A Kiss Before Doomsday

by Laurence MacNaughton

  After a moment, the other two followed.

  “This is a trap,” Rane announced, her voice echoing.

  Opal shushed her.

  “Maybe,” Dru admitted quietly, without breaking stride.

  “Maybe?” Rane insisted. “How come the entrance isn’t guarded? Where is everybody else? Where did they park?”

  “I don’t know,” Dru said. “Maybe we’re early.”

  Only as they crept toward the doorway did Dru understand how truly huge the doors were. Massive enough to swallow a freight train. Probably a good three feet thick, she estimated. Past their black-and-yellow-striped teeth, the tunnel continued, illuminated from within by the ghostly glow of evenly spaced caged light bulbs that led into the distance down a gently sloping tunnel. Eventually, it disappeared around a wide curve.

  Dru paused outside the doors and dug her ulexite crystal out of her bag. With a quick press to her forehead and a burst of magical energy, she surveyed the entire entrance. Much to her surprise, it was clean. “No magical wards, no sorcio inscriptions, nothing. That’s so weird. There’s nothing protecting the entrance.”

  “Freakishly big-ass door, but no guards,” Rane said. “Fishy.”

  “Now, if we go in there,” Opal said, “and there’s nothing but a bunch of bored NORAD boys in jumpsuits and security badges, how are we gonna explain all this?” Her wrists jangled as she waved to encompass their outfits.

  Dru thought about it. “We’ll just have to run.”

  “Or act drunk,” Rane said. “I could do that.”

  “Hell no, I’m not doing either. I’m ready to party. Here. Masks on.” Opal handed over Dru’s sparkling disco-ball mask and Rane’s brass visor. With that, she put on her own feathery Mardi Gras mask, stepped between the doors, and set off down the tunnel, honeybee-striped heels clicking on the polished stone floor. “If the air force is in here waiting, they better watch out, because Opal’s in the house. It’s going to be a party.”

  Dru traded looks with Rane through their masks.

  “Don’t look at me, dude. You’re the one who wanted to bring her.” Rane looked a little bit like a gold robot as she turned and followed Opal into the darkness.

  Dru hurried to catch up, and the three of them walked side by side down a tunnel easily as wide as a two-lane road.

  In her little party bag, Dru didn’t have much room for crystals, so she had carefully selected a handful of her best. One of them was her trusty dagger-shaped spectrolite crystal. She rested her fingers on its smooth surface, ready to light it up at the first sign of trouble.

  Up ahead, the tunnel branched. The left branch continued deep into the mountain.

  On the right, a faded warning sign just above eye level stated, TUNNEL 13—RESTRICTED AREA.

  Another open saw-toothed blast door waited. Beyond, the darkness was punctuated by flickers of light, the distant beat of thumping electronic music, and an ocean-like wash of voices.

  Cautiously, Dru stepped between the yawning doors. As soon as they were inside, she realized they had dressed for exactly the wrong party.

  21

  DISCO AND DOOMSDAY

  Tunnel 13 widened out into a cavernous darkness at least the size of an aircraft hangar, but much stranger.

  Sorcerers in black leather costumes and horned masks clustered in groups beneath roaming spotlights. They talked, sometimes danced, or just glared at one another.

  Against one wall, a movie projector splashed grainy black-and-white film clips across the bare rock: snowy ancient graveyards, dead forests, nuclear explosions. A relentless assault of death and destruction.

  Overhead, two small stages stood atop metal scaffolding, fifty feet apart. On the left stage strutted a woman in a gauzy black dress and glittering mask. In anger or defiance, she pointed a finger over the crowd at the other stage.

  There, a black man with bare, muscled arms and a wolf mask motioned to her in what was unmistakably a challenge.

  In the crowd below, the roaming lights shone down on shiny black skin-tight outfits, glittering spikes, washed-out faces hidden behind masks. Each costume had a theme, of sorts: a knight, an angel, a bird, a truly terrifying clown.

