by Jeff Hale
I recognized them; Tiffany and Kevin, both dead, blood still seeping from bullet wounds, although the hole through Tiffany’s chest was much larger. They were both wearing tight fitting military uniforms and on the pocket of Kevin’s I could see a logo: ‘Human Movement For Purity’. The same group that had been responsible for shooting Kris.
“What happened, Dave?” Alex asked. “Where’s Aerick and Celeste?”
Dave turned to give us a dazed look, shaking his head, as though he were trying to erase images from his head. “Aerick isn’t here, not sure where he is. Serena…” He closed his eyes, swallowed hard and shook his head again, sinking onto the couch.
Val came back down the stairs, face pinched with worry and anger. She looked at us, then at Dave, who was staring off into empty space. I glanced down at Tiffany and Kevin again, felt an icicle of dread go through me and wished someone would tell us what happened.
“Come on, Dave, snap out of it. I need you. My car’s back at your apartment, and we don’t have time for you to drive me back there so I can get it. I need to get to the Velvet Flame as fast as possible.” Val came around the couch and slapped Dave lightly across one cheek to get his attention. It didn’t work. With a sigh, she suddenly yanked the top of her corset down, flashing her breasts. That got his attention, and mine and Alex’s as well.
“I’m sorry what was… that…?” Dave asked, his eyes now on her chest as it rose and fell with her breath.
“Velvet Flame. Need you to drive me there,” Val said again.
“Was that really necessary?” I asked her, frowning. This was not a time for levity; people were dead, Aerick and Serena were missing. I was having a hard time keeping my Aspect under control surrounded by all the carnage.
“Rather look at those than this mess,” Alex muttered, gesturing around the room.
“It got his attention, which is what matters. Shall we go, Dave?” Val’s expression was a little contrite as she readjusted her top.
“You got it,” Dave said.
“What do you want me and Alex to do?” I asked Val, noticing that she had ignored my other question.
“Go see if you can track Aerick down,” she said tightly, glancing up at the ceiling. “There’s a monitor upstairs. Two way feed. He could see what was going on in the room, and they could watch him from here. They can’t be too far.”
I nodded absently. “Anybody care to tell me why Kevin and Tiff are dead?” My eyes went to the bodies and I shivered. “I’m not overly broken up over it, but… you killed them. What exactly were they doing?”
“You don’t want to know, they deserved it though,” Dave muttered. “And my cousin was involved.”
“Your cousin?” I asked Dave, somewhat confused.
“Yeah, my cousin Travis. I didn’t even know he was Purity. No way am I getting involved with them now,” Dave stated solemnly.
“Wait, that abusive pricktard Travis is your cousin?” I wondered if Dave knew how Travis had treated Serena. The fact that Dave had considered joining the Purity Movement sent a wave of anger through me. “And you were going to get involved with those fascist bigots?” I yelled.
“Yeah, but not like this.” Dave waved his hand at the room. “Not like Travis. I was just going to do peaceful protests, stuff like that. See if I could get petitions and get certain laws passed. You know, for the bad supernaturals. That sort of thing. Nothing like this.” A dismayed look crossed his face.
“Okay, you guys see what you can find. Dave and I need to head to the Flame,” Val said, handing me a business card with a phone number on it. She grabbed Dave’s hand, leading him out to the car and leaving Alex and I standing in the destroyed living room. I heard her car pull out as Alex and I made our way outside.
“Should we call the police?” Alex asked me as we stood next to my car and stared back at the house.
“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but bringing the police into it isn’t what any of us wants to deal with right now.” I saw Alex sniffing the air, trying to pick up some trace of Aerick, but he just looked at me and shook his head. I made a quick circuit of the outside of the house, saw that there had been a truck in the driveway that had recently left, Travis’s I figured, but still nothing that would lead to Aerick.
“C’mon, I’m surprised the cops aren’t here already anyway,” I said, getting into the car. “I’m not getting anything here that points to Aerick, only to Serena, and Val told us to find Aerick.”
