The Lightwielder Files

Chapter 5

The two boys entered behind a mahogany door with the number 12 engraved on it in what Max thought looked like white gold as impossible was that was but then again a lot of things he thought were impossible had become possible today. 

The room was painted in a deep shade of red, there was a huge stereo system beside the blackened window.  There was a huge marble wardrobe besides a dresser made with the same material. Along the walls were various posters of bands such as Coldplay, The Script, and BTS but what struck Max the most about Adam’s room was the wall behind the king-sized bed was the assortment of weapons mainly whips. Max felt he was looking at a wall in Indiana Jones’s room. Apart from the whips were knives of different lengths and blade styles. Some looked like normal kitchen knives while others had jagged edges and there was one that was less knife than a cleaver. 

“Theses should fit you”, Adam announced from behind him. He seemed amused at Max’s fascination with his whips. “Mum loves to buy me oversized stuff, so I’ve got enough on hand.”

He tossed them into Max's hands then turned around for privacy's sake. 

Max untangled the bundle and found there was a pair of black pants with silver studs along each of the legs. There was a dark green waistcoat with gold stripes on the back that clasped on the front with a dragon clip. There was also what looked to Max an ebony choker with spikes. 

He put on the clothes which were really more out there than what he was used to.

“I feel like a family-friendly stripper”, he mourned when he was done. 

“Careful those are my clothes you’re talking about”, Adam chided playfully, putting a hand around the other boy’s shoulders. “And anyway you’ll blend at the pub.”

“Wait," Max said pulling away from Adam suddenly. “We’re going to a pub?”

“Yes”, Adam intoned slowly, as if speaking to a dunce. 

“But we’re under 21 so how do we get in?”

“Well, all I can say is that there are parts of the pub that are not just for 21-year-olds. The supernatural parts of it at least.”

He tossed a piece of Max’s hair behind his ear before dragging him out of the room where Mona stood against the wall, arms across her chest with spears attached to both hips. She gave a low whistle when Max came out of the room wearing his new garb.

“Wow," she said, “you strike me down like lightning.”

“I told you looked good," Adam said proudly. “In fact, I don't think you ever looked better.”

Max’s forehead wrinkled at the sort-of -compliment from the stylish boy and he couldn’t help but add with a smile, “You say that as if you’ve been watching me my whole life.”

Adam quirked a dark eyebrow. “I swear I haven’t and even if I had, I really think my point still stands.”

“Enough you two”, Mona drawled walking in between the two boys. “Let’s get going, you know how werewolves are after midday.”

Max did not know how werewolves were after midday and under normal circumstances, he wouldn't want to find out. Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely true, he would have been fascinated and probably wondered why they weren’t more worried about werewolves at midnight. 

He stopped thinking about werewolves and when they were at their most dangerous and had another pressing thought about his two traveling companions.

“What are you guy’s light powers?” he asked. 

“I’m an Astra, Mona’s a Flasher”, Adam explained, and wanting to give a demonstration, a bolt of lightning came out of Mona’s fingertips, bright and quick as if it was still in the sky. 

“If you guys have all these powers why do you carry weapons about as well?”

“That’s like asking why eat with a fork when you have fingers”, Mona said, twirling a small spear between her fingers. “Our powers are useful yes, but sometimes you need something more concrete especially when you’re dealing with monsters, which reminds me…”

All of a sudden she threw the spear in her hand to Max who caught it just in time before it hit the floor which surprised him. Perhaps it was a Lightwielder thing. A new reflex or rather one he had and was now learning to use.

“In case things get messy”, Mona added with a wink. On Max’s right, Adam pulled out another spyglass and a weird-looking powder from a satchel on his hip. 

“What is that?”

“Is that going to be your catchphrase from now on?” Adam quipped. 

“Can you blame me?” Max retorted. 

“Okay, this is lightsahde it’ll help us travel to Fado pub.”

“So you have things you can travel with? So why did  you take the L Mona?”

She shrugged. “I wanted some variety.”

“All I have to do is imagine where I want to go blow on the spyglass and the lightshade should take us there”, Adam explained, gesturing for Max to come closer to the circle they were forming. 

