by King, R. L.
He reached the part of the invocation where Carly would have to insert her command to send Faces back. He paused a moment, reaching out to grip her shoulder again. “Carly! Now!”
Nothing happened.
“Carly! Do it!” He turned to face her, finally taking notice of what was going on around him.
And he froze.
Carly was not standing slumped and dejected in the middle of the group anymore. Instead, she stood tall, shoulders thrown back, an expression of confidence and wonder on her plain features. “It’s so beautiful...” she whispered.
Harsh laughter echoed through the clearing.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Stone reacted quickly: he grabbed Carly by her upper arms and spun her to face him. “Carly! Snap out of it!”
She smiled at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she murmured. “Why didn’t you tell me what I could be?”
The remaining mini-tornadoes sank back into the ground in a hail of spinning leaves.
“What the hell is going on?” Jason demanded.
But Edna was catching on as well. She stared at Carly in horror, but didn’t drop the shield she was maintaining.
The laughter continued. “Mageling, did you truly think that it would be so easy to rid yourself of me before I’ve completed my purpose?”
Something slammed into the side of Edna’s shield.
“Al, damn it, what’s happening?” Jason yelled.
Edna answered, her tone grim. “Faces is trying to get into her head.”
Carly, meanwhile, was holding her hands up and looking at them as if she’d never seen them before. Moving as though in a daze, she pointed one at a small nearby tree and closed her eyes for a second. Energy shot from her hand and hit the tree with a sound like thunder. It swayed, though it did not fall. When her eyes opened again, they were shining with amazement. “That’s what magic’s like?” she said in wonder. “That’s what I can do? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Carly!” Stone said urgently. “Faces is lying to you. That power isn’t yours. It’s his. He’s—infusing you with it somehow.”
She concentrated for a moment, then her expression clouded. She frowned. “You’re jealous,” she stated. “You’re just jealous because I’ve got more power than you do now. You were never going to show me how to use this, were you?”
“Oh, holy crap...” Lopez said under his breath as he realized what was happening. He raised his hand, clearly preparing to slap Carly. “Al, should I—?”
“No!” Stone snapped, holding up his own hand to block Lopez’s. “If it doesn’t work, she could kill you. She doesn’t know how to handle that kind of power.”
The laughter came again. “She will learn.”
Something else slammed into the shield, and another hefty tree branch came crashing down atop it. “I can’t hold this forever,” Edna said, strain in her voice.
Stone gripped Carly’s arms again. “Carly, listen to me. He’s not going to let you keep that power. He lies. Now come on—do what you came here for. Order him to go back where he came from. Do that and this will all be over. No one else has to die.” He could hear the shake in his own voice; even as he said the words, he knew that they were having little effect on Carly. Her face was not twisted or evil or vengeful—she simply looked like someone who had been given an amazing new toy.
“I told you that you were a fool, mageling. No one else has to die? How did you plan to banish me without death? I was born in death.”
Stone started to reply, but then stopped. He knew Faces’s voice was only in his mind, that the others couldn’t hear it. And it was only now that he realized Faces was right: he had been a fool.
He’d forgotten the most important component of the ritual.
“Bloody hell...” he said aloud.
“What?” Jason called. “Al, what’s going on? What’s up with Carly?”
The laughter again. “Now you see, don’t you? You can’t send me back. You don’t have the stomach for it. None of you do.”
Something, some kind of force, exploded inside the shield. The sound was deafening, the unseen force blowing them outward—all but Carly—like they’d been at ground zero of a bomb detonation. Not quite a bomb, though, or all of them would have been blown to pieces since neither Stone nor Edna had anticipated the blast. Instead, they were blown around as if by a huge gust of wind, propelled into various trees. Stone managed to get his shield up before he hit, which probably saved his life. Around him he could hear the thuds and grunts of his friends’ similar impacts. One of the flashlights dropped to the ground.
“Stan? Jason? Edna?” Stone called, scrambling to his feet and summoning a light spell to illuminate the area.
“Here,” came Edna’s voice from his right. She sounded pained, but still strong.
“I’m—mostly okay,” Jason rasped. He was struggling up, clutching his injured arm. He picked up his machete from where it had landed near him.
“Lopez?”
No response.
From the center of where the circle had been, Carly was watching them with interest, but the faintest bit of uncertainty flashed across her face. “I didn’t do that,” she said. “That wasn’t me!”
“What was the ‘bloody hell’ for?” Edna asked Stone as she came up next to him. She moved slowly, never taking her eyes off Carly.
“Faces,” Stone said. “It’s right—I forgot something.”
“How is it right?” Jason demanded. He was shining his flashlight around, trying to spot Lopez.
Stone’s voice sounded beaten. “We can’t banish it.”
“What do you mean, we can’t banish it?” Jason glared at him. “You mean because it’s got Carly?”
“No. Because—”
“Because it took a sacrifice to summon it,” Edna said, getting a look at Stone’s expression and putting two and two together. “Right?”
