by Hiatt, Bill
Despite my aversion to all the Halloween festivities at school, I spent a lot of time at home on my costume for the party. I had decided on Zorro because the black outfit might be good for stealth, it gave me freedom of movement, and the cape would help hide White Hilt even from Carrie Winn, or at least make it hard for her to tell it wasn’t just a prop sword for the costume.
Dad just seemed thrilled I was attending yet another Carrie Winn function. Mom, on the other hand, seemed a little apprehensive, almost as if her maternal instincts were telling her something was wrong. I insisted everything was fine, but when I kissed her goodbye, I could feel an odd tremble in her lips. Just as well she didn’t know what was really going on. If she felt this shaky over a premonition, imagine how overwhelming the truth would be for her.
I popped down the street to get Stan, who had, with eminent good sense, picked Merlin. “I needed something loose fitting in case I need to wield David’s sword, and, well, you know.” In other words, if Stan needed to raise his sword and suddenly had to double in muscle mass, he needed a costume with room to grow into. Merlin’s robe made for a wise choice, all things considered.
“So,” Stan continued slyly, “Are you ready for our trip to Cougar Country Safari?” Despite myself, I blushed a little.
“Stan, you’re making me sorry I ever told you about that. I should slap you silly for bringing it up again.”
“Too late. I’m already silly.”
Much to my relief, Jackson picked us up in the band van at that point. We were the last pick-up, and since the whole band was together, we went over the details of our upcoming performance, leaving Stan pretty much on his own. He was staring out the window, and I noticed how worried he looked.
And that was about the last time I noticed him until we got to Awen. It wasn’t just band business. It was Carla Rinaldi, costumed in a revealing white gown as Venus, the goddess of love. Apparently, she had been waiting for me to make a move and had gotten tired of waiting. She put one arm around me while we were talking about music, and her grip was surprisingly tight. Slowly, but unmistakably, she was pulling me closer, and I could feel my body respond to her with surprising intensity. My heart was racing, and my blood felt as if it were burning hotter than White Hilt. The strength of this reaction came as such a surprise to me that I had to glance over at Carla to make sure magic was not somehow involved. How sick is that? My first response when I felt drawn to a sexy girl who was clearly totally into me was to wonder if the situation were somehow being manipulated by Carrie Winn.
I looked into Carla’s eyes but did not see Ms. Winn looking back out; nor did I feel anything unusual beyond my own raging hormones. Carla looked back into my eyes with an expression that suggested that she wished we were alone.
“Uh, guys, get a room,” said George, our keyboardist, with a smirk. Carla now had both arms around me, and, having followed Carrie Winn’s earlier advice, even if unconsciously, I was glad I had gone with loose fitting pants.
“Carla,” I whispered in her ear. “I’m loving this, but, uh, maybe now is not the time.”
“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” she whispered back.
A normal guy in a normal situation would have found some way to be alone with Carla some time that night. Too bad I wasn’t, and it wasn’t. I was so aroused by that point that I feared I might miss some hint of a threat until it was too late. Using our upcoming performance as an excuse, including a very convincing “everyone else is depending on us” speech, I managed to scrape her off of me. I even managed to extricate myself without offending her. Yeah, I needed to be alert right now. At the same time, the absolute, overwhelming undeniability of my reaction to her suggested I had misread my feelings for her. Sure, she was hot, and I was fast upgrading her from volcano to solar flare, but she had always been hot, and I had never felt her presence so powerfully. I now realized that being with her would not be just a process of trying to get over Eva. For the first time in four years, I felt that I might be able to get out from under the shadow of what might have been and move into the light of what could be.
Well, if I managed to live through the night, that is.
