Bleak History (37 page)

“Then give me time to think. To feel this place out and understand it. Leave me alone for a while. I suppose I can find my way back to the house.”

She frowned. But she nodded. “Just picture it in your mind, and look for a path. The path will lead back to the house.”

Shoella shredded the orchid with a sudden motion of her long fingers, tears gleaming in her eyes. She turned and stalked away, then, back along the path they'd come.

Bleak sat down on the grassy bank, watching the fish dart at the bits of shredded orchid petal. Just picture
it in your mind, and look for a path. The path will lead back to the house.

So this place, this “demiworld,” was responsive—strongly responsive—to the mind of the sorcerer. That had implications.

He had never been to any world but his own before—not in this lifetime—and wasn't sure if the Hidden worked by the same principles here. But he knew the invisible field of living force was there, knew that those same energies, the same potential, the field of the Hidden, was all around him, in this world. He had felt it, since waking here, the way someone else would feel the ground underfoot. You didn't doubt the ground. Until, he reminded himself, an earthquake came.

He needed to know. Could he access the Hidden, here, the way he had in his world? Bleak closed his eyes and looked, with the other kind of seeing.

He saw the forest, around him, the cliff and the waterfall, the whole demiworld, as if it were in photo-negative, its lines etched in luminous purple. Then he made out living energy, seething, rising and falling, between each object, each plant and rock, each blade of grass. When he looked at it, it responded to his attention, pulsing brighter.

So the Hidden was available to him, here—it had a different character, but any world had its own Hidden.

He opened his eyes and saw Shoella's world around him, saw it anew—as lines of force, shaped into foliage, into earth and rock and sky. He searched, looking for the entity he sensed behind the veil of this world. The lines of force shivered, converged, and reshaped...into Yorena.

The bird looked bigger than ever—big as a man. She spread her wings and hovered there, not flapping them, just hanging in the air in front of him, defying gravity, like an emblem on a flag.

“No,” Bleak said. “That's not you, is it, Yorena?” He could sense this was a false image; an external. A mask.

He used his ability to draw on the power of the Hidden—and evaporated the veil of appearance.

Yorena's wings stretched out, changing shape. The familiar's eyes altered shape too; her beak became smaller and formed into a nose. The bird-head developed a mouth, a chin...feathers became clothing...

A man, now, hovered there where Yorena had been. Revealed, exposed—and staring impudently at him.

The man was suspended in the air, about three feet over the middle of the pond, with the waterfall as spectacular backdrop. He looked vaguely familiar, though Bleak didn't immediately know him.

The man was young. He had a military jacket, cammie shirt under it, khaki pants, boots. Long brown hair. His eyes...

“Sean...?” Bleak said, jumping to his feet.

“Surprised you recognize me!” Sean chuckled, drifting slowly toward him, across the water, like someone on a moving sidewalk at the airport. Looking that bored too. “You were aware of me, the whole time, Gabriel. But you couldn't deal with it. Kept hiding from that part of the Hidden, funnily enough.”

Sean had reached the grassy bank, floated not quite within reach, a few feet higher than his brother, Gabriel—so that he could look down on him. “Sean...you're really here?”

“Not exactly. Shoella only just realized, a short time ago, back on Earth, that Yorena was no longer Yorena. Seems to me familiars are just a kind of idea that takes on form and function. They're part of our own minds, like a computer program, that we put out to run in the Hidden. Easy enough for someone with my gifts to capture her familiar and destroy its inner nature. Set my own mind inside it. Make it my little spiritual UAV, a little supernatural drone, to watch you and her! Follow you here. Could have had you earlier—I waited too long, listening in, that night at the Battery. Should have called in the troops to take you in right there. Lost track of you for a while. You're good at creating a chaotic energy cloud around you, to muddy the waters. Been doing it so long you hardly know you're doing it. You slipped away—we set you up with that skip-trace job...and presto! You slipped away again! How'd you do that, by the way?”

“Probably shouldn't tell you that,” Bleak mumbled. Amazed to be talking to his lost brother. Feeling almost numb.

