Victories (16 page)

“Blood magic,” Loch said in disgust.

“He’s
sacrificing
them?” Dylan asked, his face twisted in revulsion.

“Yes,” Vivian said. “Eventually, he would probably have killed everyone left at Oakhurst.”

“But … why?” Spirit asked. Even her Reincarnate memories didn’t contain much information on necromancy.

“The younger the victim, the more powerful the sacrifice,” Vivian answered. “And he doesn’t need any of them—
you
—now. He’s got thirty years of Oakhurst graduates—all Shadow Knights—to draw on, and he knows who his main enemies are.”

“He’s gathered all the magicians at The Fortress,” Elizabeth said, taking up the tale. “But he’s not counting on just them to keep order. Ovcharenko was put in charge of hiring their foot soldiers, so right now there’s a magical army of mercenaries in Radial.”

“Those giants we fought today,” Burke said slowly.

“I wonder if they’re getting paid in T-shirts?” Loch asked irreverently.

“So,” Vivian said. “That’s what you have to deal with at The Fortress: Shadow Knights, monsters, and mercenaries.”

“Do they all know what Mordred’s going to do?” Spirit asked.

“The Shadow Knights and the monsters don’t care—or at least, the Shadow Knights won’t cross him, no matter what they might be thinking about his plans,” Vivian said. “And the monsters can just go home again if they get tired of our world. I suspect Mordred thinks the Shadow Knights will either fall into line completely—those who have their doubts—or if they don’t, they’ll provide more sacrifices for his blood magic.”

“Lovely,” Addie said with a sigh.

Kelly gave her an odd look. “I don’t mean to be a wet blanket here, but you don’t sound nearly upset enough for that news. I don’t see how we can make him stop—and you’ve already said telling the authorities won’t do any good.”

“It won’t,” Spirit said firmly. “But we don’t need to fight our way through an army. All we need to do is get to the oak tree in the Main Hall of Oakhurst. If we can destroy it, Mordred will be vulnerable. He may lose his magic completely. And without Mordred looking over his shoulder, Mark won’t start the war.”

Loch glanced at her, his face still. Spirit could read the unspoken words in his eyes.
We
hope
Mark won’t start the war with Mordred gone.

“Then haven’t we won already?” Kelly asked. “I didn’t exactly start a
small
fire today. Oakhurst and everything in it is toast. Game over.”

“You started the fire on the top floor,” Spirit pointed out. “Which, okay, I would have done the same thing. But it means their Water Witches probably managed to put it out before it reached the Main Hall. They know they need to protect the Tree from damage, even if they don’t know why. That’s why they were guarding it today when we went in.”

“Then we just need to go back,” Kelly said. “If we get a few of the other Fire Witches together, we should be able to turn Oakhurst into ashes pretty darned quick. As long as somebody evacuates it first.”

“You don’t even need to evacuate it,” Troy said. “I’m not the only one here with Transmutation. School of Air is the most common school for guys.”

Kelly nodded. “Fire and Water for girls, Earth and Air for guys, although anybody can have anything, really,” she said, as if reciting a well-known lesson. “How many other Air Mages with Transmutation are here?”

“Not me,” Vanessa said with a sigh. “Wish I did, but … no.”

“I know Josh has it,” Troy said. “And I think Noah or Colin. Maybe both. But if we go in and start turning everything from the roof on down into water, that will flood anyone out who’s still there. That should take care of your evacuation.”

“Leaving my team with the remains of a soaking wet mansion to set on fire,” Kelly said. “Thanks a lot, dude.”

“But you can do it?” Spirit asked.

“Sure can,” Kelly said. “Give us an hour and we’ll give you a smoking hole in the ground.” She grinned at Troy and high-fived him.

Burke and Loch looked at Spirit.

“Okay,” she said. “I think it’s a good plan. Tomorrow we’ll go through everyone and see what Gifts everybody has. Then we can ask for volunteers. And go back to Oakhurst … better prepared.” Because an Illusion Mage—another common Air Gift—could help them drive right up to Oakhurst almost unnoticed.

She tried not to think about Muirin, and failed.

“And as soon as Mordred is out of the picture,” Addie said. “
Then
we call in the authorities.”

