Leviathan (Fist of Light Series) (29 page)

“I think now would be a good time to do
something
,” Kathryne urged.

“I second that,” Jas said, his eyes widening.

I gulped. “I'll see what I've got left in me.”

In response to the growing ball of red energy, I pulled at my diminished reserves of power, scrounging through recesses for every drop of power that could be squeezed forth. Jas and Kathryne stood in silent support, while Herk got busy looking mean and threatening, which wasn't a stretch from his usual demeanor. Shadow retreated into the pools of darkness around us. I sensed it was due to the fact that its former residence was all too ready to reaffirm their connection, rather than out of cowardice. The pack was causing the Leviathan little distraction, their claws and talons tearing uselessly at the tough black skin. Its dark blood oozed and pattered on the ground, but that wouldn't be enough. In the swirling depths of my mind, I called Air and commanded Water, reining the two forces in, corralling them into a cohesive whole.

“You sure you can do this?” Jas asked, undermining my confidence.

“Not helping,” I muttered darkly out of the corner of my mouth.

It was a close thing, but the two elements came together, complying with my demands. A lance of pain seared through me at the effort of keeping the construct together. I was at the end of my endurance without any possibility of recovery. It was kill or be killed. That simple certainty drained away my fear and left only a cold determination in its place. Holding my arms before me, I mirrored the Leviathan, forming a ball of icy energy at my fingertips. My clothes flapped and fluttered, and my skin burned from the intense cold as the power fought my wishes. Wincing, I reasserted dominance, forcing the elements to cohere to my will.

Flashes of red energy flickered along the plasma, its size now exceeding five feet at its widest point. I was pretty sure the big baddy before me was initiating nuclear fission.

“I need more time,” I yelled to Kathryne.

She nodded grimly in agreement. “You'll have it.”

Kathryne walked fearlessly up to the dark maw of the beast, stretching up a pale hand towards the collection of bloody energy. The thing had committed itself and so wasn't able to do anything to stop her interference. Nervously, I shook off the frost burn affecting my exposed parts and expanded my design, enlarging mine to equal the measure of my enemy. Biting cold pervaded the surrounding area, forcing Jas and Herk to back away from the cold construct. My eyebrows froze and cracked, the pain in my stomach becoming a distant numbness. A thick, syrupy weakness seeped into my bones, chilling me to my core. If I held onto the power much longer, it would kill me. Then again, the nuclear detonation of the Leviathan's orb would do that and a whole lot more.

Thankfully, the siphoning of power from the Leviathan's fission bomb acted as a reverse catalyst. The construct shrunk, if only a little, but that was enough. A deep basso bellow expanded from the belly of the beast and pounded outward, a shockwave of power that was enhanced by a blast of energy. The Leviathan's multi-pronged tail whipped forward, slicing into Kathryne's arm. Wispy threads of red blasted from the core of the sphere, propelling the mass forward in a detonation of power. My compatriots were thrown backward by the blast, Kathryne included.

I'll admit, my life flashed before my eyes in that moment. It wasn't much to look at, but I did scrounge out a living. And although admittedly my more recent past was grungy, it had been the brightest period of my life. I'd been able to have a sense of camaraderie that I'd before discounted as impossible and seen things people couldn't dream up in their wildest nightmares. Anger flashed at the thought of something taking all that away from me in a pulsing detonation of power. Fury tore through my veins at the thought of this
thing
walking free, robbing developing minds of parental guidance. People who fought their hardest, living day to day, not expecting, but hoping for the best. Someone who hoped for something greater that would allow them to fight the Darkness that plagued our world at every step, seeking to bring us low at our weakest points.

That mindless fury eclipsing all rational thought exploded outward, the orb of power at my fingertips discharging in a flash of blue. A mirthless chuckle escaped me, the dark red of blood staining my teeth. The numbed pain in my stomach was unimportant, insignificant. For some reason that thought almost made me pause, but I shrugged off the feeling of apprehension. Plasma met my cold construct in midair, the two constructs swirling around each other in a deadly dance, vying for dominance. My mind was clear of all doubt. I knew that if that red energy discharged, it would level the surrounding landscape for miles. I was trying to contain the equivalent of a nuke with a wispy wall of cold.

The Leviathan released a menacing growl but made no move. We were locked in a battle of wills and it wasn't going anywhere until it was resolved. I bared my teeth in challenge, pressuring my construct, forcing it to envelop that blood-red orb. The sickly color was enveloped in a chilly embrace, and I grinned, bringing my hands together. I clutched at the air as if it were a beach ball, trying to crush it into a more manageable size.

“I've got you now.” I locked my elbows and squeezed.

The tide of the battle changed with an abruptness I wasn't prepared for. A roar of epic proportions was loosed by the enormous beast and a blast of power battered back my enveloping energy. The dark orb expanded outwards, crowding out my icy defense with it. It seemed my enemy had grown bored of play. The wall of energies blasted past me, one numbing cold and the other liquid fire. Gathering the dregs of my strength, I readied my last stand. My constant companions, dark splotches of blackness, were eclipsing the entire scene before me, insidiously clawing their way across the land and occluding all at sight.

“Caleb...” Jas' voice echoed through the darkness.

That's when I realized that this darkness was not limited to my eyes. Just before that sucking darkness dragged us into its depths, I brought my construct of Water and Air crashing down upon all of us. Then, nothing.

T
he rush of wind was followed by a feeling of untethered weightlessness. I was falling, air rushing by my ears, the pain of my wounds a distant memory. Here, there was no struggle for power, no certainty. Then, in the blink of an eye, it was all torn away. What I expected to see, however, was far from what I saw. A purple sky filled my vision, silver stars entrenched deeply in the clouds, up close and personal when compared to my own constellations. A bloody moon filled the perpetual night, casting its red glare onto the inhabitants of this dark world. Mountains clawed at the sky, perhaps seeking to pull some of those cheery lights from above. All this recognition passed by in a second before I impacted into the scraggly rock below.

