It Happened One Doomsday

by Laurence MacNaughton

  It didn’t solve anything, really, because the desert was still just as vast and endless. But it felt good. It felt like the tiniest taste of freedom.

  From behind, Rane placed her strong hands on Dru’s shoulders, giving them a quick squeeze. “You’ll be okay.”

  “I know,” Dru said with a sigh, tilting her head until she could see Rane’s eyes. “We’ll work it out.”

  “One way or another,” Rane said.

  Dru risked a glance over at Greyson and watched the stubbly outlines of his face as he stared out at the dry rolling hills. Wondering what he was thinking, what he was seeing out there in the unfocused distance. What he was keeping locked away inside.

  He sat up suddenly, squinting into the distance.

  She tensed. “What?”

  He pointed. Branching off the main road, a cracked narrow blacktop driveway stretched away into the distance, as if some giant had used a black magic marker to draw a single dark line across the desert.

  “We’re here,” Greyson said. “That has to be the address from the auction. The mansion where the sorcerers lived.”

  And likely where they died, Dru thought.

  20

  EVIL IN MIDCENTURY MODERN

  Despite the illusion of nothingness that showed on the map, their destination stood out clearly against the desert. It gleamed in the distance long before they reached it, a shining white heat ripple against the drab earth tones of the dry hills. As they approached, and the building’s outlines became clearer, Dru stared in disbelief.

  It was a mansion, all right. But this was definitely not the haunted mansion she had expected.

  The structure was all curves, without a single angle to be seen. Some nameless architect had sculpted it from an organic expanse of domes, curved walls, and flying buttresses that soared up and around with all the majesty of Saturn’s rings.

  It looked like the entire contents of a NASA warehouse had been melted together, painted space-capsule white, and dotted with portholes and wide oval windows.

  Overall, the effect was hauntingly beautiful, but at the same time downright weird.

  The blacktop ended, and the road became dirt. A faint track forked off to the right of the bumpy unpaved road, perhaps headed around behind the mansion. But from the looks of it, no one had used it in decades. Dru kept heading straight.

  As she rolled the car to a stop on the long driveway, she craned her head up for a better look. The dark round windows that dotted the house seemed to stare down at them, unblinking, like the eye sockets of a sun-bleached skull. Dru stared back, searching for any sign of what lay inside, but the windows revealed nothing of the mansion’s secrets.

  A gust of wind buffeted the car, plinking grains of sand across the windshield. Nothing else moved in the still desert.

  After trading glances with Greyson and Rane, Dru unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out of the air-conditioned car into the prickling heat. Somehow, the New Mexico air failed to warm the chilly presence of the sorcerers’ mansion.

  The sound of the car doors shutting was oddly loud in the desert.

  “Serious trouble, D,” Rane said behind her. Dru turned to look, pulse quickening.

  But Rane merely waved at the front of the Prius, now a disgusting carpet of splattered bugs and reddish road dust. “Nate’ll blow a gasket when he sees this.”

  With a wry smile, Dru hitched her purse up onto her shoulder. “I’m sure Nate will survive.”

  “And hopefully,” Greyson said, surveying the sorcerer’s mansion through his dark sunglasses, “so will we.”

  Together, they made their way up the curved walkway. The front door proved to be a huge arch split by double doors made of tinted glass.

  “No one lives here anymore, right?” Dru asked, looking at Rane, then Greyson. His forehead wrinkled in concern. Rane just shrugged.

  After a moment of hesitation, Dru swallowed and tried the doors. Locked.

  “All right, give me some room,” Rane said, edging past Dru. “Glass doors always make a mess when they break.”

  “Wait, hold up,” Greyson said. With a metallic jangle, he pulled a key ring out of his jacket pocket. “When I was cleaning Hellbringer the first time, I found these in the glove box.”

  “Seriously?” Rane said, sounding disappointed as Greyson unlocked the door with a soft click. “That was my only chance to have fun on this trip.”

  The doors swung inward with a thin screech, as if the steel hinges contained tiny demons rudely awakened from a deep sleep.

