by R. L. King
“Al!” Jason hurried over and dropped down next to him, and so did Verity. She, too, looked astonished and scared. “What happened to you, man?”
Stone glanced at Raina, then back at Jason and Verity. “I’ll leave you alone,” Raina said, taking the hint. “I’ll bring back that soup in a couple of minutes. For all of you.”
After she departed, Stone sat up a little. Jason stuffed another pillow under him. “Evil,” the mage said.
“The Evil did this to you? You found them?” Verity asked.
“Sort of.” His voice sounded tired, but steady. “It was more like they found me. They have a mage. She saw through my disguise and—well—it was my own bloody fault, really. She invited me back to her RV, and I went with her.”
“And she drugged you? With what? Why?”
Stone shrugged. “No idea. Something in a hypo. It’s all a bit fuzzy now. She was planning to drug me and then kill me, I think, but I got away from her somehow. Everything was—insane. I was hallucinating. Horrific things. I expect I’ll have nightmares for months. I got away from her and I ran.” He nodded toward the tent’s exit. “Apparently, I showed up in their camp screaming like a mad thing, and then passed out.” He seemed to remember something and tried to sit up the rest of the way. “We need to get going. It’s already after seven, isn’t it?”
Jason put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. “Stay put for now. We’ve got time. You’re in no shape to—”
His eyes narrowed. “Jason, it doesn’t matter what shape I’m in. There’s no time to waste. We either do this or we don’t, and I don’t think you two can do it alone.”
Raina came back inside carrying a tray with some bowls and glasses of ice water on it. “Eat, all of you. Especially you,” she said to Stone, taking on a stern, motherly tone. “You haven’t had a thing to eat all day. And drink all of that water. Slowly.”
Stone nodded, clearly in no mood to argue. “Thank you. For everything.”
“Happy to help, and glad to see you looking better. I’ll be outside if you need anything.” Apparently satisfied that Jason and Verity didn’t plan to re-drug him, she left again.
“I’m starving,” Stone said, starting on his bowl of soup immediately. He eyed Jason. “I could eat both of you right now and still have room for dessert. But no time. Tell me what’s been happening. Have you found anything?”
Verity shook her head. “We’ve been stuck inside all day because of the dust storm.”
“How did you find me?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Ritual. I borrowed your stuff.”
He looked impressed. “Excellent. Well done, Verity. Full marks.” He already looked better, getting some color back and losing a bit of his sunken look.
“Al,” Jason said, frustrated, “I want to know about this mage who drugged you. We need to find her, if she’s out there. It wasn’t Dr. Brandt, was it?”
“No.” Stone’s expression hardened. “It wasn’t. In fact, it was someone I’ve had dealings with a few years back. I thought she was dead, but apparently she’s slipperier than I thought. She’s cast her lot in with the Evil, and she’s gotten a lot more powerful since I last fought her, too. She won’t be easy to take down, especially since I’m not at my best right now.”
Jason sighed. “We’re out of options, to be honest. We can’t find any of them, we don’t know what they’re planning—and we’ve got less than two hours before the Burn. If that’s when they’re gonna do it, then—” He spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “We’re kinda screwed.”
“Unless we can just be on the lookout when the Burn starts,” Verity said. “We talked about that before—if they’re doing magic that big, they won’t be able to hide it.”
“Risky,” Stone said, setting his empty bowl aside and picking up the glass of ice water. “We don’t know how many are hiding around here. My guess is that they’ll be well guarded.”
“Wait!” Jason said, smacking the cot with his open hand. “I almost forgot in all the craziness: I might have something!” He quickly told Stone about his erstwhile hookup Luna and her story about the dance routine that seemed ‘like a ritual.’ “Do you think that might have anything to do with what they’re up to?”
Stone thought about it for a moment. It was obvious he wasn’t back to his full capacity yet, and a couple of times he blinked and shook his head like he was trying to clear out the last of the drugged haze. “Not sure,” he said at last. “It’s not like any ritual I’ve ever heard of, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Can you find this Luna again?”
“Maybe. I know where she’s staying, but this close to the Burn, and after being stuck inside all day with the storm? I’d bet she’s probably out having fun before she has to show up wherever the dancers are gathering.” He sighed. “What about the mage? Do you think she’ll be at the RV she took you back to? Or some other Evil might?”
“Possibly. We’d have to be careful, though. I’m not ready to go up against her yet. And even if she’s Evil and Verity’s able to evict her, she’s still dangerous, and she hates me.”
“But if we could take her out, maybe we can cut their legs out from under them. If she’s their big mage—”
“Let’s do it,” Stone said, pushing himself up. He paled and swayed a little, looking disgusted with his own weakness. “Ugh. I don’t have time for this.”
“Take it easy, Al. You get dressed and I’ll see if I can flag down one of those crazy vehicles to give us a ride.” He hurried outside.
Pia Brandt was glad it was almost over. In a little less than an hour, the ritual would begin. The portal would come into being, fed by the combined power of her ritual and Trin’s plan. The resulting chaos would ensure enough time for the portal to gather strength until it was self-sustaining.
Then she could go back to civilization.
