by R. L. King
“Play it by ear, then,” Dreja said. “Let’s get moving before they realize their outside guards aren’t answering.”
They hurried across the open space between the car and the fence; a couple of quick levitation spells from Winterhawk later, they’d all sailed high over the razor-wire fence and landed silently in the parking lot.
“I’m not getting any cameras,” Scuzzy said. “I don’t think they’re watching us.”
“Spread out and head for the door,” Winterhawk said under his breath. “If they are watching, we don’t want to be sitting ducks for any area spells.”
They reached the front doors without incident; apparently the guards were intended to discourage anyone from approaching. Scuzzy examined the doors: they were armored glass, covered on the inside with a black coating that prevented any view of what was going on beyond them. “That’s a pretty sophisticated maglock and alarm system for an abandoned building. They don’t want anybody getting in here.”
“Can you crack it?” Ocelot asked.
Scuzzy snorted. “With my brain tied behind my back. Just give me a sec.” He pulled out his deck and concentrated as the others kept watch for anyone approaching. After less than a minute, the tiniest of buzzes broke the silence and Scuzzy grinned and stowed his deck. “There. Maglock’s neutralized, and the system won’t go off when the door’s opened.”
Ocelot, Dreja, and Kivuli drew their guns and took up positions on either side of the door. Winterhawk and Narrah stepped back with Scuzzy, and Winterhawk used a spell to pull the door open. When nothing attacked, they moved inside.
A few meters inside was a solid wall blocking their view, but intermittent, flickering light shone through wide openings at both ends.
Without waiting for a response, he crept down to the end of the wall. He had already masked his potent aura before they arrived; now he wreathed himself in an invisibility spell and cautiously poked his head around the end of the wall.
For a moment, Winterhawk didn’t answer. He didn’t even notice Ocelot’s text, because he was too busy staring at what was spread out in front of him.
It might not have been the most impressive ritual he had ever seen in his many years of practicing magic, but it was certainly near the top of the list. The cavernous building housed a single enormous open area, its roof held up by massive pillars at wide, regular intervals around the cleared floor. In the center, spreading out at least ten to twelve meters in diameter, was an intricate circle of large, painted standing stones, delicate sand paintings traced on the carefully cleared floor, and braziers burning with reddish fire that provided the room’s only light. Between the stones stretched a shimmering reddish field that rose in a dome, completely enclosing the circle. Outside it, a dozen figures moved restlessly around, dividing their attention between what was going on in the circle and the remainder of the building’s empty floor. The ones Winterhawk could see clearly all cradled weapons in their hands: SMGs, shotguns, pistols. They all looked like Aborigines.
<’Hawk?>
he sent back, distracted, squinting to see past the barrier and into the center of the circle.
There were fewer people there: perhaps six in total. Each wore what Winterhawk assumed to be Aboriginal ceremonial dress, but each outfit was different, most likely indicating that they were from different geographical areas. They faced inward, each at one point of the circle. Their arms were raised, their attention focused upward. Around the center of the circle, several obviously dead bodies lay. As Kivuli had said, some of them looked like raggedly dressed teenagers—street kids.
In the exact center was a small stone platform. On top of this was a familiar sight: the serpent sculpture Kivuli’s group had stolen from Narrah’s people. Now, though, it wasn’t alone: another one, its twin as far as Winterhawk could tell, coiled around it, the two of them joined together in a way that would have been impossible had they been carved of mundane stone. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw them both move, adjusting their coils as if getting more comfortable.
However, of all the compelling sights within the ritual circle, it was the subject of the koradjis’ focus that claimed most of Winterhawk’s interest. Floating above the circle, above the dome, was another barrier, this one vaguely egg-shaped. Inside was a single man, tall and powerful, his bare chest painted with mystical symbols, his arms spread wide in a gesture of summoning. He too was an Aborigine, also dressed in ceremonial garb, though his was more elaborate than his fellows’. It was his eyes that Winterhawk noticed most, though: blazing with a mad and unearthly light, they illuminated the man’s face in a harsh, unhealthy glow. When Winterhawk shifted to astral sight, the man’s aura lit up the circle, radiating out from his body to a distance of more than a meter. “Bloody hell…” he whispered.
