by R. L. King
Meanwhile, Stone went after the other one. He ducked sideways and grabbed the kid’s arm. Again his hands flared, and a glowing nimbus formed around the ganger’s entire upper body. He shrieked and dropped, but Stone’s shield flickered alarmingly.
Stone was so busy dealing with the ganger in his face that he didn’t notice one of the others in the shadows. Before he could react—before Jason even saw what was happening—a knife flew across the clearing, slipped past the flickering shield, and buried itself in Stone’s side. The mage, arm to arm with Jason, suddenly sagged, his face going dead white and his hands clutching at the hilt. He dropped to his knees, then fell over and curled up, writhing.
“Al!” Jason didn’t know what to do next. Several of the gangers were still functional, and Stone was out of action now. He stood, legs spread wide, crouched low, trying to look in every direction at once, but he didn’t see a way out of this one. There wouldn’t be any eleventh-hour rescue this time: his rescuer was lying at his feet bleeding, possibly dying.
Oh, man, V—I’m sorry. I tried. He crouched lower and waited, planning to at least take out a couple of them before they took him down.
Then, suddenly, it seemed like the clearing was full of more people than it had been before. More? I can’t even handle these—
A ganger leaped forward, swinging a chain at Jason’s head. Before Jason could jump back, a voice—a female voice—yelled “Get—out!”
The ganger did something very strange then. He clutched his head and staggered back, dropping the chain. As Jason watched, something—some sort of shimmering, barely visible ball of energy—flew up out of the ganger’s head. It paused for a moment, then darted toward Jason. Jason yelled something inarticulate and held up his hands to block it, but it stopped before it reached him. For a second it hovered there, looking as confused as it was possible for a shimmering ball of energy to look. And then it dissipated, flying into pieces and then vanishing.
Jason was so confused by what happened that he wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around him. But something was happening. All around him, the remaining gangers were turning tail and running. They didn’t even stop to grab their injured colleagues—they simply took off, screaming. Jason could see other figures moving around the area now, figures in shapeless clothes—bums? How could it—
Something hit him hard on the back of the head and he pitched forward and didn’t see anything else.
Chapter Thirty-Six
When Jason awoke, he was lying on something soft that smelled like six weeks’ worth of BO.
“Uh?” he grunted, opening his eyes. His head felt woozy, but it didn’t hurt. He remembered getting hit pretty hard—what had happened? And then the memories rushed back, all at once. Shoving himself up to a sitting position, he looked around quickly. “Al?”
“Shh,” said a voice behind him. He turned to find himself facing a young woman sitting cross-legged by a crackling fire next to the sleeping bag he’d been lying on. A slender, pale young woman with dark brown hair cut boy-short, a battered, black leather biker jacket, and big, dark eyes.
Jason’s mouth dropped open, and he didn’t even bother to close it. Instead he spun around so he could face her fully. “Verity?”
She smiled wickedly; it lit up her whole face, making her look like a goth pixie. “Hi, big brother. Long time no see.”
He stared at her. He hadn’t seen her in years, but even back then he had never seen her look this—good. Even with her face smudged with dirt and the lingering odor that told him she hadn’t bathed or done laundry in quite some time, her face looked alive, engaged—okay, let’s just come out and say it—she didn’t look crazy. For a minute, all he could do was look at her, drinking in the sight of her, not daring to believe that after all this time he’d finally caught up with her. When he did finally speak, all he could manage was: “Where—have you—been?”
Again, she smiled, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you everything. I knew you were looking for me, but I didn’t know how to get hold of you.”
“How did you—?” he started to ask, but then another thought shoved the question out of the way. “Al! Where’s Al? Is he—?” He scrambled to his feet, looking around.
He stood in the middle of what looked like a hobo camp, with a couple fires, some ragged-looking tents, and sleeping bags spread out on the ground. Several figures, covered in tattered, shapeless coats and hats, also huddled around the fires. A shopping cart full of various bags was parked to the side, and somewhere a dog barked. Jason didn’t see anybody who looked like Stone, though. “You didn’t leave him—?”