  Dru had hoped to blend in. But this crowd was far darker and scarier than she had ever imagined. She traded glances with Rane and Opal. “Abort! Abort!” she whispered. “Let’s sneak back out before anyone sees—”

  At that moment, a spotlight zoomed over onto Dru, temporarily blinding her. Her sparkling outfit scattered points of light in all directions, simultaneously making her the center of attention and filling her with mindless panic. For a moment, the pounding of her pulse in her own ears drowned out all other sounds. A sea of black masks turned to stare at her.

  She had no doubt that she, Opal, and Rane were all painfully visible to everyone in the vast underground chamber. All of those unfriendly faces. She decided there was only one thing she could do.

  Turn and run.

  But Rane’s large hand pressed against the small of her back and shoved her forward, forcing her to walk directly into the masquerade.

  In three strides, they were out of the spotlight and back in the gloom. Dru was too blinded by the light to see much except masks looming out of the darkness.

  “Strut it,” Rane growled into her hair. “Act like you own this stupid place.”

  Dru tried, but the sudden spotlight had rattled her. She made an abrupt turn and circled the edge of the vast room, trying to stay away from the overwhelming crowd.

  They found a clear spot by a bank of old-fashioned monitor screens, the rounded glass kind, all of them dark and dead. Beneath the monitors ran a bank of control panels with lights that flickered on and off as if they’d been short-circuited. If this place had been some kind of a nuclear bunker in the past, it hadn’t been maintained in decades.

  “I like this place,” Opal said cheerfully, looking around. “Good music. I see some people have drinks. All the leather’s not really my thing, but one time I had a boyfriend who was into it, so . . .”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Dru gasped. She leaned against a control panel, careful not to touch any buttons. Just in case.

  Opal’s concern was obvious even through the orange feathered mask. “Oh, honey, you okay?”

  “No! This is not what I expected.” Dru had to raise her voice to be heard over the thumping music, but she tried not to shout. “I don’t know. When sorcerers come into my shop one at a time, that’s one thing. But so many of them in one place, wearing masks, it kind of freaks me out.”

  “Don’t worry, nobody can recognize us.” Opal pointed at her own gigantic feathered mask with both index fingers. “Totally inconspicuous.”

  “We’ve got company.” Rane’s normally flat voice carried an unmistakable warning. She stepped in front of Dru and Opal, intercepting a stout figure as he approached out of the gloom.

  “Hey, Rane.” He gave her a little wave.

  The brass visor made her expression difficult to see, but it certainly wasn’t friendly.

  “So much for inconspicuous,” Dru muttered.

  The man’s face was hidden by a silvery cloth whole-head mask with teardrop-shaped eyeholes and openings for his lips and the tip of his nose. Still, Dru would have recognized his dumpy work coveralls anywhere.

  “Ruiz?” Dru stepped around Rane. “What are you doing here?”

  “Dru? Is that you?” He peered closer at her. “What happened to your glasses?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Worry about all these freaky sorcerers.” She pulled him back into her little corner by the control panels. “I’m not saying this to be mean, Ruiz, but you don’t have any magic powers. And this is strictly a sorcerer-only party.”

  “Except for me,” Opal said with a pointed look at Dru.

  Dru held up her hands. “Well . . .”

  Ruiz shrugged, unconcerned. “Opal told me, and I thought it could be fun, you know?”

  Dru gave Opal a withering look, but
Opal somehow avoided her gaze.

  Ruiz went on. “I didn’t know this was supposed to be some sort of top secret party. Freaky place, right? Sorcerers keep getting up on those stages, having some kind of contest.”

  Dru looked up. The man in the wolf mask was gone, replaced by a stick-thin girl who brought her arms overhead in a ballet-like movement. A swarm of tiny gold lights, not unlike fireflies, swirled into existence around her.

  “No way I can do that,” Ruiz said. “I’m just going to hang out down here with you guys. That okay?”

  Inwardly, Dru groaned. Ruiz’s grandmother had been a sorceress, and it was obvious that Ruiz wished he had inherited her powers, which explained why he was always coming down to her shop. That, and it gave him a chance to chat with Opal.

  But right now, she was worried about his safety. She leaned close, trying not to get weirded out by his silver head-wrapping mask. “Look, Ruiz, this masquerade is all about sorcerers competing to be the best of the best. There’s serious magic going on. If you get dragged up there, it could get dangerous super fast.”

