The queen was resisting the pull of Player’s tornado—which was dialed up and focused straight on it.
Aiming to suck the queen into oblivion, Victor opened another mandala portal. It, too, was disc-shaped and multi-colored, showing off its complex geometry, the bands turning on one another to open the portal. It was one of his signature moves. But as the portal opened, an army of demonic creatures looking to get through was visible—definitely distant cousins of these things in the room, forcing Victor to change the calibration on the portal yet again. Frustratingly, whatever parallel universe he opened up, there they were. Finally, he was forced to shut down the portal altogether after a decidedly exasperated sounding, “Fuck me.”
Lar, in his role as Cypher once again, now that the Tillerman’s influence from their last great grand adventure together had waned—was mumbling words of power of his own now—finally able to remember them without reading from a book, something he could never do as Lar. The origami queen folded up the way it had folded out, collapsing down on itself until it got caught up in the twister and sucked into the sky and up into the portal Victor was keeping open there.
The latest dispatch of the queen compelled Victor to look up—where he’d forgotten to keep an eye on his initial portal. To his relief, it was still working. Soren hadn’t yet had time to hack all the portals.
Another queen popped up from a humanoid figure that had itself proved immune to the twister and to Victor’s portal magic. Just seconds before, the ones at that stage of metamorphosis had to morph into a queen to be immune to the twister. “Enough of this shit!” Victor shouted. “Someone figure out how to shut this possessed fuck down now before I’m forced to intercede further.”
They all knew he wasn’t referring to the queen, but to Soren.
It was Naomi’s turn at bat. Natura couldn’t do much with the insects that had morphed into humanoid shape; they were too far removed from the natural world. Lar was mouthing the same spell as before, but this queen seemed resistant; it kept unfolding the origami shape as rapidly as Lar could collapse it.
“Sorrrrreeennnnnn,” Naomi said, dragging out the consonant sounds. Soren collapsed like a stone. Without whatever Soren was mumbling to sustain them, the queen and the rest of the morphs got caught up in Player’s twister, shot into the sky, and from there vacuumed out the portal, which Victor quickly closed, lest anything else decide to start banding together on the other side.
Victor descended the rest of the way into the room on his mandala bridge. He picked Soren up in his arms, and carried him to his surgical table—a flat stainless-steel coroner’s tray. Victor ran his hands over him, held just a few inches above his body, the mandalas in Victor’s palms acting like scanners now.
Victor’s eyes remained distant as he assessed what the hell was going on with Soren.
Player whirled a tornado around himself to take him to the ground floor, and, standing beside Victor, said, “How the hell did you even know to come?”
“When his energy spikes—when any of your energies spike—I can receive the broadcast directly from your brains.”
“Ordinarily, I’d be pissed someone was cutting in on my hero moment like this, and desirous of ending you, but I’m feeling like today was a real growth opportunity for me.”
Player shut up when he realized Victor was ignoring him anyway, concentrating on his scans. His hands were both focused mostly on Soren’s head right now, hovering over it like someone administering a Reiki treatment. Finally, he dropped his hands and gasped.
“What, Victor?” Naomi asked, refusing to surrender her eagle-eye perspective on the scene below. By now Stealy and Lar had gathered about the surgical table as well. Natura, for her part, wasn’t eager to get any closer to Soren right now, so had remained up on the balcony by Naomi’s side; if anything, she was cuddled a little too close for the emotional security, like a young child. She’d just put her arm around Naomi to hug her close, possibly age-regressing further, as she was wont to do when she was truly terrified.
Victor kept shaking his head in response to Naomi’s question. “I’m not sure. Whatever these cabbalistic patterns are keyed to, it’s beyond my reach and understanding, at least for now. The parallel universes I have access to…. They have something to teach me, otherwise I wouldn’t have access to them. They’re most directly linked to my own spiritual unfolding. At least I’ve suspected as much for a while now. This all but proves it. I thought if the entities were part of space-time, no matter what universe they were in, I could track them. Now I see my own ego limits the range of my seeing. Appears I may have to learn how to get over myself for my friend’s sake here.”
