by S T Branton
"Wow, that sounds really unspectacular." The thought of Spinoza standing over me with a sword made a chill roll down my spine. "We need to figure out where they'll be and how to stop them."
"And fast," Archie added. "With the Farstuff they bought from the vampire and that much human blood available to them, they'll be able to do something incredibly powerful. Start working on her injuries. I'll keep going with this rune."
"Start working on her? I don't know what any of this stuff is."
"Read the labels," Archie instructed.
I picked up one bottle and saw it had careful instructions, like medication from a human pharmacy.
"Oh, convenient."
I went to work cleaning up her wounds and wrapping them in bandages with various ointments. I offered her gulps from a few of the bottles and watched her grimace as the concoctions inside took effect.
"You'll want to sleep while you can," Archie told her. "I have a feeling this showdown won’t be a stroll in the park."
Ally complied, closing her eyes and falling asleep within moments. I couldn't help thinking at least one of those bottles aided that along. It wasn't that easy for me. Adrenaline, anger, and determination coursed through me, keeping me on my feet pacing through the basement.
Splinter climbed out of my pocket and ran over to where my abandoned breakfast plate still sat. I wasn't too worried about him nibbling on the leftover potatoes and bits of sausage. He'd survived plenty of meals in The Deep that had their first glimpse of existence weeks before ending up on the floor of my cell. A few hours wasn't going to hurt him.
Archie kept working, but I could only force myself into a few minutes of fitful dozing before I was back up on my feet.
"Could you stop pacing? You're making me nervous."
"Maybe if it wasn't so quiet down here, it wouldn't bother you so much."
He responded by rummaging in a drawer and pulling out a remote. Pressing the power button brought to life a TV I hadn't noticed bolted into the wall above his workstation. He tossed the remote to me. Growing up with four siblings and my programming-opinionated father made this moment feel immensely powerful. I could dance through the channels with abandon. And I did.
And recognized absolutely nothing.
“What is all this?” I flicked another channel. “Why is Friends on? That was over…”
“Fifteen years ago,” Archie filled in.
“Shit. It’s an oldie. I don’t know any of this stuff. Where are all the good shows? Glee?”
“No longer gleeful.”
“The Good Wife?”
“Not sure how good she was, but people stopped caring about four years ago.”
“Parks and Recreation?” I was getting increasingly distressed by the demise of all entertainment I knew.
“It seems 2015 was a bad year for your shows.”
“How do you know all this, anyway? I don’t see you as the type to finish up your day of selling people’s skin and toenail clippings, pop a bowl of popcorn, and watch the Primetime lineup.”
“You’re right. I’m much more of an ice cream sundae man. But I, like most Farsiders, function pretty normally in The Near. I have guilty TV pleasures like everyone else.”
“I don’t think I need to hear about…”
“Golden Girls.”
“And there it is.”
I changed the channel again in a final bid to settle on something from my era. The news filled the screen, telling me we'd gotten through the night and it was early in the morning.
"The rally will draw in crowds possibly reaching tens of thousands. Candidate Jones is expected to discuss the details of her platform, including controversial social reform measures. Support from the national level is adding to the interest and is expected to test the limits of the space and security."
The voice coming from the TV made me stop in my tracks. My eyes lowered to Archie, and he stared back with the same knowing expression in his.
"Oh, shit," I muttered.
"Preparations are already well underway at Folly Beach County Park since onlookers will begin arriving at the rally within the hour. Those interested in attending are advised…"
I didn't care what else the newscaster had to say. She'd told me plenty.
"That's where they'll be," I said to Archie. "They're going to take over the rally."
"So we go to the rally and stop them," Ally said from her cot. "I'm feeling political today."
"Look who's awake." I grinned. "Are you feeling better?"
"Stiff and sore, but better than I would have anticipated after getting into a rumble with lizard people. I'm ready to take these mofos down."
"We'll discuss your use of the term 'mofos' later, but for right now, we have to decide how we'll handle this."
"Let me know what I'm looking for and we'll divide and conquer."
I shook my head.
"It won’t be that easy. They blend in, remember? And I'm sure the Harbingers who will be there today have been practicing hard to hone their human-faking game. They'll be next to impossible to spot in the crowd. Especially with that many people around. We won’t know who they are until they reveal themselves. But once they do, they're on live TV. All hell will break loose in front of a national audience."
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
I started pacing again. "It looks like I have two choices. Either I can try to stop the broadcast and eliminate the live TV element of it, which will effectively ruin the Harbinger's plan of revealing magic and the realms to The Near but won't save the lives of innocent people. Or I can wait until they reveal themselves, kick their asses, and save the people, but end up helping fulfill their plan of revealing their existence to the world.”
"So, good options all around."
"Essentially." The different scenarios tumbled through my mind for a few moments as I tried to decide which was better. By the time I'd gone over them a few dozen times each, I knew there was really only one choice. It sucked. But it was the only one. "I know what I have to do."