  Opal nodded. “That’s why you’re supposed to have an invitation. Carried by a zombie.”

  “Not technically a zombie,” Dru pointed out.

  “Zombies?” Inside the teardrop-shaped eyeholes, Ruiz’s eyes went round. “Oh, man, nobody said nothing about zombies. When do we get to see them?”

  “Yeah,” Rane said. “I’m here to kick some zombie ass. Let’s do it.”

  “No, no, no.” Dru made a patting-down motion with her hands, as if that would somehow keep this whole situation under control. “We don’t want to see them. Hopefully there aren’t any down here. And they are not technically zombies.” Dru shook her head. Better to let that one go. “Ruiz, tell me you didn’t bring anyone else down here with you. Did you?”

  “Bring anyone? No, man, I don’t know nobody else. Who would I bring? But let me tell you something. There are some foxy ladies here tonight.” He gave Opal a sidelong glance. “I was thinking about, you know, this music’s pretty good for dancing—”

  “I could use a drink,” Opal said.

  “I could get you a drink,” Ruiz said quickly.

  “No drinks,” Dru insisted. “Oh, my God. We’re on a mission, people.”

  “They got to have drinks around here somewhere.” Ruiz turned around in a circle, standing up on his tiptoes to peer over the crowd. His silver whole-head mask reflected light off the back of his skull.

  “Ruiz,” Opal said, “what are you supposed to be, anyway?”

  “El Santo,” Ruiz said, sounding as if it was obvious. “El Enmascarado de Plata.” At her confused look, he added, “What, you don’t like wrestling?”

  “Oh, yeah!” Rane brightened up. “I had a Santo comic book when I was a kid.”

  “Yeah?” Ruiz nodded. “Santo was the best, man. Number one luchador in the world.”

  “Wrestled an alligator,” Rane said proudly, as if she’d done it herself. “Least in the comic book he did, anyway.”

  “No, that was for real, I think. He really did that. You know my cousin did that, too?”

  Despite her brass robot-like visor, Rane’s face radiated disbelief. “Your cousin wrestled Santo?”

  “No, no, an alligator. There’s a place down by the sand dunes you can go, across from the UFO watchtower. You pay a few bucks, and you can jump in the pit and wrestle a real live alligator.” From inside the silver mask, Ruiz’s tongue nervously licked his lips. “But you know, he’s already missing a couple fingers, so I don’t know that he should do that. Tempting fate, you know?”

  “Let’s do that.” Rane bumped a fist into his shoulder. “You and me, we should go.”

  Ruiz backed up a step and pointed at his own head. “Is just a mask, you know. I don’t know about real wrestling, okay? Especially giant reptiles.”

  Rane shrugged. “Basically like wrestling anything else. Just got to watch out for the teeth.”

  Dru couldn’t stand by and listen anymore. She balled her hands into fists. “Can we just focus, just for a second, on stopping doomsday? We aren’t here to party. We’re here to find Greyson. Now, whoever’s in charge of this masquerade, we need to find them, follow them, and see if they’ll lead us to Greyson.”

  Opal and Rane nodded.

  Ruiz held up a finger. “I’ll be right back. Oh, Opal, what do you like?”

  She gave him a slow smile. “Surprise me, honey.”

  “Okay, okay, good.” He rushed off into the crowd.

  Rane cupped her hands around her mouth. “Find me a bottle of water, dude.” But Ruiz was already gone.

  In his place, Salem appeared from the crowd, wearing his exact usual outfit—black ruffled shirt, black trench coat, black top hat. The only addition was a black domino mask. And his leather pants.

  Dru’s heart sank. This was not going to be a fun conversation.

  He looked the three of them up and down, frowning at Opal’s animal print, Rane’s gold lamé, and Dru’s shimmering calf-high go-go boots.

  “What are you supposed to be,” he said finally, “some kind of Swedish disco super group?”

  Rane sniffed. “Look who’s talking, Houdini. Hey, I didn’t see any cars outside. Where did everybody park?”

