Angelfire

TWENTY-SEVEN

CAL

Ihurt all over and tingled as if I’d connected with an electric fence. But for the first time in what seemed an eternity my mind was clear. Every perception, every sensation, cut like a shard of glass.

I looked up into that face, a face that should have been Tina’s, and saw something fundamentally and inexpressibly alien. This was not Tina, had never been Tina.

“You all right?” Colleen leaned over me, cutting off my view of the flare, her own face barely recognizable in the ripples of light and dark. Howard peered over her shoulder.

The wave of futile bitterness passed. I took up my sword in one hand, grabbed Colleen’s arm with the other, and hauled myself upright, turning toward the front of the room. Primal stood there in a blaze of his own light, flinging out bright spheres. The flares in the room had congregated above him.

It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. I could now see what Colleen had commented on before-that the flares were tethered to him by a visible web of power. He was drawing on them, sucking up their life to fuel his own.

Goldie was the target of Primal’s volleys. He was huddled in the middle of the room, tucked into himself, rocking back and forth. The fireballs detonated with a fizzing sound, exploding like trick snakes and writhing about him. His golden halo, so bright in the semidarkness, was tinted crimson.

“He’ll kill him,” I said. “He’ll kill Goldie if we don’t get him out of here.”

“What do we do?” Colleen asked.

“Split up. Try to distract Primal. Confuse him. I’ll get Goldie.”

I sheathed my sword and crab-crawled toward him on my hands and knees, using dangling hanks of cable for cover, flattening myself to the floor when slivers of Primal’s light flew too near. I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I reached him. I’d have to trust my instincts-pray there was some way to separate Primal from his power supply.

Your thought is your reality, Doc had said. Colleen had complained that life’s rules had been suspended, and Mary that they had changed so much she no longer knew them. They were right. There were new rules, new laws of nature; perhaps even nature itself was fundamentally changed. Before, if you wanted to set off an explosion, you had to take the indirect route offered by science. You had to manipulate matter. Now, the connective tissue between thought and reality was exposed. And that exposure presented us with a whole new set of tools, a whole new realm of arts and sciences.

New rules, new ways to set off explosions.

I heard a shout from the shadows somewhere near the front of the room. Colleen. A moment later mundane fire flared and rocketed toward Primal on a crossbow bolt. I didn’t see it connect, but Primal let out a roar that sounded like a train wreck and flashed white-hot. The red missiles stopped falling.

I scrambled to Goldie’s side, grabbed him with both hands and shook him as hard as I dared. “Goldie, come on! Get clear. Now.”

He shook his head, cringing as Primal roared again, firing lightning in every direction. “No good. He’s turned me into a boomerang. I could’ve killed you.”

“You didn’t. Goldie, come on. I need you. Clear your head.”

He raised his hands, tangling his fingers in his rampant hair. “He’s in my head, dammit! I’m a fucking puppet!”

I shook him again, cringing as Howard let out a wild howl somewhere in the dark. “Let it go. I have an idea. Take my hand.” I held it out to him.

He raised his eyes to my face. He looked less like a man and more like a wild thing-a satyr surprised in a forest glade. But he obeyed, lacing his fingers into mine. I could feel the power in him, hot and raw and reckless. Darkness and light colliding; converging and separating. I’d had no idea how strong he’d become.

Looking down into his eyes, I drew my sword. “Feed me power,” I told him. “He may have your number, but he doesn’t have mine. Not yet.”

He gripped my hand tighter. “Be sure of this, Cal. Be fucking sure of it.”

“I’m sure.” I stood, hauling him to his feet, and aimed the point of my sword approximately at Primal’s head. “Fire.”

I can’t even begin to describe it. A wild tide of power leapt the physical connection, welded the two of us together, and roared through me like hot lava, scalding every nerve. The sword erupted with it, spewing gold glory at the target I held in sharp focus. We were a cosmic flamethrower-Agni, Lord of Fire. Rage and exultation, pain and ecstasy, tumbled through me. I think I screamed. Maybe we both did.

