The Burn (6 page)

"Can't what?" Miranda asked, climbing back into her litter and settling herself on the cushions. "He's not the one."

Julie looked from Miranda to Seth, her expression pained.

"Come," Miranda commanded. "We will not see him again."

Her bearers raised the litter with a quick heave and turned in the direction of their camp. Julie kept pace anxiously beside them as they marched toward a line of bicyclers. Miranda glanced back at Seth as they drifted away from him.

He stood in place, his large shoulders held straight and tanned under the sun, his hands on his hips and his gaze angled thoughtfully under the brim of his hat.

S
eth released a long breath through his teeth, watching as Miranda's captors carried her away across the desert. He wanted nothing more than to stop them in their tracks, drag her down from that ridiculous litter and take her to safety. The only thing standing in the way of it was Miranda herself.

It was obvious that she was the fighting type, a woman who believed that her only recourse, in any situation, was to assume control and attack. She didn't seem to recognize that she needed help. Maybe she didn't want to. Maybe she was afraid to. Either way, he couldn't reach her if she shut him out.

They've done something to me.

He glowered in the heat.
What, baby girl? What have they done to you? How can I make you trust me? How can I convince you to talk to me?

"Wow," Pete's grizzled voice issued from behind a gold tinted astronaut's helmet. "You really know how to get in harm's way, don't ya, sport?"

Seth swore under his breath.

The FBI agent was dressed in a cumbersome white astronaut suit, complete with a fan disguised as a jet pack. The surreal horizon of the playa was reflected in the shine of the helmet, the faded line of pale sand and blue sky interrupted by bicycling silhouettes.

"Still my Miranda," Pete said.

"
Your
Miranda?"

"Those redheads. Tenacious as hell. I knew they couldn't wipe her out, not her. See the way she took that guy down? That's my girl."

"She's hanging on by a thread."

"Walk with me, sport. Lemme explain a few things."

Seth clenched his teeth, following the smaller man off the open playa and onto the sand road that formed the camp border. Giant theme camps beckoned to the throng of revelers with open bars and costumed servers, offering large tents with lush interiors, jewel colored rugs and belly dancers, fabric caves with giant crystals, clustered halls of furry puppets and Barbie dolls hanging from nooses.

Pete trudged through the crowd and turned onto a dusty path between the tents, sunshine glinting from his helmet. He followed the thump of music, arriving at a disco camp with naked women dancing on high platforms surrounding metal stages. Plodding awkwardly in his suit, Pete climbed a set of stairs and lowered himself into a sofa that had been set at the center of a huge fabric flower, its petals as massive as picnic table umbrellas. The couch concealed the agent from view on almost all sides, though it still offered a vantage of the dancers below.

Flipping up his mirrored visor and placing a dry cigarette between his lips, he squinted at Seth.

"Fucking suit," he muttered, yanking his gloves off and digging a plastic lighter from his pocket as Seth reluctantly sat down beside him.

Pete scratched the flame from the lighter and winced as he lit the cigarette, drawing an acrid breath through it.

"You see," he began, allowing the smoke to form the words between his teeth. "Brainwashing has never really been proven to be that effective, not in healthy adults. It was tried by the North Koreans during the Korean War, perpetrated against American prisoners of war, thank you very much. The program was pretty extensive, sleep deprivation, physical torture, starvation, psychoactive drugs, the works. It's just impossible to rework a healthy adult mind without some measure of consent. You can cause trauma, but a healthy mind will eventually attempt to heal itself and reverse that process, that damage."

"Is that how you justify all this? You sleep at night by telling yourself that Miranda's strong enough to take it? She‘ll eventually recover?"

"Fuck," Pete swore. "Do you have any idea who these people are, who we're dealing with here?"

"No."