  The domed foyer inside led away into darkness, punctuated by thick beams of sunlight streaming in from the round windows. The cool air wafting out through the open door, refreshing as it felt, also carried an unwelcome tinge: the tang of recently disturbed dust, along with years of sun-baked loneliness, and the moldering odor of forgotten things.

  Before heading inside, Dru took a last look back over her shoulder at the parched desert hills, searching for any sign of life. But the dirt road was empty all the way to the horizon. Nothing moved except the clouds creeping in from the distance and the blistering disk of the slowly setting sun.

  As Greyson moved to enter the foyer, Dru spotted a faint line of symbols etched into the floor just beyond the threshold. She stopped him with an outstretched hand. “Wait. See those?”

  Rane bent down to get a closer look at the symbols, frowning. “Rat signs? Here?”

  Greyson folded his arms. “Rat signs?”

  “The correct term is sorcisto, the language of magic,” Dru explained, digging in her purse for a ulexite crystal. “At some point, sorcisto got shortened to sorcio, which is Italian for ‘mouse’ or ‘rat.’ And since these signs are popular with the more, um, alternative sorcerers, they’re called rat signs.” She pulled out her round-cornered crystal of ulexite.

  “Oh, sure,” Rane said. “Now you have your TV rock on you.”

  The ice-clear ulexite was banded with countless milky lines, all perfectly straight. Pressed against the skin of her forehead, it felt like the grain of unfinished wood. In ordinary hands, ulexite formed a natural lens, transmitting light with fiber-optic clarity. Hence the nickname, TV rock.

  But Dru had a more esoteric use for it—sensing enchantments hidden from normal sight.

  As she suspected, the crystal revealed a faint magical barrier twining across the floor just inside the entrance. Untold years ago, the pale, brassy glow had probably burned hellishly bright. But whoever had cast the spell hadn’t tended to it in years, and the magic had frayed from disuse until it couldn’t stand even the slightest disturbance.

  Dru carefully stepped across the threshold onto the polished concrete floor. The broken seal flickered slightly at her passage, then faded back into its slumber. “Keep a lookout for more signs like that. If they put a ward on the front door, there are probably more.”

  Their footsteps echoed hollowly as they explored the house. Every oddly shaped room sat empty and forlorn.

  No furnishings, no decorations. Just subtle shifts of color on the walls and floors where things had sat for decades before being carted away. The few rooms that sported any carpet were worn from innumerable footfalls and littered with furniture indentations, but whatever had made them had vanished in the auction.

  She could still sense traces of powerful magic from spells cast in and around the house in the past. But that was all they were. Traces. Brief, sour tingles in the back of her throat. A ghostly whisper along the back of her neck.

  There had been powerful magic here once. But it was long gone now.

  Everything was gone.

  Stumped, Dru wandered through one bare room after another until she stood in the center of the house, an echoing open space with a vaulted ceiling where all of the mansion’s wings met at a starfishlike crest. The long blades of a ceiling fan spread out like the rotors of a military helicopter, motionless and silent.

  With clanging footsteps, Rane mounted a nearby spiral staircase and headed upstairs.
/>   “Wait,” Dru called after her. “Let’s not split up.”

  “Dude, this place is dead empty.” Rane stomped her way up to the next level and hung over the railing, her long hair framing her face. “Total wild goose chase. Unless you know something I don’t?”

  “All I know is that we need to find some kind of clue about who created Hellbringer and why.” Dru blew out a frustrated breath as Rane shrugged and wandered away through an upstairs archway. “Guess this was a waste of time,” Dru muttered.

  “Could be worse,” Greyson said, crossing the vast room to stand beside her, his thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his jeans. “Look, if there’s anything in here, we’ll find it.”

  “Really? Because in places like this, I usually get a heebie-jeebie vibe. Not here.”

  “Something’s here,” Greyson said with a subtle nod. “I know it.”

  The utter certainty in his tone caught Dru’s attention. “How exactly?”

