A Magic King (44 page)

She used black magic, joining the power of the ancient spells with the radiation that both destroyed and now fed the world.

A book lay open before her, and she chanted words that pulled at him. The words that brought him here.

He came forward, wanting to speak to her, but in that moment he was caught. Looking down he saw a pentacle on the floor. He was trapped in its confines.

Dr. Beavesly was a practical man, never given much to magic or spirituality, but what he had seen in the last century had given him pause. Even with the slow workings of a ghost mind, he studied the changes in the world around him. He'd seen souls merge with entirely different life forms. He suspected he too, in some unknown way, had merged with the computer he devoted his life to maintaining.

But now he was here, with a woman who continued to knit a trap around him. He felt it weave about his soul, binding him tighter, closer to something.

But what?

He twisted, fighting her spell, but still feeling himself drawn downward, lower, to the center of the pentacle.

He looked down and saw his destination.

Cockroaches? They were large things. Mutated roaches or beetles. They were black and hairy with huge mandibles and extra long middle legs.

He drew back, horrified, sickened as understanding began to light in his spell-drugged mind.

She tried to bind him to the mutated cockroaches. The witch used a spell to unite him with those disgusting bugs. And the new form, the joined cockroach/man would be under her command. As their creator, they would be bound to her, tied to her bidding.

And she wanted an army.

Dr. Beavesly reared backwards, putting all his energy into his revolt. He would not be used this way. He fought, spiking all his thoughts into a dagger of energy designed to cut away the bindings of her spell.

He pulled it back, then thrust forward, stabbing at his restraints.

He heard her gasp, her chanting momentarily suspended. But then she resumed, her voice louder, stronger, and the bindings drew him down, sucking him into the pregnant cockroach. Little by little, he felt his spirit conform to the roach's body. His mind became flooded with sensations. Cold, sluggish blood. Prickly, hairy arms. The clicking, tapping mandibles, and the drive for food. The all-consuming drive for food.

No!

He reared backward again. Below him, part of him, the cockroach twisted and ran, spinning in circles, fighting the restraints and the heavy pressure of a soul entering its body.

No!

Dr. Beavesly pushed back, pushed away, but the binds were too tight, too strong, and he was sucked in. His eyes began to dim, his sight splitting, shattering into the fractured images of a thousand lenses in bulbous eyes.

No!

He clicked his jaws.

No!

He reached for his last hope, his last anchor in a world twisted into horror. He grabbed for his home, his computer. Part of him was still linked to that. Part of him still ran with the energy pulsing through the mainframe, and he drew on that now.

Like a man swimming upstream, he clawed at the power, dragging himself up it while the river ran into the cockroach.

Hunger more. Feed more.

He heard the words, the thoughts of the cockroach. He didn't dare look behind him. Didn't dare see what happened to the insect. All he could think about was escape.

Home. Go home.

Outside of the pentacle, the witch screamed. He heard it as a man would hear a bird behind an inferno. One sound lost behind roaring destruction.

Still he ran, gaining headway. A small measure of escape, but only because he fed the cockroach his energy, the energy of his computer.

He knew the insect was changing, expanding, mutating in some hideous way. He knew it, but he didn't care. He had to escape.

He felt the witch begin to die.

Her energy beat around him, a brilliant flash of life and death. He felt the witch's soul throb in the bonds restraining him, joining the energies that fell into the insect.

The book!

She wanted the book. It was her last hope, but it could not help her. Her mind fragmented, the last of her energy absorbed by the insect. Then she died while the cockroach struggled unthinkingly toward her tome of magic.

It was over. And yet, Dr. Beavesly was still trapped. The spell did not slacken. It held him, binding him to the cockroach, no longer tightening, but not releasing him either.

Then the computer power began to dry up. He'd exhausted the energy he'd been able to draw from the machine. The power cells were drained and still the cockroach demanded more, pulled more. Soon it would pull him in too. He would be sucked in with the last drops of the power.

No!

He redoubled his efforts. Tripled. Quadrupled. He would not become a cockroach. Around him he felt the witch's spell, devoid of her consciousness or soul. He felt it pulse around him, break, then fall away.

He was free!

Free!

He kicked away from the cockroach, spinning around as he saw the last of the energy absorbed into the bloated hideous insect body.

Dr. Beavesly didn't stay to see what happened to the cockroach. It had absorbed an enormous amount of energy from him, from the computer, even from the witch. It would mutate in some strange way, but it was without a soul. At heart, it was still a mindless, consuming insect. He prayed it would die, but he knew it wouldn't.

He didn't care.

He was too tired.

His computer was dead.

All he could do was limp home.

* * *

"Jane. Jane, wake up."

"Oh, God. Oh, God."

"Jane, what is it?"

Jane moaned into her fist. She curled her body tight and buried it in the warm comfort of Daken's lap. She couldn't think, she didn't want to think. Suddenly, she desperately needed to believe in her mother's merciful God. A God who could and would forgive any transgression, any sin. All she could do was clutch at the cross in her belt buckle and pray.

"Oh, God. I was so wrong."

"Jane!" She felt Daken's hands, rough and hard, shake her shoulders. "You will stop this right now and tell me what is happening to you!" Despite the harsh command, she heard the fear in Daken's voice and knew he worried about her.

She bit down on her keening, gathered her courage to her in weak tatters and swallowed her fears. Even so, she knew her eyes were huge with terror, her body still shaking from the horror of her new knowledge.

"I understand now, Daken." Her voice was thready and weak.

"Understand what?"