Adam closed his eyes and blew on the spyglass. For a minute though, nothing happened until Max felt a light tickle all over his body as if he was n***d out in snowfall. Then all of a sudden, he felt as if his body was evaporating into thin air. He opened one eye that he didn’t even realize that he had closed, and saw that he was surrounded all in shimmery white light. He looked on either side of him to the siblings who looked like they were going on a routine walk in the city, he felt he was standing on a roller coaster that went slowly if such a thing existed.

“We’re almost there”, Mona said her voice muffled as if coming from the end of a tunnel even though she was standing right beside Max. How she knew where they were well enough to know that they were almost at the pub, Max would never know. All he could see was still the white light but then he started to see other shapes form out of the haze. Shapes, like other people and streets and sidewalks, until they were standing in the middle of a busy, street people buzzing around like bees around them, and on the other side of the road was the Fado pub. 

“Wow”, Max exclaimed, looking around to make sure that this really was a real street and not some figment of his imagination, that they were not still in the Luce Order premises but this was as real as it could be. “I can’t believe it, we’re here, we’re really here on the other side of town.”

“You better believe it”, quipped Adam with a bright, “because it happened.” Then he frowned as he looked down at his watch, which as Max could see had straps made of black beads.

“And we are here after 12”, Adam gripped.

“Don’t worry little brother”, Mona cooed, gesturing for the group to cross the street. “All that nonsense Damien about werewolves and midday is totally that. Nonsense.”

“Tell that to Steve”, the dark-haired boy grumbled. 

“Who’s Steve?” Max asked his eyes on the shrub boxes outside the pub.

“Oh no one”, Mona said in a dulcet tone. “We’re here now.”

Inside of going towards the front door, they rounded to the side as he and Monad had with the church.  Max was beginning to wonder if all the buildings in Chicago had some magical area on the side. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise him after the morning that he had. 

“Look," Adam exclaimed, pointing to of all things, the garbage cans. “That must have been where the pygmy hound was sent from, I can feel the vibrations from the fur.”

Mona grimaced, making a show of holding her nose. “Sure, smells like where a pygmy hound would hide.”

Then she turned to another wall and did some elaborate knock. Max half-expected the wall to open as it had in the cathedral but instead one brick was pushed aside and on the side stood a figure with eyes of burning old that immediately set Max on edge. 

“What are a bunch of Lightwielders doing here?” the figure’s voice gruffed. 

“If you let us in”, Mona began deftly, “ We’ll tell you and all the rest of your good patrons all the salacious details.”

The figure’s eyes narrowed. 

“And there is the slight problem that a pygmy hound was traced back to your vicinity. A pygmy hound attacked a Lightwielder this very morning. We need to ask you some questions. If you don’t let us in we’ll have to take it up with your Alpha, who I’m sure is a very busy lady and would not appreciate the intrusion.”

Max could practically hear the growl on the other side and he half-expected the wall to shake and fall down in bricks and pieces all around their heads but instead, the brick fixed itself back into the surface of the wall just as they had found it.

“So Alpha it is then”, Mona said with a clap of her gloved hands. 

“Great”, Adam grumbled. “So now we have to see an Alpha werewolf after midday. This is just so positive.”

“Will you quit your whining”, his sister snapped but amongst their bickering Adma heard another rumble behind the wall. 

“Shh”, he said and the siblings turned to him in confusion. “Listen to that.”

The rumbling continued when suddenly the wall pushed back like it did back at the Cathedral and there stood a tall hulking beast of a man his eyes still blazing gold. Max to say the least was disappointed. The image of a werewolf didn’t come to mind while looking at this man just the image of a guy who busts his butt regularly at the gym. Maybe the others would look different. After all, not all humans and Lightwielders looked alike so why should all werewolves?

The man stepped aside allowing them through, Max tried not to look like he was ducking his head from view but falling due to his height, Adam sauntered after him with false bravado that would probably disappear in the next couple of minutes while Mona came behind them saluting the doorman.

“You’re a real pal, you know that”, she said smiling, “Man’s best friend all the way.”

He gave a low growl, showing overly pointed canines. Yeah, Max was seeing the werewolf in the man now. 

