by King, R. L.
Turned away from his captors, Stone rolled his eyes. Did they think him stupid enough to fall for such an obvious lie? Still, for now he’d go with it if it got him closer to the portal. He picked up two of the notebooks and a sheaf of papers from the table, assumed the indicated spot between the two remaining riflemen, and followed them to the door. Convinced now that Jason and Verity had indeed escaped, he could only hope that they had either gotten away or they had something planned. If things got out of hand he could always pull up a shield and make a stand, but for now he thought it best to see how things played out.
They trooped up the steep hill toward the cave; Dobbs went first, then Stone, flanked on one side by Sherman and on the other by one of the guards. The other guard brought up the rear. Stone shivered: they hadn’t given him his coat, and as the day went on, the temperature had dropped.
The two guards in front of the cave nodded as they approached. “Any problems?” Dobbs asked.
One shook his head. “It’s been quiet up here all day.”
“Good, good.” Dobbs continued forward and the others followed. In a few moments, they stood in the doorway of the portal room.
Stone frowned. This wouldn’t be easy. It was clear that the portal had grown even more unstable than when they’d initially seen it: its edges flickered more madly than ever, and the sickening colors clashed, if that were even possible, more than they had before. “This thing doesn’t look at all healthy,” he said. “You do know that it might not even be possible to stabilize it at this point, right?”
“You’d better hope it is,” Sherman said. “Because if you can’t do it, then we don’t have any more reason to keep you around, do we?”
Stone shrugged. “Or we might just have to wait until it makes another appearance. But frankly, I’d rather die than have to spend an indeterminate amount of time in this hellhole with you lot.”
“That’s all on you, Stone,” Sherman told him.
“Indeed.” Stone looked around. “So, about my friends—”
“They’re coming.” Dobbs said, glancing toward the entrance to the chamber.
Stone sighed. “You know,” he said in a conversational tone, “I’m amazed that you two actually believe I’m bright enough to have a chance at fixing your portal, given how stupid you seem to think I am in every other aspect of life.”
“What?” Sherman glared at him.
“I don’t know how else to interpret it. Obviously you don’t have my friends, or you’d have produced them by now. Which leads me to believe that, since you had them locked up in a cell and I can’t imagine how they could have escaped, you must have killed them. I also can’t imagine how you would be so stupid as to do something like that before you’ve gotten me to do your dirty job for you, but given the evidence, I can’t think of any other explanation.” His expression became challenging. “So—what do you say? Are they dead?” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the portal. “Because that thing isn’t going to last much longer, and if they are dead, then we have a few things to discuss.”
“They’re not dead,” Dobbs said.
“Really?” Stone’s tone dripped with sarcasm.
“Hey,” said a voice from nowhere, “Even an idiot like this guy gets one right every once in a while.” This was accompanied by one of the rifle-toting guards suddenly pitching forward and dropping to the ground as if he’d just been whacked upside the head. Behind him, Jason and Verity shimmered back into existence.
“What—?” the other guard started, but got nothing more out before Jason swung his own rifle around and leveled it at him. “Drop it. Now.”
Stone grinned. “Jason. Verity. How nice of you to join us.” He couldn’t focus on them, though, because Dobbs and Sherman, caught by surprise by the sudden appearance of their two missing prisoners, were recovering quickly. Dobbs took off for the chamber exit while Sherman spun, lunging for the remaining guard who had dropped his rifle at Jason’s order. He clamped his hand on the man’s shoulder and, eyes blazing, aimed a spell at Stone.
Stone barely got a shield up in time to deflect it. “Get Dobbs!” he cried, gesturing toward the exit.
Verity was already in motion. She levitated the portly mage and floated him back into the room. “Want to chuck him into the portal?” she asked Stone.
“Nooo!” Dobbs’s scream edged on hysterical—he didn’t even try to fire a spell back at Verity. “Please, no!”
