Lazerwarz

Chapter One

The graveyard shift at the mostly vacant shopping mall was the least eventful gig the security company had to offer. And it was why Rick had asked for it; he had been a professional student for years, and he needed a way to earn money without actually working. Most nights were eight-hour stretches of peace and quiet, with no distractions, or interruptions besides his hourly rounds; a perfect environment for study.

According to the weather reports he’d heard in the car, however, tonight promised to be different. Two storm fronts were about to collide over Tulsa, and perhaps kick out a few twisters. At the 11 p.m. shift change he scoped out the basement, then checked the batteries in his Maglite, an aluminum club that happened to cast light. So long as the basement didn’t flood, he figured he would make it through the night intact. At midnight his rounds led him to ten different clocks around the darkened mall, where he checked in by inserting his key. The key left the letter T on a tape, which his boss would read later to verify his attention to the job. Only a few lights were on, just enough so he could see where he was going, but not enough that he could really see. Lightning flashing through skylights briefly lit the darkened recesses, showing him things in the corners and doorways he had never seen before, and couldn’t quite make out. A quick sweep with the Maglite’s beam didn’t help much. Creepy. Moving on, he laughed at his jumpiness. This was a first for this place, which until tonight had all the animation of a morgue.

The place is actually giving me the heebie-jeebies, he thought, mildly annoyed. He had a test the next day, and if he didn’t get in a good night’s study his grade would be doomed. By the time he had finished his rounds the storm was raging full steam, shaking the skylights and rumbling through the mall with a deep, bassy boom. His station was at the information booth at the main entrance. Most nights this gave him a good view of a crumbling parking lot; tonight it was a parking lot drenched with rain.

He turned on the fluorescent lamp under the counter and reached for a heavy tome, Early Oklahoma Law. He was looking forward to learning what mandated a hanging in this territory a hundred years ago, which he found disturbingly more interesting than torts and misdemeanors.

When he had gotten to the part about stealing horses, a blast of lightning ripped through the sky, followed immediately by a shroud of darkness. The fluorescent lamp went out, as did all the scant lighting in the mall. The emergency lights did not come on, which didn’t surprise him. Hell, they probably weren’t even connected, he thought, standing up.

Wind howled against the quadruple pairs of glass doors, shaking the half inch-thick plate glass as if it was Saran Wrap. The Maglite cast a single white finger on the floor as he stepped from behind the information booth. He regretted not having his weather radio, which he’d left in the car.

He considered wading through the soaking rain to retrieve it. If he had to go to the basement, it had better be for a good reason. Surely, a tornado warning in his vicinity would justify being late for a round, or missing it altogether. He had never had cause to test his boss’s tolerance for lateness or absence from his post, and he didn’t really want to now. Maglite in one hand, building and car keys in the other, he went to the glass entrance.

At the inner wall of doors, where a thin pool of water was seeping in, he peered into the storm, mildly alarmed at the swaying light poles. If one snapped and fell on his Subaru, it would destroy it, a monumental disaster in any college student’s world. Sloshing through the foyer, he put his hand on the outer doors, and hesitated.

The storm had stopped, totally. No rain, no lightning, no thunder. Nada. To a nonnative, Rick mused, this might mean the end of a storm. Yet to a native of Oklahoma like himself such an abrupt cessation in hostilities meant a tornado might be about to land on your head.

To hell with it, he thought, I’m going to the basement.

As he turned to retreat, a deep blast of lightning struck somewhere out there, nearby. The blast thundered through his diaphragm and shook him down to his toes.

Still, the rain hadn’t resumed. He suppressed an urge to run to the mall’s comforting depths, and turned around. Gradually, his eyes readjusted, then widened as he perceived something tall and menacing, a narrow object, or a group of objects, in the parking lot. Something that hadn’t been there before.

My eyes are playing tricks on me, he figured. It was the only explanation.

Tall, immobile, the large objects were blocking the view across the street to a newer mall, where a few parking lot lamps struggled to stay on. The silhouette reminded him of broken teeth, with random spaces between.

