by King, R. L.
Stone spread his hands in a ‘how should I know?’ gesture. “Your guess is as good as mine, Verity. The way I see it, as long as they’re stuck here, they’ve got a vested interest in fitting in. Nothing good would come of being discovered—even if they’re only discovered committing murder or torture, irrespective of their extradimensional origins. Which means that getting together and making big plans might not be the sort of thing they’d be keen to do. Also, there’s the Forgotten’s working theory that they, at least the more powerful among them, don’t tend to play well together. They sound like mages in that respect, honestly. Egos the size of sperm whales, our lot has, and it sounds like the Evil’s top echelon isn’t much different.” He shrugged again. “The only reason I can see them getting together is if they wanted to try to figure out how to re-open the conduit back to their home dimension. And I just can’t see how they’d have much chance of doing that.”
“So there’s nobody around who can open that kind of portal?” Jason asked.
“Well,” Stone said slowly, “I won’t say there isn’t, but I will say that I don’t personally know of anybody who is—and that includes myself. Obviously I don’t know every mage on Earth—it’s possible they might be able to find one or more with the proper knowledge and somehow convince them to do it. I’m quite certain it would take more than one to even have a chance of doing it—probably several, at minimum. But even so, the power and expense required would be immense. Which means,” he added, standing up and putting his cup in the sink, “that if they decide to go that route, they’ll likely have to put aside their differences and work together. And what that means is that they’ll likely be out of our hair for the foreseeable future.”
“You don’t really think they will be, do you?” Jason asked.
“Of course not. But allow me a bit of wishful thinking.” He came back over and sat down. “By the way, on another subject: In a couple of weeks I’ll be away for a few days, so I’ll prepare lessons ahead for you, Verity, so you can do some independent study.”
“Away?” Jason asked, frowning. “What for, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Secret tryst with a stunning supermodel in Zurich. Quite hush-hush.” Stone grinned at the look on Jason’s face. “Well, I did say wishful thinking, didn’t I? No, there’s a little conference thing down in L.A.—mage stuff. We get together and talk about things that would bore you stiff. It moves around—I don’t go every year, but this year it’s close, and my classes will be nearly done by then, so I figured I’d check in and see what people were up to. I’ll also be presenting a couple of seminars.”
Verity looked like she wanted to say something, but only nodded.
Stone clearly wasn’t fooled. He patted her shoulder. “Seriously, Verity, you’d be quite bored. I promise I’ll introduce you to some other more interesting mages soon. But this particular conference is the magical equivalent of a bunch of nerds getting together to discuss the finer points of warp-drive theory in Star Trek.”
“Don’t believe him,” Jason said. “He just wants to get the kids out of the way so he can get down there and check out all the wild mage orgies.”
Stone rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said to Verity, who obviously still wasn’t placated, “You’re my apprentice. If you really want to come, you can come. But I’m not having you on about the ‘you’ll be bored’ bit. You don’t have enough grounding in theory yet to be able to get very far with what we’ll be discussing. It’s more like a scholarly conference than a convention.”
He paused a moment, then held up a finger. “Hold on: I have a compromise that might work. You can come along if you like. Not to the conference itself, but there’s quite a lot to do down there, as I’m sure you well know, and in the evenings I’ll bring you along when I get together with the others for dinner and whatnot. That way you can make some contacts, but I won’t have to readjust the tilt of your head every few minutes to distribute the drool evenly when you nod off during the lectures. How’s that sound?”
Verity glared at him, but finally matched his grin. “Sounds like a deal.”
“But you’ll have to clear out if he brings any hot mage babes back to the suite,” Jason said with a wicked gleam in his eye.
“Yeah, well, so will he, if I do.”
Chapter Two
On any given day in Chicago, some number of conventions are taking place. Many of the larger ones are held downtown at the big hotels; in fact, currently the city was playing host to a furry convention, a gathering of plumbers, two real-estate symposia, an event designed to help little people meet potential mates from all over the world, and numerous others.
One of these gatherings, however, was very different from its counterparts. Certainly its members had converged from various parts around the country: it featured representatives from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Boston, Washington D. C., and several other cities, including a couple who were local to Chicago. They had arranged to take over a small resort near Lake Forest for their meeting, which was nowhere near large enough to be worthy of the name “convention.” It was more like a group of like-minded friends who’d gotten together to discuss matters of mutual interest.
This was complicated somewhat by the fact that the “old friends” could barely stand to be in the same room with each other.
The attendees were seated around a large grouping of tables arranged into a rectangular shape: the sort of configuration you might expect to find at a corporate seminar. No podium or anything else indicated that one of the participants was the leader, and no two of them sat with less than one empty chair in between them. Most had two. The overall effect was what you might see if you put a bunch of predatory cats together in the same room and magically compelled them not to attack each other without changing any of their other feelings or instincts.
In other words, the tension in the room was so thick that it was nearly visible to the naked eye.