In just a few minutes, we arrived at Awen. This time we were directed around back to the service entrance, mostly because there was an elevator that would make getting the instruments and equipment upstairs much easier. We normally used acoustic, not electric, guitars, and they were pretty easy to move around, but the keyboard was a little more challenging, and the drums even more so, to say nothing of the sound system. Unloading the equipment, however, gave me the perfect opportunity to work the first part of my magic. Humming as I worked, I reached out with my mind, stretching my thoughts further and further, twining them around every gun throughout the complex, and then one by one I rendered the gunpowder inert. The operation was almost suspiciously easy—but of course, if Carrie Winn had not visualized such an attack, she would not have known to protect the guns from my magic, if such a thing were even possible for her.
By now we were pretty well loaded into the elevator, but I dragged my feet enough to take care of the security cameras. I focused on the one I could see, pouring my thoughts into it, them sending them surging along the cables, crackling into the security server, searing it with almost explosive force, taking out not only the cameras, but the alarms and even the fire suppression system—so if Carrie Winn had been counting on that to neutralize White Hilt, well, tough luck!
There was more than a little risk in knocking down all the security. Unlike the guns, which no one would notice until they tried to fire, the security system failure would doubtless be noted and reported to Winn almost immediately. But, assuming she did not know that I could attack technology that way, she might not interpret the security failure as an attack. Even if she did, she had no way of knowing the attack came from me, and if she thought she was being attacked from another direction, so much the better for us.
Once we were upstairs, moving the equipment into the ballroom should have been relatively easy, but, whether to create the right atmosphere for a Halloween party or to thwart any defensive moves on our part, the ambiance in the mansion was incredibly gloomy, making moving the equipment around cumbersome at best. One of Winn’s aides followed us around with a flashlight, but that didn’t help much.
Oh, there was some light, but it was a brilliant simulation of flickering candle flames, and its shifting nature made seeing what we were doing difficult. I had to constantly worry about banging something into the wall. No, I wasn’t worried about Carrie Winn’s castle. I was worried about our equipment.
After what seemed an eternity, we had maneuvered everything into the ballroom, and then came the nightmare of trying to get everything plugged in correctly by flashlight and imitation candle. I gradually came to realize, however, that that was not our biggest problem.
It was not lighting alone that made the place seem gloomy. Carrie Winn had somehow infected the atmosphere with a steadily more oppressive fear that clung to us and whispered darkly into our ears. I felt it first because of my sensitivity to magic, but I could see the other band members become conscious of it one by one. At first it seemed like a natural reaction to the flickering near-darkness around us, but I knew that as the evening progressed it would gnaw further and further into our nerves, seem more and more real, until by the end of the evening fear would engulf us, and we would be lost.
Any thought that Carrie Winn did not intend to attack tonight evaporated. No one would waste such power to make a creepy ambiance for a Halloween party, and that level of power would in any case have been stark raving overkill for such a purpose. She clearly knew I had allies and planned to weaken them as much as possible before she struck. Well, we would see about that.
I had been humming the whole time, but now I actually started singing as we finished our setup, and the others joined me, a capella, and, though they did not realize it consciously, together we pushed back the fear, sent it skittering into
whatever dark corners it could find. Winn’s spell, whatever it was, seemed to cover all of Awen. That meant there was no immediately escape from it, but that also meant its strength would have to be diluted, and my music, more localized and concentrated, could force it back, shield the band, eventually shield the whole ballroom—but only as long as I kept singing. As in Annwn, the others could add their strength to mine, but ultimately mine was the power, mine was the focus, and mine would be the failure if I faltered.
After an unusually musical sound check, we were ready to go, and, as if on cue, the guests started arriving. I sheltered them in our music; I sent it out in warm, pulsing waves, beating at the raving fear, eroding it, diluting it, finally freeing the room of it.
