The Forgotten

by R. L. King

  The stairs this time were a proper stairway, not the metal skeleton version backstage. Jason took them two at a time, still gripping Verity’s hand. At the top he glanced around the corner to make sure no one was lying in wait for them, then shoved Verity behind him. One of the gangers—the one with the exploded nose—was still coming, flying up the stairs half-blinded from the blood. Jason kicked him in the chin and sent him rolling head over heels back down, where he landed against his bewildered de-Eviled friend and didn’t move.

  “What the fuck is going on?” the bewildered ganger yelled to nobody in particular. “I just want to get the hell away from these fuckin’ loonies!”

  “You know another way out?” Jason yelled, pointing the gun at him. “Tell us, and I won’t shoot you!”

  “Uh—” The ganger’s mouth hung open, his breath coming so hard his whole body was bucking. “Uh—just the club. The rest of it’s sealed tight. They’re fuckin’ crazy!” Without waiting to see if his answer was sufficient to keep Jason from shooting him, he ducked back around the stairs and took off.

  Jason didn’t follow. Instead, he turned and hurried down the narrow space that was the tech booth. It was nearly empty now—the boards were still there, but they’d been long ago gutted of any electronics or anything else of value. The only other feature was a closed door halfway down the back wall—probably where the offices were located.

  Verity crouched in a threadbare folding chair, peering over the top of the half-height wall separating the booth from the auditorium. “See anything?” he asked. He took in the scene quickly: narrow catwalks extended out from the booth on either side, crisscrossing high above the auditorium. The remnants of broken light fixtures still hung from them, but it was hard to tell if they were safe enough to trust. He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.

  “They’re underneath us, I think,” she said, pointing. “I can hear them, but—”

  Jason was about to reconsider his reluctance to try out the catwalks in hopes of getting out where he could see better when suddenly a figure flew through the air down below and crashed in a heap in a pile of debris. The figure scrabbled to its feet, revealing itself to be a stunned ganger, and ran off into the darkness.

  “What the—?” Jason began.

  Another dark figure vaulted over a small pile of broken wooden bits and faced back toward the area under the tech booth. It raised its hands and what looked like blue lightning crackled around them, arcing back and forth between them. Jason and Verity, watching from above, saw by the lightning’s flickering illumination that it was Stone. His face looked positively manic, his hair disheveled, his eyes burning with intensity. He roared something they couldn’t understand and lashed out—the lighting flew from his hands and slammed into whatever was out of sight. There were two screams, and then silence.

  “Holy shit,” Jason breathed. “Remind me not to get on his bad side.”

  “Come on,” Verity urged, pulling on his arm. “Let’s get back down there and help him. And we still gotta find Lucas.”

  Jason paused long enough to check that there wasn’t another stairway on the other side—as far as he knew, the only way out of the upper floors was down the one they’d just come up—and then hurried to follow his sister.

  He overtook her halfway down the stairs. “Let me go first,” he told her. “In case anybody’s—” As he reached the bottom, he sensed something in his peripheral vision, off to his left.

  “Down!” he yelled, flinging himself sideways.

  His quick response most likely saved his life. He felt white-hot pain erupt across the upper part of his arm and spun around just in time to hear Verity scream “No!” and see a ganger holding a knife drop, clutching his head. A quick glance at his arm told him the knife had found a target; blood was already running down his sleeve. He couldn’t worry about that now, though. A second ganger lunged toward him, trying to pin him to the wall. Jason lashed out with a kick, sending the kid careening back into the opposite wall with a grunt, but he quickly recovered and plowed back into Jason.

  Jason kept waiting for this one to slump down too, but he didn’t. Maybe Verity’s power had to have a brief time to recharge. In any case, he couldn’t worry about that right now. The ganger had both of his arms pinned to the wall now—he was skinny and unhealthy looking, but he had the strength of a madman. Jason’s injured arm was alight with pain. He had to do something fast or—

  The ganger lurched sideways, roaring and spinning to face Verity, who’d just hit him over the head with a piece of broken wood. It wasn’t enough to take him out, but it was enough to get his attention. Yelling obscenities, he raised his hands and moved toward her, Jason momentarily forgotten.

