by R. L. King
“Well, that was fun,” Verity said, examining the map. “It’s gonna be midnight before we get there now.”
“That’s if we’re lucky,” Jason said. “We had an early start before, but now we’re gonna hit traffic as we get closer. Get comfortable.”
“Bit late for that,” Stone grumbled. “I sincerely hope the Evil are there, because right now I need someone to take out my frustration on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A plump young woman in a floppy hat and hippie-print blouse poked her head through the flap of the big blue tent.
Trin glanced up from where she’d been flipping through one of the magical tomes stacked in tote bags next to her folding lounge chair. Sam, sitting at a table where he was making notes on a large piece of paper, put down his pen. “Report?”
“They’re starting to come in,” the woman said. “About half of the main group is here already, and has checked in. The others should be here by tonight, tomorrow at the latest.”
“Any problems?”
“Some grumbling,” she said. “A lot of them still don’t want to be here. But they’re coming.”
“I don’t give a fuck what they want, as long as they get here,” Trin said. “Where’s Dr. Brandt?” She was back to looking like herself again, which she was glad about—she hadn’t liked the buxom-redhead disguise, and keeping the illusion going was tiring.
“She’s here. Keeping a low profile, like you said. Her camp’s on the other side of the playa.”
Trin nodded. “Good.” She thought the odds that anyone would recognize Pia Brandt here were low, but she wasn’t taking any chances. “Tell her we’ll need to get together tonight and finalize the details.”
“I will,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Any word on what Stone’s doing?”
The woman hesitated.
“What?” Trin sat up. “Oh, fuck, don’t tell me he’s—”
“One of the soldiers in the Bay Area told me Stone and the others were spotted leaving town this morning in a large RV with a tan Jeep towed behind it. He didn’t follow them, though, since he was told not to.”
“Fuck,” Trin snapped.
“We don’t know he’s on to us,” Sam said.
“Don’t be any more of an ass than you already are,” she growled. “Where else would they go in an RV this time of year? Stone doesn’t go camping.”
Sam shrugged. “We can put the word out to keep an eye out for them. Remember, they don’t know what we look like, and you said they can’t detect us.”
“I hope,” she said.
“Just don’t lose it now,” Sam said, eyes narrowed. “Most of what we’re doing is hidden anyway, and with all the people here, the chances they’ll figure out what we’re doing are low, as long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves.”
“We might need to keep some of the group well out of sight,” she said. “He knows what Dr. Brandt looks like, and some of the others are famous enough that they might be recognized.”
“This is a bad time—” Sam began.
“I know,” she said, glaring. “I know. But if we have to, we have to. Maybe we can pick up a couple more mages if we play it right.” She looked at the woman, who still waited in the doorway. “You’ll need to come back tonight to talk to me and Dr. Brandt. Once you know what you’re doing, start finding people to use. And put word out to the soldiers to start setting up the components. You have the map?”
She nodded, digging in her flowered leather bag. “It will take a while to get everything set up properly, since it all has to be hidden.”
“That’s fine. You’ve got five days to do it. Just make sure everything’s in place by Saturday night, and keep me updated at least twice a day.”
“Got it,” she said. Nodding to Trin and Sam, she backed out of the tent and left.
Trin sighed and leaned back. “There are so many ways this plan can go wrong,” she said. “And now fucking Stone and his crew are gonna be here—that means we have to be ten times more careful.” She slammed her fist down, which didn’t have much of an effect since she was hitting the fabric of her chair. “How the hell did he figure out what we’re doing?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Sam said. “If he’s here, he’s here. We’ll just have to keep going and keep quiet.”
“We should just kill him.” She closed the book and set it down on the stack. “He might know this is where we are, but he can’t know what we’re doing. We could still catch him by surprise. If we can take out Stone and his apprentice, the other two don’t matter. The brother can’t do shit without magic, and the granola girlfriend doesn’t know enough to fuck us up.”