I had to keep most of my focus on our performance to ensure that the protection kept up, but I did scan the room to make sure that all my allies were in place. Coach Miller and Nurse Florence arrived as a high school football player and cheerleader. (I had to say that she pulled off the costume better than he did.) Dan and Eva came as Romeo and Juliet, a choice that sent a little pang through my heart, but I wrapped myself in the memory of Carla pressing up against me, and the pang eased a little. Like me, Dan sported a cloak that helped to conceal his blade. Because I had read the Shah Nameh, I recognized Shar as Rostam, the great hero of that Persian epic, resplendent in rather realistic looking armor, another choice that would make his sword seem like a prop rather than a weapon. Gordy arrived as Hercules, complete with fake Nemean lion head as a helmet and Nemean lion hide draped over his shoulders—and bare chested. Show-off! Wait—do you doubt that’s what he was doing? Surely you’ve noticed that it is always some star athlete that shows up like that, never the president of the chess club. Ever wonder why? Well, in any case, Hercules was known for a bow, not a sword, but at least the costume was martial enough that nobody short of an expert in mythology was likely to nitpick the sword. Carlos arrived last, dressed as El Cid, another good cover for the sword and a compliment to our high school’s English department, which seemed to have gotten classic literature into our students’ heads far more than I would have imagined. Of course, Carrie Winn would quickly recognize the magic of their weapons if she got a good look, but we would have to cross that bridge when we came to it.
No one who didn’t know our strategy would have recognized the subtleties of our positioning in the room. Well, for the most part. Gordy was his usual obvious self in watching over Stan, who ironically probably didn’t need much watching while he was carrying the sword of David. Stan was scanning the darkness outside the ballroom’s massive plate glass window, watching for anything unusual, like fog rolling in or some other effort to isolate the house. Dan was subtler in maneuvering Eva and the other girls who had seen Annwn close to the stage, where all of us could watch them more effectively, and Carlos naturally stayed nearby, keeping an eye on Eva and on the other girls as well. All my peers were present and accounted for, either as allies or as people we could protect if the need arose. Nurse Florence kept scanning all the entrances for Carrie Winn or for any unexpected move. Aside from keeping our musical defenses up, I periodically checked the guns—still neutralized—and the security system—still down. We could not anticipate every threat, but we were about as well defended as we could be in an environment basically controlled by Carrie Winn.
I should have known, though, that Ms. Winn would have some surprises up her sleeve. I wasn’t paying much attention to the adults in the room. Nurse Florence had earlier suggested getting Coach Miller to lead them to safety if a fight broke out, but neither one of us thought that scenario very likely. Winn was, after all, poised to announce her state senate candidacy. Under those circumstances, a bloodbath among her adult guests seemed unlikely. We had considered Stan’s theory about the guests being impostors, but human impostors could still conceivably tell tales afterward, and with the guards already likely to be supernatural, how many other supernaturals could even Carrie Winn round up to create an imitation guest list? No, both Nurse Florence and I expected that Winn would at some point try to separate her targets from the rest of the population, probably during a band break when she could extract me inconspicuously.
We were, of course, both completely, egregiously wrong.
My first clue was the presence of a large number of security people. It was hard to tell at first, but as the party wore on, I became aware of more and more of them, too many of them. Strategically, there seemed no point in that much concentration of force, unless Winn really did intend to attack us in the ballroom.
My second clue was the gradual realization that something was a little off about the other guests. Superficially, they seemed normal enough, but their costuming was very dark, almost uniformly black and bloody. I had seen enough adult Halloween parties to know that only a few adults tended to go the straight horror route; most acted out some cheerier fantasy. Here there were no beauty queens, no prince charmings, no historical heroes, no rock stars, just a salute to the fears buried in our collective psyche: skeletons, vampires, werewolves, ghouls, grim reapers, dark and distant figures I couldn’t quite place. Aside from the grim costuming, the “guests” were convincing as real partygoers only as long as I didn’t study them closely. They swirled around on the dance floor from time to time, but in a very mechanical way. They conversed, but again, from the few snatches I caught, the conversations seemed contrived, the words of poorly scripted background characters, not real people.