  “Bad decision, asshole!” Jason yelled, clocking the enraged ganger with the butt end of his gun.

  The ganger staggered toward Verity who, finally getting it together, grabbed both sides of his head and yelled “Out!” The shimmering Evil flew free and exploded, leaving the ganger in a heap.

  For a moment both of them stood there panting. Verity looked back and forth, then moved toward Jason. “He got you,” she said. “Let me have a look at that.”

  Jason, pale and still puffing, shook his head. “We—gotta find Al,” he got out. “Can’t—stop.”

  “Screw that,” she said. “He was doing fine, and you’re not gonna be any good to him or anybody if you bleed to death. We have a minute. Now off with that sleeve.” She steered him over to a shadowy alcove.

  He sighed, reluctantly allowing himself to be steered, already shrugging out of his bloody jacket sleeve. His arm was on fire, streaked with blood running toward his hand.

  Verity quickly examined the wound. “It doesn’t look too bad,” she said. “I wish we had some antiseptic or something, but we don’t, so we’ll just have to make do. Tear off part of your T-shirt.”

  He did as he was told, ripping several inches off the lower part of his black shirt and handing it over. She took it and wrapped it around the wound, tying off a crude but reasonably effective bandage. “That won’t hold long,” she said, “but hopefully it won’t have to. Come on.”

  They could still hear sounds of combat as they hurried around the hallway under the tech booth. They burst through the crazily-hanging double doors leading to the auditorium, both looking wildly around trying to spot gangers, Stone, or anybody else.

  It didn’t take long to find Stone: he was off on the far right side of the auditorium, crouched behind another pile of debris. While Jason and Verity watched, he flung another bolt of energy at something unseen and was rewarded by a grunt of pain and a yelled obscenity. The two of them were poised to run out and join him when suddenly a bright something flew down from above and hit the mage square in the chest. Jason and Verity could see a look of utter astonishment cross his face—right before he slumped to the floor.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  “Take him to the office!” yelled a voice from the same direction where the bolt had originated. “I want him alive!”

  “That guy’s in the tech booth!” Jason whispered, pointing up. “There must be access to the office from up there behind that door. Come on!” He hurried along the wall over to the right side, trying to get to Stone before the gangers did. But as soon as he stepped out from cover, shots rang out. One tore into the wall not a foot away from him. “Shit!” he called to Verity. “Stay down! They’re on the stage!”

  Sure enough, he could see at least three gangers leaning out from cover in the backstage wings. Another muzzle flash bloomed and another bullet hit the wall near him. He ducked and skittered back along the back wall to join Verity on the other side of the door. “We have to get to Al,” he said.

  “They’ll have to go up the stairs,” she said. “Unless they have a back way in.”

  Jason nodded. “Come on. And be careful. Look sharp.”

  They pushed back through the d
ouble doors into the hallway and started off to the right toward the stairs when two more gangers rounded the corner behind them. Verity’s head whipped back and forth. “Run for it or fight?”

  Jason swore. How many gangers did they have? It seemed like they had an unlimited supply—or more likely, the word was getting out, and more were coming in through the club entrance. They needed to deal with this fast.

  He spun and fired an erratic shot toward the two gangers, who ducked back around the corner. There was no way he and Verity could make it to the other corner before the gangers could get a shot at them if they had guns. And already the gangers who had Stone had had enough time to hustle him upstairs. “Go!” he told Verity. “Just to the corner. I’ll cover you. Go now!”

  She did as she was told. He felt her hand squeeze his good shoulder, and then she was off. A ganger poked his head around the corner; Jason fired another shot and he ducked back. Jason began backpedaling toward Verity, keeping the gun trained on the space around the far corner. At least this one seemed to be working, but he only had a couple rounds left and no extra magazines. “Anything?” he called softly back to Verity.