“So, he’s basically dead then?” Player said testily, “you self-absorbed prick. And trust me, it takes one to know one.”
Victor just sighed. And he shot out of the room on the mandala bridge forming at his feet, perhaps before he saw the truth in Player’s eyes, and couldn’t deny it, even from himself.
“I want one of us with Soren at all times from now on,” Naomi said. “Figure out a rotation schedule that suits you, put my name in the roster for any times none of you can agree on. But he’s not to be left alone again. And whoever’s with him—your job is to find Soren—wherever he’s hiding out inside that monster, and lure him out.” She was speaking with the commanding authority of her mother role in the family dynamic, and with enough force to brook no argument. But she suspected they didn’t have much argument in them after experiencing what just happened.
All save for Natura. She was shaking her head. “No way I’m getting near that guy alone.”
“You’re first up, Natura. I can’t have you building your date with him into something worse than it is, waiting for your turn. Bring as many of your animals with you as you need to feel safe. Maybe your Dr. Doolittle thing, talking to them, will help anchor him to a more Disney-take on things versus whatever the hell this was.” She shuddered remembering what transpired in the lab just moments ago.
Natura was still shaking her head, but she wasn’t verbalizing anymore. Which Naomi took as a concession, of sorts.
“You panic, everyone will know and come running,” Naomi said, continuing to win Natura over. “But don’t cry wolf every five seconds, or you know what’ll happen. God forbid you send out a false alarm to Victor. He’ll flush you down a portal as soon as look at you.” She knew she wasn’t helping Natura’s fear response any by adding that last part, but right now Naomi needed her more afraid of Victor than Soren.
Naomi turned to Lar. “Lar, take all the books if you want, but I want the room back. I need to be close to Soren in case I need to buy any of you more time until Victor can get here come time for round two. Set up in the basement—in the section Soren didn’t carve out for himself.”
He nodded. “Just gives me more room for more books, so I’m cool with that. I might even set up my own lab, to put some of the ideas in the books into use.”
“You do that.” Naomi retreated into the loft bedroom where Naomi and Soren had made love once, had gotten as close as it was possible for two people to get, and slammed the door, needing, for right now, more distance from Soren than the world had to offer.
Lar turned to Player. “Um, I don’t particularly feel like going into that room right now. Could you…?”
Player blew the door open and whisked all the books out of the room and through the access way upstairs—all the way to the basement on the other side of the wall beneath the balcony, before slamming the door shut on Naomi again. The books lining the walls outside the bedroom went along for the ride with all the others. The lab looked a bit starker now, but then it felt a hell of a lot starker as well.
FOURTEEN
Norel had been to the sector with the best scientists; it made sense to head for the sector with the best wizards next; so Chinatown, it was.
The guards at the gates to the various sectors saw him charging their way on the war horse and didn’t bother to do anything but step aside. Th
ey must have figured he was on an important mission of some kind, that, and who was going to fear for the sanity of a Frankenstein’s monster and his possible inability to cope with the shock of a part of the city for which he hadn’t been adapted?
Norel charged into the Chinatown district and even his customarily fearless warhorse pulled up short, slowing itself to a virtual standstill.
Norel felt he’d discovered a new rung in Dante’s hell—one reserved entirely for warring wizards. Had the Dark Matter Man turned them on one another to keep them from coming at him? Or was he more curious to see what each could do in order to ascertain the true nature of their magic? Was this more of a learning exercise for the other-worldly entity possessing Dracus? Both possibilities could well be true.
The war horse started slowly walking backwards all on its own, minimizing any sounds coming from it. It had even taken pains to quiet its labored breathing. Norel couldn’t say he was of any mind to protest the countermeasures. One of the stout—also known as Buddha Boys, as they ranged in body weight from 400 to 600 pounds or more and seldom did anything but sit statuesquely—had no less than five wizards suspended in midair, twirling on an invisible carousel just yards from the warhorse. The energy beaming from Buddha Boy’s palm chakras powered the carousel. The war horse was backing up to make sure he didn’t catch the floating wizards’ ire meant for Buddha Boy.
