The bottle landed precariously close to Kayliss, who raised his head from the package of hot dogs he had stolen. Steve raised a steadying hand from his own place in the concealing darkness outside the firelight, and Kayliss quelled his thoughts of slashing open the offender’s belly with his claws. He instead growled his irritation but nothing more.
Kyle opened another beer and lay down on his side next to the blond. “Can I ask you a question, Susan?” he asked.
“As long as you can still form the words,” she teased, tapping the neck of his beer bottle.
“You know I like you, right?”
Her cheeks flushed slightly and then she lay down on her side to face him. “I was starting to get that feeling, yes.”
“And do you like me?” he asked.
Steve noted the other two young men watching with feigned indifference as their friend clumsily applied his charms. He knew the reason for their interest and heat flared in his chest. He almost moved against them then but stayed his hand, watching.
She giggled, saying, “I think maybe the beer’s fogging your brain.”
“No, no,” he protested. “I do like you. But I’ve got to know if you like me, too.”
Susan appeared to think it over and then kissed her finger and touched it to his lips. “Don’t worry about it, Kyle. Yes, I do like you.” She smiled as he leaned close and their lips met in a livid kiss. He rolled then so that he was above her and she pulled away abruptly. “Woah, that’s enough,” she said.
“No, don’t stop now,” he replied breathily. He kissed her again. “We’re on a roll.”
“I said that’s enough,” she insisted. She tried to wriggle out from under him but Kyle used her effort to maneuver himself between her thighs. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“What do you think I’m doing?” he said with a lurid smile. His hand reached for the top button of the front of her pants. “Why else do you think we brought you here?”
She slapped his face. “That’s not funny.”
Kyle angrily grabbed her wrists and then forced them above her head. “Who said I was trying to be funny?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Give me a hand over here.”
“Kyle, no! No!” She struggled in his grip but could not match his strength, and sobs escaped her lips as the other two young men each took a firm hold of her wrists and held her down. Tears streamed down her face as Kyle slipped a hand up her shirt and then gripped her breast.
“Just relax and enjoy it,” he said.
“Stop!” she sobbed. “Please! Just stop!”
Steve stood at the edge of the firelight, appearing as little more than a silhouette with his face shrouded in darkness. “Let her go,” he said simply. His voice was firm, and sounded unnaturally loud for the evenness of the tone.
Kyle’s head snapped up and Susan’s eyes filled with sudden desperate hope. “Please! Help me!” she begged.
Kyle’s eyes narrowed menacingly. “Who the fuck are you?” he hissed.
Steve was still as stone. In the eerie play of firelight the young men could not even see his lips move when he spoke. “I’m not going to tell you again.”
Kyle rose angrily to his feet and one of the young men who still held Susan grabbed an empty beer bottle and then took a position beside his friend. A switchblade clicked open in Kyle’s hand, held in a loose, taunting grip. He exchanged a look with his friend at his side and then effected a sneering smile at the stranger in their midst. “You’re not too good at numbers, are you?” he asked.
Steve stepped wholly into the light and made no attempt to hide the darkness of his eyes. “I guess I’m just not as smart as you are.” He held out his hand, palm down, over the sand and the crystal emitted its shattering song in answer to his call. The sand below writhed and turned, and then rose upward in a sudden spiraling funnel to collect in his waiting hand. Steve turned his hand over and then held the small mound out as though in offering saying, “I believe this is yours. Here, take it.” He raised his hand up, puckered his lips and blew. The sand flew forth across his fingertips as though propelled by a hurricane, straight into Kyle’s face. With a startled shout, he dropped the switchblade and covered his stinging eyes with his hands.
Visibly startled, the other raised the beer bottle to throw but it shattered into a thousand tiny fragments with a dismissive flick of Steve’s finger. The drunken youth dropped to his knees, shocked, gripping his bleeding hand at the wrist.