Primal couldn’t absorb the attack. All he could do was throw up a shield, and he was too late to save himself completely. The blaze of power caught him, spun him around and flung him against the deeply tinted window behind him. A thousand tiny traceries of brilliance raced out from the point of impact, letting in a ruddy glow from outside. The wash of light caught Colleen in a far corner of the room, frozen in the act of reloading her crossbow.

I lowered my sword. It still burned white-hot and vibrated in my hand as if an electrical current crackled through it. Beside me Goldie hummed under his breath, quaking. Chills rolled between us through our entwined fingers.

“Anything left?” I murmured, my eyes still on Colleen. “Nothing,” he panted. “Nothing left.”

That was bad news. Primal was staggering upright. In a moment he might be raging and sending bloody missiles at us again. We had to move fast. I grabbed Goldie and forced him into a shambling walk. To our left, in the shadows along the walls, I could see Doc and Howard. They were also moving toward the head of the room.

Fire flared again to Primal’s right as Colleen unloaded a blazing crossbow bolt right at his head. The thing’s reflexes were good. He wrenched his head aside and the bolt caught his shoulder instead, carrying away a volleyball-size chunk of it. There was no blood, only a spew of blood-colored light.

We were maybe twenty-five feet from him when Primal reared back and unleashed a fresh storm of power. It rolled over us in a crushing wave, smearing itself on Goldie’s aura, darkening it. Goldie groaned and went to his knees; nausea hit me like a gut punch. Doubled over, I saw Doc and Howard buckle, saw Colleen duck and roll.

The flares above Primal pulled close, pulsing radiance, giving up their energy to him along the bright umbilicals- energy he was going to destroy us with. And I noticed for the first time that luminous cords also connected them to the walls-to the pulsing arteries in the walls.

A tether? A conduit? If so, which way did the power run?

I didn’t have time for conjecture. Primal raised his hands above his head, a ball of fire raging between them. The deadly star grew swiftly-it was the size of his head, then three times the size.

“Now,” he roared. “Now, you die.” He loosed the thing.

The sword, still gleaming with the residue of Goldie’s power, was the only defense I had. I stepped in front of Goldie and raised it, hoping it might deflect the deadly ball and recalling that an angel with a burning sword had driven Adam and Eve from Paradise.

A brilliant streak of aqua sizzled over our heads, slashing between Primal and us. It met his blast head on, engulfing it in a billow of pale fire. In the center of the billow Magritte blazed into being, electricity in every line of her body. She flung her hands defensively toward the enemy, and what rolled out of her grasp was a roaring piece of the sun. It hurled Primal’s missile right back in his face.

He recoiled, throwing up a shield of the clotted magic, then fought back through it, aiming all his powers at Magritte. She weakened swiftly-she was alone; Primal had a dozen flares in his rear guard.

Beside me Goldie let out a shriek of useless rage, trying to gather his resources. Amber light flashed around him, but it wasn’t enough to help Magritte.

Sword in hand, I rolled away from him, out from under Magritte’s protective cover. As I came upright, melody surged over me, cutting through the chaos in the room like a sonic knife. Around Goldie and Magritte, Primal’s furious onslaught melted, the murky colors of carnage muting to pastels.

I turned. Enid stood in the dark opening at the rear of the room, harmonica to his lips, blue notes-piercing and bittersweet-cascading from it. Over Primal’s head the flares pivoted toward the musician in eerie unison and began to drift toward him as if Primal had ceased to exist. The giant’s glory dimmed, blushing ruby.

I started toward the head of the room again, sword ready. Once the flares were gone, Primal would be at a disadvantage. I intended to be in a position to do something about it.

But I’d reckoned without Primal’s will to live. In a movement that belied his size, he reached out and literally snatched Magritte out of the air.

Straightening, he held her out before him and thundered, “Enid Blindman! I swear to you I’ll break this creature in two if you don’t stop now.”

Enid faltered, and the flares-who had almost reached him-hesitated, bobbing in place.

“No!” Magritte cried. Primal’s bright hand, wrapped around her neck, squeezed off any further protest.

“Stop,” Primal repeated.

Behind me Goldie made a choking sound.

