by Ann Macela
She murmured to Saxt, “We’re going to have to be careful about ricochets. They’re not going to come off at the same angles as in an oval. What I said earlier about structural failure is more than possible.”
“I see that. I don’t see any particularly flammable objects, though. Do you?”
She was about to answer when one of the doors at the other end opened.
Like he’d been pushed, Chuck Ogden stumbled in and fell to the floor. His father made a sound of anguish. She heard Clyde say, “Easy, Charles.”
“Are you all right?” Saxt called to the boy, who rose to his feet. “Come to us, if you can.”
Chuck threw a fearful look at the now closed door behind him and started running toward them.
“Charles, stay where you are. Let him come to you,” Saxt ordered when the father took a step forward. “Watch the door, everyone! Prepare to cast a pentagon twenty feet wide, pointing at the other end. On my three.”
Johanna readied the fortress spell. The door did not open. Where was Phil?
Saxt didn’t wait for him to appear. “One, two, three, castellum!”
A multi-colored pentagon sprang up around them. Clyde must have added quite a bit of his power, because the walls were definitely more silver and gold than the other colors. That should protect them from almost anything magical Phil by himself could throw at them. The unknown quantity, however, was the Cataclysm’s Hex. Could it, or it and Phil together, breach their walls with shots of magic energy?
She and Saxt on her left moved to stand on either side of the fortress corner pointing at the doors.
Chuck ran by her, and she listened to the father-son reunion without turning. Charles quickly calmed the boy down and told him to stay behind the adults and not budge. Chuck did as he was ordered. Good. One problem solved.
Johanna’s center began to rev up and hum, but it wasn’t a happy vibration. No, this was how she and it had felt when facing the first remnant of the Cataclysm Stone.
Saxt’s center must be telling him the same thing because he muttered, “Here we go. Start the ring and spin it, Clyde. Then stand on Johanna’s right.”
Johanna heard the whoosh of the ring and felt the energy building behind her. Clyde took position on her right. Her center vibrated faster.
A bright spotlight suddenly burned in the ceiling and illuminated a circle on the floor some distance from the back wall. Although the light was so intense that Johanna could hardly see past it, she had a sense that a door had opened.
Dressed in his black Sword robe and holding a tall black staff with what appeared to be a handkerchief draped over its top, Phil strode out of the gloom into the circle of light.
Evil items were known to drain, if not consume, their owners. The Hex must have been working overtime on Phil.
Even from a distance, he looked awful, almost as bad as when his friends had carried him out of the arena. Against the dark robe, his white face and sunken eyes stood out like a grotesque death mask, and his stance and movements gave the impression that, instead of his fit, muscular body under the voluminous garment, only skin and bones remained. Despite his pallor and gauntness, he walked with authority and assurance. Johanna wondered how much of his demeanor and vigor had their origins in energy from the stolen items. Probably a lot.
“What a lousy entrance,” Pat stage-whispered. “Does he think he’s a stage magician? ‘Bellman the Great,’ maybe?”
Dorothy snorted. “Oh, he’ll put on a performance, all right.”
Johanna might have smiled, except that a blast of putrid, overly sweet, slightly tangy stench washed over them. The smell was certainly evil … and also familiar … It was the greatly enhanced smell of Phil’s aftershave! That was why his fragrance always nauseated her. It was masking evil. For how long? He’d reeked of the stuff since they were in high school. What had Phil become?
Planting the staff by his foot, Phil assumed a conquering hero stance—he must think he was more impressive that way. All he accomplished was to look pompous. As if chastising a student, he said, “Falkner, I told you and Johanna to come alone.”
They were about fifty or sixty feet apart, and Johanna could hear him as though he stood close by. Phil must have magically enhanced the acoustics in the space. He sounded almost reasonable, which meant he definitely wasn’t.
Saxt replied mildly, “You don’t always get what you want these days, Bellman.”
“True, so true.” Phil shook his head like he was really sad about that. “You can have the boy, by the way. I don’t want him any longer. The little bastard is a coward, just like his father.”
