by King, R. L.
Jason did as requested, grabbing one of the handles and pulling gently. It didn’t budge. “Shit,” he whispered. “It’s—”
It was only then that he realized he’d lost track of one of the patrolling teachers. As he leaned in and took hold of the handle, a white face appeared on the other side of the window, peering outward. His eyes met those of one of the male teachers.
“Hey!” the teacher yelled, barely audible to the three on the other side of the door even from that close distance. He reached into his jacket, fumbling with something in his pocket. On the stage, Tarkasian yelled something they couldn’t hear; one of the other two teachers and the bus driver abandoned their candle-lighting task and headed for the door as well. The third teacher ran around the back of the circle and continued with the candles, moving faster than before.
“Fuck, they’re on to us!” Jason shouted, ducking away from the window. “Do it, Al! Blow the door!” He gripped Stone’s arm, focusing on using his power to boost the mage’s own.
Stone put his hands on the two door handles, concentrated for a moment, and then snapped out a command. The door made a loud pop.
Jason grabbed one handle as Verity grabbed the other, and they flung both doors open. A barrage of gunfire from two of the teachers exploded into the hallway, but Stone was ready with a shield, again using Jason’s ability to bolster it. Verity yelled something incoherent at the woman on the left and she collapsed, the Evil inside her dissipating into nothingness as it left her. Stone took out the other one with a stunning spell. They raced into the room as the bus driver tried to get a bead on them.
“Stop!” Tarkasian ordered.
“Or what? You’ll kill the kids? We’re on to you, you sick bastard!” Jason yelled.
The bus driver fired at Verity, but the bullet bounced off Stone’s shield, which flared alarmingly. Jason leaped forward and tackled him, taking him down as Verity evicted his Evil. It flew upward, darted around for a moment, and disappeared.
“Your flunkies are gone now, Tarkasian!” Jason yelled. “Give it up! Get away from that portal!”
Behind him, Tasha/Tammy screamed. “Don’t do it!” she yelled. “He’ll kill the kids!”
“Shut up!” Tarkasian cried, taking a step forward.
Light flared in the circle surrounding the children. As Stone, Jason, and Verity had been distracted, the remaining teacher had lit the final candle. The circle glowed with an ominous red hue, the tendrils joining the children becoming visible to the naked eye.
“No!” Verity cried, but she was too far away from Tarkasian to evict him. Instead, she reached out with her mind and grabbed him telekinetically just as Jason fired his gun. Instead of hitting him in the chest, the bullet tore through his leg. He shrieked in pain as Verity dropped him, then lay still.
“Don’t touch the circle!” Stone yelled, moving forward. “We’ll have to dismantle it properly, or—”
“I don’t think so!” yelled another voice. Stone suddenly flew back like he’d been hit by an invisible battering ram. He crashed into the concrete wall and collapsed, stunned.
For a second, Jason couldn’t figure out where the voice had come from. A woman? How—
—But then Tasha/Tammy, her eyes burning with malevolence, laughed. She levitated Jason and Verity, holding both of them a few feet above the ground. “You three are just like all the others!” she cried, moving forward until she stood directly in front of the children, just outside the glowing circle.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jason demanded. “What the fuck is going on?” He tried to get a bead on her with his gun, but didn’t want to risk missing the shot and hitting one of the kids.
“All the same!” Her face was lit with a strange insanity, suffused with rage. “Shane is the star! He’s the magician! He’s the one everyone watches. Is anybody watching little Tammy, the ‘lovely assistant’?” She flashed a rictus grin. “Maybe they should be. Because little Tammy’s not so little anymore, is she?”
Verity gaped at her. “You’re a mage, too!”
“Damn straight, and a better one than Shane could ever hope to be.” She sneered. “But tell me, kiddo, when was the last time you saw a female magician?” She gestured with her hands as she spoke, and the kids began to sway in unison, back and forth. “It’s easy to hide in plain sight when the only reason anyone pays attention to you is because you look good in a skintight evening gown and fuck-me heels.”