"Yeah, well, neither do we. We know that people disappear around them. We know that they collect strays and runaways. We know that they call themselves the Rathvam. We know that they espouse some iffy belief about immortality and raising the dead from other dimensions. But their leader? We have no idea who he is. We've lifted fingerprints that match nothing, DNA samples that always end up contaminated. The guy is a fucking ghost. He only appears at night and never ventures into the open. It's all part of the show."

"The show?"

"C'mon, think about it. The guy calls himself 'The Necromancer'. He builds himself that creepy tower, he thinks he can communicate with the dead, that he's some kind of king of the dead. He's obsessed with it. He gets these college girls to swoon over him, join his cult. Then he probably uses some psychoactive drug, little torture, little hypnotism… All of a sudden, they have no idea what's real and what's not. They start to believe him, the whole thing, the whole complicated fantasy. Shit, who knows how many of them he's killed?"

"You have to get her out of there. Don't you think they know who she is?"

"If they did, she'd be dead already, right?" Pete shook his head. "No. They did a number on her, you know, just like they would any other woman in her place. She knows it too. She's after them. This is hardly the first time she's put her life on the line, sport. These guys have hurt her and now she wants to bring'em down and we're going to help. You think she'd want the investigation blown after what she's been through? You think she'd choose to pull out now and live every day knowing that these people are still out there, torturing and killing?"

"She's been compromised," Seth said tightly, feeling his patience slip. "Can't you see that? Christ, it's not her decision to make anymore."

Pete shot him a measuring look. "Don't do anything stupid, Seth. You might just get her killed faster than I ever could. Don't you be thinking that you can just go into that camp and waltz out of this desert with her on your arm and everything will be fine. It won't work, Romeo. Besides, she's already got Logan looking out for her, remember?"

"Yeah. And where is he?"

"He's around." Pete finished off his cigarette. "Unlike you, he understands the risks of this kind of work. He understands that it's part of who Miranda is. It's what she does. It's what they both do."

"He infiltrates murderous cults?"

"He does a lot of things," Pete said, grimacing into the sunlight. "More into terrorism these days, tracking down the drug money that finds its way into weapons deals, spent the better part of the last eight years living here and there as his investigations required it."

"Can't imagine why they split up."

"It wasn't just that, but it was amicable, and he's still protective."

"Who cares what he is?"

"You think you somehow understand her better than we do? Just because she's a damsel in distress doesn't mean she wants you riding in on a pony to fuck things up, partner. It looked to me like she made that pretty clear when the two of you were talking out there. She's been in tough spots before and she got out of them without your help."

"Yeah. I get that."

"If you want to help then work with us. Bring her to us. We'll give her the support she needs."

Seth shook his head, walking away without reply.

"You're going to do the right thing, Seth," Pete called after him. "You're going to realize that she needs more than just a cowboy with a quick tongue, so to speak."

Seth flipped him off without looking back.

* * *

Miranda followed Julie through the darkened corridors of the Divine Gate, the raw smell of wet metal thick in the air around them. Tiny lamps shimmered from hooks on the walls, creating dancing shadows of their movements. The symbols on the wall seemed to whisper as she passed them, each one having a ghostly pitch. They stretched on endlessly, forming an ethereal song, an echo of imagination.

Julie opened the golden door to Miranda's chamber and caught her breath in surprise. "Necromancer."

Miranda followed her gaze to the cloaked figure standing in the middle of the small room. He was tall and broad shouldered, his face concealed by the thick black fabric of his hood.

Julie immediately knelt on the metal floor grate, bowing her head submissively. "We are honored."

Miranda stared into the blackness inside the hood, alarmed by the fact that there seemed to be nothing there for a moment, no face, no solid presence at all.

"Beautiful Miranda," the figure said softly. "Where is your champion? You were supposed to bring him here."

"He wasn't the one," Miranda answered, balancing carefully on her feet. "I'm choosing another one."

"It doesn't work that way."

Reaching up to the line of his hood, he drew the fabric back slowly, as if he were taking shape in the golden light of the room. He appeared medieval in the flesh, his hair long and white, his features starkly Romanesque.