Stone nodded wearily. “It took a sacrifice to summon it, and it will take one to get rid of it, even with Carly’s help.” He half-expected Faces to chime in about then, but it was strangely silent.
Oddly, so was Carly. Her face had lost some of its enraptured wonder, and now looked like she was wrestling with some kind of dilemma. Maybe the two of them were chatting—Stone wasn’t sure. He shifted to magical senses again and blew away another of Faces’ minions that was preparing to take another pass at them.
“You mean we gotta kill somebody?” Jason stared. “We can’t get rid of it without doing that?”
Stone sighed. “I don’t know if it will take a death, but that’s what it took to bring it here in the first place.” He bowed his head. He was out of ideas. If he was right—and he was certain he was—then either he or one of his friends would have to die to send Faces back. They could try using blood, but because it had taken not just blood but the energy of death to bring it across from whatever plane it had come from, he doubted that anything less than that—even when directed by one bound by blood with its original summoners—would provide sufficient power to send it back. The energies of birth and death were some of the most powerful forces known to magic: they could provide the kind of energy that could sustain massively powerful workings. And when a mage was sacrificed—Stone’s mind flashed back to several years ago, when his own apprentice had nearly died in the same sort of sacrifice, used to power another summoning ritual. The destruction when it had failed had been incredible.
“Al?” Jason grabbed his shoulder. “What do we do?”
“Look at Carly,” Edna murmured.
Stone’s gaze came up and locked on Carly. She still stood in the middle of what had been the circle, and she still had an expression of stubborn confusion on her face. “No!” she said loudly, shaking her head. “I won’t do that!”
Stone took a step forward. “What does it want you to do, Carly?” he called.
“Kill us?”
She focused on him, but didn’t answer, not right away. Nearly a minute passed, during which she appeared to be grappling with some difficult inner struggle. Her body shook, sweat breaking out on her forehead. “It says you can’t send it back. It says someone would have to die for that. Is that right? Does somebody have to die?”
“Carly,” Stone said, taking another step toward her. “Even if it’s true, we still need you. We can’t send it back without you. You know it has to go back. Think of all the people who have died. Think of Karen, Carly. Your friend. This thing killed your friend. It’s lying to you about the power. It isn’t going to let you keep it.”
“No!” she cried. She lashed out again, but it was obvious she wasn’t aiming at anyone. “You’re—you’re jealous!” She didn’t sound so sure this time, though.
“Why isn’t it attacking us?” Jason whispered.
“I think it’s focusing on her,” Edna replied in the same tone. “It’s giving her its power, but that means it doesn’t have much left to use on its own.”
“Carly, you know I’m right,” Stone said, forcing himself to keep his voice even, calm, sane. “You know I’m right, don’t you? We can’t let this thing stay here. Think of how many more people it will kill. Men, women, children—people whose only crime is their bloodline.”
“But—” She hesitated. “Somebody has to die. Are you going to kill somebody? Is one of you going to die?”
Stone took a deep breath. “If that’s what it takes,” he said softly, “if you’ll help us, then—yes.”
She swallowed. “Really? Who? Which one of you is going to die?”
“I am.”
The words came from three of them at once: Jason, Edna, and Stone. They looked at each other; something passed between them, and they turned as one back to Carly. “We’re ready, Carly. If that’s what it takes. If you’ll help us.” Stone took a step forward. “Do it. You said you didn’t want to mess this one up. You won’t. You know you can do it. Do the right thing, Carly Rosales. End this thing you started.”
Carly stared at him for a long moment. She swallowed again, appeared to be listening to something, and shook her head hard, like she was trying to clear away gnats. Then she took a deep breath. “I’ve been a screwup all my life,” she said. “Maybe now, at least, I can do something right.”
She pointed her hand at Stone. He stiffened, squaring his shoulders and waiting for the blow.
It never came. Instead, he heard Jason yelp. For a moment he thought she had hit his friend instead, but then something sailed past his head so fast he couldn’t even tell what it was.
“What the—?” Jason started.
“Carly! No!” Stone cried, surging forward.
Carly still stood where she had been, but obviously wouldn’t be for long. She swayed, her hands going to her chest, where Jason’s machete had hit her so hard its blade had passed through her body and out the other side. Blood welled up around the wound.
As Stone ran to her, her knees buckled and she collapsed in slow motion to the leaf-carpeted ground. He dropped down next to her, grabbing her shoulders. “Carly!”
“Not...gonna be a screwup...again,” she whispered. Blood bubbled up around her lips. Stone, shifting to magical senses, could see her radiating power like a small sun.
Carly took a deep shuddering breath, coughed more blood, and then yelled, “Go home! Go home now!”
Stone still seeing the world magically, saw the power begin to coalesce. He heard a shriek that would have split the whole clearing if it had been physical, and saw something try to rush toward Carly. He raised his head and screamed out the final words of the spell that would banish the spirit.
