by Ben Stevens
The henchman half closed his eyes and gently thrust his pelvis forward, clearly enjoying the attention.
“I look forward to our celebration, my Queen.”
“As do I, as do I.” She flashed her eyes playfully and abruptly stopped her sexual torture of her right-hand man. “Despite his ignorance, he is still a formidable foe. I’m not sure we could best him head on.” Her smile vanished, and she looked deeply into Raphael’s eyes, wanting further reassurance that her plan would succeed.
“Fear not, Queen. The fool knows he couldn’t prevent you from wrecking his pet from where he plans to be, in his VIP booth. I have it on good authority that he is packing his ray-gun.”
“Perrrrfect,” Sofia purred and leaned forward to embrace Raphael in a deep kiss.
After getting her fill, Sofia broke off the kiss and spun around, facing the room filled with twenty-something loyalists, vampire men and women who had all secretly sworn their immortal lives to the Queen of New Puebla. Each one of them had, for their service, been allowed to drink from Sofia, ensuring that none of them would die if something happened to Don Luis Fernando.
“The stage is set, in more ways than one.” Sofia laughed, prompting her private militia to do likewise. She beheld her grand plan: the two dozen loyal soldiers all held in front of them large, rectangular riot-control tower shields. At the moment, each shield was covered by dark burlap bags. Bags that could be flung off quickly and easily. Behind those bags was the real coup de grace, for each shield was in actuality a mirror.
I will provoke him to the point where he will try to kill me with his fancy little pistol, and then I will get the last laugh!
On the stage, Maya performed, and Maya shaped. The shaping of Strange could be compared to the weaving of a tapestry.
If one had a keen eye, one might be able to detect the weaving itself, although in Maya’s case, it was cleverly disguised as song and dance. Very few indeed could see the big picture. The tapestry just looked a mess until the very end, when the picture revealed itself. Isolated, the parts of the tapestry were only bits of colored string. Together, interwoven and bound, the bits of colored string became a vision made manifest. And so it goes with Strange.
Those who knew little about the shaping of Strange were under the false assumption that a Shaper was restricted to one spell or effect at a time, that Strange worked in a linear, cause-and-effect kind of way.
This was undoubtedly a result of trying to apply Newtonian thinking to a very, very un-Newtonian type of phenomenon. A Shaper could, if he or she were so inclined, shape a simple cantrip, a one-invocation, one-effect Strange, much in the way a single piece of colored string could be used to make the simplest of pictures on a contrasting color backdrop.
But the more grandiose pictures took time to weave and time to reveal themselves and often formed a picture that was, in actuality, many pictures. A scene-scape. The result, when the art was channeled through a talented artist, was more often than not utterly breathtaking.
To say that Maya was merely talented when it came to shaping Strange would be the equivalent of saying that Leonardo da Vinci had known how to draw. Sure, there were tactical disadvantages to having to sing an entire song in order to make her magic manifest, but Maya was a goddess of song, not a goddess of war. Besides, you couldn’t rush perfection; good things come to those who wait, and all that.
When doing the show in Home, Maya had stuck to conventional—that is to say, non-Strange, singing and dancing—until the return from the intermission. Then, and only then had she shaped an invocation of fate, calling down the forces of destiny and revealing to her the whereabouts and identity of Jon, her star-crossed guardian. Once she had found her man, she had returned to a conventional performance.
This show was different. The set—the songs and the music—were the same, yet different. A tiny gesture here, a flick of the wrist there, the focus of intent, channeled into and through her voice. That was the difference. Without the focus of intent, what was the difference between a song sung with love and gusto and a chant, an invocation sung to the universe, to whatever gods had set one’s mind, heart, and soul afire with cosmic power?
The difference was subtle, except in the mind and will of the Shaper.
This show, unlike the one at Home, was filled in its entirety with intent. Each movement and each note were a separate piece of colored string that Maya was masterfully weaving together to form a picture of many pictures. It had to be perfect, or she and her friends’ efforts would be thwarted. It all had to come together at just the same time, in perfect unison, in perfect power and glory. Yet no beads of sweat born from frustrated concentration marched across Maya’s brow; she was as gentle and exquisite as a swan gliding across the placid mirror surface of a spring lake on a calm day.
