Prom Knight

by Ben Reeder

  “Then why do we wait?” Arata demanded. “We must act now, and take her from them.”

  Kim gestured with her hand and offered Arata the paper she held. “It would not be wise to act too soon, Arata-san,” she said as he took it. He opened the folded pages, then glanced up at Kim. “Section Two, subsection a.”

  Arata’s eyes went wide a moment later, and he handed the contract back to her. “I understand your hesitation,” he said, inclining his head slightly. “But remember this, Kim Shinoda. My patience with you is two seconds longer than your usefulness to me. Brothers, enjoy your tea. I have more pleasant things to do.” He turned and walked out of the ceremonial area, leaving the others whispering. After a moment, Hikaru went over to Kim and took her hands in his. He bowed deeply, then straightened and stood to one side as the others did the same before turning to go to the waiting vehicles.

  “It is a pity Arata-san was so hasty,” Hikaru said, his voice sounding a little sad. “The tea was delicious, and the ceremony most excellent. You are a flawless host, Kim-chan. The only failing was in your guests.”

  “I thank you for your kind words, Hikaru-sama,” Kim replied, her tone matching the formal air he’d spoken with. “But my own control was… lacking.”

  “His head is still attached, as are all of his other parts, little sister. I would say your control is still most admirable.” They laughed for a moment, a strained little sound that didn’t quite match their expressions.

  “Damn it, Hikaru-san!” she spat in English. “No, damn him! That insufferable, spineless asshole! He would have us abandon all honor.”

  “I have always found your penchant for reverting to English for cursing amusing,” Hikaru said in English as well.

  “It is well suited to it,” she said. “Clan Ryu isn’t dedicated to the cause of good, but I never thought the Dragon Banner would fly in service to the forces of Hell.”

  “Arata looks to the survival of our clan, at least in his own eyes,” the older man said, his voice tired. “He sees the coming of Mammon as inevitable, and tantamount to victory. And he has the favor of powerful patrons. Even if we could wrest power from him, we would not survive to wield it.”

  “Only if they succeed,” Kim said.

  “I fear it is a foregone conclusion, little sister. There are too many intent on calling the Horde, and it does not matter if they have the blood of the Half-Caste Chylde or not. The Seals on the gates to the lowest levels of the Abyss were weakened after Etienne’s attempt to assume the mantle of Mammon last year. Because of that, Mammon’s Horde can be called forth once more. We both know that whoever controls the Horde will begin the Slaughter of the Innocents. With the Great Seals on Mammon’s Gate weakened, the combined power of the sacrifice of so many lives and the Rending will be enough to break them.”

  “I refuse to believe that there is nothing to be done,” Kim said, fury making her voice crack with power. Hikaru shook his head and turned away.

  “Once it is summoned, all the others will try to take control of it from you, and all of them will want the same thing. You cannot hope to win against such numbers. Especially when the Horde will be all too eager to do as it is commanded. As much as my honor demands that I fight it … I know that Arata is right, that the only way for the Clan Ryu to survive is to add our banner to Mammon’s. You know this is true. Rather than try to control the Horde, or fight it, the only way to survive … is to become part of it.” Hikaru hung his head as he said the last, then started toward the front of the hangar.

  “I only know that I cannot see a better option, Hikaru-sama,” she said. “But the better option isn’t the same thing as the right one.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said from the entrance. “But it very much resembles being alive. Secure this place, and await our instructions.” He turned and got into the last waiting limo.

  “Yes, oyabun,” Kim said. At a gesture from her, the rest of the people in the hangar began to clear out, and I realized, too late, what was about to happen.

  “Ren, go!” I hissed softly. The little sprite was a blur of motion before he went invisible.

  “What is it?” Lucas asked.

  “She’s about to ward the building!” Even as I said it, I could feel the energy of her casting start to coalesce. In seconds, the wards were formed, and in less than a minute, I feel the spell slip into place as smooth as silk.

