“You sure it wasn’t just talk?” I asked.
“There’s one company within fifty miles of Glogow that leases excavation equipment,” Stan said. “I called them, and they confirmed that Brian had hired equipment and a crew and spent time at the site. I couldn’t get a clear answer as to whether they’d found anything. But, look, we’re talking about a conjuring of one of the most powerful dragons that ever lived. I wasn’t willing to take any chances, because I don’t care what kind of gauntlet Cameo has … he won’t be able to control something like Drage.”
Especially with Drage having been dead for thousands of years, I thought. Like forgotten gods, there was no telling what kind of condition he would return in. Probably more zombie than dragon.
“Is that why you hired the lunar fae?” I asked. “To create a distraction while you searched for the bone in Brian’s room?”
Stan looked over at the three fae with narrowed eyes and nodded. “I got them passes to the con and put them on standby. I made a few attempts to get into Brian’s room, but he had a sentry on his door twenty-four seven. Tried again before his session this morning, but it was another no go. That’s when I gave the fae the green light. They went overboard, but that’s what happens when you deal with their kind,” he snarled.
“Can we go now?” Lialla spoke up from the couch.
Stan looked from them to Vega. “I don’t have a problem with that if you guys don’t.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, showing him a hand. “Why did you kick me out of the con?”
“Heh. I thought that thing you took care of on the third floor was one of the fae illusions and that you were going to blow my chance to get into Brian’s room. I also needed some, ah, plausible deniability.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For bringing down Epic Con. That’s why I accused you of working with the fae. So if everything went to shit, no one would suspect I’d had a hand in it.”
“The conference’s other organizer didn’t know what he was planning,” Vega explained.
“So, you didn’t have someone call me this morning to tell me to come to the con?” I asked Stan.
“No, I don’t even know your number. Look, Sherri, my co-organizer is bigtime into sci-fi and fantasy, but she doesn’t believe any of it’s real. There was no way she was going to buy the whole thing about Brian and Cameo summoning a dragon.” He lowered his voice and looked around as if this Sherri might burst in at any moment. “I have a responsibility to act on what I know. If they do manage to summon Drage, a lost con is the least of our worries. But the damned thing backfired. Brian and his crew cleared out.”
“Everyone?” I asked. “What about the rest of the Military Federation?”
“Their rooms are empty too. Like they’d been beamed out of time and space.”
I directed my next question to Lialla. “Is Stan’s account of your involvement accurate?”
She met my gaze and nodded. I looked over at Vega. “I have no problem letting them go.”
“Me neither,” she said with a sigh. “The fewer we have to deal with right now, the better.”
“We’ll release you,” I told Lialla, “but on the condition you go straight back to your realm.”
“Agreed,” she said.
Vega unlocked their cuffs and, with Bree-Yark and me covering them, walked them out the door. When they’d left, I cocked my head toward Stan to tell Vega she could uncuff him too. While she did that, I paced the suite, trying to reconcile everything Stan had told me with what I’d seen and learned.
“Can you pull up the image of the artifact Brian posted?” I asked Stan.
“Yeah, might take me a couple minutes to find.” He rubbed his wrists, then pulled his phone from his pocket.
I started thinking out loud. “All right, let’s go back to the beginning. Brian is a know-it-all magic-user, who doesn’t actually know any magic. Dragon obsessed too. He gets ahold of an enchanted object, and he’s suddenly able to manipulate fire. Goes from publishing a crap spell book to one with a new section in the back with spells that actually do something.” In Nathan’s case, he had ended up with a demon, but the fact he’d ended up with a demon of an incendiary strain might have been telling. “Shortly after, he pulls the book from sale. Decides he doesn’t want to share his powers with others, maybe. About the same time, this Cameo got into his ear, and they start experimenting with draconic creatures. They found this group, the Military Federation of the Dragon, and start recruiting members.”
“Just to feel high and mighty?” Vega asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m thinking it’s more than that. To call up a god, which is essentially what they’re attempting, you need several things. One of them is a strong belief in the being. And another is a tribute, an offering to the god.”
“Human sacrifice?” Bree-Yark asked.
“That’s why I think he had them all meet here, at the con,” Stan said.
“That and recruiting more members,” I agreed. “Making that belief and tribute as powerful as possible.”
The door to the suite opened, and Mae came in carrying Buster’s pet carrier. I had radioed to inform her of the change in meeting place before arriving here myself. “Sorry it took me so long,” she said, a little out of breath. “Got turned around.”
“Have a seat,” I said. “Bree-Yark will help fill you in.”
The goblin rushed over, took the pet carrier, and escorted Mae to the couch where the fae had been.
“We have a main suspect in the conjurings now,” I told her. “His name is Brian Lutz, and he’s working with someone named Cameo.” I directed my voice to everyone now. “So, let’s go over the events at the con. This morning, Brian and Cameo gathered with the other members of his Military Federation. They took them to the basement, where Brian summoned a pair of fire-breathing lizards. Beings from the same space as Drage. That would have bolstered the group’s belief in Drage. He left the lizards in the casting circles to expire on their own, sealing and warding the doors so no one would find them.”