The strings grew short, their ends approaching. Somewhere in the back of her mind, behind the consciousness that directed her voice and body and the higher levels that directed her intent and will into the physical universe, Maya hoped.
Get ready, everyone. Here we go.
From her vantage, Maya could see the entire audience. She turned her gaze to a particular spot in the crowd where she had made a point of letting her eyes linger much throughout the show: the royal box, the VIP section, lifted higher above the masses, in the perfect center of the stadium, providing the best view of the Lily Sapphire show to those within it—specifically to Don Luis Fernando and his entourage.
Don Luis was dressed in his best finery, a dark, smooth suit cut to his body, made from pre-Storm materials no longer available in today’s intra-city market. He wore a black fedora that looked positively ridiculous, trimmed with a narrow band of white cloth and, although seated, he held in his hand the polished, orb-shaped pommel of a walking cane, which seemed only to be supporting his arm, and served as a decoration.
He was joined by a half-dozen toughs, also dressed to kill. They sat slightly behind and around him in a semi-circle. If they expected trouble, it was clear that they expected it from any direction besides the stage. To the left of Don Luis was an empty chair. Sofia was nowhere to be seen—no surprise there. The queen’s absence worried Maya slightly, yet she didn’t hesitate in wrapping up the final bits of her masterwork tapestry.
The show must go on.
Don Luis smiled at her in a way that made her think of a wolf grinning before it consumed its meal of sheep. His eyes burned with a possessive lust that made her shiver. He also knew the end of the show was nearing and seemed ready to spring up from his seat any second and make his way to the stage, where he would drink her life’s blood and feed his back to her in front of the vampiric population of New Puebla. Although that time had not yet come, and his fangs remained on the friendly side of her neck’s skin, the way he looked at her already made her feel violated. It was unnerving.
She batted her eyes at him and gave him a subtle, seductive smile, the corners of her mouth turning ever so slightly up into her roundish moon cheeks. Don Luis’s eyes flashed as he received the message loud and clear. Maya’s skin crawled.
The song ended. The audience roared with cheers. Ratt killed the lights and cued up the soft blue floor light installed in the stage behind Maya. Its brilliant rays spread out from the floor to the sky like a peacock plume in full strutting glory. Although she could no longer see him, she knew that Don Luis was still staring at her, molesting her with his wolf eyes, and that his hands remained on the armrest of the chair and walking cane respectively, while everyone else’s clapped violently for more. In her mind’s eye, Maya gathered the last little bits of the spell strings and began to tie them together, tucked away and trimmed, thereby completing the tapestry.
Her voice sang out a cappella across the darkness and hushed the applause like a tsunami spreading out over the masses. The blue light silhouetted her and only added to the mystical ambiance of her last song. She sounded like an angel in mourning, and waves of gooseflesh erupted over the skin of undead and alive alike, sweeping out
and over the city in the wake of the silencing tsunami. Her voice went higher and higher until her spell song culminated in a beautiful soprano note that sounded like the glory of Heaven, of the Celestial Court itself, and then all the lights came back on.
Her Strange complete, the lens of every light in the catwalk dissolved away, replaced by perfect miniature portals, a dozen mini-Drop-like windows to the other side of the globe, to a place near and dear to her, the homeland of Enki.
In an instant, the city center square flooded in brilliant, natural, yellow-white sunlight.
And the vampires burned.
18
Even from his position halfway up the small mountain, Carbine could hear the screams of the burning vampires.
Here we go. Hurry, Jon! The girls and Ratt are going to be under attack any second.
Through the telescopic sights, Carbine watched as Jon pulled himself back up into a chin-up position, this time directly behind the guard who had been sitting on the waist-high edge of the rampart railing. Just moments before, the guard had witnessed what Carbine and Jon could hear. Maya’s trap had been sprung, and the dozen spotlights up in the concert’s rigging were now waving beams of lethal sunlight back and forth across the city square.