Another odd thing that belied the gathering’s appearance as some sort of corporate presentation was the first of the attendees who rose to speak. Unlike the others, who ranged in apparent age from early twenties to middle fifties, he might have been ten. And small for ten at that. He wore a T-shirt with a Star Wars logo and faded blue jeans. When he spoke, however, his high, childish tones held a commanding edge that sounded entirely wrong coming from such a body, and the gaze he swept around the room would have chilled anyone who wasn’t part of the group at the table. “Let’s begin,” he said. Just like that. No “thank you for coming.” No “be sure to tip your waitstaff.” No icebreaker joke.
He knew his audience.
The others all turned to him, eyes narrowed. The expression “if looks could kill” applied quite effectively. “So talk,” a mid-50s man in a thousand-dollar suit said, his tone cold. He was one of the locals; his face had appeared in various newspapers many times over the past several years. No one had ever been able to pin any definitive proof of organized-crime activity on him in all that time, however.
The boy’s gaze settled on him for a moment, then he nodded once. “We have decisions to make,” he said. “As much as we’d all prefer to remain within our own spheres of influence, this affects all of us. Depending on what we decide, it might not be possible to pursue some of the avenues individually.”
“There aren’t any decisions to make,” said a woman. She was in her middle 30s, with a glittering beauty only made more intriguing by the complete lack of empathy in her pale blue eyes. An actress of not-inconsiderable fame, she looked like one of those old-time luminaries from a period when the stars of the silver screen were considered royalty, and weren’t expected to interact with the unwashed masses. She’d had to disguise herself until she got inside the resort, as she would have been recognized by any number of fans en route. “There’s nothing we can do. We have to accept what is, and adapt.”
“Like hell,” said a baldin
g, rough-looking man in his late 40s. He looked like a cop, and in fact was: a police chief in a mid-sized town, to be specific. Anywhere else, he and the man in the thousand-dollar suit would be at odds, but here they barely acknowledged each other’s existence. “Maybe you’ve accepted what’s happened and are ready to give up and stay. I’m not. We don’t have to take this. Yeah, it happened. But if any of us have ideas on how to deal with it, I want to hear ’em.”
The boy watched over the group with a proprietary expression, waiting for them to settle down. “I agree with you,” he said to the man. “Recent developments have been—annoying—but there is no reason to believe they’re permanent. What’s done can be undone.”
“Yeah, it can,” said another woman. She was tall and thin, with short, dyed-blonde hair, an angular face that was too strong of line to be conventionally pretty, and chilled green eyes. “And we can undo it. I’ve already started looking into possibilities. The first of which, naturally, is to deal with the cause.”
“The cause?” An early-50s man, in a suit even more expensive than the mob boss’s, asked. His hair, grooming, and manicure were perfect, as was his even, camera-ready fake tan and the capped smile that didn’t get anywhere near his eyes. He, too, had needed to disguise himself before arriving, though it was less likely he’d be recognized in Chicago than among those in the South who might know (or be) members of his megachurch’s congregation.
“You’re talking about Stone,” said a hard-looking woman with no-nonsense graying hair and a severe, dark blue suit.
“Damned right I’m talking about Stone,” the blonde woman said, her lip curling into a snarl. “He’s the one who did this to us. He has to pay.”
“Why?” asked another man from across the table. In his late 20s, he was one of the younger in the room, dressed in colorful, upscale hip-hop style, his dark-skinned bald head and black-rimmed glasses reflecting the room’s overhead lights. “It’s done. Revenge won’t get us what we want—if we even want it. It doesn’t sound like all of us do.”
“Not only that, but it could prove dangerous to us,” said a mousy, middle-aged woman with shrewd eyes and a deceptively friendly face. “Why poke the hornet’s nest again? Why draw attention to ourselves? Especially if we’re stuck here, wouldn’t it be wiser to just lie low for a while?”
The blonde woman’s face darkened in contempt. “Listen to you!” she said, rising. “You sound like a bunch of scared sheep. Or have you forgotten what we are, and what we can do? Do you really think he can stand against all of us?”
“Probably not,” the mob boss said. “But why push it? He’s not bothering us now. He might even think we’re gone, or laying low. If we go after him, yeah, we’ll probably get him. But don’t forget he’s not alone. He’s got friends. He’s got that apprentice none of us want to mess with. And if we make things too hot for him, he might call in more friends. They could make life dangerous, especially if we decide to go through with trying to find a way back.”
Murmurs arose among some of the others, including a few who hadn’t spoken yet. The boy let them talk for a bit, but after a few moments he spoke again, this time to the blonde woman. “I agree with you that we need to reopen the way,” he said. “And I agree that Stone and his people need to suffer for what they did. But not until after we’ve secured our gateway. We can’t risk rousing them again yet. With the portals cut off, our supply of soldiers is limited, and moving them from one host to another is difficult. I would say Stone’s people have a low probability of success, but given our past encounters with them, I don’t think it’s prudent to take chances.”
More murmurings, mostly in agreement.
The woman slammed her fist on the table. “I don’t believe this,” she spat. “I can’t believe you’re afraid of him.”