I glanced at Nurse Florence and could see in her eyes that she had noticed the same wrongness but did not know quite how to address it. Once again I visualized guitar strings stretching from my mind to the minds of everyone around me. I imagined them thrumming with the thoughts that were rushing toward me. Then reality hit me with the force of a tsunami.
Aside from my actual allies, the rest of the Annwn Six, the other band members, and Coach Miller, there were no minds in the room. Well, no human ones anyway. From the security men I could feel some dark, savage consciousness, more Neanderthal than contemporary. From the other party guests, nothing. Emptiness. Void. They appeared to be there, but as I had so often discovered in the past few years, looks can be deceiving.
No real guests meant no real reason not to cut us down right now, where we were. Winn could make her move at any time. I tried to probe the minds of the security men, but all I could get was a powerful sense of mission and a sense of expectancy as they waited for some signal. Beyond that, their minds were too inhuman; try as I might, I was just not used to reading beings of their kind.
When Winn had actually planned to strike, we were never to find out. The attack was set off prematurely, when Shar stumbled in the flickering, pseudo-candle lit semi-darkness and fell right into one of the “guests,” who must have inadvertently touched Zom and vanished in a quick pulse of green light. Shar, confused and thinking himself under attack, drew Zom from its scabbard, its dull green glow shining surprisingly bright in the near darkness of the room. The “guests” recoiled, as if instinctively, from that light, my other armed allies drew their swords, and security tried to open fire.
At least my efforts at learning how to disable guns had not gone to waste. Disabling the guards, however, might prove more difficult. It was hard to tell in the miserable lighting, but they suddenly seemed taller, bulkier…
Crap! We were facing a small army of shifters!
The band had naturally fallen silent as soon as the green flash on the dance floor had caught everyone’s attention. They were even more stunned when the rest of the “guests” dissolved. Carrie Winn must have been watching somehow and figured there was no point in wasting the energy required to maintain such an elaborate set of illusions now that we knew they were illusions. I turned to the band members and shouted, “Stay here! Hide if you can!” with so much magic force all of them ran for cover immediately. Well, all except Carla.
Damn! Just what I did not need at this point!
Somehow, she realized we were in danger, and she so stro
ngly did not want to be separated from me that she had shaken off my first command and run toward me. Dan, Stan, Gordy, Shar and Carlos were already in defensive position, and the security men were charging. I had only seconds to get Carla out of the way, if that.
“Tal!” she said frantically, throwing her arms around me. For an instant I got a loud, staticky burst of her thoughts. Hell, not only was she frightened for herself, but for me as well. Apparently, she had been crushing on me for months, but my preoccupation with Eva and with the various threats all around me had blinded me to it. Time froze for an instant as her inmost desires throbbed into me, her heartbeat almost driving out my own. Everything, even her fantasies, rushed into my mind so potently that I nearly lost my grip on reality, and, in that frozen instant, found myself bathed in warm water, wrapped in steam in a shower Carla had been sharing with me in her mind for some time, a shower in which the warmest thing was not the water but her naked body passionately locked with mine. At the same time, I was hit by an image of Carla, dressed in stark black, weeping at my funeral, her mood even blacker than her dress. Her desire and her fear, opposing images, pulled my mind toward chaos.
Either I had lost control of my ability to read minds, or Carla had some kind of magic herself. Either way, I had to snap out of this, or all would be lost.
I dragged myself out of that frozen instant, every mental muscle aching from the strain, and shoved her away roughly, longing for the feeling of her in my arms yet knowing that that feeling would undo me.
“Carla, get to safety!” I commanded, again hitting her with everything I had, and this time, pale-faced and teary-eyed, she seemed to comply. I spun around, jumped off the stage, and drew White Hilt.
And that was when I found out that Carrie Winn had yet another surprise for me. The moment White Hilt should have burst into flames, the darkness in the room surged toward it, engulfed it, smothered its light. This was no Celtic magic I had ever seen. Clearly, she, like me, had been experimenting, and with considerable success.
