Winter looked at Truth. Truth was wearing a set of green surgical scrubs and a pair of terry-cloth slippers on her feet. Her shoulder-length dark hair floated free about her shoulders, and she was wearing no jewelry that Winter could see.
"No fillings." Winter set her purse on a nearby table and took off her earrings, ring, and bracelet. She hadn't replaced her last watch yet—the damned things were always stopping and she wasn't really sure why she'd taken up wearing one again in the first place—so she didn't have that to remove.
"Shoes," Truth said, and Winter slipped off her shoes. The utilitarian gray rubber tile of the laboratory floor was chilly beneath her stockinged feet. She blessed the impulse that had made her wear a sport bra with no snaps or hooks, because she could tell that Truth wasn't wearing a brassiere and that Truth would probably have asked her to remove hers without so much as a by-your-leave.
"That's your lot—I'll take on any airport metal detector in the land," Winter said, trying for a light tone.
"Okay." Truth smiled; it made her look very young. "I'll try to keep this nonthreatening. Just come inside the circle—don't step on the chalk marks—and sit down in this comfy chair, and I'll try to answer your questions." Truth picked up the knife on the chair seat and set it on the floor beside one of the candles.
Winter stepped carefully over the chalk mark and walked to the chair, looking dubiously at the line on the floor as she stepped over it. It didn't seem to her that a chalk mark was going to be much protection against anything. Winter sat down in the hard wooden chair and arranged her limbs self-consciously. She placed a little more faith in the cage hanging overhead, though it, too, looked too flimsy to be much of a defense.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
Truth gestured to Dr. Palmer. He went over to the wall and began lowering the copper cage over both women.
"Like any fan of the scientific method," Truth began, "I have a theory and I'm going to test it. The poltergeist—doors and windows and missing objects—isn't bothering you as much as the slain animals—am I right?"
Winter agreed. "The open doors and missing objects are just a nuisance, really, but ... it killed a deer this morning," she finished, her voice flat and ugly. "It looked like something had run it through a grinder."
Truth nodded, her expression remote. "What I'm betting is that, since its appearances are so linked to blood and death, you're dealing with something more than simple RSPK; very likely it's an Elemental which you've somehow attracted to yourself. Strong emotion, especially anger or depression, often draws them; I'm not sure why. If the disturbance has its source in Nuclear Lake as you believe, we may be dealing with a water Elemental; they're highly destructive, and often too lazy to return to their own Plane of Manifestation. ..."
The copper cage rattled as it brushed the floor, and Dr. Palmer cut power to the winch. He checked his watch and made a note on a clipboard.
"And so?" Winter prompted. Truth was so briskly matter-of-fact about everything that it made it easy for Winter to ignore the fact that what she was saying came straight out of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
"You're a cool one," Truth said approvingly. "First of all, I'm going to call upon your Elemental to present itself here so I can identify it, and once that's done, I'm going to use the proper formula to banish it back to its own Elemental Plane. If I can't manage that—some of these things are remarkably tenacious—I can at least dislodge it from you and attach it to myself, and then really give it a run for its money."
Winter glanced through the wires of the cage at Dr. Palmer, but he didn't seem particularly disturbed by anything Truth had said. She wasn't quite sure what an "Elemental" was, but Venus Afflicted had mentioned them also, and she could always ask later.
"All connected?" Dr. Palmer said.
Truth checked the perimeter, and fitted the last pegs into the sockets on the floor. "Ready," she said.
"Charging," Dr. Palmer answered back. He threw the switch.
The lights flickered, then slowly dimmed. Winter felt a faint, not unpleasant vibration that seemed to enter through the soles of her feet and leave through the top of her head, and the room was suddenly quieter.
Truth turned to her and smiled, and Winter saw that she was now wearing a magnificent amber necklace with a hanging gold pendant; a sumptuous piece of jewelry that clashed oddly with the prosaic green surgical scrubs. / wonder where that came from, Winter thought.