He rose and parted his cloak, revealing the stark black tunic underneath. A dark belt crossed his waist, offering slim pouches for powders and small tools, a jeweled dagger secured at his side.

He regarded her with cold blue eyes, frowning as he moved to stand over her. "He woke you, Miranda. He called you from the depths and you rose. There is not another man in this desert, or this entire world, with the power to do that."

Miranda shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You need him now," the Necromancer insisted. "He is your protector. You will not be able to maintain that fair human likeness without him."

"Human likeness?"

"He has the energy you require. It is unique to him. And he has offered it to you, as I knew he would. Take from him now, take the energy you crave. It is the only way to remain in human form, to walk among them."

"Take from him?"

"That is what you want."

"No."

"You think you can hide it from me?" he asked, a soft hint of rebuke in his voice. "I watched him wake you, Miranda. His strength pleased you. His bravery pleased you. His touch brought you to life. When you take from him, he will please you like no one ever has."

"Leave him out of this. Don't bring him here."

"He will pursue you here. He knelt on his knees before you, because he knows what you are. He woke you and you opened the Gate of War. The power that now flows in your veins is unimaginable. You are a goddess, an elite figure among the Rathvam, your symbol divine. You must shed your mortal bias, your meaningless attachment to the human concept of life and death, and accept that. Accept what you are, and together, we will ensure the enlightenment of humanity."

"Stop it." She glared at him. "Just stop it."

"You grow weaker without him, even now," he said, disgusted. "Every minute that passes in this place is a drain to your divinity. You are not like the other goddesses, with no further purpose than to resonate within the power channels of the Gate. You were meant to walk among these humans. You were meant to live and breathe as one of them, so that you could bring him to us."

"Jesus, what do you want with him? I thought it was the seven goddesses who were important. That's your myth, right? The seven goddesses unlock the lesser gates and unleash the power of this thing on the world, right?"

"Unfortunately, the power of this 'thing' is not so one-sided," he replied cryptically. "Seth belongs here. He is an ancient and strong-willed soul. He has eluded me many times before, but as a goddess of conquest, you have beaten him in ways that I never could. He is defenseless against your beauty and your suffering. He has offered himself to you openly. You must now take from him to remain in human form. You must take from him, then bring him to me."

"You're insane."

He watched her for a moment, determination glowing in his pale eyes. "You have no idea what I am."

"This mythology…" Miranda glanced around the chamber in desperation. "A gate that opens into a divine world and brings some kind of power here, it works in this… whatever this place is, but it's a fantasy. It's not real. You can't convince me that I need to sleep with anyone to remain human. I
am
human, and I'm not about to deliver an innocent man into the hands of an ego-driven psychopath. It's not going to happen. You need to shut this thing down right now."

The Necromancer smiled coolly. "Shut what down?"

"It's time for this to end. You can't maintain control over all these people. You can't hold me here against my will. You can't kidnap Seth. This festival is way too public. These big ambitions of yours are going nowhere."

He shook his head slowly. "You still fail to understand your situation, though perhaps it is forgivable. You do not remember the force that drove you to open the Gate of War, the power that you have to unlock the greatest gift ever given to mankind. You do not remember what happened here and that has made it impossible for you to accept what you have become. I can see now that you simply require further guidance."

"Guidance?" Miranda hissed. "I don't think so."

"Sometimes, we must be humbled to accept the truth," the Necromancer said, taking a step closer. "It is when we are in the greatest pain that we discover who and what we really are."

Miranda shook her head, fighting a stab of panic.

"Do you remember the blood?"

"I—"

"I permit you to remember it," he said darkly. "Go back to that night, when I held you in my arms, your breath slipping away between us, away from me, away from the pain."

Miranda took a step back. "I—" Her voice sounded distant, so faint that she could cry out with all of her strength and not be heard.

"Now, you remember it."