The chamber down here is nothing at all like the one where Celeste and Kenta found their prize. It’s a vast stretch of the same sandstone the stairs were carved from, at least fifty feet across, and though a standard camping lantern in the middle of the cavern casts a harsh LED light it’s hard to see the limits of the room. It’s seems to be perfectly round, as if it Gaia’s cookie cutter pressed it out of a mammoth layer of sandstone. The floor seems flat, professional-grade flat, as does the ceiling. A lot of work went into this space.
The only prominent feature in the room is a stone disk about ten feet across set into the dead center of the floor. It looks like granite, about a foot thick. It’s seamless, a single, perfect shape threaded through with black quartz, and in the cold light of the lantern I can see the surface is covered with a forest of beautifully carved patterns and designs, a mandala of intricate imagery and superb stonework. I can’t even begin to guess how much it weighs, or how it got down here.
I do know how the thing laying on the disk got there.
It’s easily eight feet long, human shaped, wrapped in desiccated, yellowed cloth that looks as fragile as toilet paper. The lantern’s light reveals gaps in the shroud, and through the gaps we can see something dark inside.
Celeste and Kenta are standing on either side of the disk. They’re wearing the same clothes I last saw them in. Kenta’s holding the camping lantern in his left hand, casting the thin light. His right hand is all but lost in the bulky leather welder’s glove. Celeste’s hands are clasped demurely behind her, but I can see the two vials she’s holding in the shadow the lantern’s light casts against the cave wall.
What I didn’t expect, but should have, was Calvin Reese standing next to his sister. Physically, they couldn’t be any more different. He’s broad while she’s slender, dark while she’s blonde, soft while she’s fit. Their faces betray their heredity, but not by much. They both have high cheekbones and rounded chins. It makes her look cute and him look weak. Their eyes are the anchors of their heritage, the same dark, rich blue of a deep well. Hers have an unsettling spark in them that his are missing, or maybe that’s just my imagination.
“Hi, guys,” I say, keeping the Springfield centered between them. “You caused a hell of a stir tonight.”
Celeste doesn’t move her body at all. It’s a pivot point for her head to swivel on as she turns her face my way. Her oceanic eyes gleam when she sees me, but they don’t blink. They stay as wide as a camera shutter, never faltering, never watering. They’re not the blank, empty stare of a porcelain doll and not the eyes of the scared girl I met earlier this evening. These eyes have turned left from reality some ways back, and they show the relief that comes with no longer having to maintain the pretense of sanity in my presence.
“We couldn’t have done it without you,” she says. Damn, those eyes are seriously creepy.
“You couldn’t have done it if you’d told me the truth, you mean.”
“Yes, well, sorry about that,” Calvin says while managing to sound not sorry at all. “You were what we needed to get the job done.”
“Some job,” I say, trying to look past them at the form stretched out on the granite disk. Celeste takes notice and steps sideways to block my view.
“Ah ah,” she says. “No peeking. The curtain’s not ready to come up yet.”
“Sorry for the spoiler. It’s a kiovore.”
For the first time something’s shaken her. “You know?”
“Envoy,” I say by way of answer. Hollett and Nariko fan out on either side of me. We can’t surround them, but at least we have a solid line. Gault stays in the background, probably to maintain his wildcard status.
“Doesn’t matter,” she says, recovering her composure. “You can’t stop us. We know too much.”
“Kids always think that.” I look around the cave. “Go ahead and share some of that knowledge. What is this place? Where are we?”
“You never figured it out, did you?” Celeste says with a smile that only fractures around the edges. “We’re at the literal heart of this damned town.”
“Now how about you tell us why?”
“Because,” she says with her sorority girl charm, “we know what you don’t. We’ve learned the secret.”
“What secret is that?”
She gives me a triumphant sneer. “The secret. The secret of Superstition Bay.”
Thirteen
There’s such conviction in her voice, and her lovely face is deadly serious. “You have to narrow it down,” I say casually. “This town is built on secrets.”