Enid held the flares before him for a second more, then sagged against the door frame in defeat. They turned and began their journey back toward Primal. Magritte’s eyes, desperate, locked on them.

“No. This can’t happen.” Goldie pulled himself to his full height and staggered toward Primal, flames leaping from his hands. They spread wildly up his arms, over his head. He was turning himself into an incendiary device. In a matter of seconds his entire body was cloaked in arcane fire.

Magritte’s eyes were filled with it. Then she, too, seemed to burn brighter in Primal’s hands, her aura swelling into a blazing sphere. In seconds her nova was so intense I had to turn my head away and screw my eyes shut.

There was a flash of unbearable brilliance, a whoosh of sound, a burst of heat, and the room was plunged into chilly gloom.

I opened my eyes. Primal had faded from ruby to bronze and stood frozen, his empty hands extended before him. Magritte had crumpled to the floor in front of him, her halo dimmed nearly to nonexistence. Goldie was beside her in an instant, pulling her into his arms. She sagged against him, strength gone.

That was the opening I needed. I leapt into motion, sword swinging, while from the darkness to my right came a flash of real fire. Colleen’s third shot buried itself in Primal’s neck in the same moment I lashed out with my sword. The blade sang through the air in a radiant arc, catching Primal thigh high. Sparks exploded. The blow was bone jarring, as if I’d hacked into one of the oozing walls rather than a living thing. Bits of something hard flew in all directions. But the blade sliced through the leg, severing it. There was no blood.

Primal toppled, clutching at Colleen’s bolt. He fell backward in slow motion, into the spiderweb of light from the cracked window. The thick glass sagged, gaps widening, lengthening, and then the whole thing gave way, sending the monster and several hundred pounds of glass shard down seven floors onto the sidewalk. Ruddy sunlight poured through the yawning hole.

The world around us took a deep breath.

Then we converged on Goldie and Magritte, Enid hovering protectively, Doc immediately falling into the medic’s drill: check eyes, check pulse, check respiration. She was spent but conscious.

“Damn!” Colleen stopped in front of me, shaking her head. “I thought that thing would never die. That was my last shot.”

“Tough cookie,” muttered Howard.

I looked down at Magritte. She glowed a bit brighter now, seemed to rest more lightly in Goldie’s arms. “Can we move her?”

Doc flashed me a glance, nodded.

“Oh, shit. That can’t be good.” Colleen said the words so softly I barely heard them. She was staring at a spot behind me and over my head.

I followed her gaze. The flares hung in limbo in the middle of the room, still bound to each other and to their prison with blazing manacles. There was still power here. The building around us pulsed with it. I felt its oily static on my skin.

“They’re still trapped,” I said. “But by what?”

Magritte’s eyes widened. “Didn’t get all of it,” she said. “Still something …” She shook her head. “Weird. Flare. A flare, but… but not.”

“Oh, son of a bitch,” said Colleen. “It’s Clay.” She flung her useless crossbow aside to clatter and skid across the floor. She paced after it, swearing.

I followed her. “What’s Clay? Colleen, what’s Clay?” “Our puppet master, that’s what. The power behind the fucking throne. Why didn’t I see it?”

I shook my head in confusion. “She said a flare.”

“But not. Shit, I didn’t even think to tell anybody-if you wipe off his dazzle paint, Clay glows like a damned lightning bug.”

“But he doesn’t fly; his eyes aren’t-”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s the not part. Oh, damn, why didn’t I see it?” She grabbed my arm so hard I gasped. “We’ve got to find him, Cal. Find him before he can-”

She was cut off by the sound of applause from a single pair of hands. We both turned toward the middle of the room.

Clay stood there in the wash of muted sunlight, having appeared seemingly out of nowhere, clapping slowly, rhythmically. He was wearing what looked like an orange hazmat suit, and the flesh of his face and hands gleamed greenish white. His hair, uncovered, was long and curling and had a similar tint. And although he didn’t fly, I caught, not for the first time, the strangeness of his gait. Gliding, as if he merely skimmed the ground he walked.