“You—let the Evil possess you,” Jason said, catching on. “For the power.”
“Bright boy,” she acknowledged, nodding. “And I even talked dear Shane into joining me. It wasn’t hard. I always could talk him into anything.”
“Tammy—” Tarkasian pleaded from the floor, reaching toward her.
“Shut up, Shane.” She waved her hands again, and the children’s swaying increased in tempo. “And now, how about I show you guys some real magic?”
“Bit late for that,” came a voice from the back of the room.
Jason and Verity turned their heads in time to see Stone, who had picked himself up off the floor and staggered forward, his eyes ablaze with hatred. He made a flinging gesture at Tammy—she barely managed to dodge his concussive blast by diving aside, but in doing so she had to drop Jason and Verity. They landed hard, but scrambled quickly to their feet.
Tammy did as well. “Don’t even think about it, Stone! You won’t stop us this time!” Her voice was different now: deeper, louder. She pointed both hands at him and unleashed a beam of magical energy. He deflected it with a shield, but the impact threw him sideways. The remaining teacher, forgotten in the chaos, aimed a gun at him as he rolled up.
“Stop!” Verity cried. She grabbed the teacher, levitated him toward her, and then forced out his Evil. It flew upward and the teacher collapsed just inches from the circle surrounding the children.
“Don’t break that circle!” Stone yelled, scrambling back up with difficulty. “Whatever you do, be careful!”
Tammy laughed. “So touching, how much you care.” She too looked tired, though, and obviously realized it. She flung Verity away from her and ran over to where one of the teachers was trying to struggle up. She clamped her hand on the man’s shoulder and then hurled a sheet of flame over the children’s heads toward Stone. The man’s body whooshed and disappeared, leaving only his clothes and a pile of ashes.
Stone dodged most of the blast, but cried out as part of it hit his arm. He clutched it and doubled over, face twisted with pain.
“Al!” Jason shouted. He vaulted over the folding table and tried to reach Stone. Tammy pointed her hands at him, still crackling with the power she’d gathered from killing the teacher. Her eyes were manic.
“No!” Verity yelled. She launched herself at Tammy, crashing into her. The two of them went down in a heap of flailing arms and legs.
Tammy bellowed something incoherent. Verity lifted off the floor and flew away from her toward the back of the room.
Toward the portal.
Verity screamed, desperately reaching out to grab anything to stop her progress, but there was nothing around her. She was going through, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. “Help!”
Suddenly she stopped in mid-air, just a few inches away from the shifting portal. She hovered there a moment and then dropped to the stage. Stone stood on the other side of the room with his hand pointed toward her, and then he was gone again, vanishing behind the children.
“I couldn’t evict her!” Verity wailed. “It didn’t work!”
Tammy shrieked and cast again at Jason, sending him crashing into one of the spotlight stands. He landed badly and lay stunned, his gun skittering into the dimness at the edges of the room. “Al…!” he yelled from the floor. “We gotta kill her!”
Stone didn’t answer. He rose, still cradling his injured arm, his gaze darting around as he hu
nted for Tammy.
She was back at the front of the group of kids again, taking advantage of her attackers’ momentary inattention. She had a glowing bubble shield around her as she levitated a few inches above the ground, her arms outstretched, her face still lit with that insane grin. Stone aimed a spell at her, but it bounced off the shield and caromed to the side.
“You can’t stop me now!” she cried, laughing. “You’ll never be able to stop us. There are too many of us.”
The circle glowed brighter, the kids swaying faster. Jason, still dizzy from his impact, forced himself to his feet and ran at Stone full-speed. He grabbed the mage’s arms in a viselike grip that made Stone cry out in pain.
“Al!” Jason shouted in his ear. “Punch it!”
Stone, teeth gritted with the strain of forcing himself to ignore the pain in his arm, put his hands together. He concentrated on drawing every bit of power he could draw from Jason, then focused it into a single beam. “Try stopping this!” he roared.
