A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (30 page)

80. TARA

Chaos was everywhere. G. looked like he had a handle on
Thompson finally—the guy had at least stopped struggling—and between the two of
them, Sam and Lily had wrestled the second guy with the strange eyes to the
ground where they sat on him as if holding down a crocodile. I wished we had
thought to bring rope with us, but why on earth would we have needed it? Why
would we have thought there would be homicidal maniacs chasing us into the deep
West Texas desert?

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know why I was here. Gram
said I was the leader, but I just felt like a lamb.

I turned to face the center of the circle where Melody
stood, her arms outreached and her hair a crazy nimbus around her head. She was
glowing a little bit, and at first I thought it was haze from the dust in the
air. When I rubbed my eyes, I realized I could still see her through my lids.
She was glowing like a torch – her energy, her aura, amped like a lightbulb.
The ground crunched near my feet, and I looked down to see Gramps in his chair,
watching Melody intently. He seemed both tense and excited.

“What is she going to do?”

He leaned over to me, yelling over the howl of the wind.
“She has to anchor the vortex and channel the energy into the ground. If she
lets it loose, the veil rips, and the entities break out. It takes a lot of
concentration and a lot of energy.”

I watched my friend in the circle, her eyes closed as if
handling everything by feeling. The roiling clouds parted and a shaft of light
streamed down. It was like a crack in the storm, but not to let the sunlight
through, because this light was dark, purplish, unlike anything I had ever seen
before. And where Melody stood was a swirling dervish of debris and something
like crackling golden energy at her feet.

As I watched, my awe turned to horror. In the purple light
that was descending from the clouds vague shapes swam past the rift—as if the
entities on the other side could sense the veil rending and were waiting
hungrily to burst forth. Tentacles waved behind the veil, and long sharp claws
raked the air only inches from Melody’s head. The giant beast, more like the
mythical kraken than a creature of earth, flowed forward scary-fast and
collided with the veil, its craw open, ready to devour whomever it encountered
on the other side.

The energy from the collision caused a ripple in the energy
field and I watched, horrified, as Melody’s forehead wrinkled in concentration.
There had to be something I could do.

81. SAM

G. had finally managed to choke out Thompson and was helping
us to tie up Thompson’s friend with a couple of USB cables he had in the back
of the car. Not for the first time in the last few minutes, I wished for some
rope.

As G. wound the last cable and knotted it tightly around the
man’s ankles, I pulled Lily close and buried a relieved kiss in her hair. Over
the top of her head, I marveled at the sight of Melody in the middle of the
circle doing something wicked cool with the energy of the vortex.

A purplish-black light descend from the clouds, and the
entities swam around inside it, as if they were flooding the gates, waiting for
the opportunity to burst forth. And then I saw Melody’s face, serene, her hair
blowing around her face as it stood out in a static-electric halo.

And my blood went cold.

“G.,” I said. When he didn’t hear me, I grabbed his arm.
“G., you have to go in there.”

“What do you mean?” he shouted back.

“This is just like my dream.”

“What do you mean?” he shouted again, shaking his head.
“You’re not making sense. We didn’t dream this.”

“No.
Before I met you.
Right before, in fact.
I dreamt of Melody sleeping and the
black tentacles reaching out to get her. Look, look up there.” For Lily’s
benefit, I left out the part about kissing her, because I figured that didn’t
really matter so much right now.

G.’s gaze traveled up to the descending column of dark light
and his face grew very concerned. The sword suddenly sprang to light in his
hand, and he leapt forward, heading for the circle at a sprint. But before he
could break through and get near Melody, Margaret stopped him.

82. G.

"Yes, you can," Gram’s mouth formed a hard line.
“You were born for it."

"How do you know?" I asked. I had a hard time
tearing my eyes off of the dark light and the entities swimming along behind
it. Fending those things off with a
thoughtform
in
the shape of a sword was one thing, but anchoring the quarrel while they pulled
Matthew through, that was something else altogether.

“I thought you said that we couldn’t count on him being
saved. That there might not be a way to bring him through.”

She gave me a long look and nodded. “I did say that. But I
had a waking dream earlier… and in it I saw you pull Matthew through, with the
rest of us to anchor you. You can do it, Gideon.”

