by R. L. King
“What the hell is going on?” Jason demanded, his gaze darting back and forth between Stone and Gordon Lucas.
“They’ve—tried to construct a temporary portal,” Stone said. He looked pale and he was bleeding from a cut on his head, but he appeared to be gaining strength. “It’s—failing.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Oh, fuck,” Jason breathed. “What happens if it fails?”
He didn’t get a chance to answer before Gordon Lucas spoke. “You won’t leave here alive,” he said. His voice sounded calmer now, and Jason could definitely hear the beloved talk-show host and philanthropist behind the mad words the thing inside him was saying. “The others will be here soon. Even if you kill me, you know I won’t be truly dead. It will be unfortunate to lose this vessel—it’s served me well, and it will be difficult to find another that will be as suitable. But no matter. A temporary setback at best. And now I’ve got all three of you here.”
“Al?” Jason sounded urgent. “The portal?”
“If it goes, it’ll take out most of this building,” Stone said. He glared at Lucas. “Including you. Not just the vessel. All of you.”
Lucas grinned, showing large, white, capped teeth and somehow making the handsome face look macabre. “How little you know, mage. Just keep talking. They’ll be here soon.”
Jason glanced toward the door. Where were the DMW? Why hadn’t they come? Why couldn’t he hear anything outside?
“You might as well put that gun down, boy. You aren’t going to use it on me, and we both know it.”
“Like hell,” Jason snapped, not lowering the pistol from where he had it aimed at Lucas’s heart. “You make a move, I’ll blow you away.”
“No you won’t, or you’d already have done it,” Lucas said. “A failing of your kind—you always want to preserve the vessel. Don’t you see that this is all you’re good for—to be vessels?”
“Yeah, talk it up, scumbag,” Jason said. He’d noticed that even Lucas now seemed to be casting furtive glances toward the door, as if he too were wondering where his backup was. “We got time.” Without turning, he said to Verity, “V, can’t you—?”
“Trying,” she muttered, her voice thick with frustration. Stone was silent; Jason could see him past Lucas, and he looked like he’d passed out again. That wasn’t good.
“Ah, yes,” Lucas said. “I should deal with you. I don’t know where you got that annoying power of yours, but I really can’t allow you to keep it. You’ve caused me and the others far too much inconvenience.” He rose from behind the desk and smiled at Jason. “Go ahead and shoot me if you want to. Even if you wound me and I don’t die right away, your mage friend is right—that portal is going to lose its structural integrity soon, now that you’ve killed the only one who can control it. Do you want to take the chance that I’ll survive it, even if this vessel doesn’t?” He moved around the desk and looked at Verity. “You, however, are different. I need to ensure that you don’t get out of here alive. No more inconvenient escapes for you.” He stood over her and smiled. “And your fear as you die will make me stronger. That’s the best part.” He stepped forward—
Stone, directly behind him and far from unconscious, lashed out with his bound feet, catching Lucas hard in the backs of his knees. The Evil roared something in a language that none of them understood, pitching forward toward Verity, reaching out with his arms toward her—
“NO!” Verity yelled. She closed her eyes and pushed with everything she had. Her effort was clear—this was no simple ganger.
Lucas’s handsome face contorted into ugliness, something inside him struggling against her. Jason watched in horror as his features twisted and became inhuman. He heard something crack; when blood appeared at the man’s mouth, he realized that Lucas must have been clenching his teeth so hard that he’d broken them—or maybe his jaw.
Verity’s face was screwed up in concentration, sweat beads bursting out on her forehead. “You—get—the fuck—OUT!” she screamed, emphasizing her words by pushing out physically with her hands on his chest.
Lucas screamed, too—it was a sound unlike any of the three of them had ever heard. An inhuman, alien sound of rage and agony and shock. His hands flew up and clutched at his head, his nails ripping the tanned skin, which sprouted blooming, bloody wounds in their wake. He looked like he was trying to pull off his own face. Then his whole body went rigid and he fell backward, crashing into the desk. The old wood broke and splintered into a heap of cracked debris, Lucas’s twitching body in the midst of it.