*   *   *

It was late that night before Spirit could actually do something as mundane as sleep, and she still hadn’t had time to go and talk to Merlin. She and the other three had been too busy keeping a lid on things.

It was Loch who’d pointed out that they had almost forty people here, and the longer the Oakhurst contingent got to think about things, the more they were likely to figure they had just as good an idea of what to do next as anyone else did—or to just decide that getting as far from Radial as they could before the missiles flew would be a really good idea. It was Burke who’d suggested they have everyone stand watches. It would give everyone something to do, and it would play into the core values (for definitions of values meaning just the opposite) that Oakhurst had instilled in them, because anybody on watch would probably rat out anybody who tried to sneak away. It was Addie who said they’d need to include the Radial kids in anything they did, because they were already “us-versus-them-ing” things enough without adding in wizards versus Muggles. And Spirit had laughed bitterly and drawn up a watch list. Six people for each watch, and two hour watches (they really only needed two for a watch, but she suspected a lot of the people who signed up would bail, so it was good to have extras). That would mean only about half of them would have to stand a watch each night, so they could start with volunteers.

It went easier than she’d thought it would, but going around and getting everybody signed up meant yet another round of questions. Spirit knew why everyone kept asking the same questions over and over. It was because the answers were so unbelievable—and so
bad
—they kept hoping this time they’d be different. The idea that kindly old Dr. Ambrosius had murdered their families, that he’d been living a masquerade for decades while being some kind of movie villain mastermind, that he meant to destroy the world … those were all things it was hard to take seriously. Who’d want to believe in those truths, when they meant everyone at Oakhurst had lost their families not by some horrible accident, but by a murder that would never be prosecuted?

And the idea that the big plan now that they’d escaped and finally knew the truth about what was going on was for them to just sit here and not tell the authorities … well, Oakhurst hadn’t been big on trust and cooperation, but one thing it had hammered home to all of them was submission to authority. And trying to understand that nobody in authority could help, well.… That was hard to accept.

So Spirit did the best she could to answer the (same old) questions, and to not sound as frustrated as she felt at having to. It was after midnight when she could finally stagger back to her tent to collapse, and half the tents were still lit up inside.

Maybe their inhabitants were just afraid of the dark.

God knew she would have been, if she’d found out all of this just today.

*   *   *

The flash of the cigarette lighter was bright in the darkness. Allan Tate didn’t know where it had come from—even a book of matches was contraband at Oakhurst—but a moment later he caught the sweet scent of burning tobacco. Somebody was really going off the rez. He’d seen enough war movies—one of the few things he liked that weren’t banned at Stalag Oakhurst—to know that sentries didn’t smoke on duty (even if any of them had actually been old enough to smoke, except maybe that crazy lady who seemed to be in charge of this place). Lighting a cigarette screwed up your night vision. And the enemy could smell a cigarette from miles away and make your position.

Not that any of them were real sentries. And there probably wasn’t a real enemy, either. All of this was just some kind of a game. Sort of.

Oh, he believed that everybody at Oakhurst was out to get them. But he sure didn’t believe that Doc A was some kind of criminal mastermind. It was probably some kind of CIA or FBI or Homeland Security thing, where the government had finally found out about magic and wanted to get its hands on all of them.

Yeah. That was it. Forget about Breakthrough and all that crap Mark Rider was dishing out. Working for the Feds would be the real deal. Carry a gun, have everybody respect you. Probably get to have anything you wanted, because they’d know they needed you. It’d be cool. They’d want him particularly, because he was School of Air. All the best stuff was School of Air. Shadewalking, Animal Communication, Animal Control.…

And Illusion. That was better than all the others. And
he
had it.

It was one of the reasons he’d volunteered to stand guard. He figured that’d be a good way to get in with the inner circle here. Find out what was really going on. That way, when They made their move (whoever
They
were), he’d be in a position to negotiate. Maybe even dictate terms. Spirit had been smart to get them out of Oakhurst, sure. But she’d only been half smart. She’d been taken in by that dumb cover story. He was going to be all smart.

It was easy enough to cast an illusion that made him seem to vanish. He’d need to be quiet, because it would only mask sights, not sounds. But from the look of things, whoever was out here smoking wasn’t going to be paying much attention.

