by R. L. King
“Step away from the explosives,” Blum called. “This can still end peacefully.”
Stone hadn’t seen the detective initially, but by tracking his voice he realized Blum had to be just ahead of him, ducked around the other side of the same tangle of ducts and conduits he himself was hiding behind.
Explosive? Was that what this man had planned—to blow up one of the ship’s engines? To blow a hole in the hull and take the whole thing down? He shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with the cold still sinking into him. Even a small explosive could blow a big enough hole that the passengers wouldn’t have time to get out, especially with the sea this rough. Did the Beau Monde even have lifeboats? It didn’t matter—it wouldn’t be safe to launch them in this weather. And sending passengers into the towering waves and freezing wind in life jackets would kill them almost as surely as going down with the ship would.
Silently, Stone shifted forward a bit more. It appeared the man was still working on the bundle of explosives—if he could get him away from it (or it from him) perhaps it would buy them some more time. It didn’t look that large; of course it couldn’t be, since the man had to get it on board somehow. Maybe they’d even have time to take it upstairs and toss it overboard. The man was focused on Blum, so Stone doubted he’d even seen him yet. He might have a chance, if he acted fast.
Without hesitation, he reached out with his magic and tried to grab hold of the man, to yank him away from the bundle.
He didn’t budge.
Stone’s magical grasp stopped short as some kind of invisible barrier impeded it.
The man looked up and laughed. “There you are. I knew you were here somewhere. Come on out.”
The boat shifted again, hard to the right. Stone lost his grip and staggered out into the open. He quickly raised his shield and looked around for Blum, but couldn’t see him.
“I knew you were coming,” the man said. “I could feel you. But now I can’t. Why is that?” His voice was calm; he continued working on his bundle as he spoke.
“It’s over,” Stone growled. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Oh? Do you plan to stop me?”
“I do.”
“Stone?” came Blum’s tight voice from somewhere to his left.
“And how do you plan to do that? Everything’s in motion. I’m just making some final adjustments here and waiting for the festivities to start.”
“Festivities?” Stone shifted his balance, trying to adjust his footing in case the ship bucked again.
“Sure. The fireworks. They’ll be going off any minute now, and I plan to make a contribution to them.”
Cold dread gripped Stone. “You’re going to blow up the boat along with the fireworks?”
“That’s the plan. It’ll be fun, don’t you think? Give these folks quite a show before they die.”
“Stone…?” Blum’s voice sounded more urgent.
“What?” Stone didn’t turn his head, keeping his gaze fixed on the man. Squinting, he could barely make out the nametag on his crisp white uniform shirt: it read Tate.
“There’s another one.”
“Another what?” He still didn’t turn.
Tate laughed. “Ah, your cop friend found my other explosive device.”
Stone did turn his head that time. Blum had stepped out from behind his cover and was now facing toward the engine on the other side. A similar bundle—a box with wires extending from it and a digital readout on the top—lay next to it.
“Go ahead,” Tate said conversationally. “There’s no barrier around it. You can try to grab it if you want. It’s probably not even too heavy for you to lift. But I’ll tell you this—if you try to disconnect any of those wires or shut it off, I’ll blow it.” He held up what looked like a remote-control device. “Boom.”
Stone’s heart pounded as he shifted his gaze back and forth between Blum, the device, and Tate behind his barrier.
“What do we do?” Blum mouthed, turned toward Stone but away from Tate. His aura was alight with agitation.
“Better decide soon,” Tate said, as if he’d heard. He glanced at his watch. “The fireworks are set to go off in a couple of minutes.”
“You’ll kill yourself!” Blum yelled. “Is that what you want?”
“Who cares? I’ll go out with a bang, won’t I?”
Stone shivered again as he got a look at Tate’s smile—it wasn’t the smile of a sane man, and likely not one who had any control over his actions. He had to remind himself that none of this was Tate’s fault, that the man was in the grip of mental control so strong he had no hope of breaking it. He looked around for the figurine, hoping he could spot it, but Tate had apparently hidden it away.
He had to do something. Anything. He couldn’t just let Tate detonate his explosives without making some effort to stop him. Maybe he could punch through the barrier, if he—
Next to him, without warning, Blum, who apparently wasn’t aware of the invisible shield around Tate, snapped his gun up and fired.
“Blum! No!”
But Stone’s shouted warning came too late. The round bounced harmlessly off Tate’s shield and spanged off one of the walls.
In the same instant, Tate lifted his hand and made a sweeping gesture.
The Beau Monde made another violent lurch, its deck tilting crazily as it listed to the side away from where Tate had set up.
Blum, not expecting it, lost his balance and toppled backward. The thunk of his head hitting a low-hanging duct and the clang of his gun crashing to the floor barely made it above the engines’ incessant rumble. The detective slumped to the deck and lay still.