As he moved toward us he drew the flares down from their dark aerie. They bobbed about him, tethered, as they had been tethered to Primal. He stopped applauding and clasped his hands together over his heart. “Oh, Colleen, you are such a clever girl. I had no idea. None of my normals are nearly as clever as you and your friends. You’ve been quite an amusement. I’m sorry this has to end.”

“That makes one of us,” Colleen returned acidly. She fidgeted, in her own unique way, rolling the haft of her knife over and over in her hand. “We’re nothing to you. Why don’t you just let us go?”

“You’re not going anywhere. None of you. Oh, well, maybe Howard. He’s pretty much outlived his usefulness. But the rest of you are going to stay to populate the king’s court with life, laughter… and love,” he added, affording Colleen a wry leer.

“Like hell,” Colleen assured him.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Clay asked. “I’m not the loser here. You are. You destroyed a figurehead, an effigy. You killed a machine.” His eyes swept the walls around us, lips curving in a smile. “No-you killed part of a machine. And the master of the machine is very much alive. You still have to deal with me.” He slapped a palm to his narrow chest, pulled out a bright green ball of energy, and balanced it on the palm of his hand. “Which one of you gets this?” he asked, then swung gracefully toward me, puckering up to blow the thing in my direction.

“You are so fucking predictable,” Colleen said.

Clay pivoted. The blazing orb caught her in the chest and flung her across the floor. She skidded almost to the gaping window and rolled into a fetal position.

Adrenaline sang in my veins. I took a wild slash at Clay with my sword, but he was too quick. He dodged lightly out of reach, laughing. I kept after him, parrying, thrusting, keeping his attention on me. From the corner of my eye I saw Enid hovering uncertainly behind Doc, harmonica still in his hand.

“Enid!” I shouted, keeping my eyes on Clay. “Enid, the flares!”

Familiar melody rose around me. Enid’s refugee song. He broke away from the group gathered around Magritte and moved toward the flares, harmonica wailing out the very depths of his soul. It was a siren song; the flares melted to it, turning their bright eyes away from their master. Their auras changed subtly, shedding reds, shading toward aqua. Playing, Enid headed for the doorway, the harmonica’s haunting voice echoing through the hollow room. The flares moved with him, the cords or conduits that connected them to the building dissolving. Behind the walls the bright veins of light dimmed.

The building shuddered, and panic flashed in Clay’s eyes. He shot a sphere of light at Enid. It hit the barrier of Enid’s music and melted harmlessly away. He lobbed a second salvo at me. I met it with my sword. It fizzled in a shower of golden sparks.

I went straight at him. He released a barrage of arcane grapeshot. I caught the brilliant pebbles with the blade, swept them aside, and advanced, careless of where they landed. Enid and the flares receded into the darkness; the Tower sighed and moaned. Clay laughed and danced away from me. But he sweated now, his eyes wild.

I will probably never shake the feeling that I caused what happened next. I know I could have prevented it.

Four feet from where Doc and Goldie shielded Magritte, Clay stopped and extended a hand toward the nearest wall. The fey arteries blazed, their pulse quickening. I could almost hear the drumming of a great mechanical heart. A second later a green streamer of light leapt from the wall to Clay’s outstretched hand. It enveloped him, fed him.

I lunged, hoping to land a blow while he was distracted, but before I could touch him, he turned and pointed at Maggie. A bolt of energy shot from his fingertip straight to her heart. She spasmed, aqua radiance backwashing along the connection. There was a flash of light, a sizzle of sound, and the emerald trail sucked itself back up, wreathing Clay in a rainbow. He broke his connection with the Tower.

Magritte went limp in Goldie’s arms, light extinguished.

He screamed-one long, piercing note of anguish that I will hear until the day I die. Longer, if there’s any life after this one. Doc bent to revive her, but I knew she was gone. Because Goldie knew.

The building shook as if the ground beneath it shivered. The walls pulsed with lurid Light.

In the moment of vertigo, Howard flung himself at Clay, snapping with animal fury, claw-hands reaching, ready to rend and tear. But Clay, exultant, danced out of the way. He was suddenly able to leave the ground and, if not to fly, at least to levitate. He grinned at me, vibrating with new power, ablaze with it, his hair tossing in the breeze from the blown out window.

