Source

by King, R. L.

Verity nodded, pale with fright. “What are we gonna do if the crowd stampedes?”

  “Keep your shield up, and keep your wits about you.”

  “They’ll probably run away from us if they freak out,” Jason said, looking grim. “They’ll be more danger to each other than to us.”

  Another ragged cheer rose from the crowd.

  “I have to go now,” Stone snapped. “Look. It’s summoning the portal.”

  The rest of them looked where he pointed. Next to the spirit, a swirling vortex, almost as tall as it was, began to form in the air around the flame-clad Man. “Holy fuck,” Jason breathed. “That thing’s huge.”

  “How long will it take it to become permanent?” Verity asked. More armed Evil approached; she and Sharra cut them down with casual ease, their ley line-augmented powers more than equal to the task. Bullets ricocheted off their shields from smarter assailants who were shooting from cover; a round hit a woman in the front of the crowd, and she screamed and went down.

  “I don’t know.” Stone’s voice was tight with tension. He didn’t take his eyes off the growing portal. “Maybe fifteen minutes? It’s a guess—I’ve never seen anything like this before. Now go.”

  Before they could stop him, he turned and moved off toward the towering spirit.

  “Come on,” Jason said. “You heard Al—we’ve got to find those leaders. Can you guys find them magically?”

  “I don’t think so,” Verity said. They were safe for the moment: most of the Evil soldiers seemed to have figured out that they were wasting their bullets trying to pierce the magic shields, so they’d fallen back. “Not unless any of them are mages, or they’ve got a lot of magical energy around them.”

  “Maybe that chick Alastair was talking about is with them,” Sharra said.

  Verity shifted to magical sight and looked around, but cringed back almost immediately as if she’d been struck. “No chance,” she said, wincing. “Don’t even try it, Shar. Between the spirit, the portal, and all the residual magic from that big honkin’ ritual, magical sight lights up like a strobe. No way we’re gonna pick ’em out.”

  “Okay,” Jason said. “Let’s get moving, then. They’ve got to be around here somewhere. Maybe a bunch of those guys with guns are near them.” He looked first at Verity, then at Sharra. “How long are you guys gonna be able to hold those shields up?”

  Verity shrugged. “No way to know, but I’m not feeling it at all yet. With the ley lines, probably quite a while.”

  “If they’re supposed to be calibrating the portal with their brainwaves or something, they probably have to be close,” Sharra said. “Considering how many extra brainwaves there are around here.”

  Jason scanned the crowd. The problem was, the empty area in the middle of the playa, with the Man at its center, was nearly a mile across from one side to the other, and people and tents lined most of it. The hysteria of the group nearest them didn’t appear to have reached the other side yet, but he and Verity and Sharra had no idea where the Evil’s leaders might have hidden themselves.

  “Hey!” Verity said. “I have an idea. Come on, let’s move. We gotta find some more of those guys with guns.” She started forward.

  Sharra followed, and after a couple of seconds so did Jason, so as not to get out of the protective aura of their shields. “Why?” he demanded.

  “These guys remember what happened to ’em,” she said. “If I can evict one of them, we can ask him to tell us where the bosses are. If he doesn’t have an Evil inside anymore, he won’t have any reason not to tell us.”

  “Great idea!” He glanced around, but the Evil soldiers seemed to have vanished behind cover, perhaps fearing exactly what Verity planned to do. “C’mon, let’s go faster. The sooner we deal with these guys, the sooner we might be able to do something to help Al.”

  In a tiny structure not far from where the Man burned and the spirit began to channel its power into the nascent portal, Trin, hidden under a disregarding spell, focused on the ritual.

  She would never have admitted it to anyone, but she was more than a bit astonished that this giant Rube Goldberg contraption of a ritual she’d worked out with Brandt was actually functioning. She’d more than half expected the whole thing to blow up in their faces and had spent significant time the past week working out contingency plans for getting the hell out if that happened.

  But no, Aisha’s collection of hippies (despite being no doubt stoned off their asses) had managed, under the woman’s skillful direction, to pull off the steps and hit the marks of the circle-within-a-circle that comprised their stage. Trin had been able to take that energy and combine it with the massive amount of additional force generated by the crowd and the ley lines and send out a call to the spirit, which was one she’d found a reference to in one of the books she’d had Zack steal for her. The reference had been not only to this particular spirit—which was reputed to be of a power level that Trin would never have risked summoning under normal circumstances—but also to a way to tailor the ritual in such a way so that whatever resulting spirit you were able to summon would, in exchange for payment (spirits never did anything for free, and that was one of the first things every mage learned), open up a gateway to another dimension. Dr. Brandt’s part of the effort was to work out exactly how to make sure the spirit chose the correct dimension, and not just some random one that suited its alien fancy.

  That was all for later, though, and out of Trin’s hands now. In truth, neither she nor her Other cared much at this point whether the portal was opened correctly or not. Although there were certain advantages to having an endless supply of soldiers flooding through and in need of someone to direct their efforts once they got here, Trin and her Other had adapted well—perhaps even the best of all the top-echelon Evil—to life on Earth with no possibility of contact with home. The only thing she would get from the portal is more minions to order around—something she could take or leave.