  He turned to look directly into her eyes. Though his eyes still glowed red, there was no false bravado there, no bluffing, just cool confidence. “Gut feeling.”

  “And you get gut feelings like this often?”

  “Only when trouble’s on the way.” He shook his head. “Can’t explain it, really. But when something bad is close by, I get a bad feeling.”

  “Except when it comes to Hellbringer.”

  He scuffed his boot on the old carpet. “That’s a special case.”

  “Hmm.” With anyone else, a mysterious “gut feeling” could be dismissed as everyday intuition, Dru thought. But what if this was something more?

  What if Greyson’s hunches had a magical explanation?

  She folded her arms. “When did this start, this feeling? When you first got the car?”

  “No. Been happening ever since I was little.” His expression softened. “My dad used to call it my sixth sense. But that was his thing, not mine.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My old man used to do magic tricks. Read your mind. Make things disappear, pull a quarter out of your ear, all that. But he took it to a whole new level. You could bring him a broken toy, and he’d just snap his fingers, and it would be fixed.” Greyson raised his fingers and snapped them. “Just like that. I don’t know how he did it. He said it was magic. He seemed to believe it. So did my sister.”

  Dru studied him for a long moment, the chiseled features of his face, the openness in his gaze. “And what about you? Do you think it was real magic?”

  “No.” He looked away, at nothing in particular, and the muscles in his jaw worked. “Maybe. Tell you the truth, these days I just don’t know anymore.”

  “But he fixed things. Just like you fix cars. Like Hellbringer.” Dru nodded to herself. The pieces of Greyson’s puzzle started to connect in her mind. There were still big gaps, but the overall picture emerged. “Greyson, listen, if your dad was a sorcerer . . .”

  Greyson’s red gaze became guarded, wary.

  “If he had magic in his blood, then chances are, you do, too. But you’ve never had any training.”

  “Hey, I didn’t even know real magic existed until I met you.”

  “Well, there’s a term for people with untapped magical potential. Arcana rasa. It’s rare. Happens to be dangerous, too. It makes you a magnet for the forces of darkness.” She started to pace. It all clicked. “That explains why my crystals get more powerful when you’re around. We have a sort of magical synergy.”

  He chewed that over for a moment. “You trying to tell me that I’m somehow, what, turbocharging your crystal powers?”

  “Basically, yes. With your untapped magical energy.” She wasn’t completely certain, but the theory fit the facts. “Greyson, if you really are arcana rasa, that makes you a target. Demons crave power. That’s why they try to feed on those with potential. But having that energy inside you also gives you a chance to fight the demon off. If you know how.”

  He gave her a long, lingering look. “What if I don’t want this power?”

  “If I’m right about this, and I could be wrong, then it doesn’t matter if you want it or not. Whether or not you use your potential, it’s still inside you, trying to come out.”

  “Because I’m close to you.”

  “We’re sort of on the same frequency. Our magic is intermingling.”

  He stepped closer, and his nearness made it suddenly hard to think. “What does that mean, exactly? For us?”

  She wanted him to back away, and at the same time she desperately wanted him to come closer. The two conflicting desires felt as if they would tear her apart. “Ever since we met, your magical potential has been spilling over into mine. Making my crystals more powerful. But in the long run, this could turn out badly. It’s dangerous for both of us.”

  “I don’t know about that.” His voice dropped low and urgent. “If you kiss me again, it won’t turn me back into a demon, will it?”

  Her cheeks flushed hot, and somehow that only made everything worse. She dropped her gaze. “No. That only worked once, when we made that, um, connection.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about magic,” he said. “But whatever kind of connection we’ve got, I don’t want to break it. Not if it makes us stronger.”

  She started to tremble. She wanted to reach out to him. Wanted to kiss him again. But she couldn’t. She didn’t know if it was wrong, exactly, but it didn’t feel right.

  “Things could spiral out of control,” she said softly. “Someone could get hurt. Literally.”

  “Maybe,” he said, stepping so close that she could feel the heat radiating from his body as he reached for her. “Or maybe being a little out of control is just what you need right now.”

