The Burn (18 page)

"Well, that's just great," Pete muttered. "I really needed you to do that for me, Seth. I mean, we've got no help here without them. My account of last night has limited value. I was attacked outside, by guys I didn't see. My complaint doesn't mean much. At this point, they just think I'm some obsessed guy with a case that's coming apart. And, you know, who can blame them for that?"

"They can't help."

"They're big men with guns and helicopters, buck-o. Maybe we're the ones who can't help. Did you ever think of that?"

"I'm thinking of what's best for Miranda."

"So am I," Pete snapped, his features ruddy and flush with frustration. "I'm trying to get the help we need to go back in there and get her out. Only you won't give a statement, and Julie will talk until she runs out of breath, but she can't string two sentences together without sounding like an excerpt from a Tolkien novel. Need I remind you that this event is known, in the law enforcement community, for producing a lot of dehydrated kids who all happen to be hallucinating? Julie's statement is all about gates that open and symbols that aren't really symbols, they're souls that say creepy things. You can imagine what a guy like Warner is going to do with that."

Seth dropped his gaze, nodding.

"You're the one who could've make sense out of this," Pete said, jabbing his finger in the air. "You're the one who could've come through. How hard would it have been? They hit me. That's all you had to say. They hit me."

"They can't go in there yet."

Swearing under his breath, Pete dropped into one of the plastic chairs and ran his fingers through his hair. "I don't fucking believe this."

"I can reach her. I can bring her back."

"Alone? Sure, that worked out so great for Logan, didn't it?"

Seth looked at him. "What about Logan?"

Pete's expression darkened. He pushed up from his chair and walked a few feet away, drawing a cigarette from his pocket. He put the paper between his lips and winced into the sunlight. "Julie said that he made it in. She says Miranda tried to protect him but it didn't work out."

"Didn't work out," Seth repeated slowly.

"Yeah, they got to him," Pete forced the words with difficulty, trying his best to focus on the groups of bicycles drifting across the playa. "There was some guy who cut him up with a sword, Jesus, I…"

Pete looked down, unable to speak.

"Maybe Julie's wrong," Seth offered.

"Well, maybe, except the only reason I was able to remove your handcuffs was because I had the key. Standard issue, the same ones Logan carried. I don't think he would have parted with them easily."

Seth nodded, accepting this as best he could.

A deep cold settled in his chest, a mixture of anger, disbelief. It was for himself a little, for what he was taking on now, knowing that it could have been— maybe should have been—him that they'd murdered in front of Miranda last night. But most of the fear he felt was for her, for what she'd seen and endured at the hands of forces far stronger than her, for the way she seemed out of his reach now.

It felt like he could bridge the gap, find her somehow, yet the Necromancer was the one with all the spells, the one who understood the Gate and controlled everything in it. He was the all powerful one with the ability to call forth the dead.

Still, the Gate had spoken to him. It had whispered softly about centuries of blood, betrayal and lust. It had told him that his name was in the sequence. It had told him that he didn't need a spell.

"I can't let you go in there," Pete said grimly. "Christ, Seth, what do you want from me? I can't allow you to take the same risk, end up the same."

Seth shook his head. "I don't think I have to."

Pete frowned, the dry cigarette hanging from his lips.

"I think I just have to do this my way." Seth dropped his gaze to his wrist as he flexed his fingers again. "And I think I might need your help."

* * *

A steady arc of light erupted as the welding torch bit into steel plate, its tip circling methodically back and forth, searing a common border between two straight cut pieces. The join appeared as a bright line through the helmet shield.

Seth released the trigger on the torch and flipped up the visor of his helmet, grimacing as he assessed his own work. He had welded a quarter inch square plate with two cross-pieces, forming what looked like an intersection of two plates.

Pete glowered from a nearby chair, having kept his eye on the perimeter for most of the afternoon, occasionally helping Seth to unload plate, sheet metal and tubing, drag his rig and tools and tools around. To his credit, he hadn't objected much to any of it. Whether that was because he had given up trying to convince Seth to file a complaint, or because he was simply waiting for the right moment to do so again, Seth didn't know and didn't care.