Sam shook his head, his gaze growing dangerous. “No. We stick with the plan. Like you said, he probably doesn’t know what we’re up to. He might not even know for sure that we’re here. If he’s just guessing and we show our hand, it could endanger the whole plan. Especially if he manages to take out you or Dr. Brandt.” His expression turned sly. “Come on. It’s only a few more days. Then you can kill him. Like I said, I’ll even help. We all will. I’m sure he and that apprentice of his will be tasty for all of us. But we have to wait.”
“We’ll see,” she said. Her green eyes glittered. “But if I get the chance to do it safely, I’m gonna take it. Without Stone, the rest of them can’t do shit against us. Even the apprentice can only inconvenience us at best.” She twisted in her chair to face him. “You just do your thing, keep everything coordinated and moving smoothly, and let me handle the magic end of it.”
“I’ve got my part under control,” Sam said coldly. “You just make sure you do the same.”
Trin grinned an unwholesome grin. “I can’t wait. I wonder if all these hippies would be having so much fun if they knew they’ll all be dead in a few days.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was full dark by the time Stone, Jason, Verity, and Sharra arrived at the Burning Man location and took their position in the long line of vehicles waiting to gain entrance.
Stone looked around at the motley collection, spotting everything from RVs as big as the one they’d previously been traveling in to small, rickety vans that could easily have been older than he was. All around them, people moved around on bicycles, small golf carts, on foot, and in odd, decorated conveyances that looked like tiny parade floats. A few overhead lights blazed near the front of the line, where organizers were letting people through a few at a time after checking their tickets and verifying that they had the required supplies.
Already, he felt the power of the ley line convergence. He leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes and reaching out with his magical senses. “This is amazing,” he murmured, drinking in the force of the thrumming ley lines’ power and letting it wash over him like a raging river. “So much energy…so much power. I feel like I could lift this entire vehicle, trailer and all, and take it for a jaunt around the area.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Jason said. “It’d be pretty conspicuous, and it would suck to get a magical hernia this early in the week.” He grinned. “Come on, Al, enough with the magic geek-out. You can do that later. Right now we gotta get settled.”
Stone nodded, reluctantly switching back to normal sight and feeling a sense of loss as the swirling colors and energy currents disappeared, replaced by dust and packed-together traffic. “What’s the plan?” he asked, keeping his voice down. Verity and Sharra had fallen asleep in the back seat about an hour ago.
“We get in and find a place to set up,” he said. “I was hoping not to have to do it in the dark, but it’s either that or sleep in the Jeep.”
“Ah,” Stone said, “that reminds me: before we get to the front of the line, it’s probably best if we sort out our disguises. We don’t want anyone seeing us as we are—if the Evil are here, we’ve no idea who they are.”
They woke up Sharra and Verity, and spent the next few minutes discussing what everyone wanted to look like. Stone reiterated his suggest
ion that each of them choose a look that was close enough to their own natural appearance that they didn’t inadvertently cause trouble with things like mismatched size, weight, or gender. After going back and forth several times, they finally arrived at their choices and Stone calibrated the generators. “There,” he said, examining his handiwork.
Jason had traded his long, dirty-blond hair for a shorter brown cut and neat goatee, trimmed down his muscular frame, and altered his strong jaw for a thinner, slightly rounded-off look. He resembled a young athlete who had stopped training after high school and gone slightly to seed.
Verity, normally slim and gothy with short, dyed-black hair, added a few pounds for a more athletic look and went for shoulder-length light brown hair, blue eyes, pug nose, and a dusting of freckles.
Sharra, tall and rangy with red-brown hair and a deep tan, reverted to her natural blonde color, lengthened her hair, and adopted a somewhat more voluptuous figure. “I always wanted bigger boobs,” she said with a grin.
Stone himself changed his dark-brown, spiky-fronted hair to white blond, his blue eyes to gray, and his fair complexion to a healthy tan, while adding a bit of muscle to his thin frame. He looked like a slightly aging punk rocker.
