by R. L. King
“Stone, what the—”
“Help me get these people back inside!” Without waiting for a response, Stone started up the deck, slipping and sliding. His plan was to get past the last two people and then use magic to shove them all toward Blum and the door. He’d seen panic like that before—they weren’t going to get there on their own.
He’d made it past them and was turning back when the boat lurched again, nosing down into a deep trough and sending the two panicking passengers skidding back toward him. A massive wave, higher than the previous ones, broke over the railing, swamping the whole deck with at least a foot of water. One of the serpent-like creatures made a grab for the passengers.
Stone’s foot slipped out from beneath him and he fell backward. With a shout, he directed a wide concussion wave toward the passengers, shoving them toward Blum. “Grab them!” he yelled as he crashed to the deck.
“Stone! Look out!” Blum screamed.
From his half-prone position, Stone couldn’t see Blum well, but the detective’s terror-stricken gaze appeared to be fixed on something past him.
He spun as much as he could, but didn’t get turned around fast enough. Something watery and strong plucked him up, engulfing him, and then he was airborne. The last thing he remembered before he blacked out was hitting his head on the rail, and then the water closed over him.
51
Hitting the water jerked Stone back to awareness, but by the time he got his bearings and remembered where he was and what had happened, he’d gone under.
All around him, the waves crashed and rolled, tossing him back and forth like a discarded toy. He clamped his eyes shut against the stinging water and fought to hold what little breath he had left, trying to figure out which way was toward the surface.
He couldn’t panic—if he did that, he was dead. His head throbbed where he’d hit it, making it hard to think straight.
Focus, damn you!
He could still feel the motion of the waves, so he couldn’t be down that deep. A sudden vision of the snakelike things surrounding him rose, but he drove it down. Bracing himself against the pain, he cracked his eyes open, hoping he could spot the surface. Already his lungs burned and the compulsion to take a breath was overwhelming. He shivered as the ice-cold water soaked him to the skin; his heavy coat especially made it hard to move, dragging him down. Without a thought, he shrugged free of it and tried to figure out what to do next. His magic wouldn’t help him here—not until he could get to the surface. His protective shield might be able to create a bubble of air around him if he’d cast it before he went under—he wasn’t sure, he’d never tried it—but it was useless down here.
His head broke the surface, and suddenly he was surrounded on all sides by waves as high as houses, flinging him first one direction, then another. For a moment he could do nothing but pant, taking in great lungfuls of air, coughing and sputtering as sprays of water hit him in the face. He couldn’t see the serpent-things, but he couldn’t see much right now through his streaming, slitted eyes.
The serpents—
His breath caught as sudden dread, colder than the bay around him, hit him so hard it was almost like a physical punch.
The figurine!
No, no, no! Had he put it in his coat? He couldn’t remember—normally he kept it in his front jeans pocket, but he’d been pulling it out so many times to check it, he might have absent-mindedly stuck it in the larger pocket of his black overcoat. Desperately, he patted his jeans, but felt nothing but his car key, his now-ruined mobile phone, and his wallet.
No, no…
The figurine was gone, sinking along with his coat to the bottom of the bay, some hundred-odd feet down.
Somewhere he couldn’t hope to retrieve it.
And with it, possibly his only hope of stopping whatever the black piece had planned.
I can’t worry about that now. I’ve got to get back to the boat.
He forced his eyes open and looked around, trying to spot the Beau Monde past the towering waves. How was it that no one was seeing these waves? The black figurine must be powerful indeed, if it could put up an illusion strong enough to block the outside world’s view of this kind of madness.
He almost didn’t spot it at first, but then, inexplicably, the waves began to calm around him. Had someone managed to stop the black piece’s pawn after all?
But no. As Stone treaded water and turned in place, he gaped at what he saw. “Bloody hell…” he whispered, impressed in spite of himself.
