by R. L. King
It took nothing more than the image of the Evil’s minions carrying out their threat on Verity or Jason to allow him to affect the proper expression of wide-eyed fright—and even to mean it enough to be convincing. “All right,” he said in a dull tone. “Just tell me what you want.”
“Much better,” the man said, smiling, his face going slack as he drank in Stone’s fear. “Nothing like a little abject terror about the fate of one’s friends to make even the strongest of wills more…malleable.” He clasped his hands in his lap and leaned forward. “As I was saying, we did some research on you. And we found out that you know quite a lot about the care and feeding of portals. And, most importantly, their construction. I understand that you have the capability and knowledge to build both permanent and temporary portals. Am I right?”
Stone shrugged. “You wouldn’t be asking me the question if you didn’t already know the answer.” He didn’t look at the Evil.
“Furthermore, as it turns out, there are very few mages we could find who have anywhere near your level of knowledge about the subject. There were others—four in particular—who surpassed you to a significant degree, but they all seem to have disappeared around the same time five years ago.” He put his finger to his chin in an exaggerated ‘thinking’ pose. “I’ll make a fairly safe guess and say that I suspect that their disappearance and the existence of our portal here are probably related. Would you agree?”
Stone nodded. “Again, you already know the answer to that. You don’t need me to confirm it.”
The man smiled. “So I suppose we have these four to thank for our ability to finally reach out and claim our prize, after many years of being forced to remain in such enticingly close proximity to all the tasty treats in your world, watching you mages flit back and forth on your meaningless errands. But unfortunately, that also puts them out of our reach.” He paused. “So, Dr. Stone, it appears that you are about the best mind on the subject that we’re likely to find.”
Stone didn’t speak for a long moment as he took that all in. Then: “So what exactly do you want me to do? And what do you offer in return? Because you know as well as I do that if you simply threaten me, it won’t do you any good. I’m not in any hurry to die, but if my dying means that you lot stay put and don’t poke your feelers into our world any more than you already have, then I consider that a fair trade.”
“We could make it very unpleasant for you, Dr. Stone,” the man said in an even, conversational tone. “You would be begging to die before we were through, I assure you.”
“But that isn’t your offer,” Stone said.
“No.”
“Then out with it. What is?”
“Simply this.” The man got off the desk and began pacing around. So far the other man in the room had not moved beyond shifting from foot to foot as he leaned near the window. “You will…educate…the two mages I have here already in your knowledge of portals and how to build them. They already have some knowledge of the subject, so you won’t be starting from the beginning. You will work with them and the three of you will determine why this portal is unstable and what we can do to stabilize it. We have access to suppliers who can provide you with the magical paraphernalia that you might need.”
“You want me to help you stabilize that thing?” Stone demanded as if this were news to him.
“Yes.”
“And in return—?”
“In return, I promise that your friends will not be harmed. We’ll hold them here until such time as you have completed your assignment, at which point they will be released and allowed to leave. Further, I will put out the word to my compatriots that neither of them is to be harmed. They will be free to live their lives outside of our…interest.”
And I’m the queen of England. You must think I’m a lot thicker than I look if you expect I’ll believe that for half a minute. Aloud, he said, “And what about me? What becomes of me when I finish helping you with your portal?”
“You’ll just have to wait and see,” the man said with a strange and unwholesome smile. “This deal only covers your friends, not yourself. We might decide we have…other uses…for you at some later date.”
Stone paused. “And if I refuse, you’ll kill my friends and then kill me. Is that the way it is?”
“Oh, no,” the man said, still with the unwholesome smile. “No, not at all. Let me lay it out for you, Dr. Stone, so we’ll all be clear on the situation. If you refuse, we will torture your friends—one at a time, of course, starting with the girl—for a surprisingly extended amount of time. And of course you will have a front-row seat for the proceedings. I suspect we could get enough emotion out of you to keep our entire group going for months, not to mention the bonus of the girl’s brother watching as she is tortured. Maybe we’ll even let them heal up and torture them again. I don’t know yet. We’ll see. But I assure you, whatever we do won’t be at all pleasant, nor anywhere near as quick and easy as simply killing them.” He moved over and stood over Stone again. “So—do we have a deal, Dr. Stone?”
Stone bowed his head. He had no doubt that the Evil would do exactly what he claimed he would do—hell, he’d probably do it anyway, unless Stone could figure out a way out of this. All he could do now was buy time. The little voice deep inside his mind mumbled approval. Buy time, and possibly have a chance to do what he’d come here to do in the first place. But he’d have to be very, very careful.
“Dr. Stone? I’m waiting.”
Stone forced himself to conjure up horrific images of the Evil torturing Verity and Jason. He hated himself for doing it—he hated the Evil all the more for making him have to. But this had to be convincing. He let out a long sigh. “It seems I don’t have a choice, doesn’t it?” he asked in a dull, beaten tone. He looked up at the Evil and was rewarded by another look of slack pleasure on the man’s pasty face. “But listen to me—this isn’t negotiable. You’ll have to prove to me that Jason and Verity are still alive. I won’t lift a finger for you until you let me see them.”
