And It Arose from the Deepest Black (John Black Book 2) (8 page)

Holly tapped on the table again, so I explained the idea to her. Still, she was confused.

But won’t people still notice that you’re gone, Johnny?

It was a good question, and one I didn’t have an answer for, so I repeated it to my mom. A mischievous look spread across her face. Like she was going to enjoy pulling the wool over the eyes of the world. “John, you don’t look well,” she said. “I think you might be coming down with the flu.”

I grinned back at her. The simplest ideas were often the best. A little time locked away in the house, where no one would see. Or so people would think. But this meant I was going alone. Well, with Bobby, but, you know, not with my mom. Then I realized, I
had
to do it alone. Even if my mom came along, she couldn’t face the Gorgols. I had to do that. I didn’t want her bringing my sister any closer to those monsters anyway. So it was time to learn to do more on my own. My grin turned into a smile. Despite the fact that the whole thing scared me, a little. At the same time, I felt a little bit of a fire starting to burn. There was a fight coming, and part of me was saying
Bring it o
n
.

“Yeah, you look sick, John. And come to think of it,” Mom said, “Bobby didn’t look too good today, either.”

Interlude

Reaching out. Reaching.

The signal is lost.

No, the signal is not there. Has never been there.

Scanning. Searching. Something, like static in the air, makes the transmission waver.

Wait. Another. There is another signal. Not the one sought, but something new.

And the signal sends feelings.

Hurt.

Worry.

Anger.

Frustration.

Determination.

A second new signal appears, blending the two. It does not send feelings.

It has none.

12

Sitting in row 35, seat B, with Bobby next to me in the window seat, I thought,
Well, that was easier than I expected.

Bobby took a sip of the soda the flight attendant had brought to him and gave a little grin. I could tell he was really enjoying himself. To be honest, so was I.

It was the middle of the night, what they call a “red eye.” We chose the flight because it was half empty, so we weren’t technically stealing, just stowing away. Which was stealing from the airline, but, you know, they were going to fly the plane whether we were on it illegally or not, so the theft was at least minimal. Plus, we cut ourselves some slack for trying to save the world.

“Dude, this is amazing,” Bobby said. And I remembered that he’d never been on a plane before. He stared out the window at the dark country below like a kid waiting for Santa Claus. Lights glowed in patterns unrecognizable from the ground, showing the rigid structures of our cities and towns.

Rather than gawk at the sights, I thought of the Gorgols. A single Gorgol walking through any of the little towns we could see below would result in hundreds dead, dozens of homes destroyed.

And I felt fear. Sol was a man, an adult. That was fearsome enough for me. But the Gorgols were giant monsters. And there were two of them. And, well, if we failed… I didn’t want to think about that.

What the hell was I doing? All the effort, all the secrecy. Just to fly us to our deaths? I started to hyperventilate.

“Johnny, stop,” Bobby said.

I turned to him, not even realizing how fast my breathing had become. I’m sure I was flush and red in the face. I tried to calm myself.

“Johnny, seriously,” he said. “Have you heard of a no-win situation?”

I nodded, still breathing heavy.

“Yeah? Well, this is a no-lose situation. You and me together. Two superpowers!” He held up his hand for a high-five, but I just kept panting. After a moment, he lowered his hand, dejected. “Anyway, here’s the deal. We watch each other’s backs. And worse comes to worst, we bail. Fair?”

Between breaths, I tried to speak. “What?”

“I mean it. We bail. This whole monster-killing thing doesn’t work out, we get the hell out. Okay?”

I appreciated what Bobby was trying to do. Calm me, give us a semblance of a plan, a way
out
. I was just pretty sure that we were
in
no matter what. Once we attacked the Gorgols, they wouldn’t just let us go. I could feel it. “But they’ll just come to us anyway, come after my sister.”

“True. But if we have to bail and think up some new plan, we can, okay? And don’t forget Pip,” Bobby said. “It’s three on two once we find her.”

Find her.

Yeah, we needed to find her, as soon as we landed. Before we even thought of going after the Gorgols. “I know how we can do that.” My breathing was calming.