“Your friend?” Verity got up to join him. At his nod, she pointed at one of the tents. “He’s in there. He was in a bad way—Lamar’s working on him, though. He should be okay.”
Jason’s blood froze. That ganger had buried his knife—his no doubt far from sanitary knife—in Stone’s side, and some bum was working on him inside a dirty tent in a camp that smelled, quite literally, like shit? Verity momentarily forgotten, he hurried across past the fire and flung open the tent flap.
Inside, by the light of the ancient lantern flickering in the corner, Jason took in the scene: A large, middle-aged white woman in a garishly-colored sweater and a slim black man with close-cropped gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses were crouched down on the tent’s floor, leaning over the unconscious figure of Stone. The mage was dead pale; they had removed his overcoat and shirt, and Jason could see they’d pressed some kind of compress onto his side. Blood was already seeping through it.
“Hey!” Jason yelled, and the two crouching figures looked up, startled. “What the hell are you doing to him? He needs a hospital!”
“Hush,” the woman said as if speaking to a young child. “Your friend’ll be fine.”
“Look,” Jason said, exasperated, dropping down next to them. “I’m grateful that you guys saved us from those gangers—I have no idea how you did it, but that’s not important right now. I don’t want to offend you or anything, but—it’s not clean here. You’re gonna kill him trying to help him. I’m just gonna go call an ambulance, and—”
“It’s all right,” the black man said. His voice was soft and gentle, and he didn’t seem at all disturbed by Jason’s agitated tone. “Look.” He lifted the bloody compress.
Jason glanced down, then did a double take and stared. “What the hell…?”
Stone’s side was covered with blood; it had seeped down to stain the top part of his jeans, and a larger stain flowered on the tattered sleeping bag he was lying on. But there was no sign of a wound. His skin was whole, without any scar or mark, or any indication that it had ever been broken. “How did you—?”
The old man shook his head and smiled. “He’s lost a fair bit of blood, and I believe he was already weakened by the spells he cast. He’ll probably be unconscious for a while. But I promise you, he’ll be fine. He’s in no danger.”
“Well, no more than any of the rest of us ever are,” the woman said wryly. She picked up Stone’s overcoat and gently covered him with it. The mage shifted slightly, but didn’t awaken.
“Wait,” Jason said, looking back and forth between Stone and the black man. “You know about—magic?”
“Come on out, Jason,” another voice said. Jason turned to see Verity had poked her head unnoticed through the tent flap. “Let’s go get something to eat and we can talk. It looks like your friend’s gonna be out of it for a while. Good time to catch each other up.”
Jason took a last look at Stone; the mage’s breathing appeared to be regular and he didn’t look in any immediate danger, so he got up and followed Verity out of the tent.
She led him over to one of the campfires, picked up two old, mismatched plates, and ladled something that looked like baked beans from a pot hanging over the fire onto both of them. She handed one to Jason, along with a plas
tic fork. “Don’t worry,” she said, obviously noticing the look of suspicion and distaste he hadn’t been quick enough to hide. “It’s okay. I’ve been eating their cooking for a while now, and I haven’t been sick yet.”
She took his arm and steered him over to a tree no one was sitting under. “Have a seat. You took a pretty good thump on the head back there. They fixed you up too, but I’m betting you’re still dizzy.”
Jason was indeed still a little dizzy, but he had no idea how much of it was from the hit on the head, and how much was from the shock of all that had happened to him. He sat down next to his sister and took an experimental taste of the beans. For bland, spice-free beans, they weren’t bad. He realized he was hungry—but more hungry for answers than food. “I don’t know where to start,” he said with a sigh. He looked Verity up and down. “So—you’ve been here this whole time?”
