Freak City

by Saje Williams

  Carth bore a deeply hidden hope that their savior had yet to come, but he harbored great doubts about the matter as well. Time would tell.

  Twelve

  The wards may be keeping me from using a transit tube to get off the grounds, but there's gotta be a way to get past the wards. Jaz paced her room in the dark, looking out into the city from her third story vantage point. I'm going to go crazy if I have to stay in here another night.

  She stepped through the bathroom door and flicked on the light. She eyed the large mirror over the vanity and gave herself a cockeyed smile. Oh, if only I could be like Alice, and take a walk through the looking glass.

  She paused a moment, eyes narrowing. Switching to magesight, she reached out and snatched a thread from the air and hurled one end of it at the mirror. She sent it twenty feet. The strand struck the mirror and passed through it like it wasn't even there. It extended to the twenty feet she asked and snapped into a transit tube at her request.

  She stepped through.

  She existed in silence as she found herself standing in the midst of a thousand glimpses, little bits of another world shown through tears in reality's walls. Not ten feet away she could see a view opening up, showing another bathroom much like her own, dimly lit from a light in the bedroom beyond. Some ten feet to her right she could see yet another bathroom, this one with an occupant. Thwan was standing there, brushing her long silken hair.

  Can she see me?

  Apparently not. Jaz drifted farther, toward another large rectangle of light hanging in the void. She felt as though she were walking, but could sense nothing solid beneath her feet. It was like drifting through a black fog spaced with windows into somewhere else.

  She could calculate whose room was which just by estimating distance. The distances seemed different—as though it required less room in this place, wherever it was, than it did in the ‘real’ world. I'll bet nobody else knows about this place.

  Then another thought occurred to her. The wards wouldn't keep her in the Academy now. She could follow this invisible trail to a mirror in a car in the parking lot, or even farther out. She could probably go anywhere from here.

  She crouched next to a small sliver of light, peeking through. This certainly wasn't a mirror, she realized. It was just too small. It took a moment then she recognized it for what it was. A blade hanging on the gym wall, reflecting back the light from the outer hallway. It wasn't a mirror, precisely. It was simply reflective. Interesting.

  She continued on, finding, after a time, a darker rectangle looking into one of the classrooms. This wasn't a mirror, it was one of the exterior windows. The light falling on the inside of the glass turned it mirror-like, projecting it into this place—whatever this place was.

  She explored the whole Academy this way—looking through the reflective surfaces into the world beyond.

  She felt inordinately pleased with herself. She'd only just learned how to use her magesight a couple of weeks previously. It had taken nearly a week longer for her to focus the necessary concentration to actually touch the mana strands as they floated past her. From there the art of shaping them to her will came rather easily.

  This next week they were scheduled to learn how to craft a spell. Near as she could tell, spells were formed of more than one strand fused together, each strand performing a different function within the spell itself.

  She found the whole thing rather fascinating, even though Thoth—who taught the basic magic class—wasn't exactly the most imaginative person she'd ever met. The half a dozen or so non-mages in the class had looked thoroughly bored throughout the first session, as Thoth explained the nature of mana and its apparent limitations.

  She couldn't blame them. It was hard enough for her to follow. She found it hard to believe this stuff just floated around the atmosphere and no one had ever noticed it before. No machine had ever been invented to detect it. Loose energy, Thoth had called it.

  She'd almost found it impossible to believe in until she'd had her first experience with magesight. No one could really explain magesight to her—certainly a different way of looking at the world, almost like some sort of hallucination brought on by a drug, she thought. Not that she had any experience with drugs to speak of. Living the way she did, on the street and alone, the last thing she'd ever wanted to do was compromise her awareness.

  But she thought it would be something like that.

  All the color seemed to bleed out of the world, turning everything to shades of black, white, and gray. Thoth switched off the lights, bathing the room in velvet shadows. The threads seemed to glow with an internal, silvery light as they wormed their way through the room.

  Thoth paced the front of the classroom. “They are mindless strings of energy, produced, we believe, as a side effect of thought—of sentient perception, preconception, and imagination. They represent the probabilities that have never come to pass.

  "Now, before you start off on a metaphysical tangent, before you assign some sort of mystical process to the whole thing, before you descend into superstition, let me first let you know a little secret about the nature of reality.

  "This world, the Earth we know, is merely one of countless realities that might exist.” He reached out and snatched a thread from the air beside him, flicking his wrist and turning the strand into a cascade of multicolored light spraying from his fingertips.

  A stream of blue light coalesced into a single rolling blue orb. “Imagine this is the Earth. Imagine a ground-breaking historical event. Like the American Civil War, for example. The right choice—or the wrong choice—on the part of any of the major participants—could have changed the whole course of everything. Imagine the South had won the war, successfully seceded, so to speak.

  "Think of what that world might be like.” The blue ball split as if by osmosis, like twin bubbles magically conjoined. “Say, in the future, after the Southern states wrested themselves from the grasp of the Northern states, the South turned the tables and conquered the North.” The second ball split as the first one had, rising slightly to form a triangle configuration of spheres.

