Submerging

  SUBMERGING

  BOOK THREE of THE STARLIGHT CHRONICLES

  C. S. Johnson

  Copyright © 2015 by C. S. Johnson.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Once more, for Sam. I look forward to the day when we truly see each other, face to face and heart to heart. Until then, I write for you as much as I write for myself.

  I also want to dedicate this book to Eric. I have never forgotten the moment you, in seeing me lost in sadness and uncertainty, opened your heart to me and gave me comfort. The memory of it always comes to the front of my mind when I wonder if I have made any difference in the world. Thank you for making such a difference in mine.

  Finally, I also owe this book in part to Andy. Many thanks for that small moment in the coffeehouse where we discussed sanctification; it gave me the clarity to see the cynicism in my heart was meant to be a precious thorn in my side.

  ☼1☼

  Expectancy

  The smile flew up onto my face the moment I woke up. It was a good day to be me.

  Psh. Every day is a good day to be me, I thought with a grin.

  “Ah.” I sighed happily as I sat up in my bed and stretched. I felt happy as a teenager could be. (It was very temporary, I assure you.)

  “Ugh . . . is it morning already?” The changeling dragon on my bed, Elysian—my self-proclaimed supernatural mentor—rolled over onto his scaly back, shielding his eyes from the brightness of the springtime sunlight peeking through my bedroom window. He groaned groggily, and I stifled back a laugh.

  “Come on, Ely,” I quipped, shooting myself out of bed as I pushed down my brown hair from its bed-head form. “Today's a good day.”

  “Whoa. Who are you, and what have you done with the real Hamilton Dinger?” Elysian asked, using his bat-like wings to prop himself up.

  I glanced over at the scaly dragon on my bed. I knew what he was thinking. Me? In a good mood? It was as rare as petroleum companies going green (meaning it was only done when enough people were ticked off). But there was a good reason I was happy.

  The month of April had arrived, and while it came with scholarly benchmarks and horrendous amounts of rain, it also brought a special gift: My birthday.

  “My seventeenth birthday is almost here.” I grinned as I started getting ready for the day. “That means I get to start harassing my friends for presents, and my parents for money and a party, and maybe a car this year.”

  “And you’ll pester me to start considering you mature, I'll bet.” Elysian groaned again, this time with annoyance rather than lethargy. “Ugh, this is terrible.”

  “Just let it go, would you?”

  I lost my grin momentarily as I caught sight of the mess on my desk; I hadn't had a chance to finish my homework from English. Oh well.

  The homework didn’t matter to me anyway. It’s not like it was an important class. Really everyone (important) knows English today. Who really cares about books when you have the Internet? And who really cares about school when Mrs. Night is teaching? Her class must’ve been set up as a charity for capacity-challenged teachers. (I have to stop myself here; if there is one thing that makes me angry, it is incompetency).

  There were many, many more important things to think about anyway. I was two years away from graduating high school. I had a great girlfriend, a good, paid internship at the Mayor’s office, and a college scholarship or two lined up, with at least one full-ride. And even with all of that, there was nothing I wanted more than just more.

  And I was going to get it. After all, I was also something of a superhero, a Starlight Warrior known to the public as “Wingdinger,” and every day I was growing more in strength, power, and speed. A slight bubble of happiness swelled within my heart at the sight of the blood red, four-point star on my wrist—the mark that branded me as a defender of Earth and solidified my calling.

  Yes, I thought. Change was coming, and along with it, growth, respect, and understanding.

  There was nothing I wanted more, and I was finally okay with admitting it to myself.

  “Birthdays don't strike me as happy, so much as depressing or pointless,” Elysian remarked, drawing me out of my thoughts.

  “I'm not surprised you hate birthdays,” I replied, wrinkling my nose. “You seem to dislike anything of supreme importance.”

  “Birthdays are not that important to me,” Elysian explained, “because I don't have one. But even a lot of humans don't seem to like birthdays that much. Some people even find them depressing.”