Steve waved his hand and the exploded glass zipped through the air like a cloud of tiny hornets, slashing the face of the remaining man holding Susan to the ground. Suddenly free, she jumped to her feet and scrambled away at a run.
Kyle rubbed at his eyes and squinted through the dust and debris clinging to his eyelashes and gumming in the corners. He looked up and met the cold stare of black eyes in return. His breath caught in his throat and he staggered back a step. “What the hell are you?” Steve approached another few steps and Kyle staggered back again until he lost his balance and fell to the sand, one hand held up defensively. “You’re possessed, man! You’re some kind of demon!”
Steve paused. For some reason he could not readily explain, those words seemed somehow…significant. He stepped forward and hauled Kyle to his feet by the front of his shirt, and then into the air. There he held him, savoring the fear that practically glowed in Kyle’s eyes before tossing him effortlessly to the other side of the fire. Kyle hit the sand hard, rolling to his back to catch his breath.
“No,” Steve said, “not a demon. A demon would have killed you already. If you ever try again what you attempted tonight with that girl…“ He smiled showing teeth, “I still will.”
Kyle quailed from his place on the sand.
Steve turned as though to walk away then, but hesitated as more broken, fragmented stills of the future flashed across his mind. He turned and looked to the lights of the city further inland, staring at something far away. He gestured to the darkness and Kayliss ambled forth from the shadows. Kyle watched, disbelief written on his face, as the huge beast waited until Steve was seated securely on his back before padding away silently into the night.
Scott applied the brake and the van halted at the intersection where Steve had disappeared earlier in the evening. “This is it,” he said.
Haldorum peered into the darkness and reached out with supernatural senses. The road continued ahead and down into the mainstream of West Seattle. “You still have the list?” he asked. Scott reached inside his jacket and produced a piece of paper with the phone numbers of every police station in all of Seattle.
A high school senior touring the city with an exceptionally large tiger was bound to attract some attention, after all.
“There are a great many,” Lurin observed. “Wizard, can you not locate him magically? You did so before from an entire world away.”
Haldorum shook his head with a sigh. “I am on a world without magic. My spells become exponentially weaker the farther from me they must reach. And the spell I used to locate him from Mithal took weeks to prepare.”
Scott nodded and exhaled slowly as his eyes scanned down the long list. “Which leaves us my lengthy list. Seattle’s a big place.” He folded up the paper and then placed it back inside his jacket as he drove through the intersection.
“Try and relax,” Haldorum said to calm them all. “We will find him.”
“I just hope it’s in one piece,” Scott replied with a weak smile. “Do you really think Azinon will kill him over this pendant thing?”
Haldorum placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Let us just concentrate on finding him.”
Time dragged unbearably slowly and as the hour of midnight drew uncomfortably close at hand Scott became a bubbling cauldron of frustration. In fifteen minutes, Azinon would transpose worlds and enter the race to find his missing friend. Even Haldorum, who usually seemed so unshakable, appeared edgy and impatient with worry. Something had to be terribly wrong, for his friend would
surely at least have called his mom to tell her he was all right.
“Should we try again?” Scott offered, not knowing what else to do.
Haldorum shook his head. “No, I don’t think that will do anything but make Steven’s mother worry all the more.” He fell silent for a few moments and then asked, “Just how upset would you say Steven became?”
Scott snorted, “Are you kidding? I’ve never seen him like that. Sure, he cared about her a lot, but I don’t think that’s what messed him up. When he found out she betrayed him…I don’t know, something in him changed. To top it all off, though, she tried to finish the relationship by simply not seeing or speaking to him again; like she thought pretending he never existed would make it all go away.” The light ahead turned red and Scott slowed the van to a stop. He sat back in his seat and exhaled heavily. “I’m sure she’s not a bad person, but that was exactly the wrong thing to do to him.”
Haze sat on the shredded carpet in the back of the van —Kayliss’s handiwork—with his longsword resting by his side and looking thoughtful. As the van started forward again he asked, “Haldorum, do you suppose the strange machines of this world would work on Mithal?”