Then fear gripped him.

My car.

All possibility of a tornado forgotten, he went outside to inspect this new phenomenon.

Not only had the rain vanished, the pavement was starting to dry. Thunder rolled in the distance, sounding like it was coming from the next county. His light passed over the objects, but they were too far away to see well. The sight of the towering structures was eerie enough to encourage him to turn back, but the threat to his car kept him moving. This is stupid. Nothing happened to the car, he reasoned, but reason didn’t seem to have a place in his world right now.

His foot met soft, grassy ground where he had expected pavement. Then a knoll that took a bit of effort to walk over. His flashlight passed over grass, with bare patches of light soil.

Did a bolt of lightning blast a crater here? No, that was stupid. Did the grass spontaneously grow?

Over an extensive stretch of grass he walked, the flashlight confirming what his feet felt: soft, but dry, ground. He reached down, patted the grass, a blanket of velvet unlike the native prairie grass of Oklahoma, or even of the ubiquitous Bermuda.

He stopped before a large stone arch, easily three times his height. Other arches, and single, standing blocks of stone, joined it in a circle. I know what this is. Where have I seen this before? he thought. Beyond the first few megaliths, the light’s beam diminished. More shadows.

The car . . .

Back towards the building he found his car. At least he found half of it. His spirits sank as he studied the remains of his Justy, parked where he had remembered parking it. The front half of it lay precisely at the grass’s edge, neatly severed behind the driver’s seat. Bare cross sections of steel body glinted back, shiny and polished under his flashlight. He touched it; still warm.

Still warm from what?

An enormous circle of turf had landed on the parking lot, complete with stones, taking out half his car in the process. Also, a light pole was missing, from about where the stones stood. He suspected it was wherever the hindquarters of his car had ended up.

Wherever the hell that is. He reached down and touched the distinct division between turf and pavement. Perfectly level. He dug his fingers between the grass and asphalt, found the pavement cross section smooth, as if cut by a laser. Just like the steel body of his car.

Now I know where I’ve seen this, Rick realized, staring at the megaliths. His high school band had traveled to Europe one summer, and one of the stops was the Salisbury Plain in England. He recalled the balmy afternoon he had stood at the famous archeological site. Then, it was perplexing to his seventeen-year-old mind how a civilization from the stone age could move the slabs of rock from a quarry twenty miles away.

If that was perplexing, he thought. This is downright un-fucking-real. What the hell is Stonehenge doing in a parking lot in Tulsa, Oklahoma?

* * *

Sammi McDaris breathed a sigh of relief as the Boeing 727 rolled to a stop at Tulsa International’s gate 22. Through her tiny window the thunderstorm continued to rage, buffeting the plane with stiff gusts.

Now we’re down. Thank the gods! she thought as she pulled her carry-on out of the overhead compartment. Passengers had stood the moment the unfasten seat belt light came on, clearly grateful the flight was over. She was too tired to fight the rush for the door, and instead let it carry her along at its own speed. She didn’t much care for using human technology to travel, but when concealing her origins from her new employer the FBI, she didn’t have many options.

It would not have done to simply gate here, in part because the Bureau had already mailed the tickets, but mostly because they were sending her new partner to pick her up. From what she could tell over the phone Special Agent Owen was a crusty, twenty-year veteran nearing retirement. In their brief phone conversation he had said point-blank that he didn’t like working with women, and had made it clear who would be in charge of the investigation. She smirked, imagining his expression if he saw her true form, or even an enhanced one, with fangs, or long, sharp claws to complement her pointed ears. It was a tempting notion, but one she dismissed. Preserving her cover was critical, for without it she wouldn’t be able to do her work among humans. And strolling out of a circle of light would not have convinced many of the sleep-deprived travelers, or her new partner, that she was of this world.

