Shimmer: A Novel (30 page)

Unable to hide his disappointment, he shook his head dejectedly. “Sorry, Thalia. Nothing. Not a damned thing.”

Thalia frowned. “I don’t understand. We placed all the required spells on the eye.”

“Maybe you missed one.”

Ambrose scratched his forehead pensively. “These things often require trial and error.”

“No,” Thalia said. “We agonized over this. Every detail. It should work. All we needed was your blood to bind the eye to you. Your blood, flesh and bone. It’s made contact. It should open itself to your mind as soon as it imprints—”

Gideon gasped. His face contorted in pain.

His fingers dug into the furrows and scarred flesh around his left eye socket, his knees buckled, and he screamed in sudden blazing pain. “Something’s wrong! Get it out!”

“No!” Thalia shouted. She fell to her knees beside him to stop him. Her strength was no match for his so, instead of trying to pry his hand away from the eye socket, she pressed against it, forcing him to keep the artificial eye in place. “It must imprint!”

“Christ, it hurts!”
Like an ice pick skewering my skull!
“Oh, God…”

“Just a few moments! That’s all! Please!”

Gideon’s body was vibrating with pain and dripping with cold sweat. His arms and legs were twitching and he couldn’t control his breathing. It was as if his body was trying to rip itself apart to get away from the pain and—

—and then the pain faded, not as quickly as it had begun, but as if he was suffering aftershocks, physiological echoes of agony.

He was on his back, knees drawn up, arms flopping at his sides, staring at the ceiling of Ambrose’s office. But something was different. The room was blurry, smeared across his field of vision.

“What happened?” Logan asked. “We heard—”

“Wait!” Thalia said, hushing him.

Gideon raised his weak right arm to palm his good eye.

He smiled.
That’s more like it,
he thought.

“What?” Thalia said. “You can see now, can’t you?”

He nodded.

Thalia clapped excitedly. “I knew it would work! What was that nonsense about ‘trial and error’, Ambrose?”

“It’s blurry on this side,” Gideon said, “but it’s better than nothing.” Images blurred and swirled and smeared as his brain tried to interpret the sudden sensory overload.
Like peering through a kaleidoscope with a melting lens.

“Congratulations are definitely in order,” Ambrose said agreeably. “This has turned into an extraordinary day despite the earlier tragedy.”

“Your vision should improve,” Thalia informed him. “Uncover your good eye. That will help the enchanted eye adapt.”

“Ah, so it learns from the natural eye?” Ambrose said.

“Exactly,” Thalia said with a self-satisfied grin. “And that’s not all. It may soon have a few tricks of its own.”

“Focus is improving,” Gideon said. “Triple vision is now double vision. Not as much distortion.” When he looked at a face, he saw two copies, separate at first, but then overlapping, as if something inside his head was fiddling with a focus knob and had almost found the right setting.

“Unlike your old artificial eye,” Thalia said with a cautionary tone, “you must never take this one out.”

Logan asked, “Is that sanitary?”

“The enchanted eye is becoming part of him,” Thalia explained. “That’s how Liana and I spelled it. No other choice really. Otherwise it would have been like plopping a crystal ball in his head. Our goal was first to duplicate human vision, then improve upon it. For the former, we needed the eye to integrate with his body and his brain.”

“So that endless
momentary
agony was…?”

“Growing pains,” Thalia said. “I’m sorry, Gideon. We never imagined imprinting would be so traumatic. If we had, I would have warned you. But, in time, I hope you’ll agree the long-term benefit outweighs the, um, brief discomfort.”

Gideon laughed heartily. “What discomfort?”

A moment later, somebody began to pound on the front door.

Chapter 44

Barrett caught Liana’s arm. “Get behind me,” he whispered.

She readily complied and said, “It looks like a dragon.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t breathe fire.”

With a fierce shriek, the flying creature plunged toward them. A rippling silhouette against the molten fissures splitting the sheer cliff before them, it swooped down and then shot toward them with frightening speed. Its leathery wings pounded the air with ferocious force, while its ropy limbs, barbed with fearsome claws twitched eagerly, ready to snatch them off the barren rocky plain.

