by R. L. King
From the corner of his eye, he caught a fast movement. He spun in the air in time to spot a muzzle flash from somewhere on the far side of the room. The rounds glanced harmlessly off his shield as a figure ducked behind the long bar.
Several crowd members screamed and hit the ground.
Ben didn’t scream. Calmly, he floated over until he was standing on top of the bar, then looked behind it. A dark-suited figure was crouched there, running as fast as he could manage in that position toward the opposite end.
Ben wrenched him upward, holding him suspended over the crowd. “Bad idea!” he yelled. “Bad idea! Now, you got until three to tell me where that murdering scumbag Julio is. One…two…”
The man writhed and screamed. He’d lost his gun somewhere, and the club’s strobing lights illuminated his panicked face.
“Three,” Ben said dispassionately. He flung the man higher, slamming him into one of the shadow-wreathed support beams high above. A crack sounded, louder than the crowd’s shouts, and then Ben threw him back toward the stage. People dived to get out of the way, barely avoiding him as he crashed into a broken heap in the middle of a cluster of strobe lights illuminating the stage area. The lights popped and crackled.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Ben yelled. “I wasn’t kidding about the bombs. If you don’t hand the bastard over right fucking now, I’m gonna set ’em off and you’re all gonna die!”
“Fire!” shrieked somebody from the crowd.
Ben jerked his head around in the direction it came from, and his stomach clenched. The guard he’d thrown at the stage lay surrounded by the broken strobes, smoke pouring from this body where the lamps’ heat had ignited his clothes. Already, tiny licks of flame danced around him, catching the dry wooden stage alight.
Something slammed hard into his shield, blowing him backward into the bar.
44
Stone and Verity erupted onto the stage in time to see the bright blaze rising around the dead guard’s body at the edge and Ben’s form, encapsulated in its yellow-green shield, hovering over the bar.
Stone didn’t hesitate—he knew he’d only get one shot before Ben knew they were here. He pointed his hands and poured pure Calanarian power from them, aimed directly at the shield. He had no idea if the attack would kill Ben, but right now that wasn’t high on his list of considerations. If the fire got a chance to take hold, the results would be disastrous. He remembered what Blum had said about the place “going up like a tinderbox.”
“Verity!” he yelled without taking his eyes off Ben. “See if you can do something about the fire!” And then he couldn’t pay attention to her anymore, because Ben re-emerged from behind the bar. From the stage Stone couldn’t see his expression, but amazingly he didn’t appear injured.
“I don’t know who you are,” Ben screamed. “But that was a really bad idea!” Before Stone could react, he waved his hand in a circle, dragging several of the terrified club patrons closer to him and enclosing them all within his shield. “I’m not kidding, man—you try to attack me again and I’ll kill these people. Don’t think I won’t do it!”
Inside the shield, the prisoners were already panicking. They backed as far away from Ben as they could get, which wasn’t far—the shield prevented further movement.
Outside, the rest of the crowd was starting to lose it again. Screams and shouts of “Fire!” and “Get out!” and “The bomb!” came from all around, and once again they surged toward the double doors. They pressed against them and each other, but the magic-reinforced metal doors held fast against their efforts.
Stone chanced a quick glance sideways toward Verity. Already the flames had engulfed the corner of the stage, sending smoke pouring up into the rafters with no sign of fire sprinklers.
“Doc! I don’t think I can stop it!” she yelled, backing away.
“Get away from there!”
“Yeah, get away from there,” Ben called in an amplified, singsong voice. “Both of you stay put. I know what you can do, and I’m telling you, if you try it I’ll kill these people!”
“Don’t be a fool, Ben!” Stone yelled, adding some amplification of his own to be heard over the crowd’s screams. “Can’t you see there’s a fire? Is your vendetta against Julio strong enough to justify killing all these innocent people over it?” He lifted off the ground, hovering over the crowd, and moved closer. “Let them go. I’ll help you find Julio if you let these people go.”
