Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1) (31 page)

I stood frozen, unable to help. Useless in this fight.

Yet it was my fault that all of this was going on. Because I hadn’t trusted my parents.

I had to do something. Maybe I could go inside. I could try to stop the bomb. Or remove the multiplier. Or the emotion.

I started to the right, between the soldiers and the building. I would skirt around them, sneak past the duel and into the building.

How much time was left before the bomb went off? Eight minutes? Seven? I couldn’t be sure.

Everything stopped.

I stood on the far side of the soldiers, looking over them, past Marti, who had started an arc around the last row of soldiers. My parents’ and Nick’s shapes filled the air just past the soldiers, in front of the doorway. The three of them stood still in the midst of the hanging emblems of fire and brink, with rain hissing around them and a mist fogging the air.

Marti stopped drawing her emblem, and turned to look at the duel.

My parents’ and Nick’s heads turned every which way as they scoured the emblems, as if checking them one last time. Those already lit continued to burn, and fire spread through others. Most were connected with trails of brink, which burned slowly, but once the flames connected with a new emblem, the emblem lit at regular speed. Each one that burned brought more of the rumble. I felt like we stood at the epicenter of an earthquake. The intense smell of burnt cinnamon made my head light.

Most of the emblems burned. Only a handful didn’t. In a few seconds, they would all catch fire.

A choking sob escaped from Mom’s lips. Dad’s face contorted in frustration, and he gritted his teeth against a scream. Nick’s face—already lit with red fire and brink—began to glow with a wide grin.

“I win!” Nick said, barely audible over the rumbling. He laughed, his eyes glittering red, yellow, and purple. “Again!”

Mom began to cry. She continued to stand in one place, her back straight, arms by her side, but her body shook. Dad turned his head to Marti and I.

“We’ve failed,” he shouted over the rumble. “But you have to stop him. Don’t let him take that brink.”

More emblems burned. The trembling all around us intensified. How could I stop Nick? What was about to happen to my parents?

“If you can’t,” Marti said, “how could I?”

“You can’t stop me!” Nick said.

Like my parents, he still didn’t move. He couldn’t without disrupting his spells.

Maybe I could still disrupt them by scribbling in the air. I didn’t know what would happen if I did, but maybe it wouldn’t be any worse than what would happen if the spells culminated.

I reached into my pocket for the vial and started to run back around the soldiers. Why was Marti just standing there? Why hadn’t she started to do anything?

“Richie,” Dad shouted over the noise, “don’t do it. You can’t stop it, now. It’s too late. Just save yourself. You have to trust me. If—”

He never finished his sentence. I never made it to the brink. Because the last of Nick’s emblems caught fire.

Chapter 56: Another in a long string of questionable choices

I really never meant to blow anyone up.

-Nick Savage

The rumble reached a crescendo as all of the sound gathered together into a single groan of the deepest note imaginable. My ribs felt like they might detach from my spine and sternum.

From the emblem nearest Nick—three interlocking circles inside a triangle—streams of red light shot at my parents, striking them in their chests. Marti screamed. My parents didn’t make a sound. Nick dashed through emblems to the building’s doorway.

My parents stiffened. The streams of light flowed into them, lifting them up onto their toes. Their mouths widened in silent wails. Their heads tilted backward.

I couldn’t fathom it, couldn’t stop this nightmare.

The streams of light thinned, faded, and disappeared. My parents fell backward, as if the light had tapped them so they would collapse.

They fell backward through the burning emblems, smearing the fire, landing like boards in the gravel.

Every emblem extinguished, turned to ash that the rain slapped to the ground.

I ran to my parents.

They’d lost. They’d died trying to fix the mistakes I’d made. Guilt filled me.

Wet ash surrounded me, turning to a nasty black paste on my skin, clothes, and the gravel. I reached Dad. He lay on his back, his eyes open. A line of black ash smeared across his forehead. The expression on his face made him look just like one of the soldiers.

Maybe Nick hadn’t killed him.

I placed my ear against his chest, listening for a heartbeat, blinking to keep the ashen rain out of my eyes.

