by R. L. King
She found the key and opened the door to the bay.
Instantly she knew that something was wrong.
The small body inside was still—too still to merely be asleep. Was the little bastard faking? She reached out to poke aside the ground cloth she’d wrapped him in, shining a light spell into the darkened space.
He was just as she’d left him: bound and gagged, lying on his back.
Except he wasn’t breathing.
Trin froze. “Oh, fuck…” she whispered. “Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…”
How had he died? It wasn’t hot yet. He had air. He hadn’t been in there long enough that hunger or thirst would kill him.
And then she noticed the concrete block next to his head, slick with dark red blood. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure nobody was paying her any attention (they weren’t: already the wind had picked up, the dust swirling in the air obscuring vision past more than a handful of feet) she rolled Sam’s body over and looked at the back of his head.
It too was covered with blood.
Holy shit. The little pipsqueak had killed himself in the only way he could: by bashing his own head repeatedly against an unyielding object.
Trin’s eyes widened. The twerp had balls, she’d give him that. Sometimes it was hard to remember that he wasn’t a ten-year-old kid, but what had, until recently, been the most powerful of the Others on Earth.
But now his Other was free, which was what he’d no doubt intended. He’d known she wasn’t going to let him out, so if he’d left things to chance he might have lingered for hours—possibly until too late to have any effect on tonight’s activities. If the death of his host was inevitable, he’d apparently decided, better that it be on his terms.
So now he was out there somewhere, probably in a new host. His power would be seriously depleted, but that didn’t matter as far as Trin was concerned. What mattered was, depending on when he’d died and how long he’d been in the new host, he might have already warned the others of what she’d done.
They might already be coming for her.
She took several deep breaths and forced herself to think, twisting her head around to check for anyone approaching again. All she could see was the swirling dust.
Even if they did know, they couldn’t come for her now. Not until the storm was over. Which meant that right now her priorities were clear: get rid of Sam’s body (which would be a lot harder than when he was alive, since she now couldn’t drain him to ash), wait out the storm, and then decide what to do about the others.
Oh, and find fucking Stone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Saturday, midday
Jason couldn’t sleep. He tried, but every time he dozed off for a few minutes, the whistling wind and the flapping tent cloth jolted him back to wakefulness. Every time he awoke he’d glance across the tent, but Stone’s bed remained empty and untouched.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of tossing and turning, he wriggled free of his light covers, got up, and poked his head out through the front flap.
Dust, swirling so thickly that he could only see a few feet in front of him, struck the side of his face with stinging little points of pain. He ducked back inside, pulled on a bandana, hat, goggles, and a light jacket, then set off across the campsite for Verity and Sharra’s tent.
They were awake; in fact, Verity responded to his shouted greeting almost instantly, as if she had been expecting him. They sat at their camp table, playing what looked like a halfhearted game of gin rummy and munching on energy bars.
“He didn’t show up yet, did he?” Verity asked, sitting back down and offering him a bar.
He shook his head. “No sign of him. What time is it?”
“Getting close to noon,” Sharra said. “I’m surprised you slept through the wind. We’ve been up for a couple of hours, since it really got going.”
“I didn’t really,” he said. “Didn’t realize it was as bad as it was, though. I guess we’re not going anywhere until it blows over.”
“Well, the good news is, neither are the Evil,” Verity said. “But the bad news is, we still don’t know where Dr. Stone is. I’m getting worried about him.”
“He’s probably stuck out somewhere,” Sharra said. “If he spent the night with somebody, he might not be able to get back.”
“Maybe,” she said, but didn’t sound like she believed it. “But he knows today’s our last chance to find the Evil, and it seems like he’s the only one who really even believes they’re here.” She sighed. “You don’t suppose they figured out he’s here and grabbed him, do you?”
Jason gnawed his energy bar; it tasted pretty much like he imagined the dust did. “Even if they did, we can’t go look for him until this dies down. I could barely find my way to your tent. This is a bad one.” He was glad he’d gotten Stone to magically drive the rebar tent posts deep into the hard ground, or their tents would probably be sailing across the playa by now.
“Yeah,” Sharra agreed, sounding about as dejected as he felt. “I guess we’re stuck sitting tight here until the storm blows over. Does anybody else feel like the whole world is conspiring against us getting anything done?”
“Not a bit,” Verity said, the sarcasm in her voice so thick it could compete with the dust outside. “The Universe loves us.”
“Man, that’s the worst trip I seen since Zephyr got holda that bad acid in Monterey.” The bearded, bearish man in the tie-dyed shirt stood at the foot of the stranger’s bed, watching as he writhed in obvious pain—though it was hard to tell if it was physical, mental, or both. His screams had quieted, probably because he’d worn himself out over the last several hours. He was clearly exhausted, but just as clearly in too much distress to sleep. This was good, because in the earlier throes of the drug’s effects, he’d required two burly men to hold him down and make sure he didn’t jump up and try to run away. He was well past that point now.