“I am afraid not—at least not for very long,” he replied.
Haze looked back again, out of the tinted windows. “Such things on our own world would greatly enhance the life of everyone in the realm.”
“And certainly make it more complex,” Lurin quipped, not looking at all convinced of the overall benefits of such technology.
“More complex, indeed,” Haldorum agreed. “Earth is parallel to our world, but I am not certain if the technology here can mix with the magical side of Mithal for any great length of time. Long ago the people here made a decision to follow the path of science and left magic almost entirely behind them. Our people, however, chose the opposite, trusting in the arcane laws. That is the way our two worlds were meant to be, I think; parallel, but opposed.”
“I’m surprised we speak the same language,” Scott commented.
“Ques vueilur,” Haldorum replied, and Scott cast him a questioning glance. “I said ‘we don’t’. That is the reason I believe technology here would not work very long on Mithal. When we first arrived, I cast a spell that allows Haze, Lurin and myself to speak your language. I did the same for you and Steve when you came to our world. Usually that spell would have gone on indefinitely—or until I canceled the effect— but since arriving here, I have renewed it twice.”
Scott raised his brows and sighed. “I guess you learn something new every day.”
Steve’s dark orbs stared from the parking lot, through the large exterior windows of the grocery store where a pretty blond cashier rang up the purchases of the elderly woman before her. The young woman moved with the regularity of repetition, clearly unenthused by her work but also so swift and adept in her movements she appeared to perform the motions purely on reflex. It was late and the remaining rows of check stands to the left and right of her were empty, as the additional personnel were unneeded given the light flow of customers who shopped at this late hour.
Kayliss, crouching low to the ground near Steve’s feet, raised his head from their hiding spot between two parked cars in the lot and made a low, guttural noise, the sound a question Steve instinctively understood.
“Not yet,” he said, his eyes never leaving the young woman in the store.
The elderly woman pushed her cart with her bagged purchases beyond the check stand and moved toward the exit, and then a man dressed in old jeans ripped along the front of the left thigh stepped forward. Steve expression darkened as he recognized the man’s features from his earlier glimpses of the future: dirty blond, greasy hair matted close to his head and the distinctive rip in his jeans. He placed something small, probably a package of gum, on the counter and flashed two rows of yellow teeth in a smile. The man then held out a dollar but snatched it away teasingly as the cashier reached for it. The blond woman waited, her lips a thin humorless line. The man extended the dollar once more, likely intending to do it again, but this time the cashier snatched it from his grasp with surprising speed.
Steve smiled at that. The greasy-haired man appeared less amused.
The cashier rang up his purchase and when the drawer to her till sprang open the greasy-haired man reached slowly into the pocket of his windbreaker and produced a small revolver he held close to his body.
Steve’s brow furrowed as he wondered if he had made a mistake in choosing to wait outside, but then dismissed the thought. Grocery store robberies rarely ended in bloodshed unless the person being robbed tried something foolish. From the look of this young woman, she did not appear stupid. She would do as she was told, give over the money, and the man would run for the exit.
From his vantage point, Steve actually noticed the three casually dressed security employees moving between the aisles toward the front of the store before the thief did. They might have passed for customers if not for the man in front speaking momentarily into a two-way radio he held in his right hand. Steve did not know how they knew of the ongoing robbery—perhaps a store video camera, or silent alarm button the cashier managed to push undetected—but whatever the means, their brisk pace and current path put them on an intercept course with check stand 8.
The thief noticed them the moment they stepped out from between the aisles not four rows away. The cashier hit the floor and the security men dived in three separate directions as the thief’s gun came up. Steve heard the gunshots like the popping of firecrackers from his place in the parking lot, the greasy-haired man firing shots haphazardly in all directions as he ran along the store’s front. No one attempted to stop him as he overturned a shopping cart on his way out of the store’s exit and ran headlong into the night.
