by C. T. Phipps
“Who is the reverend?” I asked, wondering how the hell he’d gotten here and who he was. He wasn’t a local. It was a quirk of the town that almost all of the clergy were women. I also didn’t recognize any of his followers and Bright Falls citizens knew better than to wear white when tromping through the woods.
“Dr. John Winston Jones,” Alex said, his look one of passionate hatred. It was a striking contrast to his usual calm and easygoing manner. “Quite possibly the most dangerous man in America.”
Chapter Three
“John Winston Jones,” I said, blinking. “Wait, I know that name. Isn’t he the butthead who does all those religious infomercials and internet banner ads?”
Emma looked at me. “I don’t think someone Alex came here to fight would—”
“Yes,” Alex interjected. “He’s the leader of the Ultralogists.”
“Oh, those guys,” I said, snorting.
Ultralogy, despite the name, wasn’t related to the similar-sounding religion based out of Los Angeles. It was a product of the Reveal with the selling point of being led by a wizard (apparently Jones) who promised to share the real secrets of the universe. Since the Reveal had shaken the faith of atheists and believers alike, it had proven pretty popular in certain circles. You too could know what happened when you died for the low price of $49.95, or $15.99 for the Kindle version.
Alex kept his gaze focused on Jones. “He’s a doctor of psychology and a game theorist. Did a lot of consulting work for the FBI.”
“Speaking as game, I dislike anyone theorizing on me,” I said, smiling.
Alex smirked then frowned again. “I wouldn’t joke. Jones is a far more powerful wizard than me.”
Impressive, since I understood Alex was probably in the top twenty in the United States and top fifty worldwide.
“The FBI had a cult leader as a consultant?” I asked, watching him go into a speech for the various media outlets here that seemed to rush to give him airtime despite the fact that they had a mass murder to report on.
Alex gave a half-smile. “Before he founded the Ultralogists, Jones was heavily involved in a lot of the United States’ more unsavory experiments with LSD and mind-control. MK Ultra and the Stargate Project—what the show was named after rather than the reverse.”
“So he’s a hundred-year-old kook who looks like a forty-year-old kook,” I said, wondering if he was related to all this or if Bright Falls had two big magical problems now.
The two problems will become related, the Merlin Gun said. The evildoer seeks the goddess.
I thought back to it, You think you could clarify that, a bit?
No.
Of course. Did anyone ever tell you that you are profoundly unhelpful?
Yes.
Alex nodded. “He founded the Ultralogists after the Reveal. There was a lot more money to be made dispensing books about how the universe worked. That generally just covers up the fact that he’s a major player behind the scenes. Mages who oppose his efforts to reshape society tend to die, and he knows how to harvest their power post-mortem. I have personal reasons for hating him too.”
“So he’s a bad guy,” I asked, cutting to the heart of the matter. “Does any of his religion work?”
Alex paused before answering. “I’m hesitant to call any organized spiritual group a complete fraud if the members are sincere in their belief—”
“I’m not,” I interrupted. “The difference between a cult and a religion isn’t just the size.”
“Then no, no it doesn’t. The Ultralogy movement is just a tool for Jones to feed off of. I mean that in the literal sense. He drinks of their worship and devotion to power his magic. Believers suffer insomnia and weak wills at best, suicidal depression at worst. That’s in addition to funding his lifestyle.”
“Sounds like a great religion. Where do I sign up?” I asked.
Emma, I noted, looked disgusted. “Why does he want to come to Bright Falls? We don’t want a cult here.”
“To save the environment,” Jones’s voice carried over to us like a tune. “To stop the evil developers of O’Henry Construction and O’Henry Resorts and Hotels from destroying this pure natural resource.”
“Deershit,” I said, turning around to look at the man.
Now that I got a closer look, John Winston Jones looked even more creepy. A dull quartz crystal hung around his neck from a leather cord. His face seemed to have been through several facelifts, making him look like a man his thirties. There was a palpable aura of power from the man, magnetic in a way, but also slightly repulsive. I felt confused and dull-eyed whenever I looked at him, but felt my head clear when I looked away. He was a vampire, but not the blood-sucking kind. He was the kind who scooped up everything inside you and used it up. I hated guys like that.
Standing beside him was a tall woman about my age with long purple-dyed hair and bangs. She wasn’t wearing any of the white the other members of the Ultralogists wore, but a black hoodie that read “Pandamonium” with a cuddly fat panda wrecking a table. She was also wearing ripped jeans and looked like the kind of girl who I might have been friends with during my younger, more rebellious days of last year. There was an aura of magic about her that seemed strong but diminished somehow. Both her hands were in her pockets and she was wearing a pair of extremely well-worn sneakers.
“Who are you?” Jones asked, looking at me sideways.
“Jane Doe, Shaman,” I said proudly.
“Wow, your parents were cruel when they named you,” Jones said, not inaccurately. “Also, look to the side.”
“Why?” I said, blinking.
“Because when I look at you from one angle, I’m seeing Sherilyn Fenn and Winona Ryder, but when I look at you from another? Eh, not so hot.”
“Wow,” I said sarcastically. “I don’t have validation from a random man off the street. However will I live with myself?”
