by Simon Hawke
He could feel the power surging through him, more power than he had ever felt before. It sang through every fiber of his being, jolting him, energizing him, filling him with an almost sexual ecstasy as he trembled violently from the sheer force of it.
He had prepared his spells painstakingly and now they cycled continuously, energy expended fed by energy absorbed as he reached out to his acolytes through the psychic link he’d forged with them and gave the command for the slaughter to begin.
They were unable to resist. Already primed with lust for power and slaved to his will by the link between them, which had grown stronger with each transferral of life energy, they all went on a wild killing rampage the moment he gave the psychic command. In New York and Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, Denver and Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, everywhere they had dispersed to pursue their predatory hunt for victims, they all suddenly began to kill indiscriminately, like blood-crazed sharks in a feeding frenzy.
In Los Angeles, Captain Rebecca Farrell responded to a call that an adept had gone berserk in the Hollywood Bowl and had started killing people. Moments later, even as she was en route, a second call came over her radio that another adept had run amok on Sunset Boulevard, followed by a report of still another one in Westwood, and yet another at the Galleria.
My God, it’s started, she thought, as she quickly dispatched SWAT teams to the sites and hoped like hell that Wyrdrune and the others were on top of it. If they weren’t, it was going to be the worst case of mass murder in the history of the country.
As her car shot around the corner, skimming several feet above the surface of the street, lights flashing and siren wailing as her driver adept banked around the turn like an aerial stunt pilot, she could see the pandemonium in the streets outside the Bowl. People were streaming out of the popular concert venue like stampeding cattle, running straight out into traffic. Horns blaring, people screaming, and over it all, the sound of gunfire.
“This is Farrell, talk to me!” she spoke into the mike. “What’s happening?”
“We got him, Captain,” came the reply. “He’s down.”
“Casualties?”
“At least a dozen dead, three officers down. He didn’t even try to get away. Bastard just kept comin’ till we dropped him.”
“Christ,” said Rebecca, exhaling heavily. “Farrell to all units. Report on what’s happening in Westwood, the Galleria, and the Strip.”
The units responded quickly, identifying themselves and then reporting briefly. The killer on Sunset had been brought down by the first unit arriving on the scene; nine civilians dead, no police personnel injured. They took him out with two shotgun blasts at close range. They got the one in Westwood, too, but not before at least a dozen people had been killed. They still didn’t have an exact count. Two police officers down, both dead. The one in the Galleria was the worst. The popular shopping mall was crowded and even though she had thought to station units on the scene in anticipation of possible trouble there, the necromancer had killed at least fifteen or twenty people and four officers before the SWAT team arrived on the scene. She waited tensely in her car, listening to it unfold, and then breathed a sigh of relief when the report came in that they got him. She checked with dispatch. No other reports of adepts running amok had come in. Apparently, it was over… at least as far as her jurisdiction was concerned.
Bad as it was, it could have been much worse, she thought. The whole thing couldn’t have taken longer than ten minutes. Ten minutes, and over thirty people had been killed. If they hadn’t been forewarned, if they hadn’t had every available cop out on the street, and if they hadn’t moved as quickly as they did… she didn’t want to think how bad it might have been. She bit her lower lip, wondering what was going down in other cities.
Steve McGuire didn’t reach the first murder scene until the smoke had cleared. By then, it was over, all across the city. Special units had been standing by, organized into highly mobile and heavily armed flying squads, prepared to be dispatched to any area of the city at a moment’s notice. Every cop on the street had been alerted, extra units had been detailed to potential trouble spots. They knew something would be coming. They just did not know exactly where or when. Still, it was their preparedness that kept the death counts lower than they would otherwise have been. And when he saw how quickly and how savagely the killers had struck, McGuire shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if they had not been ready for it.
In Soho, the city’s fashionable art district, thirty people had died before pohce sharpshooters arrived and brought the killer down. In the theater district, there were nine deaths before a patrolman who had been nearby put a bullet through the perpetrator’s skull. He had only been half a block away when he had heard the screams and it couldn’t have taken him longer than thirty seconds to arrive on the scene. Yet, in that brief time, nine people on the street had lost their lives.
At Madison Square Garden, a disaster of cataclysmic proportions was narrowly avoided. McGuire had rightly guessed that the Nazgul concert would draw the biggest crowds in the city on that night and had detailed extra police for security duty as well as calling up all the available police reservists and sprinkling them throughout the crowd. The department’s finest sharpshooters had been stationed up where the lights had been set up and it was one of them who had scored the extremely risky direct hit, but not until some people had been killed and others injured in the panic that broke out. Miraculously, no innocent bystanders had been shot in their attempts to drop the necromancer, but it was still too early to tell how many had been killed or injured in the pandemonium that broke out when people started dying.
It was the same in cities all over the country. Talon’s human necromancers, stationed in crowded areas, went off like a pack of firecrackers and started on their murderous rampage, tunneling life force energy back to their master with each killing. From the moment Talon triggered them, they became automatons with no will of their own, like living machines that killed with no thought to their own self-preservation. Talon didn’t care if they all died. He expected that they would.