“What did you do with your henchmen, Bellman?” Saxt asked. “Where’re Rodney and Mort and the others who idolize you?”
“Those idiots? A couple are drunk—” He waved at the rear door. “—and three ran off when my power manifested itself. Good help is so hard to find,” he lamented.
Then Phil’s expression and tone changed to ones of sheer excitement. “I don’t need them. Wait until you see what I can do, Johanna, the spells I can cast, the power I can wield. You’ll drop that sorry sack of shit next to you and throw yourself into my arms. You’re mine! We were meant to be mates!”
“Phil, I don’t care what you can do,” Johanna told him in as bored a tone as she could manage. Maintaining calm around the man was essential. Saxt was correct—as much as she’d like to hit Phil, they needed information first. “You’re nothing to me and never have been. Billy was my first soul mate, and Saxt is my second and my last.”
“You’re wrong, darling, but I guess I’ll have to prove it to you.” Phil returned to being his usual, sneering, condescending self. “Billy Johnson was a joke. He was no Sword. He merely played at being one of us. He was so unsure of his meager abilities—and so envious of ours. Poor jealous wannabe wizard. Stupid, gullible amateur. It took me no effort at all to persuade him he should ‘prove’ himself to you by destroying an evil item. He leaped at the chance I gave him.”
“What?” she cried. “You were behind that? How? Why?”
“Of course I was. You were meant to be mine. I knew a level-twelve item would be too much for him. And, man, was it! Where do you think he got that lodestone? From the leprechauns?”
Phil paused, pointed his index finger to his chin as if thinking, then held it up. “Oh, that’s right! You don’t know about my other ability. You’ll appreciate the irony in this, Ogden. I’ve always known the spells to enter the vault. My dad was a keeper. Like someone else I could name, he also practiced at home. I learned opening spells at my father’s knee. The vault fools never changed them.”
Johanna clenched her fists and gritted her teeth as the magnitude of Phil’s revelations sank into her. Billy hadn’t thought up the horrible stunt for proving himself to her. Phil had given him both the idea and the means. The bastard! The murderer! She couldn’t think of words bad enough to describe the man. She knew one certainty about the horrible, evil, poor excuse for a man or a Sword, though. Phil Bellman was going to pay for killing Billy.
In response to her anger, her center began to expand and gather energy. Only Saxt’s placing a hand on her arm kept her from throwing a bolt at Phil’s head.
“Go on, Bellman,” Saxt coaxed. “When did you start going into the vault?”
“As soon as I was old enough to sneak out of the house. Getting in was laughably easy. I discovered the most amazing place. All the horror stories we’re told as children are total lies. The items in the vault are not bad. They’re good for us. They confer wonderful abilities. I found one that wanted me for its friend. It also confirmed that Johanna was my true mate. I’ve been wearing it ever since.”
Phil pulled out a chain from inside his robe. An amulet hanging from the links gleamed when he rubbed it.
Johanna began to prepare her beam as Saxt had planned. Now she had the perfect target—that evil item Phil was caressing. Her center revved up and gathered more energy from the ring behind them.
“What does that have to do with Billy Johnson?” Saxt asked. “Why destroy him? You knew that would happen, didn’t you?”
Johanna wondered at Saxt’s ability to keep his air of disinterest and slight disbelief, but it was really goading Phil on. She told her center to be patient. Remember your Sword training. Stay cool. Our time to attack Phil is coming.
“Of course I did,” Phil chortled. “Johanna was mine, is mine. I knew it from the moment I set eyes on her way back in magic classes as a teenager. My amulet told me so. I knew I had to wait for her to realize we were destined to be soul mates. You have to wait with women, you know. I was all set to make my move when idiot Billy intervened, stole her from me. I couldn’t let that pass, could I? I had to retaliate.”
“No, I can see how you’d think that,” Saxt said.
“What a pathetic fool Billy was. I must admit, I profited more out from his destruction than I expected.” Phil could have been discussing a windfall on the commodities exchange, he was so pleased with himself. “I was waiting outside the arena that day. I wanted to be first in the door after the explosion—I was going to rescue her.”