Stone moved fast, taking a desperate chance that Tate hadn’t finished setting up the second explosive unit yet. As soon as the man raised his hand Stone cast a quick levitation spell, just enough to lift his feet from the deck and prevent him from falling over. Then, without giving his common sense time to second-guess the foolhardiness of his next action, he used a telekinetic grip to lift the unshielded explosives from the deck. As soon as they cleared it, he focused all his power and conjured a barrier bubble the size of a large beach ball around it.
Tate roared “NO!” and stabbed his finger down on his remote-control device.
The bomb detonated.
The psychic feedback hit Stone like an oncoming train. His body went rigid, all his thoughts driven off by a wall of white light and a flash of agony that felt like someone had buried a battle-axe in the middle of his skull.
He crashed to the deck and went to all fours, his back heaving, the white wall obstructing his vision replaced by a solid sheet of red. Drops of blood pattered down to the deck.
It took him a moment to break through the disorientation to the most important fact:
He was still alive.
The explosion hadn’t blown them all to bits—and the fact that he could see the drops of blood from his nosebleed on the deck meant they weren’t taking on water, either. It hadn’t blown a hole in the hull.
Had he succeeded?
He struggled up, eyes streaming, blinking against the pain, and chanced a look.
The device lay in charred, smoking pieces on the deck, in a surprisingly small blast radius. Stone let his breath out, fleeting relief washing over him. He hadn’t by any means been sure that trick would work. The barrier he’d erected had been designed for massive strength, at the price of size and duration—it wouldn’t have been practical as a personal shield, because he could only hold it for maybe two or three seconds, max—but in this case, mercifully, it had done its job.
Shaking with exhaustion and feedback, shivering from the cold, Stone dragged himself to his feet, hoping he’d be fast enough to act if Tate was preparing something against him.
But Tate wasn’t preparing something against him.
In fact, the man barely seemed to be paying any attention to him at all. Instead, he was crouched over his remaining device, screwdriver in hand, and appeared to be feverishly tr
ying to complete a connection. The remote-control device lay on top of the box housing the explosives, within easy reach.
Panting, Stone staggered forward. The deck bucked again, pitching him toward Tate. With both hands outstretched, he caught himself against the invisible barrier protecting Tate from attack.
The explosion hadn’t distracted him, then. It hadn’t taken the barrier down.
Tate glanced at him and smiled, but then quickly turned back to his work.
Stone pressed his hands against the barrier and glared at him. If allowed to make those last connections, Tate almost certainly would detonate the device right away. With only one left, he risked too much by waiting. The black piece wouldn’t allow him to wait any longer than necessary. Any moment now, more ship’s personnel would show up to find out what was going on, why the engine-room crew weren’t responding. He was backed into a corner, literally and figuratively, and he knew it.
The black piece knew it.
Stone clamped his eyes shut, his brow furrowing, and clawed at the barrier in frustration. Did he have enough magic left to get through it?
All he could do was try.
Focusing his concentration, gathering every shred of magical energy left in his body, he fixed his attention on one small section of the barrier. He’d only have one shot, so he had to make it good.
The ship listed, and he staggered, falling over backward as he lost his balance.
With a roar of rage, he let the magic go.
53
The concentrated magic of Stone’s spell slammed into the barrier.
For a second, he feared it wouldn’t get through. For a moment, the power of the spell appeared to battle with the strength of the barrier—an irresistible force against an immovable object. But as he scrambled to his feet, fighting renewed magical feedback, the spot where the beam had hit glowed first yellow, then white-hot. The entire semi-circular structure lit up then, bathing the engine room in brilliant, dazzling light for the space of perhaps half a second.
And then it was gone, leaving darkness.
Tate screamed inarticulate rage, glaring in fury at Stone before turning once again to his task, more urgently now.
With a manic grin, he snugged the last connection into place, and reached for the remote control.
When he thought about it later, Stone could not entirely reconstruct the mental process that drove him to what he did next.
What he did know, though, what he did remember, was that he had nothing left. His magical well was dry, the last of it depleted in his desperate effort to punch through Tate’s—through the black piece’s—protective shield.
He had no more time, no more options.
His rage flowered at the sight of Tate’s knowing smile.
Time seemed to slow in Stone’s mind as the man reached out for the remote control. If Tate reached it, everything would be over. Everything he and Blum had tried to do would be for nothing. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people—maybe including Jason and Verity—could die.
He saw no other options.
“No!” he screamed, and launched himself at Tate.
The sight of the man’s eyes widening in fear, of him trying to throw himself backward, of his hand scrabbling for the remote-control device, bolstered Stone’s resolve.
He could have stopped then. He could have snatched up the device and flung it away, ending this.
But he didn’t do that.
He didn’t want to do that.
Instead, he locked his grip with both hands onto Tate’s shoulders, met the man’s gaze from scant inches away—
—and he pulled.
At that moment, he wasn’t Alastair Stone, former white mage, ashamed and appalled at having to drain energy from other living beings to sustain his magic. He wasn’t the man who had resisted the tantalizing call of power, of sensation, of satisfaction in favor of a source that fueled his magic but gave him none of those things. He wasn’t the man who knew Tate wasn’t responsible for any of these actions, and would probably be as distraught as Stone—if not more so—to find out what he’d almost done.