"Sometimes when it's really crazy at the Institute I just wish I could come in here and switch this thing on. Quiet, isn't it?" Truth said.
"Yes," Winter said, surprised.
"And if we could only figure out whether a strong magnetic field enhances psi—or damps it—and why, we'd know something," Truth complained good-naturedly.
She walked over to the nearest of the candles and retrieved an object from the floor beside it. When she straightened, Winter saw that she was holding the small dagger in her hand.
"I told you I was going to call up the Elemental that's bound to you. To do that, I'm going to have to use a symbol set it's familiar with. Don't worry," Truth soothed. "While the Elemental has what you'd call an objective reality, these things are only symbols—the candles, the chalk marks, everything here is only a symbol of what I'm going to do with my will. These things have no power except what I give them, really. The unconscious mind communicates by symbol—just think of it as a very powerful computer with very stupid software. Now, I'm going to want you to sit here and be very still for a while, no matter how peculiar things start to seem. I know Tabby gave you a set of centering exercises along with the tea—have you been doing them?"
"Sort of," Winter said. After yesterday she'd meant to, anyway.
"Well, just concentrate on breathing slowly and deeply—and stay in the chair, please, until I tell you to stand up. No matter what you see and hear, you are in no danger—that's what the circle's for. To protect you."
"Okay," Winter said, taking a deep breath.
With that, Truth seemed to forget her completely. Barefoot now, she walked toward one of the candles, holding the black-handled knife high, like a madwoman in grand opera.
/ must be tireder than I thought, Winter told herself. Her head didn't hurt, but everything had developed colored haloes: The copper web of the Faraday Cage was outlined in violet fire and she could locate Dr. Palmer in the dimness beyond by the faint corona of blue about him. Within the cage itself, Truth Jourdemayne left trails of blue fire as she walked, and the knife she held flared and wavered brightly in Winter's sight.
Winter tried to push the illusions from her vision and see the world the way it was, but try as she might, the web of colored light superimposed on the real world wouldn't go away.
Maybe I'm starting a migraine, she told herself hopefully, willing momentarily to welcome the thought of the pain rather than to surrender to this new flood of unreason. But it was false reason that was the villain here, Winter told herself fiercely. There was too much at stake for her to afford the luxury of self-delusion. Conscientiously, she took the deep slow breaths that Truth had counseled her to, and forced herself not to care what she saw, no matter how weird it was.
Truth had Laid the Floor of the Temple and saluted the first Guardian, Winter saw, and did not question where the knowledge came from. The first candle was a pillar of scarlet fire that somehow held the wavering form of a stag; as Truth approached the second, it erupted into a bolt of pure silver light.
Red spirits and white; black spirits and gray
Come horse, come hound, come stag and wolf to bear my soul away. . . .
South, then, and a pillar of blazing ebony brighter than any color became the Black Dog. West, and a white blaze; the White Mare. Then back again toward the North, and it seemed to Winter now that Truth carried a star in her hand instead of the knife she had seen before—a star that pulsed and waned in time with her heartbeat. Truth held the star out to the North pillar and the Grey Wolf, and Winter f
elt a sense of completion, as if some great machine had wakened to throbbing life.
Truth walked around the chair where Winter sat again, and this time stopped facing her. She sketched a shape in the air between them: white fire that dimmed to silver, to a shape as real and tangible as the dinner plates in Winter's kitchen cupboard. She almost reached for it, but Truth anticipated her, taking it and tossing it in the direction of the scarlet pillar. Winter saw the white spark submerge in the red, and then Truth was facing her again, drawing another symbol into the aethyr and flinging it away to the white pillar of the South.
I've fallen asleep, Winter said to herself. How embarrassing. But she watched as Truth repeated the action twice more, all in a silence that was somehow more unreal than the polychrome light, and realized that what she was watching now was the summoning of the creature that Truth had promised to bind.
This isn't going to work. The voice was outside her, but part of her; the voice Winter had learned to trust even as it urged her to doubt. For the first time since she had come here tonight Winter was afraid—not of Truth's magic, or even of the idea of magic itself, but of the too-real unimaginable danger that Truth was so casually calling up.
