The Magician: An Epic Dark Fantasy Novel: Book One of the Rogue Portal Series (20 page)

              Rumsfeld dove for the cherry desk, fumbling with shaking hands as he opened a drawer and pulled out a black box. He raised the box into the air, and shouted a sort of incantation, which was inaudible to Connor. As though the box had opened some sort of vortex, all of the swirling scarlet smoke was sucked into the box, and as the last of it obeyed, Rumsfeld slammed it shut.

              He replaced the box into the desk drawer and closed it, gasping. It was clear to Connor the Rumsfeld was trying desperately to replace his look of calm demeanor. To act as though his breaking composure had never happened. But something happened that had greatly shook him to the core, and there was nothing he could do to convince Connor otherwise.

              "And just what was that?" Connor was incensed.

              "Nothing you need to worry about. Wouldn't have happened if that crystal hadn't broken."

              Rumsfeld spoke quickly, clearly wanting to move on to other subjects. Not wanting to reveal anything more to Connor about this realm, or how it worked, or what the portal had to do with anything.

              "Then maybe you should pay attention to where you send people when you throw them across the room."

              At this point Connor was deliberately trying to get under Rumsfeld's skin. For some reason he felt like he had the upper hand tonight. If Rumsfeld could have simply taken the portal from him, he would have done it already. If he could have simply killed Connor, he would have done that, too. But Connor still maintained possession of the portal, and he was still alive. Clearly there was something keeping Rumsfeld from harming him. Clearly there was something that Rumsfeld knew that Connor didn't. Of course, there were probably many things in that category. But the most important thing was that in some way Connor was invincible. At least for now. Rumsfeld spoke, seeming to have read his mind.

              "You may think that you have some kind of special power. Or that I can't get to you. Or that you know what you need to know about that portal around your neck. But I promise you, you don't know anything. So I'm going to give you one more chance to be smart and hand me the portal."

              Rumsfeld was almost trembling, and his rational, cool demeanor was long gone. He was struggling to maintain composure, to put on the face of the actor the Connor was so used to seeing. But instead he saw a mad scientist and before him, a fragment of a man masquerading in a silly costume. Whatever the smoke dragon had been, whatever was going on, Rumsfeld was quickly losing ground and he knew it. And Connor intended to use that to his advantage for as long as possible.

              "Maybe you didn't hear me the first time, Rumsfeld! But you're not getting this portal! As long as I'm still breathing, I'll be the one with this portal around my neck! No shortcuts, no easy ways out. Because you can't offer that to me, or Stuart, or Kit, or Hazel. You didn't give us a choice but to fight, so you won't get any other choice, either. Got it?"

              Rumsfeld pursed his lips, breathing heavily and clenching his jaw. Finally, his eyes darted toward the wall and back at Connor, and he straightened his posture. His breathing slowed, and the Rumsfeld that Connor had been so familiar with up until that point began to return.

              "Oh, Connor," he said, his voice transforming from the haggard grunts of a madman to the smooth performer he tried so hard to be. "I didn't want to do this. But you've left me no choice."

              He flicked his hand in the air, and a slight sound of friction, wood against wood, echoed through the room. An hourglass from the far wall drifted effortlessly across the vast room, finally resting in Rumsfeld's hand. A cruel smile played at the edges of Rumsfeld's lips, and his eyes narrowed in anticipation.

              "Do what?" Connor asked in a sardonic tone.

              Rumsfeld didn't respond to the words. Instead, he removed the top of the hourglass that had drifted into his hands, pour the contents of it on floor, and began to laugh in a menacing, half mad chuckle. Displaying the hourglass in front of him, like a child showing off the trophy he had just won, Connor could see the name on the hourglass. Terror flooded him, dragging him to the bottom of an ocean of despair in which he had floundered for so long. In a moment, all of his nightmares had come true.

              The name of the hourglass was Julia Galveston.

              To add insult to injury, Rumsfeld raised the hourglass above his head and smashed it on the ground. In the midst of the insane anger and hatred and blinding rage that encompassed him, Connor remembered seeing that same action before. Where was it? Had it been in a vision? Connor tried to calm himself so that he could think more clearly. Yes, it had been in a vision. At least it felt like a vision. It was what happened to his father's hourglass. It was what happened to people when Rumsfeld or whoever else in this realm who was working with him wanted them to go mad.

