by R. L. King
Stone put a hand on her shoulder. “Go to sleep, Verity,” he said softly. “I doubt they’ll do it tonight, whatever it is, and if you’re half as tired as I am, we wouldn’t be able to do much about it anyway. Tomorrow we’ll start our little cat-and-mouse game. Remember: the advantage we have is that they don’t know we’re here. The longer we can keep them from figuring it out, the more likely they’ll make a fatal mistake.”
She smiled a little. “I thought I was supposed to be the optimistic one.”
He shrugged, raising an eyebrow. “Sometimes the teacher learns from the student.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Okay,” Jason said. “What’s the plan?”
It was just past dawn, only a handful of hours since they’d gone to sleep. The four of them sat around a small fire in the open area in front of the tents, watching a pot of coffee heating up like a pack of lions eyeing a wounded antelope.
“Recon,” Stone said without looking up.
“Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Verity teased, grinning at him.
“To wake up,” he grumbled, “I’d have to have been asleep in the first place.” He hadn’t had a good night: every time he’d made an attempt to drop off to sleep on the uncomfortable air mattress, some collection of drunken idiots whooping outside the tent had awakened him. He’d spent most of the night trying to get comfortable and attempting to tune out the outside sounds. It was worse than his University days.
“Hang on, I’ve got just the thing for you,” Sharra said. She disappeared into her tent for a moment and then returned, tossing something small toward Stone. “Earplugs.”
He caught them. “You are prepared for everything, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, we’d be kinda lost without her,” Verity said. She was cooking up some sort of breakfast-sandwich things with eggs, cheese, and flatbread. “So, recon. What are we looking for, since we don’t know what the Evil look like?”
“For this morning, just wander around and get an idea of where things are,” Stone said.
“We won’t be able to stay out for long,” Jason said. “It’ll get hot fast.”
“Look around for a couple of hours and meet back here,” Stone said. “Try to note any landmarks, points of interest, or anything that looks out of place. Verity and Sharra, use magical sight and try to identify any other mages around here, but don’t reveal yourselves to them. We don’t know which ones are Evil.”
“Uh…” Verity said, “Shouldn’t somebody stay here? If we leave all our stuff unattended—”
“We can lock it up in the trailer,” Sharra said. “I doubt anyone will bother the tents and sleeping bags and stuff—they probably won’t bother the rest of it. But no point taking chances.”
They finished breakfast, stowed their gear in the trailer, and then headed out. Each pair, Verity going with Sharra and Stone with Jason, picked a different direction and agreed to meet back at the tents and compare notes in two hours.
“I can tell I’ll be getting very tired of this dust very soon,” Stone grumbled as he and Jason moved off in a counterclockwise direction along one of the hard-packed dirt roads.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Sharra said it’d be everywhere, but she didn’t really do it justice.”
The whole affair hadn’t gotten fully started yet; all around them, groups of people maneuvered vehicles into their campsites, set up tents, built temporary structures out of plywood and canvas, and stood around chatting with old friends and new acquaintances. One of the mutant vehicles, decked out to look like a giant bright-orange fish, trundled by, with three people leaning out of an open section in the back handing out brightly-colored sno-cones to everyone they could attract.
Jason took a couple with thanks and handed one to Stone. “Ice is kind of a big deal around here,” he said. “I was talking to Sharra—bags of ice are one of the few things they sell, but the lines are insane.”
“I don’t feel comfortable just—taking things,” Stone said. “I feel like I should be helping out somehow, but my skills are fairly hopeless around here.” He scanned the crowds ahead, occasionally switching to magical sight. He knew that wouldn’t show him the Evil or any mages who weren’t actively casting spells or wearing magical items, but it still made him feel like he was doing something useful.
Jason pointed. “You want to help, there’s a chance already.”
Stone followed his pointing finger. Two middle-aged women were wrestling with a large tent, trying to drive in the long rebar stakes that would hold it against the wind. They weren’t having a lot of success: the ground was hard and at the rate the stakes were going in, it would take them at least a couple of hours to get set up.
Jason didn’t wait for Stone’s reply, but headed over. “Can we help you out?” he asked them, nodding at the stakes.
One, who looked around fifty, flashed him a cheerful grin. “Oh, bless you,” she said. “This gets harder every year.”
Jason took the hammer. “Hold the stake, A—uh, Spike,” he said, with a significant look toward Stone.
Stone did as instructed, crouching down to get a good grip on the stake. As Jason drove it in, he augmented the effort with magic and in less than a minute, it was buried several inches into the unyielding ground.
The two women looked impressed. “You’re very strong,” the other one said to Jason.
In around half an hour, they had all the stakes driven in and the tent set up. “Thank you so much,” the women said, offering them tall glasses of icy lemonade. One of them even threw her arms around each of them in turn, enveloping them in hugs. “If you need anything, come on by. If you come tonight, we’ll even cook you dinner.”
They thanked the women for the kind offer and went on their way.
