Final Solstice (25 page)

Chapter 6

On a well-worn path in a wooded realm, a hazy sun rose, peeking between the snow-capped trees like a curious newborn stag.

Mason followed the path as it traveled over a gentle hill. He followed it as a carefree hiker or latter century explorer, his mind clear and his thoughts oddly free of distraction. Just taking in the magnificent scenery, the sloping terrain, the majestic sequoia trunks and extensive foliage. The sounds of the forest, the animals and insects, the cool northern breeze through the branches …

The breeze that died completely within a few more yards as the shadows deepened and the land sloped into a steeper decline, warming slightly until the recent snowfall melted and revealed the ground cover of twigs and leaves, roots and rocks. Moss encroached in the congealing shadows and the trail vanished. Mason stopped, frowning. He scratched his head and wished for a walking stick or a staff of some kind. Seemed he was sorely unprepared without one. Not only unprepared, but also … lacking the invitation he needed to proceed.

He squinted and tried to peer through the darkness ahead. Somehow he couldn’t make out any features or distinctions in the forest, no sign of the trail for sure, but also a layer of mist had moved in and clouded the way ahead. Only, Mason wasn’t sure if the clouding was in reality, or just in his mind. His temples throbbed and his eyes hurt as if he’d just woken from a night of hard drinking and dehydration.

There was something he had to do. Something in there, farther along the now-nonexistent path. He looked back over his shoulder. Even the sun was afraid to go any further; it had descended and pulled a layer of earth over its eye, darkening the world even more.

Undeterred, Mason walked straight down into the spreading darkness that rose up to meet him, into the mist that sent out a cool, clammy embrace. He walked and walked, until the footing became knotty and treacherous, until he couldn’t see even his hand in front of his face. The world had become shadows and fog. No up or down, no sense of reality in any direction. For all he knew he could be heading straight off the edge of a cliff.

He had to stop. Stop and think.…

Where am I? What am I doing here?

He thought and thought. For a long time, until he feared he might have even been here for hours, days. And if he thought about it some more, the days would turn to weeks, months. Years.

This was no ordinary mist, no ordinary forest.

Despite that realization, he clung to one thought in the formless nothingness, the mist that had gone through his nostrils and ears into his mind, obscuring all:

I am no ordinary man.

He had something to do. Something to find. He thought again, pushing the mist aside with a gentle breeze.

And in his clarified mind, swept clear of clouded debris, he saw the image that had flashed in his vision earlier, during his meeting with the Haitian—a familiar landscape with a snow-capped mountain in the background, only now he saw it from an eagle-eye view. He rose up, through the green ceiling, higher and higher, ascending up above the air currents and gracefully soaring into the sunlit realm, where light still held its own dominion.

Regaining purpose was difficult with such majestic power and control over the winds and the air, swooping and climbing, but he brought his sight back down and peered across the sea of green. Back and forth until he found what he was looking for: a lone clearing in a patch of thick trees. Nothing more could he see, as the area stubbornly refused to resolve itself, as if it were a satellite photo blurred out by government security teams before it could be shown to the public.

In a flash, he was back on the ground, back in the dark and the mist. But this time, he returned with a sense of direction.

He was close. He just needed a little help, a little assistance in finding the way.

A little … magic.

O O O

His eyes closed or opened; he couldn’t tell. Mason reached out and shuffled his feet until his fingers contacted something. Bark, sharp thick wood with rough edges and deep creases. He reached up and down, almost caressing the tree like a lover, until he found an off-shooting branch.

Too fresh, he went on to seek another, and another and then found one. Nearly dead, brittle and if not diseased, at least ruined enough that it wouldn’t grow any more. He found the base, and with both hands, snapped it free.

In the darkness, he estimated the size of the branch. A little too long for his purposes, he set the bottom edge down against the ground, and using his foot, broke a section off to make it a manageable size. Held it up, then moved his hands up and down, breaking off odd shoots and old sapling branches. His skin was cut, bleeding and smearing his blood on the wood—which, he imagined, might only make the magic more powerful.

