took grim satisfaction in his current state, back to Mason, and the staff.

She lowered her head in reverence, mimicking Belgar’s motion, and Mason raised the staff. “Please, it’s not like I did anything for it.”

“You’ve earned it nonetheless,” Belgar said, then eyed the vision of the earth below his feet. “Now, what about this mess?”

“It’s too late,” Gabriel said, his back to them. Still staring at Solomon, he shook his head. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

Mason moved toward him. “It was, Gabriel. It always was his plan; you were just never in on the whole thing. He used you.”

Gabriel’s right hand clenched and he pressed the staff against the altar stone, mumbling some words.

“Gabriel?”

Shelby reached out to him, moving in front of Mason, and for a moment in a clearing before the clouds completely blocked out the sky, there was a low angle where the sun shone clear and bright—perhaps the last time it would be seen for a long, long time. Shelby’s face glowed and her hair seemed to dance in an angelic aura, and all at once, Mason remembered the hospital … Lauren’s dream.

Burning … the sunlight. Burning … all the trees and the vines, everything, burning all the green …

The wind buffeted him and drowned out the crowd’s murmuring. Mason’s eyes widened as he focused on the satellites on the projection below. Focused, and remembered …

“Shelby!”

She spun her head around, Gabriel forgotten for the moment. “What?”

“I have an idea.” He motioned to Angelica and Belgar, then shouted to Annabelle. “Re-form the circle, fast!”

Mason made a motion with his fingers, pointing at Shelby’s wrists, and the bonds broke apart into a dust that blew away at once. She flexed her hands, and suddenly Mason’s old ivory staff jumped into the air and settled in her grasp. Smiling at her, he nodded to his side, an open niche in the circle being created by the others.

She took her spot and now Mason stood tall, at the cornerstone, with more than twenty druids spread out in a circle before him, and more joining ranks behind them. It seemed like they all knew what to do. Several concentric circles, everyone touching the shoulder of the one in front, and the front line holding out their hands toward the altar, and then skyward, mimicking what Mason was doing, aiming his staff up to the swirling clouds, and beyond.

“Not much time,” he spoke so Shelby could hear.

“Gabriel?” He called out to his son, who now just seemed empty like a deflated doll. He sagged to his knees, forehead against his staff, still resting on the altar stone. The altar itself was wet, the block of ice surely melting, but not fast enough for concern.

“Leave him,” Annabelle said, at his right. She stood next to Belgar and opposite Angelica. “Whatever you’re planning, do it fast.”

Shelby pointed her staff’s bottom edge to the image of the earth below, where the blues and greens were being devoured by dark masses of grey-black, a chaotic, crawling mass of clouds filled with sparking lights and flares of crimson.

“How can we stop this?”

“With the weather,” Mason said, closing his eyes. “Think larger, think higher. Focus on the atmosphere, on …”

“The solar wind!” Shelby yelled. “Space weather, geomagnetic storms …”

Mason recalled everything he knew about solar radiation, flares and the constant flow of radiation particles bombarding the earth from the sun, the varying intensities of the geomagnetic forces surrounding the earth and trailing it, leading into the atmosphere and causing coronas and auroras. The very radiation that heats the earth and is trapped by the clouds and greenhouse gases … Solomon had done his part to release massive amounts of methane and CO2 and water vapor, hoping to trap the existing heat and intensify it, causing a runaway greenhouse effect that would cook the planet and boil the oceans and kill off most of the species on the surface.

Tremendous damage had been done, but it wasn’t finished yet and what was to come would be infinitely worse.

Mason clung to two shreds of hope. The first was that the methane pockets were being released slowly, the glaciers thick and the permafrost was still heating. Stopped soon, the worst effects could be mitigated.

And the second—the sacrifice wasn’t complete. Solomon still lived.

To stop the energy flow and the continued weather-cycling, they just had to break the circle up there. Break the satellite’s connection.

Or knock them out altogether.

He focused and projected what was in his mind over the visuals of the earth on the floor. The sun appeared, up close and personal. A seething, churning mass of fiery power, rippling with blazing heat and—as they watched, shooting off a sunspot, a massive solar flare that created a looping burst of plasma. A coronal mass ejection of extreme size and power.

“The sun!” Mason yelled. “An X-twenty class flare was expelled three days ago. Most of its impact wasn’t felt here as it wasn’t directly facing earth, but we caught enough, and are still in the trail of the geo-magnetic storm it produced.”

His eyes swept over the crowd.

“We are going to do to that storm exactly what you’ve all been doing here on earth. Terrestrial or space, it makes no difference. We are the caretakers of the earth, and its weather is more than just what happens under its atmosphere. To fully control it, we have to expand our minds, expand the limits of our jurisdiction.”

He pointed his staff skyward, challenging the writhing, battling clouds. “This is our dominion! We control the earth, the moon, the very sun.”

Both hands now on the staff, he closed his eyes and felt the energy rippling through the old wood, collected from the surging power of every soul on this rooftop, collected from the fears and dreams and thoughts and wishes of everyone so deeply connected to the earth and the air and the elements, in turn fueling their magic.

It coursed through his muscles, his veins and bones. Galloped through the neural pathways in his brain and intensified. And now the entire floor of the rooftop balcony faded away, replaced by the stars and the great ball of the sun, blasting out its plasma storms, a wind that seethed in different wavelength filters, roaring and twisting, swirling and gaining down upon the tiny planet.

The planet with its own magnetic shield that vainly fended off the surging storm, deflecting huge swathes of driving particles and shimmering streams of energy.

Mason concentrated, and felt the entire congregation merging as one, standing fast against both winds now: terrestrial and solar, being in two places, above and below the fray.