"Oh Daken, everything I've thought, everything I've believed of you has been wrong."

His hands stilled where they caressed her forehead, his face became as blank as his voice. "Are you saying you don't love me?"

"No! Oh, no. Daken, they're cockroaches. Horrible, terrible mutated cockroaches."

"The Tarveen?"

She nodded, pulling herself up until she knelt before him. "I was so sure they were part human. A piece of me was so sure. But it wasn't that. It was a spell that went wrong."

"What was?" Daken held onto her, his hands tight where they gripped her shoulders as though he tried to squeeze some sense out of her.

"The Tarveen. I thought they were human, but they aren't. They took the energy, maybe some of the intelligence, but none of the soul. None of the morality, the heart, or anything which make us human. They're insects intent only on feeding." She collapsed down on herself, drawing her arms tight to her chest in pain and humiliation. "And all this time I didn't believe you. I fought you. But you were right."

He must have understood her garbled nonsense. Either that or he saw a woman in anguish, a woman who'd suddenly realized how horribly she'd misjudged the world around her. For whatever reason, he drew her close, pulling her into the comfort of his arms, protecting her with his body.

"It's all right. You understand now."

"I'm sorry," she murmured into his chest.

"Shhh." He held her there for a moment longer, but they were still in the middle of the Tarveen storage area. It wasn't a place to loiter. She pushed away, knowing now what she would do.

But before she could move, she saw Steve, healthy, whole, and well; holding out the Beretta for her.

"Are you all right?" she asked him.

Steve nodded, then suddenly burst into a cocky, boyish grin before disappearing to help the continuing flow of prisoners out through the shaft.

Jane groaned as she tucked the weapon back into her belt. "He thinks he's indestructible."

"No," came the rumble of Daken's voice as he dropped a kiss on her forehead. "He thinks he's blessed. And given that he's the adopted son of the Oracle, I'd say he's right."

Jane drew back, her eyes scanning the room. Her gaze skittered over the remains of the poor girl then inevitably landed on the bullet-ridden body of the second Tarvite. "I understand something else, Daken. I understand why you chose your people over me."

"I've never—"

She stopped him with an upraised hand. "I killed, Daken. Steve was in danger, and I didn't think about it. I just killed because Steve was in danger."

"But you just said they were insects. Cor—cok—"

"Cockroaches. Yes. They are. But I didn't know then. I still thought they were people, and I killed it anyway." She took a deep breath and turned to Daken, wanting him to see the sincerity in her eyes. "Just like you would kill, you would do anything for your people."

"I think," he said, his voice unnaturally thick as he touched her face. "I think I can't call you a fool anymore. You are too wise a woman."

"Well," she said, suddenly embarrassed by the warmth flowing through his gaze, "this wise woman is ready to take you to the nursery. Or rather," she paused as the last of Dr. Beavesly's memories crystallized in her mind. "It's really a hatchery."

Daken nodded, grabbing her backpack from the floor. "By the time we set the bomb, the rest of my people will be out."

"Your parents?"

He grinned the first true smile she'd seen from him in a long while. "They and my brother are alive. Tired, starved, but alive."

She looked around again, expecting the Tarveen to come clamoring down on them any minute. "Where are the Tarveen? Shouldn't that one," she waved at the bloody smear that had been the girl. "Shouldn't he have alerted the others by now?"

Daken shook his head. "They don't think like that. They come here to feed. They don't understand their food could escape. They just eat and leave."

"Then why haven't your people escaped before?"

Daken shrugged, his gaze on the steady line of people climbing toward the shaft. "They tried, but they didn't know about the shaft—"

"There's no way to escape through this floor," Jane cut in. "There are miles of tunnels and corridors, but they're crawling with Tarveen. The only way out is straight up—"

Daken nodded. "Through a shaft that up until now has been covered with filth, blocked, and virtually inaccessible."

Jane nodded. Thank God, the captives were finally free. She didn't want to imagine the horror of living down here, existing only as food to cockroaches without hope of escape.

"So," Jane said, looking around. "Except for the occasional midnight muncher, we're relatively safe from the Tarveen."

"Until the bomb goes off. It's designed to start a very big fire."

Jane bit her lip, thinking of the result. The hatchery and this storeroom were at the heart of the Tarveen colony. Starting a fire here, especially one which would spread outward, would be like starting a wave of Tarveen. They'd scramble outward, like a sea of roaches, all running for the top, disgorged from exits very close to the ventilation shaft and Daken's escapees.

Jane looked up at the thinning line of people above them. "We'd better tell them to hurry."

"I already have."

Jane nodded, then grinned. "Okay, then. Let's go toast some bugs."

She led him to the hallway, grabbing a torch to take along the way. She hesitated as they came to the body of the Tarvite she had killed. Grimacing in distaste, she gingerly hopped over the dark ichor of its blood.

"Ugly, aren't they?" commented Daken.

"And I thought the ninja turtles were gross."

"The what?"

"Never mind."

Daken stared at the odd woman before him. She was such a complex combination of moods and attitudes. One minute she was prostate with fear, mumbling apologies and acting as though her world had ended. The next, she was firmly dedicated to his holy war, cracking jokes he didn't understand, and talking about toasting bugs.

How did he ever get involved with such a bizarre woman? He spent most of the time torn between a fierce need to bed her and an equally strong urge to strangle her.

It made no sense. She made no sense. But when she tossed her hair out of her eyes and winked at him like she was a child about to pour vinegar in the Elven Lord's morning yaffa, he couldn't imagine living without her particular brand of humor in his life.