"It looks…" Pete shook his head. "What is it?"

"It's the prop."

"The what?"

"The important part."

"Right."

And so it went.

Seth connected the hoses to his acetylene cutting torch and lit the nozzle. The flame was thin and oily at first, the acetylene burning a weak, low temperature flame. He opened the oxygen valve slowly and watched the gas mixture light up.

The flame turned hot and blue, hissing as he put it directly to the welded steel plate and began to cut a pattern through the metal.

Dipping his head forward, he flipped the visor on his helmet down and watched the steel melt under the cutting torch, its edges glowing cherry red, balls of material spitting and dripping from the flame. He made arches and turns, ignoring the hard electric crackle of the torch and the warming of his fingers through the gloves.

The cutting took time, the pattern forming across different plates and seams, creating lines that swept into one another. He finished the last piece and flipped his visor up, waiting for the metal to cool before picking up his angle grinder.

The tool emitted a high pitch whine as he turned it on, its grind wheel spinning to a solid blur. Leaning forward, he stroked the grinder along one of the fresh cuts, carving it out and polishing its edge. Sparks flew, spilling over his gloves and his clothes, flaming out in the thick dust beneath him.

At some point, he looked up to see Julie standing beside him, watching over his shoulder he worked. Her eyes lingered on the piece, the pattern cut in the plates making more sense to her than it did to Pete.

She frowned, her attention turning to the sweat dampened fabric of his t-shirt, the exertion in his arms as he force fitted the finished prop onto a steel shaft. Her eyes suddenly met his, bright with concern. "You're tired."

"I'm fine."

"It's a beacon, isn't it?"

"Sort of."

"But how will Miranda see it? She's not actually in this world. She won't be able to see something that's just sitting on the playa."

"This won't just sit on the playa."

Julie stared at the symbol carved into the plate. "That isn't even her name."

"No. It's mine."

She stared at him, taking a moment to fully understand that. "Your name? How could know that? The Necromancer would not have shown you and the Gate only communicates with the dead."

"It communicates with whoever can hear it and I'm a good listener, especially when I'm sitting in the dark wearing handcuffs."

"It's a strange symbol," she said.

"Meaning what?"

She looked away. "Nothing, probably. It's just hard to remember sometimes, that you're one of them. You don't think like they do."

He watched her for a moment, trying to decide how much she really knew, how much she still wouldn't say.

"You'd better hurry," she murmured, her eyes set on the blue sky above. "They don't like the glare of sunlight, but they'll come tonight, as soon as it gets dark. They'll come for both of us."

N
ight swept across the desert with a cold wind, spinning harsh waves of dust through the camps. The gale strengthened quickly, pulling spikes from the ground and lashing sunshades into the air. Columns of dust formed on the open playa, twisting in the colored light of the camps, blowing across the open desert only to vanish, reaching for the moon.

People huddled together as they walked, their eyes protected by swimming goggles and hats with headlamps, their laughter hidden behind white dust masks.

Seth had brought goggles and a mask, but it proved too difficult to work in them. He sifted through his parts boxes with a penlight between his teeth, the sand thick in his hair and coating his skin. He tasted it in his mouth, gritty on his tongue, parching his lips to white.

Pete helped when he could, holding a bright area light in place as Seth fitted a pair of bearings into each end of a long steel pipe. Seth then ran a solid length of round tubing down the middle and welded the steel plate prop to its end.

He built a stand and erected the sculpture against the wind, its weight securing it in the glowing haze of dust. To shield it, he bent two square pieces of sheet metal and welded them together to form a cylinder with small slit holes cut in the metal. When he was finished, the sculpture stood over seven feet tall, with a large cylinder for a shield and an interior prop of welded steel cross-plates mounted on a custom driveshaft.

"What
is
that?" Pete shouted into the wind. "Is this supposed to make sense, cowboy?"