“Christ, what a rush! I had no idea … Here I’d been keeping those creatures alive, taking only what I needed-what I thought I needed. I had no idea it could be this … powerful an experience.” He smiled beatifically and rubbed a hand over his heart as if petting the new power that infused it. “Do you know how many devas are in this place? Dozens. Scores.” He giggled. “So much for saving something for a rainy day.”

Dear God, I’d taken a garden-variety monster and driven it to become a flare killer. Somehow, we had to bring him down before he could reach any of the other flares. But how? He was no longer a man. He wasn’t even a flare. He was an unknown, connected to this damn Tower in ways I didn’t understand. I shook myself. Understanding was irrelevant. We had to stop him.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Colleen raise her head from the floor. She fumbled her necklace off over her head, made a beckoning gesture with her fingers, then dropped her head and lay still. Clay didn’t seem to notice her, though she was only about five feet from him.

I took a long, gliding step to my left.

“Maybe,” Clay mused, “my diet doesn’t need to be limited to devas. You can read changed texts, can’t you? Maybe I’ll sample you next. Lord knows what I could do with your little talent.”

I stepped left again, raising the sword.

He glided right, laughing at me. “You don’t actually think you’re going to get near me with that thing, do you?”

In answer I raised it over my head and came right at him.

At that exact moment Colleen wrapped a hand around his ankle, then sliced through the leg of his coverall with her knife. His skin gleamed through the tear for an instant before she reached in and grasped his leg.

He shrieked, convulsing as if caught in a powerful electrical current. A swarm of shimmering sparks raced up his leg to engulf him, devouring his bright new aura.

No hesitation. Not now. I knew what this thing was- what I had to do. I redoubled my grip on the sword, took two strides and ran Clay through. I felt the power in him kicking back through the blade, still battling me. The sword bucked in my grasp as if alive, but I held on-willed myself to hold on.

In a spray of light and blood he pitched backward, sliding off the blade toward the shattered window, dragging Colleen with him.

I flung the sword aside and threw myself down practically on top of her in the debris, wrapping my arms around her as tightly as I could. She let go of his ankle as he went over, stopping our slide just short of the jagged border. We watched as the spot of orange receded into the twilight.

A sigh seemed to issue from every corner of the room, from the building itself. Then the entire place shuddered. There was a loud, long wrenching sound and bits of ceiling tile rained down into the room.

“Shit, the whole place is coming apart,” said Colleen.

I rolled to my feet, drawing her up after me. “Let’s go!”

The Tower shook again, then settled into a rhythmic quaking. Ceiling tiles continued to fall, exploding dully against the floor.

We scrambled from the room, half dragging Goldie, who still clutched Magritte’s frail body to himself. The building no longer toyed with us. It was dying, groaning, pelting us with debris as it disintegrated around us. We escaped through its death throes to the escalator core and descended, sometimes conveyed by tides of other refugees.

Out in the street we put as much distance between us and the Tower as possible. We’d barely gotten across Dearborn when it seemed to sag, settling toward the parking garage at the rear. We took cover in doorways and under ledges, and while we watched, every window in the place blew out, showering debris everywhere. Then flares poured from the building into the sky, which even now was clearing, losing its ruddy gleam. There were dozens of them.

Primal’s ruby dome was evaporating.

For the space of several minutes the sky was amber-washed cerulean. A cold wind whipped the streets and flayed the clouds overhead. But then, in the west, a swift unnatural darkness gathered, blotting out the sunset. The sky went yellow-gray, the way it does before a tornado.

From where I hunkered inside the blasted foyer of the building across Dearborn from the Tower, I saw Enid move out of cover into the middle of the street, his knot of rescued flares hovering close behind him. They were enclosed with him within a shimmering nebula. The light was pure, blue-a weave of flare magic and music.

Enid raised his eyes to the twisted, static-filled clouds, to the fingers of lightning. He’d seen this before. We all had. He put his harmonica to his lips again and played, the sharp, sad wail of sound reaching up into the sky to grasp at the escaping flares, to do battle for them with the Source.