I sent us in a random direction, towards the outskirts of Vegas, as I racked my mind to come up with some way to find Aerick. Finally, I pulled over in frustration and got back out of the car, leaning against the side and staring up at the bright sky.
“I don’t know what to do, Alex!” I felt him lean in next to me, trying to help me center. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again, staring at the blue sky and swearing that I could see faint pinpoints of starlight despite the time.
Lucien had said to look to the sky for my answers and now I did, letting it fill my vision, relaxing as I focused on nothing but the darkening infinite expanse, the moon almost invisible in its watch.
I could feel Alex next to me, vibrant with life and energy, the trees on the other side of the street, the little field mouse that stared at us with trepidation from its hidden spot in a bush. I knew without a doubt, exactly what phase the moon was in, crescent waxing.
I thought of Aerick, pictured his face in my mind, let my desire to find him fill my entire being, and with a sudden sharp intake of breath on my part, I knew which direction we needed to go. I didn’t know where he was, only that we needed to go—and I turned so I was facing the direction—northeast.
I scrambled to get back into the car, a confused Alex joining me.
“You know where he is?” he asked. He didn’t question me as to how I might know.
“Not exactly, but I know which way to go.” I floored the gas pedal as I got us back on the road and in the right direction.
We had to stop two more times for me to get my bearings on Aerick again, and even I wasn’t sure what it was exactly that I was doing. I didn’t care, as long as it got us there, although it did dawn on me that we were going in the direction of the test site. We finally ended up parked in the brush alongside a road that led to an abandoned hangar.
Both of us shifted to animal, blended into the shadows and got in as close as we could to the hangar. There were guards doing patrols along the outside, guards with the same logo on their uniforms that Kevin and Tiffany had had. Purity Movement.
We took down one guard who made the stupid mistake of leaving his post to go take a piss in the weeds. The idiot had obviously never watched a movie in his life, he should have known better; the guard taking a leak always met a bad end.
Alex checked out his weapons, multiple 9mm pistols and a submachine gun. We’d dragged the guard far enough out to switch to Aspect. Alex’s form wavered for a moment, then he was human as he held up one of the bullets from the machine gun’s clip.
“Bloody fuck,” he whispered, dropping it and shifting back to Aspect a few seconds later. No way were we going to get caught as human out here.
“Silver and some other metal. Iron maybe,” he said to me, voice a low growl. We both looked back to the hangar. There were at least twenty guards still outside on patrol and we could see more moving inside. There was no way we’d be able to make it in and out of there alive.
“Aerick’s in there, I know he is,” I hissed. I hooked a claw in the guard’s uniform and Alex and I made our way quietly back to the car, dragging the guard with us. We bound the guard with a bungee cord I had in the trunk, then shoved him in the backseat. We both shifted back to human, sitting on the ground with our backs to the car.
I got my cell phone, called the number that Val had given me.
“Kat?” she said anxiously when she answered.
“Yeah, we think we may have found him,” I told her softly.
“Some old abandoned hanger between Vegas and the Test Site,” I said. “Alex and I don’t dare go in there. They have a veritable arsenal of…” I broke off as Alex gripped my shoulder, the phone held limp in my hand. A bright light flared at the hangar and I could feel energy so thick in the air that it was a pressure against my skin.
“Kat?! Kat?! Are you there?! Hello?!” I could hear Val yelling from the phone where it lay against my jawbone.
“Oh. My. Fucking. God!” I yelled, shocked, as the hangar suddenly went up in a brilliant explosion of roiling flame, the sound from it almost deafening, a wave of hot air hitting us. The atmosphere around us seemed to pop suddenly, the phone going silent, and I saw a man running full tilt along the road in our direction that I hadn’t noticed before. To be as far from the hangar as he was, he had to have escaped just moments before.
Alex and I both stood to intercept him and I recognized him. Malachai. He stopped when he saw us, and conjured his bladed weapons of diamond and lightning.