The Beau Monde loomed ahead of him—but only the back half of it was visible, its fake paddlewheel still churning the water. It was as if some giant had taken a massive axe and chopped it cleanly in two, and the front half had sunk without a trace beneath the waves.
It took Stone, shivering and disoriented, a few seconds to figure out what was going on. It’s in an illusionary bubble. You’re in there with it, but it’s moving on and taking the bubble with it. This was some truly world-class magic going on here, dwarfing anything he’d seen from the other pieces. The set must have saved its best work for the finale.
Cold—both dread and a bone-numbing physical chill—seeped further into Stone’s core, and his shivering increased. He had to get out of the water and back to the boat soon before he succumbed to hypothermia and could no longer do magic. Focusing hard, he cast his levitation spell and rose free of the waves.
He barely managed it. His head kept throbbing, and the shivering, if anything, got worse as the bay wind buffeted him through his sodden jeans and thin T-shirt. He gathered his energy and started off toward the Beau Monde.
He could barely hold his concentration as the shivering got worse. His teeth chattered so hard he thought they might break, and the icy cold burrowed deep into his body, making it hard to move. Resolutely he pressed on.
The levitation spell was not fast—it wasn’t flight, but more a controlled float, like an airship directed by a weak engine. As he drew closer to the big ship, the waves picked up again and the gusting winds grew stronger. He had to concentrate even harder to keep pushing in the right direction. Glancing down, he spotted the bobbing form of the little boat he and his friends had used to get out here. The waves had capsized it; its bright-white hull pointed toward the sky, but the rope still held, dragging it alongside the Beau Monde like a storm-tossed duckling trying to keep pace with its mother.
Up this high, Stone’s vision cleared enough to give him a better look at the big boat, though he had to keep his eyes slitted to fight the wind. The serpent-creatures seemed to be gone, but the waves still crashed high against the sides, cresting over not only the lowest deck but the middle one as well. He couldn’t spot anyone on the outer decks now, and the doors were closed—either the wayward passengers had gotten smart and gone back inside, or else they’d been swept overboard. He hoped it was the former, but he couldn’t spare thought for them now. The cold was sapping his energy, which meant he wouldn’t have much longer to get to the deck before it gave out.
He had to put everything he had into keeping the levitation spell going, so if anyone saw him floating out here, he’d have to deal with the consequences later. He couldn’t even see Blum anymore, and hoped the waves or the serpents hadn’t gotten him as he no doubt remained outside as long as he could, trying to spot Stone in the water.
His energy gave out and the spell failed just as he drew up next to the ship, sending him plummeting toward the bay. Fighting panic, he flailed his arms with mad desperation and barely caught the lower-deck railing on his way down. He scrambled to get a grip on the slippery wood and haul himself up, but he felt his strength ebbing. One hand slipped, sending him swinging from his single remaining hold. “No!” he yelled, trying to force strength into his frozen limbs. He was not going to drown in a magically-induced micro-storm in the middle of the San Francisco Bay!
An instant before his one-handed grasp broke and he fell, a strong grip locked around his wrist.
“Hang on!” a shaking
but strong male voice yelled. “I got you!”
Stone couldn’t see who had him, but he didn’t care. He struggled to help his rescuer, pulling his legs up to get footing on the deck and shove himself up. He flopped over the top of the railing and lay in a wet, shivering, panting heap on the deck.
“Holy fuck, Stone! When that thing tossed you over I thought you were dead!”
Stone flung himself over on his back to see Leo Blum staring down at him in astonished, white-faced horror. He continued shivering, realizing he now lay in several inches of cold water. “B-Blum…” he got out between coughs and hitching breaths.
Blum got an arm around him and hauled him up. “Come on, man—you’re half-drowned and you’re gonna freeze to death. Let’s get you inside.”
Stone didn’t object as Blum pulled him along. The detective was short, but he was strong. Stone did his best to help, but finally gave up and allowed himself to be dragged inside.