“Not here,” she said. “We move around a lot—we have to. You saw the kind of thing they have to deal with. And that’s just the start. Cops, people who just want to hassle them because they think it’s fun—it really sucks.”
Jason leaned back against the tree and rubbed his head. “Oh, God, Verity, I have so many questions. It seems like all I’ve been doing for the last several days is asking questions.”
“We’re safe here,” she told him. “We’re not going anywhere for a while, and it’s way too early to go to bed. Just start somewhere. I don’t know if I can answer ’em all, but I’ll tell you what I can. And I’ll ask you a few, too. Okay?”
Jason nodded wearily. “Okay.” He ate a couple more forkfuls of beans and thought over all the things he wanted to ask. Finally, he looked at her. “You seem—better,” he ventured.
“You mean I don’t seem like I’m crazy anymore?”
“Well—I wouldn’t have said it that way, but—yeah.”
“Lemme get back to that. That part’s a little more complicated. But you’re right—I’m not. At least for now. And hopefully not ever again.”
“Okay, then… Why don’t you start by telling me what happened at New Horizons? Why did you leave? What did you see? Where did you go after you left?”
“Slow down, slow down!” she said, laughing. Then her expression sobered. “I heard a rumor that Charles was dead. Do you know if that’s true?”
Jason nodded, looking down at his plate. “Yeah.” When he glanced up at her, he was surprised to see tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry, V.”
“Yeah…” Roughly she swiped her sleeve across her face. “He was a good guy. He was the only one who even tried to make that hell of a place tolerable for me.”
“V, I—”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. You’re sorry you never visited, but you didn’t know how to deal with your batshit-crazy sister. I get it. Why don’t we just forget about that for now, okay? I’m not sure if I’ve forgiven you for it yet, and I might still tell you what I think about it, but—later. Right now we have more important things to deal with.” Her voice sounded bitter, but surprisingly mature.
When had Verity grown up so much?
She was silent for almost a minute, concentrating on eating. Then she looked at Jason. “So—yeah. I woke up one night and thought I heard something, so I went downstairs to check it out. We weren’t supposed to be downstairs after lights-out, so I was afraid I’d get caught, but I had to find out what it was.”
“What did it sound like?”
“Like a kid. Screaming.” She took a deep breath and shuddered a little. “When I got there, I noticed the basement door was open—and it’s never open. I heard a voice, and somebody whimpering. So I snuck down there. I have no idea why I was brave enough to do that, but the kid seemed like he was in trouble, or hurt—and I kinda thought of you.”
“Me?”
She nodded. “Yeah. How you always used to protect the little kids in the neighborhood from bullies, remember?”
Jason smiled. That had been a long time ago. “Yeah, I remember.”
“So I opened the door and looked inside—and there was a guy in there standing over a kid. A boy, maybe nine or ten. The kid was scared to death, and the guy—I couldn’t see his face ’cause his back was to me—it was like he was getting off on the kid’s fear.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “You mean he was—?”
Verity shook her head. “He wasn’t molesting the kid, if that’s what you meant. Everybody had their clothes on. But he was definitely getting something from scaring him. And then he reached out and touched his head, and—” She paused, as if gathering her courage to continue speaking. “—and then the kid screamed again, and he—he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” A cold chill ran down Jason’s back at that. What she’d described sounded exactly like what he’d seen the night Charles died.
“Yeah. I know it sounds hard to believe, but—”
“No. I believe you. Go on.”
She looked surprised by that, but didn’t ask. “So after he did that, I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I was scared to death. And the guy turned around, and his eyes were all freaky, and he came at me. And I—I—just sort of pushed at him. With my mind.” She looked at him again. “This all sounds like I’m back to crazy, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not sure,” Jason said. He had to be honest. “What do you mean, you ‘pushed’ at him?”
“I can’t describe it. It was like I punched him with my mind. And then something flew out of him. It looked like some kind of shimmery thing. It flew at me, but I shoved it away, just like I’d done with the man. Then it flew away, and the guy fell over.”
