Chariots of Wrath

by R. L. King

  Normal people don’t know our family, though.

  Her face has gone pale, lit only by the bright, colorful lamps above our table. “You were chanting, and then a figure rose up behind you and started chanting too.”

  “What?” Startled, I look closer at her. Her eyes are unfocused, like she’s watching a movie the rest of us can’t see. “What kind of figure? Do you know who it was?”

  When she goes on talking, it’s not as if she’s answering me. She almost seems to be in a light trance. “And then…after that…another figure rises up behind the first one. This one’s bigger—taller, wider, more imposing.” She’s shaking now. “It scared the hell out of me, Bron. Just looking at it scared me. I wanted to run away, but you know how dreams go. I was stuck to the floor. And then it starts chanting too. You’re still there in the front, completely unaware of what’s going on.”

  My heart’s thumping harder. “What happened next?”

  She swallows again, glancing at her empty margarita glass like she wishes it would magically fill up so she could toss it back in one shot. She closes her eyes, bows her head, and clenches her fists on the table. “Then…the chant changed. Your chant changed. I couldn’t understand what you were saying, but I could definitely tell two things: you had no idea what was happening, and whatever you were doing was coming from at least one of the two figures behind you.”

  I have no idea what to say to that, so I say nothing. I know from experience that these kinds of dreams sometimes take a while to get out, and the best thing is to stay patient. It’s not easy, though. I can tell Nick is having as hard a time as I am.

  “Okay…” she says breathlessly. “So…this is the part that really freaked me out. As I keep watching—and I can’t do anything to affect any of this, of course—the big dark thing in the back starts changing the chant again. Then the one in the middle takes it up. And then, last, you do. At that point, you’re all chanting the same incantation. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s not the one you’re supposed to be chanting, and I know it’s not good. And on the other side of the circle, my mom is just…oblivious. She’s got this stupid, proud smile on her face like you’re doing it exactly the way you’re supposed to.”

  Her voice is really shaking now, and her body’s starting to follow along. “I want to grab her by the shoulders and yell at her to make it stop, to run away, to do anything before you three finish that chant, but my mouth is stuck shut just like my feet are stuck to the floor. I can’t do a damn thing to stop any of this.”

  I know what’s coming next, but I don’t try make her stop talking. I don’t think I can at this point. I exchange glances with Nick and keep listening.

  “So…” she goes on, shaking harder than ever, “the chant keeps going for a while, and Mom keeps looking proud and all stupid-happy, until…she doesn’t. Suddenly she looks scared, like she’s finally figured out that the ritual isn’t going the way it’s supposed to. She takes a step forward and raises her hands like she’s trying to block something off, and then…”

  “Twy…” I whisper, shocked.

  Her voice breaks. “And then…her body just…blows apart. In all directions. There’s blood everywhere, covering the circle, the walls, you…”

  “Twy, come on…You don’t have to—”

  But she doesn’t even seem to hear me, or anything else in the real world. “And then something—flies out of her. Something dark and shadowy. It flies out of her, across the circle, and it disappears inside the largest figure on the other side. I feel some kind of weird…satisfaction…from it, and then that figure fades away, leaving only you and the other one.”

  My heart’s doing its best imitation of a speed-metal band now. I try to speak but I can’t.

  Now, Twyla’s awareness snaps back to reality. Her gaze bores into me, and she leans forward across her plate. “Just before I wake up screaming, I get a look at the second figure—the one that’s left, right behind you.

  “Bron…it was Selene.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Do you believe her?” Nick asks.

  He still sits across from me at the back booth, contemplating the remains of our dinner. I’m not seeing much of anything at this point. I’m still more than half-stunned. Twyla has excused herself to the bathroom to get herself together, but I didn’t offer to go along. I need a little time to digest everything that’s just happened.

  “I…don’t know,” I say slowly.

  “She says she’s had those dreams before—and you sound like you know about them.”

  “She does. She has ever since we were teenagers. She was always really good at it, too.”

  “But she’s also right in the middle of a pretty bad situation, just like you are. Maybe the idea of seeing you again after all this time messed with her mind.”

  “That’s definitely possible. That’s the problem with prophetic dreams: you never know whether they’re real or whether you just ate something spicy for dinner or watched the wrong movie before bed—not until they come true, anyway. You have to walk a tightrope between letting everybody think you’re either crazy or crying wolf, and actually warning people about potential problems before they happen. It’s not fun, trust me.”

  “So, you have them too?” he asks. He looks curious—of course he does. He’s like a sponge when it comes to anything to do with magic, soaking up all the accurate knowledge he can get to drive out the bullshit he’s picked up from those books he’s been reading all his life.

  “I do—but a lot less often and usually a lot less vivid. I don’t get big things like the Kennedy assassination or 9/11. When it happens at all, I usually get where the next-door neighbor lady’s lost dog is—and sometimes I don’t even know who the lady is or that she has a dog, so the dream can be pretty baffling.”

  “Huh,” he says, pondering. “I guess real magic is a lot messier and less precise than I was led to believe.”

