The Burn (24 page)

She closed her arms tightly around herself and began to rock gently. There was no comfort in the act, no sanity, no clarity. She sat alone, lost in a terrible, blinding heartache.

Death. Blood. Light. Power.

The thoughts came desperately.

She struggled for reason, for the logic she had developed over so many years. It was possible to work through shock. It was possible to get through fear or panic. She just needed to get up. She needed to take a minute to understand, to grasp what had happened and think…

She shut her eyes, a tortured sound slipping under her breath. Seth was gone. She had failed to protect him, failed to save him and now he was gone.

So arrogant…to think that she could fight this war, as if she were still herself, the invincible FBI agent whom no one could touch. She wasn't that anymore. That life, that woman, with all of her authority and her strength, no longer existed. She was ghost, nothing more.

The desert wind threaded softly past her.

Sunlight broke on the horizon, spreading over a sea of sleeping tents and parked cars. From the open playa, the towering Burning Man statue thinned in the glare, a skeletal silhouette caught in the golden aura of daybreak.

Miranda blinked, her gaze drawn to the silent cluster of camps around her, the makes and models of the vehicles familiar. She had seen them, in their exact location, before. She had seen all of this before. She hadn't appeared at some random location on the playa. She had come
here
.

Looking back over her shoulder, she discovered Seth's RV sitting in the early morning sunlight behind her, the windshield missing and the old grill dented. A pool of broken glass glittered underneath the bumper. His destroyed sculpture lay a short distance away, broken and covered with dust.

The silhouette of a man appeared inside the RV, rising to stand behind the driver's seat. He peered at her from the darkness, as if he couldn't believe his eyes.

Miranda felt her heart stop, the possibility too much to bear. "Seth?"

"Miranda?" the man replied. Not Seth.

Miranda shut her eyes, lost in some bleak emotion. She heard the click and creak of the RV door opening, then soft footsteps in the silt coming toward her.

A blanket was placed over her shoulders, a big pair of hands rubbing warmth along the back of her neck.

"It's okay, kiddo," Pete said. "We've been waitin' for ya."

* * *

Miranda sat on the old couch in the RV, staring past the shattered windshield to focus on the pale sand beyond it. The sound of an exotic flute lilted across the open desert, mixing with rhythmic chill music thumping from a car speaker. The revelers were light hearted in their exhaustion, swirling under the sun on dust faded bicycles, their bodies covered with sand and paint.

Pete crouched down in front of her and slid his big hand over hers. "A volunteer EMT picked up Seth's ex-girlfriend on the playa about an hour ago. They've determined that she's in the grip of some serious drug-induced hysteria and they're shipping her out to the closest hospital."

Miranda managed to meet his gaze. She grasped for a reply but nothing came. What was there to say?

"She wasn't making any sense," Pete added. "But the deputies are starting to get suspicious about the Divine Gate camp. They've talked to some of the freaks outside and they'll be watching the place tonight, not that the effort will mean much. Tonight, the Man burns and this place will go nutso."

"Tonight?"

"Yeah, you know, the big night? The night they burn the Man and party until they can't stand anymore? Sex, drugs and DJs?"

"Excess."

"Yeah, well—"

"The last goddess," Miranda murmured. "The Goddess of Excess. He's going to open the Gate tonight."

"Who?"

"The Necromancer."

"And what's that gonna do?"

"It'll destroy us, what we could have been. Don't you get it? Gods, angels, demons, they all exist on the other side of that thing. Their gift to us wasn't the Gate itself, it was the lock they put on it."

"I don't—"

"The Gate doesn't have to open for humans to cross into their world. Its structure, the way it resonates, it lifts the voices and the souls within its walls higher. That's its purpose. They only reason for the Gate to open is to bring them here, into our world. That's the reason it had a master, to protect us. That's the eighth symbol."

"The eighth?"