  “Okay, I even felt that,” Lucas said as he looked at the hair on his arm. “But dude, how is she going to get out?” I peeked over the top of the pallets, watching Kim walk toward the open doors. He was right, Kim still needed to get out without tripping her own wards. I summoned my Sight and watched as she came to a stop inches from the edge of her own spell. I could see the slow waves of energy coursing through the sphere, each ripple spreading from random points in its surface. Kim raised one elegant hand and tapped the edge of the spell, not enough to register or trip the wards. The ripples from her touch spread, then rebounded on each other, coming back to their point of origin and creating a moment of resonance marked by the absence of energy. She stepped through the brief opening, and it closed a heartbeat later. Once outside, she turned and looked back into the hangar, and for a split second, I could have sworn she glanced our way.

  “I think she just showed us how to bypass her wards,” I said. “And that she knew we were here.”

  “Why didn’t she sound the alarm?” Lucas asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t think she’s playing the same game the rest of Clan Ryu is.”

  “So, can you get us out of here?” Lucas asked.

  “I can get me out of here,” I said after a moment. “Getting you out...that’s the hard part.”

  “Can’t you just tell me where to touch and when to go through?” he asked.

  “The process is very precise. You have to make contact with the shield soft enough that it registers but not so hard it trips the wards. The opening won’t be right in front of you. And it will be pretty narrow. You have to be able to see what you’re doing, and you’re months away from being able to see auras.”

  Lucas closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then let it out and gave me a level look. “You could help speed things up,” he said, his tone flat.

  “Have you met me?” I asked. “I’m a mediocre student at best, and I’m even worse as a teacher. Hell, you’re the one who’s always helping me get a handle on shit.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I’m not talking about teaching me,” he said. “You told me once how Dulka gave you aura sight.”

  “He didn’t give me aura sight, he forced my Third Eye open. I was out of it for days.”

  “Then that’s what you need to do to me.”

  “Lucas, no,” I said. I took a step back, forcing old images back into the boxes they were trying to escape from in my head. “It’s one of a long list of things I hate him for. I’m not going to do it to you.”

  “You weren’t willing. I am. There’s a huge difference. Hell, I figure you’re doing me a favor.”

  “That’ll change real fast. Lucas, I can’t do that to you.”

  “We don’t have a choice. If I trip the wards, or if I get caught, we’re both screwed. And we’re not missing junior prom.”

  “Prom? Really?” I asked, grasping at the first thing I could.

  “Really,” he said with a weak smile. “I mean, have you seen our dates? Tell me you wouldn’t trade a little trauma for an evening with Shade.”

  “There’s a lot I’d do for her,” I said.

  “And the same goes for me with Monica. Look, there’s not really any way around this. You’re going to have to force my Third Eye open.”

  Chapter 11

  ~ All this time, you kept me blind/ to things you didn’t want me to see ~ Betrayed, by Suicidal Jester

  “Okay,” I growled. “But this is gonna be harsh.”

  “How harsh are we talking?” Lucas asked. “Am I gonna end up all catatonic or something?”


  “No, but you might see some things you’ll wish you could forget,” I told him.

  “Too late,” he said, his smile wavering.

  “Are you absolutely sure about this?” I asked and marked one more refusal down in my head next to the two he’d already overridden. Thrice requested, thrice refused. If he asked again, I could at least be sure he thought he wanted what he asked for.

  “As sure as I can be. Let’s say you don’t do this. What happens?” He looked at the doors, then around at the loft where we were hiding.

  “Not sure,” I said, “but best guess, you end up staying here for the next two or three days. Worst case, I’ll say something nice at your memorial service.”

  “So, either way, I miss prom. Okay...do it, before I think this through or something.”

  “Okay, let me think a minute, though,” I said, pulling my own aura in tight..

  “Why? I’m-” The initial surge of energy killed the sentence on his tongue as I hit his aura with a surge of magick..