  “Clear,” she called back.

  “Okay, go around. I’m coming now.” He sensed that he was only about ten feet from the corner, and took the chance that if they’d had guns, they would have used them by now. He turned and sprinted the rest of the way, executing a quick turn around the corner. The stairway, empty now, lay ahead of them. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go while it’s clear.”

  She started up the staircase, but almost immediately stopped short, causing Jason nearly to run into her. “Keep going!” he snapped, still afraid that the two gangers would make their appearance—possibly with reinforcements by now—any second.

  “Wait!” she called. She ducked down, scrabbling at something on the floor. “Be careful. Don’t move! You’ll step on it!”

  Jason froze, wondering what she’d found. Another gun? A dead body, or part of one? One of those incendiary grenades the DMW seemed so fond of? (He was grateful they didn’t seem to be using them in here, given the fact that the whole building was made of old, dry wood.) “What is it?” he demanded in a harsh whisper.

  She scooped something up and held it so he could see it. It was the small crystal-and-wireframe cube Stone had been carrying. “The cage?” he whispered.

  “It must have fallen out of his pocket when they were carrying him,” she said.

  “Or he dropped it on purpose,” Jason said eagerly, heartened by the thought. If he had dropped it on purpose, it meant two things—he didn’t want Lucas and his cronies finding it on him…and he was still alive.

  “Jason!” Verity yelled, pointing over his shoulder.

  He spun. In his surprise at finding the cage he had momentarily forgotten about the gangers, and they had taken that opportunity to make up lost ground. The two of them came pounding up the stairs, screaming and waving knives. Verity evicted one of them just as he reached her, shoving his unconscious body back where it smashed into his friend and took him tumbling down. Jason plugged him without a second thought. He was beyond caring about who he hurt at this point—his only objective now was to get to the office, rescue Stone, and deal with Lucas. Oh, and get the hell out of here and as far away as possible. That, too.

  “Go, go, go!” Verity urged, already pounding the rest of the way up the stairs.

  “Wait!” Jason yelled. “What if there’s—”

  “It’s clear!” She was already at the top. “Come on. We have to hurry. They won’t be expecting us this soon!”

  The tech booth was clear except for a pile of ashes and clothing that used to be a ganger—one that hadn’t been there last time they were there—on the ruined board. The door halfway down the back wall was closed. Verity grabbed the knob. “Shit, it’s locked!”

  “Back up,” Jason ordered. It didn’t look like a metal door—just a standard interior model. Verity stepped back and he wound up and kicked, just like they’d taught him. The door splintered away from the frame and flew open. Both he and Verity ducked off to the side in case anybody was waiting for them.

  Nobody was. The hallway beyond was deserted. There were two more doors, one on either side. “Which one?” Verity whispered.

  Jason was about to say he didn’t know when he spotted something—a faint flickering glow coming from beneath the one on the left. He pointed silently toward it, and she nodded.

  “Do we just break in?” she whispered. “Can we even do that?”

  Jason looked down at the gun in his hand. He double-checked it—still only one more round. “Whatever we do, we gotta do it fast.” No sound came from the other side of the door—either it was soundproofed, or they just couldn’t hear. Oddly, they couldn’t hear any gangers coming up the stairs either. Had they given up? That hardly seemed likely. He didn’t have time to think about it now, though—Lucas and his people could be killing Stone as the two of them dithered over what to do. “Get ready,” he told her.

  He rushed forward and kicked the office door open.

  It’s amazing the amount of detail you can process in the space of two seconds. That was about the amount of time Jason had to notice the detail in the office: Stone bound and unconscious on the floor, his overcoat with his magical items tossed in a far corner; a large desk, behind which stood a tanned, gray-haired man with movie-star features twisted into a rictus of hatred; another man, unassuming and mousy-looking, standing over Stone; the slumped dead form of another DMW ganger, his eyes fixed open in surprise nearby; a shimmering, glowing thing on the far side of the room, surrounded by flickering candles.