"I'm still working on your new weapon. It might take me a little while to get it right." He made a frustrated growling sound. "If I had some troll hair, it would make the process a lot faster."
My ears perked up.
"Troll hair?"
"Yeah. It's one of the more potent Farstuff materials for a weapon like this. I don't have any right now."
"Why didn't you say something?" I shimmied out of my jacket and flipped it around in my hands until I found the patch of troll scalp still clinging to the leather, a gift from that creep I had beaten up on my first night back in town. "There you go."
"Yes!" Archie exclaimed. "Now we're rolling. I'll have this ready in no time."
I looked at Ally and saw her face scrunched.
"You've been hanging around me with chunks of troll stuck to you?"
I shrugged. "It happens."
Chapter Thirty-Six
“They weren’t kidding when they mentioned limited parking,” I said as we joined the flow of people heading toward the rally.
“There are so many people.” Ally’s voice was tight with the anxiety of knowing what that meant.
If there were this many people still heading into the park for the rally, the number already there would be staggering. Whoever arranged the rally had chosen an interesting place for it. Folly Beach County Park was a peninsula jutting out from Charleston. Water surrounded its long, narrow shape on three sides. Security had set up massive entrance gates to block people from simply passing through into the rally. They meant it as a measure to keep the political figures safe and control the crowds. They didn’t realize they were trapping thousands of people on the strip of land.
Watching the group funnel through the admission gate and onto the beach was like watching a herd of cattle being brought to slaughter. We moved as fast as we could toward the entrance. The sooner we could get into the rally, the better chance we had of shutting this thing down before it turned into the disa
ster the Harbingers hoped it would be. We finally pushed our way through the crowd to get close enough to see the entrance gate and my stomach dropped.
“They're checking IDs,” I said to Ally.
“What?”
“The security guards at the entrance gate. They’re checking people's IDs before they let them inside. It's probably because of the politicians. The news did say there had been some grumblings from protesters considering showing up to the rally today.”
“Probably not the kind they were thinking,” Archie commented.
I grabbed each of them by the arm and pulled them out of the way so we could talk without risk of being trampled by the impending masses.
“What are we going to do?” I asked. “I don't have any ID and I really doubt dear Archimedes over here does, either.”
“Actually, I do.”
“You have a Near ID?”
“Of course.” He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a card. “How do you think I blend in when I'm doing things like getting a house and paying bills?”
"You have a Near ID?" I repeated, trying to wrap my head around an ID with his weird glowing eyes and Archimedes across the front. He handed the card to me and I looked down at it. "Steven." I looked up at him. "Steven, why aren't your eyes glowing in this picture?"
"Really painful contacts. Not something I want to do again."
"What are we going to do about me? There's no way they’ll let someone in without an ID. I can't exactly pretend to be the press."
My eyes slid over to Ally, and she shook her head.
"Don't get your hopes up. I'm not officially press. I'm like press-adjacent. That doesn't get me access to anything. We'll have to come up with another way to get you inside."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.
"What are you doing now? You use that thing for everything."
"Everybody does, Slick. They're essentially part of human DNA now. I'm checking Instagram."
"I know you had certain feelings about your sister dating that old guy with kids, but I don't think that's a nice thing to call her."
Ally's eyes lifted over the top of her phone to stare at me.
"I don't." She flipped the phone around to show me a series of pictures. "Instagram. I'm checking to see if anyone I know is already in there posting pictures. They might have caught something that could give us an idea of how to sneak you in."
"That's brilliant," Archie complimented.
Ally looked at him with pursed lips.
"It would be more of a compliment if you didn't sound so stunned about it."
He shrugged, not willing to relent to anything. After a few seconds of scrolling, Ally jumped a little like she'd noticed something and turned the phone back to me.
"What am I looking at?"
She swiped her fingers across the screen, drawing the image up closer to zero in on the barricades around the edges of the peninsula.
"The security doesn't look as serious around the edges," she pointed out. "It's only those flimsy orange mesh fence things. You could slip under one of those and get in without them noticing."
"Are you suggesting I go jump in the water somewhere, swim up to the side of the peninsula, and wiggle under the fence?" I asked.
Ally's mouth opened, then closed as she turned the phone back toward herself.
"It was a suggestion," she muttered.
I looked back toward the entrance gate and watched the security guards checking IDs. The crowd had been funneled into three lines, but the concept of being single-file had never caught on. Instead, they were smashed up together, trying to force their way through like Black Friday at the electronics store. Progress stopped when a man didn't produce a card and got into an argument with the security guard about the unconstitutionality of compulsory identification. An idea popped into my mind.
"I have a better one."
"What are you going to do?"
"Come with me. Get your cards ready."