  “Try not to scream,” I said as I stepped forward and caught his quivering body before he could fall. He focused on me and managed a slight nod. My hand came up, and I could see the glow from my fingertips against his suddenly pale cheeks. Then I felt the energy membrane over his Third Eye against my own aura, and I knew the real suffering was only beginning for him. I scraped my thumb across the field, and I felt some of it peel away. The work he’d been doing over the past few months should have weakened the barriers the conscious mind put over the mystic senses, but it still felt pretty solid to me, though it also had some give to it.

  “Son of a bitch!” Lucas gasped. His eyes scrunched up as he closed them tight, and I could feel as much as see the tension in his arms as he fought the urge to bring them up. I brought my energy covered thumb across his forehead in another pass, and more of the covering came free in blue tendrils that faded into nothingness. Beneath the damaged layers of his psychic shields, I could see and feel the presence of his Third Eye as a glow just beneath the surface of his aura. A narrow line of gold shown over his creased brow, and I knew I was getting close.

  “Just a couple more passes, Lucas and you’ll be seeing shit you never wanted to,” I said.

  “Two years too late for that,” he said, and I had to stop for a moment.

  “Leave it to you to make me laugh at a crucial moment.”

  His eyes opened and he smiled. “It’s my superpower.” We both laughed, and in that moment, his Third Eye opened. He sucked in a breath and looked around, his gaze never resting anywhere for long until he looked back at me. I nearly sobbed in relief at not having to force him further. It had ended up happening almost the way it was supposed to, in an unguarded moment, unexpectedly and with someone he trusted around to help anchor him. For me, it had been painful and disorienting, and Dulka had just left me alone after he was done ripping my psyche open to the world of the Veil.

  “You okay, man?” I asked. I’d been infinitely more careful than Dulka had been, and I had still been afraid I was going to hurt him. But unlike when Dulka had forced my Third Eye open, Lucas wanted it to happen, and it seemed like his trust in me had made it easier on him. In the privacy of my own head, I breathed a little easier.

  “Dude, is that what you look like on the inside?”

  “Yeah kinda. Pretty fucked up, huh?”

  “No...well, yeah, but …” he let the sentence die, then closed his eyes. “It’s like...hearing about it is one thing, but when I can see it, and I just...know that it’s a hundred times worse than you make it sound. Everything’s like that, it’s like the whole world is cranked up to like, a hundred.”

  “Lucas, I need you to focus,” I told him, and he opened his eyes. “Concentrate on the here and now. Concentrate on me, on my aura. It isn’t pretty, but it’ll ground you. If you aren’t careful, you’ll get lost in all the stuff you see.”

  “Okay,” he said, taking a slow breath and letting it out. “Focus on your aura, got it.” We stood and I led him down the wooden stairs to the hangar floor. Our path took us through the area that had been set up for the tea ceremony, and Lucas slowed as we entered it. I turned as he fell behind and gestured for him to come on, but he stopped moving.

  “Lucas,” I hissed. “We need to move.”

  “Don’t you feel it, Chance?” he asked. His gaze came back to me with sharper focus. “Right here...right here, it’s calm...quiet. I can feel her here. I can feel...I can’t describe it. You just need to feel it. I think you’ll get it.” He looked around with a smile, and I made the decision. Lucas wasn’t one to be fooled easily, even if he’d just been traumatized. I opened my Third Eye.

  Most of the time, I only opened my senses part way, but like my first time, Lucas didn’t have that option. So I opened my senses completely. What he was talking about was pretty damn obvious. The rest of the room was a riot of color, bleed over from a nearby air ley line mixing yellows and pale blues with the greens and dark blues of the lake’s water lines overhead, and the brilliant gold and silver hues of the oyabuns’ aura imprints at ground level. But in the area Kim had marked off for the tea ceremony, there was only white light. Every now and then, it shimmered, and an opalescent rainbow of color flickered, but otherwise, that one place was an oasis of harmony in a field of chaos.