Allan drifted closer. Now to see what they were up to.…

“Brett! What if they catch you?” Allan heard Juliette Weber clearly, even though she probably thought she was keeping her voice down.

“What’re they going to do?” Brett Weber answered. “Kick me out?”

“No, but— And where did you get them, anyway?”

“Five-finger discount at that place we stopped at to use the rest rooms. You know, if I had magic like that girl does, I wouldn’t waste it. I’d make myself a whole suitcase full of cash.”

“Yeah? What if it wasn’t real? You know—counterfeit.”

Allan nodded approvingly. Juliette was pretty smart for a mundane. And pretty, too.

“Okay, gold and diamonds, then.” Brett sounded irritated. “You know, none of this is really fair. Look at all the stuff that’s happened to us—our whole town got erased—just because we’re supposedly in the middle of this whole big supposed witch-war.”

“But.… Spirit wasn’t lying, Brett. You saw those things at the Library when Erika and Bella got killed. And … what happened at the Dance. They say Muirin’s dead.”

“So? Bella and Erika are dead, too. And probably Kennedy, the skank.”

Allan heard Juliette snicker briefly. “Yeah,” she said. “Nobody cares what happened to us.”

“Yeah. Not then, and not now. So I figure we’d better be smart, and look out for oursel—
Hey!”

There was the sound of a scuffle as Juliette snatched the cigarette away from Brett. Allan could see the two of them were standing at least three feet to the wrong side of the spray-painted line on the ground. He shrugged. They didn’t have any magic. What could it matter?

“Yeah?” Juliette said suspiciously. “How? We’re out here in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like we can call our folks to come pick us up.…
Brett!
Do you think they’re going to be okay?”

“Sure,” Brett said, too quickly. “You heard what Spirit said. That guy wants to turn all of us into, like, medieval serfs. He needs them. And anyway, we can rescue them.”

“How?” Juliette said, just as quickly. “Brett—”

“Look, Jule. All this talk about getting rid of this Mordred guy, that isn’t going to work. If it would, they would’ve done it already. Isn’t everybody saying there’s no point in calling the cops or anything because he’ll just fry their brains? If I’d known all that back in town, I wouldn’t’ve left, and you wouldn’t either. You want to spend a couple of weeks camping out in the middle of nowhere—and by the way, I didn’t see any bathrooms—before we get rounded up and shot? I figure whatever he’s doing, we should help him do it. If we do, I bet he’ll be grateful and give us anything we want.”

Allan sneered.
Idiots.
Doc A would be glad to get them all back, but if Brett Weber thought he’d be grateful to some small-town yahoo who didn’t even have any magic.…

All I have to say is, I’d sure like to be there when Doc A turns Brett into a mouse. I bet he wouldn’t turn him back, either.

He turned around and walked away, being careful to stay inside the Wards. Tomorrow morning he’d tell Spirit what he’d overheard. Or maybe Addie—it wasn’t any secret she was some kind of big heiress. Then they could arrest the Webers—there had to be some place to lock them up around here—and then he’d have proven his loyalty. He figured that would give him the leverage to make his move. He glanced at his watch. Almost two a.m. The next shift would show up soon, and he didn’t want them stealing his thunder.

He hunted around until he found a chunk of rock on the ground.
Nothing too big.
Then he took careful aim, and chucked it toward the Weber kids.

It bounced off the ground in front of them, and he heard Juliette yelp. But it did what he’d wanted it to. Juliette threw the cigarette out into the dark, and she and her brother moved back inside the boundary line.

*   *   *

Spirit didn’t know why she woke up. One moment she was sound asleep, the next she was lying in bed, eyes open, noticing that the sky outside the tent was paling with dawn. That meant it was somewhere around seven a.m. She didn’t really feel that six hours of sleep was enough, but in the last couple of weeks she’d gotten used to the idea that the day began with dawn. On the other side of the tent, she saw Burke turn over, and knew in another moment he’d be squirming out of his sleeping bag and getting ready to greet the day.

This would probably be a good time for her to finally go down into the bunker and talk to Merlin. Spirit knew she needed to check with him about what they were going to do next, but she hadn’t wanted to do it when it was likely one of their guests would follow her down. Loch and Burke were right: their refugees were volatile. She hoped that if she could just—