She had spent most of the last week in her tent, working on her calculations, with only the occasional foray out, fully swathed in bandana, hat, and goggles to guard against recognition, to walk around and look at the nearby area. She hadn’t resented the fact that Trin had told her she should probably avoid being seen: this wasn’t the sort of event that appealed to her, so she had no desire to participate in it. It was too hot, too dusty, too crowded, too loud, too—primitive. She missed her comfortable home in Germany, and wondered if she would be able to come up with a sufficient story to explain her missing husband and child so she could return and resume her life at the University.
Sometimes, mostly late at night before she drifted off to sleep, a tiny corner of her “old” personality surfaced, reminding herself of what she had lost. Sometimes she awoke in the middle of the night with tears drying on her cheeks, but couldn’t remember why she’d been crying. It didn’t matter, though. None of it mattered anymore.
What mattered was that she would finally see the realization of a dream she had harbored since she began her second career as a researcher into the mysteries of magical portals. After all this time, all the late nights and disproven theories and failed experiments—she would finally have access to levels of power sufficient to make her theories into reality. Even if it weren’t for the other being who shared space in her body and its desire to have the conduit to its home dimension re-opened, this still would have been a powerful motivator for her. Now, though, she and the Other sang in harmony, both of them wanting the same thing, both of them growing more excited with each passing hour.
She wondered where Trin was. The younger mage had been a near-constant fixture in Brandt’s RV over the last few days, popping in two or three times a day to check on the progress of the research, the formulas, and the general plans. Trin hadn’t talked much about her own part of the operation: Brandt knew it had something to do with summoning something to generate the massive amount of power required to kickstart the ritual and instantiate the portal, but that wasn’t something she herself needed to worry about. It was irrelevant where the power came from: it could just as easily be a m
assive mundane explosion, a blast of magic, or a tapping of the rich ley lines that crisscrossed the playa like downtown streets in a major city. As long as it was power—and a lot of it—it would work. She knew it had something to do with a group of dancers and a ritual that Trin was setting up, but that was all.
She glanced at the little clock on the RV’s wall: it was already 8:05. Everything was set already; she didn’t really need to talk to Trin, any more than she needed to be present for the ritual itself. She would be, of course: she would no more miss the culmination of all of her research than she would kill herself. But the pieces were in place, the wheels in motion. From here on, it was all down to her own careful calculations and Trin’s magical skill.
Still, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t feel better if she had an opportunity to go over everything one last time with Trin before showtime. What was keeping her? Maybe she’d gotten sidetracked on something and was running late.
Brandt considered her options: at this point, dusk was moving fast toward sunset; it was dim enough outside that lights already began to dot the playa. The odds that anyone would recognize her were so low as to almost be nonexistent. She wasn’t exactly famous even in her own home country—when she’d attended the magical symposium back at the beginning of the summer, only a couple of the other attendees had even known her name. She could take this one chance. It would only take a few minutes to walk over to Trin’s RV on the other side of the playa, and she could bundle up in her floppy hat, goggles, and bandana to make sure nobody got a look at her face. Not that anyone would pay attention anyway. After the dust storm had kept everyone inside their structures for the biggest part of the day, all everyone wanted to do was get out and party on this last night before this year’s Burning Man was consigned to history.
If only they knew.
She gathered up her disguise and began donning it, and a few minutes later, she was on the move.
“If this bloody thing moved any more slowly, it would be going backward,” Stone complained.
“Hey, it beats walking,” Jason said.
They had taken their leave of Raina and her group with much thanks and appreciation. Raina hadn’t thought Stone should leave yet, but she understood when they told her that after being here all week, they didn’t want to miss the Burn. One of the less burly of the group’s men had lent Stone a shirt: he now sported a black tank top with a large red, white, and blue Grateful Dead logo on the front. It was still a couple of sizes too big for him, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
They had located Sharra and flagged down a mutant vehicle shaped like a cheerful pink cartoon snail with a pair of bench seats along the back, and now trundled at a pace appropriate for its chosen design in the general direction of Trin’s campsite. Almost everyone else, walking or biking, moved in the opposite direction, migrating toward the center of the playa in preparation for the Burn.
It was 8:15.
Stone didn’t say much; it was obvious to all three of his friends that he still felt the effects of the day’s ordeal despite his efforts to conceal it. They left him alone, using the time to scan the faces of the crowd and look for anyone they recognized.
By the time they got as close as the snail-mobile would get to Trin’s RV, it was 8:20. They thanked the driver and hopped off; Jason kept a close eye on Stone to make sure he was doing all right: he moved slowly, but he was still moving so far. As they approached, he settled his disregarding spell over himself, since he no longer had his disguise pendant, and fell in behind the others.
Trin’s entire campsite was dark. The RV and the tent were both silent and appeared empty, the fire dead and cold, the small perimeter lights all switched off. “Nobody here,” Jason said. “Maybe she’s already headed off to set things up.”
“Probably,” Stone agreed.
Verity risked moving in a little closer, using her own disregarding spell to cloak her as she levitated up and peered into the RV’s window, then poked her head into the tent. When she came back, she had an odd expression. “Nobody in there,” she said. “But something smells funny. Like something died. It’s faint, but it’s there.”