The bright blue beam lanced unerringly from his fingers to the egg-shaped shield encasing Tammy. For an agonizing second, it seemed that it wouldn’t have the power to punch through, but then there was a loud sizzle, and the barrier flared bright red and disappeared. The beam continued on its path—striking Tammy in the center of her chest and piercing straight through her, finally fizzling out as it struck the miasmic, shifting colors of the portal.
Tammy’s high-pitched death scream echoed through the hangar and was joined by—something else. Something loud and full of rage and frustration and hatred. As her body crumpled and hit the floor, a brilliant, purple and red glowing cloud rose up from her.
“Holy shit, it’s one of the big ones!” Jason yelled. “Al, can you stop it?”
But the evicted Evil wasn’t going to stick around to allow Stone the attempt. Even as he summoned his remaining strength to cast again, it flew around the room once, hovered in front of the portal, and then shot straight up through the hangar’s ceiling and was gone.
Chapter Forty-Three
The only sound in the hangar was the soft rumble of the generators, Tarkasian’s low moans, and the eerie shifting as the children continued to sway back and forth like participants in some kind of ghostly sports wave.
Jason picked himself up off the floor. “What now?”
Stone, pale and panting, still clutched his injured arm. “First,” he said between breaths, “We take care of Mr. Tarkasian who, unless I’m mistaken, is still harboring a fugitive.”
“Take care of him?” Jason asked. “You want us to kill him?”
Tarkasian moaned more loudly. “Help me,” he begged.
Verity went over to him. “I’ll heal your leg,” she said. “But you know we’re gonna have to knock you out, right?”
“Please. Help me.” He nearly sobbed now, his right leg soaked with blood. “I’m dying.”
The others moved closer as Verity bent to heal him. “Al,” Jason said, glancing back over his shoulder. “What about the kids? The ritual—”
“They’re safe for the moment,” Stone said. He held out his injured arm. “Verity, if you would be so kind—we don’t have a lot of time here.”
Verity nodded, concentrating. “I’m just gonna fix this so you don’t die,” she told Tarkasian. “Sorry, but I have to save most of my energy for Dr. Stone. And if you make one move, believe me, I’ll be happy to kick that thing out of your head.”
Tarkasian didn’t even twitch. He lay very still while Verity stopped the bleeding in his leg, and while she switched her attention to Stone and healed up his arm.
“Mmm,” he said in satisfaction, trying it out after. “You do have the touch, apprentice.” Then he turned without warning and plugged Tarkasian with a stunning spell.
“Now then,” Stone said, getting up and moving toward the children. “Let’s see about dismantling this ritual.”
“Is it hard?” Verity asked. “Is it dangerous to do it?”
He shook his head. “No. It just needs to be done in the right order. Jason, please disarm and keep an eye on our chaperones. I wouldn’t put it past the Evil to try to re-occupy them with fresh recruits.”
As Jason did as he requested, Stone paced around the circle. “The good news is, we’ll be able to re-use some of these ritual materials,” he said to Verity, who was following him. “Just—be quiet for a moment and let me concentrate.”
It took considerably longer than a moment; he paced around the circle’s circumference twice before finally stopping in front of one candle—as it happened, the last one that had been lit. “Stand back,” he said. “I’m not entirely sure what will happen here.”
As Jason and Verity watched from a distance, he bent and blew out the candle, then carefully moved it out of the circle.
The glowing perimeter and the tendrils that joined the children together collapsed like they had never existed, and all three of the observers realized that they’d unconsciously been hearing a subsonic hum that now ceased. The children stopped swaying and collapsed in their chairs, falling over each other as if they’d been playing a macabre game of Ring Around the Rosie.
Verity gasped. “Are they dead?”
Stone checked one of them. “No. They’re unconscious, or at least this one is. Come on. You two get them out of the middle and lay them out. I need to start working on this circle. I don’t like the look of that portal, and I want to get on with this, just in case they’ve got any cavalry on the way.”