"Yes, eighth," she repeated, sliding a loose piece of paper and a pen from the corner of the table. "The Gate has seven lesser gates, for the seven facets of mankind. The last one, the symbol in the center of the central chamber—"

She drew a rough figure-eight and held up the paper. "The eighth symbol is for the master, the one who comes from the divine world. The eighth symbol is our guardian." Turning the paper on its side, she allowed the glow of the afternoon to highlight it's transformation from the number eight to the ancient looping symbol of infinity. "Seth is the eighth gate. He's the only one who can harness the power of the goddesses and bridge worlds. In the event of his death, his blood will still harness that power, still create that bridge, only it'll condemn us when it opens."

Pete hesitated. "And then what?"

"Their protection will end. Any of them will be free to come here and do what the Necromancer does. They gave us chance. The gift was also a test, right? And we failed it."

She leaned forward and cut her gaze away from him, not wanting to have to look in his eyes and see the incomprehension, or worse yet, the fear.

Pete rose to his feet and stepped away from her.

Drawing a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, he selected one from the box and slid it between his fingers. He shifted to stand in front of the broken windshield, placing himself in dark silhouette against the open glare of the desert.

Miranda heard the click of the metal lighter, watching as a curl of smoke rose from his outline. He drew a strained breath and held it in his lungs, considering the bleak view in silence.

Finally he turned, squinting at her through the shadows. "Okay. I get it. World's over. Only not quite yet, right? So we gotta find a way to deal. C'mon kiddo, snap out of it."

Miranda felt her teeth clench.

Pete released a stream of smoke through his teeth. "Seth knew what he was doing when he left here. He had a choice and he made it. You have to accept that, and quick, because we have to come up with some options."

"Options," she repeated numbly. "There's only one option."

"Which is?"

"Destroy the Gate." Miranda grimaced, forcing the words out in slow, clear syllables. "Set some charges and get out."

"Charges?"

"Light the damn thing up while the Necromancer's followers are out on the playa watching the Man burn."

He scoffed. "You serious?"

"Yes."

"But, presuming that's even possible, that would destroy you too, right? You're a part of that thing. You can't survive without it."

"I'll be fine."

"You're lying."

"If I'm lucky, I'll find my way and be reborn, like last time."

"And Seth?"

"Jesus! It's the only way. Can't you see that? The Necromancer will take me out the moment he sees me. He'll set the Khagan on anyone else who tries to stop him. Neither one of them can be destroyed. This is a war we cannot win. We have to destroy the Gate, tonight, while the Man burns."

"Miranda, look at me."

Releasing a slow breath through her teeth, she raised her gaze to meet his. Pete stood against the light, staring at her with look of utter disbelief. "If we destroy that thing, we'll lose both you and Seth forever, won't we?"

"I don't know."

"I think you do."

"You'll keep your freedom," she said, a tone of resignation softening the words. "You'll save the world."

His jaw tightened, a wary understanding forming in his eyes. "So why does it still sound like we're giving up?"

"Can you get the charges?"

"You mean like from the 'Special Forces Surplus' camp?"

"Pete."

He released a slow breath through his teeth, slanting his gaze across the playa. "Maybe."

"You'd better go and find out then. Like you said, not much time, right?"

He looked down at her, unhappy.

"Pete," she murmured. "I'm already dead, remember?"

"Yeah," he replied darkly. "Right."

Turning away, he pushed through the door of the RV and descended the short steps to the playa. He appeared a second later in the sunlight, slipping a ball cap over his blonde hair as he headed for the road.

She watched him go, feeling the emotional toll of the conversation wear her down. Leaning forward, she buried her face in her hands, ignoring the tremble of her fingers.

"Miranda," Julie's voice rose behind her.

Miranda angrily swiped the wetness from her cheeks, turning to see the younger woman appear from the gloom of the small bedroom. "What?"

"You can't destroy the Gate."

"Yeah." Miranda looked away from her, lacking the energy to argue. "I know how you feel."

"You can't because we haven't failed yet, right? If you destroy it, you and Seth will be gone forever and it'll prove that we couldn't protect it."

"That's already been proven."

"No, it hasn't."