They exchanged glances and had moved off across the way to discuss what to do next and whether they should investigate the odor, when Stone suddenly held up his hand for silence.
“What?” Verity whispered, looking around.
“Somebody’s coming,” he whispered back.
He was right. As the four of them drew into a circle and acted like any other group of revelers waiting for the Burn to begin, a furtive figure hurried in the obvious direction of Trin’s RV.
“Is that her?” Jason whispered to Stone.
He shook his head. “She’s taller and thinner. I don’t know who that is.” He paused a moment, focusing. “Wait!” he whispered. “I think I do!”
“Who?” Jason focused on the figure, trying to identify it.
“Is that Dr. Brandt?” Verity said, catching on. In her excitement, her voice rose a bit above a whisper. The figure suddenly froze, its head snapping up as if it had heard her. It whirled and hurried off at a faster pace than it had approached.
“Damn it!” Verity snapped.
“I’ll get her!” Jason said, preparing to run, but Verity grabbed his arm.
“No! Let me. If that is her, the only way I can evict her is if she threatens me, remember?”
Jason paused a moment, unsure.
“Go!” Stone ordered, and Verity took off.
The woman tried hard to lose herself in the crowd, but after all the fruitless and frustrating searching Verity had been doing for the past few days, she wasn’t about to lose her quarry when she finally had one. She increased her speed to a run, shoving her way past the Burn-goers heading in the other direction and catching up with the woman as she rounded behind a darkened van.
“Hold it, Dr. Brandt!” she yelled. “Stop or I’ll take you down!”
Brandt whirled, panic and anger showing in her eyes. She raised her hands and pointed them at Verity.
Unfortunately for her, though, she moved with the reflexes of a middle-aged, sedentary scientist with no combat training. Verity, on the other hand, was young, fast, and had been trained by one of the few white mages in the world with real magical-combat skills. Brandt’s feeble attack bounced harmlessly off Verity’s shield, and that was all the threat she needed. “Out!” she roared, pointing both hands at Brandt as she tried to scramble away.
Jason and Sharra came pounding up behind Verity just in time to see the gray puff rise up out of Dr. Brandt’s body and dissipate into the night air. Brandt collapsed to her knees, sobbing.
A moment later Stone, moving more slowly, caught up. “Got her,” Verity said triumphantly, pointing. None of the three of them had approached her yet, and she had shown no sign of getting up or trying to escape.
As they drew cautiously nearer, they could all hear the words buried in her sobs: “Oh dear God, what have I done?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Trin couldn’t wait any longer. She stood outside Pia Brandt’s RV, pounding on the door, but nobody answered. No lights were on inside. Had she gone somewhere? Now, of all times?
A soldier approached. “She’s not here. I think she mighta been lookin’ for you. I saw her leave a few minutes ago.”
“Fuck!” She glanced at her watch: only fifteen minutes until showtime, and she’d still have to work her way through the crowd to find Aisha and her dancers, make sure the others were where they needed to be, and get herself situated to begin her own part of the ritual. At this point she’d have to hurry, and might even have to use magic to make sure she made it on time. “Okay. Get to your position. Never mind Dr. Brandt. She knows what she’s doing.”
The man nodded and hurried off, leaving Trin to steam for a moment. The damned woman had been content to stay inside all week, and now at the last minute she’d decided to go for a walk? She sighed loudly. The world was full of fucking idiots. That was the only explanati
on for why things kept going wrong.
No helping it now, though. She spun and set off toward the center of the playa, pushing her way through the crowds gathering to celebrate the end of another Burning Man and watch the festivities as the Man burned. All around her people were dancing, screaming, drinking, singing, waving all manner of lightsticks and flashlights and flaming torches; she smelled everything from liquor to marijuana to the sharp tang of energy drinks mingling with the low-hanging funk of thousands of un- or underwashed bodies in close proximity. Go ahead, celebrate, she thought, eyes glittering in malicious amusement. Do it while you can. Pretty soon you’ll be screaming, and I’ll be celebrating.
Just to be safe, she did use magic to get her over the crowd: she had visions of getting hung up by some collection of moshing hippies and missing the start of the ritual, and the thought pissed her off enough that she shifted to invisibility and soared above the group, zooming over their heads toward the large tent they’d set up on the inner edge of the playa circle, on the border of the open area.
The others were already there, and they looked restless. “Where the hell have you been?” the mob boss demanded as he and the others converged around her.
“I’m here now,” she growled. She looked around and spotted Aisha outside, standing on a ladder, giving final instructions through a bullhorn to the crowd of eager dancers arrayed around her. Turning back to the Other leaders, she said, “Okay, it’s almost time. Please tell me the soldiers got the last circle points up and running.”
“They did,” said the actress. “They reported back about half an hour ago.”
“And they’re manning them all, ready to go?”
“They’re ready,” the mob boss said. “Are you?”
Trin ignored his tone. “You guys know what you’re supposed to do, right?”
“We’re not stupid,” said the military man. “When the portal shows up, we all focus on it and concentrate on home. Is that really all we need to do?”