Once in the main concourse she looked around for Owen, found only one other human in a suit, and he was young and kind of cute. Late twenties, with short dark hair, possibly with some Native American blood . . . no, definitely Native, with high cheekbones and dark, smooth skin. He had a boyish face and a build that was clearly athletic even under the suit. Certainly not Owen. But he was walking toward her, and when their eyes met he definitely recognized her. Concealed beneath his coat she sensed the lump of cold iron that could only have been a handgun.

"Samantha McDaris?" he asked, face brightening. He was holding up his badge. "I’m Special Agent Hawk." He extended his hand. "Welcome to the Tulsa field office."

"Thank you," she replied, shaking his hand, giving it a firm pump to let him know she meant business. "What happened to Special Agent Owen?"

Hawk’s face darkened, and he looked down as he walked beside her. "Owen had a heart attack last night."

"Oh dear," she said as they started down the concourse, keeping up with his quick stride. "Is he . . . ?"

She didn’t want to ask if he had dropped dead, and considered a more diplomatic way of posing the question. Hawk saved her the trouble.

"He’s going to make it, but he’s still in the hospital. It also looks like he will be taking an early retirement."

"I see," she said. In a way, she was relieved. Working with Owen hadn’t sounded very promising. But it also meant they were less one agent; to work this case they would need all the warm bodies they could get.

Hawk didn’t seem to want to talk further in the airport. He waved at the security guard at the metal detectors, and led her to the baggage conveyor, where luggage was already parading past. "The rain has stopped," he noted. It was dark and just past nine p.m., but the flight was booked solid. People streamed by, some giving them furtive looks, apparently aware of their G-man aura. She claimed her bag, a single large Samsonite. The handle snapped up and she rolled it and the overhead bag behind them as they started for the parking lot.

His car was, of course, a Crown Victoria, unmarked except for the federal plates. Once they loaded the suitcases in the trunk, Hawk continued, "I’ve been reading the files you sent on the Lazer Abductions. The more I read, the more interested I got. I want a chance to work on it." He started the car and guided it through the parking lot.

"Good," she said, and ventured, "Meaning no disrespect, of course, I don’t think Owen was all that enthusiastic about it."

"He wasn’t," Hawk replied. He paid the parking attendant and drove towards an on ramp, and once on the expressway he continued, "In fact, he rather disliked the notion of diverting FBI resources to missing children. I disagreed and still do, but never said as much to him directly."

This is looking promising after all, Sammi thought, her estimation of the Tulsa field office rising a notch. As they drove south on I-169, the rain started up again, and lightning streaked the sky. "If you want my opinion, I don’t think the FBI has done nearly enough about the missing children problem. Sure, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sends us information regularly, but it seems the Bureau is reacting to the problem instead of leading the way." He clicked the wipers up to a faster speed. "I mean, when so much of it goes across state lines. And kidnapping is our game, or it’s supposed to be. Even after the shakeup after Hoover’s death, it doesn’t appear that we’re doing what we’re supposed to."

He’s new, she thought, New, and brash, and independent. I think I can get to like this guy. No, I know I can. In fact, I already do.

"How long have you been with the Bureau?" Sammi asked.

He cast a sly smile towards her. "You can tell I’m new. That’s okay, I am. It’s been about a year now. Owen took me under his wing, so to speak, when I came here, but right away I knew he was old school. You know, statistics, public image, go after the big cases but fill out the schedule with lots of minor, easy ones to make the numbers come out right. And I’ll tell you right now, I don’t agree with that."

"I see that you don’t," she said, mildly amused, but mostly impressed. "And I like that. I’ve been on for almost two years. Before that, I was a homicide detective in Dallas."

Hawk perked up at the mention of Dallas. "You were? I’m from Dallas." Without being too obvious, he glanced over at her, apparently studying her more closely. "I thought you looked familiar. You were working that crack cocaine case. The one that killed all those kids in the rich neighborhood. I remember that."

"You have a good memory," Sammi noted. She also wondered how much he knew, too. . . . That was when many things came to the surface, or nearly so, including her elven identity. "I went to school there," Hawk said. "I remember hearing about it. Your name was mentioned in a newspaper story, along with your picture."