“What?” Ocelot demanded.
“They’ve already done it. They’ve already summoned Akurra’s spirit. He’s got to be possessing the man inside that floating force field.”
And at that moment, the man turned, and his gaze fell on Winterhawk. A cold smile split his face and he pointed his hands at the wall the mage was hiding behind.
CHAPTER 44
SYDNEY
TUESDAY EVENING
“Go! Go!” Winterhawk flung himself backward, barely getting a barrier up in time to protect himself, Ocelot, and Scuzzy as two meters of the wall they stood behind exploded into a haze of dust and flying debris. Invisibility forgotten, he landed in an ungraceful sprawl on top of Scuzzy, while Ocelot used his augmented dexterity to remain upright and leap out of the way.
Precious seconds ticked by as Winterhawk and Scuzzy extricated themselves and got back to their feet. “Oh drek oh drek oh drek,” the decker muttered under his breath, looking terrified.
“Stay back here,” Winterhawk ordered, moving fast. The sound of gunfire came loud and fast around the barrier. “Anyone gets near you, shoot them.”
“Y-yeah,” Scuzzy said from where he crouched near the ragged end of the wall. “I’ll watch through Ocelot’s and Dreja’s cybereyes.”
When Winterhawk rounded the wall, the battle had already begun. Ocelot, Dreja, Kivuli, and Narrah had spread out, taking cover behind nearby support columns, where they were exchanging fire with the mundane Aborigines.
Winterhawk triggered his glowing magical armor and spared a quick glance toward the center of the circle as he found cover behind another column. Oddly, the man in the floating egg-shaped field had not pressed his advantage, and once again seemed to be focusing on something none of them could see. The six koradji behind the reddish barrier had neither moved nor appeared to notice the intruders, leading Winterhawk to believe that they were concentrating on keeping the barrier powered and their leader safe.
He noticed something else too, just before one of the mundane Aborigines spotted him and opened up with his SMG, taking chunks out of the column and forcing him to duck back under cover: Something was forming above the leader’s head.
It was small and indistinct, but Winterhawk knew what it had to be: the gateway Akurra was opening to bring in the spirits. He couldn’t be allowed to do it. They would have to take care of these mundane opponents fast if they had any hope of figuring out how to bring down that shield before Akurra was successful. He gathered mana to him again, reveling in the feeling of it flowing, smooth and surging with power, through his body. The chance he’d had to rest and eat, even despite the exertions getting into Sydney, had restored his strength now that the malevolent spirit was gone from him, and he didn’t hold back.
Muttering words of power, he flung the spell at a group of three of the Aborigines who had unwisely gotten too close to each other. Their armored jackets provided no protection against the power of his magic; all three
screamed, clutched their heads, and dropped, their weapons clattering to the floor.
The Aborigines weren’t stupid, and were almost certainly in communication with each other. When Winterhawk had taken out three of their number with a single spell, the rest quickly got out of his line of sight. One was now parked behind a column on the other side of the circle, keeping up covering fire on Winterhawk’s column. The mage waited for him to duck behind it to reload, then recast his invisibility spell and hurried to another nearby column. He pulled up his AR, noting the red dots where his teammates had marked the positions of the other Aborigines. Eight left, but he couldn’t currently see any of them. He’d have to move again.
He was about to do just that when Kivuli shot out from behind another column, clearly attempting to move to the next one and resume firing.
Winterhawk looked on in shock from his vantage point as she screamed, struggling in vain to stop herself, but the man on the other end was too strong, her forward momentum too great.
She crashed into the barrier.
Her screams abruptly stopped as her body disappeared, instantly vaporized into a red haze that hovered for a second as a cloud around the barrier’s edge, then dissipated.
“Kivuli!” Winterhawk yelled.
From his new vantage point, Winterhawk could see Narrah, crouched behind another pillar.
Gunfire chattered again. “Drek!” Dreja yelled. Then over the link:
Winterhawk gritted his teeth. Six mundane Aborigines left. He spared a glance at the circle; as yet, nothing had changed. The six koradji were still turned toward the center, with Akurra’s host still floating in his bubble. The snake-things still coiled and writhed at the middle.