 
"Are you sure
I’m strong enough?" I clenched my fists. I wasn’t a coward. But I didn't want
to fail my friends, either.

"Gideon," she said firmly, and her stare into my
eyes was very direct. "Do you know what your name means?"

"No." I said.

"It means
Guardian
.
And that's what you are. Tara is the Sage, Sam is the Lantern, Melody is the
Light, and
you
are the Guardian who
watches over them all. That is who you are; it's who you've always been."

Tara gasped. I turned to look at her and her face was slack.
As I watched, the animation came back; it was unnerving to watch her when she
consulted the records.

She stepped to my side and gripped my hand tight. "G.,
she's right. You're the only person who can do it."

"Stewards are called when the plane is in need. There
are always four."

Sam was beside me suddenly, his hand gripping my arm
painfully. The expression on his face was furious. “I told you that you have to
save her!” he said savagely.

“No, Sam,” said Gram. “You know better than that. G. will
pull Matthew through. I’ve seen it.
You
have to save her.”

Gramps craned his neck to look up at me. “The light will
continue to descend, and lightning from the ground will reach up to meet it.
When the vortex crowns, the gateway will be open for a split second. Melody
knows she has to hold it stable while you pull Matthew through – but don’t take
too long or the whole thing will fall apart, and we’ll have a flood of nasties
that might just eat us alive.”

“What about those two?”
I nodded to
the unconscious Thompson and his trussed up friend.

Gramps studied them for a moment. “I think Lily has them
covered.”

I looked back and noted that Lily was definitely taking her
guard duty seriously. She’d have made a good Guardian, I thought.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

83. MELODY

I felt someone plunge into the circle – like feeling the
tide swirl around my feet in the ocean, except I could feel the other person’s
energy too, and I knew it was G. I didn’t even have to open my eyes.

“Matthew will be here soon,” I said.

“That’s what
your
Gram said,” he
answered. “I’m supposed to pull him through.”

I felt a pang in my heart – was this really happening? Was I
really getting my brother back? I felt the energy tremble and heard Gramps
shout to me over the din beyond the circle.

“Concentrate, Melody!
Focus!”

I redoubled my focus and turned my attention inward. I could
see the vortex behind my eyes, and I could see the descent of the dark light as
the two planes bowed in the middle to meet each other, like the force of
reality on either side was too heavy to bear. The closer the bowed sections
got, the hotter the energy flared. It burned me up inside. I was on fire. I
couldn’t take it anymore—I screamed.

84. SAM

This wasn’t exactly like the dream, I thought, but then
nothing about this experience so far had been exactly like any of my dreams.
But what did that mean anyways?
Nothing,
abso-friggin-lutely
nothing.

“Take my hand,” I yelled to Tara. “I’m going in.”

And just then, Melody screamed. She was swathed in burning
energy that looked like plasma, her hair still whipping furiously in the gale.
G. was reaching up into the dark light and the entities were crowding the rift,
poking tentacles through, reaching down to curl around his and Melody’s necks.

“No time,” I yelled, and ran into the mix. I lost Tara’s
hand along the way but I couldn’t stop now.

And suddenly I was inside the circle and noise was less, the
wind was less, but the screaming from Melody was much worse. She was in agony
and it was all I could do to keep myself from grabbing her and hauling her out
of there.

“Now, G.!” she screamed.
“Now!”

I stopped to look up and was amazed at the sight above us… a
whirling tornado of light, golden from below and blazing dark purple from
above. It looked just like Harold had said.
A crown.
“Holy Shit,” I breathed, forgetting why I was there for a moment.

And then Melody screamed again and I knew, without a doubt
that she was being burned up from the inside out. I didn’t know what to do, so
I reached for her.

“Sam, no!”
Tara shouted, and then she
tossed me a long extension cord. “Tie it to her feet, and then bury the end in
the ground!”

I didn’t understand what Tara was asking of me at first
until I looked down and realized that Melody’s feet were no longer touching the
ground. She was burning up because she wasn’t grounded. There was nowhere for
the energy to go.

85. G.

I could see him. He was there. He wasn’t on the other side
of the veil, he was
in
the veil. Like
he’d been sewn inside, like a body in an old-time body bag. His eyes were
terrorized and his body was motionless. It was obvious this was going to be all
up to me since it didn’t look like he could move at all.