Carbine watched the guard sit in stunned disbelief, his jaw slack, and just as he was snapping out of it and rising to his feet, he was grabbed from behind by Jon and flung off the wall.
Jon kicked his legs over the wall and came to a low stance, reaching behind him to unsling his hammer just as the two closest guards, left and right respectively, turned their heads from the spectacle of pyrotechnic death in the plaza to see why their companion had just screamed.
Carbine was as quick as he was accurate. He didn’t wait for Jon to let fly the hammer; he only had to see the direction Jon was looking in to know that he and his railgun had to look the other.
A slight shift of the barrel to the right and, freeze, squeeze.
The sentry to the right and slightly behind Jon had his head atomized by a super-sonic slug of depleted uranium before he could even take the safety off his rifle.
The boom echoed down through the canyon and swept over the city, but Carbine didn’t worry about anyone noticing. The rulers of New Puebla and their servants had other, bigger concerns at the moment. A slight shift back to the left, just a hair farther, and Carbine found Jon, retrieving his hammer from the crushed rib cage of the other guard. Jon made a quick look back over his shoulder in Carbine’s direction, nodded, and then jumped over the wall into the city.
“Egghead, remind me to thank you for your fine work,” Carbine said to himself. The rifle kicked considerably more than the Lawnmower he had grown up and trained with, but thanks to the egghead’s modifications, it was bearable. Forgetting his relief and gratitude for the moment, Carbine returned his attention to the task at hand.
He could have switched on the railgun’s scope to phase through the layer of stone that now separated Jon from his view and even follow him with his gun all the way to Jon’s destination and beyond, perhaps, but as previously agreed, Carbine wished Jon good luck and moved his sights to the city square to cover Maya.
If Jon failed, Carbine was to provide cover for Maya to escape. Above all, Maya must live to continue her campaign against the Harvesters. As grim as the thought was, guardians were replaceable, while goddesses were not.
Whoa. I knew things would be intense, but this…
The city was ablaze. Human-shaped pillars of flame ran amok, crashing into each other and buildings alike, spreading the fire everywhere as they went. Some writhed on the floor, and others had already become nothing more than smoking piles of ash. The initial shock of the surprise attack hadn’t worn off yet and nobody, neither human nor vampire, was making any move to launch a counterattack on Maya.
Carbine spun the knob on his scope back two clicks and took in a broader view of the plaza. He instantly spotted Ratt up in the catwalks, operating the twelve spotlights from a control panel, causing each of them to swivel like a machine gun turret, sweeping their beams of light over huge swathes of fleeing vampires.
The effect made Carbine think of a fire-fighter’s water cannon or a flamethrower with an incredible range. He also spotted Lucy, who had sprung up and out of the DJ booth and was now upstaging Maya, a Macuahuitl at the ready, and taking pot shots into the crowd with her BFG at any vamp not on fire.
Carbine decided to join Lucy in her endeavors and clicked in three turns.
Freeze, squeeze, repeat.
Maya opened her eyes the very second she had finished the high note. She watched the sea of darkness, flecked like stars with the glowing red eyes of her vampire audience, as it became whitewashed with the brightness of sunlight when the dozen spotlights turned on.
Her eyes locked into Don Luis’s gaze and she watched his expression change from lust and greed into one of confusion and pain.
Ratt had maneuvered one of the spotlights into a straight line to the VIP booth during the last few seconds of the song, as they hoped to take the head off the wolf in the first few seconds of the attack. The plan was sound, and Ratt’s aim was true, but what they didn’t count on was Don Luis’s constitution. Perhaps by dint of his great age, or maybe because he had been turned by the demon-urchin itself, Don Luis Fernando seemed to be more powerful than his peers. Whatever the reason, he was not instantly vaporized by the beam of sunlight the way the savages had been last week, the way his retinue of bodyguards burned around him.