“I want to get them outside,” Jason said. “At least behind those heavy doors. Just in case.”
“Do it,” Stone said, “but quickly. I’ll need your help when I get this circle sorted.”
Jason and Verity, moving fast, began picking up the kids and carrying them out into the hallway. None of them showed any signs of waking, which was probably good, since Jason wasn’t in any hurry to explain to them what was going on.
Meanwhile, Stone worked around the circle, moving the crystals and candles off to the side and adding the ones from his own backpack. Then he set about obscuring the chalk lines. Jason, carrying the last little girl, noticed the tense lines in his face as he headed for the exit. “You okay, Al?”
Stone didn’t answer.
“Al?”
He stopped, rising from his crouch. “Just realizing that this is it. I can’t wait any longer. Once I get this set, I’ll have to do it.” He didn’t meet Jason’s eyes.
Jason took a deep breath. “Will you—be able to do it? Because if you can’t—if you won’t—”
Stone shook his head. “I’ll have to, won’t I? That’s all there is to it. It’s like you said—sometimes things just need doing, and you have to do them. Right?” His voice sounded odd, toneless.
“Al—”
“No, Jason. Not now. Just—let me do this.” He finished obscuring the old chalk lines with his foot, then moved closer to the portal and began drawing new ones. “If you want to help, move her somewhere else,” he said, pointing at Tammy’s sprawled form. “She’s in the way.”
Jason carefully lowered the little girl to the ground, then hefted Tammy’s body and carried it off to the other side of the hangar. The remaining teachers and the bus driver were already there, trussed up in a neat row. Like the kids, they showed no signs of awakening. He took the little girl outside, then came back in, closed the door, and stood next to Verity. They both watched Stone as he worked.
“He’s scared, isn’t he?” Verity asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think he’ll be able to do it?” She watched the portal as it shifted, red to purple, purple to green, and back. It looked stranger than usual behind the doorway that had been erected around it.
“I hope so. This is it, isn’t it? If we can get this one shut down, then it’s just a matter of dealing with the Evil that are left on this side.”
“You make that sound so easy,” she said. “There are a lot of them—and probably quite a few of the big ones still around. You don’t think the one inside Tammy died, do you? It went off to possess somebody else. So we’ll have to deal with it again.”
“First things first,” Jason said, shuddering.
They didn’t know how long it was before Stone finally came back around the front of the portal, running a hand through his hair. “That’s done,” he said, letting his breath out in a long sigh. He held the final crystal in his hand.
“You’re ready to go?” Verity asked. “It’s time?”
Jason only now remembered something, and he stiffened. “Al—even if you succeed—remember the last time? The portal blew up and took out everybody anywhere near that blast. The kids—”
Stone shook his head. “I don’t think that will happen this time,” he said. He was still speaking in a monotone. “This one isn’t as far along as the other one. It’s not as unstable. It might still blow, but I think you’ll have time to get out before it does.”
“You think,” Jason said. “But you don’t know.”
He shrugged. “This is all speculation. Go if you like, but I don’t know how much longer things will be stable enough for me to do this.”
Jason thought about it a moment. He looked at Verity, then at the portal. He couldn’t tell, but it seemed like the swirling had picked up in speed and intensity a little. They didn’t have much time. He closed his eyes and sighed. “We’ll stay,” he said. “The kids are all out in the hall—there’s no time to get them any further away. This place was supposed to be armored against nukes—hopefully the thick walls will protect them if anything goes wrong. If we lose the chance to shut this down because we wait too long—”
“It’s war...” Verity whispered, tears glittering in the corners of her eyes.
Stone nodded. He took a deep breath. “All right. Jason, give me all the power you can manage, and stand back. If I don’t come back in one minute, just—do what you can to get the kids out of here.” He still wasn’t looking at them; his face was pale, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. “No other choice, my friends.”