“Good, Johnny. How do you want to find Pip?”

Inside my head, I pulled away the shroud that covered my beacon. Bobby immediately leaned away from me. I guess it was that strong.

“That should work,” he said with a grin. “Assuming she wants to be found.” A second later, Bobby’s own beacon became stronger.

From Pip’s vantage, it must have sounded like two bells ringing, far away, but getting closer by the second. Maybe she would feel like the cavalry was coming. The idea made me chuckle.

“Feeling better, Johnny?” Bobby asked.

I shrugged. “For now.”

* * *

Between the time of night we left, the length of the flight, and the time zones we were passing through, it would have been a really smart idea for Bobby and me to get some shut-eye.

Instead, we drank a lot of soda and watched movies.

They had four movies to choose from. Some sappy adult drama that looked like it would make my mom cry. An animated movie for babies or possibly toddlers, but no one even a day older. Then there was one about a football team no one thinks can win, but magically does. (
Yay! What a surprise!
) And a monster movie.

Bobby watched the football movie. I wanted to see the monsters.

Maybe I could learn something.

The movie was called
The Sword of Atys
, and it was about some muscle-bound swashbuckling swordsman saving a kingdom from the tyranny of a large and rather grumpy dragon. I’m not really sure
why
the dragon was attacking the kingdom, even after I’d finished the movie, but maybe it was just bored.

Our hero, a chap named
Volteer
or
Vulture
or something like that, began as an innocent farm boy. My first eye-opening moment came when Volteer had his initial fight against the dragon.

He lost.

Beaten, battered, sent away to lick his wounds. Mocked by the dragon as he ran away.

Oh shit. I hadn’t considered that option with the Gorgols. That I might just be headed for Round 1 of a longer fight.

After that, Volteer began to listen to his mentor, a wizened old dude named Merwin. And, yes, I noticed that was a clear ripoff of Merlin from King Arthur. This was not A-grade material. Anyway, by the middle of the movie, Volteer was blocking and thrusting as well as any other movie swordsman I’d seen, even carrying on lengthy conversations (did I mention the dragon talked?) during his final duel. Volteer’s learning curve was somewhat mysterious. I think they edited out most of the parts where he was in Swordsman School for the sake of brevity.

But there were scenes of great majesty, Volteer poised with sword at the ready, awaiting the attack of the dragon, then deftly parrying claw or tooth. The
clang clang clang
of the battle went on for what seemed like forever. Eventually, Volteer remembered the dragon’s prophecy, which predicted a single fault in its otherwise flawless armor. Yes, I know, they ripped that off, too. With a dramatic swirling move that was more ballet than combat, Volteer spun in and thrust his sword into the heart of the beast, and it fell dead around him, leaving behind nothing but dust, a most likely very smelly dragon carcass, and a hero.

I found myself both smiling and deeply concerned. I didn’t have any swirling ballet moves to defeat the Gorgols. But I wanted very much to be the hero, despite the fact that I knew a certain arrogance came with that. Still, that thrust, into the dragon’s heart. I liked that.

Maybe too much.

A silly grin on my face, I realized Bobby was watching me. He didn’t bother saying anything or even taking off his headphones. He just smiled, pointed at the heroic Volteer on my screen, then pointed at me.

After the movie, I dozed for a short while, my ears filled with the ceaseless hum of the jet engines, a sound that was both annoyingly monotonous and strangely calming. The cabin was lit by only the dimmest of lights for the odd person who might stumble to a restroom in the middle of the night. I’d stayed up too late, jacked up from the excitement and soda and strangeness of the whole experience, and finally I crashed. And in my dreams, a dragon spoke, flying around me on updrafts of air.

But the dragon’s voice wasn’t the one from the movie I had just finished, the one with the over-the-top British accent and impossibly low bass growl. It had an accent, but I knew it was Portuguese. One I’d heard before.

In the voice of Sol, the dragon circled above me, saying, “John, my old friend.”

Old. Friend.