Steve held out his hand palm down at the height of his waist, and Kayliss’s head rose to meet it. “Yes,” he said, his countenance darker than a summer thunderhead. “Now it’s time.”
A small glow pierced the darkness from beneath Steve’s shirt as the crystal came to life.
Haldorum startled both Scott and Lurin as he sat bolt upright in his seat.
“What is wrong?” the woodsman asked, his hand moving for the slim sword at his side.
“Steven! He is close!” He paused then closing his eyes, reaching out with his senses to get a bearing. “Straight ahead!” he declared pointing.
Scott planted the gas pedal to the floor and the van lunged forward.
People screamed and fled in all directions as Kayliss raced down the sidewalk with Steve clinging tight to his back. He could have killed someone, the young man thought angrily. Kayliss growled in assent as he paced the fleeing thief before them. That man could have killed someone, and he couldn’t care less. The girl did as she was told, the employees hit the floor at the very sight of the gun, and he sprayed bullets anyway!
Kayliss snarled and Steve bared his teeth as his anger flared; a wild rage that made man and tiger alike thirst for blood.
The man slipped into a side alley that ran between two storage warehouses and disappeared from sight. Kayliss slowed to a walk as he neared the entrance to the alley and Steve dismounted. He sidled up to the corner with his back to the building and carefully glanced around the side. The alley was dark and smelled horribly of garbage and urine. Rats squeaked and climbed over boxes and bottles, for the most part broken and unusable, while they scurried and fought for scraps of food. An old rusted dumpster rested against the brick wall of the second warehouse a hundred feet in and Steve could hear the happy giggling and gibbering of the man he sought coming from the opposite side. The thief sounded elated.
The young wizard stalked forward and the giggling stopped abruptly at the sound of a bottle skittering across the pavement. Steve then stepped out and seized the man by the front of his clothing in one hand.
“What the--!” was all he could utter before he left the ground in the young man’s powerful grip.
The thief struggled madly
, his legs kicking wildly in the air but couldn’t shake himself loose. The robber then reached for the pocket in his windbreaker. Steve’s free hand shot out like a striking serpent and seized the man’s arm just below the wrist. With a jerk, he snapped the bone and his prey howled in agony, but even that cut off as Steve’s hand then went from his arm to his throat. Slowly he squeezed, tighter and tighter, watching the man’s mouth open reflexively to draw in air. Steve released his hold on the windbreaker and held him up by the neck alone, his palm pressed tightly against his windpipe. The thief’s hands pried frantically at Steve’s fingers. His eyes rolled back in his head, his lungs spasming…his life fading.
Doubt played across the young wizard’s face then. He blinked and the whites of his eyes returned, the irises swallowing back the darkness to return to blue. “What am I doing?” he breathed in horror. He dropped the thief in a heap to the ground, who immediately clutched at his throat and gasped repeatedly for more precious air. Steve could only back away, scarcely able to believe what he had nearly done.
The darkness within him vied for control in the turmoil of emotion, struggling for the hatred that fed it but recoiling from the revulsion and horror.
“What’s happening to me?”
Scott’s van skidded to a stop on the street in front of the alley, and then Haldorum, Haze, Lurin and Scott exited in a rush. “Steven, thank Heaven we found you!” the old wizard called.
Steve turned at the sound of his name and the magic in his blood triggered a tidal wave of hatred, amplifying his rage as it seized on the one sin he loathed above all…betrayal. The darkness swam across his eyes at the mere sight of the elder wizard and strengthened his fury three fold. With a snarl, Steve searched the alley for a weapon but saw only one that would suffice. In answer to his will, the rusted dumpster shrieked as it slid several feet across the pavement. Sweat broke out across Steve’s brow with the effort of trying to focus his raw power and again the rusted metal moved—this time only half the distance it had before. His breath left him explosively as his mental strength waned. The power was there, he could feel it, raw and immense, but he lacked focus.
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