“You lie!” Ben yelled. “I know you’ve been looking for me. I know somebody’s been looking for me! You probably work for Julio!”
“Ben!” Another voice, not amplified this time, barely reaching above the din. “Please don’t do this! This isn’t what you want!”
Ben’s head jerked around. “Shut up, Daisy! You betrayed me, didn’t you? You called these people and brought them here!”
“You said you wouldn’t hurt anyone!” A dark-skinned boy pushed forward from the other side. “You promised, man!”
“That’s before Julio took off!” Ben yelled back to him. “Don’t you see, Calvin? I can’t let him go! I can’t let him get away with killing my mother!”
Stone darted his gaze back and forth between Ben in front of him and Verity and the flames behind him. The fire hadn’t engulfed the whole stage yet, but it wouldn’t be long before it did. They didn’t have much time before the whole place was full of smoke. Already some of the people in the crowd were coughing.
“Ben!” he yelled. “Let them go! Open the doors! I’ll help you, I promise! I know there’s no bomb!”
“No way, man! No way! Get back, or I swear I’ll kill these people!” To emphasize his words, he picked up one of the screaming men inside the barrier and threw him to the ground. The others scrambled even harder to back up, while a couple of them crouched next to the fallen man.
“No! Don’t do that. I won’t attack you! I want to help you!” But this time, Stone had seen something in the flashing lights. It had only been for a second, but both Ben’s face and his aura suddenly flared with fear and disgust—as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing.
“Get out!” Ben yelled. “Get out however you got in. This isn’t your fight. I want Julio back here, or this whole place is gonna go down around our ears!”
Stone thought fast. For all his power, he couldn’t attack Ben directly. The rift had clearly augmented the man’s abilities, and if that shield had held up against a full-strength Calanarian attack—even from this distance—he couldn’t be sure a second one would get through. And if it didn’t get through, he had no doubt Ben would make good on his threat and kill the prisoners inside.
Another figure hurtled out of the crowd, panting, legs pumping as she ran away from the door and toward Stone and Verity. “Please!” she cried, waving her hands. “Help us! Help him! Don’t let him hurt these people!”
“Daisy!” Verity called, leaping off the stage. She ran to the girl and gathered her into a protective hold.
“Please!” she yelled, eyes wild, looking back and forth between Verity and Stone. “You have to do something! You have to stop him! This isn’t what he wants. There’s something making him do this!”
Stone, still hovering several feet off the ground, knew how right she was, even if she herself didn’t. He could see it in Ben’s aura—the rift energy was engulfing him, pouring more of itself into his body than it could safely channel. But if he tried to attack him directly and failed, he’d kill several innocent people.
Damn it, Ben, I’m sorry Julio killed your mother, but—
He stopped.
Why, suddenly, had a vision of Roderick Selby popped into his mind?
That was an odd thing to be thinking about now, in the middle of this situation spiraling increasingly out of control.
Ben didn’t look anything like Selby. His problem wasn’t anything like Selby’s. So why was he—
A hotel room, a woman, a half-opened door—
Yes! Of course! It had worked then, and it m
ight now. He didn’t have too many other choices, and he’d have to act fast.
Before he could convince himself of the folly of his plan, he shot upward, above the smoke, and fixed his gaze on Ben. He hoped his memory was good, because a lot of lives would depend on it.
“Doc—?” Verity called, but he ignored her. All his concentration had to go to this now, or he’d fail and these people were all dead.
Behind Ben, a figure shimmered into being and solidified: a small, stout woman with over-coiffed hair, too much makeup, and a floral pantsuit. “Ben?” she called, her voice somehow carrying easily over the screams of the crowd.
Ben stopped, his aura flaring bright red, his head jerking sideways.
“Ben? You look at me right now!” Stone fought to keep his concentration, glad for the din of sound all around him, masking the fact that he’d never heard Marsha Halstrom’s voice. He made his best guess based on her appearance and hoped it would be enough.
Apparently it was. “M-Ma?”