The televangelist shrugged, still looking placid and perfect. “I don’t even know him,” he said. “Except that he’s a mage, and that he’s caused us problems in the past. I’m willing to leave him alone until after we’ve found a way to reopen the way back.”
A thin young man stood. “Wait a minute,” he said. “We haven’t even agreed that we should try to reopen the way.” When the others turned to him, he spread his hands. “Listen. I’ve gotten used to things here. In some ways it’s better than back home. I’ve found a place where I can get what I need—and what my host needs—without a lot of effort. Do I like that we’re stuck here against our will? No. But it could be a hell of a lot worse. And if we try something and it fails, we could get ourselves wiped out. Why take the risk? We don’t even know what we’re doing.”
“Who says we don’t?” the blonde woman asked.
They all turned to her. “What are you talking about?” asked a late-40s man whose entire bearing screamed career military, even in civilian clothes. “If you have more information, let us in on it.”
She smiled a snakelike smile. “I’ve been doing some research,” she said. “Ever since Stone and his people closed the portals, I’ve been looking around, trying to find anyone who might have a chance of figuring out how to open one again. Someone Stone doesn’t even know exists, so they can’t tip him off even if something goes wrong. And I think I’ve come up with an idea that has a good chance of working.”
“An idea we discussed earlier today,” the boy told the group. “And I agree that it might have merit.” He turned back to the woman. “Go ahead and explain it to the others.”
The blonde woman nodded. She spoke for perhaps ten minutes, describing her plan and how it could be implemented. They listened with varying expressions ranging from enthusiasm to grudging acceptance to outright dismissal.
“That’s crazy,” said a chubby, early-30s man, shaking his head. “Way too many variables. Too many places where something could go wrong.”
But the boy shook his head. “It would require cooperation from all of us,” he said. “It wouldn’t be easy, but it could work. I haven’t heard any other better ideas. Have you?” He looked around at them. “I know as well as any of you that our kind aren’t fond of cooperation—”
“That’s an understatement,” the evangelist cut him off with a humorless chuckle.
“But,” the boy continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “this isn’t a normal situation. I realize that most of us have found places here in this world—settled in and carved out our areas of influence. None of that has to change. If you want to stay here, nothing will stop you, even if we’re successful. All this will do is give you a choice. Or would you prefer to have your choices made for you by your prey? That is essentially what’s happening, you realize.”
He’d hit a nerve, as he knew he would. Despite their inherent distrust of each other and reluctance to give up even a tiny shred of their individual power to participate in any kind of group effort, they all hated even more that what they considered a collection of intelligent herd animals had caused them this level of difficulty. They began muttering among themselves again.
The boy smiled, and so did the blonde woman.
“Can it be done quietly, though?” asked the mousy woman. “Stone and his people have proven that they’re paying close attention to anything involving portals.”
“Maybe it can be arranged somewhere far from here,” said the dark-skinned man. “Somewhere it’s unlikely that they’d even hear about it before it’s finished.”
“That,” said the boy, “depends on what the expert we plan to consult determines. I don’t know anything about the construction of portals, but it seems that there are conditions that make it easier to place them.” He glanced at the blonde woman for confirmation.
“Ley lines, for one,” she said, nodding. “I’ve learned a lot over the past few years, though I’m by no means any kind of an expert. I can’t build a portal on my own, but I can follow the discussion well enough that I should be able to work with our expert, once we’ve found the right one.” She leaned forward
, still standing up, and put her hands on the table. “And as for Stone catching on: he won’t. Because we’re going to kill him before we start.”
The boy turned to face her, and his expression had an implacability that hardened his soft features into something much more adult—and much more authoritative. “No,” he said flatly. “I won’t go along with that. As I and others have said, it’s too dangerous. It’s much safer to simply let him think that we’ve gone dormant, accepted the inevitable, and don’t pose a large-scale threat anymore.”
The blonde woman glared at him. “You might have forgotten,” she said in a cold tone that barely veiled a seething rage, “but you aren’t in charge here. You don’t make the decisions, and you don’t control what any of the rest of us do.”
“No, he doesn’t,” agreed the military man. “But I for one think he’s right. I agree that we need to do something about reopening the way home, so we can start bringing over more of our children and re-establishing our original plan for this world. But I won’t sign on to a vendetta. Yes, I agree Stone has to die. He and his friends. But not until after we’ve succeeded.”
Around the table, the others were nodding. The mob boss settled a probing stare on the blonde woman. “Listen,” he said, “I know you got issues with Stone that go beyond what he’s done to our plans. I get that he and your host go way back. But none of that matters to the rest of us. You deal with your own baggage on your own time.”
“Agreed,” said the actress. “I don’t like this plan at all. I’d rather just make our own way here and reproduce when we can. It’s slower, but it’s safer, and we have time. But if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it the intelligent way. The safe way. I’m sure you’ll find many of us willing to help you deal with Stone after the situation has been taken care of, but not before.”