I actually was sort of pissed, because I liked both actresses even if I questioned the resemblance.
“I try and define all people by how much they amuse me,” Jones said, shrugging. “So unless your much-hotter friends want to talk, I’m going to go threaten Alex here.”
“Hi,” the girl beside him said.
Jones smiled and conjured a pack of gum. “Have some gum, Robyn.”
Robyn looked uncomfortable but clearly picked up on the unspoken command and put it in her mouth.
“What do you want?” Alex asked, his voice low and threatening.
Jones spread out his arms and the light seemed to dim around us while glowing around him. “The reduction of Earth’s population by two-thirds, a restoration of the environment, the death of all supernatural beings but mages, peace on Earth, and to find the Moonchild so I can rule the next Age of Magic through her.”
“I meant here, in Bright Falls,” Alex said.
“Oh,” Jones said, blinking. The light around him returned to normal. “I want to stop the O’Henry family from building their next hotel here so I can underbid it and construct a spiritual retreat for the wealthy. I can also make over a billion dollars in yearly profit by selling the land’s spiritual healing waters in bottle form.”
“Our waters have spiritual healing properties?” I asked.
“Maybe!” Jones said cheerfully. He then pulled a bottle of water from his sleeves with town’s titular waterfalls on the label before unscrewing the lid then taking a long drink. “Ah, taste the ley line convergence.”
I shook my head. “So you’re just a money-obsessed fraud.”
“Oh no,” Jones said, shaking his head. “I meant everything I said. It’s just that it’s amazing how much magic you can do with money. You can turn it into buildings, followers, airtime, and political power.”
“Why do you want to kill all other supernaturals?” Emma asked, offended. “What did we ever do to you?”
“It’s just the symmetry of the thing,” Jones said before pointing at Alex. “Where is your master?”
Alex didn’
t miss a beat. “Why do you want to know where Kim Su is?”
“To kill her, obviously.”
“I appreciate your honesty,” Alex said.
“I don’t!” I snapped, angry he was threatening my mentor. “Besides, you can’t kill Kim Su. She’s immortal. Like really immortal, not vampire immortal.”
“I’ll settle for chains, a mine shaft, and filling it with concrete,” Jones said, still relentlessly cheerful. “I know she’s taken a new student and is hoping to raise a new champion for whatever weird little agenda she’s pursuing. Tell me, Alex, and you won’t end up trapped in a television set forced to be a guest star on Friends for the rest of eternity.”
Wow, forced to hang out with Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, and Jennifer Aniston for all eternity. What a punishment. Oh wait, I remember the scripts. Yeah, that would be hell.
“Is that what you did to Laura?” Alex asked, barely keeping control of himself. “Banished her to some sitcom prison in the Spirit World?”
Wait, who was Laura?
“No, she’s just dead,” Jones said, his voice soft and yet still sarcastic. “I prophesized she would come to a bad end if she continued her investigation of our finances and she did. I understand the FBI found numerous financial irregularities, a drug habit, and affairs. Her own spouse and child were disgusted with her. Remember that when you consider crossing me.”
Alex went very still. “How do I know I can trust you?”
Jones smiled. “You’re just the black knight of Kim Su’s pieces. I’m after the pawn she’s made into a queen.”
“I stole the Merlin Gun from her and it’s never been returned,” Alex said, shrugging as if the question was irrelevant. “She’s replaced me as her student and I have no way of knowing where she is right now. I know you know that’s the truth.”
He was leaving out the part where we’d tried to return the Merlin Gun but she’d let us keep it, I was her student now, and while he didn’t know where she was now, it was highly likely she was thirty miles away at her occult shop in the dirt mall by the Pinehold hotel.
“Don’t get in my way, Alex,” Jones said, pointing at him threateningly. “Destroying you would require a great deal of weregild to be paid to the gods you serve, but not so much I’m not willing to pay it. I could also target the people around you.”
“Don’t you just love when people talk about you like you aren’t there?” I said, talking to Emma.
“Did you hear something?” Emma asked Alex.
“Ha-ha,” I said. “That wasn’t funny when my parents used to do it.”
“Ciao!” Jones said, grabbing Robyn by the shoulder and dragging her back to the cameras.
“Wow, that guy was both intimidating and kind of dorky at the same time,” I said, watching him depart. “Still, I wouldn’t think of him as capable of carrying a movie as my archnemesis. Weredeer II: The Search for More Morels will have to look a bit further for its antagonist.”
“Who is Laura?” Emma asked the question I didn’t want to ask.
“Laura Lee. My partner,” Alex said, taking a deep breath. He visibly deflated. “An excellent investigator and formidable mage in her own right. She was working against Ultralogy with three other agents. They were erased from existence. Not even their families remember them, only mages like me. Laura was my friend. I’d been hoping until now that she was just missing or being held prisoner. Now I know the truth.”
Ouch. “You know, if you want, I can point the Merlin Gun and take him out. I’m pretty comfortable with making stupid decisions like that when they involve evil wizards.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Alex said.
“It can kill just about anything,” I said.
“Yes, but he can take over any of his followers,” Alex said. “His spirit moves into their bodies and warps their flesh into a duplicate of his current body.”