In the end fifteen more flares made it into the safety of Enid’s protective pocket of sound; the others were lost- sucked up into the whorl of unnatural wind. When it had taken them, the Storm raged above us, opening and closing its maw, roaring, spewing bright rage, while Enid led the rescued away toward the Near South Side. I had to pray they’d be safe there.

The Storm lingered for a time, reaching after the lost flares, then retreated into the sunset, taking its lightning and thunder with it.

The broken skeleton of the Chicago Media Building pointed up into a clear, dusky sky. Wind scraped walls and windows, whistling around corners. Normal sounds. Natural sounds.

I sagged back against the facade of the building, weakness flooding my limbs. Nearly at my feet, Goldie sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, Magritte’s body limp across his lap. Howard hunkered next to him, sucked into himself.

“I’m fine,” said Colleen in answer to a murmured question I only half heard.

“Let me look at you.” Doc’s voice was gentle, as always, but had an undercurrent of alarm.

I turned, fearing what I’d see. Doc had Colleen’s head between his hands; Colleen was trying to push them away.

“Ni smyesta!” said Doc sharply. “Don’t move.”

“Viktor, stop!”

“You’re bleeding-”

Colleen grimaced. “It’s not my blood. It’s his.” She glanced across the street to where the puppet master and his puppet lay in a mound of debris. “Look. See? Just little cuts. Nothing major. Stop fussing.” She imprisoned his hands with hers and looked up into his face. “Stop, Viktor. Parestanya.”

He kissed her. With a passion she obviously shared. And all I could think was, Now, why didn’t I see that coming?

I pushed myself away from the wall and walked across

Dearborn toward the ruined building. I tried to think as I walked. What to do next? We’d have to find some way to protect the flares. With Primal/Clay gone, we might be able to find other musicians like Enid who were now “released” from their contracts. Maybe they’d help us against the Source, too, or maybe they could help get the flares back to the Preserve.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I paused to look back across the street at Goldie, slumped over Margritte in the lengthening shadows with Howard still huddled beside him. That was a mistake. Just seeing them like that made me feel hollow inside. The way I’d felt as I watched Tina change. The way I’d felt in the days after she was gone.

I took a deep breath and moved to where the bodies lay, Primal’s and Clay’s, in a sea of fallen glass and tile. Primal’s remains weren’t so much a corpse as they were a heap of rubble.

Behind me, I heard the crunch of boots on debris.

“This was Primal?” Doc asked, stepping carefully over the littered ground. Colleen was at his side.

I nodded and knelt to pick up a clod of the detritus. “This was never flesh and blood,” he said. “This was-” “Clay,” said Colleen. “Primal was clay.” She glanced

over to where the onetime puppet master lay on the ground,

gray as burnt ash.

“A golem,” I murmured.

“A golem?” Colleen repeated. “What the hell’s that?” Doc answered. “An effigy. A lifeless figure made of earth and powered by wizardry.”

Colleen shivered and pulled the front of her shirt together. “He did like word games.”

“What did you do to him?” I asked her. “At the end, when you grabbed his leg. It paralyzed him. What was that?”

She reached into her pocket and held up the wedge of leather Papa Sky had given her. Mr. Mystery’s talisman.

“Before I realized what he was, he tried to …” She glanced sideways at Doc. “He made a grab at me and got a handful of this instead. Derailed him. I thought, hell, why not? Nothing to lose, right?” She shrugged, returned the thing to her pocket, then moved to kick at the wreckage.

A moment later she called out, “Hey, look at this.”

She picked her way out of the debris and laid something on the ground at my feet. It was a metal tool kit about the size of a shoe box.

“Where’d you find that?”

“There was a little cavity of some sort in the torso.” She nodded back toward the broken golem. “It split wide open when it hit the ground, but I figure it was right about here.” She gestured at her own midsection.

I knelt to inspect it. It wasn’t locked; in place of a lock, what looked like a piece of bone was shoved through the hasp, holding the box closed. I knocked the bone out with a chunk of rubble and opened the lid.