Mona turned around sheepishly, walking down a dimly lit flight of stairs then whispered into his ear, “Do you think that was too much.”

Max smirked, shaking his head, then leaned to Mona’s ear, “I’d say yes if I thought it would keep you from doing it again.”

It was Mona’s turn to smirk, and Max could see that her canines were kind of sharp as well but in a cute way, if Mona could be described as cute.

“No, I’m always on like that, doing too much.”

Max was about to come up with a witty retort of his own until they came down to what he assumed was the basement of the pub. Did the patrons upstairs know that this existed, that they were werewolves beneath their very feet? Maybe they did know but thought see no evil then there is no evil. Thye just minded their businesses and went on with their regular lives. 

The room they were in looked like some sort of hunting lodge that he had seen on tv. They were deer antlers, bear heads, and was that a crocodile? All these appendages were mouthed on the molasses-colored wall in between various lamps attached to the wall. 

There were a bunch of people surrounding a pool table, others laughing heartily and jesting at a minibar and a raucous bunch around a circular wooden table chewing and placing bets on an arm wrestling competition. 

“You can practically smell the testosterone," Mona whined.

“And the body spray," Adam added making eye contact with a werewolf girl seated near a bookshelf. "Don't forget the body spray, I think it’s Axe.”

Max sniffed the air and found he agreed with him. “Well not all of us can afford Old Spice.”

“Yeah Adam," Mona joked, “Not all of us want to smell like Abuelo.”

Piano music drifted across the space, a light jaunty tune juxtaposing the tension in the air. Mona led the group to a little corner of the room, where a man decked in fur sat on a chair also draped in fur. His hair was dark and matted and his eyes surveyed the scene, with a paroxysm of laughter he beckoned the teenagers forward.

“So what are you Lightwielders doing on werewolf territory?” he hissed, low, hard, and long. “And going about threatening to go to the Alpha, now you've got some guts.”

Then he gave a wicked grin, his red mouth spreading wide. “Now whether you leave here with your guts still in your bellies is another thing entirely.”

“We won’t keep you long”, said Mona charmingly, stepping forward until she was a hair’s breadth away from the werewolf. “We just wanted to enquire how a pygmy hound came to be in the dumpster of your establishment.”

The wolf raises a hairy eyebrow the guffawed. 

“Little Lightwielder, do you think I keep a tally of every single being in this area?”

“No, you don’t look like the intellectual tallying type”, Mona retorted cooly. “It’s just pygmy hounds don’t usually come to this part of town, and this one in question attacked a Lightwielder against its solitary nature.”

The wolf leaned forward his fur dropping off his shoulder, showing a well-defined pectoral. 

“Maybe the Lightwielder in question was being an annoying git”, he snapped.

But Mona didn’t rise to the bait. 

“That could have possibly been the case but it wasn’t. This pygmy hound  attacked said Lightwielder in his own house, how you do explain that?”

The wolf had a hand to his temples as if the conversation was annoying him or boring him or just both. 

“I can’t because I don’t know every single damned thing that goes on here.”

“Do you happen to have any cameras around the area?” Adam asked. 

“What are you hoping you’ll find, boy?”

“The pygmy hound and anyone involved with it.”

The wolf narrowed his eyes at the group and then gestured behind them and whistled.

All of a sudden they were joined by a muscular boy with a mane of brown hair. He wore a grey r-shirt revealing his larger arms, a pair of black slacks, and around his neck was a necklace made from green glass. He looked no older than them.

“Harry, take our guests to the camera room would you.”

“Thank you”, Mona replied then with a wry smile added, “We’ll make sure not to go into the woods and stay on the path.”

The wolf looked confused as Mona laughed gently to herself at her joke. 

“How long were you waiting to use that one?” Adam asked. 

“Believe it or not, it just came to me”, she replied smugly, but the look disappeared from her face when she came into contact with the young male wolf, Harry. Her mouth fell open a brief minute and Max noticed that it may not have been the most common expression on her face. 

Harry didn’t seem to notice except for a slight flinch in his cheek. 

“Uh, this way”, he said, in a voice much deeper than expected from most teenage boys. He led them behind the bar through the cheering after someone had won an arm wrestling round. 