“Hold him!” Stone ordered, diving out of the way of another spell flung by Sherman and readying one of his own. The guard, whom Sherman was using as a power source, had gone ashen gray and swayed wildly on his feet.
Jason didn’t waste time on kindness. He spun his rifle around and hit the swaying guard in the back of the head, dropping him down next to his friend. As he did, he caught a look at the portal, which Stone currently had his back to. “Uh—Al—?”
Stone telekinetically grabbed Sherman and slammed him into a wall. “What?” he demanded as the skinny mage struggled back to his feet.
“The portal—” He pointed.
Stone backed up, turning sideways so he could keep an eye on Sherman while risking a glance at the portal. He immediately grasped what had caught Jason’s attention: the portal was shifting. Before it had merely flickered, but now it was actually changing shape, almost like a ball of clay being kneaded by some invisible hand. “Bugger,” he bit out through gritted teeth.
“What’s it mean?” Verity demanded, fighting to concentrate on keeping her levitation spell up on Dobbs. “What’s it doing?”
“It’s losing what little structural integrity it had,” Stone said. “Whether that means it will wink out again or go up like the one in San Francisco, I can’t say. Either way, it’s not good for us. Let’s deal with this lot so I can get to work.”
Jason pointed the rifle at Sherman. “You got three choices, and you better decide fast. You can let Al knock you out with magic, which probably won’t hurt much. You can let me knock you out by smacking you with the butt of this rifle, which probably will. Or you can let V toss you through that portal. Pick now, or I’ll do it for you. You won’t like my choice.”
Sherman glared, wide-eyed, back and forth between Stone and Jason. “I don’t think he’s kidding,” Stone said conversationally, shrugging. “Man’s got no sense of humor when it comes to people hurting his sister. Or his friends. Better make a choice.”
Sherman’s gaze darted over to the hovering Dobbs, and finally toward the entrance to the chamber in hopes that the cavalry was arriving to rescue him. When this didn’t happen, he sighed, turning back to Stone without a word.
Stone aimed a hand at him and cast the spell, a nimbus of blue energy appearing first around his hand and then around Sherman’s head. The other mage dropped, unconscious. “Not a bad sort, Sherman,” Stone said. “I think I might actually like him if he didn’t have his nasty little roommate in there. Dobbs? Same choice? Make it quick, please. I don’t like the look of that portal, and I’d like to get it sorted as soon as possible.”
Dobbs sighed and nodded. Verity lowered him to the ground, and Stone wasted no time in dropping him next to Sherman.
Jason tried not to look at the portal. Everything about it made him nervous, and it was getting worse. “Al—can you do this?”
“I don’t know,” came the mage’s tight reply. He was already going through the bags that Dobbs and Sherman had brought, rapidly laying out the various items on the cave’s floor. “Just keep people out. If you have to, shoot them.”
Verity shook, her breath coming fast. “You okay, V?” Jason asked. He had stationed himself off to one side of the chamber entrance and leveled his rifle at the opening, but when he got a good look at his sister he started to move toward her.
She waved him off. “I’m—okay,” she said in a trembling voice. “It’s that portal—just being near it is making me feel
wrong.” She swiped sweat off her forehead. “Watch the door. I’ll be all right.” She moved over to the other side of the opening and took up a position there.
Time passed, but slowly—each minute stretched out to an impossible duration. Jason, impatient, kept looking back over his shoulder at Stone. The mage was paying him and the surroundings beyond the portal no attention; he’d drawn some sort of complicated chalk perimeter around the roiling portal and was quickly setting up crystals and candles at what looked like the points of a strange, lopsided star, occasionally stopping to consult the notebook propped open off to the side. Jason was afraid to call to him in fear of distracting him, but in his mind every endless minute that passed brought them closer to someone coming up to investigate what was going on.
He didn’t want to shoot anyone, but he didn’t doubt he could do it if he had to—he was more worried about Verity. He’d given her the pistol from the man in the cell, and a quick primer on how to shoot it, but he didn’t think she’d ever fired one in her life. He had all three rifles, one in his hand and the others leaned against the wall behind him.