“Why not tell me? We're not enemies, Gabriel! We're brothers! It's all been a stupid misunderstanding! We are to be allies. We've even got the girl, she's waiting for you. The girl you're
intended
' to have. Not this exiled voodoo priestess you're tangled up with. No—your soul mate, for God's sake, Gabe! The real deal! The true
soul mate!”

“Loraine...”

“That's right. You felt it. You suspected. I confirmed it for myself, talking to the Powers—and now you know it. That's what she is: your soul mate—and we've got her! She wants you to come and help us, Gabriel.”

“If she does...it's because she's CCA. Indoctrinated. Doesn't know any better.” After a moment he added sadly, “Like you, Sean.”

“Oh, I know what I'm doing! I'm on the inside, Gabe, you're on the outside—so you should be guided by me. You've got to trust someone sometime!” Sean grinned crookedly. “You and I are like oxygen and fire, Brother. Bring us together”—he raised his hand and fire seemed to leap from the sun overhead, to become a roaring flame in the air above him—”and the fire grows!” He turned and made
2
a throwing motion, down into the pool of water, and the fire in the air formed into a ball and shot down to crash like a meteor into a sea, so that a pillar of water surged up, widened into the shape of a ten-foot-high mushroom cloud, boiling and seething in a nuclear explosion, the fire glowing in its heart. “We're like uranium and the atom splitter! Bring us together and the power of the sun is set free!” Sean dismissed the water and it fell back into the waterfall pool, the fire going out with a hiss. Turning toward Bleak, he went on, “You get it? I don't think you do—God, look at your face! Well. I don't like having to collaborate with you much, myself. Wish I didn't need you. I mean, shit—you've had so much already! You got to stay with our parents. Had freedom out in the world. Adventure...women... And what have I had? I've been a prisoner. Been close to escaping too.”

Sean paused, looked up at a small flock of parrots flying by overhead. His voice became low and earnest. “Then Forsythe came along, changed all that for me.” He looked fiercely down at his brother. “You'll see why—if you come with me. The hell away from this half-world. Come to CCA, Gabriel— and you can have Loraine!” Adding bitterly, “You can have the person who completes you. Something I'll never have. I've had that revealed to me too. But
you
can have it—what everyone yearns for! True love. Completion. Peace. Only, brother, if you want it—you've got to cooperate with us. We're going to change the balance of power of the whole world. And there'll be something for your brother in this:
I'll have real freedom for the first time.”

“Yeah? How, exactly, does this come about, Sean?” Bleak asked. Thinking that Sean had a grimace, when he talked, that looked like his attempt to smile. And he always seemed to have his teeth almost clenched. Even though this wasn't him—was some kind of magical projection of him—it was probably how he looked in life.

“How? I'll tell you, Gabe. We...Forsythe, CCA, and I, all of us... we'll
stop all magic,
except the magic that
we
control! Imagine it! A
monopoly on magic!
And that means that the country will be safe for the first time. That's what gets Helman and Breslin wet. No one would dare to threaten America if we had
all the magic.
The artifact in the north—the thing that makes that cracked Wall of Force—it'll seal up the cracks. But you and I,
we'll be on the other side of the wall.
You know—figuratively speaking.” Sean made an elaborate shrug, flipping his hand. “Main thing is, long-lost bro of mine, we'll have the full power of the Hidden! Only, we won't have enough power, working alone—not for what's needed. No, see, to do this, to extend control over whole armies, we've got to have an ally. An Unconventionally Bodied Entity—a more powerful one than you've ever encountered. A
Great Power.
All the big magic is done through working with the Great Powers, the real lords of the Hidden.”

“An ally. Would that be-the Great Wrath?”

“Very good! You were paying attention to what your Scribbler scribbled! Don't look so startled —we've got Scribbler in custody. Your woman buckled, first time Forsythe rammed her mind. Forsythe saw your Scribbler in her thoughts, found her notebook where she'd copied down the lines in red.”

“What's going to happen to Scribbler now?” Bleak asked. Feeling sick, thinking of someone as fragile as Scribbler in the hands of the CCA.

“He'll become one of us, that's all. A recruit. He's
fine,
don't worry about him. Don't worry about your precious darling Agent Sarikosca either. Worry about us! You and me! We've got to work together—meaning you come back with me. You'll just vegetate if you stay in this place.”