“See?” Jason said, grinning. “You’re not hopeless. You just need to know your strengths.”
If any wayward Burners had poked their heads uninvited into a large, pavilion-sized tent on the edge of the open area of the playa just after dark on Tuesday night, they would have seen an interesting sight right before they were killed.
Of the dozen people seated around a series of pushed-together folding tables or milling around near the walls, only a couple looked like they fit in with the festival attendees. The rest ranged in varying degrees from “attempted to look the part but failed miserably” to “didn’t even try.”
Trin watched all of them in some frustration. When she’d arranged to have the plan communicated to them so she didn’t have to talk to them herself, she’d told them where they would be and what to bring with them. They had shown up over the last day or so in a series of RVs and trailers, most of them grumbling about the heat, the distance to civilization, and the general uselessness of the plan.
But they had shown up. All of them had.
That was something.
“Okay,” she said. There wasn’t any hubbub of voices to shout over, because none of them were talking to each other. They all just sat or stood stiffly, as if their fondest desire was to bolt back to their own locations scattered around the area and wait out the week in seclusion—or maybe to just chuck the whole thing and go back to their home bases. Trin suspected that one or the other was probably exactly right. “Now that we’re all here, I wanted to go over the plan so we all know what to expect.”
Sam sat at the end of the table nearest her, switching his attention between Trin and the rest of the group. He had come with her; the two of them had a campsite consisting of an RV and a large tent. She wasn’t sure how the kid had become her responsibility, but that was one of the disadvantages of his current form: he would draw notice and suspicion if seen without some sort of adult guardian. She’d been elected, since he was the logistical leader for the operation, and she needed to stay in close contact with him.
Less than a week and it’ll be over, and I can get the fuck away from him again, she thought. It had become her mantra.
“So,” she said. “We’ve already g
ot the soldiers setting up. It’s going slow, because they need to be careful not to attract attention, but we have plenty of time. As long as it’s all done by late on Saturday, we’re good.”
“How many soldiers do we have?” the police chief asked.
“All together, around three dozen,” Trin said. “That includes the grunts, along with a few key people like the woman who’s coordinating the dancers, and Dr. Brandt.”
“Where is she?” asked the evangelist. “I haven’t seen her yet.”
“You won’t,” Trin said. “She’s got an RV on the other side, all the way over on the edge, and I told her to stay inside and work on her calculations. She doesn’t care—she doesn’t like it here anyway. But we can’t have anybody see her, since she’s supposed to be missing.”
“So what the hell do the rest of us do all week besides sweat?” the mob boss asked. He was indeed sweating; the armpits of his white shirt were already soaked. “It ain’t gonna be so good if some of us get seen either.” He waved his hand to indicate the politician, the actress, and the televangelist. “We’re gonna get recognized if we go out.”
Trin shrugged. “Use your best judgment. If you do go out, make sure you only do it at night, and you’re covered up so nobody can see you. That’s the one good thing about this fucking dust everywhere: you can wear a protective mask, so you’re hard to recognize. Just don’t get seen.”
Sam spoke up. “The soldiers have been instructed to make sure you have food and water, and they’ll get you anything else you need.”
“Anything?” the mob boss asked. “So if I wanna get laid, they’ll bring me a hot chick?”
Trin glared at him. “You don’t have a goddamn clue where you are, do you? You want to get laid, just poke your head out the door and say, ‘I wanna get laid!’” At least three women and probably a dude or two will come running.” She redirected her glare to the group as a whole. “But for fuck’s sake, people, if you don’t do anything else right, do not kill anybody, and don’t freak anybody out so you can feed. There’s plenty of energy around here that you won’t starve. It’s not great, I know. But if Stone is here and he starts hearing about people getting terrified—or people disappearing—then we’ll have him and his whole crew sniffing up our asses.”
“Wait, Stone’s here?” demanded the dark-skinned man. “When were you gonna tell us that?”
“We don’t know he’s here for sure,” she said. “But we have reports of him and his people leaving the Bay Area in a big RV yesterday. Where else would they be going?” She began pacing around her end of the table. “I’ve already told the soldiers to let me know immediately if they spot any of them—you guys need to do that, too. Some of you who aren’t publicly recognizable will be able to go out if you want. If you see him, I need to know so I can keep track of him.”
“So you can kill him, you mean,” said the mob boss.
Trin wished so much that she could just fry the sweaty little bastard where he sat, but with effort she controlled herself. “No,” she said with exaggerated patience. “Not so I can kill him. So I can keep watch on him so he doesn’t figure out what we’re doing.”
“Yeah, right.” The mob boss stood up. “You’re full of shit, Trin, and we all know it.”
Some of the others began rumbling in agreement. A couple of side conversations started up and quickly rose in volume.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Trin raised her hands. “Will you all calm down?” she ordered. “We need to finish this. I don’t want to be here anymore than you do.”
They paid her no attention. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” the mob boss growled, rising from his chair. “You—”
“Quiet!” Sam’s childish but commanding voice cut through the growing din.