“I’ll go through you, I will. Even I’m not stupid enough to stick around when he’s that pissed,” he declared hurriedly. His short dark hair was a mess, his fedora and trench coat absent, jeans and t-shirt rumpled and in need of a wash. “I’d stay and chat, Guin,” he risked a quick glance over his shoulder, “but I’m in a bit of a hurry, maybe some other time.”
He took off again, not even bothering to worry about us anymore, with a speed to rival my own when I pulled from my Aspect. I didn’t have time to worry about him, or the fact that he had called me Guin, as another explosion rocked the hangar.
I turned back to the hangar as the front side of the building erupted out into thousands of pieces of so much shrapnel. I gasped as I saw Aerick pass unscathed through the destruction, arms held slightly away from his sides, tongues of fire licking along his body. He was moving fast, almost running, leaving a sparkling trail of molten glass behind him.
“Aerick!” I screamed, taking a step towards him.
At the sound of my voice, his head snapped in my direction. He was close enough now that I could see his eyes burning with brilliant fire. One corner of his mouth twitched as though he were trying to smile.
Arms went around my waist as arcing tendrils of fire flickered out from Aerick, crawling unerringly towards my car. Alex threw me roughly over his shoulder, sprinting away from the car, the force of my little Civic being blown to smithereens sending us both rolling across the sand.
I wasn’t sure what had happened, but something was seriously wrong with Aerick. I wanted to run after him as he put distance between us, heading in the direction of the city, but instinct had me shifting to lynx next to Alex’s dingo as the two of us hightailed it further out into the desert. A few minutes later we saw Lucien and Val materialize not far away out and we loped over to them, shifting back to human as we got closer.
“Ah, there they are,” Lucien said calmly when we got to them, as though the burning wreckage of the hangar was of no consequence.
“What happened?” Val asked.
“Um, place went boom,” Alex said, pointing.
“I got that, where’s Aerick, was he…?” She broke off the question as though she didn’t want to know the answer.
“No. He really wasn’t affected by it, he’s not human anymore. Dammit, Alex, why didn’t you let me try and talk with him?” I yelled at Alex. I might have been able to stop Aerick. Or he might have fried me. I wasn’t sure, but I could have tried.
“Because, you may be a cat, and you may know lust, but we canines are creatures of anger, and whatever that thing was, was nothing but anger. Like a living incarnation of it,” Alex told me sagely, giving the hangar a fearful glance.
“Did Aerick do that?” Val looked at the trail of glittering glass.
I nodded sadly at her.
“So now what do we do?” Val asked Lucien, waving a hand at the path.
“If Aerick has become what Alex claims he has become, then we must find a way to calm him. I fear that somehow Merlin’s… secret may have gotten loose. If that’s the case then we don’t know what we may be dealing with. There is no telling what the Movement may have done to him. If his soul has been ravaged beyond repair, then…” Lucien trailed off, his expression grim.
“We’ll have to kill him,” Val said.
“No! Absolutely not!” I exclaimed angrily. There was no way I was going to let anyone hurt Aerick.
Val put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me into her. “I know. I don’t like it any better than you do,” she said softly, and I believed her, “but we may not have a choice. Would you want to see him like that for the rest of his life, until the fae decided he was too much of a threat and killed him?”
“No,” I conceded reluctantly, “but if I can talk to him…” I knew I could get Aerick to listen to me, if they would just let me try.
“A chance we’re going to give you,” Lucien stated firmly.
“What?!” both Alex and Val cried at the same.
Lucien held up a hand to forestall their arguments. “Katelyn might be able to get through to him where the rest of us might not. There isn’t time to argue any more over it. He’s headed towards the city and who knows what kind of havoc he might wreak if we don’t stop him first.” Lucien pointed in the direction that the glass trail Aerick had left behind was aimed for.
Alex followed Lucien’s hand and then stared, perplexed, into the distance for a few seconds. “Are you sure he’s headed for the city itself?”
