by R D Martin
Bella recognized the room, and it was all she could do not to lose either her concentration on the spell or her lunch as the pit of her stomach lurched. She’d killed a man in there, accidentally to be sure, but that didn’t make him any less dead and she didn’t want to visit it ever again.
In an almost blind panic, she thrust her hands at her former manager. The electricity flowing between her hands shot out, an unstoppable crackling ball of white-hot energy, and embedded itself in his chest. The man squealed, sounding like the large pig he resembled, and staggered back, tripping against the side of his desk and falling to his stomach. Having lost contact with the wall, the edges of the doorway began to shrink, though the pace was almost too slow to notice.
“Where are they?” she demanded again. Spitting out the electric spell again, she advanced on the porcine figure. “Where are the kids?”
Of all the responses she would have imagined, laughter wasn’t one of them. Pushing himself up, Browser dusted his hands and turned to face her. His tie was completely burned away, as was a large area in the center of his shirt. While the shirt had blackened and crisped edges, the skin beneath was whole and unharmed apart from a crisscross of long white scars that stood out in contrast to the pinkish skin.
“Is that all you’ve got? Is that what Master’s been worried about?” Browser laughed. “You really are a weak mouse, aren’t you?” Stepping forward, he reached out to grab her by the wrist, intent on dragging her through the closing rip in the air.
Putting as much power into the spell as possible, she hurled it at him again. Aside from pushing him back a little, the spell had the same effect.
“Come, now, can’t you do anything else? Or are you a failure as a witch too?” He laughed as he lunged at her. It was only the heavy desk keeping him from reaching her.
Staggering back, almost tripping on one of the guest chairs in front of the desk, her arms cartwheeled as she tried to keep her balance.
In the space of a heartbeat, the man was around the desk and descending on her. His movements were steady and paced, like an old prizefighter reentering the ring after years away.
With no time to think and nowhere to run, she yelled the only spell that came to mind. Blue-white flame erupted from her palms and shot across the dwindling distance between the two of them. She couldn’t tell if it was by either luck or skill, but the large man dove to the side, avoiding the flames as they shot past and splattered on the wall. Thick smoke began curling up, and in the time it took her attacker to rise to his feet, the fire alarm began blaring.
Outside the room, the elevators locked down and employees began shuffling toward the stairs. It was a long walk to the ground and none of them were looking forward to it. Inside the room it was a different story altogether.
Electricity might not bother him, but the fire gave him pause, she thought as the two combatants circled, each waiting for the other to make a move.
“Where are they?” Bella demanded, pressing the little advantage she had.
“The Master will make your death quick, you know. You won’t feel anything.” Watching her hands, Browser circled left, putting one of the overlarge chairs between them.
“Where are the kids? Where are they?” Thrusting her hands forward, she shouted the spell again and another stream of blue-white fire burst to life. She needed to keep him moving. He was so large, she thought. If he got his hands on her… The thought made her shiver.
This time he’d been expecting the fire. Lifting the leather chair up as though it weighed nothing, he let it take the brunt of the blast. The upholstery scorched and singed as the fire tore into it, pressing him back in the process. The moment he felt the pressure ease up, he grunted and threw the chair at her as hard as he could.
As the burning furniture flew at her, trailing a long tail of thick black smoke behind it, she dived to avoid it. It wasn’t until she was mid leap that she saw Browser barreling behind it. Avoiding the flaming office furniture was easy. Avoiding the large man wasn’t.
A large meaty hand snatched at her shoulder before she’d even hit the floor and Bella realized she’d been underestimating her manager since the very beginning. She’d always thought of him as fat and weak. Her entire plan coming here had centered on intimidating him, but now she realized just how wrong she’d been.
His powerful grip ground the bones in her shoulder together with ease. It took her a second to register the scream tearing through the air at a higher octave than the fire alarm was coming from her. Her scream cut off when his thick fist rammed into her stomach, forcing the air from her lungs.
“Oh, the Master will be pleased. He was upset when you killed his Lank and hurt me for it. But when he found you stole from him…” The thud of his fist against the side of her face snapped her head back and sent her vision reeling. “Oh, he was so mad. I thought he would kill you. I would have killed you for him, but Master sent other servants after you. Master didn’t trust me anymore. But now, now Master will trust me. Master will hold me higher than the others and I will have power.”
The pitch in his voice increased as he spoke of his dreams of power and she could hear the lunacy behind them.
He might have been having fun shaking her like a rag doll, but pleasing his Master seemed to spark a fire in him. Ignoring the growing inferno around them, he turned and dragged her by the shoulder toward the closing portal. By this point, it had shrunk too small to fit his massive girth through.
Cursing at being slowed in his rise to glory, he tried passing her struggling form from one hand to the other. Weak though she was, she snatched a trophy knocked to the floor during their fight and brought it around in a sweeping arc to smash it into the back of his head. The small black marble base bounced off his thick skull, snapping off the trophy to leave her holding a jagged shard of glass.
