Jumlin's Spawn Read online

  “I didn't say I was going anywhere!” she shot back.

  He grabbed her again, and this time, thrust her against the wall. His mouth captured her mouth. His hands climbed her belly to her breasts and began to knead them.

  “She told you, back off!” Yancey said, grasping Oliver's shoulders to drag him off Elfie. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  The front door flew open. A figure rounded the corner into the room. A voice shattered the kitchen's quiet like brittle old glass, “Get away from them!”

  They turned around toward the voice that had just intruded. A Native American man stood there, brandishing a sub-machine gun, pointed squarely at Oliver. It was Severin, the man from the motorcycle, the man who warned them about the phantom dogs.

  “Back off and stand against that wall,” Severin said, moving to stand between Oliver and the other two.

  “What the hell are you doing, Severin?” Yancey said sharply.

  “You have to trust me for a moment, Yancey,” Severin said. He yanked a pair of handcuffs from his belt and tossed them across to Oliver. “I need you to listen. While you still have enough concern for your friends, put these on.”

  “Why?” Oliver asked, clearly confused.

  “Just do it,” the man with the gun said. “I'll explain after.”

  “But, he has an injury on his arm,” Elfie added quickly.

  Severin reached for Oliver’s uninjured arm and cuffed it, pulling the other end to lock around his own wrist. “I know. When the beings attacked him, your friend was infected by them.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” Yancey asked.

  “I know because I know,” Severin said, “and very shortly, he'll bear no resemblance to the man you know. For your safety and the safety of others, I have to bring Oliver with me.”

  Oliver's face was overshadowed by concern. He seemed to be listening to his own head, to whispers in his own blood. “I think he's right,” he said, his voice tightening in upon it. His gaze appeared to turn inward. His complexion grew even whiter. “I have to leave.”

  “You'll come with me,” Severin said. “I'll see you safely to where you must go.”

  “What do you intend to do to him?” Yancey asked sharply.

  Oliver reached out with his un-cuffed hand and grabbed Yancey's arm. “It'll be okay. I'll be back. Somehow. I'll come back.”

  “Oliver!” Elfie said, her voice breaking, “You can't leave us. Not now.”

  The first signs of tears misted his eyes. “I have to,” Oliver said, removing his glasses and handing them to Elfie. “I promise you, I’ll be back.”

  Severin looked back, with regret in his eyes, and said, “I'll see you soon.”

  Oliver didn't look back…Elfie sensed that he couldn't look back…and the door closed with a dark finality between them and him.

  Chapter Four

  Oliver's mind flickered through random thoughts like a ship’s masthead blown by the wind. He thought he felt the peak path ripple beneath his feet, as if the world was a transmission and his brain kept drifting off the signal. It terrified him while something else tried to calm him. It felt like a kind of lullaby humming through his blood--a mental signal to draw him toward the embrace of the invisible. It also felt like a lie.

  Severin put his weapon on safety and set it aside before he plucked down on a big rock. He nodded Oliver to the boulder across from him. Severin unlatched the handcuff from his own wrist and latched it onto the metal bar embedded deeply in the ground rock beside Oliver. The cuff on Oliver's wrist was now chained to the ground.

  “I'm sorry for this. One day, I hope you will realize it was necessary,” Severin said.

  Oliver watched as the final lock clicked in place. He shook his head in disbelief. “I had a friend once who was fine one day and the next day, he learned he had a brain tumor. One day fine, the next day, a death sentence. I know what he felt like now.”

  Severin shook his head and pulled his knife from his left boot. “You will survive. They've claimed you to establish what they see as balance. None of this was an accident. They wouldn't have gone to that trouble just to destroy you.”

  Oliver squinted, trying to follow a conversation that was turning on a dime. He also watched the knife. “They claimed me? What do you mean?”

  “They weren't after your friends. They were there for you. You're a pawn in a very old chess game.”

  “Why?”

