Night Magic

by Susan Squires

  “We’ll have to go back outside and come down the Bay of Pigs corridor,” Kemble decided. Nobody said anything about what had just happened. There wasn’t time. Nobody asked him what they’d do when they got to Senior, either. Good thing, since he didn’t know.

  “Let’s go,” Michael said. They turned to Jane.

  She gulped but straightened. The little column of light winked out. “Safer here if no one sees a light,” she murmured in apology. Kemble felt her take his hand. He was tired from the trip down “Code Lane” but it was manageable. Michael put a hand on his shoulder, and Tris was probably doing the same to Michael. Just like the field trips in kindergarten. Only this field trip was likely to be considerably more deadly.

  *****

  “Get me some light!” Morgan hissed. “Rhiannon, can’t you produce some lightning or something?”

  “I have been. Haven’t you heard the sizzle and crack? You just can’t see it.” She sounded frustrated. “This blackness eats up everything.”

  “Not everything.” Morgan clutched the Wand and felt its power course through her. Light, she thought. Nothing. Her arm began to shake as the power from the Wand increased, trying to obey her command. A tiny glow emanated from the Wand. It illuminated the faces of her troop, scared, like Phil and Rhiannon, or stony and blank, like Hardwick and Jason.

  “Okay. We can break the darkness.” She didn’t tell them how much it was costing her to do that. “But I can’t follow you around. You’ll have to find them in the darkness. Phil and Jason, get back into that corridor after Brian Tremaine. The man is helpless and Hardwick took down the one who can Calm things, so you should be fine. Rick and Denny, into the kitchen behind you. They spend a lot of time there and they probably hid the younger ones and anybody without magic somewhere near there.” Rick’s power wasn’t exactly offensive, since he turned metal into instant rust. On the other hand, locked doors were no protection from him. And Denny was a Percussive like Phil. Together, they’d do against regular humans. “At least with this dark that little bitch who can change the way things look is useless.”

  “What if we run into the guy who can heat metal things?” Rick asked. His face was frightened in the dim light from the Wand. Probably wondering what would happen to him if his belt buckle and his watch burned through his flesh.

  “Denny will shove his head against a wall,” she barked. “Now get going. Jason, you shout when you’ve got Brian Tremaine. I want to be in on that one.”

  The four with orders felt their way into the blackness.

  Morgan let the light fade. Her arm had begun to shake with the effort. She didn’t want her troops to see their leader vulnerable. She should have brought the Sword and the Cup for reinforcements, even if she just let Hardwick and Rhiannon hold them. And now here she was, not quite on the defensive, but not in control. Damn. Who had gotten a power that could suck all light away? And why hadn’t their contact warned her about it?

  *****

  Kemble pushed open the door above their little troupe and climbed out into darkness. The cool wind off the ocean was the only indication that they were even outside. Kemble had to keep reminding himself that the Clan had it worse than he did. They didn’t have Jane, and Kemble could keep an eye out through the security cameras. He felt as though he was split into multiple personalities, or watching one of those monitor displays that showed fifteen locations at once. He wished he were better at multitasking. Now he could see one of the Clan coming into the room they’d set up as a hospital. They had to get there fast or it would be too late for Senior.

  Michael came up into the darkness, the last of their party. “Go fast,” Kemble whispered to Jane. She did, guiding them around trees and bushes. They came to the French door that gave access to the Bay of Pigs. He pulled it open.

  “Found him!” the one in Senior’s room yelled. Kemble could hear the guy crashing around against the equipment. Through a camera above the bed he saw the guy raise the butt of a gun that looked like a rifle and bring it down on the console at the side of Senior’s bed. He shoved the other machine against the wall. Kemble had moments to act or Senior would be dead.

  “Hurry up,” the one in the hall called. There was no way around them. They were almost upon the one in the hall. They had to get to Senior now.

  Kemble stopped Jane to tell her to turn on her light so Tris could see to melt the guns. But Tris stumbled into him. Something clinked. Keys? Tris kept his keys clipped to his belt.

  “What was that?” the one in the hall hissed, turning toward them. His semi-automatic was raised and ready.