And something broke free of it and flew upward.
It wasn’t an indistinct ball of white mist like the evicted gangers had ejected. This one glowed a sickening, reddish-purple hue, bright as a light bulb, but somehow not illuminating the rest of the room. It looked like a small, unhealthy sun hovering there in the air, appearing for the moment to be disoriented.
Jason was not idle. He leaped across the room, pulling out his knife and getting behind Stone. The mage had been bound with plastic zip-ties; Jason sliced through the one holding Stone’s hands behind his back, and he pushed himself up to a sitting position while Jason worked on his feet. “Quickly!” Stone yelled to Verity. “Before it escapes! Cage!”
Verity, momentarily shocked by what she’d seen, recovered her senses. Fumbling inside her jacket, she pulled the little apparatus out and tossed it to Stone, who deftly caught it. Shaking free of the bonds Jason had cut from his feet, he struggled up and held the cage aloft near the hovering form. Breathing hard, he began reciting an incantation in the same odd language Jason had heard him use before. His eyes were fixed on the Evil, unblinking and intense.
The glowing ball obviously had some knowledge of what was in store for it; it tried to make a break for it, first heading toward the door and then changing direction abruptly and darting toward the portal, which was now rolling and surging with alarming frequency. It moved toward Jason, then toward Verity, who glared at it and waved it away. Then, finally, it began to move, slowly and with great protest, toward Stone and the cage he held.
It looked like the world’s strangest tug-of-war match, or like an odd fisherman trying to land an even odder fish. The glowing ball would draw closer, then move away a bit. Each time, though, the distance it pulled away was a little smaller than the distance it was pulled toward Stone. Closer and closer it got to the cage, its light flaring first purple, then red, then a clashing mix of the two. If it were possible for a glowing ball of energy to panic, then it was quite clear that was what this one was doing. Stone’s arms shook with the strain of focusing his will on the ball. He was fixed on it and nothing else.
So was Jason—until he smelled something burning. He allowed himself a quick second to glance to the side, and what he saw made his blood freeze. The force of Lucas’s body crashing into the desk and destroying it had sent chunks of dry, rotting wood off to the side, knocking over two of the candles near the portal. A small blaze was forming, fueled by the dry wood of the floor and the desk.
“Al!” he yelled. “Hurry it up!” He snatched up the first thing he could get his hands on—Stone’s coat—and threw it over the flames, trying to smother them. It was too late for that, though: the coat caught fire and the flames began to spread.
“No, Jason!” Verity wailed. “The crystals—”
Too late, Jason realized that all of the crystals and other objects Stone had created to help him channel magic had been in his coat. He tried to grab it back, but the fire was already flaring up around it. “Al!” he yelled again.
It wasn’t clear whether Stone had heard his words or noticed the loss of his items, but something in Jason’s urgency must have gotten through. He tightened his grip on the cage, gritted his teeth, and leaned forward, passing the little construct through the seething mass of purple and red. Something screamed—more in their minds than an actual physical sound—and then the glowing ball blinked ou
t of existence, reappearing in miniature form inside the cage. Stone dropped to his knees, puffing and pale, his head bowed. He stuffed the cage into his pocket.
Verity grabbed his arm and tugged. “Come on,” she urged. “We gotta go. I don’t know what that thing in the corner is, but it doesn’t look healthy. And the place is on fire!”
Those last words finally seemed to reach him. With effort, he dragged himself to his feet. “Let’s go,” he agreed. “Where’s my—” His gaze fell on his jacket, which was blazing merrily now. His expression hardened, but there was nothing to be done about it now. “No matter. We have to get out of here before that portal blows.”
“Or we burn to death,” Jason muttered. “Let me take point, in case there are any more gangers out there. With any luck it’ll take a while for the fire to spread, and we can find another way out. How long before the portal goes, Al? Do you have any idea?”