  No, right now Trin focused on two things: making sure the spirit received the payment it was promised for its help, because pissing off spirits the size of high-rise apartment buildings never went well, and redirecting the energies of the ritual to rejigger the original terms of the agreement to something more in line with her own goals.

  That latter bit was the hard part: changing the terms of an agreement with something as large, nasty, and powerful as this spirit was usually a very bad idea. In this case, though, it wasn’t as hard as it might have been because, contrary to what foolish mages more often tried to do, Trin was altering the agreement to the spirit’s advantage, by offering it more than she’d originally promised. The only difficult part was waiting for the spirit to examine all the sides of the deal and make sure Trin wasn’t trying to put something over on it. Since she wasn’t, she was confident things would end up in her favor.

  As for the other payment—the original one—Trin sent the thought through the rudimentary link she’d established as part of the summoning: Whenever you’re ready. They’re all yours.

  She sensed the spirit’s satisfaction as it redirected part of its focus (it had plenty to spare) to claim its due.

  Stone once again cursed his own body. He trudged forward, moving far more slowly than he should have been able to, having to pause frequently to rest. His body shook, both from hunger (the small bowl of soup hadn’t been nearly enough sustenance after not eating for the better part of a day) and from the lingering effects of whatever Trin had drugged him with. Even though the playa was cooling off now that it was full dark, he was sweating, and having a hard time getting a deep breath.

  Would he be able to do this? Despair clawed at his mind as he forced himself to keep going. The spirit was the biggest he’d ever seen. Nobody in their right mind would risk summoning such a thing, because they almost certainly wouldn’t be able to control it. Spirit sizes didn’t necessarily correlate with power levels: he had seen tiny spirits
with enough magical potency to level city blocks, and large ones who could barely manage to remember why they were here, but even without using magical sight he sensed the sheer force of this one. If this thing got loose, it could easily go on a rampage and take out thousands of people—or more. Possibly many, many more before enough mages managed to get together and coordinate well enough to have even a chance of banishing it.

  Trin had gotten around the requirement of having a large group of mages present to summon it by taking advantage of both the ley line confluence and the sheer number of people present, their mental energy all focused on the same thing: the Man. These, and using the dancers’ sub-ritual as sort of a mystical tinder pile to touch the whole thing off, allowed her to call up something far larger and more dangerous than she’d ever be able to manage on her own, or even with a few others.

  Trin was smart, Stone gave her that. Smart, clever, and a straight-up psychopath: never a good combination to go up against. He had no idea how she’d survived the destruction of the burning house where he’d seen her last more than four years ago, or why she hadn’t come after him sooner than this, but right now he didn’t care. She was here, and she was in her own way every bit as dangerous as the spirit. Especially since it wasn’t just her he was dealing with, but also the Evil inside her.

  Where was she, anyway? He’d need to take her out too, and that wouldn’t be easy. Not normally, and certainly not in his current state. She’d gotten a lot tougher since he’d tangled with her last, and she’d have the same advantages from the ley lines as he would, as well as a body that wasn’t threatening to betray her at any moment. He paused again, swaying, and drove down the grayness rising in his vision. He would not pass out now. If he did, he was dead, and so was everyone else around here. The thought contained no ego or conceit: it was simply a fact. Aside from himself, with help from Verity, Sharra, and Jason, there was no one else to end this.

  He stopped again as screams sounded to his right, somehow rising louder and more agonized than those coming from the increasingly panicked crowd. He risked a glance and stared, eyes wide with shock.

  The dancers’ circle was about fifty feet in diameter. There were about forty of them, spaced out around its perimeter and arranged at various points inside, all of them performing the same precise but simple steps.

  Or they had been.

  Now, their shrieks of agony broke through the crowd’s cacophony as some unseen force simply tore them to pieces.

  That was the only way Stone could describe it. He stared, shocked, unable to look away, as the whirling dancers exploded in a mist of red haze and spinning limbs, as if someone had dropped a massive invisible bomb into their midst. He risked a quick glance using magical sight and saw exactly what he expected to see: the energy, glowing like a small multicolored sun, coalesced into a ball and flew toward the spirit. It joined with the massive thing’s dark form and disappeared into it, and the spirit itself grew a little larger, its darkness a little more substantial. Stone, who had never been squeamish about looking at scenes of carnage, staggered back and nearly fell.

  “Bloody hell…” he whispered. For the briefest of moments, the images of Rosie and Wendy flashed through his mind.

  Now he knew how Trin had gotten the spirit here—what she had promised it. Unlike the ritual he and Stefan had done, where the smaller spirit had been content with symbolic blood offerings, there was nothing symbolic about what this one wanted.

  He doubted very much that it would be satisfied with only taking the dancers.

  Grimly, he forced himself forward again.

  For now, the spirit wasn’t paying him any attention. He had to take advantage of that time, because he didn’t think it would last much longer. He didn’t know how much control Trin had over it at this point, but if she figured out he was here, things could get even uglier than they already were.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Luna!”