Jason stared hard at Verity, riveted by her words. This was all sounding so familiar—all except the “pushing with her mind” part. He had no idea what she meant by that. “And then you ran away?”
She nodded. “I didn’t even stay to see if the guy was dead or alive. I just ran back upstairs—and straight into Charles. He was in the kitchen. I almost knocked him down, I was going so fast. I thought I was busted for sure, but he saw my face, how scared I was, and asked me what was wrong. I told him I saw something terrible in the basement.”
“Did he go check it out?”
She shook her head. “I think he’d thought there was bad stuff going on at New Horizons for a while. He told me I had to get out, and he’d help me. That’s when I went to call you. But you didn’t answer.”
Jason sighed. If only he hadn’t been out of town for two days—if only he’d been there to take her call—how different the events of the last few days could have been. “I’m sorry about that. I—wasn’t home when you called.”
“Well, it’s good that you weren’t just ignoring me,” she said, this time without bitterness. “I went back to find Charles, and he told me to pack up and get ready to go, fast. He said he had a friend I could stay with. After I got back with my stuff, he sent me down the block to the pay phone, and gave me his friend’s address and cab fare to get there. Told me to lie low, and he’d be in touch.”
“This friend—it was Melody Barnes, right?”
Verity nodded. “Yeah. She’s dead too, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. She and her friend Willow are both dead.”
“So many dead people…” Verity whispered, looking down at her lap. For a long time she didn’t speak. Then, pulling herself together, she continued: “Anyway, Willow and her friend Susanna came to visit Melody. Susanna was homeless. There was something weird about her. We were all just sitting in the living room talking when all of a sudden she looks up like a dog that smelled something. She told us somebody bad was coming, and we all needed to get out.”
“But Melody didn’t want to go,” Jason said. “Right?”
“Yeah. She thought it was all a big joke. Susanna was getting really agitated, and Willow kept trying to get Melody to go. She told her to take me out too. Susanna grabbed my arm and practic
ally dragged me out the back door. Willow told us to go and she’d bring Melody. We never saw them again after that.”
“Do you know who was after you guys?” Jason asked.
“I didn’t at the time—I really had no clue what was going on. Remember, I was still pretty much out of it back then. I know now, though—it was that gang. Dead Men Walking. The one that ambushed you and your friend tonight.”
Jason nodded. “Where did Susanna take you? We talked to Willow at the hospital before she died—she told us to go to this abandoned fruit packing plant in Redwood City. Is that where you were?”
“Yeah. It was a safe place Susanna knew about—she and some of her group were squatting there. We took a bus over as far as we could, then walked the rest of the way. Her group was there, but we didn’t stay very long. She was still freaked out that somebody was after us. The others—they seemed to really listen to what she said, so we all cleared out. That was when we headed down here. We met up with another group, and they were the ones who told us you were looking for me. But by that time I couldn’t contact you, because nobody knew where you were.”
Jason leaned back against the tree, picking at his cold beans and mulling over everything she’d told him. “Okay, so…that explains where you’d been all this time. But it still doesn’t explain why the DMW and God knows who else is after you. Does it have something to do with the guy in the basement? Do you even know who he was?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know who he was—but I’m sure that’s what it had to do with.”
“So it wasn’t that Delaney guy?”
“Dr. Delancie?” She looked surprised. “No, it wasn’t him. He was full of himself and could be a real asshole sometimes, but I don’t think he was part of this.” Taking a deep breath, she continued, “Okay, now you know where I was. But I guess you need to know what’s going on here. Why I’m hanging out with these people.”
“I was wondering about that,” Jason said, nodding. “It sounds like they kinda took you in and took care of you—that’s a good thing. But—why homeless people? Al—my friend in the tent there, Alastair Stone—and I are getting more and more convinced that there’s more to them than meets the eye. That’s true, isn’t it?”