Miranda shook her head. "What do you expect me to do?"

"Bring Seth back."

"Ah."

"His name is still in the Gate. It hasn't been destroyed, so he hasn't been released. He's still there."

"You don't understand."

"Understand what? You're a goddess. You're his lover."

"I'm a Rathvam goddess," Miranda clarified. "I'm of the middle species, right? Seth comes from higher. I don't have the power that he does, or that the Necromancer does. I can't bring things into this world that don't belong here."

"Seth's here already."

"As a symbol. His human body is dead. His soul is bound to a bunch of lines engraved on a golden slab. I don't have the power to focus that energy, to help him materialize as anything other than that. He's not some lost human spirit I can call from the air. He's a god, Julie. Do you get that?"

She shook her head, looking lost. "But he called you back with the sculpture. He somehow focused energy that way."

"He focused
his
energy that way. The energy of his soul, which compared to that of a human, is infinite. I have a human origin. My soul has changed to become Rathvam, but I don't have the power that higher beings do. The energy that I can focus is just not enough, not nearly enough."

"Maybe you just need something bigger than that sculpture."

For Christ's sake.
"It's not about the sculpture. That was just a way for him to focus his energy. I don't have enough energy to do what he did. No human soul does. Not even those that have become Rathvam."

Julie grimaced. "But you can't just give up on him. I mean, he's still there. You can't destroy the Gate with him still in it, right? Miranda, you can't."

Miranda looked skyward in desperation, struggling to find the words that would help the woman understand.

An image of Seth surfaced from memory, a vision of him standing before her on the playa, his black hair glossed with sunlight and the heat glowing in his eyes. "I'm sorry," she said finally. "There's no other way."

T
he glaring heat of the day ebbed to a crimson sunset, the clouds overhead burning like so many brilliant embers, casting a thick orange glow over the parched silt of the playa. Miranda watched as revelers appeared from the desert, coalescing in groups along the roads, their costumes forming surreal outlines in the fading light.

They had filtered from the camps and merged into denser streams, their numbers flooding over the open playa as they headed for the statue of the Man in the distance. It beckoned with raised arms, its silhouette stark against a red sky.

Pete grimaced under the glare of his headlamp, assessing the items he had placed on the small picnic table outside the RV. "This is all I could get."

Miranda looked down, counting two electronic blasting caps, an older-style detonator and one butter-sized stick of yellow material. "Semtex?"

"Yeah," he scoffed under his breath. "And here we were, thinking that we should just be concerned about the amount of ecstasy and blow that rolls onto this desert every year."

"How did you find it?"

"Lot of pyromaniacs to choose from. And we have files on some of them."

"So you convinced one to give this up."

"It appears I haven't lost my touch."

In the distance, a fireball blew from the back of a pickup truck, releasing another giant smoke ring into the sky. Art vehicles sailed through the dust like parade floats, enormous dragons and butterflies shimmering with colored light and thumping with the repetitive heartbeat of trance music.

"I figure we slip into the tent," Pete continued, "tap these onto the bottom of the Gate and slip out. Then we detonate remotely from outside. The structure is metal, so it won't really blast it apart but the damage should be significant."

"We need to destroy the central chamber," she replied. "We need to get one of the charges in there, right in the heart of it."

"And we do this how?"

"It's too dangerous for you in there. You attach one charge to the structure outside and I'll place the other inside."

Pete shook his head. "And if he sees you?"

"Let's just hope he doesn't."

"Great plan."

"At least it's simple."

"Yeah," he remarked without enthusiasm. "It is that."

"If you don't see me by the time the Man burns to the ground, detonate the charges anyway."

He nodded slowly, as if he'd expected that. Dropping his gaze, he considered the scattered remains of Seth's sculpture. The wreckage lay sprawled at his feet, a mess of broken tubing and torn sheet metal.

"You sure about this, kiddo?" he asked.

She released a tense breath, following his gaze to the plate cut with Seth's name. It stood half-submerged in the darkness, a gentle breeze whispering through its curving lines.