  The four of them held their breath. Kemble watched the one inside the room feel for the doorway. His gun was now out and ready too. If they sprayed the area, Jane would get hit. Kemble pulled Tris up beside him. He didn’t have to ask whether Tris was ready. Kemble tapped Jane’s shoulder.

  The dim column of light materialized down the hall. It illuminated two very surprised guys. Tris stepped out to the side. Kemble pulled Jane out of the way. Tris held up his hands. The two intruders dropped the guns, yelling. Bullets sprayed the ceiling just before the weapons turned bright red. Michael lunged around Tris. Two quick thrusts and the deeds were done. Black pools grew on the tiles under the men’s bodies.

  Jane’s shoulders were shaking under Kemble’s hands. She had never seen anyone killed at close range before. Neither had Kemble, but he didn’t have time to indulge his reaction.

  “See what they’re firing at.” Must be Morgan yelling.

  No use being quiet anymore. He lunged into Senior’s room. Tris was right behind him. Before Kemble could ask Jane for more light, a glow appeared from the foyer. Christ! The Wand.

  *****

  Drew crouched in the darkness of the wine cellar, trying to control the visions that kept flashing over her. The seven of them were all jammed together behind the cabinet the size of two or three armoires that was meant to house cheese. Tammy tried to soothe Jesse, who had started to cry. Lance was whining. Which was bad, because one of the visions Drew just had was of two men opening the door to the cellar in the kitchen above them. They looked infrared, like you’d see in a darkroom, or through infrared glasses. Drew knew she was seeing the fact that they were about to be found.

  “Devin,” she hissed. “They’re coming.”

  “Ready?” Kee asked, putting her hand on Devin’s arm.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Can you really break the bottles just by calling the wine? I mean, won’t the corks just pop?” Lanyon was the doubter.

  “Not if I boil it.” The grim determination in Devin’s voice made Drew proud of her adopted brother/brother-in-law.

  “Dude, you can boil it?” Lanyon sounded impressed.

  “Yeah. I been working on that. More later. I gotta concentrate. Tammy, keep Lance quiet.”

  Even Jesse grew silent as they heard the door to the kitchen open above them in the darkness. Tammy moved Jesse to Kee, over Drew, and grabbed Lance’s collar. Bagheera got his claws out as he crawled over Drew’s shoulder.

  The hell of it was Devin had to wait until the attackers were down in the cellar proper before he made his move. Drew had no idea whether he could make the wine bottles into weapons. This might all just be a futile last gesture. The bitch of it was they had to hold their breath and just wait as the steps thumped down the stairs.

  Jesse hiccupped loudly.

  There was a satisfied chuckle. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” a male voice sing-songed.

  Jesse hiccupped again. The steps turned toward their hiding place. Drew heard Devin’s huge intake of breath clearly because no one else but Jesse and the animals was breathing. Two sets of steps came across the old adobe brick of the wine cellar floor.

  Then all hell broke loose. The unmistakable clinking break of glass was almost overwhelmed by an explosive whoosh. The wood of the cheese pantry was bombarded with thuds. Jesse screamed. Tammy shrieked, Lance barked, and two male screams rent the cel
lar air. The thundering blows against the cheese pantry stopped. The screams faded away into gurgles.

  Devin thrust himself to his feet. “Come on. Time to get out of here. More will come looking for their friends and I’m out of ammunition.”

  Jesse was crying. The others gasped as they tried to get their breath. Drew realized that the intensity of the last moments had banished her visions, at least temporarily. Good to know. All she had to do was nearly get killed to calm her mind.

  “We can’t find our way in the dark,” Tammy sobbed.

  “Yes, we can,” Drew said firmly. “We’ll feel our way. Devin, find the stairs. We’ll go outside. At least we won’t be trapped here.”

  “Roger that, Drew,” Devin muttered. “Be careful of broken glass.”

  Kee made shushing sounds at Jesse.

  Drew was very glad they couldn’t see what lay beyond the cheese pantry. Jesse might be scarred for life if they could.

  *****

  The screams and explosions were definitely from the wine cellar. Kemble couldn’t breathe or think. Devin had done his thing, but had only the Clan been hurt?