Hell, at that moment he wasn’t even civilized.
All he saw was a man who was preparing to commit mass murder. All he felt was the bottomless empty well where his magic should be. All he sensed was the blazing, potent aura in front of him, freed now as some of the black piece’s protective magic fell away.
And all he knew was that power would be his, until there was no more power to be had.
Tate screamed and tried to jerk back, but Stone held on tightly, reveling once again in the orgasmic, magnificent sensation of the man’s life force flowing into him. His eyes blazed with passion and rage in equal parts as the Tate flailed against him, trying with ineffectual terror to push him away.
And then there were hands on his shoulders, and another voice was screaming in his ear.
No. Get away. I deserve this!
“Stone!” The voice grew louder, closer, and the hands yanked harder.
No, damn you! Let me finish!
Something hit him hard in the jaw, rocking his head back.
He reeled backward, losing his grip on Tate’s shoulders, and crashed to the deck.
In front of him, Tate, eyes rolled up into his head, swayed a moment and then dropped where he stood, collapsing into a pale, unmoving heap.
The instant the connection broke, fear and shame took hard hold of Stone as he realized what he’d almost done.
Dear gods, no…not again...
Blum’s face—wide-eyed, angry, confused—loomed over Stone, swimming in his blurred vision. “What the hell were you doing?”
“Thank…you…” he whispered, and passed out.
54
When Stone awoke, it took him a moment to realize what had changed.
He still lay flat on his back on the cold metal deck of the engine room. The engines’ steady rumble still echoed against the walls. He was still soaked and shivering, and his head still hurt. But something was different.
Then it came to him:
The deck wasn’t tilting. The boat was no longer tossing and lurching in wild waves.
The sea was calm.
He risked sitting up a little, and blinked as Leo Blum appeared, crouching next to him. “Blum—” he whispered, putting a hand to his head. He glanced down: the front of the still-unbuttoned chef’s jacket he wore was spotted with bright red flowers of blood.
“You okay?” The detective glanced at him, at something off to the side, then back at him.
“I—think so. How long—”
“Just a couple minutes. They’re gonna be heading down here any time now.”
Sudden fear gripped him. He spun in place, scanning the area for Tate. “Tate—”
“He’s over there.” Blum pointed. “He’s alive, but barely. What the hell did you do to him?”
“Had to stop him,” Stone whispered. He sat up more, moving slowly as his vision swam again. “But…thank you.”
“For what?”
Stone didn’t answer, because at that moment faint shouts sounded from back toward the entrance to the engine room. As Blum rose from his crouch and started to turn in their direction, Stone grabbed his arm. “Wait.”
“What?”
“I—don’t want to be part of this. Too many questions.” Sitting upright now, some of the fog began to ebb away—and he knew why. Even despite the cold and the exhaustion, his magical stores were topped up again, courtesy of the energy he’d taken from Tate.
The energy he’d stolen from Tate.
“How are you gonna do that?” Blum demanded.
“Just—you be the hero. Make something up. They won’t see me.” Gripping a nearby conduit, Stone rose to his feet and cast a small spell to fade into the background. “We’ll talk later,” he added, just as several white-uniformed ship’s crewmen burst onto the scene.
Stone didn’t wait to see what Blum would say, or what the crewmen would do. Using a combination
of invisibility and his disregarding spell, he slipped away and exited the engine room behind the group of crewpeople hurrying down the stairs.
Still using an illusion to cover his blood-spattered chef’s coat and sodden jeans, Stone reached the top deck and spotted Jason and Verity there, along with a majority of the passengers.
Most of the crowd seemed to have calmed down now that the bay was still again; Stone could see the closing forms of several boats approaching, along with a helicopter. Overhead, the fireworks show exploded in colorful glory, its brilliant bursts falling down over the bay like electric rain, and off to the west the brightly-lit form of the Golden Gate Bridge rose. Aside from the nervous glances many of the passengers were casting toward the water, the scene looked oddly normal.
Stone intercepted his friends just after they’d broken free of the crowd and, both of them looking worried, joined several other passengers heading for the stairway down to the top enclosed level. Keeping his illusion up, he pointed toward a mostly unoccupied area on their current deck, and they separated from the other passengers and followed him. As he expected, everyone else, intent on their own groups, ignored them.
“Al!” Relief wreathed Jason’s face. “Man, I’m glad to see you! What happened? Did you find him?”
Verity flung her arms around Stone, and Jason didn’t even scowl at her for it. “Did you stop it? Is everything okay now?” She looked tired, but satisfied.
“Everything’s fine. It’s over. Was anyone hurt up here?”
Jason glanced down toward the lower decks. “We had some close calls. Mostly people getting banged up when they lost their balance and fell. But—did you see those snake-lookin’ things? What were they?”
“Magical constructs, summoned by that game piece.”
“Shit…those things were bad news. They nearly grabbed several people and tossed ’em overboard.”