“No, this town is built on magic,” Celeste corrects me. It’s been over a minute now and she still hasn’t blinked. She’s an owl in the body of a sorority girl. Her voice goes into lecture mode. “This town is over two hundred years old. Did you know that? And before it was a town it was still a gathering place. It had its share of regular vanilla humans, but right from the start the area drew in what you now call the Grey, people and creatures with magical talents. But nobody has ever figured out what makes this town so special, have they? Not all the warlocks, the high priests, the adepts and the scryers and the librarians and the bookworms and not even the mighty Aegis know why so many supernatural things come here. Nobody has a clue. Isn’t that right, Mr. DeLong?”
All eyes are on me, even Gault and Hollett and Nariko. “She’s right,” I tell them, “for what it’s worth. I don’t think anyone’s really put that much thought into it. The Aegis did some surveys years ago, but as far as I know nothing came of them. They figured it was psychological, not environmental. That people with magic want to live with people with magic. Birds of a feather and all that, like racially distinct neighborhoods in big cities. But you figured they were wrong.” My tone is meant to challenge. I need to keep her talking until we can draw them away from the kiovore, laying there at their feet like an active nuke. “Of all the people in history, you’re the one to get it right.”
She doesn’t react to my tone. “Yes, I did. It wasn’t really all that hard, once we knew what to look for.”
“What’s that?” Hollett asks.
“Magic, you dumb thug,” Calvin snaps. Kenta has been silent in all this, standing diffidently behind the Reese siblings. “Both of our families use raw, environmental magic in our crafts. In this town our output exploded, one time literally. In other places we have to wring energy from the air like water from a dry sponge. Here, it’s like a busted fire hydrant.”
“It has to come from somewhere,” Celeste joins her brother. Her hands are still at the small of her back, holding the vials she thinks I don’t know about. “And it had to be underground, since nothing above ground is still standing from two centuries ago. We followed it back to its source.”
“Okay, then,” Gault snaps. “What’s the source?”
“This,” Calvin says, resting his polished boot on the stone disk.
“What is it?”
“It’s a seal,” Celeste says. “The lid on the jar of all local magic. Superstition Bay is built on top of a ley spring, a pool of raw, unfocused magic. Ley lines are the magical bloodstream of the earth. A ley spring is the heart that pumps them. This particular one was sealed off centuries ago.”
“This town is built on top of a sealed ley spring?” I ask with some alarm. It actually makes a lot of sense. Like she said, once you know what to look for it actually seems obvious. The thing that’s making my blood pressure spike is the fact that it’s capped. I’ve heard of springs being sealed off, but not in a long time and never in good terms. Tunguska was a capped ley spring, and so was Pompeii. I’ve heard of one in Nepal that has a monastery built on it, though, and it’s been there for centuries.
“Well, not sealed, at least not completely. This seal was built to be imperfect. If the spring were stopped up completely the pressure of magical energy underneath it would build up until it burst free, probably with catastrophic results. No, it restrains the magic almost completely, but some energy radiates out all
the time, like a pressure cooker, constantly venting off power. This whole region is saturated with magic like steam in a sauna. Everyone and everything who has magic can feel it, even if we don’t know it. It’s why so many magical things come here. It feels like home.”
“Why were you searching for this?” Nariko asks. Kenta, silent up to this point, rises to his sister’s challenge.
“We are going to use it to revive the kiovore,” he says simply. Most of what he says, he says simply.
“Do you have any idea what this thing can do?” I almost shout. “Why on Earth do you want to do that?”
“Because we got tired of the fighting,” he says. “Our families have been at war for months, and the war will never end. We knew our fathers would never let the matter die, never stop fighting each other and themselves. The only way they would stop is if they are both dead.”
“You pathetic wimps,” Gault spits. “Why not grow some balls and just do it yourselves? There’s a million hexes or potions either one of you could have used. You could have taken them out any time and they’d never have seen you coming.”