  “Oh, no, it can be very precise—at least some of it can, especially when somebody who really knows what they’re doing is practicing it. But anything to do with divination is going to be muddy no matter who’s doing the divining, by its very nature. Nothing anybody can do about that.”

  “So I’ll go back to my original question: do you believe her? And more importantly, if you do believe her, what are you going to do about it?”

  That’s the big question, isn’t it? I sigh. “The answer to your second question is the same as the first: I don’t know. It’s a pretty strong accusation to drop against somebody who’s a big deal in my family. Nana has a lot of respect for Selene—I mean, when I left, she was being groomed to be one of the big decision-makers for the whole family. To accuse her of—” I shudder. “Mara was her best friend. She’s Twyla’s mentor. It’s…unthinkable.”

  I won’t lie—I almost wish Twyla hadn’t told me any of this. She’s been wrong before with her dreams—but not very often. Her success rate is high enough that it can’t be explained by simple random chance. But in this case, she’s so close to the situation, so emotionally involved, that if she is going to make a mistake, this would be the time she’d do it.

  Before I can say anything else, Twyla returns. She’s fixed her makeup as well as she can without her purse and looks a little more composed, at least physically, but I have no trouble seeing she’s still upset. One of the things I’ve learned while living as a mundane for the last five years is that most mages seriously underestimate mundanes’ ability to read people. Auras make it a lot easier, but if you pay attention, you can still pick up a lot by simple observation.

  What I’m picking up right now is that Twyla is definitely not composed.

  She slides back into the booth next to me. “Sorry about that,” she says bleakly.

  “It’s okay.” I see now why she was so anxious to tell me this last night—and why she also seemed so reluctant to do it. Twyla has never been as brave as I am, but this time I admire her courage. I could cause a lot of trouble for her if I reacte
d the wrong way to what she’s told me, and she had no real way to know how I would react.

  Nick clears his throat. “Can I say something?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.” Normally it would annoy me that he’s poking his nose in where it doesn’t belong, but right now I’m grateful for the interruption. Both my usual level-headedness and my characteristic snark have departed for less chaotic climates, and my head feels like it’s full of pinballs and static.

  Next to me, Twyla nods.

  He considers his words carefully. “I don’t claim to know all the details of what’s going on with you two, but maybe I don’t need to. Maybe somebody with an outside perspective might help.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” I say. “Go for it.”

  Again, he pauses, obviously thinking things over. “It sounds like we’ve got a lot of variables here, and we’re not even sure if any of them are related to each other. Twyla, when did you say you had this dream?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “And you’ve been sitting on it since then?” Now my admiration for her courage and my exasperation with her indecisiveness are having a cage fight among the static and pinballs.

  She flutters her hand in a gesture of confusion. “What was I supposed to do? I don’t even know if it’s real. We hadn’t had any contact in five years. Was I just supposed to call you up and dump this on you? How do you think you’d have responded to that?”

  She has a damned good point. I give a grudging nod and a vague grunt of agreement.

  “When the chance to come out here came up, I thought it might be some kind of…you know…omen or something. If I could have an excuse to talk to you in person, away from the family’s influence, I figured I could see how things went and go from there.”

  “Wait.” I sit up straighter, remembering something she’d told me before. “You said that Selene was the one who found Mr. DeVries, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But this thing with the video—that’s not her idea?”

  “Working with disadvantaged kids? No, that’s Nana’s thing, and Grandma Inez’s. Selene helps out some—a lot of the family does—but it’s not her project.”

  “Did you ever let on to Selene that you had this dream about her?” Nick asks.

  She gives an emphatic head-shake. “No. I haven’t even seen her in several weeks. She moves around a lot, using the portals to travel.”

  “But I thought you were her apprentice.”

  She rolls her eyes, but then seems to remember Nick doesn’t have the standard magical background. “I finished my apprenticeship a couple of years ago. After that, mentors and apprentices don’t usually work nearly as closely together.”

  “Did you see her before you came out here?” I ask. “You said she gave you something to take to Mr. DeVries.”

  “No. She had a courier drop it off at my place. I—” She starts suddenly, like somebody just ran an electrical current through her chair. “Oh!”

  “What?” Nick and I both speak at the same time.

  Her eyes get big. “The package! I almost forgot about it!”

  “What about it?” I twist to face her. “You said it was magically sealed—that you couldn’t open it.”

  “I couldn’t! I was supposed to give it to Mr. DeVries. But I didn’t.” She’s breathing harder now, and she grips my hand. “I didn’t give it to him!”

  Now it’s my turn to get the electric jolt. “What do you mean, you didn’t give it to him? Why not? Where is it now?”

  “It’s in my car—hidden in the trunk.” She pauses a moment to get herself together, then says breathlessly, “I wanted to talk to Mr. DeVries first—you know, get some idea of whether I could trust him, or if it seemed like there was anything going on with him and Selene. When we met, I told him I’d forgotten the package, but that I could go back to my place and pick it up after our meeting.”

  “How did he react to that?” Nick asks.