Around Ben, the shield juddered and shook. The red flashes in his aura grew, and so did the green-gold ones. It looked as if the two aspects of his aura were fighting for control.
Stone didn’t risk a long conversation. Instead, the figure crossed her arms over her ample chest and shot Ben the most disapproving, disappointed look Stone could manage. She pointed at the shield and shook her head.
“M-Ma?” Ben’s voice was definitely shaking now, as hard as the shield was. “H-how are you here?”
In answer, she pointed at the shield again, and then held her arms open wide, beckoning him in with a jerk of her chin.
From his vantage point high above the crowd, Stone watched the scene unfold. He’d never observed the breakdown of a man in real time before. If it had been in less dangerous circumstances, he might have found it fascinating in a clinical way. As it was, as he watched the two Bens, old and new, battling for supremacy of his mind and body, the shield shook harder, fading, and finally winking out. Ben lowered himself back to the bar and dropped to his knees, tumbling forward toward his mother’s arms, sobbing. Stone couldn’t hear him now—he was no longer amplifying his voice—but he could not have been more certain that, at least for now, Ben’s crisis had passed.
The whole crisis hadn’t passed, though. The building was still on fire, and there were still dozens of innocent people trapped inside.
He didn’t waste time. He could leave Ben alone now—that he knew, even though the illusionary figure of his mother had now faded back to nothingness. Ben didn’t need it anymore—it had done its job, reminding him of what he’d been fighting for, and what he’d made a terrible mistake pursuing beyond all possible reason.
Stone, still hovering above the crowd, shot over them toward the door. A second later, Verity, catching on to his plans, joined him. He didn’t think the doors were magic-locked anymore, but they weren’t installed to code and he could see that in order to get out, they’d have to pull the doors inward. That wasn’t going to happen with this many people crushing in panic against them. “On three!” he called, pointing his hands. “One…two…three!”
He and Verity let loose with powerful concussion spells, aimed at the point where the doors met, well above the crowd. The spells slammed into them and blew them forward, off their hinges. They crashed to the ground and the crowd poured out through them, climbing over each other in their haste to escape.
Outside, startled firefighters in full gear immediately began shoving their way past and into the club. Stone glanced toward the stage; so far, the fire had not reached beyond it, and he realized with astonishment that the whole confrontation had taken far less time than he’d thought. He motioned to Verity and the two of them faded from view, dropping back to the ground.
“Where’s Ben?” she demanded, watching the rest of the crowd surging past her toward the doors.
Daisy, who’d apparently been watching from below, ran over to Verity. “We have to get out!”
“You get out,” Verity told her, squeezing her arm in encouragement. “Go on. It’ll be fine now.”
“But what about Ben?”
“Ben won’t be causing any more trouble tonight,” Stone said. He nodded toward the door. “Verity, get Daisy outside. I need to find him.”
Verity looked as if she might argue for a few seconds, then took Daisy’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “You can levitate, right?”
“Yeah, but we have to find the others! They’re still in here!”
Stone wasn’t listening anymore. He’d re-cast his invisibility spell and lifted off again, heading for the bar. He knew Ben would still be there. The air was getting smokier, and even though the firefighters had already started on the blaze, it still wasn’t safe to be in here.
As he expected, Ben’s familiar form still hunched behind the bar, shoulders shaking. Stone dropped down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Ben…”
Ben jerked his head up and looked at Stone, startled. Then he slumped over again. “Go away,” he mumbled. “Just let me die. I deserve it.”
“You don’t deserve it.”
“I killed people. I almost got all these people killed because I went crazy. I just want it all to end. Ma was right—magic is nothing but trouble!” He erupted into fresh sobs.
“Ben—listen to me. We’ve got to get out of here before the smoke gets us or the police find us. Come with me. I can help you, if you let me.”
His gaze came up again, revealing bloodshot eyes, tousled hair, and a pudgy, pale, unshaven face. Ben Halstrom certainly didn’t look like any kind of major magical threat now. He looked almost as much like a scared kid as his little posse of teenagers had. “How can you help me? Why would you want to?”