The lowest deck was deserted now, except for scattered, overturned tables; the floor was littered with broken china and shards from shattered glasses and liquor bottles. The water had seeped in and soaked the carpet. “Where—where is—”
“Everybody took off for upstairs,” Blum told him. “Hang on—stay here a minute.” He took off without further explanation.
Stone was only too glad to lie on the wet, tilting floor and shiver.
It seemed forever before the detective returned, but then the man was helping him up again. “Come on,” Blum said. “We gotta get you dried off—dry clothes—Let’s get upstairs.”
“N-no.” Stone dug his heels in, trying to sound adamant when he couldn’t get a single word out without his voice shaking. “D-d-downstairs. Have y-you—”
“Haven’t checked down there yet. The door’s locked tight. I was tryin’ to spot you. If I didn’t find you soon, I was gonna see if I could find a way in there.” He leaned Stone against the buffet table. “Come on—get that shirt off. I got a towel and a dry shirt, at least. Can’t help with the rest.”
With Blum’s help, Stone pulled off his soaked T-shirt. Somewhere, Blum had found a towel; he did his best to dry off with it and the detective handed him a crisp white chef’s jacket.
“Found ’em in the kitchen,” he said, shifting from foot to foot and looking nervously out at the rising waves.
With weak, shaking arms, Stone donned the jacket, but his fingers were still too stiff to manage the buttons. He shoved a hand through his wet hair, then mopped at it with the towel. The dry top had quelled a bit of his shivering, though his lower half still felt like it weighed an extra fifty pounds and was encased in ice. “W-we’ve got to g-get downstairs,” he said.
“That’s where he is?”
“That’s the only place left. W-where are Jason and Verity?”
“I dunno. Like I said, everybody else is upstairs. Some of the ship’s crew came down here and cleared everybody out. Only reason they didn’t make me go too is I showed ’em the badge. They’re all panicking—even the crew. They’re not used to this kind of rough weather in the Bay. ’Specially not on the freakin’ Fourth of July.”
Stone pushed off the table. “Come on—we’ve got to go. I don’t think we have much longer.”
“Where’s your game piece? Are you gettin’ anything new?”
“Gone.”
Blum stared at him. “Gone? Whaddya mean, gone?”
“F-fell out of my pocket. In the water.” Without waiting for an answer, Stone staggered toward the rear doors. The pitching deck and his stiff legs made it a lot harder, but he reached the other side and crashed against a door labeled Authorized Personnel Only – No Admittance. Unlike the passenger-friendly doors for the stairways, this one looked more like what you’d expect to find on a ship, complete with airtight seal. Stone grabbed the wheel and tried to spin it open, but it didn’t budge.
“You aren’t gonna get in there,” Blum said. “I tried it already. Whoever’s down there’s got it locked up tight.”
Stone glared at it in frustration. This wouldn’t be a simple matter of using magic to open a standard door. That was easy—just concentrate, get hold of the catch on the other side, and flip it. This one was going to take a lot more power to crack. “There’s no other way in?”
“I couldn’t find one.” Blum looked over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to be bearing down on them. “Was about to find the crew and ask when you showed back up. What are you gonna do?”
“Get it open. Let me concentrate.”
Stone had no idea if he’d be able to do it—his stores of magical energy were already depleted; they hadn’t been high to start with, and he’d used a lot of power saving both the passengers and himself from drowning. And that didn’t even count his throbbing head and physical exhaustion from near-hypothermia. He wished again that Jason was here, and briefly contemplated asking Blum if he could take power from him—but no. His control was shot, and he couldn’t risk killing the detective. He’d just have to do this with the power he had.
He focused on the wheel, pumping magic into gripping it and wrenching it open past either the lock or whatever the people on the other side had jammed it with.
For a moment, he thought it wouldn’t go. Despite the chill of the air and his body, sweat stood out on his forehead and ran down his face as he bore down harder. His magical strength, even in his depleted state, was a lot higher than his physical, but would it be enough? If it wasn’t, there had to be a window somewhere, or—
With a loud crack, something on the other side gave way, followed almost immediately by the faint jangling of something heavy and metallic hitting the floor. Stone sagged against the wall, getting his breath as Blum hurried forward and took hold of the wheel, spinning it and pulling the door open. “You okay?” he asked, obviously impatient to go down.