I've got to stop this, Winter thought in tardy alarm, half-rising from her chair.
But it was already too late.
A wave of cold rolled over her, as if someone had just opened the door of a gigantic freezer. The violet fire of the copper mesh flashed into darkness as the Faraday Cage was sucked empty of current. The lights in the laboratory beyond flared into full illumination for a moment, blenching the flaming pillars into pallid might-be illusions, and then everything went dark.
There was a crackling noise and a cascade of purely mundane sparks. Winter heard Dr. Palmer curse and say something about the circuit breaker and emergency overrides. She heard him stumble away in the darkness, and over the sound of his shuffling footsteps she heard the first mutter of thunder.
"It's coming," she whispered, and heard the fright in her own voice.
"I know. Hush," Truth said.
At the lake it had come in the full force of its power, willing to terrify by its mere display of strength. This time it slipped in, at first only the faintest of presences as it challenged Truth's wards, then—as if it were some astral cat bored with its terrestrial mice—came more fully real; strengthening as the storm did, as the thunder crescendoed and the candles of the Guardians flickered and died.
"Oh, damn," Truth said in a quiet voice.
Winter had not realized how much she had trusted in the circle until its protection deserted them. Lightning lit the laboratory's high windows to a strobed blue-whiteness, making the following dark seem even more impenetrable. She felt suddenly naked and, as every exposed piece of glass in the darkened laboratory shattered, she screamed at the sound of breaking. The tumult served only to underscore their vulnerability, and raw impersonal terror made Winter's throat tight and her mouth metallic.
Winter would have run if she could have seen somewhere to go, except for the fact that the cage, which had looked so flimsy before, was still locked in place, and despite its seeming fragility the inert web of copper wire formed a completely mundane trap. It marked out a killing floor, on which Winter Musgrave would die.
"I charge you—" Truth's voice rang out diamond hard, defiant despite the loss of all her protection. She placed herself between Winter and that which had been summoned—Winter could sense this, even in the choking blackness—and seemed to gather darkness in her hands, weaving a net to tangle the summoning in.
But what had come would not be bound. It swatted Truth aside, and then instead of going on to attack Winter, it coiled around Truth, distracted by pure elemental fury from its lawful, rightful prey.
Winter sensed Truth's struggle, and for a moment the too-real surroundings of the Institute's lab blurred; her past reared up like a cresting wave and drowned her in the sights and urgency of the trading floor, where deals that defined the economic nature of reality rested on the heart and mind and will of one frail human vessel.
And she was there, amid the puts and calls, her blood hammering hot with the sheer predatory joy—of the victory that meant others were forced to lose. Hers would be the victor's crown—the triumph and the spoils—there was no room for second-best on the Street and she was the best; she would defeat them all—
In this uprush of passion the tiny voice that dared her to question her assumptions was all but lost—
How did it reach you so easily? How did it get here?
—but Winter's third self, her real self, the self that was battered and hauled between these two opposing forces, listened, and saw:
Just who the hell does this bimbo with her mumbo jumbo think she is? If she thinks she's going to take me for a ride here she's got another thought coming—
The Elemental had not needed to breach the barriers Truth had made, because its ally was already within them: the serpent of Winter's hate; the rejection of everything that might defy it—blind intolerance and knee-jerk prejudice, a hatred that fenced Winter in to a safe and ever-shrinking circle of things that would not challenge her preconceptions. Winter could almost see the darkly luminous umbilicus projecting from her body, reaching out to and twining with the serpentine elemental form, rising ice-pale and malevolent to devour anything that opposed it.
It. Opposed it. Not her.
She clung to that one thought as to a promise of salvation. It. The serpent-hatred was not her. She was not her hate—it was something that sheltered within her, pursing its own goals—using her.
She would not be used!
Hot human anger—a blind determination to be free at any cost— drove Winter toward the place where Truth lay, and sought something to lash out against.