  “Get to Rory and Denny,” Morgan shouted from the foyer. “They’ve found Tremaines.”

  “Sounds like they found more than that,” a male voice said. “We might be throwing lives away if we send anyone else down there.”

  “Phil and Jason are down,” another voice called. They must have seen the two bodies in the hall by the light of the Wand in the foyer.

  “Dead?” Morgan asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Damn. Why do I have to do everything myself?” The glow from the Wand got slightly brighter, though it wasn’t the sharp channel of excruciating light Kemble had seen up at Pendragon’s castle. Morgan was coming to finish them off.

  The machines behind Kemble were silent. Senior had to be his first priority. “Tris, blast anything metal that comes through the door,” he whispered. “I’ve got to fix Senior’s respirator.”

  “Will do,” Tris said grimly. “Damn Wand is metal, isn’t it?”

  Kemble had never thought of that. The Wand was silver according to Devin and Keelan. “Yeah,” he said. Maybe Tris could stand against the Wand. He had a better chance than Kemble or Michael.

  Kemble pulled a part of his mind away from the danger around them. He couldn’t afford to worry for Tris or Michael or even Jane. He slid his mind into the code that controlled the machines meant to keep Senior alive. One was damaged beyond repair. There were big holes in the code. But that was the monitor. He felt for the respirator. Its code was intact, just strewn into nonsense piles. The code required a reset, but he could do that. Jane’s light glowed dimly. He scrambled for the respirator control. The damn thing was unplugged.

  Behind him he heard Tris grunting with effort. Morgan said, “You think you can stand against the Wand with your puny powers?”

  He glanced back. Tris had his palms out, every muscle straining as though he was pushing against Morgan’s power in a physical sense. Morgan had begun to shake.

  “Take him out, Hardwick,” she yelled.

  An older man with a craggy face that looked vaguely like Boris Karloff stepped out beside Morgan and raised his hand. Tris gave a strangled scream and staggered, then with great effort righted himself, his chest heaving as he tried to keep his power centered on the Wand. He held his position for a long moment then slowly sank to his knees, making small grunts of pain. How could Kemble concentrate on the respirator when his brother might well be dying? But he’d forgotten about Michael. So had the Clan. Michael sprang out the door and drove that big-assed army knife into Boris Karloff and pulled it upward, then pushed the body over with the other two. He whirled to face Morgan.

  But Morgan turned the power of the Wand on Michael. He went reeling backward as a wavering beam of light hit him. Kemble tore his attention from the struggle and fumbled for the cord. He wouldn’t be any help to Michael. He had to get Senior back on life support. He shoved the machine back toward Senior’s bedside.

  “Morgan.” A female voice cut through the power that was humming in the air. “We have five dead, at least. We can’t afford those losses. Come away while we can still retrieve them.”

  Kemble shoved in the plug and glanced up as the respirator made a humming sound to begin the reset process, a process Senior couldn’t wait for. Morgan’s arm was shaking. Tris’s kneeling form was silhouetted in the doorway against the Wand’s light. Michael was plastered up against the far wall, holding his head. Two men dragged corpses back toward the foyer.

  “These big apes can’t win. I’ll bring back our dead after I’ve killed Tremaines.”

  “You’re endangering the Wand,” the woman pleaded, coming into view. She had cotton-candy-pink hair.

  Morgan’s face was suffused with pain as she clutched a Wand that had begun to smoke. Tris staggered to his feet again, his focus on the Wand.

  With half his mind, Kemble slid into the code in the respirator and rebooted it instantaneously as he connected the hose to Senior’s mouthpiece. Senior looked like a wax figure in the dim light from the Wand. Was Kemble too late?

  The light from the Wand winked out. There was a clatter on the floor. Only Jane’s dim column lit the room. It brightened as she shed light on the hall as well.

  “Damn you!” Morgan yelled. The Wand lay in a pool of blood that boiled and bubbled.

  Michael, freed from the assault of the Wand, stumbled back into the room. He pulled the door shut behind him even as Tris collapsed to the floor.