This Buddha Boy had modeled himself on one of the laughing Buddhas. His laughter echoed through the streets, like music accompanying his carousel ride. The splay of his mouth in laughter created a small, false chin, around which was a bowl of fat, keeping his mouth at the bottom of the bowl. His lips were contrastingly rather thin, and his nose modest and unaffected by what his weight had done to the rest of his face. His shaved head was perfectly round and his eyes large and deeply recessed.
One of the wizards in the carousel—his face also hairless, but his neck long and thin, and the undercarriage of his face damaged, as if he were molded from clay, the crude fingermarks creating the craters in his face—flung two of his shuriken at the Buddha Boy that had him suspended. The weapons had been laced with magic, as they glowed at their edges, and for a moment, penetrated the invisible shield about Buddha Boy, before they were bandied to the side, nearly taking off Norel’s head, but for the quick reflexes of Norel’s trusty war horse. His stallion bent at the knees just enough as Norel ducked to avoid the rapidly twirling weapons. The shuriken lodged instead in one of the conjoined heads of the female Siamese twins fish peddlers. The twosome, working their hand-axes, had just cleaved the heads of a pair of Red Snappers.
The Siamese twin’s head on the left, which had not fully separated from the head on the right, died on the spot, the light going out of her eye, and the eyelid closing, the mouth drooping. The Siamese twin on the right shook her fist and cursed to high heaven and flung her axe at the wizard who was too preoccupied with Buddha Boy to fend it off. Prior to the attack, she was the smiling, energetic one, the other twin, the frowning, sleepy-eyed one. Smiley’s hatchet lodged at the wizard’s temple that had flung the shuriken, killing him instantly, and so, Buddha Boy had three live wizards and one dead one twirling on his invisible carousel overhead and a few yards out in front of him.
Prior to the wizard taking the chef’s hatchet to the side of the head, he’d been mumbling words of power that had somehow magnetized or compelled every weapon in the vicinity—hundreds, considering what part of Chinatown they were in—toward Buddha Boy. Those weapons lodged in the invisible energy shield about the chi master. As to the weapons obscuring his view, Buddha Boy sent them at the remaining wizards in the carousel. That put an end to their magic as well by putting an end to them—including the magic causing the buildings to bend about Buddha Boy like taffy, their roofs looking more like the tips of fishhooks determined to snag him.
The war horse had continued to step backwards keeping Norel from getting sucked into the space-warping effect of the bending buildings. The final wizard in Buddha Boy’s carousel, with his last vestiges of life, using wizard’s fire to shoot boluses of flame at the chi master, got off one last blast, which was redirected at the fish market, where a customer had just asked, “Could you broil that for me, please?” pointing to the red snapper.
The seafood purchaser got his fish broiled, alright. The vender got barbecued along with the fish. The customer grabbed his selection. “Maybe a little less eagerness to please next time,” the patron suggested, leaving the money and making off with the fish in a huff. He ducked the arsenal of cutting implements coming his way by the dueling wizards like a seasoned vet used to dashing across war-torn battlefields alive with mortar-fire.
The wizard in the carousel that had gotten off his magnetization spell before expiring… His death did not stop the last blades in the vicinity from flinging themselves at Buddha Boy.
Norel threw one last glance back at the carousel of wizards, wondering why Buddha Boy bothered to keep them twirling overhead. Geisha Girl in the kimono and painted white face with hair pins holding up her hair—with plenty of hairpins to spare, being as she had used them as throwing weapons—had herself been turned into a butcher block as the blades meant for Buddha Boy found their way to her, instead. This seemed like divine justice, at least in her case, until she started coming back from the dead—and then she looked more like a Karma-retribution doll. She pulled one blade out of her body at a time. As the weapon flew into her hand, responding to her will alone, she mumbled words of power. Her voice had altered, more in keeping with a convincing zombie, as if she were now a spirit trapped in hell and she’d figured out how to turn her own body into a puppet in her hands bearing truly immense power.