"No!" Truth shouted. "Don't! You'll make it worse! Don't give it power!"
Truth's cry was like a dousing of cold water, washing away anger and disbelief, leaving behind only the fear. With clumsy, untutored instinct Winter tried to draw her anger back into herself, to defeat the serpent that way, by making a still center of quietude in which she could shelter.
But all the effort she could muster wasn't enough. The creature fed on her, was bound to her, but was not of her. She could not control it.
From the storm outside the lightning flashed, giving Winter a snapshot image of Truth crouched upon the floor by the melted puddle of what once had been one of the candles and its silver holder. She heard Truth cry out, a hoarse, furious sound of pain and rejection.
"Truth!" Dr. Palmer's voice. There was a high mechanical hum; the laboratory lights flashed as the emergency generators came on-line, and Winter heard a firecracker popping as half the bulbs and fuses in the lab's equipment blew. But raw electricity sizzled into the copper wire, completing the circuit, and the magnetic field surrounding Truth and Winter snapped into place with the violence of a gunshot.
Now! Winter heard Truth's voice plead silently within her mind. It was nearly too late. With one last effort Winter struggled with the phantasm, dragging it back from its alliance with the Elemental Truth had summoned.
Refusing to hate.
/ see you. I know you for what you are, she told it silently. / won't dance to your piping.
Without her cooperation, it had no power. Without her consent, it could not act.
Tears oozed slowly down Winter's cheeks as she stood rigid, eyes closed and hands clenched into fists, exerting all her will neither to act, nor to permit action. Behind her closed lids, she could see Truth win free for long enough to sketch a white fire image in the air.
Winter felt the moment when the Elemental chose not to press the battle further. With all its power, Truth had vexed it; it withdrew, and when the glyph Truth had drawn burned to blackness and vanished, its going closed off the vortex of fear, rage, and pain as absolutely as a slamming door.
It was gone. The Elemental was gone. Winter fell to her knees. Above her, she sensed Dr. Palmer cutting power to t
he cage, and the weird magnetic tickle over the surface of Winter's skin ceased.
And there was silence.
Slowly Winter opened her eyes. The storm had passed, and the laboratory lights were on, albeit dimly. She heard a mechanical whine as the winch raised the Faraday Cage, freeing them. . . .
She turned toward Truth.
Just as in her nightmarish vision, the candle—wax and metal base both—was a pool of commingled slag, and Truth was huddled in a heap beside it. As Winter stared, Dr. Palmer ran to Truth, clearing the smudged chalk-mark boundary of the circle with a leap, and cradled her in his arms.
"Truth! Are you—?"
"I'm all right," Truth croaked unconvincingly. She tried to push herself upright against him, and her hands left bloody prints on Dylan Palmer's shirt. Truth shook her head as if to clear it, and Winter watched in horror as a shower of fine blood drops sprayed from her mouth. "Fine," she said again, as Dr. Palmer drew her gently to her feet.
"You are not fine!" he scolded fiercely. "For God's sake—"
"Not that god," Truth corrected him thickly. "Winter?"
"I'm all right," Winter said, though she was chilled and drained of all energy. "Better than you are," she added bluntly. Truth's face was green-pale; her hands and mouth were as bloody as if she'd crawled across a field of broken glass and then tried to eat some.
Truth shook her head again, coughing. "I don't—" she began, then, "Dylan, get me—"
"All right," Dr. Palmer said soothingly. "It's okay, honey. Everything's under control."
He led Truth over to the chair that Winter had sat in only yesterday, and picked up a Thermos from a nearby table. Winter followed him, worried about Truth, and saw Dr. Palmer pour a cup full of a thick dark-purple liquid that smelled honey-sweet even at this distance.
"You should probably have some, too," Dr. Palmer told Winter, while wrapping Truth's fingers around the cup. Truth slugged the drink straight back and coughed again, but she had a little more color in her cheeks. She reached for the towel that Dr. Palmer had laid by and wiped her hands and face, leaving bloody smears on the white terry cloth.
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