In a few cases, the authorities lucked out. In San Francisco, an alert police detective dropped a necromancer who went berserk in Ghiradelli Square. He just happened to be about twenty feet away when the killer struck at his first victim. And in Denver’s Mile High Stadium, a necromancer who started killing people in the stands during a game was overwhelmed by angry Broncos fans and beaten to death in moments. But in other areas of the country, the death toll mounted steadily until, one by one, the necromancers were brought down by the authorities. And then only one remained…
Talon felt it as each of their lives was snuffed out, but it caused him slight concern. He even conceded a grudging admiration for the human authorities, who had been prepared to move so quickly to counter the attack. He had anticipated that his acolytes would die as the police and thaumaturgic agencies responded, but he had hoped for more time in which to absorb the energies of those they killed. Within a fairly short time, all of them were dead, except the one, his final contingency plan, and he had still managed to increase his store of power, though not as greatly as he’d hoped. And when he heard the explosion up above and felt its tremors all the way down inside the cavern, then heard the howling rush of wind sweeping down through the tunnel passageway, he knew that they were coming and he was ready for them.
Talon! he sensed Beladon’s anguished cry within his mind. Talon, for pity’s sake, release us! Don’t be a fool! You cannot take them on alone!
“But I am not taking them on alone,” Talon replied calmly, as the swirling vortex of light around him flashed and sparkled, reflecting off the veins of crystal in the cavern walls and flooding the darkness with light and dancing shadows. “I have you, my friends. And I have you where you cannot desert me to save your own miserable skins. I now command more power than any necromancer ever has before. One way or another, it ends here, and it ends now.”
; The noise of rushing wind increased to a shrieking pitch and the cavern exploded in a brilliant wash of light as the swirling vortex that was the Living Triangle came hurtling through the tunnel, the spirits of immortal mages and three human avatars embodied in a cloud of living, pulsating, pure energy.
“Welcome, my old friends,” said Talon from within his funnel cloud of spinning light. “I have been waiting for you.”
He stretched forth his hand and a wash of cobalt blue light leaped like burning plasma from his outspread fingers and struck the cloud of living energy full force.
Like a mirror shattered by a hammer, the cloud of swirling, sparkling light that was the Living Triangle burst apart into dozens of light shards, like pulsating globules of liquid mercury, shifting in the color spectrum to a duller hue, then rushing back together once again, flaring brightly and swooping down upon the vortex within which Talon stood, fed by beams of thaumaturgic force emanating from the massive crystals. The two energy fields met, sparked, ignited in a wash of white flame and set off jagged bolts of blue lightning that danced throughout the cavern.
As the Living Triangle rebounded off the funnel cloud of energy within which Talon stood, it floated up near the ceiling of the cavern, its form becoming more distinct, a triangle revolving rapidly, crackling and humming with energy, looking like a spinning star as it shifted colors through the spectrum, recovering from the earthshaking contact.
Talon laughed. “Is that the best that you can do?” he shouted.
In answer, a bolt of concentrated thaumaturgic force came lancing out of the spinning energy triangle, but Talon met it with a force bolt of his own and the two blasts collided in midair, setting off an explosion that rocked the cavern and brought debris raining down from the ceiling. Several times they hurled force bolts at one another, shaking the entire cavern and causing the earth to rumble, but neither was able to break through.
“Show yourselves!” yelled Talon. “I want to see your faces! Manifest! Look your last upon the one who will destroy you!”
The spinning triangle flared several times, its deep, oscillating hum rising and falling metronomically, and then it slowly settled to the cavern floor and split apart, one smaller triangle spinning off from the central mass, glowing with a bright blue light, another revolving off to the right, flaring with a bright green hue, and the third pulsating, with brilliant, bright red light. Within each of the spinning forms, the indistinct outlines of oval-shaped figures started to appear, glowing with light to match the spinning forms around them until the triangular auras gradually faded and only the glowing, pulsating oval figures remained.
Talon hurled incandescent bolts of force at them, but before they struck, the three glowing figures fragmented, dividing like cells, each splitting apart into four brightly pulsating shapes like human silhouettes. Those shapes continued to move outward, all twelve of them, hovering above the cavern floor, floating rapidly to different points throughout the subterranean chamber, surrounding the necromancer.
Talon extended his awareness through the crystals towering over him, using his captives within to “see” the sorcerers materializing all around him, registering their shapes within his mind as they were reflected in the facets of the crystals overhead.
“Expend more energy that you cannot replenish!” he shouted at them. “Divide your strength, you fools! It will not save you. It will only draw out the inevitable. You grow weaker, while I grow ever stronger!”