  A shimmering—

  Oh, fuck—

  “Holy shit, it’s a portal!” Jason yelled.

  Verity pushed in past him. “What? What are you—” Her eyes fell on the mousy-looking man and widened in shock. “Oh, my God, Jason! That’s the guy from the basement! At the halfway house!”

  “Kill her!” screamed the man with the movie-star looks—the man that Jason and almost every other person in America had seen for years smiling out at them from TV talk shows, telethons, magazines, and billboards. “Kill the girl!” he yelled in tones completely alien to the soothing, pleasant baritone with which he had interviewed entertainment royalty and addressed the country’s social problems.

  “Verity! Go!” Jason yelled. He was already swinging the gun around to cover the mousy man, who had to be the mage and was thus the stronger threat at the moment. “You try it, asshole, and I’ll plug you before you can get the spell off!”

  “Wait!” A weak voice called from the floor off to Jason’s left.

  Jason didn’t take his eyes off the Evil mage. “Al?”

  “Can’t—kill him,” Stone got out with difficulty.

  “What the hell? Why not?” The Evil mage was hovering there, obviously reluctant to make a move with Jason’s gun trained on him.

  “Can’t—Cage—”

  “I have it!” Verity yelled from the other side of the door. “I picked it up!”

  “See?” Jason said, still without turning. “We can—”

  “No…we can’t,” Jason could hear Stone shifting in his bonds, and the mage’s voice took on a strained urgency. “Only—one. Must—save—”

  “Only one? What the hell are you—” And then he realized what Stone meant. The cage was only built to hold one Evil. If they killed the mage and evicted the Evil from him, they’d either have to let it go free to take up residence elsewhere, or capture it and have nothing in which to capture the Evil possessing Lucas. “Shit!” he yelled. “Al, what—”

  And that was when he made his mistake. The shock of what Stone had said caused Jason to turn toward him as he spoke. It was only for a split second, but that was all it took for the man driven by a panicked and alien force to take his chance.

  The Evil-possessed
mage leaped forward, faster than one would have thought it possible for such a small and unassuming man to do, and clamped his hands on Jason’s shoulders. “Now, you die!” he whispered. His burning gaze locked on Jason’s, he leaned forward as if in expectation—

  —and nothing happened.

  Jason had no idea what the man had been trying to do, but he didn’t let him get another chance. The man was off balance, obviously shocked that whatever he’d been attempting hadn’t worked as planned. All at once Jason had a crazy idea. An insane idea. An idea that couldn’t possibly work. And yet—

  Roaring with rage, ignoring the throbbing pain in his arm and the fact that it was bleeding again, Jason flung his arms around the man and bull-rushed him forward—straight toward the portal.

  At the last moment, the Evil mage realized what Jason was doing. He screamed, struggling madly in his captor’s grip, but Jason was stronger. “No, you fool!” he yelled. “You don’t know what you’re—”

  Jason let go, shoving him forward. For a moment he teetered, arms flailing almost comically as he made a desperate attempt to regain his balance. His thin hand locked around Jason’s wrist as he went over backwards. Jason planted his feet, suddenly fearful. If he went over too, if he touched that thing—

  —And then Verity was there behind him, grabbing him around the middle. The Evil mage overbalanced, and his tenuous grip loosened. His screams echoed around the room, and then his head broke the shimmering surface of the portal and the screams silenced as if someone had hit a switch. The rest of him followed. The portal flickered crazily like a TV set that couldn’t tune in a station. It crackled, and the swirling surface roiled and surged. Verity staggered back, shaking, trying to get as far away from the portal as she could.

  “You—fool,” Stone said faintly from the floor. He was trying to struggle up, but his bonds were preventing him from doing so.