  In the center stood an aura shadow of Kim. Lucas was standing just inside the edge of it, and I was on the outside. It seemed too beautiful to sully with my crapped up aura, but seeing it...even from the outside, I felt welcome there. Before I could think about it, my feet had carried me across the edge of the area and I was basking in the calm Kim had left behind. I winced at the dark places my aura left in its wake.

  “You are welcome here,” the afterimage said. It smiled and swept one elegant hand toward me. “Do not worry. You are doing no harm. Purity is an illusion.”

  “Is she...talking to you? Does she know we’re here?” Lucas asked.

  “She isn’t,” I said as I walked toward the image. “This is an impression of her. It reacts like she would but it isn’t actually her.”

  “I guess she likes you, then.”

  “Guess so. You ready?”

  “Give me a second,” Lucas said. He closed his eyes again and took a slow, deep breath, and I watched as the chaotic swirl of colors in his aura calmed. While he did his thing, I glanced back at the afterimage of Kim. Lucas was right, it was acting as if Kim liked me, or at least, she wasn’t hostile to me. It was hard not to read more into that than there really was, but my already low self-esteem wasn’t above kicking me in the shins where a beautiful, older woman was concerned. Besides, I had enough girl problems to deal with.

  “Hurry it up,” I said, forcing myself to bring my focus back to the problem at hand.

  “Yeah,” Lucas said. “I’m good. I think I can walk and talk without losing my shit, anyway.” He followed me to the rear door of the hangar, and I pulled him up short a few feet from the door. He stared at the edge of the warded area for a moment, then reached a hand up.

  “Easy, dude,” I said, catching his wrist. “This is the part where things get delicate. Now, watch what I do. See the ward? The trick is to make the slightest contact with it, so that it starts to resonate but not so hard it goes off. The resonance will go out, then it will come back and make an opening near the point where you first touched it. The trick is to see the opening and get through it when that happens. If you move too fast or too slow, you brush the edges of the ward as it’s opening or closing, and you set it off.”

  “And that’s bad,” Lucas said.

  “Yes, that’s bad. Now, watch me, then do exactly what I do.” I reached up and brought my fingertip to the edge of the ward, then brought it forward the last fraction of an inch, until I just brushed the border of the field. My fingertip tingled from the touch of energy, and ripples flowed away from the point of contact, three beautiful circles expanding within each other until they met on the far side of the circle. When they finally coll
ided with each, resonance turned to dissonance, and the smooth curve of each circle turned rough, until it all converged in front of me. For a moment, the ward was simply not there, its integrity not so much compromised as shaken. I jumped forward as it reached its widest point, clearing the edge with plenty of room to spare.

  “Cool,” Lucas whispered from the other side of the ward’s boundary. “My turn.” He brought his hand up, then hesitated before he put his finger to the ward’s surface. My heart leapt into my throat as his fingertip stayed in contact with the ward for a microsecond longer, then he was pulling his hand back like a snake. The dissonance started where he was, and he jumped through, barely missing the edges of the dissonance.

  I frowned at him. “What the hell were you doing?”

  “Testing a theory,” Lucas said with a smile. “I was right, by the way.”

  “A theory?” I said. I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door. “This isn’t fucking science class, Lucas. If you were wrong, we’d be dead or worse! Come on, we have to get the hell out of here. And we are not mentioning Kim to Dr. C.” I opened the door and we slipped out into the night.

  “Why not?” Lucas asked as we walked through the knee high grass.

  “He’s hard enough to live with as it is,” I said. “Can you imagine him all screwed up over his ex-girlfriend?”

  “Damn it, Chance,” Dr. Corwin said as he knelt in front of Lucas. “What have you done?”

  “Exactly what he needed to,” Lucas answered, leaning forward in the chair I’d led him to. “And not a damn thing more than I asked him to do.”