“I knew you’d see it our way when the proper stimuli were applied,” the man said, nodding. “You’ll see your friends. And then you’ll do as you’re told.”
“When do I start, then?”
“Oh, right away. And just be warned: as I told you, the mages you’ll be working with do know something about portal construction themselves. We handpicked them for that. If you attempt to lead them astray, they’ll know. And it won’t go well for you or your friends.”
We’ll see about that, Stone thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
At the same time as Stone was making his reluctant deal with the Evil in the office, Jason and Verity were coming to uncomfortable consciousness in the single cell of Decker’s Gap’s tiny police station.
Jason woke first. He lay on the cold concrete floor, splayed out in such a way that he figured they’d just tossed him in without much regard to comfort. He quickly rose to a sitting position, which was probably a mistake. His head felt woozy and out of sorts, like he’d had too much to drink. Clutching it, he looked around to get his bearings.
The cell was small: only about eight by ten feet. Its sole furnishings consisted of a metal-framed bed bolted to the floor, a tiny sink, and a stainless-steel toilet with no lid. Outside in the hall, beyond the bars, the only illumination was provided by a single, naked incandescent bulb covered by a wire screen and hanging from the ceiling.
Verity lay on the bed, her eyes closed. Stone was nowhere to be seen. The whole place had a dank, unused smell.
Jason struggled to his feet and went to check on his sister. As with him, her coat and boots had been removed, and she shivered in the unheated cell. He gently shook her shoulder. “V? You awake?”
“Mm?” She rolled over toward him, reaching for the blanket that wasn’t there, then snapped awake. “Jason?”
“You okay?”
She pushed herself up, looking around. “Where are we? Where’s Dr. Stone?”
“I
don’t know the answer to either of those. Obviously we’re in some kind of jail cell. Somebody ambushed us in the cave and knocked us out. How do you feel?”
“Still weird like before, and woozy.”
“Yeah—I think they had mages, and they were using the same kind of spell we had to hide them.” Content that his sister was unharmed, Jason got up and went over to the door to the cell. He peered out through the bars, but all he saw was a bare hallway with a door at the other end. “Hey!” he yelled. “Anybody there?”
Nobody answered. He remained there for a few minutes, then came back over and threw himself down on the bed next to Verity. “Well, fuck,” he said, sighing.
“Jason, we have to get out of here. We have to find Dr. Stone.”
“If he’s even still alive,” he said. “It doesn’t look like there are any more cells here, so if they’re holding him, they’ve got him somewhere else.”
She got up and went to the sink, where she splashed water on her face and then dried it with her sleeve. “I don’t get it. Why are we here? Why didn’t they just kill us? They want us dead, don’t they? And it wasn’t like we could fight back. They had us.”
He shook his head. “No clue. Maybe they’re just gonna stick us in here and starve us to death.”
“I don’t—” She stopped, because at that moment something rattled at the end of the hallway. They looked at each other, then jumped up and hurried over to the cell door.
Three figures came down the hallway. Two of them Jason and Verity didn’t recognize. The third was Stone. He walked between the other two, his hands behind his back, his head down.
“Al!” Jason yelled. “Al, are you okay?”
Stone looked up and relief crossed his face. “You are alive,” he said softly. “I didn’t know whether to believe them.”
The other two stepped away, revealing that both of them held pistols. One was trained on Stone, the other on Verity. “No funny business,” said one, a tall, thin man with a gray beard and a red plaid flannel shirt. “We’re well aware of what you’re capable of, young lady, and I’m warning you: If you try it, you won’t succeed. And you will be killed. Do I make myself clear?”
Verity nodded quickly, looking scared.
“What the hell is going on here?” Jason demanded. “What are you doing with Al?”
“Dr. Stone will be helping us out with a little…project,” the Evil said. He took hold of Stone’s arm with the hand not holding the gun. “You’ve seen them now. Time to go.”
“Wait!” Verity yelled. “What do you mean, a project? What’s going on?”
“You’re hostages,” Stone said in a dead tone, without looking at her. “As long as I do what they say, you stay alive.”
Jason stared. “You believe that? What do they want you to do?”
“Never mind,” the Evil said. “Come on, Dr. Stone. You have a lot of work to do.”
Jason and Verity watched as the two Evil took Stone out through the door at the end of the hall and closed it behind them.
Verity went back over and dropped down on the bed. “Now what?”
Jason tried the door to the cell; of course it was locked tight. “Damned if I know. This is new. What do you supposed they’ve got Al doing?”
She shrugged. “Helping them with the portal, maybe? Doing some other kind of magic for them?” She looked around. “We’ve got to figure out a way out of here, Jason.” She dropped her voice down to a whisper. “Do you think they captured the Harmony people, too?”
“I hope not,” he said. “If they did, they’re probably dead. If they didn’t, maybe they were able to get away and they’ll send help back up here.”
“I don’t think we should count on that,” Verity said, frowning. “Let’s just assume they aren’t gonna help us, and we’re on our own.”
“That’s the kind of optimism I’ve always admired in you, V.”