Raina sat next to the bed on a camp stool, a bootleg Grateful Dead CD playing softly on a portable player. She had a pot of cool water and a rag, and periodically mopped sweat from the man’s forehead and chest. His dark hair was plastered to his skull, his pale skin drained of color. “What time is it?” she asked.
“About noon,” he said. “He doin’ any better?”
“Hard to tell. Doesn’t seem to be any worse. I’ve been trying to get some water into him so he doesn’t get dehydrated, but every time he seems to wake up for a bit he freaks out.” She looked up. “How’s the storm look? In case we do need to find somebody to take care of him.”
“Still going strong,” he told her. He offered her a large mug of tea. “Want me to sit with him for a while?”
She shook her head as she accepted the tea. “No, I’ll stay ‘til he wakes up or ‘til the storm passes, and we can get him some better help.” She sighed, looking down at her patient. They hadn’t found any identification in his pockets, so she had no idea who he was or where he came from. The only clue she had was a couple of times when he’d yelled something marginally coherent (usually along the lines of “Get away from me!”), it had been in a British accent. There couldn’t be too many Englishmen at Burning Man, so once they could venture outside their camp, she thought they might have a chance of getting the word out and finding whatever group he’d come with.
If they could get out. This was one of the worst dust storms Raina had seen in the last few years of attending the Burn. At least there wasn’t any rain—that would have made things a lot worse, since prolonged rainstorms turned the playa into a giant muddy swamp that made everything inconvenient and everybody miserable. With your garden-variety dust storms, even ones this bad, you just had to shelter in place until they blew over and then you could go about your business again.
“You got any idea what he did yet? Acid? LSD?”
“That’s the weird thing,” she said. “Can you roll him over on his side for me? I want to show you something.”
The man moved closer and carefully
maneuvered the man over so his back was facing the two of them. He muttered something, but otherwise barely protested at this point.
Raina pointed at something high up on his right shoulder. “See? What’s that look like to you, Paul?”
Paul leaned in for a better view. After examining it for a moment, he said with a confused frown, “Looks like somebody stuck him with a needle, but maybe he tried to get out of the way?”
Raina nodded. The angry red welt, about an inch in diameter, stood out against the man’s chalk-white skin. In the center of the welt was a tiny, darker red spot, like a needle-prick.
Eyes narrowing, Paul said, “You’re thinking he maybe didn’t do this to himself.”
“Yeah.” She settled back in her seat and motioned for him to roll the man over onto his back again. “No way he would’ve injected himself there—not even sure he could have.”
“Bad news,” Paul pronounced. “Not cool. Somebody had it in for this guy.”
Again, Raina nodded. She looked sober. “What if it was somebody in his own group? Maybe we want to find that out before we take him back.”
“Yeah…” Paul looked at the man for a few more seconds, then turned away. “Anyway, if you don’t need me, I’m gonna head back over. I’ll bring you something to eat in a bit and sit with him if you need to get out to take a leak or whatever.”
“Thanks, Paul.” Raina settled back in her seat and picked up the wet rag again.
Trin sat in the front of the RV, looking out the big windows and listening to the shrieking storm pelt the vehicle with stinging flurries of dust.
How long was this fucking thing going to last, anyway? As concerned as she was about Sam’s Other flitting off and ratting her out to the rest of the group, she was more worried that if the storm lasted much longer, they wouldn’t have time to set up the rest of the ritual points and finalize everything before the Burn tonight. If that happened, then all of this work, all the week’s hot and sweaty misery, would be in vain.
If the ritual didn’t go off, then she wouldn’t be able to carry out her modified plan, which meant that she’d still have to look over her shoulder for a bunch of pissed-off Others hell-bent on killing her for fucking up their plans.
And to make things even better, Sam was starting to smell.
It was almost noon now, nearly six hours since she’d discovered his body. She’d closed the cargo bay while trying to figure out what to do and retreated back inside, but as the day got warmer, she’d started catching whiffs of something unpleasant, like meat going bad. For a while she’d tried to ignore it, telling herself that it was just the fact that she needed a shower, but she knew better.
She’d have to do something about him and soon, before anybody else noticed and came poking around, dust storm or no dust storm.
She pulled on her goggles, balaclava, and the rest of her protective gear, then opened the door and stepped out into the storm. Immediately the dust assaulted her, but she was well covered, and it proved no more than an annoyance. Still, she’d need to hurry.
She walked to the front of the RV. One of the tents, miraculously still here despite the high winds, crouched there, leaving about a ten-foot space between its wall and the RV’s front end. Beyond that was the back side of someone else’s tent, with no windows facing in their direction.
She examined the space between their tent and the RV, contemplating. Normally, there was no way she’d be able to do what she was thinking of: she simply didn’t have the magical punch. Earth-based magic was some of the hardest kind, because manipulating anything directly attached to the planet required overcoming its aura. Mages trained for years to be able to do it, and even then their abilities were usually confined to digging shallow holes or forming small shelters out of living rock. She’d heard of some nature-oriented types who had an easier time of it, but she wasn’t one of those types.