  The Sioux man shrugged. “I don't know why they do what they do, only that they do it.”

  “That's what the lady…Molly…said.”

  Severin nodded and tossed him a smile. “She would have. She's the one who taught me everything.”

  “You're the guide she was going to send us,” Oliver said, in sudden understanding.

  Severin's smile melted into a gentle laugh. “In truth, I've been riding with you the whole way, just to be on the safe side.”

  The Lakota man leaned down to aim the knife's blade at the ground. He drew a pattern showing one entry branching off several ways. “This is the layout of the Angel Caves. Laughing Bear's inner circle amass in the depths of it, the spawn live in the portal coves. You must stay as far from the inner circle as possible and wait for us to come.”

  “But if I've been infected by whatever they are won't I become them?”

  “No. There are choices to be made. You'll make a better one, just as others have done. The caves are a vast, subterraneous circuit. The creatures only live in a portion of it. The song in your head will lead you away from danger and toward safety. You'll be safe from the sun in the caves. We know the newer beings can survive in there.”

  “I hope you know what you’re talking about.”

  “Believe me, I do,” Severn said, stowing away the knife in his boot again. “I'll toss you the key to unlock yourself in a moment. When you do, follow the call in your head toward the caves. One way or another, your stay there will be short-lived, I promise.”

  “Why doesn't that sound very reassuring?”

  Severin laughed a little. “You should feel fortunate. You're going to be part of a great battle, a battle for the ages.” He pitched the key at Oliver, who caught it. “I'll see you soon.”

  Before Oliver could rebuff him sarcastically with some bit of wit about willingly forgoing the honor of a great battle of the ages, Severin had already vanished from the path, his footsteps echoing crisply down the hill.

  Oliver turned toward the seven mouths of the caves. He could hear the summoning voices singing through his blood. He could feel the daylight stinging his skin, as if he was growing allergic to it. The sun was barely reaching the sky. The brighter the sky grew, the harder he found it to breathe.

  He walked into the center cave.

  Swallowed by a bright, white fog, he walked utterly blind into the depths. Once beyond the blinding whiteness, the passage ahead appeared dark, dark, dark, without all hope of day dark, as John Milton once put it. The only illumination flickered like fireflies trapped behind black glass walls.

  His hand trembled as he touched it to the glassy cave wall. He slowly advanced.

  Something flickered from torches at the far end of this passage. It flickered like fire, but it gave off no light. Somehow, it burned with a black flame.

  He heard a clatter of many feet shuffling his way. The sound swept toward him like a low wave. The marching stopped suddenly. He swung toward them. He remembered the flashlight on his belt. He flicked it on and flashed the beam their way. The line of child doll faces fractured into blue ash.

  The child-like warbling gathered again and moved closer. He crept nearer to the wall.

  All the way to the end of the natural colonnade, where the cave passages annexed a central part of the structure, the black flame burned dimly enough to see through. Past the torches, Oliver could see a pit at the center of the annex. Phantom shadows fluttered over the cave pit walls, cast off by the black fire torches.

  Something draped in black fire arose from
the pit. It resembled a human-sized bat with angrily outstretched wings. What he first thought to be feathers appeared to be licks of flame.

  It pivoted upwards and turned slowly around.

  He never saw the being completely before it rushed toward him. He never felt the bite from the jaws that clamped down on him from behind.

  ****

  They just stood there, like two clenched fists, unable to relax their grip on the moment. Elfie had no clue what to say or do. She felt like she'd been broadsided by a truck and left half-conscious in the middle of the road.

  “What do we do?” Elfie asked.

  “What the fuck can we do?” Yancey replied, slamming a hand against a wall. “Stand here, sit there, do something pointless and wait.”

  “How well do you know this Severin fellow?” she asked.