  Michael slid down the door until he was sitting. His head was bleeding copiously.

  Kemble saw, through the security cameras’ eyes, members of the Clan dragging bodies into the foyer from the kitchen as well as from the Bay of Pigs. They stumbled in the dark and banged into furniture and doorways. Outside Senior’s room, one of the Clan shrugged out of his coat and picked up the Wand with it.

  The only sound inside the room was heaving breath and the mechanical wheeze of the respirator. Jane stood, shaking, in the middle of the room, her tiny glowing column still intact. Kemble had an idea.

  “Give them some light, Jane,” Kemble said. “It will get them out of here faster.”

  Jane gave him a surprised look. Then she got a determined set to her mouth. The security cameras let him see that she had lifted the darkness in the foyer and outside the house. Kemble put his hand around his father’s throat and felt for a pulse in his carotids. He heaved a sigh of relief as Senior’s pulse thrummed erratically back at him.

  “He’s alive,” he whispered to Jane and Michael. “How’s Tris?”

  Michael felt for his brother’s pulse as well. “Just passed out, I think. That guy could somehow cause pain from a distance.” Tris groaned and his eyelids fluttered.

  Through a security camera in front of the house, Kemble saw Morgan turn, her face a mask of hatred and anger. “This isn’t the last of me,” she threatened. “Next time you’ll have to stand against all the Talismans.”

  Kemble glanced to the views other compartments of his mind were monitoring. One of the Clan was coming from the van outside with a couple of big plastic jugs. He began sloshing them over the draperies in the living room and the foyer as others loaded their dead comrades into a van parked in front of the house.

  Uh-oh. Gasoline? Some other kind of accelerant?

  Morgan’s rage became an unholy grimace of satisfaction as Clan members began tossing matches at the soaked fabric. The drapes became torches.

  The vans pulled away as smoke began to billow in under the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “They’re gone,” Kemble yelled.

  Michael lunged for the door and pulled it open to rolling billows of smoke. Tris staggered to his feet.

  “Jane, stay with Senior.”

  What the hell were they going to do about this fire? The Breakers would be consumed by the time the fire department was notified and got here. And they couldn’t move
Senior. Kemble stumbled out into the foyer. The smoke was punctuated by crackling flames licking up the adobe walls and blackening the wood-beamed ceiling.

  “Michael, get the others from the cellar,” he choked.

  But Devin appeared in the doorway, his shirttail over his nose and mouth. “They’re all safe outside,” he coughed. “Morgan and crew just tore out the front gate.”

  “Place is going up,” Michael said. “Can we move Brian’s machines outside?”

  “No power outside.” Kemble shook his head.

  “I can power them.” Tris, looking exhausted, stumbled back toward the Bay of Pigs.

  “Wait,” Devin called. “I think I’ve got this one. Gonna make a mess, though.”

  Kemble realized what his adopted brother was thinking. “Mess we can clean up. Charred ruins, not so much.”

  Devin looked around, his eyes going unfocused. “Now where’s the water main?” he muttered.

  *****

  Jane led Brina through the swirling water, ash, and charred remnants of draperies to Brian’s room. The sirens were fading. Two ambulances took Ernie and Mr. Edwards to Torrance Memorial. Miraculously, none of the security staff was dead, though Mr. Edwards probably had a punctured lung. Tris was riding in the third ambulance with Maggie. That was the only way they were going to get Tris to go in and get checked out. He kept fainting, which wasn’t right. The paramedics had alerted the local police to the attack. Kemble was talking to Palos Verde’s finest out in front of the house even now. The family had made a hasty agreement that they would pawn this off as a robbery attempt gone wrong.

  “Will you sit with Brian?” Jane asked her surrogate mother, now mother-in-law, softly.

  Brina, usually so in control of the family, looked lost and anxious. “How do we know he’s okay if the monitor is broken?” she worried. “Was he damaged by that lapse in power?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jane tried to sound reassuring, though they wouldn’t know anything until the doctors tried to revive him. And whether his condition was worse than it would have been without that power lapse they’d probably never know. “The respirator is working fine now, and his pulse has steadied.”