Inside, sitting in the half-empty metal tool tray, was a sheaf of papers, binder-clipped and held together with a fat rubber band. More specifically, it was a sheaf of contracts. Enid’s, other musicians whose names I didn’t recognize, one I did-Charlie Gwinn, who had chosen death over slavery. He and a Vanessa Gwinn had signed on with Primal as a duo.

I turned them over in my hands. “Huh. What do we do with these now?”

“Burn them.” The voice was Goldie’s. He was standing behind me in the wan light of the setting sun, looking wasted, pale, all the luster gone from his eyes. “So we can move on.”

He wandered off around the field of debris. I followed him with my eyes, wondering why tears wouldn’t come when I so felt like weeping.

“Cal, what do you make of this?”

Colleen had come around to hunker down next to me. She’d moved the tool tray to reveal a collection of pitifully mundane objects. There was a wallet, a badge, a small velvet bag, and an envelope.

I picked up the wallet and flipped it open. There was a photograph in it. In the waning light of a natural sunset, I made out a man, a woman, and two children. Smiling. A normal, happy family. The only other contents were three dollars and a driver’s license issued to one Clayton Devine of Rapid City, South Dakota.

The velvet bag contained a wedding ring.

The badge was DOD issue. A security badge, also in the name of Clayton Devine: MAINTENANCE CREW CHIEF. The face of the man on the badge was round with delicate features, eyes that had a vague, unfocused look, mouth cocked in a slightly loopy grin.

“Level seven access,” Colleen read over my shoulder. “If that’s anything like the Air Force security ratings, this guy had a pretty high clearance somewhere.”

“Yeah, but where?”

“Somewhere near Rapid City, looks like,” she said.

I flashed momentarily to Mary’s office, to Goldie twirling the little Lakota prayer drum in his hands. Badlands, he’d said. I remembered something Clay’s golem had said, too, when I asked how he’d known about the Source.

There was a leak.

I picked up the envelope. May, it said. A month? A name? Inside was a single piece of notebook paper with writing on one side. In a barely legible scrawl someone had written, Baby, I know you won’t understand this, but I’ve gotta get out of here. It’s not you or the kids. I love you. Always love you. But something’s happening to me I don’t understand but it’s happening and I’ve got to go away. They know why it’s happening and I wish I could make them tell me what this is and what it means and if it’s good or bad. One minute I know it’s good and the next I know it’s bad just as hard. It’s power, May. But I don’t think I’m supposed to have it. If they find out I have it I don’t know what they’ll do so I’ve got to go away. I don’t even know if I should be telling you this.

The letter just ended. Was it an aborted first draft, or had he never sent it? I looked at the date scrawled across the top of the letter. A full three months before the Change.

A leak.

I put the stuff into my pocket. “Let’s get back to Legends. Without Primal protecting this place, who knows what’s going to be out tonight? We can get back to this in the morning.”

Her name was Gwen, not Tina. She was sixteen, not twelve. A child of abusive parents. They were grunters now, and gone. She didn’t even really look like Tina in the light of day.

I wasn’t devastated. Just resigned.

The city was different now. With Clay’s bubble removed, things roamed at night. Chicago would finally face the full effects of the Change.

There wasn’t much sleep for anyone that first night. Most of it we spent realizing our losses and gains, sorting things out and trying to make coherent plans. Papa Sky showed up at Legends about eight o’clock, according to my wind-up Timex. We owed him a tremendous debt, him and his secret friend. Colleen and I cornered him and asked if we couldn’t meet Mr. Enigma now, to thank him personally for his help.

Papa Sky just laughed. “No sir, Mr. Cal, I don’t think he’d’ve let you near him on any account. Not yet, anyhow.”

“What do you mean, not yet?” asked Colleen.

“Well, the way he put it to me, he’s got some thinking to do before that happens.”

I was puzzled and didn’t bother to hide it. “Why should he have to do any thinking about meeting us?”

Papa Sky shrugged.

Colleen chuffed in frustration. “Well, if he won’t see us, will you at least tell him thanks? For all of us.” She waved an arm at the strange rabble in the room.

“I don’t think thanks means diddly to him. I don’t think he helped because he was lookin’ for thanks.”