With a joyous, almost ecstatic smile Johanna could see even as far away as she was, Phil paused, spread his arms wide, tilted his head back, and sighed. “The most wonderful feeling flooded over me when I rushed in. All the power from the item hadn’t been destroyed, as I expected it to be. No, it flew to me and into me. It was glorious. Afterwards, I had the hardest time keeping a shocked and sad face when I really wanted to dance, I was sooooo happy. My only regret was that too many healers and others were surrounding Johanna, and I didn’t even get to comfort her.”
The memories of that horrible day rushed through Johanna’s mind as she swallowed against the bile rising in her throat from his smug horror story. Phil had been there, in the building, but she had avoided him on her way down to the arena. Then Billy with that horrible evil item. Then her pleading with him to stop. Then the explosion. Then …
Try as she might, she couldn’t remember who was present afterwards. She shut her eyes to picture the scene. She was crying and kneeling by Billy, holding his head. And to the side behind her … was a black, ominous presence. A yellow-clad healer pushed it aside. That had to have been Phil, gloating over her and her dead soul mate.
When she opened her eyes again, Johanna had only one thing to say to him, and she hardly recognized her own voice when the words rasped out. “You’re despicable, Phil, and you’re going to pay for murdering Billy.”
Saxt slipped his hand down her arm to intertwine their fingers and spoke softly, for her ears only. “Wait, Johanna. Don’t hit him yet. He’s insane. We need one more piece of information.”
She clenched his fingers, kept her eyes on Phil, and nodded. “Make it quick.”
“So, Phil,” Saxt said, “what did you do with the items you ‘liberated’ from the vault? What good will it do to have them?”
“Falkner, Falkner, I really thought you were smart enough to figure that out,” Phil mocked. “Our duel showed me I needed extra power. What better place to obtain it than the items you all fear? What better way to destroy you, her new, soon to be ‘late,’ mate? Don’t worry, Johanna, you’ll be spared to be with me. Let me demonstrate.”
Like a stage magician revealing the whole object he’d cut to pieces moments before, Phil whipped the handkerchief off the top of the black staff. He unveiled a large, white, bony-hand-like carving whose palm faced up and whose spread fingers curled as though grasping … What was that? Trying to make out the object in the hand, Johanna frowned and leaned forward. Shiny? Transparent? With a black blob in it? The evil shards in a …?
A baggie? Phil put the pieces of the Cataclysm Stone in a baggie?
She was about to burst out laughing when a wave of such pure evil washed over their pentagon that she almost gagged and threw up. The group behind started coughing.
She snuck a glance at her soul mate. He stood absolutely still, concentrated on the man and the depravity at the other end of the room. Nonetheless, she could feel how absolutely angry he was in the tension of his grip on her hand.
“Felt that, did you, Falkner?” Phil sneered and thrust the staff at them. “This wonderful Stone can mask itself from would-be destroyers and reveal itself when it wants. It’s already beginning to reconstitute, recombine into one item, and regain all its power.”
Against her will, Johanna was forced to wonder if he might be right. Even fifty feet away, she could see, standing out against the white hand’s background, a tiny black flame burning inside the plastic bag.
The Hex was awake.
Saxt laughed. Johanna could tell it was forced, but his laughter sounded genuine enough to fool Phil. “In a baggie, Bellman? That’s the best you can do? You have pieces of the most powerful evil item we’ve seen in a hundred years, and you keep them in a baggie? I don’t believe you. All you’re holding is a plastic bag full of pebbles, glass pieces, and dirt. I’m supposed to be afraid of rocks in a baggie? Oh, wait, is it a zipper style, or do I need a twist-tie?”
Johanna joined in his laughter, and the others followed suit.
“You presume to mock me and the Cataclysm Stone?” As if affronted, Phil drew himself up, placing his free hand on his chest. Then he laughed like Saxt had told a really good joke. “You think you’ve turned her against her true mate? Let me show you how wrong you are, Falkner.”
Phil held out his hand to her. “Johanna, I forgive you for listening to this man, for being taken in by his persuasions. You’re only a weak woman, after all. Come here, darling, join me against these misguided idiots.”
