The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (43 page)

All around Anthony there
were savage mutterings throughout the yard at this declaration. He
began to wonder what Fenris was holding in his gauntleted hand. For
some reason, a bad feeling began to take root in his
chest.

“
This is true, my
brothers. This is an inescapable fact.” He paused dramatically.
“And yet, I am honored to say… it matters not.” Only the sound of
the mild breeze could be heard. “For The First Organ has been made
obsolete and worthless by the very existence of this Key!” He
gestured toward the ornament, pausing to look around, watching the
meaning of his words sink into the minds of his troops. “This very
Key, forged in the heart of the Storm’s Lair by the Great Maelstrom
himself, will circumvent the First Organ and change the order of
the universes as we know them! For all of us here tonight, this Key
spells the end to all of the endless days of mindless torture and
mayhem. Delights we have endured and inflicted in the World of
Storm to the point of complete and utter boredom. The time has come
for the Storm to conquer once more, to expand beyond the borders of
our plane, to enlarge our living space and thrive.” He suddenly
held the ornament high above his head, thrust eight feet up into
the cold night sky. “This is what the Key will bring
us!”

There were satisfied
grunts abound.

“
Now, we will drink the
fruits of what is rightfully ours! We will take hold of the claim
our Great Lord decreed when he first laid eyes upon this World back
in the annuls of time when it belonged to the Great
Serpents!”

Around the yard, Anthony
heard some muted snarls and growls of accent. Whatever the man-wolf
was talking about, all of his troops were of the same mind. Behind
it all, continuous, drawn-out, he could hear his grandmother
calling for them.
Where is she?
he thought.

“
This is
our
right,
this
is our destiny. We must take it all, before the opportunity escapes
us and we are left with nothing. The riches of all the planes
belong to us! We need space, we crave more. We
must
have it all! And, we will, I
say. Whether by surrender or by
FORCE,
with the change this Key will
bring, we will rule
EVERYWHERE
!”
His jerked a clenched fist above his head, holding high the
dainty, silver ornament.

The beasts screamed with
glorious rage into the starry heavens as loud as they could
manage.

So did his grandmother,
urgent, pleading. Why hadn’t she come out of the house to
investigate? If she’d had heard the clamor of these hideous
creatures, why was she still in the house, clamoring for them? Why
didn’t she come?

Suddenly, he realized
something else.
Where had the dogs gone?
Shouldn’t they be barking like crazy right about now?

Fenris broke his train of
thought. “With the power vetted upon me by my blood, as the Crown
Prince of the Vülfen Kur Ambalaj and by the Great Lord of the
Storm, the True Nixeous, the One Metohkangmi, the Ancient Nihhûs,
I, Fenris dok Kór, the Storm Lord’s Hand, summon the Rending with
the final three peals of Hope for this world. As tolls the final
chimes, I remove the Guardians of Man. I clear the Way for the
Armies of Storm!

“
LET THE
MELDING BEGIN!!!
”

Without warning, he swung
downward with all of his might, smashing the ornament on the ground
with such force, it shattered into pieces so small they resembled
dust more than tiny shards of thin, silver glass.

For a moment or two,
nothing happened.

Anthony watched the fine
remnants of the ornament slowly float toward the ground, then
looked around quickly, trying desperately to clear the tears from
his eyes.

God, please make my
sisters be alright!

In the last moment, he
felt his heart thud in his chest, watched as the final motes of
broken glass came to rest upon the concrete patio. As if to answer
the beating of the muscle buried deep in his torso, there came a
sound. A thrum so low in frequency, he felt it inside his mind and
outside his body. While, at the same time, he felt the very ground
beneath his feet vibrate with the same resonance. Anthony’s jaw
dropped in awe when he saw it was so much more than sound. I was an
emittance of light as well. As this tremendous reverberating toll
sounded, a sickly green corona of light burst from all the other
lights in the backyard, from every star in the night sky and even
from the moon.

All around the backyard,
the minions of Fenris ginned and watched in child-like amazement,
milling about in wonderment, while the terrible man-wolf smirked at
Anthony with distain.

The sixteen-year-old boy
froze with shock, for - as if blown away like a mist before a
steady breeze - his grandmother’s house blew out of existence and
was simply no longer there. His grandmother’s horrific screams
vanished with it, lost on a ghostly wind of decay.

He glanced frantically
about, so unnerved, his stomach twisted in a knot and acidic bile
rose in his throat, making his eyes water and his nose run. A
moment later, he witnessed almost a third of the homes and a good
portion of the streets of the neighborhood surrounding his
grandmother’s house dissipate into nothing right before his
mortified eyes. Something was destroying the city. Something was
devastating Los Angeles.

Then, the forlorn sound
thrummed again… the earth itself groaned in pain…

…
And once again, it
resonated everywhere at once, through his mind, body and soul,
shimmering off every source of light. Once again, more of the city
of Los Angeles and the tiny portion of the only world Anthony had
ever known, dissolved into nothing.

The wrongness of it all
registered within every cell of his body. This time he couldn’t
hold it back. He retched, his throat clenching and unclenching. He
threw-up the entire contents of his stomach. His ears popped with
the strain, unable to control it.