“Will you trust me? You’ve got something in your head—something that’s influencing you to do these things. I know you want revenge for your mother’s death. I understand that. But you didn’t want to hurt all these people, did you?”
“No!” he wailed. “I didn’t want to hurt anybody…except maybe Julio. And I didn’t even want to kill him. Just make him pay. And now he’s gotten away…”
“Let’s not worry about Julio right now, Ben.” Stone glanced over the top of the bar. The crowd had dispersed significantly by now; he hoped none of them had been trampled in their panicked rush to get out, but at least the opening had been wide. The firefighters had advanced further into the room, and he could see the searching flashlights of police as they scanned the area, probably looking for Ben. Quickly, he cast an illusion over the two of them to hide them. It wouldn’t work for long, but he hoped it wouldn’t have to.
“Please, Ben, let me help you.”
“How?”
Stone heard the despair in the young man’s voice, and once again cursed the fact that he couldn’t close the Oakland rift. As long as it remained open, he wouldn’t be able to block the energy affecting Ben completely. Whatever had happened, a connection existed now between the rift’s energy and the man—even if Ben didn’t know it. But he thought he could at least block the worst of it, the part that had been eating at Ben’s unprotected mind and making him unstable. It was something, at least. “Just—trust me. I’m like you, with a lot more experience. I can do this, but you’ve got to let me.”
Ben looked up at the spot where his mother’s image had been. “You…you did that, didn’t you? You showed me Ma.”
“I did, yes. I thought it might be the only thing that would get through to you.”
“When I saw her…”
A blast of static interrupted him. A policeman aimed a flashlight at the bar, talking into his radio. “I don’t see any sign of a bomb yet, sir. Wouldn’t it have gone up in the fire if there was—” The voice faded as the cop moved away.
Stone wanted to pop up, to tell them there wasn’t any bomb and never had been, but they’d figure it out soon enough. “Ben, please. We’ve got to get out of here. Let me help.”
If Ben had any fight left in him, it was gone now
. “Yeah. Okay. Do what you want. I’ll go to jail. I deserve to. Just…get me out of here, and make it stop.”
Stone worked fast. “All right. Just hold still for a moment.” He put his hand on Ben’s forehead and focused, dropping the illusion so he could put all his energy into what he was doing. It was a simple block, the same kind he’d done dozens of times before, but this time he wanted to make doubly sure he got it right. The rift’s energy was powerful, and now that it had an opening to get out into the world, it wouldn’t relinquish it easily. Stone wondered if the rift had touched anyone else—how many other ticking time bombs were out there, ready to blow when least expected?
Don’t think about that now. Deal with the problem you have, not the one you might have.
It didn’t take long to place the block. Stone had never felt energy quite like this before, but whatever had welled up before had receded now, making it easier than it might have been earlier tonight. He carefully built the psychic wall around Ben’s mind, holding off most—but not all—of the rift’s energy. He had no idea what the part he’d left would do, but he was sure if Ben had handled the energy at full force, he could handle this. It wasn’t what he would have hoped, but it was the best he was going to get.
When he finished, Ben seemed to deflate. He fell forward, his face in his hands, sobbing harder than ever. “Oh, God…” he mumbled. “What have I done? What have I done?”
At that moment, another cop looked over the edge of the bar, shining his flashlight down. “Hey! Both of you—stand up and keep your hands where I can see them!”
“Oh, God…” Ben sobbed. “I’m so sorry…”
Stone rose up, still in his illusionary disguise, and stepped away from Ben. “Officer—”
“I won’t hurt anybody! I’m sorry!” Ben still hadn’t gotten up. A quick glance at his aura showed his growing agitation. “There isn’t any bomb! Just…oh, God…”
Stone wondered if blocking some of the rift’s energy brought back more of Ben’s natural guilt at what he’d done. “I think there’s something wrong with him,” he told the cop in his American accent, making himself sound worried. “I…I think this guy is the one who was causing all the trouble. I found him here like this.”