Wait. Something had changed.
Above Akurra, the glowing, shifting gateway had grown larger. It was now about the height of a man, its colors becoming more distinct. Winterhawk thought he could see things shifting around on its other side.
Winterhawk watched as Ocelot seized the Aborigine bodily and flung him toward the barrier. He winced, bracing himself for the scream and the red haze…
And nothing happened.
The man flew through the barrier as if it weren’t there, managed to regain his balance before falling over, and surged back out of the circle. He opened fire on a surprised Ocelot, who was barely able to dive out of the way in time to avoid being hit.
Winterhawk frowned, mind spinning as he flung another spell at the Aborigine before he could press his attack on Ocelot. The man stiffened and dropped.
Winterhawk glanced at the AR. Narrah’s green dot was only a few meters away from a red dot that had moved out from behind another column. The Aborigine must not have seen him since he’d been hiding the whole time in the same spot. The green dot moved too, but there was no sign of Narrah. He’s invisible, the mage realized, shifting to astral sight and spotting the boy’s glowing aura as it moved. The figure stopped, appearing to take aim with a spell on the unwitting Aborigine.
What Narrah didn’t see, probably because of his unfamiliarity with the group’s AR targeting system, was the other red dot behind him. Moving nearly as fast as Ocelot, the hulking Aborigine hurtled out from behind another column, directly toward Narrah.
Narrah moved fast, but not fast enough. The big Aborigine got his arms around the slim youth and bulled him forward toward the circle, yelling something that Winterhawk’s Aboriginal-languages linguasoft rendered as “Die, enemy!”
“Narrah!” Winterhawk yelled, gathering mana and trying to grab the apprentice telekinetically before he hit the barrier, but he wasn’t fast enough.
Screaming, flailing, trying desperately to break free of the larger man’s hold, Narrah made contact with the glowing red field—
—And went through, along with his attacker.
Both of them, off balance, fell hard. The attacker, surprise showing on his face, leaped up and lurched free of the barrier. That was Ocelot’s chance. He drew his shotgun and hit the man full force in the chest and head, dropping him.
Winterhawk was only tangentially watching that. Mostly, he was watching Narrah. The apprentice appeared dazed, but unhurt. The koradji inside the circle ignored him. What the hell was going on? If the circle was aspected to allow the other group to pass through it safely but kill anyone else, how had Narrah—
And then it came to him. Of course! It was the only thing that fit.
Winterhawk spun, mind still working fast.
Winterhawk looked closer, noting that both Narrah and his attacker had landed in a cleared area just outside the circle.
<’Hawk!> Dreja sent.
She was right: another red dot was approaching the circle from his side. He got a look at the man’s face: it was lit up with rage and some
kind of insane fervor, eyes locked on Narrah. He didn’t even appear to be paying attention to the rest of the armed group surrounding him. His intentions were clear: get Narrah out of the circle.
Winterhawk grinned, an idea taking hold.
Almost instantly the reddish dome dropped, fizzling and then disappearing. The koradji staggered, clutching at their heads as the psychic backlash of the barrier’s sudden catastrophic failure slammed them.
The koradjis’ ceremonial garb wasn’t armored, and in their confused and disoriented state they had no chance to erect armor spells before they were cut down by the automatic fire from Ocelot’s and Dreja’s assault rifles. One by one they screamed and went down, their bleeding bodies falling alongside of the innocents they had sacrificed.
Winterhawk started to answer, but then froze. He was still viewing the scene through astral sight, and noticed several things simultaneously: the egg-shaped barrier containing Akurra’s host had not been destroyed, and still floated several meters off the floor, as strong and brightly glowing as ever. The nascent gateway, growing larger and more distinct by the minute, was still present, as were the coiling snake sculptures in the middle of the pile of bodies.
None of these things were the most immediate focus of his attention, however. That would be the two spirits shimmering into being on either side of the circle. One rose from one of the intact braziers, a tall, reddish-flamed being of vaguely humanoid shape.