She didn’t even think before plunging the broken glass into the fat man’s lower back. His squeal of pain was so loud it drowned out the noises of crackling flames and fire alarms, threatening to burst her eardrums.
The pain in her shoulder disappeared as he dropped her to the floor, struggling to pull out the trophy shard. Landing on the thin pile carpeting, Bella scrabbled to her feet, gasping for the air her lungs yearned for.
Using every bit of training, every exercise she’d ever gone through, she tried to calm herself. She needed control now, not to lash out without thinking. Acting without thinking had killed Ronnie and she wasn’t about to do that again.
Coughing her way through the layer of thick roiling smoke gathering at the ceiling, she turned her attention to her manager as he bounced off walls and furniture, trying to pull out the glass he couldn’t quite reach. She knew it was a lucky hit, but right now she’d take any luck she got.
Needing him alive, she snapped her hands together as she mumbled quick words drowned out by the surrounding noise. When she pulled her hands apart, electric lines connected them again. The electric charge hadn’t stopped him before, but she needed him alive and not charbroiled. The white ball crackled as it shot through the air to ground itself into her former manager. He shrieked, but otherwise seemed to ignore it.
Once more, then again she tried striking him with the electric charges. He ignored each one except to scream a little louder. Finally on the fourth one, whatever protection he had against the balls of crackling power failed and, screaming louder than when she’d stabbed him, the fat man shook from head to toe before dropping to the floor on his wide belly.
A coughing fit tampered her success at overcoming him as the flame and smoke coursing throughout the room overcame her. Dropping to her knees, she crawled across the room to the prone figure of the man moaning on the floor. She might have brought the fire to life, but it wasn’t hers to control. Bits of burning ceiling were already dropping to the floor, trailing smoke and sparks as they fell.
“Where are they?” she yelled at the man’s huddled figure, trying to cut through the noise around them. “Where are they?”
/> “Master,” moaned the fat figure. “Master, I…”
“Your Master won't save you now.” She coughed in the smoke. “I can save you, but only if you tell me where they are. Where did you put them? Where are they? Where’s Samantha?”
He blinked at her, though whether it was to consider her offer or because of the smoke, she wasn’t sure until the man nodded.
“Vomo Aimatos. The… the Blood Altar,” he said in a low coughing whisper.
She must have done more damage than she’d thought, as a moment later he began coughing, spewing droplets of blood into the air in a ruby fountain.
The figure on the floor shivered again and seemed to fall in on itself. His left hand, wearing the golden ring he’d used to open the portal, slid out from beneath him. It flailed in the air for a moment before flopping to the floor. When she saw the other hand, however, she couldn’t stop herself from gasping and falling back. It looked as if his fingers were fusing together, melting and combining like crayons left in a hot sun. Even as she watched, the digits curled, split, and hardened until his hand looked less like a hand and more like a hoof.
Sitting back, eyes wide even as they watered from smoke, Bella could tell this wasn’t the only change the man was going through. His legs curled beneath his body, causing him to roll on his side, shrinking. His expensive shoes fell off feet that no longer fit inside them. It looked like his body was stretching as well, elongating until he was almost twice his normal length.
The most drastic change was his face. Long teeth burst from his lower jaw, spraying an arc of blood as they tore through flesh and muscle. His eyes, always sunken and beady before, bulged and pushed forward. Settling into their new position, the irises were completely dark with a blue ring surrounding them. They no longer looked beady either, but rather held a sad, world worn look that spoke of too many horrors burned into them.
When the bones in his face began snapping and reforming, a stray thought struck her. Chryso had referred to Browser as a pig, but she’d assumed he’d been insulting a fat man. What if?
Staring at the transforming figure, she realized her train of thought was right. Except for the hand wearing the ring, her former manager had almost completely transformed into a large hog.
A pool of blood had formed around the transformed beast and it kicked back with its hind legs. There was a metallic ting as the large gold ring it wore popped off fingers no longer human and bounced off the side of the desk, almost hitting her in its flight.
Snatching up the ring, she backed away from the dying pig. The flames and smoke were getting too thick for her to deal with as the ash caused her eyes to water and choked her lungs.
A section of the ceiling in the corner caved in under the fire’s onslaught, plunging to the floor and spreading the flame. Time was up and she knew it, though she wondered why the smoke alarm had gone off, but the sprinklers hadn’t.
Snatching up the sequined unicorn backpack from where it leaned next to the door, she swung it open and staggered out of the office. Forgetting the inferno behind her for a moment, she scanned the sea of cubicles, looking for anyone moving among them. Browser couldn't be the only…
A crash to her right pulled at her attention like a fish on a line. Whipping her head around, she saw a giant serpent tail disappearing around a corner near the break room.
Crouching low, she scuttled between gray cubicle walls, trying to remain unseen. Another crash off to her left convinced her it was more important to run than it was to keep out of sight. Heart pounding in her chest, she took a few deep breaths to steel herself before pushing up and sprinting toward the glowing exit sign.