              "She has nothing to do with you! She has nothing to do with this! What you've done cannot be reversed!"

              Connor lunge forward, with every intention to do as much harm to Rumsfeld as he could. And he might've done, because judging by the look in Rumsfeld eyes there was potential for him to be harmed. But just as he was about to make content, he felt the world around him fading and knew from experience that he was being pulled back through the portal. His ninety minutes had expired. Whatever vengeance he was to bestow upon Rumsfeld it would not be tonight.

              As Rumsfeld realize what was happening, his eyes sparkled with joy and relief intermingled. He began to chuckle once more, and leaned against his golden staff like an actor who had just delivered the performance of a lifetime. Connor fought furiously to get to him, clawing at the air like a mad dog, like a cat trying to get up a tree to chase a squirrel. But his feet could find no traction on the ground, and he understood that his time was up.

              "I swear I will come back and kill you! I will come back! I'll come back and kill you all! This isn't over!"

              Right before the world went dark, Rumsfeld uttered his reply.

              "Be careful what you wish for Dearie. If you want to be a hero so badly, if you want to take vengeance on me so badly, and if you think you actually can, you just might get your chance to prove it. All of you!"

TWENTY-THREE

⌛

              Connor woke up as dawn reached through the curtains next to the sofa. Thoughts raced through his mind, sadness coursed through his body, and between the dream and the Piano Man, he now had more questions than ever. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he looked at Kit, then Hazel, then Stuart, trying to remember how this had all started. How they'd all found themselves together on this journey.

              Shaking his head and running a hand through his hair, he stood and walked toward the sliding glass window that opened up to a small balcony, taking care not to make too much noise when he opened it. Closing the door behind him he walked over to the balcony and leaned on the railing, palms down, eyes closed, trying to process the impossible.

              "This can't be happening," he said to himself.

              "And yet it is," a voice answered him.

              He spun around. Kit stood in front of the glass sliding door, looking at him with a half-smile of mingled pity and empathy.

              "I didn't even hear you open the door," he said.

              "Yeah, I'm sneaky like that." She elbowed him.

              He smiled.

              "So," she said, "how'd your meeting with Rumsfeld go?"

              He hung his head, returning his hands to their resting place on the balcony.

              "He admitted to a lot of things. But you have to assume he'll only admit to the things that serve his purpose somehow. At times he seemed genuinely torn." He clenched his jaw. "But I don't particularly care if he is. Because then he..."

              Connor rubbed his forehead, and Kit put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

              "He what?" she asked.

              "He killed my mom."

              "Wait, what?" she cried, then looked toward the glass as though remembering other people were still asleep.

              "He took her hourglass and poured out the sand, and then he smashed it. And after what we read..."

              "Oh my God."

              "Yeah." He blinked hard, fighting back tears. He had no time for tears. Not now.

              "You have to tell the others," she said.

              "Yeah. I know." He looked at her, both of them leaning against the balcony, staring across at the forest that bordered the property.

              "Are you telling me everything?" he asked.

              She sighed, her shoulders sagging with the deflated posture of a guilty person who knew they'd been caught.

              "No," she answered with a hollow voice.

              "I think now would be a good time to come clean," he said.

              "I know where you're coming from. But you're wrong."

              A knock at the window interrupted their conversation, and Connor shot a look over his shoulder. Stuart waved with a wry smile, and Connor smiled back, giving a final glance of contempt toward Kit.

              "This conversation isn't over," he said. She met his gaze with defiant eyes.

              Stuart opened the door and Connor and Kit walked back into the hotel room.

              "You're up early," said Stuart.

              "Yeah, I couldn't exactly sleep," Connor replied.

              "Dreams again?"

              "You know by now they're not dreams."

              "True."

              "But yes," Connor confirmed. "Rumsfeld was there. He emptied my mom's hourglass and smashed it. Right after admitting to being behind everything. Or at least playing a hefty part in it."

              Silence. Stuart hung his head.

              "I had a dream, too," Stuart said.

              "What?" Connor replied.