13

I popped up with a start, head throbbing. The lights were up, people talking and milling about. Bobby, thankfully, had woken before me and was actively pushing minds to ignore our presence. Flight attendants were shifting through the aisles, giving out trays of strangely plastic-encased breakfast.

But I didn’t hear any of that. I just heard the tone.

Pip had unleashed her beacon, calling us toward her. It had an odd, wavering quality to it. Like a Doppler effect on repeat.

I looked at Bobby, and he smirked. “Wondering when you were going to notice it. You slept through it for like 10 minutes.”

“Does her beacon always sound that way?” I asked. “It seems strange.”

“I don’t remember the warble, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t remember it having that… I don’t know, interference?” Bobby didn’t seem too concerned about the difference, though.

The voice from my dream still buzzed in my head, spinning around. I rubbed at my eyes, trying to clear my head.

And I realized I was about to land in a place ruled by monsters, and I was planning to fight them to the death. Not their death,
the death
. Which could mean
my
death. For the first time I could recall, I wished I drank coffee, or just understood why people drank it. It seemed desirable while I rubbed at my temples and tried to wake up. The pilot announced 20 minutes to landing.

“Ready, Freddie?” Bobby asked, dry-rubbing his hands together.

“No way, Jose,” I replied. It was one of two standard responses, the other being “Yes, indeedy, feed the needy.” But at that particular moment, I wasn’t feeling very ready.

The airport was on the eastern outskirts of the state capital, a good long drive from the coastal towns the Gorgols had mostly flattened. So we still had a healthy car ride ahead of us. Nonetheless, landing felt important.

After the flight attendant collected our breakfast trash, which consisted of a large amount of the food-like substance they were calling breakfast, I used my mind to raise my tray table into its upright and locked position. No hands.

“Are you trying to get someone to notice you?” Bobby asked.

“No, I just feel like I need to do
something
to practice.”

“How about this?” Bobby said. “When we get near the shore, we can stop some place and you and me can spar. Cool?” I nodded. “It’ll be like old times.” He grinned.

“Like what, the time you tried to kill me?”

“Ah, memories,” he said, one hand over his heart melodramatically.

“Ass,” I said. Brevity in insults is often best.

“If I’m an ass, then you’re friends with an ass. So what does that make you?” Bobby tilted his head in a sort of jaunty way.

I looked out the window to see the ground approaching, knowing that somewhere out there, two 200-foot-tall monsters were waiting for me. “It makes me stupid. Really stupid.”

* * *

Despite having his mind pushed to both fail to recognize us
and
be willing to drive us toward the Gorgols, we could tell the cab driver was getting uneasy.

“This will have to be close enough,” I said to Bobby as we sped through a deserted area of dense pines. “It feels like Pip is close by, maybe really close. And besides, you said we were going to spar.”

Bobby nodded, and we had the driver pull over. We didn’t have any money, so we sent him on his way with another little push to forget the whole thing ever happened. I wondered if he’d get halfway back to the airport to find his next fare and wonder why the heck he was so far out. We couldn’t worry about it. We were on foot in the land of monsters. We had exponentially bigger fish to fry.

Standing beside the road, the mental throb of Pip’s beacon seemed so loud that it might have been truly audible. She was close. She must have felt us coming and decided to meet us. There was still an odd quality to the tone, but we estimated its direction as best we could and began walking toward it. That led us into the thick pine forest, deeper and deeper, until we could no longer see or even hear the road. Finally, we came to a clearing. Well, not a clearing, but a place that had been cleared of normal growth in favor of crops. Orange trees grew in long rows, the fruit adding dots of bright color to the otherwise unbroken deep green extending into the distance.

We passed between orange trees, walking row to row, until Bobby stopped just ahead of me.

“Okay,” he said, turning around, smirking. “Let’s go.”

“Here?”

“Would you prefer a steel cage or something?” He dropped down into a fighting stance.