  “Well enough to know that Oliver is safe with him. Severin did what he did to protect us.” Yancey arose from the patch of wall he was leaning against. With a burst of sudden rage, he kicked the box of artifacts. “Stupid atavistic backward garbage. That box matters a whole lot now, huh?”

  “Oliver risked his life to get them back here,” Elfie replied, emphasizing every word.

  “So what?”

  “So, maybe we should honor his sacrifice by not knocking it.”

  “He's not dead!”

  “I didn't say he was!” she said. “You're not the only one who is hurting here, you know.”

  “I'm the only one who didn't leave him!” Yancey said, his face reacting with regret the moment he said it. “Listen, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.”

  “If I could change things and save Oliver from this,” Elfie said carefully, “I’d go back with the artifacts and never return.”

  “You know I wouldn't have wanted that.”

  “I don't know that,” she said, her eyes growing dark. “I can see why you'd feel that way. You and Oliver chose each other. Clearly, you two belong together. It's destiny…fate, whatever. You and Oliver were fine together until I came back. And I'm messing things up. Maybe you're right, I shouldn't be here.”

  “I didn't say that in the first place!” he said. “You know I don't believe in fate.”

  “Well, yesterday, you didn't believe in vampires either, did you?” she asked.

  He strode across the room to stare directly into her eyes. “Don't you dare use this situation to chicken out of the three of us.”

  “I'm not chickening out of anything!” she said, staring straight at him.

  He took a step forward, until he stared deeply into her face. “Then what the hell are you doing?”

  “Trying to make your argument for you. That maybe I - ”

  Yancey grabbed her and pressed their mouths together. He thrust his fingers into her hair and plunged his tongue through her teeth.

  Elfie's mouth reacted to his, her tongue responding in an instant.

  He thrust her against the wall, his lips covering her mouth completely. After a moment, he broke the kiss and forced himself away from her. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don't know,” Elfie said, anxious for breath. “I’d say it came out of nowhere.”

  “It's the life energy of the caves. It provokes mating…and anger,” Severin said from the door.

  She nearly leapt out of her skin at the sound of his voice. She had forgotten that Indians didn't knock. Suddenly, Severin was standing there, returning the cottage key to his pocket.

  “I can tell you all you need to know,” he said. Severin nodded at the door. “Come on, let's go out there to talk.”

  “That's not safe,” Yancey said, glancing toward the sky.

  “They have what they came for,” Severin replied. “You're safe. But there's a lot we have to talk about.”

  ****

  His eyes wore an inscrutable and quiet brown, like those of a deer watching from the deeper woods. His hair ran past his shoulders, like the satin drape of a black shawl. Severin sat on a rocky seat beside the table where, Elfie remembered with a sharp jolt of pain, she, Oliver and Yancey had been sitting and talking, while not all that afraid of the future.

  “How do we get Oliver out of there?” Yancey said, as if every word was a chore to speak. “Don't tell me it's impossible. We'll make it possible.”

  “It's been done,” Severin said, nodding. “I’ve seen people rescued from them. Not many, but some. I've done it myself.”

  Elfie sat forward. “You have?”

  Severin looked up toward the peak. “I rescued my woman from there. I took a member of their race from them, so I had to make a sacrifice.”

  “What sort of sacrifice?”

  Severin glanced cautiously toward the blue seeping through the black sky. “I am what they are, at least in part. I'm what Oliver may become.”

  Yancey’s eyebrows gathered together. “Are you actually trying to tell us that you’re – ”

  “Yes,” Severin said. “I doubt you can be so close-minded as to still think we don’t exist.”

  “It’s not closed-mindedness,” Elfie said protectively. “Yancey is a skeptic. We need that more than ever now. I don’t believe in anything but what I see. I’ve seen enough at this point, and I think Yancey has too.”

  Yancey murmured his agreement. “Enough. But Severin, how is it you live outside the cave system? Why don't you look like them?”

  “They choose to live that way, I choose not to.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Elfie said.