Stone sighed. “No way to know. From the look of it, maybe fifteen minutes. If we’re lucky.” He hurried out behind Jason.
“Wait!” Verity said suddenly when they were out in the hall and about to shut the door.
“What?” Jason was trying not to panic, but it was getting harder.
“What about Lucas? He’s still in there! And he’s not Evil anymore!”
“Oh, crap!” This was one of those times when Jason really hated having an overdeveloped conscience. “Crap. We can’t just leave him.” He was already spinning around to head back in. Stone followed, with Verity bringing up the rear.
Lucas was conscious again, and standing near the fallen DMW ganger. He was unsteady on his feet, his face was bleeding from where the Evil had torn at it, and his expression was one of abject horror. He held a gun loosely in one hand.
“Don’t shoot!” Jason yelled. “We gotta get you out of here.”
“Out?” Lucas seemed to be barely aware that he was talking to anyone. Tears ran down his face, joining with the blood and staining his expensive suit. His gaze traveled around the room, taking in the portal, the dead ganger, the growing fire. “My dear God. What—what have I done?” His voice was a dead monotone, his eyes haunted.
“Mr. Lucas—” Jason took a step forward, not taking his eyes off the gun in the man’s hand. “Just—”
Stone came up alongside him. “He’s not coming, Jason,” he said gently. He looked at Lucas, and some understanding seemed to pass between the two of them. He touched Jason’s arm. “Come on—let’s go.”
“But—”
Lucas raised the gun—but not to point it at Jason or Stone. Instead, he raised it to his own head. “I’m so sorry…” he said softly.
“No!” yelled Jason, diving forward, but it was too late.
The gun went off, taking the side of Lucas’s head with it. Blood and brains and perfectly coiffed silver hair flew out, staining the walls and, even more sickeningly, speckling the miasmic surface of the failing portal and slowly absorbing through and disappearing. Jason stared in shock, moving closer to Stone in an effort to shield Verity from the sight. For once, she didn’t protest. Lucas’s body crashed twitching to the floor for the last time, the flames licking at his legs and igniting his suit.
“Guys—come on!” Verity urged, near hysteria, grabbing each of them by an arm and tugging. “We have to go!”
As one, the two men turned and hurried after her. “How are we gonna get out?” Jason said, scanning the area ahead of them for gangers. “We can’t go through the club. And we still gotta go back for the prisoners.”
“If they’re still alive,” Stone said. He was staggering a bit, as was Jason, but they both moved as fast as they could down the stairs. Jason half-expected to see gangers any second, but so far all they encountered were the bodies—unconscious or dead—of those they’d already dispatched. Jason and his overactive conscience felt a twinge of regret that there was no way they’d be able to get them out—after all, it hadn’t exactly been their fault that they’d been possessed by extradimensional horrors—but there was no helping it. If they found a way out and the place hadn’t gone up yet by the time he got Verity out safely, he’d consider coming back in for them. Otherwise, all bets were off.
By the time they reached the ground floor and hurried down the hallway toward the shop and where they’d left the former captives, they could already smell smoke. “I don’t think we have too long,” Jason said. “I know smoke rises, but this place is in bad shape. That whole second floor section—the whole fucking roof—could come down once that fire takes hold.” He raised his voice as they reached the under-stage area. “Come on out, you guys!” he yelled. “We gotta get out of here fast!”
A few seconds passed, and then the bedraggled group of former captives came out, picking their way out through the debris, led by the Forgotten man. All of them looked considerably less shell-shocked and terrified than they had when Jason, Stone, and Verity had left them there.
“What happened?” the bearded man asked. “Can we go now? Is it safe? I smell something.”
“The place’s on fire,” Jason said. “We have to get out fast. Did you see any gangers?”
“We took out a couple of them,” the bearded man said, looking proud. “They didn’t see us, and we took a chance.”
“How are we getting out?” asked one of the women, frightened. “Did you say the place was on fire?”
“I can smell the smoke too,” said the boy.