Later, he wouldn’t quite be able to reconstruct what happened next. The power of his words joined with the vast glowing pulse that was Carly, forming into some sort of mystical battering ram that shot out like a cannonball, cleaved the dark energy in two, and slammed into the enormous tree under which He of Many Faces’s shrine had resided for hundreds of years. The tree rumbled ominously as a glowing rift appeared in front of it. The dark energy, which had flowed back together into one piece again, was sucked inexorably toward the rift.
Many Faces screamed as it disappeared inside, the psychic feedback from its cry nearly deafening Stone. It fought, flinging tree branches, leaves, anything it could reach, but it had no aim. The rift flared bright, then began to shrink. Stone looked down at Carly.
Her eyes were closed. Her chest, with the wicked hilt of the machete protruding from it, was still.
She was smiling.
The tree rumbled again. The glowing rift was getting smaller, collapsing inward on itself.
Stone leaped to his feet, snatching up the magic book, and ran toward Jason and Edna. They had located Lopez, lying up against another tree. He was unconscious. “Come on!” he cried. “We have to go!” But even as he said it, he knew they weren’t going to make it. He grabbed Edna’s shoulder and shoved her down next to the tree where Lopez lay. “No. Never mind. Edna, we have to put up a shield. That thing’s going to blow any second!” Already he was forming his own, and already he was afraid it wouldn’t be enough. He was sure that when things went up, they would go up big.
Edna gritted her teeth, sweat pouring from her brow. “I’ll try,” she said. “Almost out of power, though—” She raised her own shield, but almost immediately it sputtered and died. She looked every bit her age at that moment, and then some; deep, furrowed lines stood out on her ashen-gray face. “Sorry—”
Stone didn’t answer. He closed his eyes, breathing hard, and focused everything he had on keeping them protected. “Get in close,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s got enough power—”
He felt Jason pull him in on one side, Edna on the other, and they all huddled in a protective ball over Lopez’s unconscious body.
“Al—” Jason rasped.
“Not now, Jason.” Stone’s voice shook with the effort. He could feel the magic building. They might have run, but he knew there was no way they’d have gotten far enough. Not having to carry Lopez. Not tired as they were. They would have to make their stand here, and that was the best they could do.
“Al. Take my power.”
Stone stared. “No, Jason. I can’t—” I can’t count on you. I can’t split my concentration on a gamble. If you don’t come through, we’re all dead for sure.
“Al!” Jason’s voice was harsh but strong. “Do it, damn it! If you trust me, do it!”
For only a second, Stone wavered. Then he clamped his hand on Jason’s shoulder and called for power, as he’d done many times before.
For only a second more, he felt hesitation. It’s not going to work! He can’t—
But then it was there, flowing in, filling him with energy, lighting up his body with more power than he’d used in months.
And it wanted out.
Stone yelled something inarticulate and triumphant, flinging his hands to the sky. The shield flared brighter, forming a radiant, glowing white dome over them all.
The rift collapsed.
The tree exploded.
Everything was white.
And then it was black.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Two days later
“So, it’s over,” Peter Casner said.
Stone nodded.
“You aren’t going to give me the details, are you?”
“Do you want to hear them?”
Long pause. “Do I need to?”
Stone shrugged. “I doubt it will do any good. No one will believe them.”
“No, probably not.” Casner shifted in his chair, glancing out his office window. “I suppose you want to know why I asked you to come down here.”
“I hope it wasn’t to arrest me again.”
Casner made a sound that might hav
e been meant as a laugh, but it came out more like a cynical snort. “Somehow, Dr. Stone, I doubt I could keep you on ice if I tried. But no.”
“Why, then?”
“I’m not sure,” Casner said, shrugging, not meeting Stone’s eyes. “Maybe just because I wanted somebody to tell me it really happened.”
“How many people died over the past few days, Lieutenant?” Stone asked softly.
Casner paused for a long moment. “Thirty-two, total. That’s assuming we’ve found them all.”
“Does that count Carly Rosales?”
“Who’s that?”
“The woman who was with us when we came to the park.”
“She’s dead?” Casner jotted something on his pad. “How? Where is she?”
“You won’t find her body. Vaporized, I expect. I can show you where if you like, but there’s nothing left to find. Just a crater.”
Casner considered. “So…whatever happened to…end this—it happened there?”
Stone nodded.
“But we won’t find anything we can make sense of.”
“No. Not likely.” He paused, then sighed. “We might run into a bit of trouble from the police in Santa Maria, since they saw us with her the night she died. If you could deal with that situation, I’d appreciate it.”
Casner nodded. “If they ask, I’ll tell them that you had nothing to do with her disappearance.”
Now it was Stone’s turn for a mirthless laugh. “We had everything to do with her disappearance. But I want you to know something, Lieutenant.”
“What’s that?”
“Carly Rosales died a heroine. She’s the one who ended this. We just made it possible for her to do it. If there’s some way she could be memorialized—”
Casner looked like this was the last place he wanted to be right now, or the last thing he wanted to be thinking about, but he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