His heart beat, slow but strong.

A joyous shout escaped my lips as I leaped to Mom. She also lay with her mouth and eyes wide, staring into the clouds.

I listened for a heartbeat, and heard it.

Relief flooded me. Except—in just a few minutes, a nuclear bomb would go off less than fifty feet away.

I stood and turned toward the building. Rain had washed most of the ash from the air. The mist had dissipated. Nick stood in front of a zip-door that blocked the doorway. No one could enter the building until someone triggered the zip-door.

Marti stood a few feet back from him, brink in her hands. Her body trembled as she faced him.

“You have a choice, missy,” Nick said. “You can step through this portal into a potentially dangerous situation, or you can stay behind and try to save them.” He motioned at the soldiers, then at my parents. “The choice is yours.”

“Or,” she said, “I could just keep you from leaving, and we can all die.”

He grunted and slid to the side, out of the path to the zip-door. “If you want to save their lives, you’ll have to let me escape.” He smiled as if at a disobedient child. “I think you know what to do.”

She glared, her fists clenched at her side. “It might be worth it just to see you dead.”

“Except you wouldn’t see me dead.
You
would be dead along with me. But it’s up to you. Will you save lives? Or destroy them?”

They faced each other for a few seconds before, with a growl, Marti turned back to the soldiers. She immediately began drawing ribs on one of her arches.

What to do? I could throw my parents through the portal, but unless I could get us all through at the same time, someone would be left behind.

Nick turned to me, smiling. “Son, I made a promise to you that I need to keep.”

I tensed to tackle him, though I didn’t know what good that would do. “That’s real comforting. Thank you so much.”

“I told you I would give you some brink created from your emotion, and I will.”

“Oh, yes. I’m so worried about that at this point. You’ve lied to me all this time.” I felt foolish about it—for being inclined to believe him. But clearly, from the start, everyone else had been right. I shouldn’t have believed a word he’d said.

I wanted to punch him in the teeth.

“No,” he said, “I haven’t lied to you. Not once, Richie. You have to believe me.”

“Shut up,” I said. “I do not.”

“Just do whatever he says,” Marti said. She had her back to me, still drawing foot-long lines perpendicular from one of her arches. She’d lit one of the lines, and it had disappeared.

“Why aren’t you fighting?” I said to her.

She glanced at me. “I know a lost cause when I see it. Cut your losses.” She stepped over a soldier on the edge of the group, and finished drawing ribs along the arc.

“That’s right,” Nick said. “She’s made the right choice. You have a choice, too, son. You can try to stop me, or come with me.”

I stared at him, my heart thundering. I had no good way out of the situation. That’s what happens when you throw a nuke in with a lunatic rock star.

“Son,” he said, “I don’t want anyone to die. Not your parents. Not Marti. Not even these good soldiers. In my plan no one dies. I’m not a murderer. I’m not even insane.”

“That’s debatable,” I said.

He gave me a patient smile. “Just come with me, so I can keep my promise to you.”

“What, you’re a man of honor now?”

“I’ve always been a man of honor. I’ll take you somewhere we can watch from a distance.”

“Why not stay here? Under Marti’s protective spell?”

He laughed. “Certainly, we can, but why risk a spell malfunction?”

“You’re risking them,” I said, and pointed at the soldiers, Marti, and my parents.

“Some things can’t be helped, son. Stories say that the spell works, but I’m not going to risk it. I’m not going to trust someone else’s story when I haven’t seen it with my own eyes. Are you coming with me, or not?”

Marti looked over her shoulder. She’d started back across the group of soldiers, drawing that same long arc. The series of curves and lines looked like a toothed cage over the soldiers.

“Go with him, you idiot. Don’t you remember what your dad said right before going under? He said to save yourself. Trust your dad.”

I looked at my parents. At Marti. At the zip-door that separated me from the inside of the building.

Two options to choose from. Should I trust Dad’s last order? Or should I make my own decisions and try to take action on my own?

I made my choice.

The only choice I could make.

Chapter 57: Alone, I battle evil

I love the smell of brink in the morning.