I blinked. “What, like in The Matrix?”
“Let’s just say I have personal experience with this,” Alex said, all but confessing he’d tried to take him out before. “There are some threats that the United States prison system is ill-equipped to hold.”
Okay, that would be hard to deal with. “So he’s going after our teacher and wants this land for some reason.”
“Yes,” Alex said, sighing. “However, he’s always playing a much deeper game. She needs to be informed of this.”
I had no doubt she referred to Kim Su. “I was going to ask her to help me with finding out who was responsible for the whole murder pit too.”
“She might help,” Alex said, frowning. “Kim Su has a soft spot for children, slaves, and runaways.”
Kim Su was, at least according to her, the oldest mage in the world. She didn’t look it, as the Earthmother had given her immortality when she was seventeen in the early days of what would become China. I liked her but I also noted she was in hiding from the plethora of enemies she’d made across the past few millennia. She was the oldest mage in the world rather than the strongest. I felt like telling her one of those enemies had traced her within a single county limit was not going to be news she appreciated, even if it was possible Dr. Jones was here for other reasons.
“Yeah,” I said, frowning. “We’re going to nail both Jim Jones and this child-killing son of a bitch.”
Emma muttered under her breath. “It’s like I’m a supporting player in Wynonna Earp.”
“You’re Waverly,” I said without missing a beat.
Alex blinked. “You realize it’s very possible the person responsible for this tragedy is probably long gone, correct? The youngest of them was killed over twenty years ago and the Reveal caused many of the most heinous supernatural to move to larger cities. Places where their crimes could be blamed on others.”
“How far as you willing to go to get justice?” I asked, unwilling to imagine any circumstances that justified whoever created that pit of horrors getting away.
“As far as it takes,” Alex said. “A creature that does that is a threat to the innocent.”
“Damn straight,” I said. “I’m the resident shaman in town and it’s my job to put away the evil.”
Of course, the reason I was the resident shaman in town was because I’d forced my mother to testify against Marcus O’Henry. Prior to the Reveal, she’d been the person who’d helped him with some truly heinous stuff like purging the Dragon Clan from Bright Falls. She’d also helped with some nastiness afterward, which was something I was less than pleased to find out about. Neither of my siblings had entirely forgiven me for doing it, which was damned ungrateful since I’d also saved their lives from the Big Bad Wolf.
“Good luck, Jane, and don’t forget that Jones is a very dangerous man.”
I paused, preparing to watch him walk away. Again. “You know, you don’t have to talk to me exclusively about work.”
Alex didn’t move for a second. I was about to look away when he spoke. “You are in my dreams.”
The two of us kissed. It was nice. Alex was older than me but someone I felt I could enjoy the company of. He was also weird and wonderful in a way that worked well with my own hundreds of quirks. Our lips lingered and while I had to stand up a bit to reach him, I didn’t mind one bit. Then he was gone, having to go deal with another monster or serial killing nutjob while I was stuck here picking up the pieces.
Again.
“You should totally tell him about Lucien,” Emma said, watching. “Because you two sucked face for like a minute.”
“Shut up, Emma.”
Chapter Four
“Waverly?” Emma asked, following me down the dirt path of Shadow Pines Park to the parking lot. “Really?”
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked cheerfully.
“You know,” Emma grumbled. “You associate me with Wynonna’s sister?”
Oh right, the fact Emma had crushed on me since about the time we’d hit puberty. That was awkward and not entirely for the obvious reasons. I was ninety-five percent into guys, but the prima
ry problem was that she was my best friend. Thinking about her that way did not compute on a fundamental level. We were like Rizzoli and Isles or Rachel and Ivy from Kim Harrison’s the Hollows. Okay, wait, that last one was a bad example.
“I hereby solemnly swear not to compare you to any of my blood relatives.”
“Thank you,” Emma said, putting her hand over heart. “I also promise, in return, never to speak of how hot your sister is.”
“Ugh,” I said, making a gagging gesture.
“Are you really going after both these guys?” Emma asked. “I mean, the head of a cult and the baby-killing cult or demon?”
“Why not?” I asked, wondering why it was even an issue.
“I don’t know—is it your job?” Emma asked, sounding unsure even as she looked back toward the way we came. “It could be dangerous.”
No shit, Sherlock. Of course it was dangerous. That was part of the reason I was doing it. “The Big Bad Wolf was dangerous.”
“Yes, but it was going after our families,” Emma said, causing me to deflate a little. “It killed my sister and threatened your brother.”
“Now it’s going after someone else’s sister and brother,” I said, not really getting her point.
“I see,” Emma muttered under her breath. “Never mind, forget I said anything.”
“Are you scared?” I asked. “It’s okay if you are. I mean, not all of us are adrenaline-addicted supernatural bounty hunters.”
“I’m not fawning over you, truly,” Emma said. “But mostly I’m worried about you getting shot like Bambi’s mother.”
“Oh, the puns.”
“More like a comparison.”
We reached the bottom of the staircase that had two large hedges blocking our view of the parking lot and I turned to give her a hug. “I’ll make sure no one turns me into venison. I’ve herd you.”