  “Funny. If you’d had an actual invitation, you would know. You didn’t drive up the dirt road and then have to walk, did you?” Salem turned his crazy eyes to Dru. His gaze roamed up and down her body, but not in a lustful way, more as if he was examining some strange new species of insect. “Did you really have nothing better to do tonight than the exact opposite of what I said? I told you to stay away.”

  Dru stood up straighter. “Well, you’re not the boss around here.”

  From the curl of his lip, he seemed to find that amusing.

  “So you can either help me find out who the boss is,” she said, “or maybe you can just get lost.”

  “Or both,” Opal said.

  Salem turned to Rane, who stared back fiercely.

  “Did you come here alone?” Rane asked.

  “You didn’t,” he said.

  “Don’t mess with me, dude. Not tonight.”

  An unsettling prickle at the back of Dru’s neck gave her the feeling she was being watched. She looked all around, seeing nobody watching her. Then she looked up.

  There, on a shadowy balcony just above the edge of the light, a looming figure in an elaborate red costume watched her from the darkness.

  He was dressed in a blood-red double-breasted jacket with long tails and shimmering gold trim. The shadowy eye sockets of his skull mask stared down at her with eerie intensity.

  Dru nudged Salem’s elbow, drawing a hostile look that she promptly ignored.

  “Who’s he?” She nodded her chin up toward the man in red. “Do you know him?”

  “He’s the one in charge here. If you need a formal introduction, then that’s your cue to go home,” Salem said acidly. “Leave this up to the real sorcerers. Now where have I heard that before? Oh, I remember: every conversation we’ve ever had.”

  “So he’s the one running this thing,” Dru said, not expecting an answer.

  Above, the man in red turned and strode away into the darkness, followed by the ripple of a cape that flowed behind him like blood.

  22

  THE RED DEATH

  As Rane traded insults with Salem, Dru leaned close to Opal. “If I’m not back in five minutes, get Rane and come after me with guns blazing.”

  The feathers on Opal’s orange mask quivered. “When Rane talks about her guns, you know she actually means her biceps, right?” She tapped her upper arm for emphasis.

  “Just . . . I’m going after the guy in red, okay? If he’s in charge, and Greyson is in here somewhere, this guy has to know about it. Come after me in five.” She left the relative safety of the control panel nook.

  “’Lot can happen in five minutes,” Opal called after her.

  Dru threaded her way through the black-l
eather-clad crowd, looking for some sort of staircase or ramp up to the balcony. She moved fast, since she needed to find a way up there before the man in red got away.

  Unexpectedly, she found herself facing the man in the wolf mask. He swayed in front of her, inviting her to dance. Tribal-looking tattoos swirled up the well-defined muscles of his bare arms. His dark brown skin shone as he danced, maybe with sweat, maybe with some sort of magical energy.

  She didn’t have time for this. Waving an apology, she ducked around him and headed closer to the rough stone wall, hoping she could thread her way around the periphery of the crowd.

  But her path was blocked by the bulk of the terrifying clown in black leather. He wiggled his white-painted eyebrows and started jumping up and down in front of her, his belly flopping, the jingle bells on his three-tasseled hat bouncing ever higher.

  Dru stopped dead, looking for some break in the crowd, some escape route. But there was no way around him.

  The clown opened his mouth and let out a wet pink slab of tongue that wiggled as if it had a life of its own.

  Heading out on her own was a mistake, Dru realized. She had to get back to the control panel, back to safety. She never should have separated from the others.

  The crowd parted behind the leather-clad clown. He stopped jumping and froze as a red glove clamped onto his shoulder. Visibly flinching, he moved aside.

  The glove belonged to the skull-masked man. He stepped up to Dru and gave her a slight bow. Despite the height of her sparkling platform boots, he towered over her.

  His mask covered most of his face, so that only his lips and strong jaw showed beneath. He held out one red-gloved hand. “May I have the honor of this dance?” His voice was surprisingly deep.

  The stiff formality of his gesture, contrasted against the thumping electronic music, made her laugh. “Not what I expected you to say.” She held up a hand to wave him off. “Thanks, but I’m a terrible dancer.”