Tabitha snickered, no doubt at the memory of the warded door blasting me off my feet.
I ignored her. “Then Brian held his session on wizardry. This time to create converts to the Military Federation of the Dragon. He packs the room with promises of free-drink tickets and an introduction by Stan the Man over here.”
Stan paused in his search to give a sheepish wave.
“Why did you do that?” Vega asked.
“Like I said, Brian paid for it. I didn’t want to stoke his suspicions by refusing. I admit, I got a little carried away up there with all of this—” He pumped his fists like he’d done on stage that morning.
Vega rolled her eyes.
“When Brian spotted me,” I went on, “he not only saw someone he considered a rival, but a chance to make a real impression on his audience. The guy’s got charisma in spades. So much so, that I could see its effect on the crowd. But when our duel got underway, he couldn’t cast for some reason.”
“Yeah, dude,” Stan said with a little snort. “I admit, I thought you were gonna be toast.”
“Having lost his audience, Brian leaves the session in a huff. But the faith of his Military Federation is threatened now too, so he conjures the second creature, the frog-beast that Buster sensed behind the door.” Buster chirped at hearing his name. “Only this time, Brian creates a break in the casting circle so the creature can get out.”
“To terrorize everyone?” Mae asked.
“Actually, I think Brian was waiting somewhere nearby to put it down. You know, be the hero. But we interfered and put it down ourselves. He and Cameo go ahead with their plans to attend the parade, because…” I thought of the way Brian had been marching at the head of his Order, chest thrust out, face beaming with arrogance. “Well, because I think Brian couldn’t resist. But they had to be concerned about having enough faith and tributes. When the fae broke up the con, they may have decided to cut their losses,
start clearing out—that’s why you found the rooms empty—but Brian was determined. The wyvern summoning may have been a last-ditch effort.” I gave a dry laugh. “Ambitious as hell, yeah, but it went off beautifully. Brian dispersed the wyvern publicly and very spectacularly, getting him the followers he’d needed. When I tried to interfere, he turned half of them against me and took the other half with him. Question is where in the hell he took them.”
“Oh, hey, I found the photo!” Stan said, holding up his device.
I walked over and peered down at the image of the item Brian had acquired.
“Oh, fuck,” I said.
29
“What?” Vega said, coming around so she could see the image on Stan’s phone too.
Bree-Yark and Mae came up as well. Even Tabitha plodded over and leapt onto the table, craning her thick neck while trying to maintain an expression of barest interest. I dragged a hand through my hair.
“Brian’s not performing any magic,” I said.
“Then how was he doing all that stuff with the fire?” Stan asked. “And the conjurings?”
“This is a phylactery for holding elementals,” I said, tapping the screen. “He used it to summon an efreet. That’s what’s been doing the heavy lifting.”
“An efreet?” Vega asked.
“I should have put it together,” I muttered. “Efreets are a kind of genie.”
“Like Aladdin and his magic lamp?” Mae asked.
“Very similar, actually. They’re powerful elemental beings. Ages ago, dark sorcerers would conjure them, then bind a part of their essences to objects like this one. It was a way to claim ownership, but it was also a faster, more economical way to call them up. Over time, most of the genies broke their bonds to the objects, murdered their owners, and returned to their realm. A few genies remained, their objects either passing hands so many times no one knew what they were anymore or becoming lost altogether. I’m not sure how Brian ended up with this one, luck maybe, but see the inscription here?” The bronze phylactery on the phone was shaped like an oblong crystal. I tightened my aura so I could zoom in on one of the phylactery’s faces, where an incantation was inscribed. “That’s how he called it up. And this particular genie is an efreet. Their element is fire.”
“But I thought you said he had no magical ability,” Stan said.
“He doesn’t,” I replied. “Probably a combination of his charisma, a large enough quotient of the efreet’s essence already inside the object, and timing.”
“The rips around our world,” Vega said, understanding the third factor.
“In fact, I think I know why I couldn’t sense the being.” I opened a portal to my cubbyhole and withdrew the book with the maps of the layers around our world. Stan watched the whole process wide-eyed, but this was no time to be discreet. “The efreet’s realm is here.” I displayed one of the maps, even though none of the others could have known what in the hell they were looking at. “It’s not far from the Below. When Brian called the efreet, the balance of its essence would have come up through the path of least resistance—the Harkless Rift. Like with the demons, that passage cloaked the efreet’s aura and magic.”
“So, every time Brian cast, it was actually the efreet?” Stan asked.
“Had to be.” I thought about the casting circles, an amalgam of old sorcerer magic and the efreet’s protections, which is why I hadn’t recognized them. Good thing I hadn’t attempted to cast on them. “As an elemental force, it’s invisible to everyone but Brian. I doubt he even told Cameo about it.”
“Nothing in their exchange,” Stan confirmed.