-Nick Savage

Nick drew another zip-door as I dragged my parents over to the group of soldiers.

“We’ll be fine,” Marti said, giving my hand a squeeze. She leaned close. “Find a way to keep him from coming back here for the brink.”

“Can’t you just get the brink once the bomb goes off?” I asked. “Because you’ll be fine, right?”

She gave me an uncertain look. “I don’t know.”

“He can’t stop me,” Nick said. “He doesn’t know a single spell.”

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me away from Marti, through the door. The last thing I saw was her, standing above my parents, brow furrowed, lips turned down.

Nick and I stepped out onto a metal floor that clanged with each of our steps. I stumbled to one knee.

“Perfect!” he said.

“Hooray,” I said, standing. “I’m safe! You twisted jerk!”

We’d zipped to the balcony of a tower. It had a sheet metal floor and a waist-high railing—beyond which was only darkness, so I couldn’t tell how high up we were. The balcony curved to the right and left, presumably around the entire tower. Nearby, a red light over a metal door provided the only illumination.

I could no longer feel the emotion.

“By my reckoning,” he said, “we’re safe. Thirty miles east of the bomb.” He took a deep breath and looked to the distance. “Near enough to watch.”

“You’re sick.”

He grunted and turned to me. “You’d find it fascinating if you weren’t so fretted about your parents.”

“You’re right. Who needs parents, anyway?”

“They should survive the blast. According to SOaP, anyway.” He turned and plucked a vial of brink from his arm. “Back in the fifties and sixties, SOaP tried out spells to shield against A-bombs. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they didn’t. My own research never produced a conclusive answer, because I was never able to detonate an atomic bomb, but SOaP insists that they work. They block radiation, heat, and fire.” He poured some of the brink into his hand. “Just to be safe, I’m going to protect us against the explosion, as well.”

“Oh, good. I feel so much better about their safety.”

He bent to the metal floor and began to draw a straight vertical line in front of the railing. “Best to be as safe as possible.”

I watched him, not really focusing on his actions. How could Marti and my parents possibly survive at the hypocenter of a nuclear explosion? I’d seen movies. I’d seen cartoons. I’d seen plenty of re-creations of people disintegrating in nuclear explosions. Even just within miles. And my parents and Marti and the soldiers were fifty feet away from the bomb.

I stepped backward, my knees going weak, and fell. My butt hit the metal floor and gave off a clang. It hurt, but I didn’t care.

Nick finished drawing his vertical line, about eight-feet high, then drew a curved line from the right to the left. It intersected the vertical line at the top. He tossed the vial of brink over the edge, and plucked another from his left arm. He didn’t have many left. Three dangled from his right arm, and two more from his left.

“After the bomb goes off,” he said, “we’ll give it a few minutes, then zip in to get the brink.”

“It’ll be too late. By then my parents will get the brink. Them or Marti.”

At that, he turned to me and narrowed his eyes. “No, I reckon not. It’ll be too windy and hot outside their barrier for them to get to it. They should be protected from fire, heat, and radiation, but only if they stay in the barrier. I, however, have prepared a safe place to zip into.” He turned and continued to draw the emblem.

He sounded reasonable, but Marti’s spell to protect them could fail. Plenty of what she’d done tonight had gone wrong.

I should have trusted them. I should have obeyed them, and stayed out of this entire mess.

But it wasn’t over yet. I still had the red vial of brink Mom had given me. I reached into my pocket and pulled it out. As I did, my fingers brushed the metal cube that Nick had given me earlier that night.

I held the brink up, and considered it with a frown.

What could I do with it? What spells could I cast?

Nick finished drawing perpendicular lines to his emblem. He took out his lighter and touched it to the center of the spell. As the flames spread all throughout the brink, he turned back to me and started when he saw my vial.

“Where’d you get that?”

There had to be a way to defeat him. “I pulled it out of my butt.”

“Give that here,” he said, and held his hand out. “I don’t like that look in your eyes.”

I couldn’t compete with him on any magic level, but maybe I could overpower him physically.