  “Just the women, I think,” I replied. “Either that or the unimportant people.”

  Elysian rolled his eyes. “What's the point of celebrating the anniversary of your birth? It's not like you did anything to deserve a party. Mothers do all the work.”

  “It's just a day that celebrates the awesomeness of a person—and since I'm so awesome, my party’s going to be awesome. And I want a car, too.”

  “Yes, how wonderfully mature and humble you are,” Elysian muttered sarcastically. “Why do you even want a car, anyway? If you really need to go somewhere, you can ride on my back.”

  “I can’t just ride you to school or take Gwen out on a date on your back,” I retorted. I hoped he wouldn’t push anymore on the subject. People don’t make careers out of being superheroes—not really. What was I going to do when Elysian and I were no longer needed to take down the bad guys in Apollo City?

  For good measure, I pretended to ignore the rest of my thoughts on the matter and focused on preparing for the day. “I’m supposed to meet Mikey and Gwen after work today, so I won’t be home for a while.”

  “You have work? It’s the weekend.”

  I rolled my eyes, irritated at Elysian. He’s supposed to be my mentor, but he doesn’t even remember my schedule half the time. He’s worse than my parents.

  While I’m not one for giving credit, I could at least admit my parents had proper excuses for not paying attention to me, much as it was still inexcusable. My parents, Mark and Cheryl, had their own jobs and my three-year-old brother, Adam, to look after. From what I could tell, Elysian only had to watch the news, slink around the city looking for our enemies, and . . . Well, that was about it, actually. And apparently even some of that was not necessary, since more often than not the monsters managed to find me anyway.

  “Yes, I have work now. Remember, Cheryl got me that part-time job at the Mayor’s office?”

  Some part of me figured Elysian just didn’t like to recall it. My job with the Mayor’s office did not impress him in the slightest; I still got ticked off with him as I thought about his reaction. He was upset that it could interfere with my so-called superhero duties.

  I was, even though I’d never admit it to Elysian’s face, starting to understand where he was coming from on the issue.

  Last fall, a meteorite landed in the middle of my home, Apollo City, smashing up a bunch of buildings and leaving a massive hole in the ground. I considered this an excellent symbol for what its arrival meant for my life.

  It wasn’t long after the meteorite struck that things started happening. Elysian had shown up, along with my previously-unknown superpowers. Elysian tried to convince me of my destiny to be a fallen star, something he called an Astroneshama (in “Star language,” no less), and to use my abilities to fight off the other new arrivals to the city, the villainous Seven Deadly Sinisters, and their leader, Orpheus.

  Somehow, I’d gone from all-around all-star high school student, top athlete, and class genius (not to mention charmingly irresistible and good-looking), Hamilton Dinger, to Wingdinger, the superhero of Apollo City, who was half-loved, half-hated, fully determined, and sli
ghtly irritated—a fallen star on a mission to destroy evil and save the world (also still charmingly irresistible and good-looking).

  It was a classic case of boy meets destiny. Or something like that, anyway.

  Elysian rolled over and nuzzled into my now-empty bed, looking like a scaly dog of sorts as he wriggled around. I was half-tempted to rub his belly as a joke, but before I could, he snarled, “Oh, is that the job where you more or less file stuff for three to four hours a couple of times a week?”

  “Shut up.” I swatted at him. He dodged my blow and catapulted himself to the window, where he settled down like a huge lizard-cat.

  “It's raining today,” Elysian murmured as he glanced out the window to see the thunderclouds.

  “It’ll stop by the time I’m out of work.” I shrugged it off easily enough.

  “Would be a good day for our enemies to attack, too,” Elysian observed.

  “Seriously? What stops them from attacking any other day?” What did rain have to do with anything? “Wasn’t it just once? I could think of tons of different attacks that didn’t affect the weather.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Of course I’m right.