He gathered the solar storm’s energy, tweaked its trajectory, felt its power and almost ran fleeing from its sheer godlike strength. He felt like a gnat beneath its foot, but raised up his hands anyway to catch and redirect the behemoth’s weight and force, shifting it ever so slightly.

A minor change that, at such distance to the earth’s atmosphere, was enough.

Ordinarily, with monitoring of the sun’s flares for X-Class eruptions, terrestrial satellites had time to take measures to turn the sensitive equipment away from the onslaught of the impact. But this time, there had been no need, and the satellites lay unprotected.

Seven of them over the western hemisphere, among the hundreds of other satellites not controlled by Solstice.

Collateral damage for sure. But these seven … Mason focused harder and then let his mind relax, and just rode the wave of the solar wind, feeling it roar at over a million miles per hour, surging with all the power and energy of supercharged plasma particles.

He exhaled and watched now as the impact occurred, and again the image on the floor switched to the earth itself, with the blinking satellites in the druidic formation.

Four sparkled, vibrated, then went dark. Three more quickly followed. The lines of energy intersecting the globe fizzled, retracted, then withdrew.

Mason sighed and lowered his staff, as the congregation did the same. Wide-eyed, they watched the floor, then turned their eyes skyward.

The clouds still surged and battled, but all at once, their fury seemed to abate, their ferocity dropping by visible degrees. Like soldiers whose commander had just fallen in battle, they lost the will to fight and gave in to the winds that turned a notch warmer, swirling and blowing in an extreme southward path that began to scatter the thicker masses.

Mason watched as a patch of blue appeared, one that expanded and spread, trying to gently muscle in on the territory ceded by the storm clouds.

And almost immediately, something else formed in the clear sky: an undulating ribbon of light, multi-hued, an extensive and exquisitely beautiful aurora that Mason knew would continue for hours, given the strength of the flare and the storm raging in the ionosphere.

“Did we do it?” Shelby asked hopefully.

Mason looked back to the image of the earth, with its areas of gray starting to dissipate and break up, revealing areas of green and blue beneath. He shuddered to think of the terrestrial damage, the lives lost in the past few hours across the world, and he knew soon they would have to connect to the news services and survey the damage. There would be questions and demands, riots and hopefully—a coming together of the world in new and more cooperative ways. But for now, all he knew was what he told Shelby as he squeezed her hand.

“I think so. The world—all of us—we have another chance.”

She was about to say something more as she squeezed his hand back, but a cry from the altar shattered the moment.

Gabriel stood up. His staff was ablaze, and he slammed it down—right upon the block of ice. Whether in frustration, anger or out of some hope to free Solomon, Mason wasn’t sure. The staff struck and an immense blast of heat and flame tossed Gabriel back into the crowd.

The ice block shattered all at once, exploding outward in a burst of arms and legs.

Another cry arose, inhuman and primordial, full of pain and screaming at the very depths of nature. Solomon slid off the altar, fell on his blackened knees, then somehow got up.

O O O

Nothing was recognizable from his features except that one green eye, dripping out blood-red tears over burnt, hollow cheekbones and scorched teeth. A blistered tongue slithered out and muffled words struggled to form, sounding like occult obscenities.

Solomon reached out his hand. And the staff in Mason’s hand trembled, started to pull away. But Mason held it tighter, wrestling it back, as his feet slid.

And all at once, a swarm of bugs flew up from the cracks in the roof and under the vegetation. Locusts, wasps, flies and beetles of all varieties. Rising up in an undulating cyclone, twisting horizontally, then arching and dropping—over Solomon.

He looked up, and that one eye widened, then flashed back to Mason in surprise.

It was as much a surprise to Mason as well. “Not my doing,” he said over the buzzing and clicking and fluttering of wings. Mason had a sudden flash of a memory—back to Palavar’s farm and the interruption of the sacrifice … and the extreme reaction nature took when denied.…

Solomon made to lunge, to throw himself across the roof onto Mason, but his legs never completed the motion. The plague of insects met him at once, covered him like a complete glove, every last stray bug searching for purchase, some spare bit of cooked flesh to chew and consume.

And they were hungry.

The crowd murmured, some cried out and others looked away. But still others, like Angelica and Belgar and Shelby all watched in grim satisfaction as the insects had their fill. Efficient, fast, unyielding and brutal, they devoured Solomon like tender meat, saving nothing for leftovers, and cleaned the bones. Then they scattered up into the air and back under the tiles, leaving behind a bleached skeleton that tumbled upon itself and collapsed into a heap.

A lone insect remained, hovering, fluttering over the remains. A dragonfly, yellow and red. Engorged. It alighted on Solomon’s skull, cleaned its wings fastidiously, then darted off.

“It wasn’t me,” Mason repeated hollowly, this time to Gabriel who had staggered out of the crowd now, then stood still, frozen himself in shock and awe.

And for a moment, Mason saw it clearly again: the dragonfly, just as he has seen others just like it before, on his first day. That first morning down in the grove greeting him, and then again, here on the summit, when the insect had hovered around Solomon. Only now, Mason was sure it hadn’t appeared for Solomon at all, but for him. It was a sign, repeated now. And Mason knew, knew without any reservations, what his totem was to be.

But that could wait. Now …

The winds continued to blow and swirl, and the clouds continued their gradual retreat. Somewhere a bird was chirping, and somewhere the sun shone through, competing with the beauty of the scintillating aurora.

“He didn’t follow through with his sacrifice,” Gabriel said quietly, head down. “And was punished for it.” He gave a sideways glance to Mason, and the implication was there.