They walked past the kitchens and same to a technical-looking room. All the way there, Mona and Harry kept an odd distance from each other and not as Max expected firstly because of the apparent simmering animosity between Lightwielders and Werewolves but rather because of some personal history between the two. 

Adam nudged him as they went into the camera room and whispered into his ear.

“Do you kind of feel the awkwardness between those two?” 

“I thought I was the only one”, Max whispered back.

“Oh yeah”, Adam said in realization, “ Mona was dating some werewolf a while back, but she never said who.”

“How’d she know if was werewolf she was with?”

“She started coming to this side of town more often and she started buying all this wolfsbane one Etsy.”

Max gawked. “They sell wolfsbane one etsy?”

“They sell everything on Etsy where do you think I get my cool chokers from. They even sell blood not that I would trust it though.”

“Stop talking about blood and focus on the monitor," Mona snapped and there was no teasing in her tone. He seemed rather put off. Max assumed that this Harry moving the mouse between camera footage was her ex, it had to be. He found himself really wanting to know how all that went down, Which was really strange, he only met her this morning he shouldn't be wanting to know these private details of her life, ber brother didn't even seem to know, why should he. Perhaps it was because in the short span of time that he knew the Davenmeyer siblings, he learned more about himself, and though he knew that once he found his dad, he would be leaving the world of the Lightwielders, he couldn't help but feel some sort of kinship with them, something budding into friendship no matter how long they had together. 

He broke out of his daze to look at the footage of the dumpster on the screen. The timestamp read two days ago and 12pm. 

“Pygmy hounds don’t usually stay in one place for long especially if it’s unfamiliar”, Mona explained, “so I  think this is a good timeline.”

“So what am I looking for exactly Desdemona?”  Harry asked then flinched at the withering look Mona gave him.

“Only my dad calls me Desdemona”, she said icily. “So unless you have suddenly become my dad, you have a death wish wolf.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed, “Well, sorry it just slipped.”

He didn’t sound sorry to Max’s ears and either Mona didn’t hear what he heard or just she plain didn’t care anymore because she replied, “that’s okay, is there anything in any of these that look weird or like a pygmy hound.”

Harry typed fast on the keyboard in front of him and the many squares of footage were reduced to four. 

“That one," Adam pointed “the one from earlier this morning”. 

Harry clicked on the one Adam was pointing to and it enlarged revealing the dumpster at the back of the pub at 6:15 am. 

“Nothing yet”, Max noted despondently, watching as a leaf blew by and then some early morning drink stragglers.

“Patience”, Mona chided almost sounding just a mother. 

The pygmy hound showed up coming out from under the dumpster it looked like it was yawning. 

“There’s our hound”, Mona said with veiled delight, which turned to shock when she saw what happened next.

A cloaked figure came and knelt in front of the pygmy hound. 

“Is there another angle on this?” she asked. 

“Let me check”, Harry replied, the earlier dispute over names forgotten. 

The angle flipped so they could see the image from a reversed position but what they saw shocked the two seasoned Lightwielders. The man in the dark cloak was also wearing a medieval plague doctor mask but that surprisingly wasn’t the weirdest thing about him. 

Froom his hands hear where the pygmy hound lay unmoving came what looked like a lightning bolt but instead of it being silvery in color it was dark black. Max remembered that it looked like the lighting bolt the dark wizard had on the mosaic.

All of a sudden, his mask began to move slightly as if he were speaking to the pygmy hound. Then the pygmy hound rose up on its hind legs and began to move lethargically t out of the ally following the man’s directions, to a street that would eventually lead to max’s home. The group gawked.

Adam was the first one bold enough to break the silence.

“Was-was that a…?”

“A Darklighter?” Mona added face nearly frozen. “Yes, yes it was.”

“A Darklighter?” Max queried relying on the little bit of Lighwielder lore, he had discovered earlier, “Isn’t that person who’s had their powers, their light corrupted by the darkness?”

“Yes”, Mona replied still in a daze, “Their numbers aren't as much as they were in the Dark ages, there are still some rouge Lightwielders who can perform the ritual but they usually live in enclosed communities. If a Darklighter is behind your dad’s disappearance then he is in danger.”