  “You might as well stop worrying about it.” I grabbed the last of my English homework and stuffed it into the small briefcase I used for work. Glorified file boy or not, I was still getting paid good money and gaining good experience in the government sector; I was also largely unsupervised, so getting the rest of my English homework done wouldn’t be a problem. “You might jinx us or something.”

  “I don't believe in jinxes.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I believe in being prepared–”

  “Yeah, sure. You know, you worry too much.”

  “I wouldn't worry so much if you were more serious about this.”

  “I don't have to be serious about this,” I argued, pulling on my shoes. “The bad guys have been really slacking off in the last couple of months. Ever since that sword was given to me—”

  “Even though you haven’t learned to use it properly—”

  “—there haven’t been that many attacks. Maybe they've given up—”

  “Or maybe they're just biding their time—”

  “—and have realized that they can't beat us—”

  “Us? You mean you're sharing the credit all of a sudden?”

  “Huh?” I looked up, a bit surprised. I’d gotten used to the broken, fragmented arguments between Elysian and myself, but it was always jarring to hear a completely different subject thrown into my train of thought (not to mention one I didn't particularly appreciate).

  Elysian smirked. “You mean that you did that unintentionally? Goodness, what is the world coming to?” He giggled into his claws.

  I frowned. I hated to be mocked—particularly by someone who wasn't supposed to be real. I was just about to say something (something especially vile, no doubt) when Elysian sighed, quickly losing the joking demeanor.

  “I suppose,” he said, “Starry Knight and SWORD have both helped us quite a bit lately.”

  Heat flushed through my face and I turned to the side, hiding my gaze at the mention of Starry Knight, my mysterious, most-of-the-time ally. “I don’t think it matters that much,” I muttered.

  I knew I was lying, but there was nothing else I could do. Why Starry Knight was helping us, who she really was, and why did it matter at all were questions I desperately wanted to know the answers to myself; I could empathize with Elysian in this matter. But unlike him, from the small conversations and the time I’d spent with her, I knew it was going to take a lot of work and patience before she trusted me enough to give me answers.

  “You never seem to think much at all where Starry Knight is concerned,” Elysian huffed. “Why do you think SWORD is helping us?”

  SWORD, the Special World Operations and Research Division, was a secret agency, from what I could tell, investigating the world of the paranormal and supernatural, and possibly the extraterrestrial. The reality that such a task force existed would not have bothered me at all if my best friend’s estranged, runaway dad didn’t happen to be in charge of the case file with my name on it.

  “Well, Mikey’s dad told us that SWORD came in to more or less gain control of the situation,” I recalled, thinking of the one time they had captured me and Starry Knight. “And they’ve been doing a lot of clean-up work.” I wrinkled my nose. “Chatty Patty, that obsessive anchorwoman for the city’s cable news network, has less to report lately than I know she’d like.”

  Patricia Rookwood had her spies popping up closer to the battlefields lately, but SWORD agents had been getting good at turning several away. Ratings for her show have been down lately, too, I recalled. Ever since my last big standoff with Orpheus and the Sinisters, actually. The event had been hailed from the press as a severe “gas leak” that caused “hallucinations” in the central northern district of the city.

  Thinking of that battle in particular, I glanced at the small, crystalline orb on my desk. I’d told my parents, and the maids as needed, that it was a paperweight. But that wasn’t the full truth; it was actually the remnant of a Sinister, Meropae, I’d sealed away with my own sword a few months ago. (I did use it as a paperweight sometimes, though.)

  It was almost proof I was capable of holding off the Sinisters on my own, without anyone else’s help.

  It was also an irritating memory, because the other Sinister I’d managed to seal away, Alcyonë, had been taken from me. Starry Knight laid claim to it the moment I showed it to her.

  Irritation briefly shot through me. While I did want to work with Starry Knight, I was also upset with her on a regular basis. And it was mostly her fault.

  “Why is Starry Knight helping us?” Elysian muttered. “That’s the question that’s been bothering me for a while now.”

