Marc Zicree - Angelfire

CAL

Howard didn’t lead us back through the business district. He swung east toward the lake and up through the rail yards to Grant Park. It was nothing like I remembered it. The defunct trains had become a neighborhood on useless wheels. Boxcars, passenger cars, cabooses, even engines had been converted for human use. It had to beat trying to maintain a household in a twenty-five-story walk-up.

The park’s lawns, which once seemed to go on forever and had been dotted with picnickers, volleyball games, and joggers, were now divided into farm plots, tent towns, and graveyards littered with sad little markers. There were no flowers, but some of the graves seemed to have collected piles of offerings: bows, feathers, ribbons, other odds and ends.

It was easier going here, oddly enough, because the people seemed not to care about us. Neither Magritte nor Howard, shambling along smothered in his sweatsuit, aroused any particular interest. Maybe it was because an armed group of normals with two twists in tow merely looked like a successful hunting party. Whatever the reason, they looked at us; they looked away, they went about their business. And, I noticed distractedly, there seemed to be a lot of business going on in some quarters.

“Balbo Market,” said Howard, apparently catching my curiosity about the busy clumps of tents, stalls, and makeshift wagons. “People gotta eat, and they gotta have stuff, y’know, so …” He waved an arm at the small but bustling throng.

I slowed my pace a little to watch the patrons of Balbo Market interact. I saw haggling, items changing hands, hands being shaken in accord. Adaptation passing for normalcy.

“Life finds a way,” murmured Goldie.

I focused my attention on the cluttered path ahead. I couldn’t yet see the Black Tower through the combination of fey red haze and smoke, but the closer we got to it, the tighter my nerves twisted.

I distracted them with a study of Howard Russo. Who was this guy, really? Was he the victim of circumstance who bravely allowed Enid and others to escape Primal’s grasp, or was he the weasel who sold out flares and a handful of musicians to save his own hide? Was he both? Was there any way to find out before we walked into Primal’s fortress? Was there any way to find out what Primal was?

“Howard, the devas that Primal keeps-are they his allies or his slaves?”

Howard glanced up at me from inside his hood, his mirror lenses nearly blinding me. “I didn’t sell those people.”

“Chill, Howie,” said Colleen. “Cal’s just trying to get at the truth.”

“Is Primal a group of flares?” I asked bluntly.

The lenses flashed at me again. “Primal is Primal. But it likes the devas.”

“Why? What does ‘it’ want with them?”

“Not sure,” Howard said.

“Maybe the question is backward,” suggested Colleen. “Maybe the question is: What do the flares want with Primal?”

I shook my head. “We’ve never known flares to be devious or dangerous.”

“But they could be, couldn’t they? I mean, look at the pull the Source has on them. Alice, Faun.”

The memory of losing Faun raised an ache in my heart. It carried its own freight of agony, on top of reminding me of what I’d gone through with Tina. “Faun and Alice weren’t…” I hesitated.

“I think evil is the word you’re searching for,” Goldie said baldly.

“They weren’t evil. They were tortured, pulled between opposing forces. Look, this conversation is pointless.”

“Is it?” Colleen asked. “If we knew how the flares figured in this, we’d have a lot better idea what to expect once we’re inside. What d’you think they’re gonna do, Cal? Give us a hero’s welcome?”

I guess I had expected that-or at least that we’d be viewed as a rescue party.

“Colleen may be right,” said Doc. “What if this is the way these flares protect themselves from the Source? Might they not take us as a threat?”

I turned my attention back to Howard. “Is Primal protecting the flares, Howard?”

He considered it, his mouth puckering. “They’re safe there. Safer than they’d be anywhere else.”

“And what does Primal get out of it?”

“Shit.” Colleen gripped my arm so tightly I knew I’d bruise. “We’re forgetting something. Primal’s a tweak . Maybe even a flare. He’d have to have some way of protecting himself from the Source.”

One Voice in front of many . A mutual protection society, very much like Enid and Magritte’s. We wouldn’t be heroes; we’d be invaders.

“Tweak?” echoed Howard.

“Like you,” said Goldie, “or Magritte.”

“Primal’s not like any of us,” Howard said, and my blood congealed in my veins.

“Shit,” Colleen said again. “This sucks.”

She could hear the flare voices, but only faintly. And she could drive them almost completely from her head if she kept one of Enid’s songs in mind. Enid, wrapped in Magritte’s flare shielding, heard nothing. He sweated the situation anyway.

“This doesn’t seem right-me hangin’ while you get into this up to your armpits. If I went in with you-”

Cal was adamant. “You can’t. If you went in, you might never come out.” He glanced at Magritte. “Either of you. We don’t know what might happen if you went in there before your contract is voided. I’d rather not find out.”

Enid took a deep breath and stared up at the Tower. In the strange gleam of Chicago daylight, its darkened windows and steel frame spat iridescence back at the sun. “Yeah,” he said. “Me neither.”

The front doors of the Chicago Media Group were massive, glass-and-brass revolving mechanisms set in two ranks with a ten-foot windbreak between. We watched them for several minutes from the half-shattered lobby of a building across the street. No one came in or out.

“We go?” Howard asked from beside me.

“No time like the present.” I patted the copy of Enid’s contract I carried in an inside pocket of my jacket and turned to Doc. “You’re our backup contingency plan. If this is a trap, or if something goes wrong, you may be our only way out.”

Doc nodded grimly and worried the hilt of a knife that had never been used for anything but cutting bandages.

Colleen put her hand over his, stopping the nervous clenching of his fingers. “Don’t cut yourself on that thing, Viktor. It’d be pretty embarrassing if I had to patch you up.”

He smiled faintly. “I will try not to cut myself. Good luck.”

Colleen smiled and squeezed her odd collection of charms. I noticed there was a silver cross among them now. Funny. I hadn’t thought she was particularly religious. “I’ll see you later,” she answered, and started for the street, leaping nimbly over a fall of broken glass and mortar.

Howard and I followed, leaving Goldie behind to make his good-byes. We’d reached the great doors by the time he came loping up behind us. They weren’t guarded, and in my eagerness to get in, I simply put my hand out to give one of them a push.

“No! No! ” Howard howled, and Colleen threw a body block, bowling me over. When she hauled me upright, she and Howard and Goldie were all talking at once.

“What the hell was that for?” I asked.

“Didn’t you see it?” Colleen flung an arm at the doors. “See what?” asked Goldie, glancing from me to Colleen. “Can’t just walk in,” Howard lectured. “There’s proto -

cols.” He swung away and shuffled over behind a pillar. “See what?” Goldie asked again.

Colleen squinted at the doors. “The … the force field.”