by R. L. King
“Let’s not find out,” Jason said. The fact that his sister seemed to share Alastair Stone’s catlike curiosity about things strange and paranormal bothered him, especially considering their budding relationship as master and apprentice.
“Don’t worry,” Stone said with a raised eyebrow. “I have no intention of letting this little beastie out of its cage. I—” He stopped, his attention focusing back on the construct.
Something new was happening in there: the faintly glowing ball flung itself against the cube’s “walls,” and an almost inaudible buzz or hum emanated from within. None of the trio had ever heard it make any kind of noise before. As they watched, its urgency increased, along with the speed at which it caromed off the inner boundaries of its tiny prison.
“It’s like it knows it’s dying soon...” Verity said in a near whisper.
It appeared she was correct. The little ball continued darting around madly, gaining brightness as it did. Its sickly, red-purple glow increased, as did its size. Where it had before been small enough to move around inside the cage, it now seemed to be growing too large to be confined by it.
“Is it gonna break out?” Jason asked, leaning in.
“I don’t think so,” Stone said, but nonetheless he sat up a bit straighter, as if preparing himself for action if necessary.
The glowing ball grew both larger and brighter, until it strained against the edges of the construct. After a few seconds, the cube itself began to move, rattling on the table. This went on, increasing in its intensity, for about thirty seconds. The tension and desperation of the thing inside became nearly palpable.
And then, with no warning, the ball disappeared. There was no flash of light, no psychic scream, nothing. It simply ceased to exist. The cage settled back and stopped rattling, its crystals going dark.
Stone let his breath out. “Well, that’s done, then,” he said, getting up to switch on the light. “And now we know about how long the big ones can hang around after they’ve been evicted.”
“That’s useful, I guess,” Jason said. “If we’re planning to capture another one.” He looked up at Stone. “Are we planning to capture another one?”
By mutual unspoken agreement, the three of them hadn’t talked much in the last two weeks about what had occurred at the underground torture chamber in San Francisco that had served as the headquarters for this area’s contingent of the Evil. They were a little surprised that they hadn’t had to. For the first few days after they’d gotten together with some Forgotten friends at a Palo Alto restaurant, they had spent a lot of time looking over their shoulders, as if expecting to be jumped at any moment by Dead Men Walking gangers or worse.
But it seemed Stone’s hypothesis had been correct: the death of the area’s top-tier Evil, which had been possessing former talk-show host Gordon Lucas—and which had just met its final demise on the kitchen table—had thrown the rest of the local Evil into enough disarray that they apparently weren’t in a position to mount a revenge plan.
Stone shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose we’ll have to at some point—either that, or find others who can help us.” He indicated the cage. “In any case, if we do plan to capture another one, I’ll have to build another one of these, which won’t be easy. This one’s dead now, and the materials to build it weren’t easy to get hold of.”
Jason nodded. He knew Stone had been struggling with this. The trouble with the Evil, and what made them so insidious and difficult to fight, was the near impossibility of discerning whether they were possessing a given human unless they gave themselves away by doing something wildly out of character and usually violent. There were Forgotten—the strange, usually homeless, and mostly mentally unstable individuals who had manifested various paranormal abilities around the same time the Evil had arrived—who could identify Evil-possessed individuals, but the logistics of getting the two in proximity to each other often confounded matters even more.
Worse, since the Evil preferred to possess people in positions of power, it was dangerous to reveal anything to the authorities without taking a risk. There was also the fact that those authorities who weren’t possessed by the Evil didn’t look too kindly on tales of extradimensional entities who fed on human (preferably negative) emotion.
Stone had discovered how to build magical items that reacted to the presence of the Evil—the now-inert construct on the table was his first and only specimen at this point—but they also required close proximity to get any kind of useful reading and even then they weren’t all that precise. The bottom line was that the Evil were a problem that had to be dealt with, but only after much thought and careful examination of the possible ramifications. Once that particular genie was out of the bottle, there would be no putting it back in.
In the meantime, the three of them had been trying to return to a normal life—or at least the closest thing you could get to a normal life when talking about a classically trained mage who taught collegiate-level Occult Studies on the side; a seventeen-year-old girl who was not only a fledgling mage, but also a Forgotten and the only known individual capable of ejecting the Evil from its human hosts without killing them; and her bemused and protective older brother, who recently discovered that he had the ability to serve as a willing “magical battery,” providing the energy that allowed a mage to cast powerful spells without causing injury or psychic drain to either party. Jason couldn’t decide if the whole thing sounded like the premise for a bad sitcom or the punch line to a very weird joke.
In any case, Stone had wasted no time getting Verity started on her magical studies. This amounted to spending large chunks of time with her in the family room of the house he’d rented to replace the one that had been destroyed in an assassination attempt by his Evil-possessed housekeeper, quizzing her on the books of magical theory he’d given her to read, and instructing her on the basics of actually casting simple spells. Jason’s ears still rang from her shriek of delight a week ago, when she’d managed to levitate a pencil two inches off the table for a grand total of five seconds.