Surprised, they all stopped and looked at him.
“Better,” he said. “Look—none of us like this. I understand that. This plan requires a fair bit of sacrifice on everyone’s part. But think of the reward. Keep your focus on the end: in a few more days, if we don’t squabble among ourselves and cause the plan to fail, we’ll have our portal back. Remember that.”
The grumbles rose again, but they were quieter now. Several of the group members glared daggers at each other, the prickly auras around each so strong that even the most mind-blind of mundanes would be able to sense them.
“That’s better,” Sam said, nodding. “I think we can go now, unless you’ve got anything else, Trin?” The look he gave her clearly said, It would be smart not to have anything else right now.
“Nah,” she said, waving an airy hand. “I’m done. If I think of anything else, I’ll send the soldiers around.”
The group got out of there fast, pulling on their hats and goggles and wrapping their lower faces in bandanas and balaclavas.
After everyone was gone, Trin dropped into one of the folding chairs. “Those people are a fucking pain in the ass.”
“They are,” Sam agreed. “But we need them to make this work. So mind your manners.”
She got up and pulled on her own gear. “Fuck off,” she said. “You can play good little schoolteacher with them, but not with me. Just do your job, okay? And no more meetings. I don’t want to see any of those assholes again until after the portal’s up.”
Stone, Jason, Verity, and Sharra didn’t end up getting together to compare notes on their recon missions until Tuesday after dark. They’d intended to do it earlier, but by the time they arrived back at the tents, the heat was so oppressive that all they wanted to do was get under shade and start recalibrating their sleep schedules to accommodate nocturnal activity.
Stone emerged from his and Jason’s tent shortly after sunset to find Verity and Jason cooking up something in a pot hanging over the campfire.
“Nice of you to join us,” Jason said with a grin. “You get dish duty.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’d rather be the dishwasher than the main course. I had to keep rolling over to make sure I was baking evenly in there.” He waved at the tent.
“Yeah, it gets pretty hot,” Sharra said, emerging from her and Verity’s tent. “That’s why everybody mostly does their thing at night.” She sat down and accepted a plate from Jason.
They spent a pleasant meal discussing what they’d seen during their walk around the playa. While everyone had interesting stories to report about the various individuals, structures, and vehicles they’d encountered, no one had seen anything out of the ordinary. No sign of any Evil, nor anyone else they recognized. The closest any of them came was Verity spotting a couple of people wearing minor magical items when she’d shifted her sight, but neither she nor Sharra thought they were anything more than lesser talents here to have a good time. They’d decided not to try to catch up to them, since the idea was to not draw attention.
Stone sighed. “Well, keep your eyes open. I think this will be a long week. If the Evil are here, they’ll be lying low and trying not to attract attention either. Be on the lookout for any odd occurrences, crimes, anything that they might use to feed on. I suspect they’re going to be fairly grumpy by the end of the week if they’re forced to subsist on a diet of happy emotions. Somebody might slip up, and I want to know if they do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Wednesday
Trin glanced around, slinging the strap of the large canvas bag she carried over her head to make it more secure.
Nobody paid any attention to her. She didn’t even have to use a spell yet to make herself unobtrusive: people were too busy going about their own business to care.
Apathy was a good thing sometimes.
At just past dusk, the playa was just starting to chill after a day of nearly unbearable heat. Trin hated the heat. She hated the dust, and the glare, the smells of the legions of porta-potties dotting the area, and the crush of people everywhere she went. One of the few things she did like about being here was the power—the constant sense of vast amounts of magical energy coursing through the area, flowing through the ley lines
, through the land, through her body. Every now and then she had to stop and shift to her magical senses, letting it wash over her. She decided that when this was all over and she was back in civilization—which couldn’t be a moment too soon as far as she was concerned—she would research other ley line convergence locations and see if she could find one she could relocate to. This kind of constant magical rush would be worth the inconvenience of moving.
Of course, she’d never give up taking power from other people. That was one of the other things she liked about this place: in a crowd this size, full of people who were excited, energetic, and often high or otherwise impaired, it was laughably easy for her to get all the power she could want. Often, someone would offer to hug her—that was the easiest of all. Between all the opportunities she had to top up from other people and the constant influx of magical power from the ley lines, she had to exercise great restraint not to simply start firing off powerful spells just because she could.
The Other inside her was not quite so happy. Because the plan depended on secrecy and remaining unobtrusive—especially if Stone and his gang of idiots were here—it wouldn’t be wise for her and the others to cause the sort of incidents that resulted in optimal feeding opportunities. The Others drew their best sustenance from fear, pain, despair, and other strong negative emotions. They could feed from any sufficiently strong emotional energy, which meant that the happy intensity of most of the Burning Man attendees was sufficient to keep them going, but Trin knew that if they didn’t get something better before long, things could get ugly. After what had happened the previous night, she and Sam had decided that it probably would be best not to have another meeting of the entire group.