The black flame flared. Johanna actually felt a tug, a little pull, before her center repulsed it. Phil was truly demented if he thought such a monstrosity would bring her to him. Holding on tighter to Saxt’s hand, palm to palm, she said calmly, “No.”
“No? You dare to defy me? The Hex will convince you. You’re mine, woman! Come here!” Phil waggled the staff at her while he bellowed.
The black flame shone brightly through the plastic, and the pull grew stronger. Saxt must have felt it because he fed power to her through their clasped hands. She murmured, “Raise the fortress level.”
The walls shimmered when everyone sent them more energy. The tug on her middle stopped as if it had been cut like a stretched rubber band.
Phil rocked back on his heels, recovered his stance, and shouted, “This is your last chance. I command you, come here!”
He pointed the head of the staff at her. The black flame grew brighter and seemed to fill its container.
Their walls rattled, and the team strengthened them again. The tug diminished until Johanna barely felt a flutter. She concentrated on her own center as it filled with energy, ready to fire it at the coward before them. She answered Phil’s demand with a crisp, “No.”
“So be it. You’ve had your chance. I don’t need you. You’ll rot with the rest of your sorry bunch.”
“Get ready to fire,” Saxt murmured to her and Clyde without moving his head or lips. “On my three.”
“Ready,” She and Clyde said together.
Saxt whispered, “One, two, three!”
All three of them fired simultaneously, only to watch the spells crash into a suddenly appearing pentagon whose walls glittered and swirled with silver, gold, and a nausea-inducing, putrid green.
Saxt and Clyde both cursed.
“Phil didn’t cast that,” Johanna said. “The Hex did.”
“You numbskulls! You can’t destroy me—I have the power of the ages at my beck and call.” The malicious coward at the other end of the room laughed, a weird cackle that degenerated into a giggle.
Johanna studied the Hex’s pentagon. Seeing the man behind its walls was like looking through rippling, scummy water. He was visible, although his wavering outline might make accurate targeting difficult.
Inside his barrier, Phil began to gesture, pointing at her while he talked to the stuff in the baggie.
They couldn’t hear what he was saying. Did the Hex understand him?
No matter. Johanna worked on settling down, mentally and physically. She and her Sword mate had a job to do. A job that would grant her vengeance for Billy.
Clyde stepped back with the team to spin the ring faster for more power.
“You’re right. We’re fighting the Hex now. Let’s go with our blade.” Saxt stepped behind her. “Take two steps back. One more. Ah, now my back is against the ring. Perfect.”
“Are you hiding behind Johanna now, coward?” Phil yelled. He raised the staff, turned the stones in the baggie toward them, and pointed with his free hand. Without both hands, he couldn’t draw his own blade, of course. He could, however, cast missiles with only one. In succession, three energy blasts shot out of his hand. The last one made their wall vibrate.
“Did you see what happened when he cast?” she asked as they fitted their hands together in the grip. “The baggie gave off a glow.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean those crystals have solidified into one mass,” Saxt answered. “It’s probably only the Hex acting. Start with red. One, two, three.”
The blood-red blade rose out of their hands.
Phil threw two lightning bolts that shattered on the point of their fortress without doing damage.
Idiot! Keep hitting the strongest part of our pentagon, Phil, and see where it gets you. Johanna fixed her attention on the blade in their hands and reveled in the power pouring into her from Saxt. Both their centers were humming, revving, letting the power from the ring fill them.
“Take it up,” Saxt said.
They channeled the power through their hands, and the sword flashed through the spectrum colors to deep gold. Somebody behind them said, “Wow.”
“Let’s take the right side first,” Johanna said. “One burst.”
“Go,” Saxt murmured.
“One, two, three.”
The golden bullet flashed from the blade’s tip to strike high on the wall of Phil’s fortress. Contrary to Johanna’s expectations, it did not slice through like their individual beams had in the previous duel. Instead, the wall’s swirling colors undulated, and concentric ripples spread out from the impact all the way around the structure. The effect gave the impression of a rock thrown into an oily pool.