Jason himself struggled to find his place in this odd little team, especially now that Verity showed signs of actually being able to do real magic. Sure, his ability to help Stone cast spells more easily was useful, but not nearly as useful as being able to throw lightning bolts or levitate onto roofs. He didn’t even have a job now, which frustrated him even more. He stared at the little cage on the table and sighed. Nothing to be done about it at the moment, he knew. But he was going to have to do something, and soon.
The phone rang. Stone got up and disappeared into the other room to answer it, while Verity picked up the cage. “Wonder if he’ll bother building another one of these things,” she said, examining it. “We could start our very own Evil zoo!”
Stone returned a couple of minutes later, pausing in the doorway. He held on to it as if it was the only thing keeping him upright. His eyes were haunted, his expression one of someone who’d just been broadsided by shock.
Jason looked up. “Al? What’s going on? Something wrong?”
Instead of replying, Stone went back out to the liquor cabinet, poured himself a shot, and sank into the nearest chair. Jason and Verity trailed him, concerned. It was only then that he looked at them as if he were actually seeing them.
“That…was a friend from back East,” he said, his voice dull and colorless. “She was calling to tell me that another friend has been…murdered.”
Verity’s stared. “Murdered?”
“What—what happened?” Jason asked.
“She…didn’t give me the details. I don’t think she wanted to talk about them. Apparently it was…quite horrific.”
Jason picked his words with care. “This friend… You two were…close?”
Stone shook his head. “No, not close. We saw each other perhaps once a year or so. But she was—a lovely woman. Older. Kind, clever…a wicked sense of humor. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Was she…a mage
?” Verity asked in a near whisper. Jason looked at her sharply—he hadn’t thought of that.
“Yes.” Stone stared down into his liquor glass, which he hadn’t yet touched. “She was...one of the few truly ‘white’ mages I ever knew, in both magical style and morality. As I think I mentioned at one point, even most of the best among us these days have a few streaks of gray. Eleanor Pearsall…didn’t. She was one of the few genuinely good people I ever knew. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill her.”
Jason looked down at his hands. He never knew quite what to say in situations like this—his mind always tended to run to tactless questions about whether they had caught the murderer, or what were the details of the crime scene. Fortunately, Verity didn’t have any such limitations. “Will there be a funeral?” she asked, her voice gentle. “Are you going to go?”
Stone nodded. “She said it’s Friday, in the morning. And yes, I’ll be going. You’re both welcome to come along if you want to.” He glanced at Verity. “There should be at least a few other mages, if you’re interested in meeting them.”
“Friday—that doesn’t give us much time to get plane tickets,” Jason said, frowning.
“We aren’t getting plane tickets,” Stone told him.
“Wait a minute,” Jason protested. “Not—”
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. But the portal is much faster.”
Jason sighed loudly. “There’s one near there?”
“Yes. We’ll have to rent a car and drive for a couple of hours, but it’s better than trying to sort out flights on such short notice.”
Verity was clearly trying hard not to look excited. Stone had explained the teleportation portals to her a few days ago, and she’d been looking forward to trying out this new method of transportation, but this was hardly the time to say so. Instead she asked, “When are we leaving?”
“I’ll make the arrangements and we’ll go tomorrow so we can drive up and find a place to stay overnight. No need to pack much—I don’t see the point in remaining past the funeral itself and whatever gathering they have afterward.”
The next morning, they drove down to Sunnyvale. Murphy Street was quiet this time of day; parking was plentiful on the street in front of A Passage to India, but Stone waved Jason around the back. “David said we could park back here, so we don’t have to leave the car in front of the restaurant overnight. He’s showing up early to let us in, since they’re not open yet.”
After checking to make sure nobody was watching, they headed in through the back door; it would look odd for three people carrying bags to go into a restaurant at nine in the morning, especially if they didn’t come back out again. Even at this early hour, the spicy scent of curry hung tantalizingly in the air.
David, the portly, balding mage who ran A Passage to India along with his non-magical partner, waited for them inside. “I’m so sorry to hear about Eleanor,” he said. “I wish I could go, but Marta is out of town and I can’t close the restaurant.”
“We’ll give everyone your best,” Stone assured him.
The portal in the basement was just as Jason remembered it: large, vaguely round without defined boundaries, shifting and rippling with strange, multicolored lights. He remembered the first time he’d seen it, how beautiful he’d thought it was. After a disastrous trip through this one and nearly being killed by a collapsing temporary version at the Evil’s headquarters, though, he was less interested in its appearance and more in its safety. “You’re sure this is okay?” he asked after David left them alone. Stone was already calibrating the portal to send them to their destination, somewhere in Lowell, Massachusetts. “You said those things home in on emotion—you seem pretty upset about your friend. Is—”
“Don’t worry,” Stone said after a moment, stepping away from the portal. “That’s part of being trained as a mage—the ability to put aside one’s own emotional state when necessary. It’s probably a good thing that you two didn’t know Eleanor, though—it will make things easier.”