Seth shook his head, dragging out his last part box. "Not just yet."

Pete squinted, grimacing as Seth heaved a small cylinder engine out of the box, followed by two car batteries and a small collection of pulleys and belts.

Seth carried the engine to the base of the sculpture and mounted it on a stand. Pete brought the pulleys, kneeling in the dust as Seth connected them to the engine and the sculpture's drive shaft with lock down bolts. He attached the belt between the pulleys and tested the tension, then sat back, wetting his lips and frowning at the engine.

"What is this thing gonna do?" Pete asked.

"Spins the prop."

"Are we flying somewhere?"

"It doesn't fly. It sings."

"
Sings?
"

"This engine runs at thirty-seven-fifty RPM. Which means that, between the pulleys, it'll spin the driveshaft at over seven thousand RPM."

"Okay. That's the singing part?"

"The pattern cut in the steel is the singing part."

"The pattern that's supposed to be your name?"

"Yeah."

Pete shook his head. "It's got some kind of special frequency, does it?"

"Something like that."

"You've lost it."

Seth nodded in agreement, leaning down to attach the leads from the batteries to the engine through a switch. He worked quickly, his fingers careful with the wires, the dust swirling in the beam of the penlight.

"Is this thing safe?" Pete asked, glaring at the shield.

"No," Seth yelled above the storm.

"Is that why it has a shield?"

"Yes."

"In case it flies apart at seven thousand RPM?"

"It won't fly apart."

"But the shield is there in case it does?"

"Yes."

Pete considered that. "But I shouldn't really be this close, should I?"

Seth looked up, considering his distance from the sculpture. "No."

Pete took a few steps back.

Seth knelt on one knee by the engine, his hand on the switch. He winced through the rush of wind and sand, cutting his gaze to Pete.

"You ready?" he asked.

"Do I have to be?" Pete shot back.

Seth shook his head and flipped the switch, watching the engine rev up to speed, the pulleys spinning to a solid blur, the belt streaming between the grooves. The driveshaft rattled wildly as it spun. The sculpture began to turn in earnest, the prop blades rotating faster behind the shield.

He felt it more than heard it, a thrum of motion and energy whipping through the symbol cut into the plate. The prop began suck air from under the shield, chewing dust and causing the whole piece to shudder as if it were about to explode.

A small crowd gathered, too trusting or inebriated to be afraid. The light from their glow sticks reflected from their goggles, glittering from the sequins on their costumes as they murmured and gasped.

The prop achieved three-quarter speed, emanating a strong, pulsing noise. The song became thicker and richer as the blades turned faster, the shudder in the material becoming a hard and dangerous vibration.

A vortex of air and dust formed through the cylinder shield, drawing the silt of the playa up through the prop blades and spinning it high into the wind like a dancing flame.

Seth stood, his gaze fixed on the sculpture.

"Jesus, it's coming apart!" Pete yelled at him, grabbing onto his shoulder to pull him away.

Seth shrugged off his hand, walking toward the shaking metal shield.

"Seth!"

Seth felt its instability, its wild motion shaking the air around him as he approached it. The prop roared inside, its song powerful and intense. Clenching his teeth, he reached for the shield and laid his hand on the bucking metal. Dust twisted around him, harsh and blinding as it scoured his skin.

He grimaced, drawing on his memory of her, the feel of her in his arms.

"I know you can hear it," he yelled against the wind. "I know you can hear me, Miranda."

* * *

Miranda retreated a step, focused on a dark thread of mist as it appeared from the wind, spinning like a dust devil in mid-air. It made no sense, the vision of it jumping and shuttering, as if viewed through a quick flicker of motion. It spread, sweeping outward with twisting arms, the hard rattle of metal mixing with the roar of wind. Then it began to thrum.

She covered her ears with her hands as its vibration became deafening. Fear turned to panic. "What are you?" she screamed at it.

The mist crystallized before her, swirling into a particle brush-stroke view of another place. She caught her breath, watching the night wind of a different playa lash through the sunlit desert before her.