  "All these words actually exist. Along with many others, spread out from these in a kind of web of probabilities. I can't possibly begin to describe all the possible worlds out there, but you can imagine what some of them are.

  "We refer to some of these universes as being close to this one. Technically a world that branched off more recently would be considered close. Out there, somewhere, may exist a world where magic hasn't been returned to us, that's nearly identical to this world, except it's perfectly normal, where magic, mutants, and immortals exist only in the realm of speculative fiction."

  He'd offered a thin smile at this point. “That isn't our world, of course. We know what our world is. It's a crazy place, growing crazier by the moment. But out there—somewhere—there exists a world in which humans never came to being, a world in which creatures much different than ourselves grew to sentience. How?—we can't begin to guess. But these creatures—these ‘Centians’ exist. And their rapacious. They have conquered hundreds of different worlds, enslaved countless different races and even created their own.

  "They're not mechanically inclined. But their genetic and biological knowledge is unparalleled. They've been breeding their own monsters for millennia. And they're coming here next."

  Those words echoed in Jaz's mind as she walked through the splintered darkness. The impending invasion of the Centians was the reason why the immortal, Loki, had created and spread the various metaviruses through the human population.

  They were supposed to be the first-line troops for the coming war. Everything leading up to it was merely the prologue. The monsters, the meta-villains, everything the people thought they knew, was just the opening act.

  Jaz didn't know if she wanted to fight a war. She wasn't even sure she wanted to learn magic, or study here at the Academy. During the orientation, given by Athena herself, she'd learned that the price of attendance at t
he Thorne Academy was five years service to the government—under the auspices of the PAC.

  In effect, they'd be indentured to Shea Industries. She certainly wasn't sure how she felt about that. Athena made her ... wary. She was one of the immortals, the two-hundred odd survivors of the Centian war on their homeworld some twenty-five thousand years ago who'd arrived in this world's pre-historical time as refugees.

  They'd expected to be followed, but had never imagined it would take this long. Now that the time was upon them, they were scrambling to protect what they had built in the time since they'd arrived. Their way of life was threatened.

  A movement caught her eye and she found herself moving closer to the source. A thin sliver of impinging light slashed through the black wall. She crept up and peered through, casting her gaze upon a group of people standing in an outer darkness, as if outside at night. A flicker of firelight in the center of the circle brought a thoughtful frown.

  In magesight it took several moments to locate a strand. She snapped it outward, past the gathering, and into the woods beyond. She leaped through, stumbling slightly as she caught her foot on a limb that had fallen from the surrounding trees. She thrust her hand out, stabbing a twig into the palm of her hand as she fell against a standing tree. She swore under her breath and blew into her palm.

  She turned and looked into the circle. What were they doing? Chanting. That much was obvious. She crept closer, listening, wincing as her injured hand brushed up against a stand of nettles. Shit! She waved her hand wildly, as if airing it off would make the pain go away.

  "Guardians of the Watchtowers of the South, heralds of the element of fire, we call upon you to attend our rite.” A robed figure, face shrouded in a dark hood, stepped forward, raising a torch as if to symbolize the element she was calling upon.

  Jaz nearly gasped aloud as a stream of glowing red strands seemed to writhe from within the burning flame, drizzling to the ground like blazing rain. As she watched in something like shock, a figure materialized out of the flame, sleek and reptilian. It danced around the inside of the circle, then paused in front of the woman who'd apparently summoned it. Jaz peered closer, realizing that it was actually formed out of mana threads, with a pulsing symbol hidden deep within its breast.

  "Guardians of the Watchtowers of the West, heralds of the element of water, we call upon you to attend our rite,” another voice, this one male, intoned slowly. He held up a goblet, out of which sprang a shower of blue threads that coalesced into a woman seemingly composed from wave and foam. She coursed around the circle and stopped in front of her summoner.

  "Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East, heralds of the element of Air, we call upon you to attend our rite.” The third summoner stepped forward, holding a caldron, throwing smoke skyward. Interspersed with the smoke seemed to be a myriad of glowing purple strands, forming themselves into the very likeness of a small tornado. It spun its way around the circle, taking up a position in front of the man who'd summoned it.

  "Guardians of the Watchtowers of the North, heralds of the element of Earth, we call upon you to attend our rite."

  From the ground beneath their feet came a swirling mass of emerald strands, forming themselves into a small, humanoid figure.

  Jaz crouched in the bushes, suddenly breathless. The rest of the ritual went by unheeded. She found herself entranced by the creatures cavorting unnoticed in their midst. Whoever these people were, they couldn't actually see what they'd brought into their circle. Obviously no magesight.

  Truly amazing, she thought. They were rank amateurs, even compared to her after only five weeks of study. What were they doing out here?

  It used to be that Point Defiance park was closed after dark, but that had changed over the past few years. Technically the statute remained on the books, but no one bothered to enforce it anymore. At night the park wasn't anywhere the cops wanted to go. They had better things to do than get killed.

  Not that the park was that dangerous. The Crimson Sash made regular patrols, and rumor had it that a couple of different immortals had made it their business to wander through now and again. Now that the goblins had all gone to So Cal with Kali, that left the park to the gangers and those metas who preferred wilderness to the concrete jungle.