  There was no way Jason, Verity, and Sharra could have missed the gruesome spectacle that took the dancers: it happened directly in front of them as they continued fighting their way forward, shoving aside screaming people who fled in all directions.

  Jason almost ran. He almost broke free of his friends and hurled himself toward the bloody scene, in the vain hope that he might be able to save her somehow.

  He would have done that, except that Verity’s hand clamped on his arm and held him with more strength than he thought she had.

  “No, Jason!” she yelled in his ear.

  He spun on her. “V, what if she’s—”

  Tears streaked her cheeks, and her face had gone pale, but her expression held resolve. “You can’t go. They’ll shoot you!”

  He knew she was right. He knew a lot of things in that few seconds: if Luna had been among the dancers, she was certainly dead, vaporized along with the rest. He didn’t love her—he barely knew her—but that didn’t change the fact that he might have. He wanted to do something—anything—other than cower under his sister’s protection and be as ineffectual as a child trying to help in a task he couldn’t hope to perform. “FUCK!” he screamed into the sky.

  Verity’s arms went around him in a hard, quick hug. “Come on,” she said, her tone grim. “We have to find the Evil.”

  Next to her, Sharra pointed her hand at a soldier who hadn’t got the message. He carried what looked like a small submachine gun, and opened up on them with a hail of fire. As before, the rounds ricocheted off and took down several of the panicked crowd. Then a small, localized sandstorm whipped up around the soldier and lifted him from his feet, dashing him to the ground several yards away. He scrambled up, grabbed his gun, and ran.

  “Shit!” Verity yelled, letting loose of Jason. “We need him. Come on!”

  Jason, still struggling with the insane desire to run to the site of the dance ritual, gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus. He couldn’t do magic. He had to do what he was good at, and keep his head together. “There!” he yelled, pointing, as he spotted the fast-moving figure.

  Verity took aim and tried to get a bead on him with a spell, but too many straggling, panicking crowd members blocked her line of sight. “Damn it!” she snapped, moving forward. “Don’t let him get away!”

  As one, the three of them rushed forward again, trying not to pay attention to the fact that the ground they ran over was now soaked in blood.

  From her little shelter, Trin watched the spirit devour the dancers with a gleam in her eye and her snake’s smile on her lips. Through her link with it, she felt its satisfaction as it consumed their life forces and added them to its own. She felt it grow more powerful, and watched the shifting lights of the portal correspondingly grow more distinct.

  It wouldn’t be long now.

  She wouldn’t have to focus on the spirit much longer: it had its instructions, and so far it was following them as expected. The infusion of the dancers’ life forces had quelled any residual reluctance: now that it was convinced she wasn’t going to renege on her promise, it released more of its vast reservoir of power into the construction of the portal. At this rate, the thing would be solidified in a few minutes; if the Others in the tent did their jobs, it would be pointed at their own dimension and the reinforcements would start to come through.

  She sent the spirit another thought through the link: Let them finish establishing the location for the portal to point to. Then you can have them. Then, after the portal is self-sustaining, you can remove your power from it and you can have the rest of the people here. Everyone but me. Got it?

  She felt its astonishment—as much as an ancient and completely alien spirit can experience such an emotion—and pleasure at this unexpected gift. She fully expected that once the spirit completed the process of holding the portal in place long enough for the ley lines to take over and sustain it indefinitely, it would break free of her control and run rampant.
/>   She didn’t care.

  As long as it didn’t kill her, she didn’t care if it took out everyone else in the area. The location of Burning Man was remote enough that, by her knowledge of summonings and how they worked, the odds were about even that it would devour everyone here and then return to its home plane, or it would decide it liked these tasty little morsels and set off in search of more of them. Either way, it made no difference to Trin as long as she wasn’t one of the morsels. Eventually it would tire of the sport and return home, and she would be left with either a whole flock of new soldiers to command, or simply a world minus a few more people where she could go back to her business.

  Giving the spirit explicit permission to devour both the Evil’s leaders and the thousands of others present, though, was about the best armor Trin could give herself against becoming a meal herself. She still planned to take no chances: no spirit liked to be summoned away from its home plane, even if the summoning was a polite request laced with tasty goodies, so it was always possible it would turn on her. But she would have plenty of time to get free of the area before she became interesting enough to the spirit that it would pull itself away from its larger meal.

  All right. That was done. It had its instructions, and it would follow them because it was to its advantage to do so. That meant she had some time—at least a few minutes before the portal was solid enough that the spirit could begin eating the Others, and probably a few after that while it claimed its new prizes.

  Now it was time to find Stone.

  She knew he wasn’t dead. If he’d gotten away from her, he was out there somewhere. And if he was out there, then no way was she going to let the spirit have him.

  He was hers.

  She’d been cheated out of watching him die before, but she wouldn’t be again. If he was alive—if he could move—he would be here somewhere, in the thick of the action, trying in vain to come up with a way to take down her spirit.