Max’s stomach sank with dread. What had his dad gotten himself into with the Darklighters?

He turned to Harry who was uncomfortably watching this exchange.

“Hey, is there any way you can see which way the guy went next?” he asked.

Harry shrugged despondently. “I can try.”

He furiously typed on the keyboard, fast-forwarding a few minutes from when the pygmy hound left the area but all of a sudden the man in the cloak and mask vanished. 

“What?” Max exclaimed, looking at each of the video screens. 

“Damnit!” Mona yelled, punching the table in front of her causing it to shake. “He must have traveled with Lightsahde or was under glamour.”

“Glamour?” Max repeated.

“It’s what keep supernatural beings from being seen by humans at will”, Adam explained. “Lightwielders can manipulate it as often as they want.”

“And so can Darklighters apparently”, Mona grumbled, tossing a dyed lock behind her ear. “We’re gonna need to go back to HQ, if a Darklighter is involved it’s above our paygrade.”

“We don’t even get paid”, Adam said. 

“All in all, we have to go,” Mona said, then glanced at the werewolf who had helped them. Suddenly she looked kind of shy. 

“Thanks, Harry”, she said airily. 

He gave her a cool -guy type of nod.

“Don’t mention it Davenmeyer”, he replied, “Or does your step mum call you that?”

Mona made a rude gesture before heading out, with Max and Adam smirking behind her. 

“50 bucks they get back together in a week”, Adam whispered conspiratory.

Max wasn’t really in the mood to joke so instead he said, “You have me at a disadvantage, Adam, you know her better than I do.”

Before Adam could even think about replying there was a huge crash heard from upstairs. It was promptly followed by others and piercing screams interspersed with waling howls and the faint sound of clothes ripping.

“A barfight?” Max asked as Harry rushed past all of them to get back to the source of the commotion. 

“At 12 in the afternoon?” Mona retorted incredulously. 

“Is a werewolf haunt what would you expect?” Adam seethed his whip tipped with iron already in his hand. 

The group ran out following Harry back out to the main parlor,  where they met a scene of pure chaos. Max knew he’d get a chance to see the werewolves acting like werewolves and frankly, he was not disappointed if a little slightly terrified. 

Wolves in their natural forms were standing on the hind legs or crouched about covered in pelts of fur ranging from light brown to ebony. Some with gnashing teeth, and others covered in deep thick scars but that wasn’t what scared the Lightwielders the most about this scene, what it was were the other creatures that the werewolves were fighting. They seemed canine in appearance like large Siberian Huskies but what set them apart from real Siberian huskies was the fact that they seemed to be made of shadow. Dark billowing clouds, contorted to the form of huskies but the damage they could do was no shadow, it was entirely real. Already a few, werewolves were down from the claws and teeth of the huskies but then they stopped in their attack. 

“I can’t believe this”, Mona whispered in terror.

“Why, what are they?” Max asked anxiously, his spear already in his hand, his finger on the button should he need it to elongate and keep him safe from the shadows, 

“Hellhounds”, she replied, her knife twisting both ways in her hands. “Agents of Darklighters.”

And they turned to face to face them, or rather him, he felt a weird connection to the beasts, something in him that was drawing them towards him. Their hulking bodies skulk across the lino floors. Max was about to throw his spear into the flank of one of the Hellhounds rearing at his left. Then all of a sudden, a searing burst of white light came from his right. The hound shrank back in terror were a werewolf which Max recognized to be Harry tore it to ribbons. 

Max looked to his side to see white shimmery light emitting from Adams's hand. It was the Mona who had backed some more hellhounds into a corner ready for two maroon-colored werewolves to strike at them. Except here light wasn’t white and shimmery with was a striking silver humming with raw power. A lightning bolt. 

One hound feinted to the left and reared for Max again, breaking him out of his amazement at the display of his friend’s powers. 

He lifted up his right hand that he unlocked and faced it towards the incoming hound. He was blown black into a crocodile tail, while all the while he was engulfed in a bright hazy yellow glow. Amongst the glow, he could see other rays of light a spectrum of colors and that was all before he passed out.