  Severin smiled a little. “There were children who once grew up in the sewers of a big city. They were rescued from there, and yet, they still walked hunched over, as if they couldn’t stand up. We carry some limits within us, as they do theirs.”

  Yancey exhaled, slowly but surely. “Then you know their limits, so you tell us. How do we get Oliver out of there?”

  Severin leaned forward. “Molly says you three are the Wakinyan,” he said. “Wakinyan, in Lakota, means thunder and lightning. In a lot of indigenous American cultures, thunder is truth, lightning is vision or revelation. The thunderbird wings give thunder, the beak brings lightning. The two together bring justice and unity and -”

  “I know all that,” Yancey said, shaking his head, “and to borrow your words, we need to know what it does, not what it is.”

  “It means you three, united, have the means to destroy Jumlin and his spawn.”

  “How can we? We have no idea how to do that,” Elfie said.

  Severin nodded thoughtfully. “The myth doesn't say you have knowledge, it says you have means. You have a way.”

  “Oh, well, that makes all the difference,” Yancey shot back wryly. “What's the use of having a way to do something if we don't know what it is or how to use it?”

  “I think the way is to fracture the cave system itself,” Severin said. “There is some kind of system of external crevices that allow small amounts of light inside at each point. The indirect light reflects in the cave walls and, cumulatively, produces the glow. Yet the cave and the black glass protect them from the direct light that would kill them.”

  “And you think this system of external crevices also creates a structural weakness in the caves,” Yancey said, “and if we can find a force strong enough, we can crack the cave system open like a geode. Flood it with light.”

  “And kill the spawn,” Elfie said.

  Severin nodded. “Exactly.”

  “So how do we know what to use?” Yancey asked. “What is strong enough to kill them?”

  Yancey gestured toward Molly Coddle’s place. “I believe I know what the force is that can be used, but you’re the only ones who can say for certain.”

  “Your guess is as good as ours,” Elfie said.

  “The legend speaks of working with light. My grandmother is a light-worker, in the literal sense,” Severin said.

  “Molly’s glass blowing?” Yancey asked. “The torch she uses? Would that be strong enough to fracture a cave wall?”

  Severin looked toward Elfie
. “What would you say? You’re the scientist.”

  “Well, plain glass is a bunch of disordered atoms,” Elfie said, uncertainly, “and crystal is a structure. It’s much more coherent and orderly. Molly’s glass-blowing equipment is meant to manipulate glass.”

  “But doesn’t rock have glass in it?” Severin asked.

  “Yes, but that’s silica, it’s crystalline. It’s the structure that counts. But anything can melt if it gets hot enough. I’m not sure Molly’s equipment will do it,” she said, “though I’d say anything at this point is worth a try.”

  “Where would we aim the torch?” Yancey asked.

  “Anywhere in the structure would be suitable,” Elfie said, “Provided Severin’s theory is right. The same instability would impinge on everywhere in the structure.”

  “And if we blast through Laughing Bear and kill him,” Severin said, “we can destroy the entire spawn…and that would release the humans under bondage.”

  “Fine, great. Why don’t we test it?” Yancey asked. “No time like the present.”

  ****

  Severin aimed the nozzle of Molly’s premix torch at a chunk of rock broken away from the Willow Peak. He fired. The nozzle’s flame skittered around each nook and cranny and around its curvature. Sparks spit back like silver rain at them from its surface. He blasted the chunk with flame for what seemed, to Elfie, like forever. Then, he shut it down. The flame went dead. The rock chunk lay there, virtually unchanged, except for some surface charring.

  “Well, that’s something,” Yancey said.

  Severin shook his head. “But not nearly enough. That won’t even knock a chip off of it.”

  “What else could be the lightning the legend speaks of?” Elfie muttered quietly.

  “Maybe it’s a metaphor for something?” Yancey suggested. “Like a symbol for our relationship.”

  “How is that going to knock down a cave system?” Elfie asked.