Hawk has an eye for details, she observed. Wonder if he has an eye for magic. Or glamories. She briefly checked her own magical shields, making certain her human seeming was still in place. It was.

"Anyway, regarding the Lazer abductions. I counted one hundred fifty entries in the NCIC. That can’t be all of them."

Reminded of a glaring problem with the law enforcement system, Sammi sighed. The National Crime Information Center was useful only when it was used. Convincing local law enforcement to enter cases was sometimes difficult, particularly when dealing with what appeared, at first, to be runaways. Then what turned out to not be a runaway became a "domestic dispute," something local, something they should handle, if anyone did. The net result was that only a portion of the actual Lazer Abduction cases made it into the computer, making it even more difficult to make important connections between them. It wasn’t until she had practically stumbled across the phenomenon in Baltimore, on her first assignment, that she discovered the most important connection of all: Elven magics, tied directly to Underhill. The only magical device that would leave such a strong sign was a Gate, and she held no doubts that one had existed right there in the Baltimore arena in the not so distant past.

"No, I’m sure there are more," Sammi said. "But how many more, I can’t say."

Hawk seemed confused. "How can kids disappear in a game arcade?"

"Well, Lazerwarz is not really an arcade," Sammi explained. She was patient, she knew he had never seen one; the Tulsa arena wasn’t due to open until next week. What irked her were the agents who had seen one and still didn’t understand what it was all about. "It’s a laser tag game. The arena is very large and dark, with a labyrinth of mazes. The object is to hide in the maze and ‘tag’ the others with a low intensity laser. The one with the most points wins."

"So it’s like the infrared rigs the army uses to train in," Hawk said.

"That’s it," she said, glad that she wouldn’t have to explain it in increasingly simpler terms. "That’s also why it’s gone over so well. Kids are getting tired of Nintendo and arcade stuff."

"The files mentioned you thought the arenas themselves were involved in the disappearances."

She felt him pull back on the speed as traffic slowed in front of them. "I suspect," Sammi replied, being careful. "There are too many coincidences. But I don’t have any evidence. That’s why I’m here in Tulsa, before this new one opens. I can study it from the very beginning."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him grinning, just a little. She asked, "Sounds like something you’d enjoy?"

"Yeah, I think so," Hawk replied enthusiastically.

"Good. Because as soon as it opens, we’re going to be playing it quite a bit. Are you in good shape?"

Hawk cast her a puzzled look. "I like to think so. Why?"

"Because if you’re not, you will be."

The puzzled look turned to confusion.

Do I have to spell it out? She thought, then replied, "Have you ever been chased around by a horde of crazed teenagers with ray guns?"

* * *

Dobie started at the window’s sudden, fierce rattle, and sat up awkwardly on the bed, blinking the dream away. Deep thunder rolled off the house, shaking the aging timbers down to the ground. Lightning strobed against pale, paisley wallpaper, reminding him of an old black and white movie. He was alone here, as he had been since his mother passed on the previous summer. The two story house was no mansion, but it felt big and empty without her. She had died here, but had left no ghost behind; sometimes he thought he heard the wheeze of the oxygen machine, but this was a vague, probably imagined sound. He often saw her in his dreams, but he never awakened afraid from those.

This dream had been a repeating, special dream, and he didn’t feel so alone now; he’d just left a world populated by people who were bigger than life and were far more interesting than the ones he saw every day at the burger stand.

One of the deep dreams, with color and words and strange names, in a foreign tongue. Was the language real, something that once existed? Dobie scratched his head. It had to have been real, at least at one time. He lacked the imagination to make it up. Everyone knew that.

He went to his particle board-and-formica desk and turned on a lamp, a bedside fixture with stallions on a torn cardboard shade. Beneath the glaring light he held out his hands, palms up. It was a ritual he’d performed as long as he could remember, a calming, stilling exercise that never failed to put his mind and body at ease. He spread all of his fingers, seven on each hand, until the tips formed a half-circle. His hands shook. Then, after deep breaths, they relaxed. The circle has something to do with it, he thought, as his heart thumped a little less loudly in his chest.