“It wouldn’t be enough to just kill our fathers,” Celeste says, and her too-calm voice in the face of this situation finally betrays her cracked psyche. “Someone else would only take over as the family leader and the cycle would start over again. The only way for it to work was to scrub both of our families off the map, completely and forever. They are too well protected for anything to get to them. It has to be something they won’t have prepared for, something powerful enough to get through their defenses.”
“We will send the kiovore after our families,” Kenta says. He doesn’t seem to have as much zeal as Celeste does, but then again not many people do. As far as I can tell he hasn’t even looked at Nariko yet. “Every Gamagori and every Reese in the world are here, and it will kill them all. After they are dead, we will put it back to sleep.”
“Thanks for bringing their homework with you,” Calvin says, indicating the binder laying against the seal. The lantern’s light on the plastic cover makes it hard to see the prancing kitten. “We needed that to put it back down. We were hoping they’d send it along with you.”
“You knew they’d send us?” Hollett asks.
“We knew they’d send somebody, Andrew,” Celeste says. “We didn’t know who’d be along for the ride, but we knew they’d send him.” She turns those camera eyes back on me.
I look at the shrouded form laying on the granite seal. “So why haven’t you done it yet?” I ask. “You had enough time before we got here. Were you waiting for an audience?”
“Well, we weren’t ready yet.” Celeste admits. “We needed one more thing to revive it.”
“What’s that?”
Calvin looks at me with barely restrained glee. “You,” he laughs.
Hollett, Nariko and Gault look as one from Calvin to me. “Why him?” Hollett asks.
“We looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find out how to break through the seal,” Calvin says. “Whoever made it made the damn thing perfectly. Hell, I don’t think there’s anything in the world today that’s strong enough to break through it, and that’s where we went wrong. We were thinking in the wrong direction. You see, the stone itself isn’t the cork in the bottle, it’s what went into the stone. Spells, charms, rituals.” He looks me dead in the eyes. “Magic.”
Oh, shit. For the first time I see what they’re planning, and it must show on my face.
“That’s right,” Calvin says through a broad, Hollywood smile. “When I saw what you did to our wards tonight I knew that what I’d heard about you was true. Just your touch is enough to undo any magic. In all the world you’re the only thing that can unlock the seal. That’s why we needed you to be here. When you touch the seal, you’ll rupture the containment spells and let the magic run free. That much concentrated power should be enough to wake up our friend here.” He nudges the kiovore with his boot, leaving a smear of polish on the ancient linen.
“It could also blow this town half a mile into the bay. If you’ve done half the research you say you’ve done then you already know that.”
“Who’s to say what’ll happen?” Celeste jabs back. “All research is contradictory. Two books say this’ll happen. Two books say that’ll happen. Yes, we know about some of the other capped springs, about what happens when someone tried to force the seal open it went bad.”
She brings her hands around to the front of her body, hands Calvin the pair of vials and stands there, looking pleased with herself. “We also know about some that were opened with no problems whatsoever when someone took the time to recant the sealing spells. That’s the trick, not to cut the knot but to simply untie it. It’s taken a long time for us to do it right, probably more time than we would have had, but you can do it with a touch. And once you do that the magic will flood out, right into our friend here. It’ll be like a magical defibrillator. He should wake up almost instantly.”
“You took a big chance,” I say. My mind is scrambling now. Their plan is lunacy, but the worst thing about it is that it could actually work. “What if your families didn’t see fit to send me after you? What if they’d just killed me on sight?”
“We were a bit nervous about that,” Celeste admits, “but even though our fathers are maniacs they’re not stupid. If they were going to kill you it wouldn’t have been done quickly.”
Imagine my relief.
“We’d hoped that once we’d gotten away from my house you’d have simply gone with us to pick up our package.” She kneels down and lovingly traces a finger across the linen where the kiovore’s brow should roughly be. “When they captured you, though, we were pretty sure they’d enlist you to fix your mistake. Or, if they locked you up in the basement we’d just find a way to get you out. Whichever way it happened it would have been a delay at best. But you’re here now, so we can begin.”