“What makes you ask?” Lucien gave Alex a sharp look.
“Just that… I think there’s a Movement for Purity protest building on the edge of town, and it’s kind of in that direction,” Alex told us. “If he knows that Travis and his bunch were all Purity, and he thinks they have Serena…” He shrugged.
“He might head there first to look for her,” Val finished for him. She ran down the hill towards her car. “Come on!” she yelled back over her shoulder.
She had the car started when the three of us joined her, Lucien in the front with her and me and Alex slipping into the back. She threw the car into gear and drove through the desert alongside the trail of glass that Aerick had left.
“How fast was he moving?” she asked us.
“Pretty fast. He was in a bit of a hurry,” I answered, leaning forward on the backrest.
“Fuck.” She pressed the gas pedal to the floor. Pretty soon I could see the occasional building as we got closer to the edge of town, but they were still far enough from Aerick’s path of destruction that, so far, all he had done was melt more desert.
The path finally ended where the land went from desert to parking lot. The asphalt of the parking lot was melted and warped, curving out around the building ahead of us. The building was about eight stories tall, the glass structure reflecting the manicured palm trees and bushes around it perfectly.
There was a loud explosion of flame from in front of the building. The car skidded to a stop and we all got out, hurrying towards the road that led past the front. As Val rounded the building and we came up behind her, I saw Aerick standing in the road and Val ran for him. Before we could do anything else, there was another explosion, this time from the building. The heat was intense and Alex and I moved away from it. The building, or at least part of it, was on fire, the glass shattering and melting from the heat.
Aerick was still heading toward the building, not even registering that Val was there. Flames still licked up around him, but I couldn’t see his face. I felt Alex’s hand on my shoulder, keeping me in place as though he were afraid I might run after Aerick.
Little ribbons of fire played around Aerick, arcing and jumping almost like electricity as it traveled with him. He whipped a hand up and more glass and metal exploded, the impact from the air hurling Val forward. She went with it, coming up out of her forward roll almost too close to Aerick.
A shrill alarm was coming from the building and people began vacating the pla
ce in panic, screaming and yelling. I could hear another noise, a car engine as it revved and I looked down the road. Traffic was nonexistent, the cars either wisely heading elsewhere or stopped somewhere safe. But a singular car was barreling down the road towards Aerick with resolute intent. Just when it seemed it might be too late for the occupants, the doors popped open and four bodies leapt from the vehicle as it continued its trajectory towards Aerick. Aerick didn’t even spare the car a glance, raising an arm in its direction and making a subtle motion with his hand. The vehicle was instantly encased in ice, sliding forward on the asphalt. Another flick of Aerick’s hand and the car shattered into thousands of glittering pieces.
I had to wonder at what kind of idiots would attempt something like that, and when I looked at the car occupants, they were dressed in stereotypical gang style, and sporting visible gang tattoos. What stunned me a few moments later was that they were obviously Aetherics. Two suddenly shifted to Aspect forms, a gator and a vulture like bird, and the other two conjured shields similar to what I’d seen Aerick do, and damned if they didn’t begin casting a joint spell that began to make the asphalt under Aerick’s feet buckle and erupt up around him.
I had to give them credit for bravery, even as I shook my head at their stupidity. They didn’t have a clue what they were dealing with and they were about to find out the hard way. Aerick’s gaze jerked over to them, irritation crossing his face. Then an explosion ripped through the street where they were, sending all four of them flying backwards and disrupting their spell. Three of them lay unmoving where they landed, while the fourth, the gator, began to pull himself slowly away towards safety. They might not have succeeded in their efforts, but at least they had distracted Aerick for long enough that there weren’t any more people coming out of the Purity Movement center.
Aerick turned his attention back to the building, eyes blazing. The air around him shimmered and misted, as though he were alternating between hot and cold, and the asphalt beneath him fought between melting and freezing, causing it to rut and crack and emit a stomach turning smell.