But don’t get too damned calm . . . I have to get down what I just dreamed! On the desk was a ragged spiral notebook, a remnant from his junior year at high school, that was his dream journal. I have to start now. Before it goes away.

With a Bic pen, he started writing:

Fear, he wrote, is far more intense during sleep. You are completely helpless, and a tiny part of your brain knows that when you’re under . . .

He paused, feeling vulnerable, and considered striking out what he had written. Then left it as is. No one will read this anyway.

The Bic scratched away. I saw the straw tents tonight, but what I thought were teepees are actually houses, some pretty big. Rocks made up the walls in places, and in others it looked sort of like a basket, with stuff woven in between timbers. It seemed like each family had their own hut. I was part of the big family, where the chief was, but I didn’t live in his house. The chief was my uncle or something.

Also, some of the strange sounding words. Here are some of them: Ma ha, hoo lin, iffy, anoooin, tarn, danann . . . and Ayver.

He stared at that last one, knowing it meant something, a rather important something. The word brought erotic images to mind. The ache in his loins drove home how important this word was.

A word . . . or a name? he thought. Moving on, before the dream was completely gone, he wrote down what he could, in the language he possessed. The people are like Indians, but they are white. Very white. With long hair, beards, and they are big. I am big, too, but I’m still a child? I guess I was. Their shields are metal, not buffalo hide or wood (well, some of them were, with long pointy things like bullhorns running lengthwise) but they don’t have many bows and arrows, mostly spears. And the metal is strange, kind of yellowish but light, so it can’t be gold. They don’t even have toilets. They must be poor. The metal makes a strange sound when things hit it . . . like spears and clubs and stuff. Then—

It stopped there. All he could remember was now on the paper, the rest dissolving in his brain like sugar in hot coffee. His eyes tracked back to the one word. Ayver. Is it a word, or a name?

Dobie was staring at the page as lightning ripped through the sky. Then the lamp went out.

"Aw shit," he said to the darkness. He was used to losing power during a storm. Dobie’s neighborhood was a confusing landscape of old frame houses, machine shops, small factories, and an abundance of do not block driveway signs. Lining the main artery of Charles Page Boulevard were beer bars, cheap motels, and large angry dogs of no particular breed barking through flimsy, sheet metal fences. Whatever primeval network of wires brought electricity to this forgotten area north of downtown was probably so old it couldn’t stand up to a stiff breeze, and on most occasions it didn’t.

In the silence he listened to the echoes of his dream.

Is something outside? Thunder pounded the sky again, this time a long, piercing rip, the kind that makes you hold your breath until the inevitable sledgehammer pounding, announcing lightning contact with some unlucky point on the ground.

Drums, chanting, drums, more chanting . . . It was coming up the stairs.

Then it was gone.

The lights came back on as he stood, and he found himself so light-headed dizzy he thought he was going to be sick. Then the nausea passed.

What the hell was that? he thought as he reset the flashing clock for 4 a.m., the time on his watch, and set the alarm for 8:45. At 9:00 he had to be at work at the Mega Burger just down the street.

I’m imagining shit again.

Dobie crawled back into bed, wondering what it all meant. Certainly, if the strange dreams had something to do with a past life, a possibility he hadn’t discounted, his previous occupation must have been more interesting than his present one of flipping burgers at minimum wage.

He stared at the ceiling, remembering the sound, and considered going downstairs with his shotgun to check things out.

Or maybe I’m not.

* * *

Hawk dropped Sammi off at the Professional Suites, an extended-stay establishment the Bureau was generous enough to pre-pay a week. Sammi also received an extra bonus, Owen’s white Caprice, which was parked in front of her room. "He told me to check it out to you until he was back on his feet. This is his cell phone, too," Hawk commented as he handed her the keys and the small Nokia. "I’ll see you at eight sharp tomorrow morning." "I’ll be there," she said as she clipped the cell phone to her carry-on. "And thanks. I’m glad I’m working with you."