  She remembered something Chaz, the Gadgets and Gizmos instructor, had said—something about pagans in Tacoma. He was a long standing member of a local group, even though he defined himself as a ‘pagan by default.'

  Unlike in the public schools, it wasn't considered inappropriate for instructors to discuss their personal spirituality at the Academy, though Thoth made it pretty clear from the very beginning that he had no patience for what he called ‘that metaphysical bullshit.'

  This, if I don't miss my guess, is a perfect example of ‘that metaphysical bullshit.' It corresponded to nothing she'd been taught at school, and seemed to fly in the face of everything she knew about magic. Such creatures didn't really exist, did they?

  Apparently they did. And they came to a summoning without what she would consider ‘real’ magical impetus. They weren't consciously channeling mana, but they were doing something with it. This is as weird as snake shoes, she thought.

  She crept closer as they continued chanting.

  * * * *

  I'm going to lose my mind if I have to spend another minute here, Ben thought, gazing out over the city and the bay beyond from the Academy's roof. They say there's no way for us to leave—the windows are all barred and warded. There's no way to get out through the doors either. All guarded.

  At least until the end of next week.

  He gazed down the four stories to the back gardens. “They've got to be kidding.” He took a couple of steps back, ran toward the edge, and vaulted over the precipice. Or, rather, tried. He rebounded from something he couldn't see. It delivered a considerable shock at the same time, sending him to one knee.

  He shook his head irritably and climbed back to his feet. Magic. Great. And pretty damn powerful, considering it stopped him cold. He didn't like that in the least.

  "Nice try, bro."

  He whirled fast enough to give him vertigo. A tall figure in a long black trench coat and a matching cowboy hat stood some distance away, perched on the edge of the rooftop. “This place is sealed up tighter than Mr. Felson's ass."

  Ben snickered. Mr. Felson had been a language arts teacher back at Redburn High. Hardly a favorite among the students. The only way this person could know that was if he was from Redburn High. “Cory?"

  "In the flesh.” He stepped down off the precipice and doffed the hat. His eyes, strangely bright, glittered silver under the full moon's light.

  "Where have you been?” Ben asked, taking a hesitant step forward.

  Cory laughed, a sound that raised Ben's hackles just a little. It carried with it not even the slightest hint of humor. “Nowhere you'd want to be, Ben.” He glanced around the rooftop briefly, then turned those strange glittering eyes back on his friend. “This is the right place for you,” he said. “You can do good things here."

  "I'm going out of my mind here,” Ben replied. “I just need to get out for a little while. I have to shift. My skin is practically crawling off of me with the need to change."

  "It sounds like you've come to terms with what you've become,” the vampire observed dryly. “I guess that's an improvement."

  "Not like I had a choice,” Ben muttered. “I can't believe you haven't called your mom once since you disappeared."

  "I couldn't. Her phone is most likely tapped. One slip and I'd seal the fate of more people than I can count."

  Ben frowned at that. “What are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about Hades,” Cory answered. “I assume you've heard the name?"

  "The Dark Immortal? Lord of the Underworld?"

  "That's him. Chase was operating under his orders when he captured me. Hades holds his wife and child hostage—he didn't really have a choice. Hades thinks he has me under his thumb. He's
using my blood to create more vampires. Of course, he doesn't know I'm a mage too, so every so often I slip away from my cell and eliminate those who need it."

  "You're Raven!” Ben breathed, putting two and two together. “Holy cow—wait ‘til I tell Am—"

  "—you'll tell no one,” Cory/Raven interrupted. “We can't risk it. Especially now that Amanda's left the PAC to go back to work for her grandfather."

  "What?"

  "That's right. You're kept out of the loop here, aren't you?” The vampire sighed. “She and Athena had a big fight at Coyote Blue a couple of weeks ago, culminating in Amanda's resignation from the PAC and return to the fold at GreyCorp. Grey is in cahoots with Hades. Apparently he and the Ceniad—I think the immortals call them ‘Centians'—offered him something he just couldn't refuse. I'm still not sure what it is."

  "Goddamit, Cory, you've gotta help me get out of here. I've gotta talk some sense into her."

  "Stay out of it, Ben. I mean it. You can get out of here in a week. Don't go near her. It'll just screw everything up."

  "You'd best listen to him, Mr. Dalmas,” another voice interjected. From the shadows emerged Renee, dressed in a black evening gown as if she'd just returned from a party. “We don't need you mucking around with something you don't understand. Amanda's off-limits until I tell you otherwise.” She turned her violet gaze on Cory and smiled thinly. “Well, Mr. Flynn. Or should I call you Raven?"

  Cory sketched a slight bow. “Either will do. I'm quite pleased to meet you,” he said, seemingly quite in earnest.

  Renee laughed, a clear, bell-like sound. “You know, I actually believe that you mean that. I'm impressed, young man. You are better at staying under the radar than any other vampire I've ever met. And I should know, since I make it my business to keep track of such things."

  "Thank you, I guess.” Cory looked nonplussed.

  "I also won't take exception to the fact that you're out there putting bullets in rogue vamps either. As long as you don't make any mistakes."