“I've felt you watching since I got here,” Bleak said musingly. “Did
you
create this place?”

“No—Shoella created it, just as she said, as a way of trying to get away from us. And to keep you isolated so she can use you for her little agenda. She was supposed to be working with us—we had her set up to bring you in, through Coster. He's not entirely the drunk he seems to be. He was supposed to tempt you to come looking for me. But he did manage to make a bridge to Shoella. Planted a little magical charm I had worked up—and made it possible for me to take over Yorena.”

Sean floated down to the bank, walked back and forth—almost strutting as he talked. Bleak  noticed Sean, in this world, had no shadow.

It seemed to Bleak that Sean was boasting to him the way a little boy would boast to his father of something he'd done in school sports. “Then I talked to Shoella through the Yorena guise. She was angry at you because you just weren't taking her
hints
—and we told her that if she got you for us, her ShadowComm people could be free.” He smirked, enjoying the lie they'd told her. “Offered her something else. Told her that you would become hers! We'd basically give you to her! But”—he spread his hands, cocked his head—”something about that Scribbler session changed her point of view.” He grinned crookedly. “Shoella figured out the soul mate thing. She knew if you went to CCA, you'd be with her rival. That if you were with Loraine, any length of time, you'd never leave her— never could leave a soul mate. So she brought you here.” Sean gestured at the gorgeous junglescape around them. “Thought she was clever.” He made a dismissive gesture and grimaced—a grin with clenched teeth. “She has the talisman for the summoning—transported the two of you here. But...too bad for her! She didn't think I could follow but I came right along in the psychic slipstream.” He shrugged, very devil-may-care. “When you've got it, flaunt it.”

When you've got it, flaunt it?
'What old movie had Sean taken that from?

“Well, Gabe? You coming with me? It's all waiting for you.”

“I don't think so, Sean. At least not till you answer some questions.” Bleak felt close to tears, seeing his brother like this: a resentful, predatory liar. Too socially naive to hide his real intentions. Hostility showing nakedly on his face.

“Questions.” Sean snorted dismissively. “Like what?”

“Tell me about your...your talents. Like shape changing—to become something like Yorena?”

“Yeah. I can do what you can do—and I can do
wore.
I can alter my spirit form—I can
possess.
That's a valuable ally, right? And I can open a path between worlds! I can take you out of this demiworld—this prison of love! You know you can't stay here with Shoella—you can't trust her! She drugged you, kidnapped you here.... You don't want to stay with her—and she can't go with us. That the sacrifice she made. This world emanates from her—she's part of it now.... Hard to pull her out of it and keep her alive.”

Bleak's mouth was papery dry. Reeling inwardly with shock at all this, he hunkered for a moment, to scoop water from the pond—it would be safe to drink from, in this world—and to take a moment to deal with meeting his brother again...and with what he'd said about Shoella. Had she really been playing him against CCA?

“I made you an offer, Gabriel,” Sean said. “You going to help your brother—or not?”

Stalling, Bleak straightened up, wiped his mouth. “There a guy named Gulcher you're working with?”

Sean tilted his head, looked at him with narrowed eyes. Then he levitated into the air, rotating slowly, arms outspread, making a whirlpool in the water beneath him. Despite reacting to him, the water did not reflect him. “Yeah,” he said, as he whirled slowly over the water, like a slow-motion ballet dancer. “We've got a little meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned. Gulcher's going to help us with that.”

Bleak wondered if he too could fly, move objects about, in this world. He suspected flying wouldn't be possible because he was here in his physical body; Sean was here as an astral body. “You know Gulcher's a mass murderer, Sean?”

Sean stopped spinning, stabbed an accusing finger. “And
you
fought in a war! Killed quite a number of people yourself. You shot a teenage boy once, in Afghanistan.”

Bleak felt punched in the stomach, hearing that from Sean. But he said, “He was part of a team that killed my best friend. And he was trying to shoot me.”

“I know—absolutely! You did what you had to. Gulcher figured he did what he had to do—to get out of where he was. And that's all we're doing at CCA, Gabriel! What we have to do. Even if it means working with losers like Gulcher.”