Verity looked them all up and down. “Not bad,” she said. She grinned at Sharra. “I could get used to that look on you.”
“Maybe I’ll keep this thing after,” she replied, fingering the pendant.
“You’ll want to dress a bit differently than usual if you can, too,” Stone said. “I hope you brought some different items to make sure your clothes fit your persona. The idea is to blend in and not look uncomfortable in your skin.”
“You’d better work on your American accent too, Al,” Jason pointed out.
“Don’t remind me. Ah: we should choose different names, too. Jason, you’d probably be all right, but I doubt there are loads of Sharras, Veritys, and Alastairs running around here. Pick something that you’ll respond to without too much thought. I suppose I’ll just use one of my middle names, Michael.”
Sharra grinned. “Oh, no. Around here, nobody goes by regular names. Everybody uses nicknames. And nobody picks their own.” She eyed them each in turn, then pointed at Jason. “You can be Wolf.” To Verity, she said, “You’re Rowdy.” Stone, she studied longest of all. Finally, she reached forward to ruffle his new hair. “And you’re Spike.”
Verity grinned. “Not bad. And you…you can be Dusty.”
“Thanks,” she said sourly. “But hey, like I said, you don’t pick your own. Everybody remember who they are.”
“Can’t do anything about our IDs getting in,” Stone said, “so we’ll just have to hope that the Evil haven’t infiltrated the organizers of this thing.”
They crept forward a bit at a time, and eventually reached the front of the line. Stone handed over their tickets while Jason and Sharra opened the trailer and got their gear approved, and before long they were moving again, following the organizer’s directions.
Inside was controlled chaos. Burning Man’s location, called the “playa,” was laid out in a large three-quarter circle, with “streets” that traced the arc of the circle and radiated out from the center where the multi-story wooden Man held silent court over the proceedings. The streets radiating from the center were labeled like a clock face, starting with 2:00 on the far right and ending with 10:00 on the far left.
Jason twisted in his seat. “Okay, Sharra—er—Dusty: you’re the expert. Where should we go?”
Sharra leaned forward, looking out. She took her bearings and then began directing Jason. “I’m looking around for something that looks quiet.” The organizers had given them a map when they arrived, and she consulted it now. “A lot of places are already spoken for by the big camps, so we’ll have to work around them. My friends said to stay away from the top parts of the clock, since that’s where a lot of the big parties are. Wouldn’t hurt to try to find something near some people who know what they’re doing—maybe they’ll take pity on us, and we can trade for some help and advice.”
All four of them watched with interest as Jason threaded the Jeep down the road, moving at a snail’s pace because it was choked with pedestrians, more of the weird little parade vehicles, and bicyclists.
“What’s the point of those?” Stone asked, pointing at what looked like a golf cart built up to look like a giant cat, complete with glowing, neon-green eyes.
Sharra grinned. “They’re called ‘mutant vehicles.’ They’re just for fun, plus they’re the only powered vehicles that can drive around the playa. You have to get special permission for them—you have to prove it’s entertaining or useful in some way to get it. For us, once we park we won’t be moving anymore.”
They kept driving. Even through the Jeep’s closed windows they could hear strains of music mixing in a weird melodic cacophony from various directions, as well as the whoops and shouts of revelers. “It doesn’t officially start till tomorrow,” Sharra said, “but people get going early.”
Another half hour passed before Sharra tapped Jason’s arm and pointed. “That looks like a good spot,” she said, indicating a large empty area set back from the roads. A collection of mismatched tents, trailers, and moving figures was nearby, along with a large bonfire and another of the mutant vehicles, this one done up to look like a large woman wearing a fancy hoop-skirted dress bedecked with strips of colorful lights. Sharra rolled down her window as Jason pulled up in front. “Hi!” she called, and pointed to the empty space. “Is that spot taken?”
Several people from the camp ambled over. They ranged in age from mid-twenties up to one woman who looked nearly fifty.