“What then?” I asked, hoping maybe the answer would shed some light on our mysterious benefactor.

“I asked him that myself, son. He said you and him had something in common. And before you ask-no, he didn’t say what. And before you ask-I can’t ask him, ’cause he’s gone.”

Colleen and I exchanged glances. “Gone? Gone where?”

“Moved on. I think he’s looking for something, too. Maybe that’s what you have in common. Hope he finds it, whatever it is. Hope both of you find it.”

So much for tidy conclusions. Only on TV does the masked man come out of the shadows and reveal himself to be your long-lost cousin, or the twin brother you never knew you had, or Batman. TV was dead, maybe forever. I was disappointed, but not surprised that its conventions didn’t operate in the real world, if they ever had.

I also wasn’t surprised when Enid pulled me into the dim little hallway behind Jelly’s bar to tell me he wanted to take the flares back to the Preserve. The pain of losing Magritte was etched on his face. His mouth, for which laughing had seemed the most normal state, drew downward at the corners. I was amazed he was still on his feet, still jamming the Source.

“I’m sorry, Cal,” he told me. “It’s just something I feel I gotta do. For Maggie. For the other ones like her. And … for the folks I screwed up back there. Maybe there’s something I can do for them, too, now that I’m clear. I know that don’t make sense, but seems like I ought to try.”

I understood. In fact, it seemed like the most logical, practical, humane thing to do. “It makes sense,” I said. “And I know it’ll make Mary happy.”

“You all could come back with us.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. But, hey, you ask the others. Maybe they’ll want to go.”

He gave me a weird look. “You crazy? You don’t believe that. They’d never leave you. Not in a million years.”

I knew that. Maybe it was the only thing I knew with any certainty, when it came right down to it.

“Something else I gotta tell you before I crash and burn.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. Even in the feeble light that filtered through from the bar, I could see they were bloodshot and red-rimmed from tears and exhaustion. “That guy Clay, the guy on that badge you showed me? I met him before. Just didn’t recognize him. He was one of the maintenance guys at Primal. I seen him working around there when I done some late session work. Funny about all that, ’cause I’d swear the guy wore makeup, even back then.”

Clayton Devine had twisted before the Change. And come here. From Rapid City, South Dakota. Which meant, what? That the Change had happened there first? By how long? And why? I tried to wrap my mind around that and failed. It made me recognize how close to crashing and burning I was.

“Enid, you’re going to have to sleep sometime. Who’s going to shield the flares when you do?”

“I am.” Venus appeared in the hallway behind Enid and moved into our puddle of light.

I swear all I could do was stare at her. “You’re a musician?” I meant “a tweaked musician” but didn’t want to say it.

“I was. Vocals, keyboards. My … Charlie played horn. We’d just signed with Primal Records when everything changed. We got stuck here on the inside. When Charlie… when I saw what happened to Charlie, the music in me just dried up. Just stopped. I haven’t written or sung a note since the Change.”

Enid shook his head. “God Almighty, I only been holding it in since Wisconsin. I can’t even imagine.”

“You’re Vanessa Gwinn,” I guessed.

She nodded.

“She’s going back to the Preserve with us,” Enid told me, then hesitated. “Look, Cal. I owe you…”

I shook my head.

“Yes,” he said, “I do. I’m free because of you guys. After I get them all home safe, I’ll come find you. Catch up.”

I started to answer him, realized I didn’t know what to say. I wanted him to find us, but how likely was that, really? I nodded, mute.

He put a hand to my shoulder. “Take your own advice. Man’s gotta sleep sometime. That includes you.”

Man’s gotta sleep. I was terrified of sleep. How badly I needed it, I only realized when I sat down to consider where I would sleep. Most certainly not in the room I’d slept in last night, nor in that company. The thought of sharing a room with Doc and Colleen made me feel like a teen who’s terrified of what he might catch his parents doing. What did they call that?

A “primal” moment?

I started to laugh. Sitting alone in a corner of the restaurant with the murmur of other people’s lives going on around me, I laughed. I caught Jelly gaping at me from behind his bar. But that only made the laughter more fierce.

Then, when I thought I would never stop, the tears finally came.