The Evil and his silent henchman led Stone through the town, up the cracked main street that was Decker’s Gap’s only paved road. Most of the buildings were rundown and badly in need of repair—Stone spotted the remains of a bar, a post office, a restaurant, a general store, a one-room schoolhouse, and a farm supply store, along with several small houses in even worse shape than the businesses. A few lights shone here and there, but most of the town was dark. Stone realized it was probably after midnight now; Happy Christmas, he thought sourly. Aloud, he asked, “Where are we going?”
“Not far now.” And indeed it wasn’t: it soon became apparent that they were heading to the same church where the path to the cave began.
“How...inappropriate,” Stone said, his tone full of sarcasm.
The Evil smiled his wolfish smile. “Nothing implied by the location. It was simply the largest building in town, and our mages need a bit of room to…spread out.” Mounting the short flight of steps up to the church’s double front doors, he pulled one of them open and motioned Stone in ahead of him.
The lights were on inside. They entered the tiny vestibule and the Evil took Stone’s arm and led him into the main sanctuary.
Stone stopped. The place hardly resembled a church at all anymore. All of the pews had been pushed back against the walls and stacked on top of each other, leaving a large space filled by two oversized tables, a chalkboard that looked like it had been pilfered from the schoolhouse, and a number of large sheets of white paper tacked to the walls and the edges of the stacked pews. On top of the tables several notebooks lay open, revealing scribbles and diagrams.
Four other people occupied the room: the two mages who had ambushed Stone and the others in the cave, and two more flannel-clad men who were almost certainly Evil-possessed townspeople. The latter held rifles casually over their arms and lounged near the doors on two pews that hadn’t been added to the stacks. The mages stood at the far end of one of the tables, where they appeared to be engaged in a spirited discussion about the contents of one of the notebooks.
The Evil led Stone over to the mages. “Gentlemen. You remember Dr. Stone, who you—er—met earlier this evening.”
The two mages nodded warily. One was short and squat, with dark skin and graying hair. The other was younger, thinner, and very pale, with a shock of white-blond hair teetering over round, owlish glasses. The older man was dressed in slacks and an ugly, shapeless, brown sweater, while the younger one wore jeans and a faded black T-shirt with a grinning stick figure and Stand back—I’m going to try SCIENCE! on the front.
“Have you met?” the Evil asked. “Perhaps we should have introductions.” He nodded toward the older man.
“I’m Kelby Dobbs,” the man said. “From Cleveland.”
The skinny man said, “Byron Sherman. From Seattle.”
Stone looked them up and down. He hadn’t met either of them, but he had heard of both. Both were on the black side of gray in their leanings, kept mostly to themselves, and were known to be highly curious about furthering the study of the darker aspects of magic. Stone wasn’t at all surprised that the Evil had managed to recruit them. If they had been approached properly and wooed with promises of forbidden knowledge, he could see both of them biting on the bait. Unfortunately for his plan, they were both also quite intelligent and knowledgeable about magical research. Fooling them would be a lot harder than he’d hoped.
He took a deep breath. “Right, then,” he said, forcing his voice to a briskness he didn’t feel. “You already know who I am, and you know why I’m here. So let’s get started, shall we? Show me what you’ve got so far.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said the bearded Evil. “I’ll be back in the morning to check on your progress.” He moved off, stopping to say something to the two men by the door that Stone couldn’t hear. They nodded, and the man left the church.
Kelby Dobbs did most of the talking, and after an hour of listening to him lecture in a droning voice using the notebooks, the tacked-up sheets of paper, and the formulas scribbled on the chalkboard as visual aids, Stone struggled to
stay awake. Damn, but the man was boring! He wouldn’t last five minutes in a university classroom. The only thing that kept Stone from nodding off was the knowledge that he’d have to make sense of what Dobbs was saying so he could try to subvert it without him and Sherman catching on. That, and trying not to think about what Jason and Verity were doing, and what might be happening to them. He didn’t trust the Evil not to have killed them as soon as he’d left their presence, but he realized that in the long run it didn’t matter. He had to shut down this portal, even if they were dead. Let the Evil think he was too frightened to consider possibilities like that. It was easier that way.
“So?” Kelby Dobbs was asking. His tone was more than a bit condescending, as if he didn’t expect Stone to understand what he’d been talking about. “Do enlighten us, Dr. Stone. Where have we gone astray?”
Stone shrugged. “How the hell should I know? Do you honestly think I’ll be able to figure it out after an hour of listening to you bang on about it? This stuff is complicated. Let me take a look at your notes, and leave me alone for a while. I’ll see what I can come up with. Meanwhile, you two can carry on whatever it is you’re doing.”
Byron Sherman glared at him. “Don’t talk to us like we’re idiots, Stone. We’ve been dealing with this for a lot longer than you have, and I’m guessing we know a bit more about it than you do. I don’t even know why Richard bothered bringing you in.”
“No?” Stone stood. “Well, since it appears that the continued well-being of my friends depends on my ability to help you lot with your little portal problem, let’s get something straight right now.”