“Welcome!” called a bearded, grinning man, waving. “Come on in, neighbors. It’s all yours!”
Jason pulled the Jeep into the empty area and the group all piled out, happy for a chance to stretch their legs after the long ride.
It took them nearly an hour to get their camp set up. Jason and Sharra took charge of putting up the tents while Verity, the best cook among the group, organized their supplies in the back of the trailer. Stone didn’t think he’d be useful since he’d never set up a tent in his life and the two that Jason had procured were both large and complicated, but as it turned out, his newly augmented magical punch came in handy for driving long sections of rebar into the ground to use as tent stakes, and for surreptitiously moving heavy items around without having to carry them.
He grinned. “This is exhilarating,” he told Jason. “I feel like I’ve just had four or five cups of coffee. There’s so much energy around here that it’s practically bursting. Do you feel it, Sharra?”
“Oh, yeah, for sure,” she agreed. “It’s really a shame we can’t just get a bunch of mages together and buy the place, so we could set up a portal and build a settlement. I’d be here in a heartbeat if they could.”
“Why can’t they?” Verity asked.
“For the same reason it’s so compelling,” Stone said. “It’s not practical for mages to spend too much time this close to this many ley lines. It’s not a problem for a few days, but if you stayed too long, it would start doing…odd things to you. This much power warps the mind, eventually.”
“Okay, you guys,” Jason growled. “Mundane in the house. C’mon, Al, finish driving in those rebar pieces so I can get these tents up. I don’t know about you guys, but I want to get to sleep sometime before the sun comes up.”
Stone picked up another long metal spike, placed it where Jason indicated, then concentrated for a moment and drove it deep into the ground. “Why do we need these?” he asked. “I’m no outdoorsman, but I thought tent stakes were usually a lot shorter than this.”
“Wind,” Sharra said. “And sandstorms. This is a huge flat area. They can get some wicked windstorms blowing up without much notice. If we used standard stakes the tents would get ripped out of the ground the first time one hit.”
Stone nodded and continued driving in spikes, keeping a lookout to make sure that th
eir new neighbors, who’d drifted back to their own camp following introductions, weren’t watching what they were doing.
“I’m glad you insisted on bringing all this stuff,” Verity told Jason when the tents were up and the four of them were carting air mattresses, sleeping bags, and lanterns inside.
“So am I,” Stone agreed. “Much as I’m not fond of sleeping in tents, I’d be even less fond of whatever we’d have had to make do with if you hadn’t been prepared.”
“What can I say—I used to be a Boy Scout,” Jason said, grinning.
“He really was,” Verity affirmed. “I remember being jealous when I was little because I wanted to be one, too.”
They got their gear squared away and locked up whatever they didn’t need in the trailer. “Okay,” Jason said, yawning and heading toward the tent he and Stone were sharing. “Bedtime, yeah? See you guys in the morning.”
Verity and Sharra nodded, heading toward their own tent, but Stone remained where he was. “You coming?” Jason asked him, pausing at the flap.
“Go on. I’ll be along shortly. Want to get the wards up around the tents.”
Jason and Sharra continued into their respective tents, but Verity stayed outside, coming over to stand next to Stone. “If they’re here, won’t they notice wards?” Verity asked.
“The Evil won’t. Their mages will if they go looking for them, but I’m betting we’re not the only mages around. Remember, Sharra said this is popular with young mages.” He shrugged. “It’s a chance we’ll have to take. I won’t leave us completely unprotected. And if nothing else, if the Evil try to come near our tents, I’ll know it, so we’ll know for sure that they’re here.”
Verity looked out over the wide, flat expanse of the playa, at the dark shapes of the vehicles, the shifting lights, and the smaller forms of people moving around. “Do you think they’re here?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“I wish we knew what they’re planning. We don’t even know what they look like and they don’t even know we’re here. They could be doing something in plain sight, but will we even know what to look for? Who knows when they’re even going to do it? We might not have much time to figure it out. Who says they’ll wait till the end?”