“Wait,” Stone puffed. “If he’s down there, he’ll be expecting us. Let me go first so I can shield us.”
Blum pulled his gun from a holster hidden beneath his jacket. “Can I shoot through the shield?”
“No.”
“Then you use it, but leave me out. If he’s there and I can get a shot at him, I’m gonna take it.”
Without waiting for Stone to respond, he ducked through the door. After a moment, Stone followed him.
No shots rang out as he reached the bottom of a steep stairway. The bent, twisted form of a crowbar lay there—obviously what had been used to jam the door. Stone had to pause to be a little bit impressed with himself: that kind of magical strength would have been a lot more difficult when he was a white mage.
Ahead, dim lights illuminated an ordered mishmash of machinery, conduits, metal ducts, and gauges. It was loud down here, between the waves, the massive diesel engines that really powered the boat, and the paddlewheel continuing to churn through the water. The deck continued to pitch; as Stone dropped from the last step, a sudden sideways jerk sent him slamming into the machinery to his left. With a grunt of pain he ducked to a crouch, shifting to magical sight and trying to spot Blum or anyone else.
The first thing he saw was neither the detective nor his quarry, but the prone form of a man. Dressed in the uniform of a ship’s crewman, he lay sprawled in the space between two of the banks of machinery. His flickering orange aura told Stone he was unconscious, not dead.
Stone kept going, magical sight still up, ears craned for any unexpected sounds. He still couldn’t see Blum up ahead. He picked his way down the narrow walkway, staying low. For now, he left the shield down—it took a fair bit of energy to keep it going and he didn’t want to waste any, especially after what he’d had to expend to get the door open. He hoped the one advantage of no longer having the white game piece was that the black piece’s pawn wouldn’t know he was coming.
Of course, the clang of that crowbar hitting the ground would have been a good clue, he thought.
As he continued, he spotted two more prone forms of unconscious crewmen off to either side of the main aisle, as if t
hey’d been dragged there to make them harder to find. It might have worked, for anyone not using magical sight—the dimness and tight spaces hid them well—but like the other man, their auras gave them away. Alive. Stone moved past them, feeling guilty for not stopping to check their condition, but he knew time had to be growing short before the black piece’s pawn acted. He wondered why the person had waited at all, especially when he (or she, he reminded himself, hearing Verity’s voice in his head) knew the white piece was nearby.
The rumbling roar of the massive engines grew louder; he was getting closer now. Where was Blum? Had the detective spotted their quarry yet? Was the person even down here at all? Momentary doubt gripped Stone—what if they’d misread the white piece’s signals, and the black one was actually somewhere else entirely? If they’d been wrong, they’d have no way to track it again, now that the white piece was irrevocably lost.
He was trying to decide his next move when Blum’s voice rang out up ahead, barely rising over the thundering engines: “Stop right there! This is the police. Put your hands up and step away from what you’re doing. Now.”
Stone froze.
A laugh sounded, then a deep male voice. “You’re too late. Go ahead and shoot if you want. You can’t stop me now.”
52
Under cover of the engines’ roar, Stone crept forward. When he reached the end of the walkway, he ducked into an alcove and peered out.
Beyond him, the narrow walkway opened out into a slightly more open space. On either side were the massive engines; the back wall was lined with more machinery, gauges, and control panels, their lights and the dimmed overhead fixtures providing the only illumination.
He spotted the man instantly, knelt down over by the left-side engine, where he appeared to be making adjustments to a small bundle on the floor. The man looked to be in his forties, with close-cut dark hair and a blunt, no-nonsense face. He was dressed in the white uniform of a ship’s officer. The oddest thing about him, at least as far as Stone was concerned, was that he had no aura.