“So we just…step through?” Verity asked. Stone had explained the highlights of travel in the Overworld to her on the trip down, with Jason adding the layman’s interpretations, so she had a pretty good idea what to expect. Still, Jason knew hearing it described and actually experiencing it were as different as listening to a symphony and trying to understand it by hearing someone tell you about the individual notes. It didn’t translate well.
“Yes, exactly.” Stone nodded toward the portal. “Just stay close together and keep walking. And remember not to be afraid. The trip will be very short—no more than a minute, and we’ll be out on the other side.”
Verity didn’t look scared in the slightest—to the contrary, she regarded the portal with shining-eyed anticipation. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I’m a lot tougher than my big chicken of a brother.”
“We’ll see,” Jason said darkly. In reality he was proud of her courage; he just hoped he could match it. Even though Stone had fixed it so he could go through without attracting the attention of the Overworld’s occupants, the place still made him damned nervous.
“All right, then. Ready?”
“Ready,” Verity said.
“No, but let’s go anyway,” Jason said. He put his hand on Stone’s right shoulder, and Verity put hers on his left, and together they stepped through the electric mists.
Verity screamed.
CHAPTER TWO
The cry wasn’t startled, or surprised, or mildly frightened—it was a full-throated, ear-piercing shriek of utter and complete terror. Verity ripped her hand from Stone’s shoulder and clamped it, along with her other one, to the sides of her head.
“Bloody hell!” Stone snapped, spinning to face her. She was doubled over now as if in some kind of agony, but nothing was near her.
“What the—” Jason started, but Stone didn’t let him finish. He picked Verity up, slung her, still screaming, over his shoulder, and whirled back toward the portal they’d just entered. “Come on!” he ordered. “We’re going back!”
Jason took a quick look around before following the mage. The flitting, hazy gray things in the Overworld—that generally ignored them on normal trips through the portal—hurried toward their location. “Oh, fuck, not again...” he whispered, and then he was back through, and the creatures were gone.
Stone had fallen to his knees, struggling to lower the still-screaming Verity to the floor without dropping her. Jason quickly got next to them and helped. “What’s wrong with her?” he demanded. Even he, on his disastrous first trip through the Overworld, hadn’t freaked out this badly.
“No idea.” Stone barely seemed to notice he was there. Bending over Verity, he took her wrists and tried to pry her hands off her head. “Verity! Pull yourself together!” he ordered. “We’re out of there now. You’re all right!”
Gradually she stopped screaming, and over the next few minutes she slowly got herself under control, although she still shook. Her breath still came fast and hard, as if she had just run several miles with a pack of monsters in hot pursuit. Eventually she opened her eyes and stared up at Stone and Jason. She swallowed once, tried to say something, but ended up just shaking her head. Her whole body was bathed in perspiration, her short, spiky dark hair stuck to her sweaty forehead.
“You okay?” Jason asked, kneeling next to her.
She gulped several deep breaths. “I—I think so,” she got out between them.
“What happened?” Stone asked. “Do you have any idea what caused that?” He too breathed hard as the adrenaline spike that had allowed him to pick Verity up and hustle her around like a sack of potatoes wore off.
She struggled to sit up. Jason hauled her to her feet and helped her to the wall so she could sag against it, since the portal room had no furniture. Stone followed, looking concerned. “I—don’t really know,” she said. “It’s like—the minute I went in there, I felt like my head was gonna explode. Like—things were trying to
get in.” She took another deep breath. “Like something was pressing on me, and it was gonna kill me or drive me crazy or pull out my brain.”
Over Verity’s bowed head, Jason looked at Stone. “Have you ever heard of this before?” he whispered.
Stone shook his head. Returning his attention to Verity, he said, “You say you felt this as soon as you went inside the portal?”
She nodded without looking up.
“Nothing before that?”
“I—I don’t think so, no.”
“Was it when you saw the creatures?” Jason asked.
That made her look up. “What creatures?”
Jason’s eyes widened. “The gray foggy things flying around in there. You didn’t see them?”
Verity shook her head. “Like I said—pretty much the second I got in there I felt like my brain was coming apart. I didn’t really get much chance to see anything.”
Stone had the thousand-yard stare again, the one that Jason knew meant his mind was moving fast as it tried to make sense of what had happened. “Al—?”
The mage scrubbed his hand across his face. “This is new,” he said, still sounding preoccupied. “I’ve seen a few cases of people who didn’t react well to the Overworld—your case, Jason, and my own on my first time through, when I was a teenager. But I’ve never heard of a reaction that violent before.”
Verity looked concerned. “Does this mean I’m not gonna be able to go through?”
“You still want to after that?” Jason demanded, incredulous. “My freak-out was kid stuff compared to yours, and Al practically had to drug me to get me in there again so we could go home.”
Her expression was disappointed. “I’m gonna be a mage, Jason. This is what they do. They use this thing to travel around. If I can’t—” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Dr. Stone. I don’t know why—”