None of that mattered here, though. Sitting on the massive ley-line convergence, Trin felt the power singing in her body. Here, she could do almost anything she set her mind to. Even despite her aches and pains, she thought she’d be able to carry off this bit of magic.
Even so, it was harder than she expected. It took her half an hour and a lot of concentration to carve a narrow, six-foot-deep trench in the hard-packed playa ground, and by the time she finished she was panting and sweating with the exertion.
“Damn good thing you’re small,” she muttered as she headed over to the cargo hold and opened it. A ripe, fetid, nearly visible odor rolled out, making her stomach clench, but she got herself under control and didn’t retch into her balaclava. She levitated the body, still wrapped in the ground sheet, over to the hole. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure nobody was paying attention, she lowered the small form into the trench, then summoned her will once more.
Moving the dirt back into the hole to cover the body was easier than carving it out, and in another ten minutes the playa was flat again, the filled-in area looking only marginally disturbed. She spread the extra dirt displaced by Sam’s body around, then stood back to admire her handiwork. Not bad, all things considered. The swirling dust would cover up the evidence of the disturbed ground, and besides, who’d believe she—or anyone—could dig a hole deep enough to bury a body in the playa’s packed, rock-hard ground? You’d need heavy equipment, at least a couple of hours, and would make enough noise that nobody would be able to miss it.
She’d still have to clean up the blood inside the cargo hold, but for now she could just lock it up. After tonight, anybody left alive around here would have a lot more pressing things to be concerned about than a little blood in an RV.
Now if this damned storm would just settle down, she could get on with the rest of her plans.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Saturday, late afternoon/early evening
Verity poked her head out of the tent flap again.
“Anything?” Jason asked.
“No.”
The dust storm had lasted until almost five-thirty in the afternoon, finally blowing itself out about a half-hour ago. The air was still murky, and it was hard to see into the distance, but people were beginning to head back outside. Life on the playa was resuming as everyone dug themselves out from under a thick coating of dust and began moving around once more. The sounds of vehicles, music, and the usual yells and shouts filled the air again.
There was still no sign of Stone.
Verity came back inside and threw herself down on her cot. “He’d be back by now if he could,” she said, dejected. “He’s gotta know we’d be concerned about him.”
“We should get out there and look for him,” Jason said, getting up. “Asking around—maybe somebody saw him.”
Verity jumped up too. “No,” she said. “We don’t have to do that. Man, where’s my brain today?”
“What?” Jason looked sideways at her.
“Hang on,” she said. “I gotta go to the trailer for a minute.” She hurried outside before either Jason or Sharra could say anything, and returned five minutes later carrying what Jason recognized as Stone’s black leather duffel bag.
“Hey,” he said. “That’s the bag Al keeps his—”
“—ritual stuff in,” Verity finished, triumphant. “Yeah. We don’t have to go out looking for him. We can find him right here.”
“You’re gonna do a ritual to find him?” Jason hadn’t thought of that, even though he’d seen Stone do the same ritual on more than one occasion to search for someone. “I didn’t know you knew how to do those by yourself. And anyway, I thought you couldn’t find mages with rituals.”
“I can find him,” she said. “It’s one of the first things he taught me, and even when he’s hiding from everybody else, he couldn’t hide from me.” She rifled through the bag and set out candles, crystals, and jars of sand on the folding table. “He used to test me by going off hiding somewhere and I had to find him. C’mon, Sharra—help me with this. We can do it in here—it doesn’t have to be big, since
he’s probably not very far away.”
Jason stood back and watched, feeling useless as he always did during magical processes. Verity and Sharra seemed to know exactly what they were doing: they constructed a small circle inside the tent using the sand in place of chalk and setting out the candles and crystals at points around it. The whole setup took them about half an hour. “Don’t you need something of his to do it?” he asked.
Verity shook her head, stepping out of the circle to examine it for defects. “That’s only if you don’t know the target. Bring me my map and a pen, though, ’kay? When I get something, I’ll mark it down on there.”
Jason did as requested, then wandered over to look outside again. There was no point in Verity doing the ritual if Stone was on his way back to the tent. He wasn’t. “Go for it,” he said. “I want to find Al and figure out what we need to do next. Time’s wasting.”
He noticed that none of them even brought up the all-too-real possibility that the Evil had somehow gotten hold of Stone, and he was no longer alive.
Verity settled herself in the middle of the circle, spreading the map of the playa out on her lap. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Here goes.”
Jason and Sharra watched in silence as she closed her eyes, took a few more centering breaths, and gestured at the candles to light them.
The process only took a few minutes, at which point the candles all went out at once with a small whoosh. Verity sat up straight, snatched up the map and the pen, and drew a large X at a point about halfway around the playa’s circle of streets.
“Found him!” she exclaimed, jumping up and pointing at the map. “He’s there.” Then she frowned, her expression clouding. “I watched him for a couple of minutes, though. He doesn’t seem to be making any move to leave that place, whatever it is. I thought I’d find him heading back here.”