We joined the crowd again and I willingly smooshed myself into the middle, wedging myself between people so we were all bouncing against each other as we made our way toward the entrance. The woman in front of me reached into her pocket and pulled out her ID. Now was my chance. I slung myself forward, ramming into her and the two people beside her, then whipped around to shout angrily at the crowd that hadn't done anything. I made an apologetic face at her.
"People are crazy," she commented.
"You're telling me." I slipped her newly snatched ID into my pocket.
I slunk back so I was with Archie and Ally again, positioning them on either side of me. The woman got to the security guard and realized she was no longer holding her card. She started searching frantically and the crowd built up behind her. I pushed Ally toward the guard standing in the middle and stood behind her, so I'd be forced between her and the woman without an ID. She showed her card and I flashed the stolen card. The guard asked to see it more clearly, but Archie caught on and pushed up behind me to offer his ID. Within a few seconds, I popped out of the crush of people and into the rally.
"That was risky," Ally said when they met up with me a few moments later.
"But it worked. And that’s one potential victim we don’t have to worry about. Now to convince all these other people to leave."
Archie looked around.
"Good luck with that. These people are either here to cheer on the local lady wanting to revolutionize the office with her brilliant new ideas or protest the neighborhood chick who will screw everything up because she doesn't know what she's talking about. Either way, they aren't going anywhere."
"The stage is set up toward the end of the park. I have a feeling that's where the Harbingers will go."
"Why wouldn't they try to get right in the middle of the crowd? That's where they'd be able to accomplish the most damage the fastest." Ally looked confused.
"It’s not about the death toll," I pointed out. "They’re here for the attention, for the shock value. Blood and guts are a pleasant bonus. Remember, their whole goal is to take down the Pax Philosophia, and that starts with revealing The Far to The Near. If they can get on stage, they’ll be the center of attention. Everyone in this crowd will look at them, and that's exactly what they want. Once they’ve done their big reveal and it's been seen by everyone here and everyone tuning in on their TVs around the world, then they can have their fun. The war will have begun, and they can start the massacre."
Ally looked toward the stage, the weight of our task written on her face. "Well, shit."
"I'm going up there. I'll get as close to the stage as I can and start looking for anyone I think might be a Harbinger. You two try to get people to leave. Do whatever it takes. We need to thin the crowd as much as we can. They might get trigger-happy and want to turn the crowd itself into part of their demonstration."
We split off, and I ran toward the very edge of the peninsula. The picture Ally had showed me gave me the idea of following the bright orange fence around the edge to get to the stage with as little resistance as possible. The farther I went, the more my stomach sank. Pretty soon it would be flopping around in my feet.
The park was huge, and the crowd filled nearly all the space. With more people flooding in, soon the park would reach total capacity. Not only did that mean more lives to snuff out, but less chance for escape. The more people who came, the harder it would be for any of them to run when the devastation started. If I couldn't stop this plan from happening, it would be a bloodbath. Dozens of cameras positioned throughout the park only made it worse. They were primed and ready to suck in every second of the horror to come and blast it out to all the households, computers, phones, and lord only knew what else that would tune in to listen to the future of politics.
I made my way along the edge of the peninsula, ducking around people and occasionally yelling at them to leave as I tried to force my way to the stage. It was visible in the distance, and as I got to within a few dozen yards of it, a gro
up ascended the stairs.
Oh, fuck.
If their tight formation and slow, methodical movements didn't give them away, the robes did. The Harbingers had taken the stage. Something was about to go down and I didn't think it would be a tap dance and kick line.
There really wasn't any choice left. I hadn't been able to get the crowd out of the park or stop the cameras from rolling, and the Harbingers were already in place, ready to get their plan underway. There was only one thing left for me to do and it wasn't what I'd ever wanted.
But this wasn't about me.
I stepped closer to the fence, reached into my pocket, and pulled out a key. The ornate metal felt heavy in my hand. It still carried the same intimidating presence as the night the Guild showed up at my house and used it to tear me away from everything. At the same time, it held the same sense of redemption as the night I stole it from the warden to escape from The Deep. It might mean offering myself into the hands of The Guild, but it would save lives.
I drew a final breath and shoved it into the keyhole in reality, turned it, and walked away.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
As soon as the Harbingers walked out on the stage, their tight formation spread out and they formed a line that stretched nearly end to end. They each removed their robes and set them aside. They looked human, but they weren't fooling me. It only meant they were using powerful runes to conceal their actual identities. I knew exactly who they were, and my eyes focused in on Spinoza in the middle. His mouth curled up in a nasty smile and I knew this would be bad.
Trying to blend in was no longer either a priority or an option. All that mattered now was minimizing the destruction until the Guild could get there. There was no turning back now. I had used the key, and that was as good as an engraved invitation. Guild Agents would track it and swarm down on this place. As final as it felt, it was exactly what needed to happen. It was entirely possible I was in the last moments of my stolen time in The Near, and I would use them to save as many lives as I possibly could. Not caring who they were, I started pushing people toward the gate at the end of the peninsula.