My bones smacked jarringly and I began to roll, reducing some of the impact. It wasn't very graceful, though, and much of the shock transferred into my limbs, vibrating through my body. A flash of pain fired into my brain. Groaning pitifully, I brought myself to hands and knees before levering myself painfully to my feet. Cold shock spread flashed through me as I stood, and hands searched for a wound that was no longer there. I drew up disheveled clothes from my stomach, feeling the smooth musculature of my stomach, but I couldn’t find my wound. True laughter fell from my lips before I processed the gravity of this new development and it trailed off into the surroundings uncertainly. Pale lengths of shadow menaced me from behind, shaded a dark red by the blood moon.

“This is
so
not good.” Jas rubbed his head painfully and scrunched his eyes up to the sky above.

Kathryne's green eyes flashed. “As if we all hadn't figured that out by now.” She was also rubbing at a phantom wound that had vanished without a trace.

“Where the hell are we?” Zack demanded of the dark landscape, but it was silent.

“Quiet!” Simon hissed. “I doubt we're alone.” We all clustered together in a loose group, collectively uncertain. Herk was nowhere to be seen and it was unclear where Shadow had gone off to. That left one person still unaccounted for.

“Mary?” Jas called out.

There was a clattering of rocks as they were depressed outward by approaching footsteps. “I'm here,” she called brightly, her light not yet dimmed by the dreary land.

Kathryne declared as she raked her eyes across the black plains. “This place is a blight.”

“Where are the other souls?” Zack asked the question everyone had been thinking. This place was deserted.

I shuffled over to an outcropping of stone, sitting down on it with a sigh. “In the belly of the beast, no doubt. I think we've been made into doggy chow.”

“That's not possible!” Simon exclaimed. “From what we've learned so far, this
Leviathan
needs physical touch to absorb a soul.”

I fiddled with some pebbles at my feet, hefting them curiously. “Maybe all the power that was thrown around had a projecting effect. Whatever we're looking at here, it isn't Earth.”

“So in all likelihood, our souls have been stolen from our bodies and placed in this fabricated purgatory.
Perfect
,” Kathryne said, stalking about irately across the dark plane.

Simon started hyperventilating. “We're stuck inside? How are we supposed to get out? What happened to our bodies?”

Zack slapped some sense into him. “Get ahold of yourself. Panicking isn't going to make this right.”

Simon rubbed at the stinging redness on his face, the pain returning him to this false reality. “Thanks,” he offered grudgingly.

“First things first.” Jas sat beside me on the rock, pulling his legs up under him and scanning the skies. “We need to figure out what the hell this place is before we get all worked up. Could be we're all tripping on a bunch of preternatural magic mushrooms and everything will go back to normal once they've worn off. Point is, we're alive, mostly. If we let the details drag us down we're done for.”

“Well put,” Kathryne said. “We definitely aren't on Earth any longer. Look for any scratches, any wounds you had before.”

Everyone scrambled to do so. Kathryne's eyes locked with mine in the ensuing seconds and we nodded in perfect understanding of each other, despite the absence of speech. At all costs, we had to maintain our course and not give the others cause to doubt or give up hope. Stunned eyes stared sightlessly as they didn't discover any wounds. In fact, there wasn't any evidence of scars at all. We were as clean and unblemished as newborn babies.

I didn't pull any punches. “I think it’s safe to say we left our bodies behind. Right now, we're nothing but metaphysical projections, pure soul.”

“And the Leviathan feeds on souls.” Mary shivered, pulling tattered clothes about herself.

Jas rubbed her arms down awkwardly, trying to work some heat into her pale body. “Caleb has it dead to rights. We're stuck inside the Leviathan and from the looks of it,” he swept his arm across the vacant landscape, “anything that gets gobbled up is pretty much dead on arrival.”

I cautioned Jas with a thought, pulling his arm back down to his side. “We're still here,” I said firmly. “Maybe this is the best chance we've had to do some damage.”

Simon caught on. “This monster can shrug off a missing limb, maybe even reassemble itself from component parts, but we're on the
inside
now.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And although this place doesn't look fragile, it'll have a weak spot. All we have to do is find it.”

“Yeah,
all
we have to do is find the secret lever that shuts this thing off,” Jas said with a sneer. “I'm sure its somewhere. If it was that easy, I'd bet someone would've pulled the damn thing by now and saved us the trouble.” He spat and Mary pulled away from his touch as if burned by his ferocity.

“I never said it would be easy.” I returned my attention to the gravel, letting it slip between my fingers.

“I could think up worse guesses.” Zack's green eyes had gathered in this information and were now sporting a determined cast.

“We aren't alone,” Kathryne hissed in warning.

A deeper patch of shadow past through our midst before winking out of sight. My eyes struck out into the surrounding landscape, trying to spot out of place movement in the shifting shadows. If anything was out there, I couldn't see it. I tried extending my senses out into the dark plains, but came up short. This place felt cold and dead no matter the lengths spanned outwards.

“Not there.” Simon's keen eyes spotted the disturbance first. “There.” He indicated the sky with a shaky hand.

Only the red light of the moon allowed for the discovery of the black being circling above. Its tattered wings beat silently on the air, black orbs fixed on our ragged company. A long neck extended, ending in a wickedly sharp beak that was large enough to swallow a man whole.

“Nothing back home is that big,” Zack said.

“I don't think that's the only one,” Kathryne said.

And all of a sudden, the flyer was joined by another. Before long, a tornado of the gigantic black vultures had amassed above. They hadn't made a move, but it was only a matter of time.