Hawk flashed her that boyish grin as he pulled away. Sammi thought whimsically as she hauled her suitcase into the suite. He must have filled in the unspoken words: "Working with you, instead of Owen."

Once she was inside, the storm let loose a new torrent of rain, which hammered the ceiling with a ferocity that surprised her. "Welcome to Oklahoma," she said to herself. The state had a reputation for violent weather, and tonight it was living up to it.

She turned on the lights, and was impressed with what she saw. This was no mere hotel room. It was truly an efficiency apartment, with a kitchenette, and a little work area separate from the "bedroom." She had a week to find an apartment here, provided it looked like she would be here for a while. There was always the chance the Lazerwarz angle could be dead end; there might not be any connection at all, and the Gate she sensed in Baltimore might have been there in spite of the arena, not because of it.

Yeah, right. I think I’ll start looking for apartments as soon as I can.

She opened her carry-on bag, which held her IBM ThinkPad, and set the computer up on the desk. With the laptop was a thick paper file, a copy of which Hawk had received a week earlier. It was an annoying holdout on the old technology that the Bureau seemed determined to cling to; some of the older agents were downright technophobic. In the file were missing persons reports, photos of kids, and the scribbled comments some of the agents in the Baltimore office. There was also a thick envelope containing several free passes to Lazerwarz; at six dollars a game, it wasn’t cheap. She knew the passes would be gone soon because she would be playing often, to get a feel for the arena and for the person running it. With few tweaks to her glamorie she would make herself seem a little younger, so as not to seem so out of place.

Her eyes fell on one of the pictures, a school photo of Alan Barker, the boy who disappeared from the Baltimore arena. He was a young blond kid of about sixteen, an honors student with an invitation to attend Princeton, with an IQ of about 150. He was also a laser tag enthusiast, the local terror of the arena, and played under the code name "Joystik." One afternoon after playing ten rounds of Lazerwarz he vanished without a trace. His RX-7 was still parked in front of the arena. And no one, as usual, saw anything.

Alan had an excellent relationship with his parents, didn’t do drugs, started a Students Against Drunk Driving program at his school, and volunteered for AIDS hospice work. And the local police had wanted to say he had run away from home, at first. When they learned that his father was Congressman Barker of Illinois, they reassessed their theory and sought help with the FBI. It was the first time the Bureau had found out about the Lazer Abductions, even though fifty cases had been entered, or were waiting to be entered, at the NCIC.

The FBI had already set up the MCLP, the Missing Children Location Program, at the academy in Quantico, Virginia. Volunteer requests for MCLP went out to all the field offices, yet the response was, to say the least, underwhelming. That was when Sammi, then a new graduate, stepped in. She volunteered to coordinate the flow of information between the NCIC and the FBI, pointing out "domestic" cases that should be included in the missing persons files. Three other agents around the country worked on MCLP, but Sammi was the only one devoting her undivided attention to it.

Her gaze returned to the photo. This kid is bright, with a future, and great rapport with his parents.

He didn’t run away.

She considered turning on the ThinkPad, but closed her eyes against the thought, realizing how tired she really was. It might have been different had she been in her native realm of Underhill, where the energies were a tad more tamed than those here, particularly during this thunderstorm. Lightning wreaked havoc with the magical workings of even the most experienced elven Mage, and keeping a glamorie in place during the bumpy plane ride had sapped her strength.

"To hell with it," she said to the suite. Feeling slightly naughty, she let the glamorie fall aside and stood, regarding her purely elven form in the mirror.

My ears have lengthened with acquired wisdom, she thought with a chuckle as she playfully admired the image she went to so much trouble to conceal. Her slitted cat’s eyes, green and large and inhuman, were a frightening sight to all but the elvenfolk. Seeing her own image, unfettered by the earthly trappings of the human race, reminded her how long it had been since she had enjoyed the company of her brethren.