A crash and roar from behind her announced the creature chasing after her. Refusing to look back to see what it was, she darted left and right, moving around the gray maze with the ease of someone having spent years navigating it. The red exit sign loomed in front of her and she could almost imagine crashing through the door and mixing in with the throng of people making their way out of the building.
The thought of salvation, and the crashing and roars of the thing chasing her, gave her an extra burst of speed. Clearing the last set of cubicles, she sprinted across the open space to the exit door and slammed into it. The door didn’t stay open long as she jetted through and down the wide stairwell.
She could hear voices carrying up from below, but she refused to slow down until she could see the backs of other office workers. Straining her ears, listening for any sounds of pursuit, she felt a spreading sense of relief when she didn’t hear any.
When she exited the stairwell, she filed out of the building and into the street, mixing in and disappearing with the crowd. Fire engines had arrived, along with paramedics who shouted offers of help to anyone who could hear them. Ignoring the emergency crews, Bella slid through the onlookers and away from her former place of employment. There was no going back now, not that there ever really had been.
Chapter 23
This time the phone didn’t even ring before voicemail picked up. This was her third call in less than an hour and either he had lost his phone or he was ignoring her. Neither possibility was good.
“Uh, hi, William. It’s me. Again. I just, well, I just…” Why were the words so hard to say? She’d been horrible toward him, but not without reason. The stress, the danger, everything had just been too much, and it had boiled over onto him. It wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t his either. Maybe that was the problem? Maybe he thought it was his fault? Maybe he was too mad at her for blasting him in the alley and leaving him there. She hadn’t even returned to check on him. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I need your help and I—”
“We’re sorry. Voicemail is full. Good-bye,” a generic female voice interrupted, ending her call.
With a sigh, she slid the phone into the unicorn bag and, hoisting it onto her shoulder, began trudging up the street. Making her way through the afternoon crowd was easier than normal. Most people had a sense of when it was in their best interest to get out of someone’s way, though she suspected most of them just wanted to avoid contact with a woman covered in enough dirt and ash that she looked like a rejected extra from an action horror movie.
Not that the surrounding people mattered. What mattered was saving Samantha and the other missing kids. Striding through the crowd, she might as well have been alone, adrift in a sea of people who neither understood nor cared. Doing some mental gymnastics, she figured she had three hours to find the Blood Altar that Browser had mentioned before dying, save Samantha and the other missing kids, and stop whatever Chryso was up to. No problem, right? Except she had no idea where to start. She needed some clue, some information, and she needed it fast.
The idea of information struck her so hard she froze in place, forcing the man behind her wearing an expensive suit to either dodge around her and blunder into other pedestrians, or run into her and dirty his clothes. He decided on the former and gave her a look as dirty as her outfit before disappearing among the masses. Bella never gave him a second look as her excitement grew. She knew someone who traded in information the way a fish breathes water. That damned caterpillar had started her on this road and he would help her finish it, either that or she’d smash him into a black and green smudge on the counter.
Grinning for the first time since leaving her burned-out office, she turned and dodged through the crowd toward the gleaming glass doors of a department store. She needed to find a quiet place to set up the spell, one that had a doorway to pass through, and a changing room fit the bill. Besides, she was attracting too much attention in her dirty state and a change of clothes would be welcome. It was too bad, she mused, entering the store and scanning above a multitude of racks as she looked for the changing room, they didn’t sell showers. She could use one.
The spell took very little time, and wearing a fresh shirt and a new pair of pants, Bella opened the changing room door. Light flooded the small cubicle with the bright colors only found in the Circus. Moving across the thr
eshold felt like stepping through the shimmering surface of a bubble. A pleasant tingling spread over her entire body, and then she was through. Just as fast the tingling disappeared, replaced with the blending clash of thousands of different noises and languages that made up the Circus.
Ignoring everything else, she looked for one of the locater signposts. Every doorway into the Circus opened into a different spot, making the signposts important. This was one reason she’d tried to only enter the Circus from her building elevator. Thinking of her home gave her a pang in the chest. It wouldn’t be much of a home if Cat wasn’t there to share it with her, would it? Her eyes misted over before she pulled herself together. Only time would tell if her familiar would come home, and there was nothing she could do for him now. But she could do something for Samantha.
Setting her shoulders, she strode through the teeming masses of creatures gathered at the Circus, winding her way past a Centaur selling a coat shining kit and a pair of Japanese water demons communicating by spitting bubbles at each other that popped to make different noises.
Coming to the Finder’s small gray tent, she crawled through the opening and into the massive marbled lobby of the interior. Not for the first time she wished she could do the same thing with her apartment, but she shook off the thought. The tent wasn’t really bigger on the inside. Magic did a lot of things, but that was beyond even its abilities. Rather, the tent’s entrance was another doorway to a different place, just like the doorway into the Circus.