“You’ll never be able to control it,” I say, and even I can hear the desperation beginning to grow in my voice. “You can’t train it or domesticate it. It’s a superpredator, not a damn house cat.”
“Wrong again, DeLong,” Calvin gloats. He reaches into his shirt and pulls out a chain with a wooden pendant hanging from it. I can’t see it clearly, but it looks a lot like the one Kenta was wearing this morning. Nariko is a lot closer than I am, though, and judging by the way her face looks suddenly like it’s been carved from a splinter of an iceberg she isn’t happy with Calvin holding that particular charm. “Kenta found this rune while we were researching the kiovore. It’s a shield rune, tied into the thing itself. It won’t hurt us, and while we won’t be able to control it, per se, we’ll be able to aim it towards whatever targets we want. I think we’ll start at our house.”
“Once we break the seal, of course.” Celeste takes a step forward, languidly extending her hand like she expects it to be kissed. “Come here, Ian.”
“DeLong,” Hollett says from my left.
“What?”
“Run!” he shoves his way in front of me, stabbing with his thorn wand while shoving me back towards the stairs.
Chaos erupts in an instant. With a snarl Gault goes airborne, springing at Calvin with the inhuman fury only a werewolf can bring. He’s stopped dead in midair ten feet away from his target, twisting and flailing hard enough that I can hear seams in his clothes ripping. Kenta has stepped up finally, standing between the Reese siblings with his gloved hand defiantly in the air. He shakes his hand left and right and Gault jounces about in conjunction with the movements. When he squeezes his fist tight I can see Gault’s face bulge red as his body is compacted like a grape in that irresistible fist. Kenta draws his arm back like a quarterback ready for a Hail Mary, bringing Gault almost within clawing distance of Calvin, then he pitches forward and opens his fist. Gault streaks through the air, the force driving him into the flat rock face of the far wall with a wet, snapping sound. He drops to the floor, unmoving.
I don’t have time to check on him. He’ll
be fine anyway; the wall’s not silver. I make my run for the stairs, cursing myself for doing it but knowing that logically, Hollett’s right. I should run. No matter what else, if I’m not here they can’t follow through with their plan. My foot reaches the bottom step and I take a last look back.
Nariko leaps at her brother, but she’s flipped her tantos around so she’s leading with the butt ends in an effort not to kill him. I knew it’d be like this. Hollett, at least, isn’t holding back but Celeste and Calvin are flipping vials and powders at him so fast it’s taking all his focus to parry them. An errant gust of powder drifts across Nariko and she recoils, dropping her knives as she clamps her hands over her eyes, screaming in Japanese. In the moment of opportunity Kenta uses his glove to grab hold of Hollett and squeeze. Hollett, his hands pinned by his side, gasps as blood sprays from his mouth.
Shit.
I push myself off the bottom step in a leap towards Kenta, letting two shots off as I do. One punches a hole in the side of his shirt but the lack of bloody spray tells me I missed his body, the other strikes the glove. I don’t know if the impact on the gauntlet is what makes him flex and drop Hollett or if I just broke his concentration, but I really don’t care. He falls on his ass, stunned by his near-death experience and cradling the gloved hand against his chest. I keep the Springfield trained on the Reeses.
“Don’t move,” I warn them. Celeste promptly ignores me, running over to her boyfriend and kneeling next to him.
“You shot him!” she screams at me.
“Next time it won’t be in the hand,” I say, stomping on her concern while I address Calvin. “Go stand with them.” He complies, wordlessly. I run around the granite seal, keeping a lot of distance between me and it, calling for Nariko. She responds to my voice and stumbles my way as I reach Hollett.
Her pupils are gone, just gone, erased by whatever the hell was in that powder and leaving her eyes blank white orbs. It makes me shudder. I know a man with eyes like that, and whenever he shows up in my life everything seems to go to shit. But as I watch her eyes come back to life, the pupils returning like dead bodies floating to the surface of a lake. I hold the point on Romeo and Juliet Plus One while I check out Hollett.
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 12