The glowing forms resolved into white-robed, hooded figures standing on ledges and atop rocky outcroppings in the cavern, each one wreathed in a protective, transparent, glowing aura: the Council of the White, made manifest once more after centuries of existing in only spirit form, contained within three enchanted runestones that were keys to lock a spell meant to have remained unbroken till the end of time. As they surrounded him, the mages hurled bolts of thaumaturgic force at the swirling light funnel that enshrouded him, but Talon sent his power through the crystals, calling upon the life forces of the Dark Ones trapped within, and beams of energy lanced out from them in all directions, striking the sorcerers who stood around him.
Over and over, the tumultuous exchange continued, blasts of energy hurled back and forth, rocking the cavern, splitting stone and sending stalactites crashing to the ground. The cavern became a webwork of force beams shooting back and forth, striking one another, some breaking through and hitting the auras surrounding the necromancer and the sorcerers, and as each one struck, the protective auras flickered and grew weaker until their force was replenished by the life energy of the adept maintaining them.
Talon saw one of the auras weakening and poured forth a long stream of thaumaturgic force. The aura flickered like a guttering candle and winked out, the adept within discorporating, immortal spirit snuffed out once and for all. With a cry of triumph, Talon redoubled his efforts and the cavern shook with the force of the energy, being thrown back and forth. More debris rained down, fissures opened in the walls, and another spirit member of the Council used up his last reserves of energy and was vaporized by a bolt of energy he was unable to counter.
The others continued to pour forth everything they had at Talon and he inevitably felt the power drain. He could not keep this up much longer. Two were gone, but ten more remained, though several of those were weakening visibly as their protective auras flickered. They were all that stood between him and all he ever wanted, all that he waited for over the centuries that he been confined. It was all or nothing now.
Talon! he heard Beladon shout within his mind, as he sensed what Talon was about to do. No! The others all cried out in desperation with him.
“Sorry, my friends,” said Talon, gritting his teeth with concentration. “I have no other choice.”
And as the minds of his captives in the crystals shrieked in agony, he drained them of every last bit of life force they possessed. As they died, one by one, the massive crystals shattered with loud reports into thousands of shards that went spinning off across the cavern, refracting light from the latticework or energy bolts the antagonists hurled at one another. Talon felt renewed strength fill him as he poured even more energy into his attack and another Council spirit was struck down, winking out forever, then another…
“You’ve lost!” he shouted triumphantly. “I am stronger! I can feel you weakening! You have nothing left!”
Another spirit mage was vaporized, his aura winking out as Talon concentrated his energies upon those that remained. And he could sense them growing weaker now, feel less force in the spells they threw at him, see their protective auras fading as they used up what little strength they still had left.
But even with the remaining life force he had drained from his captives, Talon felt his own strength ebbing quickly. The spirits of the Council were growing steadily weaker, but he was expending much more energy than they were now and he had drained Beladon and the others more than he had thought before he consumed their remaining life force. The renewed rush of strength he felt when he took what little they had left was ebbing quickly now and, as another Council spirit was struck down, the remainder joined their forces in one last push against him. It took almost all the strength that he had left to withstand their concerted assault and he realized that it would not end here, after all.
If they continued, there was a chance they might destroy one another and he knew that was a price the white mages would pay if they could bring him down. But he was not willing to give his all to win. Not after he had come this far. It would be pointless if he failed to survive.
He had still prevailed, however. He had destroyed enough of them to weaken the power of the Living Triangle to the point where they would never again be able to call upon the spell. It was forever broken. It would take the survivors years to recover from this battle, and in that time, he would redouble his strength to the point where they could never threaten him again. For now, however, retreat was the prudent thing to do. And he had prepared for that.
They
would think that they had beaten him, that he was destroyed. But they would succeed in killing just his body. And they would never suspect that his spirit had survived, or where it had escaped to. With the last bit of strength that he had left, he poured his remaining power into the swirling light shield that enveloped him and reached out with his mind…
It was perfect, thought Maria, as she led the First Gentleman out of the room. She had known what was on his mind and it hadn’t taken any magic to see it. It was going to be even easier than she had expected. He was attracted to her and he clearly hoped that something might eventually develop, but it was going to happen much more quickly than he thought. And it would turn out very differently from what he had in mind.
When she made contact with him, looked into his eyes and spoke the spell, he had succumbed to it immediately. Not much will there to break down. And he was already halfway there. The love spell took hold instantly and overcame him with uncontrollable desire.
He had brought her into one of the bedrooms—she could not recall which President it had been named after; he had told her, but then he could control himself no longer and his hands were all over her as he seized her and started kissing her passionately. She was making merely token protests as she prepared to take him—and then she stiffened as a numbing cold started to spread rapidly throughout her mind.
“Talon?” she mumbled.
“Sssh, honey, come on, now, let’s get over to the bed—”
Talon was taking her over once again and as she felt herself receding, panic filled her. He had never possessed her so quickly or completely before; he was flooding her with his essence, forcing her out of her own mind and body. She wanted to scream, but couldn’t. She couldn’t move. It felt as if she were growing smaller and smaller within herself, falling away into a dark and frightening cold abyss…