  “He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t seem too worked up about it.” She smiles slyly. “I think he was kind of into me. Had other things on his mind, you know?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I get it—you two got busy. But unless that’s relevant—”

  “You said he wasn’t happy,” Nick interrupts. “Did he seem angry? Like he was really waiting for it and was pissed you’d forgotten it?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Just…like I said, mildly frustrated.”

  “So you didn’t get any bad feelings off him?”

  “Nope. I checked his aura, but it looked pretty normal. Maybe a little over-eager, but…”

  “Yeah. Got it.” I frown. This isn’t making sense. Twyla met with the guy, had lunch with him, went to a hotel room for a little fun after, blacked out, and the next thing we know she’s some kind of feral cannibal thing trying to kill us. That doesn’t fit with a “pretty normal” aura. I mean, sure, people can hide their auras, but it’s not easy and Twyla’s always been good at reading them.

  “We need to go find this DeVries,” I say suddenly. “We need to talk to him. And we need to get that package from your car.”

  “What difference does that make?” Twyla looks troubled. “I can’t open it, and neither can you.”

  “Maybe I can,” Nick says.

  “How can you—oh.” Her eyes widen. “You can glitch the magic on the seal?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. It might just deactivate, like whatever messed you and those other people up, or it might blow up in our faces. But I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”

  I consider. I deliberately never got involved with the magical community out here, so I don’t know anybody else to ask. The only other alternative I can think of is to ask Nick to take it to his grandfather. The Happenstances are a pretty big deal magically, so they probably have somebody who can get around magical seals. But that would mean sharing the contents with them, and I don’t think that’s a good idea—at least not until we have some idea what they are. “What do you think, Twy? It’s a crapshoot, but Nick’s probably our best bet.”

  Her gaze switches between me and Nick. “Okay,” she says at last. “Assuming it’s even still there, of course—they might have taken my car, too. But I guess we won’t be any worse off than we were before if it gets destroyed before we can see it.”

  “Unless it does, you know, blow up in our faces,” I drawl.

  “My face,” Nick says. “Better if I do it with you guys standing far away, just in case.”

  “And I still want to talk to this DeVries,” I say. Now that we’ve got a plan, my resolve is coming back. Whoever this guy is, I want to know his connection to Selene, and why she’s sending him secret messages that Nana doesn’t know about.

  “Tomorrow,” Twyla says. She looks wrung-out, tired and stressed. “Right now, I just want to get some sleep—hopefully without any bad dreams.”

  I don’t want to wait that long, but at least with DeVries we probably don’t have a choice. He’s not going to be at his office at nine p.m., and we don’t have any other way to contact him. “Let’s go find your car, if it’s still parked where you left it. If the package is still there, we can see about having Nick open it, then go from there tomorrow. Sound good?”

  Nick doesn’t look happy about waiting either, but he gives a resigned nod. “Yeah, okay. Let’s get out of here before I’m tempted to order another drink.”

  Chapter Nine

  Twyla’s rented Toyota is right where she left it, in the parking lot of a three-story building on South Broadway. It’s not even the only one there, which is probably why it hasn’t been towed yet.

  We approach it carefully, after Nick backs off and Twyla scans the area for anybody who might be watching us. There’s nothing to indicate a problem: no open doors or trunk, no cracked windshield, no broken windows.

  “Let me go first,” Twyla says. “Just in case.”

  Nick stays where he is, but I don’t. I follow her, keeping a lookout while she peers in through
the window. A second later, she uses magic to pop the door and points down at the passenger-side footwell. “Look—my stuff is here! My keys, my bag, and even my phone.”

  That’s odd—so wherever they took her, they made a point to leave her stuff?

  “Maybe they didn’t want anybody to trace it to where they are,” she muses as she rifles through her purse. “Even my wallet’s here.”

  I guess that makes sense.

  “Is it safe for me to come closer yet?” Nick calls.

  “Hold on.” Twyla uses the button inside instead of magic to pop the trunk, then hurries around to look. I go with her, heart pumping hard. Obviously, somebody had access to the car—probably somebody with magic. Did they leave her other stuff and take the package?

  Twyla grins and snatches something from the shadowy darkness. “It’s still here!” She holds up a large, thick manila envelope with an odd-looking blue seal holding it closed.

  “So…whoever did this to you didn’t know about the package—or at least didn’t know it was in your car.” That’s even weirder. If DeVries had drugged her after their session at the hotel and then returned her stuff to her rental car, it made sense that he’d check it over thoroughly. Also, if he was waiting for her to give him something important, why would he drug her at all? Why wouldn’t he wait until he had the item in hand?

  None of this is making sense.

  Twyla closes the trunk and leans against the back of the Toyota, studying the envelope. “So…what now? Do we try to open it here, or do we take it back to your place?”

  I glance at Nick, who’s moved off to the sidewalk and is leaning against a light pole. “I’ll be honest, Twy—I’d rather not let you out of my sight until we see what’s in that package. And we can’t leave your car here and all go back in Nick’s.”

  “Why not?”