After what seemed an eternity, Jason was startled to hear Stone’s voice. “Jason?” It held an odd note.
Jason turned to him. He stood in front of the portal, his expression unreadable, holding a large red crystal in his right hand. Whatever magical construct he had been working on seemed complete now: the candles and crystals were all in place. Each candle was lit, their tiny glows nearly invisible next to the wild, fluctuating kaleidoscope of the portal itself. It seemed bigger and somehow less distinct, pulsing, its edges bleeding out into the dim light of the cave. “What? Are you ready to do it?”
Stone nodded. “Yes…” He still sounded strange.
“Is something wrong?”
“I—” He took a deep breath. “I know how to do it now, Jason. I know how to destroy it. I’m sure of it.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “You didn’t before?”
“Not completely, no. Not until I got a good look at it.”
“Al, what are you not telling me?”
Verity turned to look at them, but Jason waved her back “Watch the door, V.” Then, to Stone: “So—what do you have to do?” He was afraid of what he would hear.
For several seconds Stone didn’t answer. Eyes haunted, he held up the red crystal. “In order to complete the circle, I have to place this final crystal,” he said in a monotone. Hooking his left thumb over his shoulder toward the portal, he added, “—in there.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jason stared. “You—have to go in there? Al, you can’t—”
Verity, forgetting for a moment to watch the entrance, spun around wide-eyed. “No! Are you crazy? You can’t do that! You’ll—”
“Watch the door, Verity,” Stone said. There was no conviction in his voice. He sounded exhausted. “There’s no other way. I have to do it, and I have to do it soon.”
“Just let it wink out,” Jason protested. “We’ll try it again next time it—”
“Who says there’ll be a next time?” Stone asked. “They know we’re on to them now. They’ll guard it much more carefully than before. We’ll never get near it again.” Behind him, the portal stretched and popped out another shimmering gray ball of fog. It immediately streaked out of the cave, ignoring the occupants.
Jason couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Well—let me do it, then!” he insisted, stepping forward and reaching out for the crystal. “I can’t shut down the other portal. If you get sucked into that thing, we’re screwed. I’m expendable. You and V can finish—”
“No, Jason!” Verity yelled. Her forehead was dotted with sweat now as the portal’s intensity increased. Jason could almost hear it humming now—or perhaps he just felt it somewhere deep in his psyche. It was impossible to tell which.
Stone shook his head. “Very courageous, but it isn’t simply a matter of stepping in and tossing the crystal. It has to be set properly, or it won’t work. Besides, the creatures in there will tear you to pieces the moment you appear.”
“And they won’t do that to you?” Every one of Jason’s instincts cried out for him to grab Stone and hustle him away before he could finish his insane and suicidal plan.
“It will only take a few seconds. With your help, I think I can put up a barrier sufficient to hold them off for that long.”
“You think?”
Stone sighed. “We don’t have a lot of choice, Jason. It’s either do it or everything we’ve been working toward is all for nothing.”
“Jason!” Verity’s hushed but urgent voice cut in. “Dr. Stone! I think I hear something!”
Both of them stopped and listened. She was right: they could both hear what sounded like yelling voices, a scuffle, and what was unmistakably a gunshot. It didn’t sound close, but if they could hear it inside the cave it couldn’t be far off. “Hold them off, you two,” Stone ordered. “Long as you can. Kill them if you must.” He gripped Jason’s shoulder. “I’m not sure if this will work without keeping in physical contact with you, but now’s the time to find out. Just concentrate on feeding me as much power as you can.”
Jason didn’t argue. There was no more time to argue. He closed his eyes briefly and focused with everything he had, commanding his strange ability to channel magical power to Stone. As always, he had no idea how it worked, or even if it was working—he felt nothing. But when he opened his eyes again and looked hopefully at Stone, the mage was encased in a shining shield-bubble that blazed brighter than the sickening shifting colors of the portal.