The one with the Fu Manchu look—nothing but a long, trailing pencil-thin moustache and small slits for eyes reanimated next. He grew his arms and legs until he looked more like a Daddy Long Legs spider whose extensions could grab hold of the nearest buildings and pull him out of the carousel formation. Not that the freedom did much for him. Buddha Boy hit him with his laser eyes and turned him to ash.
The bald, ancient looking Chinese guy with the big round head and the prominent eyebrows resting on ridges that jutted out of his forehead and with a long thick beard down to his navel was next to morph; each hair in that beard came alive like snakes on Medusa’s head and slithered toward Buddha Boy—right through his energy shield. No doubt about it—the wizards had died and come back more powerful than before. Typical of the advanced wizards crowd.
Buddha Boy stifled grimaces from the bites of the venom-excreting snakes, but quickly brought the situation under control by combining all the smaller snakes into one bigger one that swallowed the Snake Wizard whole.
One of the two last remaining members of the carousel looked more like an Asian martial artist than a wizard. As she reanimated, her every fighting stance resulted in a different colored energy shooting out of whichever foot or hand was pointed at Buddha Boy. The bands of color weren’t just different, the paths the energy beams followed to get past Buddha Boy’s energy shield ranged from sharp zigzags to coils. Each energy burst penetrated his shield, and, as they impacted against Buddha Boy, seemed to zap more of his energy, until his eyelids started to close. She didn’t look like she was doing much more than a kata routine inside the floating carousel, but the routine itself was acting like a combination lock on a safe—that door about to pop open any second.
Buddha Boy took a power breath to pull himself back into the moment and breathed it out. His exhaled air acted like acid, dissolving her. She fell like red rain on the road.
Norel wondered now if the Dark Matter Man was bringing the wizards back to life, more and more powerful each time, or if what he was seeing was because of a rare, mostly forgotten spell that only a few of the master wizards knew about. Considering that Putty Face Man had yet to reanimate, Norel supposed the second of his two theories held the most credence. But Putty Face Man could just have been slower to reanimate than the others.
While Norel waited for an answer, to see if more dead wizards reanimated, despite the Buddha Boy mumbling words of power to ensure that there were no more resurrections, Norel cast his eye to the distance.
The wizards further up the street were scaling the fronts of buildings like actors in movies being yanked on suspension wires. They were blasting one another from the various levels en route to the rooftops, where their wizardly wargames continued unabated. The one climbing the first story on the opposite side of the street from Norel directed both arms up at the wizard on the second story as he was bounding up toward the roof and shoved him telekinetically to the street below.
Shover had a short, squat body, thick arms, and grossly thick fingers.
The shattered marionette of a wizard—with long, almost emaciated arms and legs attached to a short torso—quickly reanimated—his bones popping back into place, along with the torn muscles, ligaments—even the blood finding its way back to his insides—in time for him to retaliate. He, in turn, telekinetically shoved his attacker across the street into the wrought-iron balcony of the second story terrace, whose fencing was topped with fish-hook-shaped points. The skewered wizard, wincing in pain, bleeding out, his chest perforated by no less than three of the “fish hooks,” pulled himself off his mount, fit to be tied. His tense expression served as little more than the windup for a primal scream and a hand gesture that was the thunder before the lightning strike. The lightning which followed next from the outstretched hand contacted his adversary, burning him to a crisp.
Another wizard—with upward sloping eyebrows that flared like crackling flames of a black fire, and a very chiseled, flat-ridged nose—animated Crispy and recruited him into his legions of the walking dead he was gathering from the fallen victims to direct at the Buddha Boy blocking his way to the master upstairs—who so far, refused to participate in the fracas on the street.
Reviled Page 13
