Marc Zicree - Angelfire

Not to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but I did wonder where the food came from. Asking, I was told simply, “Grant Park.”

I drank the broth off some stew and carefully chewed up and swallowed some potatoes. My throat was sore, like it had been scoured with steel wool.

Cal didn’t eat. He asked questions. Foremost of which was what anybody knew about the Source or Storm or Dark or whatever they called it here. They said it was powerful, they said it was dangerous and terrifying and that they didn’t need to know any more about it than that. They did not say that it lived in a gleaming, glass tower at the corner of Randolph and Dearborn.

Naturally, they wanted to know things in return-like why were we so absurdly interested in something that really ought to be avoided at all costs-and Cal told them about what had happened in New York, and Boone’s Gap, and everywhere else along our trail. And he told them about Tina, about the fact that the world as we knew it was being invaded by a sort of metaphysical kudzu and that we were determined to find a way to stop it.

“Whoa, son, whoa!” Jelly interrupted Cal in mid-sentence, grasping the rim of the bar with both of his beefy hands as if it was trying to fly away. “You tellin’ us you’re trying to find the Storm itself?”

Cal nodded. “Yes. I don’t pretend to understand how, but it’s at the heart of this. At the center of the Change.”

“Shit,” said Tone, and Jelly added, “That’s crazy.”

Cal’s face didn’t change expression. If being accused of insanity undermined his self-confidence, it sure didn’t show.

Jelly said earnestly: “The Storm is bigger than we are, son. I don’t think any of us realizes just how much bigger.”

“Well, we’re not as small as we look,” Cal told him, and there was a sharp edge to his smile.

“Oh, yeah?” said Tone. “So when you find it, what’re you gonna do, stick that fancy sword in it? Shit, you can’t fight a damned tornado with that.”

“It’s not really a storm,” said Goldie quietly. He sat hunched over the bar, his hands around a steaming cup of chicory, Magritte hovering protectively at his side. “It’s … more than that. And it’s less than that. It has a core, a heart. That’s what we hope to stick a sword in. Figuratively speaking.”

“And you think it’s here ?” Tone asked Enid, eyes narrowed. “Where? In the lake? In the underground? Riding the damned El? That’s fuckin’ crazy.”

Cal looked at Goldie, who dived back into his chicory.

Enid said: “I don’t know if it’s here. I do know that Primal Records is here and I come to get out of my contract with them.”

“Your contract?” repeated Tone, sitting back in his chair. “What d’you mean?”

Enid explained it all: the effect of the Change on his contract, how the contract bound him, the way the music could charm, could shield… could twist. “Cal’s gonna cut my music free and I’m gonna help him find his sister and cut her free. Maybe cut us all free.”

Tone laughed, raucous. “I don’t know which is more crazy, thinkin’ you can get someone back from the Storm, or thinkin’ you can get ’em back from Primal.”

Whatever Tone saw in Cal’s eyes cut his laughter off at the pass. “It sounds as if Enid isn’t the only musician with a … contractual problem.”

Tone lowered his eyes. “There’ve been others.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Cal. “Strange as it seems, the legal bindings in Enid’s contract are still in effect, they just work on a different level. In theory, if we confront the Primal executives, we can void the contract. Which is where we might need your help. Is there a safe way to get into the Chicago Media Arts Building?”

“You’re screwin’ with me, right? You ain’t goin’ in there.

Man, that thing’ll eat her alive.” He jerked his head in Magritte’s direction. “The rest of you it’ll just chew up and spit out.”

Cal shifted from one foot to the other like he’d borrowed some of Goldie’s bees. Made me wish he’d sit down. “What thing?” he asked.

Tone looked at him as if he’d dropped in from another planet. “Primal, what else?”

Cal held up his hands. “Wait a minute. Primal is a record company.”

“Primal is a monster.” Venus was perched on a stool at the end of Jelly’s bar, watching us. She shrugged. “Or a savior, or both-depending on how you look at it. I suppose if it weren’t for Primal, this city would’ve imploded on itself in the first week after. But it didn’t, because of whatever it is that Primal does.”

Cal turned slowly to look at her. “ Primal generates the firewall?”

She nodded. “Somehow it keeps the Storm from reaching in here.”

“So Primal isn’t… the Storm. Isn’t related to the Storm.”

Our new acquaintances exchanged a series of glances that spoke volumes about the uncertainty of present-day life. Then Venus said, “I don’t see how that could be. Like I said, Primal keeps the Storm out.”

“Or at least it seems that way,” added Jelly. “Hell, I don’t think a one of us can pretend to know jack-diddly about anything these days. All we know is, when Primal’s Red Zone went up, the Storm went away.”

“But you think it’s a monster,” said Cal. “You hide from it-why?”

“Back in the beginning, we had some like her,” Venus said. She canted her head toward Magritte, who drifted closer to Goldie. “The Storm got some of them, then Primal put up that bloody canopy and it didn’t get any more. Right about the time we were thanking God for that, they started disappearing again. This time it was Primal doing the taking.”

Cal paled. “Why?”

“We don’t know,” said Jelly. “It just takes them whenever it gets the chance. It can’t suck them up like the Storm does, though, so it lures them or sends its goons after them.”

“The Tough Guys?” guessed Cal.

Tone curled his lip. “Surface scum.”

“But why would this Primal create the Red Zone?” asked Doc rocking forward in his chair. “What would it have to gain from putting this place under a bubble?”

“Maybe it’s hiding out, too,” said Magritte softly.

Tone was nodding. “A king in its castle.”

Or a spider in its web .

“But where’s it getting the power to do that?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. Damn, I was having trouble tracking suddenly-craving sleep. “If it’s all that powerful, why didn’t it take Magritte when it had the chance? We were right there. Standing out in the street like a bunch of gawking tourists. Hell, even I could feel…” I hesitated, not wanting to remember what I’d felt.

“I was jamming,” murmured Enid, his eyes on Cal’s face. He tugged at one of his dreadlocks, shaking the little course of bells at the end, pulsing out a rhythm. “I was jamming harder than I ever jammed in my life. Maybe it couldn’t reach past the music.”

“I think you were a surprise,” said Goldie. He was still sitting at the bar, aimlessly sloshing chicory around in his cup. “You’d been silent up till then. And we were being drawn in, right to them.”

That sent a jolt of slimy electricity up my spine. Damn that troll, Russo. If I ever saw him again, I was going to skin him, tan his hide, and wear it for a rain slicker.

Cal was shaking his head. “It, them… what are we talking about here? I’ll ask again: What is Primal?”

“One Voice in front of many,” mumbled Goldie. His own voice was flat, gray, all the normal colors leached out of it. From what I could see of his face, it matched.

I caught Doc’s eye and canted my head toward Goldie. He all right? I mouthed.

Doc’s expression did not ease my mind one bit. He got up and moved over to the bar. I watched for a moment as he put his head close to Goldie’s, their foreheads nearly touching. Viktor Lysenko, Guardian Angel. My lips smiled without me telling them to.