“Go!” Jason yelled. “We’ll keep ’em out. And hurry the hell up!”
Stone immediately turned and ran toward the portal. Jason saw him pause for the barest of seconds and then disappear into that churning mass of discordant colors, saw it flare briefly brighter as if in anticipation, and wondered if they would ever see him again.
Verity returned to her post, leveling the pistol at the chamber opening. “Should we go out there and see what’s going on?” she asked.
Jason shook his head. “Sounds like there’s a lot of them out there. They’d shoot us before we figure out who’s who.”
She nodded, then glanced at the portal. “He said it would only be a few seconds,” she said, her voice shaky. “It’s already been—”
“Shh,” he hissed. “I’m concentrating.”
The scuffle, whoever it involved, had entered the cave now. Bobbing lights and shadows shifted on the wall of the passage approaching their location. Another gunshot. “Jason—”
“Shh,” he said again. He risked a look over his shoulder. The portal had changed colors again. Even in the few seconds he could risk to look, the new hues nauseated him. He’d never seen colors like that on Earth before, and he hoped never to again. The shifting and roiling increased, as did the low-frequency hum. “Al?” he yelled. “Al, if you hear me in there, get the hell out! Get out now!”
A figure hurtled into the room. It was the gray-haired, bearded man who had spoken to them in their jail cell, his face stricken with rage and panic. “You fools!” he cried. “No! You can’t—”
“Get out!” Verity yelled, glaring hard at the man. He stopped as if he’d run into a wall. He stared at her, eyes so wide that they almost popped from his head, and his hands went to his temples. “He’s fighting me, Jason!”
Jason didn’t think. He swung the rifle around and smacked the man across the back, pitching him forward in an awkward stutter-step toward the portal. Verity focused on him again. “I said out!” she yelled again, grabbing his shoulder.
The man screamed as something popped out of his head, still clutching his temples as if trying to hold it in. The thing wasn’t gray and formless, but neither was it the red-purple ball that Verity had driven from Gordon Lucas and Stone had captured in his magical cage. Instead, it appeared somewhere halfway in betw
een—vaguely round, colored in muted shades of the red and purple of its more powerful counterpart. The man’s body collapsed to the ground, leaving the energy ball to dart upward—but then it appeared to change its mind and altered its direction, streaking toward Verity. She raised her hands and fended it off, careful to take her finger off the pistol’s trigger so she didn’t shoot Jason.
Then the ball, flaring with desperation, changed direction again and flew toward Jason. He held up his hands like Verity had, fully expecting it to stop and change its mind—but instead, it settled over his head.
Verity screamed, but Jason barely heard it. Suddenly his brain felt strange, wrong, dissociated. His own thoughts were still there, but now they were mixed with other, alien thoughts—the strongest of which was that he needed to shoot Verity.
No! his own mind told it. I don’t want to shoot her! She’s my sister!
She is the enemy. She is our enemy. Shoot her now!
And then he was swinging the gun around to level it at the wide-eyed Verity. “Jason, NO!” she screamed. She stretched her hands toward him, her face screwed up in concentration, but her arms trembled.
You want me to shoot my sister!
Shoot her. NOW! She is the ENEMY! She will DESTROY us! SHOOT HER NOW! The voice rose to a crescendo in his head; his finger almost twitched on the trigger.
“Jason! Jason, I can’t get it out!” Her voice was nearly hysterical with panic. “I can’t make it leave!”
You want me to shoot my sister, you motherfucker! Jason’s anger, red and uncontrolled, the kind of rage that too often used to get him in trouble in his younger days, surged, and he made no effort to stop it. That is not gonna happen!
And then Jason’s mind was his own again. His vision filled with something red-purple and sickening, and then it was gone, and he stared at horror at his own hands holding the gun, its barrel still pointed at Verity. He jerked it upward and very nearly threw it aside. “V! Are you okay?”