  “What about Starry Knight?” I asked, trying my best to keep my tone neutral.

  “I’ve heard of fallen stars coming down to Earth before,” Elysian said. When he saw the surprised look on my face, he snarled. “What? You didn’t think you were the first, did you?”

  I frowned. “Dante mentioned it,” I admitted, “when I was in the SWORD’s black site. But you’ve never mentioned it.”

  “It’s not supposed to happen very often.” Elysian shrugged. “Anyway,” he continued, “I’m not surprised SWORD is well-versed in their situations. There are many things in this world not everyone is willing to accept. You can be the prime example in that one, kid.”

  “Shut up.” I threw a pillow at him as he laughed. “Just stop,” I muttered. “That’s not who I am anymore.”

  “Definitely,” Elysian agreed. There was enough of a pause in his words where solemnity had sneaked in, so I forgave him for his previous slight.

  “Why are you so fixated on Starry Knight?” I asked again.

  “I’m not the only one,” Elysian said defensively. “You’ve always seemed to have a soft spot for her. I just realized too late that it was a soft skull.”

  “Are you really still angry I made you let her go at the end of that big battle with Orpheus?” I bristled. “Get over it. I told you I talked with her quite a bit in the prison at the black site, and . . . we came to an agreement, and that’s really all there is to it.”

  “I doubt that.” Elysian snorted, letting out a small stream of smoke through his dragon nose.

  Part of me cringed; he was right. There was much more to it, but I couldn’t even admit a lot of it to myself. I still hadn’t told him about how I kissed her.

  Memories of kissing her rushed through me, as if I’d suddenly crossed paths with a waterfall of warmth. My lips tinged with the sudden sensations of spices, prickly and perfect all at once.

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. But I knew it was futile on some level, and reluctant on others.

  “She’s hiding something,” Elysian declared.

  I snorted, glad he’d been so caught up in his own thoughts th
at he didn’t seen mine had been derailed. “That’s pretty obvious. Congratulations on your stunning logic.”

  Elysian narrowed his yellowish-green eyes at me and flicked his tail. “You were the one I was meant to find,” he said. “So why is she so intent on doing the job you were meant to do?”

  “I don’t see the big deal about that. I mean, you just said SWORD had helped us, too.”

  “What’s her motivation, though?” He began to pace, which, considering he was a small dragon, was pretty hilarious to watch in my bedroom, but the sense of seriousness involved was unnerving. “It can’t be to protect this world. After all, she’d just tried to destroy it to get them captured in her power that time . . . ”

  “My duty was to capture the Sinisters and protect the other people,” I asserted. “Maybe hers was just to destroy the Sinisters. That’s enough of a difference to make a difference, right?”

  “Your mother would congratulate you on your lawyerspeak,” Elysian muttered.

  It was at that moment my mother, Cheryl, as though she knew we’d mentioned her, called up from downstairs.

  “Hamilton! It's time for breakfast. Your turkey dumplings are going to get cold if you don’t hurry.”

  “Ugh, not breakfast.”

  “What’s wrong this time?” Elysian asked, more out of duty than desire to know.

  “Cheryl’s still on her meat-heavy, sugar-less diet,” I explained. “I don’t think I’ve actually eaten anything in this house since Helga came to cook for us.” A mental image of my mother’s heavyset Russian cook flashed across my mind, and I felt scars form instantly at its graze.

  I might have liked her better if she didn’t remind me so much of Mr. Lockard, my old, idiotic drama teacher. Helga was Lockard’s unibrow twin, and that was no simple matter to just overlook. It was enough that it made me wonder if they were related, but I doubted it.

  After getting his soul stolen and eaten last semester—the thought of which earned my mind another couple of scars—Lockard had been moved to hospice care, according to the gossip grapevine at the school. Helga, on my mother’s pay, could afford better care than that. Some of the Sinisters’ other victims had recovered quickly enough, after all.