  21

  BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN

  The spiral staircase creaked and popped as Rane swung one leg over the upstairs railing, straddling it. “I so want to live in this place. You guys find anything? Oh.”

  Dru had already stepped back away from Greyson by the time Rane’s loaded “Oh” echoed through the vast central room. But it was too late.

  Rane slid down the length of the banister, corkscrewing down until she hopped off onto the mansion floor, fixing Dru with a knowing look all the way.

  Dru cleared her throat. “So, um, we should keep searching. Look for more rat signs. On the floor, the walls, anywhere. They could mark another warding spell. Or maybe a secret door.” She turned her back on Greyson, then immediately felt as if she’d lost something precious. She could feel his presence behind her. The intensity of his gaze on her back.

  “Okay, secret doors,” Greyson said finally. His footsteps exited the room. “We still haven’t checked the garage yet.”

  Dru nodded, trying to avoid Rane’s penetrating eyes.

  “So.” Rane feigned wide-eyed innocence as she sauntered over. “Whatcha doin’, D?”

  “Nothing. Let’s just keep going.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Quit looking at me like that.”

  “Over here,” Greyson called from the doorway. “Hellbringer must have been kept down this way.”

  Thankful for the distraction, Dru followed after Greyson, who led them past rows of porthole windows that looked out on the empty miles of desert that surrounded them. The heat from the afternoon sunlight warmed Dru’s skin as she passed through each thick beam of light. The darkness in between was chilly by comparison.

  The garage turned out to be a vast dome, perfectly round and easily big enough to fit a trio of Greyhound buses. Hangar-style doors curved around one quarter of the perimeter, opposite an expansive window that dominated the other side.

  Like the rest of the mansion, the echoing garage seemed spotless at first glance, but a closer look revealed drifts of dust and unidentifiable scraps of trash littered about. The smells of age and blown-in desert sand thickened the air and made it difficult to breathe.

  Another scent lurked in the still air. An underground scent, the smell of dirt and long-buried rocks.
The skin on the back of Dru’s neck prickled as she realized what it reminded her of.

  A freshly dug grave.

  The echoes of Greyson’s boots ricocheted around the garage. He studied the floor as he went. When he reached the exact center, he knelt down and ran his fingers across a streak of tire marks.

  Dru crossed the cavernous garage to the massive window, a curved grid of glass nearly as wide as a city street. It looked out over the desert hills behind the mansion, toward the blue smudge of the mountains on the horizon. Ominous clouds roiled in the distance, reaching out forbidding fingers toward the mansion even as she watched, casting a chilling shadow across the landscape.

  In the middle distance, the monotony of the desert ended at a brown rocky ridge. The clouds above seemed to change course around it, leaving it in an oasis of sunlight. Something seemed odd about the way the afternoon sunlight slanted through the rocks near the ridge. But it was too far away to tell why.

  Dru took off her glasses, breathed on the lenses and wiped them off on her shirt, then tried again.

  Squinting hard, she could barely make out a strange rock formation rising up over the ridge. A stone archway.

  But not a natural, lumpy, wind-scoured arch.

  This archway had machinelike precision. A perfectly smooth, sculpted shape. Something made by human hands.

  She couldn’t be sure at this distance, but it looked easily big enough to drive a truck through. And it happened to be in the middle of the desert, on private land, far from anyone’s eyes.

  Hidden from everyone . . . except the sorcerers who lived in this mansion.

  “That’s not a coincidence,” she muttered. As soon as they were done here, she decided, they needed to check that out.

  “Found more of those rat signs,” Greyson called, crossing the garage. When he reached the far wall, a door-sized section swung open with a raucous metal screech, trailing loose cobwebs. Beyond, a rough-hewn rock staircase descended into darkness.

  Rane strode toward the opening, transforming into metal with a faint scraping noise. “Behind me,” she ordered.

  Greyson stood his ground, body tensing, ready to fight. “I didn’t even touch it.”