What the hell did I know about fighting stances, or technique? I had fought three people with power: Bobby, Petrus, and Sol. Of those, the fight with Bobby was a brawl, but in a way, no different than the random fistfights kids our age had. Petrus and Sol were different. In both cases, I never landed a single blow. In fact, I never threw a single punch. And I won both fights. Still, I couldn’t imagine a fight with a Gorgol that wouldn’t be full-contact. Sparring was going to be necessary. I raised my fists, halfheartedly. “Okay.”

We stood, nearly toe to toe, and I steeled myself, not sure when to start sparring, or, when I did, where I should strike first.

Something shot out at me and I was sent sprawling to the ground. Bobby laughed.

I shook my head, pointlessly swiping at my now dirty clothes as I started to get up. “I guess we’re starting now?” I said.

I felt him coming, felt something shooting out at me again. It was Bobby’s right fist, so fast it became a blur. No, that’s not right. So fast, his hand and arm actually blurred in real life, extended, sluiced. Like a liquid version of a person, Bobby struck at me.

This time, my body took over. Apparently, after the first knockdown, the rest of my cells decided they didn’t trust my mind to do the right thing. My head and upper body shifted, sluicing away from the blow. But Bobby didn’t relent. His left fist followed quickly, trying to catch my body in its new position. Again, I slid away.

We stood there, inches from one another, Bobby’s fists flying impossibly fast, with inhuman moves, my body dodging instinctively, sliding left and right, up and down.

I felt glancing hits, but nothing direct. Bobby tried harder and faster to punch me, but my body moved faster and faster to avoid it.

Anyone watching would have seen two pairs of nearly motionless feet and legs, with nothing but a shape-shifting mass of color atop each.

We kept on that way for what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than a minute or two, tops. When you operate at hummingbird speed, time seems different. Finally, I came to realize, as I dodged and slid, that I needed to do more than simply evade and defend. And a little fire lit inside me. A desire to change the fight.

I had to attack.

In the middle of a roundhouse Bobby was attempting to land, I swooped my right fist upward.

And Bobby sailed through the air, slamming against a nearby orange tree, shaking its limbs and sending a few green leaves scissoring to the ground. Bobby shook his head. “Ow,” he said. “Snuck one in on me.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said with a grin that spoke to exactly how sorry I was. Undaunted, Bobby jumped to his feet and lunged at me.

This time, he led with his left. My body sluiced, bending around his outstretched fist. My right hand punched at his face, but Bobby’s neck bent backward and I missed. Punches and dodges, back and forth, most of them missing or glancing off without effect. We were learning how our bodies could move, like flowing oceans of cells somehow kept together as a human form, but able to slide and sluice in unbelievable ways. Slowly, both Bobby and I started to smile.

And just when Bobby thought I was getting too complacent, he pulled up and froze for just an instant, throwing off the rhythm of our liquid fighting dance. Then, without warning, he put all of his effort into a double-fisted thrust into my abdomen. My body had almost no time to adjust, to slide out of the way, and so, although I was in the middle of a dramatic dodge, Bobby’s hands struck me, hard.

Letting out a harsh
oof
, I was sent through one row of orange trees, then the next, to skid to a stop in the moist, deep brown soil.

Bobby must have enjoyed his sudden success, because he didn’t pursue, but just left me to dust off, again, and come back to find him. Which, after a moment to shake off the cobwebs, I did. I honestly don’t know if it was the hit or the show of confidence that irked me more, but I knew one thing had changed. The fire inside me was no longer little, it was raging.

I was angry at Bobby. And I wanted to do something about it.

A static sound grew louder in my head, and for a moment I didn’t know if Bobby had knocked something loose inside me. Even more upsetting, Bobby had his back turned to me.  The nerve. I leapt up beside him, then quickly stopped dead in my tracks. Instinctively, I tensed when I saw the object of Bobby’s attention.

There was a man in a short-sleeve green shirt and khaki shorts standing as if watching us. At first glance, he looked like a Boy Scout, but in adult form. I didn’t see or feel it, but Bobby must have tried to push the man’s mind to ignore us, to move along. Because Bobby suddenly shook his head and gasped.

“Don’t do that,” the man said.