“Matthew,” I called. “We’re coming for you!”

I willed my sword of light to change into a shepherd’s crook
and extended it to the length of my reach, and even with my long arms it wasn’t
quite enough. So I jumped.

86. TARA

I watched in horror as Melody burned up from the energy,
almost forgetting that it was my turn to go into the circle. Gramps reached up
to hold my hand, staring at Melody, unshed tears in his eyes. Then he looked at
me.

“Together,” he said.

I nodded. We held hands and crossed into the circle. When we
got to Sam, I reached out and put my hand on the waistband of Sam’s pants and
Gramps reached out to put his hand on Melody’s foot.

“Harold, No!” Gram cried from outside.

Gramps let go of my hand just as I turned to see Margaret
jumping up to run inside. I held onto Sam, who had tied off Melody. Gramps was
grounding Melody as best he could since the extension cord wasn’t doing much.
Beyond the circle, in the shadow of the building, stood Esme.

Esme, we’d forgotten all about her.

And she held something in her hand. There was a mad, violent
look in her eyes as she cast her gaze upward at the things in the sky, the
things that were tearing to break free. Then she looked at me.

“Never again,” she cried. And without
loosing
my gaze, she took the little bag of sulfur and pulled the string loose, letting
the yellow powder swirl on the breeze.

There was a frightening crack of thunder and a bolt of
lightning that shot down into the ground, and I was blinded for a time. I
smelled sulfur and ozone, and the ensuing shockwave sent me tumbling to the
ground. A sharp pain slammed my head full of stars, jagged streaks tearing
across my vision. When I came rolling to a stop, I didn’t see anything at all.

87. G.

I had Matthew by the neck now and was pulling him down as
gently as I could considering the circumstances, and when he was half in and
half out of the dark light, he was able to move his arms and help. I felt a
well of relief surge inside me and shouted to Melody, who still had her eyes
closed, but for now had stopped her awful screaming.

“We got him! You can let go now!”

But she didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t wake up. There was
a terrible smell of sulfur and a tentacle wrapped around my neck. I looked up
in time to see the baleful gaze of a shadow beast stare down at me before it
yanked me off my feet and into darkness.

“Tara!” I tried to reach for her before my vision went
black, but she was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.

88. SAM

It
was
just like
my dream. I tried to wake her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell if she was dead
or alive, focused or asleep. But the tentacles were snaking out in one last
desperate attempt to break free.

“You can let go now,” I said to her, almost a whisper
really. “We’ve got Matthew. He’s safe,” I said.

When the shockwave hit, I wasn’t even surprised. I knew the
beasts were going to try and take her from me, to drain her dry; I couldn’t
allow that. So I pulled close, stroked her cheek, and finally kissed her.

I didn’t think about Lily. I didn’t think about what Melody
might say. I just did it.

And she opened her eyes.

89. MELODY

The pain was intense. My blood was on
fire,
my head blazed like a torch, my skin was bubbling up and blistering like burnt
plastic. I was done for, I knew it. I wasn’t just going to burn up my synapses
like
Gramps,
I was going to shish kebob myself. But it
would be worth it. Matthew would be back, and that was worth a thousand times
worse than this.

I felt the sorrow well up inside me like a volcano, all the
pain I had endured, the
uncertainty,
it came up from
the depths and threatened to overtake me. I knew that the entities fed on fear;
I could only assume they fed on sorrow as easily, so I let the energy burn it
up before it could leak out of my eyes. I felt the sorrow go and replaced it,
little by little, with joy.

I started with memories of hanging out with my brother, of
sitting at the dinner table telling jokes, of playing video games and him
letting me win, of him teaching me to ride a bike. And then I took those
memories and lifted them to the surface, and they did not burn in the energy.
Instead they filled me up. And I added that brief moment of joy I felt in the
desert the night before. That sense that I was a part of something greater,
that I was loved, so loved.

The pain subsided. The burning was gone, replaced only with
the barest buzz, almost as if someone had turned a switch off. I heard Sam’s
voice and felt his presence. Then I felt his lips pressed against mine; finally
the joy that filled me burst forth and I opened my eyes. There he was, nose to
nose, looking at me, worry clearly etched on his face.

“You’re okay,” he said, relieved.

I shook my head. “I’m alive.”