Maya watched with morbid disappointment as the beam illuminated Don Luis’s face, blackening it into a rough, cracked, leathery affair, which seemed to steam or smoke but didn’t burst into the consuming flames of purification she had hoped for. His charred face contrasted his ivory fangs, exposed to the light as his lips were pulled back entirely in a sneer of rage and suffering.
Surprised and wounded, Don Luis still had his survival instincts; they were, after all, his strongest character trait next to greed and selfishness. He reflexively pulled his hands to his face and the shiny, polished silver chrome pommel of the cane he had been holding diffused the incoming beam like a disco ball, splashing the burning rays out and away from him, effectively saving him for the moment.
That brief moment turned out to be all he needed to survive longer.
His hand burned, but his face was shielded enough for him to see a bodyguard who was writhing in his seat, only an arm’s reach away. Don Luis ruthlessly grabbed the man and pulled him up, holding him out and in front of himself as he dropped the cane. The bodyguard performed admirably as a protector of the city’s king, though not for very long.
Don Luis had only been holding the man for a few short seconds before the body-turned-shield began to burn like the tallow-dipped torches of the palace catacombs. It was long enough, however, for Don Luis to make his getaway.
He leapt out of the VIP booth, using the dying bodyguard as a tower shield, and dashed to a short stone wall that was part of a raised garden bed, one of several that decorated the city square and had existed long before anyone had thought of turning the plaza into concert grounds. He held the man-torch in his hands until he reached the garden bed, his hands burning from the flames.
When he reached it, he tossed the man up and over and ducked down, effectively disappearing from the immediate threat of the sunbeams. Don Luis noticed that immediately after switching from decorative stage lights to lethal beams of sunlight, something he didn’t quite understand, the beams began to move, eliminating survivors of the initial assault the way a side-door gunman in a helicopter would mow down fleeing infantry.
He watched in horror as beams of light chased down his fleeing kin and burned them to ash. The city seemed aglow, sounds of screams echoing everywhere.
“How could this have happened? We are gods! We must fight back and destroy this witch. I was such a fool! Sofia was right! Sofia!” His mind raced, and he searched the crowd for signs of his wife. He had casually noticed that she had not j
oined him in the VIP booth; in fact, he had not seen her since last night. They had fought again briefly after his short visit to Lily Sapphire’s chambers. He had not even listened to what she’d said—something about Lily’s assistant wandering through the palace where he didn’t belong the night before, something about how she would show him. He’d cared nothing for the rambling gripes coming from his wife. I should have listened, he thought now. Perhaps Sofia knew something. Where is she?
Sofia stared in shock as her city burned.
My husband is a bigger fool than I thought! He has invited a bruja into our city!
Besides the light of day, there was only one other thing that Don Luis Fernando and Sofia feared. Mágico. Strange. And those who could shape it. Early on in the first days of New Puebla, they had discovered some of their human cattle began to spontaneously alter reality in mystical ways. One, in particular, could light fires from nothing, even going so far as to become a living inferno, seemingly invulnerable to its own conjured flames. That was enough, then and there, for them both to agree that no such talent, no matter how harmless it may have seemed at the time, would ever be allowed in their city. Since then, any Puebloan citizen demonstrating paranormal abilities was swiftly and thoroughly taken care of, without prejudice.
“Now look what your lust and stupidity have wrought us!” Sofia screamed to the night.
She and her men had marched to the plaza from their covert meeting place and entered the plaza from the north, coming at Don Luis’s VIP booth from the side. The plan had been simple, if risky: keeping their distance from the VIP booth, they would attack the singing slut from the side of the stage, provoking Don Luis into shooting at Sofia with his laser pistol. Her loyalists would be ready, and form a veritable shield wall phalanx, using their mirrors to reflect the lethal beam directly back to Don Luis. If the initial shot did not kill him outright, then they would move in, like an armored tortoise, until they could get close enough to overpower Don Luis and rip him to shreds. He never would expect it, or even defend against it, because he truly believed that no one would kill him, lest they die themselves.