She lay back on the bed, frowned at its hardness, and fought the inevitable ache of loneliness that intruded at times like these. She missed home, even though she worked and lived among the humans as a matter of choice. Rare invasions from hostile elven clans notwithstanding, life Underhill had taken on a predictable quality, a monotony that some of the elves found unbearably dull. The solution, heretical in some elven courts but welcomed in hers and others, was to cross the barrier separating them from the human race. They would assume human forms, learn human trades, play their games, and live their lives in disguise, always ready to Gate back to Underhill if their true identities were discovered by humans too difficult or violent to control. Some elves lived as humans for a brief time, some longer. Some, like herself, for a good span of a human’s adulthood. Sammi had spent her time in law enforcement, and her elven abilities had enabled her to spot dark magic from her homeland, and deal with it; something a human cop simply could not do. While investigating Alan’s disappearance at the Baltimore arena, she’d discovered the traces of a Gate, along with the more insidious remnants of Unseleighe magic. All the more reason to get involved: if the Unseleighe were abducting children, it was her duty to her clan and to the human race to deal with it.

Sammi stood and prepared for a long, hot shower. Her experience with travel told her she would never sleep until she had bathed, no matter how fatigued she was. But outside lightning continued the rake the sky, and she had second thoughts about getting into the water. Tempted to disregard common sense, she started unpacking her bathroom items, longing for the Shower Massage that beckoned in the stall.

Then it hit.

The dark scream was a wound, the ripping of barriers between realms. She closed her eyes and looked for its source, finding a hot, bright mass in her mind’s eye, in a place not too far away.

Great Danaa, she muttered as she turned off the shower. What she felt was no lightning hit, but something far more telling, and sinister. Only the gods could pull together such strength, she thought as she fumbled through her bags for jeans, sandals and a T-shirt. Half numb, she put these things on, and picked up the keys to the Caprice.

She saw clearly where the power source was, but had no idea who would have a need for such a construction. What she sensed was a Gate, but one of such magnitude one could move an army through it. It was coming from inside the city limits of Tulsa, and was close enough she could drive there in a few minutes, she guessed. The Caprice was parked just outside her room; a wave of stale cigarette smoke greeted her as she slid behind the wheel. The ashtray was open and overflowing with butts. No wonder Owen had had a heart attack.

The rain had ceased, though the storm was still raging in the distance, spiking the horizon with lightning. She pulled out of the parking lot and entered the expressway for downtown Tulsa. The source was getting closer, somewhere on her right. Here, let’s take this exit, she thought, getting off on 41st Street.

Her reaction to investigate the matter had been spontaneous, and she took a moment to reassess her move. If this is Unseleighe magic, shouldn’t I have backup? she thought, and considered aborting her recon. But if she didn’t locate it now she might never; Gate energy, particularly the temporary kind that emerged in the human’s world, didn’t always stick around long. She would locate it, and deal with it later, if indeed there was something to deal with. If something had come through that she could not handle alone, well . . . she had better not encounter it, that was all.

Right away she noticed the electricity in the area was out. Streets and neighborhoods slept in darkness. Ahead near an intersection was a cluster of black and white cars with blue and red flashing light bars. An accident? No, they were not on the street, they were in a parking lot, shining their spots on something tall and dark. She pulled up and stopped. If the other cops noticed her they didn’t seem to care; they appeared to be too stunned by what they were observing.

Sammi got out, and stood a few feet from the idling Caprice. Thin fog boiled from the pavement, and the asphalt’s black warmth seeped up through her sneakers. In her room she had heard the wound tear, and here it was, festering before her.

"This isn’t from Underhill," she said to the warm, wet night. Whatever magics were responsible for bringing this massive stone circle to this land were likely well beyond any the Unseleighe might summon.

This is Stonehenge, she thought, recognizing the monoliths. Brought from England, via Gate or some other construction.

None too eager to introduce herself to the officers on the scene, she got back into the Caprice and drove slowly away from the situation. After all, she didn’t have any ID with her; she had left it at the room. Just as well, it now looked like she had a cover to protect.

Time to speak with the King. I’ll likely need Avalon’s help after all.