Powerless before the
strength of his captors, defenseless against the nausea roiling
within, outraged at what was happening to everything he loved. He
hung limp in their grasp and cried as retch after retch spewed what
was left in his stomach onto the ground.

Then the sound came again,
the third time. It was simply too much for the boy. He passed out
cold in the grip of the Swûreg warriors holding him. He slowly
slipped into unconsciousness.

The last thing heard as
fell into nothingness was the slurping laugh of the Storm Lord’s
Hand.

He was rent from his
rightful place – from his world. His very existence was torn from
the Earth. In a blink of an eye, the final pieces fell into place
and the planes of existence moved, shifted, and altered.

The Rending
finished…

…
and became the
Melding.

Anthony Herrera was no
longer in his grandmother’s backyard, but somewhere else. So
infinitely far away it couldn’t be calculated, possibly… even
dreamed.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Abducted

Wednesday, November
24
^th
,
the Day Before Thanksgiving,

A Few Minutes
Earlier…

Andrew Ibarra lounged on
the couch, watching TV, one of his legs strewn over the back of the
worn piece of furniture, the other resting on a pile of pillows. He
was dressed in a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt,
and his Nikes. His hair was slightly off kilter from lying down for
an extended period. Remote in hand, his finger flicked the control
every third second or so as he surfed through the hundreds of cable
channels available to him.

Something of import
flashed across his mind and he remembered he was supposed to clean
up the front room. A task he was given, by his father, over an hour
ago! He sat up quickly, placed the remote on the coffee table in
front of him, glancing around the room. He noticed for the third or
fourth time the messed up couch covers and pillows, the disheveled
magazines, yesterday’s newspaper strewn on the love seat in the
corner, nearly covering the entire piece of furniture. His eyes
fell to the empty bag of potato chips on the floor between the TV
and the table before him. He stared at the crumbs trailing from the
bag.

Should I get up and clean
this pigsty?

It probably mattered
little if he did or didn’t do what his father told him. He would
probably yell at him either way. Lately, it seemed nothing he did
was up to his father’s standard. So, why waste the effort,
right?

It wasn’t as though he
father was mean or abusive. The situation at the Ibarra residence
was nothing like that. Rather, his father was stressed, about a
great many things. It was to the point that lately, all he seemed
to do around the house was yell. There were no calm discussion
anymore, no level-toned admonitions. Those days were long gone. He
was dissatisfied with everything, including Andrew, his brothers
and his sister. But, it seemed to the teenager, his father took out
his frustration on him the most.

His siblings all handled
their fathers’ change in demeanor differently, each in their own
way. Andrew wanted to do the best he could. He wanted to prove to
his father that being the oldest he could handle the responsibility
of helping out around the house, assist with the younger kids.
Which, he believed should also earn him more freedom. But, his
father was just too critical of everything he tried, whether it was
some chore or wiping his little sister’s face. It was beginning to
bother him on a deeper level than he realized.

Is that really the issue
though? Come on, Drew, you gonna start making excuses and land
yourself on Oprah now?

Maybe not…

This was, after all, not
some type of rebellion against his father. His father wasn’t even
the cause of his distraction of late. Since he’d come back home on
that rainy night, he’d found it hard to concentrate. Those memories
made it difficult for him to remember what he’d promised to do. It
had nothing to do with dissatisfaction. He was just making excuses,
trying to avoid the real issue at hand. The creepy kid and her
monster wolf - those were the real cause to his disjointed
malaise.

For the past two days, all
he could think of was the Isighünd – Jätung. He could see it as
clear as if it stood right there in the front room. He could make
out every detail of the massive wolf-like pet belonging to that
creepy bleached-blonde, that midget version of Dakota Fanning on
crack, named Nixy. He couldn’t get his mind around the sheer size
of the beast or its incredibly huge fangs or its gruesome gaze, so
filled with hunger and hate. He imagined when it ripped flesh it
would probably howl in pure ecstasy, savoring every blood-sluiced
chunk of meat squishing down its throat.

Dude, yuck!

How could something like
that exist here in Los Angeles in this day and age? The god damned
thing was from another time, another place, right? It has no
business being here. And how in the hell could roam around my
neighborhood and shit, and go completely unnoticed?

How long had the creature
been here? How long would it stay?

And where the hell were
the cops? Crap, weren’t they supposed to be patrolling the streets
and keeping everything safe and shit? A thousand bucks says they’re
out there, somewhere, eating donuts without a care in the world,
like some fat kid in a candy store!

He stood up and made his
way toward the empty bag of chips and began picking up the crumbs
that had fallen out of it, carefully placing them back in the bag.
Absently, he wondered if he would ever walk farther up Milbur
Street than where his house stood. He seriously questioned if he’d
even go up half way to visit Anthony.

Would the creature be
there waiting for me? Would it want to get at my brothers and my
baby sister?

“
So you have chosen to
include him this early into the game, eh, Anthony Herrera, when he
was not supposed to be a part of it at this juncture… Well, I guess
in the grander scheme of things, it matters little.”