Then he was ready.

It wasn’t the ivory staff he was given back in the hospital, the one he still needed to retrieve when the time came, but for now, this would do.

He held it up, not sure what to do or how to proceed. He only knew that this was right, this was the missing piece. This was the invitation he had been lacking.

Holding the makeshift staff with his right hand, he aimed it toward the darkness and let the mist curl all around it, and then he focused on the staff, focused all his thoughts and energy.

He thought of Shelby and of Lauren. He thought of the sun, its energy and power, and let the feeling of warmth and intensity of illumination gather in his arm and travel up to his hand.

And he spoke, deciding to call on his rudimentary knowledge of Latin, if only to make it seem more realistic. “
Lux in obscurum!”
He said, pronouncing the words with care. A little “light in the darkness.” That had to work, he hoped.

Nothing happened.

He shook the staff, and kept holding it aloft until his arm started to hurt. He waved it around, then sighed.
Harry Potter never had this problem.

He stamped it on the ground and again raised it up. “
Lux in—”

The world lit up all at once, in a blinding sphere of light, banishing darkness and bathing the forest in a dazzling light that Mason couldn’t bear. He dropped to his knees, eyes clenched and still writhed in stinging pain, his eyes watering.

What the hell …?

Slowly he opened them, peeking and seeing that it wasn’t his staff making any sort of guiding light, but the sun itself, which had risen higher and now shone through a huge pocket in the trees, banishing the shadows and lighting up the world with the strength of a desert sun.

He gripped the staff and stood up, wobbling, just as a wind flowed down the hill, this one cool and caressing, smoothing away the sweat from his brow and—as his eyes cleared and focus returned—scattering the mist and clearing away all obstruction.

He blinked several times, and then shifted and walked three paces to the right—to again set his feet upon the well-trod path that had been so close all this time.

He curled his toes, flexed his fingers around the bloodied staff, which now looked more knotted and rugged, like a walking cane should, and he set himself down the path, around a winding trail that took him through a serene forest, into a grove, and to the very doorstep of a quaint and wondrous cottage.

O O O

Inside, once he let go of the shamrock-shaped handle, the quaintness ended and the horror began. It looked like an epic battle of the elements had recently occurred, complete with fire and ice; earth and vegetation, lightning and wind. Mason choked on the smell of burnt flesh, gagged on seeing two frosted, preserved heads not-so-cleanly decapitated and resting against a blackened wall.

Great vines hung lifelessly from a scorched ceiling in a rounded chamber with the remains of what looked to be a massive oaken table and a shattered grand piano. A place of meeting, a place of power. Decisions were made here, Mason thought. Powerful decisions. In this little room, this cottage in the heart of the forest with the majestic mountains and the crisp natural air among the ancient woods.

Half the table had been blasted into oblivion and more blood and gore decorated the back wall, which somehow still stood, although cracked and shattered in places. The eastern windows were all broken but covered now with newly-grown vegetation, providing a modicum of shade, like drawn curtains for modesty.

Or shame.

Three statues stood amidst the carnage. Three bodies—two men and a woman—encased in clear, thick ice.

It was toward these figures that Mason drew near. Without a doubt, he had come for them. He set a hand on one, the nearest—the woman. Red hair, pale features and a long flowing thick dress. Mason couldn’t understand why these ice blocks hadn’t melted. The air was certainly colder in this vicinity, but it felt as if the cold was being generated by the individuals inside the ice rather than from any outside source, maintaining their own condition indefinitely.

It made no sense, but nothing about this magic did. Mason’s hand trembled, and his staff twitched and seemed to heat up, as if some internal mechanism sensed a need and generated its own power. He could feel a tremendous sense of energy flowing all about this cottage. Sensed it even as he approached, in the grove outside. Situated on a powerful location, maybe an underground source of energy, a sacred native Indian site for sure, located and co-opted by the druids for their meetings or conventions, or whatever went on here.