Liana looked from Barrett and his sword, pale in the illumination cast by her light sphere, to the flying behemoth, and she didn’t like their odds.

Barrett shouted, “Get down!”

Liana dropped to the ground, but looked up as Barrett braced his sword.

The impact was violent and thunderous. From her low vantage point, it appeared as if Barrett tried to cut the creature’s long neck, perhaps hoping to sever the head with its long and twisted, tooth-filled snout, but no matter how fast his reflexes, he couldn’t match the speed of its movements. The dragon—for that’s how she thought of it now—wrapped one clawed foreleg around the sword in an attempt to disarm Barrett. But if Barrett misjudged the creature’s speed, the creature underestimated Barrett’s strength. One moment he was standing over Liana’s prone form, the next he was twenty feet away and bouncing off the hard ground, dragged on his back as he maintained a tenacious grip on the hilt of his otherworldly sword.

Like a tin can dragged behind a wedding limousine,
she thought. And about as effective at slowing down the dragon’s flight.

Barrett grunted with each bruising impact. In moments, he was lost in the deep shadows beyond the glow of the lava and her light sphere.

The dragon pounded its wings in an attempt to rise into the dark sky. Liana saw Barrett’s form beneath the bulk of its body, dangling impotently. Then he twisted his arms, digging the blade into the dragon’s foreleg. A moment later, he slipped from its grip and fell with a frightening thud.

Fearing the worst, Liana rushed toward the point of impact. The light sphere accompanied her, bobbing overhead, just out of reach, its diameter contracting with each passing moment.

She prayed that Barrett was alive. Couldn’t imagine how she would proceed in this world of darkness and predatory evil if she was alone. Her magical skills would be no match for Carnifex. Of that, she had no delusions. She was playing the sidekick role here. Strictly backup, holding the keys to the supernatural doorway back home. At least she hoped she had the keys. If Barrett suffered a serious injury or if—God forbid—he died before their mission was a success, she would need to return to tell the others what had happened. And then return to this godawful place with Gideon.
I never want to come back here again. Please, God, let him be alive!

As her fear flared, the crystal amulet dangling from her neck emitted a warm glow, bringing her to her senses. She tried to control her breathing, aware again that something unseen in this hellish place was attempting to stoke the embers of her fright. She closed her palm around the glowing orb for psychological comfort and resumed her search.

She found him among some rocky outcroppings. No place for a soft landing. For all she knew, no such place existed within the entire hell dimension. Kneeling beside him, she made a quick assessment of his condition.

Remarkably, he’d retained his grip on his sword. Pale greenish fluid coated the length of the blade, probably blood from the dragon’s foreleg. Barrett’s clothes were ripped in a dozen places, and he seemed to be bleeding from a dozen more. His shoulders, elbows, and the backs of his legs had absorbed the brunt of the assault. With his eyes closed, he moaned softly, almost as if he were feverish instead of brutalized.

“Barrett,” Liana called. “Can you move?”

“Think so,” he mumbled.

“Good,” she said, casting a nervous glance toward the fiery cliff. In a moment she spotted the winged, serpentine shadow as it completed the loop to bring it in line for another attack. “Because in about ten seconds we need to be somewhere else.”

She helped him to his feet. “Let’s find a slab to hide behind.”

He frowned. “Is the ground moving again?”

“No.”

“Could have fooled me,” he mumbled. “Go—get to your slab.”

“What about you?”

“Gotta catch this bus.”

“That bus already ran over you once,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. Regroup.”

“I softened him up,” he said. “Go!”

Liana shook her head in disbelief but ran for cover. She couldn’t help it. He refused to budge and she lacked his strength and meta-human agility. He was an immovable object to her highly resistible force.

“I think it softened up your skull,” she yelled angrily as she scrambled across loose gravel on her way to ducking behind an angled slab of rock. She pressed her back against the cold stone, waiting for the inevitable, sickening impact.

A moment of calm.

She couldn’t help it; she peeked.

Again Barrett was standing his ground, but this time he was almost crouching, and she wondered if he was about to topple over. The dragon was a few second away, at most. As good a meta-human fighter as he was, Barrett was no match for the flying creature’s speed and power.
If only there was a way for me to help even the odds.
Her concussive spell would take too long and would have minimal effect on—

Minimal!