“And with Brian’s charisma, he’s able to control it,” I said. “For now, anyway.”
“Then why wasn’t Brian able to cast against you this morning?” Vega asked.
I stopped to consider that. “You know, that’s a really good question.”
“The important question is where Brian went,” Stan said. “According to the website, they were going to try to summon Drage tomorrow night, but I’ve got a feeling they’ve moved everything up.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Might not have wanted to take a chance on losing their support.”
“But how many people did they recruit?” Mae asked. She knew a thing or two about magic from her year of research on the subject. “If it was just a hundred or so, is that going to be enough belief?”
“Well, they have the most important components: the bone, the efreet, and the tribute. The efreet just might have to work a little harder to call up…” My voice trailed off as another piece of understanding snapped into place.
“What is it?” Vega asked.
“The efreet is the vessel the demons are after,” I said. “Sefu is the name Brian gave it—a made-up name, probably after a D&D character he created. That’s why it didn’t register with me or anyone in the Order. But demons could easily have heard the name as the efreet was being summoned through the Harkless Rift. The race was on then to find and possess it.”
“They can do that?” Mae asked. “I mean, possess an elemental?”
“With the kind of energy Brian is asking the efreet to call up, the phylactery won’t be a sufficient channel. The efreet will need to take physical form, become a channel itself. That’s the one case where a demon can possess an efreet.”
“Why don’t the demons just take the phylactery?” Vega asked.
“They could, but it wouldn’t do them any good.” I reached into my cubbyhole again and produced another reference book. “Once an owner becomes master of an efreet, they’re its master for life.” I flipped between a couple sections as I spoke, a skill I’d picked up during my ten years as a professor. “And it says here that the efreet can’t be relinquished by the owner or stolen away. Indeed, it requires powerful and highly specialized magic to undo that bond, something the demons don’t possess.”
I could see Bree-Yark trying to think like a demon. “So, why not just kill Brian?”
“That would terminate the contract, yeah, but the efreet would then sleep for a hundred years—or longer—before it could be called up again. And the demons want its power now. That’s where the form becomes important. Because demons are from the same general area”—I gestured to the strange map again—“they can possess that form. For the same reason, demons are immune to the efreet’s power, which puts them in super-exclusive company. With the possession, the demon doesn’t just inhabit the efreet, but fuses with it, creating another being entirely. One with advanced demonic powers and an inexhaustible supply of elemental energy.” I remembered what the pump-house demon had said about his master smiting their competition. “One that can even kill other demons.”
I didn’t want to think about the human destruction a being like that could wreak.
“So do you think that’s what Arianna meant by Sefu being concealed now but the situation changing?” Vega asked.
“I do. The manifestation of the efreet’s form will send shockwaves through the ether, calling all demons within a hundred-mile radius. They’ll stop at nothing to claim that kind of power.” I read a little more. “Oh, great.”
“What?” Vega asked.
I paused to finish the section. “It would also mean we’d have to handle Brian with extreme care. I mean, like literally swaddle him in bubble wrap and stick him in a padded cell. The efreet’s form carries a ton of energy that it needs to burn off before it can return to the phylactery. That can take weeks. If Brian were killed, though, the efreet’s form would be pulled back to the phylactery, ready or not. Meaning that energy would discharge all at once. We’d be talking a massive explosion.”
“How massive?” Vega asked.
“According to this, massive enough to level mountains, rattle the tectonic plates, and send up a plume of dust so thick it could kick off the next Ice Age. Of course, none of us would be around to enjoy the cooler summers.”
Mae shook her head and made a tsking sound.
“Can we get back to the dragon?” S
tan asked nervously.
As I’d been talking, the prospect of a resurrected dragon, even one as powerful as Drage, increasingly paled in comparison to the literal hell that could follow with the efreet and demons. And that was saying something.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “To prevent the efreet from taking form, we’ll definitely need to stop the conjuring. Do we know where they were planning to summon Drage? Was there any info on their website?”
Stan shook his head. “It said everything would be revealed at the con.”
“Dammit.” I checked my phone to see if I had any new messages. “Someone called me this morning and told me to come to the hotel. Said there was going to be a conjuring in the basement and that I was the only one who could stop it. If it wasn’t you,” I said, nodding at Stan, “then I’m thinking there’s a defector in their ranks.”
“Have they been back in contact?” Vega asked.
“No, and that’s bothering me. Someone walked in at the end of their call this morning. If it was Brian or Cameo and they caught on to what this person was doing, they might have taken care of them.”
“And no one’s come up to you at the con?” Vega pressed.
I started to shake my head, then stopped, remembering the young man at the back of the Military Federation of the Dragon’s formation, the one who had pushed the envelope into my hands.
Had he been trying to give me a message?
I pulled out the envelope again and looked it and the manifesto over. No other writing besides what I’d already read. My gaze fell to the red ticket sitting at the bottom of the envelope, good for a free drink.
“Someone did give me this,” I said lifting out the ticket.
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