Whatever the history, Mason was out of time. He had come for these people. They had been imprisoned, and the others … by the gruesome evidence here … had been killed. Mason could only surmise that Solomon’s was the hand behind all this, and that these three refused him, spurned any alliance, and he had left them behind, neutralized for the time being.

Whatever his reasons, any enemies of Solomon’s had to be friends of Mason’s at this point.

He touched his staff to the ice, just under the woman’s eyes, and watched the surface start to melt.

Two minutes later, his feet were wet, but not much progress had been made. The ice was too thick, and his slight heat generated from the staff wasn’t doing much.

He backed away, held up the staff and tried another bit of Latin:
“Ignis!”

Nothing.
Come on,
he thought, imagining burst of flame shooting from the staff. A fireball, or something.

“Flamma! Incendia?”

Again, nothing happened. Frustrated, he looked around for an alternative.

A minute later he had a little woodpile created and piled around the statue. Broken bits of the table and walls, chair legs and backs. And a plastic bottle of candle oil he had found in one of the cupboards in the next room, along with a box of starter matches. After drenching the wood, he dropped a match and backed away.

Suddenly he felt like a priest of the Inquisition, about to burn a suspected witch.

God I hope this works, and I don’t kill her … assuming she’s even still alive in there.

He hadn’t even thought of that yet. Without air, without food or water for days … Were they still alive? He had assumed this was like a suspended animation thing. In fact, he was somehow sure of it, despite all logic. They were imprisoned only.

In any case, he was about to find out.

The block of ice, encased now in flames up to her shoulders, began to melt. The fire licked and drank, and kept melting despite the flow of water upon the base … it was enough. In fact, too much.

A scream, and the remaining ice around her head shattered, and Mason had just enough warning to turn and duck, or shards would have torn through his skull. He heard a wet flopping sound, then a rolling and screaming and something battered the floor and walls. The smell of burnt hair and flesh assaulted his nostrils, and he turned—just as the dark shape with literal fiery red hair stood from a wet crouch.

Her gown flowed and swirled in a sudden breeze that extinguished the flames, and as Mason watched, the burnt skin on her legs and face miraculously healed over. Emerald eyes sought him out, and her mouth twitched into a hideous snarl.

She raised her hand and made a flipping motion.

Mason’s feet launched off the ground, upending him. He struck his head on the floor, then he was thrust up to the ceiling, flattened on his back as she strode beneath him. She took deep breaths, hand still raised, keeping him pinned, as she looked back to her fellows trapped in the ice.

Fingers to her lips, she blew two kisses in their direction.

Mason could feel the edges of that gust of heat from the ceiling. Her breath carried the intensity of a volcanic steam blast, and within seconds, the two statues were thawing.

Satisfied, she turned her attention back to the ceiling, and as soon as she heard the stamping of wet feet and the breaking of brittle ice behind her, she spoke to Mason.

“And what exactly are
you
? Somehow you found our location. No easy feat for a commoner, much less a practiced druid. Which would indicate you are far more advanced that you seem.”

A gnome-like man appeared at her side, smoothing his balding head and wringing out his cotton shirt. “Angelica? What have we here? Is this our rescuer?”

“That remains to be seen, Morris. He found us with what must have been ancient magic, yet had to resort to common fire to melt ice.”

“Sorry,” Mason stammered, fighting the pressure against his chest holding him in place. “I was kind of rushed for time.”

“I see that.” She cocked her head, then glanced at the next friend to appear at her side. “Belgar? Are you reading anything from this one?”

Belgar, with his canine-like jaws and hooded eyes under overgrown brows, sniffed the air, then growled. “I get the scent of Solomon on him.”

Morris’s nostrils flared and he scuttled back, finding his own staff and raising it up. “End him, now.”

“Wait,” Mason cried. “I came to help you.”

“Why?” Angelica asked.

“The Haitian … he said …”

“Jack?” Belgar tensed. “Where is my friend?”

“I don’t know,” Mason said honestly. “But please … let me down. If you would stop Solomon, then we are on the same side. And …” he spoke slowly and forcefully, “…we don’t have much time.”