“Al,” Jason spoke up. “The crystal you gave him—can you—?”
Stone shook his head. “It’s tuned for concealment, not combat. It won’t—”
He didn’t get to finish as the air was filled with yelling voices and pounding footsteps. “There they are!” one voice cried. “Get ‘em!”
Everyone spun in toward the voices in time to see three gangers skid to a stop at the top of the metal staircase above them. Two reached in their jackets. “Die, fuckers!” yelled one.
Jason reacted instinctively, firing at the one who’d yelled with his last round while shoving Verity to the side behind a large broken light fixture and diving on top of her. “Down!” he screamed, unable to stop the second ganger before he flung something into the midst of the group.
Stone reacted fast, grabbing the arm of the nearest prisoner—the Forgotten man—and launching the two of them forward to roll under one of the wooden workbenches. The rest of the homeless group wasn’t so lucky. The incendiary grenade hit the ground between them and exploded, and suddenly the air was full of agonized shrieks and the smell of burning flesh and hair as the remaining former captives caught the brunt of the grenade’s effect. The hallway lit up with flames, fanned further as the terrified, dying people ran around in a desperate and futile attempt to outrun the inferno.
Verity screamed, shoving her way out from under Jason, to get to them, to do something—anything—to help. She glared at one of the gangers and evicted his Evil with barely a thought.
The remaining ganger, seeing now that by tossing the grenade where he did, he’d cut off his only escape route, stood for a moment in indecision at the top of the stairs. Stone rolled out from under the workbench and plugged him with a spell, staggering back into the wall and sagging against it. The ganger dropped off the edge and crashed to the ground, his clothes catching fire too.
“Al!” Jason screamed, scrambling back to his feet and yanking Verity up with him. “What do we do?” His head jerked madly around, looking for an escape route, wanting to help the dying people, but knowing he couldn’t. He had never felt so impotent—and now their one last desperate escape route, the tunnel back to the club, was engulfed in flames. Above them, they heard faint popping sounds, followed by a muffled crash. The smoke and the stench of burning bodies filled the area. “What do we do?”
Stone was breathing hard, coughing, obviously trying to keep it together despite the fact that he was almost as panicked as Jason was. “The
doors!” he said, pointing at the firmly chained metal double doors.
“They’re locked, Al! No way I can break that down!”
“Can you break it?” Verity demanded to Stone. She too was coughing from the smoke, her eyes streaming. “With magic?”
“I—” Stone started to say something, then obviously realized he had no other choice but to try. He took a few steps in the direction of the doors, braced himself against the back wall, and focused his gaze on the door. His eyes were streaming too, and his head wound was bleeding down his face—angrily he brought his arm up and swiped the smoke-induced tears away, then put both hands together and pointed them at the door.
The lock rattled, then fell back with a thud. The doors didn’t move. Stone slumped back against the wall, white and shaking. “I can’t do it—” he breathed, coughing. “Not without some sort of focus—”
“They’re all gone, Al! You have to—” Jason stopped. “Wait! Al! You said you can use people, right? To power spells?”
Stone stared at him. “What?” Then he shook his head. “No! I won’t—I won’t do it. I don’t have the control—”
“You have to do it!” Jason yelled. “You don’t have any other choice! If you don’t do it, we’re all dead!” He leaped across the hall and grabbed Stone’s shoulders, getting right up in his face and shaking him. The flames were getting closer, the smoke thicker. Around them, the wooden building cracked and popped. Jason thought he heard another explosion upstairs. “Damn it, Al, do it! Use me as a power source, and get that door open!”
Stone glared at him for another couple of seconds, and then something hardened in his eyes. “God damn you, Jason!” he snarled, half-sobbing. His hands came up and with surprising strength he spun Jason around, gripping his shoulder in a viselike grasp with one hand while focusing both his gaze and his other hand on the door. Verity and the Forgotten man watched, horrified, nearly heedless of the fire now. They obviously knew that this was their last chance and, one way or another, it would all be over soon.