A slight advantage could make a big difference.

Her fingers danced upon the sigils on her forearm and they awakened with a ready glow. She twirled her palm out and up, raised her arm abruptly and shouted,
“Levitas—exos!”

The first command caused all the loose dirt and gravel around her to rise from the ground in a hovering, weightless cloud of debris; the second command cast the stones at the long head and twisted snout of the dragon a moment before it reached Barrett.

The earthen barrage momentarily blinded the dragon.

Its forelegs came together where it expected Barrett to be standing, in a viciously clawed clapping motion design to rip human flesh asunder—and missed!

Liana gasped when she realized why Barrett had been crouching. He’d needed to give his legs enough spring for his planned attack. His vertical leap was, naturally, inhuman, his timing impeccable. Up and over, his free hand guiding him around the thick serpentine neck, he landed astride the dragon’s shoulder. Squeezing his thighs together to secure his bareback riding position, he clutched the sword in both hands and drove the point down through the leathery skin of the dragon’s neck.

The creature shrieked again, this time in agony.

It’s crooked snout, as long as Barrett’s arm, looped back on its serpentine neck and attempted to dislodge the human rider with its jaws. Barrett tugged his sword out of the dragon’s flesh and swung at the ferocious mouth, the edge of the blade whacking repeatedly against the snapping teeth as Barrett kept the head at bay.

Beating its wide leathery wings, the creature shot straight up, perhaps hoping the extreme angle would dislodge Barrett from his perch. The tactic proved ineffective as Barrett held tight, and once again the creature’s head swung around for a frontal assault. Its attention distracted, the dragon’s ascent began to corkscrew. Liana imagined that the first deep sword wound was having a debilitating effect, continually sapping its strength as the battle raged on.

In utter frustration, the creature swung its wedge-shaped head down toward Barrett, in a blatant attempt to crush him, like an anvil falling from the sky. Barrett leaned forward and thrust his sword under the jaw, through its mouth cavity and into its brain. Almost immediately, and in eerie silence, the dragon barrel-rolled and plummeted out of the sky.

In the dim light cast by the lava flowing down the cliff face, Liana saw Barrett scrambling to stay on top of the beast. With one hand clutching the hilt of the pinned sword, and the other wrapped around the coil of the creature’s neck, he shifted himself away from its underside.

The entire descent lasted a scant few seconds, but to Liana’s eyes, time seemed to slow down. They were in a different dimension, so that effect wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. Nevertheless, she imagined her senses were merely heightened by the imminent impact and her dire fear that the creature would accomplish in death what it had failed to do while alive: kill Barrett.

At the last instant before impact, Barrett flung himself away from the dragon, at an angle perpendicular to its descent. He struck the harsh ground with a painful grunt, and attempted to roll to absorb the shock, only to slam into a wedge of rock with a harsh cry. The winged beast crashed to the ground with a sound like a muffled explosion. It rolled tail over head once, its lifeless neck flopping inelegantly to the side as the bones in its fore- and hind-legs snapped and popped.

Liana hurried to Barrett’s side.

He was groaning, on all fours, but still in possession of his sword.

“Anything broken?” she asked.

“Bruised beyond recognition,” he said. “But nothing feels broken. Unfortunately…”

“What?” she asked, concerned.

“Didn’t stay up there long enough to qualify for frequent flyer miles.”

She grabbed his free arm and helped him stand.

Panting, Barrett glanced at the lifeless mound of the dragon. “I feel as bad as that thing looks.”

“Don’t suppose that was Carnifex?” Liana asked hopefully.

“Nah,” Barrett said with a smirk. “Hungry minion.”

Liana peered up at the cliff face and thought she saw more silhouetted shapes flying in lazy circles against the dark sky. “Let’s find a place to rest before another one of those things spots us.”

She led Barrett to the rock slab behind which she had sought shelter and they sat side by side. After listening to Barrett’s breathing gradually slow to normal, she shook her head and asked, “What’s the point of this?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are we doing here?”

“Looking for Carnifex, remember?” he said with a raspy chuckle. “Jeez, I’m the one taking repeated blows to the head.”