              "I had a dream about what happened to my family. Sort of. Only I was there and watching from a distance. And then I watched Rumsfeld standing there, too. He was surrounded by hourglasses. One for each member of my family. He emptied them all. And then he looked at me, and held up my hourglass. I screamed at him to smash it. But he just looked at me with that obnoxious smile and told me he needed to keep me around. That I wasn't allowed to go anywhere just yet."

              Stuart spoke in the monotonous drone of someone who had gotten far too little sleep and was carrying far too great a burden. His voice was tired, and although emotion registered in his eyes, his body was deflated.

              "What do you think it means?" asked Hazel.

              "I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it's symbolic. I mean that didn't happen when I was there. So it was definitely some kind of message."

              Hazel shifted in her spot on the rug. They had all gathered in the same position as the day before, seated around the book at different places. She looked around the room, her eyes darting from point to point.
Looking for stage left,
thought Connor. After several moments, she sighed.

              "I had a dream, too."

              Stuart looked at her, a concerned expression taking up residence on his face.

              "What was it?" he asked.

              "Similar to yours. I was looking for my sister. He was there and he was laughing, and there were signs with arrows pointing in all directions. I was in a forest, and I didn't know where to go next, and every time I'd follow a sign a giant hourglass would crash down in front of me. He just laughed and laughed."

              She hugged her knees to her chest, clearly wanting to forget the dream, knowing it was truer than any of them dared to believe. Stuart put a comforting arm around her, and she leaned over against him with no sign of bashfulness. Connor's mind raced. How could it be possible that they all had dreams with Rumsfeld in them? How could it have been a coincidence?

              He looked at Kit, who had taken great pains not to make eye contact with anyone else. He knew she'd had a dream, too. She made it obvious by the way she purposefully avoided the others. And while part of him understood the reluctance to believe any of this or feed into the proof of what had been happening to them, it angered him at the same time. Because she knew more than they did. She'd admitted as much. What right did she have to be the person who didn't tell? Why was she so special? Didn't they all deserve to know everything they were all going through if it pertained to the Void and what had happened in their pasts?

              "Kit?" Hazel asked.

              "What!" she snapped. Hazel jumped.

              "Hey lay off, Kit!" Stuart said.

              "Bite me," she retorted.

              Connor tried to swallow his growing sense of resentment and rage toward her and her arrogance, but he couldn't.

              "You know what? I'm sick of this." He glared at her and she stared at him with cold eyes. "You sit there in your bitter little cocoon of anger and think you're so much better than everyone else! You think somehow what you're going through is unique to what we're experiencing! You think you can just wall up and not tell us anything! We're all in this together whether you like it or not, so drop the self-pitying lone wolf attitude and start talking! You're no different than us, and you don't get the right to just shut down whenever things get hard. None of us like what's going on! But we're all being honest about it because that's what's necessary to keep us alive! So get off your damn throne, and start talking!"

              Stuart and Hazel looked at each other and then to the ground. Kit's eyes brimmed with tears, and Connor swallowed hard. Under any other circumstance he'd have felt bad about making her cry. But not this time. She needed to cry. It was about time she showed some real emotion about what they'd been going through, and felt some guilt about her secrets.

              He expected her to scream. To become irate and tell him in no uncertain terms what a terrible person he was. He braced himself for a profanity-laden diatribe about his arrogance or his selfishness. So when she spoke in a barely audible tone, quiet and defeated, it scared him.

              "Yes, I had a dream. Yes, he was there. So was the necklace I had that I told you about. And so was my mother. She was bleeding from everywhere and was trying to hand me the necklace. Now you know my dream." She paused. "But I have more than enough right to keep things to myself."

              He let out a single, silent laugh that clearly said "You're something else."

              "You have no idea who you're dealing with. Or what you're dealing with," she said.

              "And for the last time, Kit, if you know so much you better start talking."

              "I'm trying to protect you!"

              "Well you're not! There is no situation in the world where having less information than what's available is an asset! Even if it looks that way on the surface. Don't you see that?"

              She blinked, and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

              "No," she said. "I don't."

              He shook his head, incensed at her arrogance.

              "Well that's funny coming from the person who gave me such a compelling speech about not keeping anything from anyone. Or have you forgotten?"

              She turned her head away from him and brushed her face, wiping tears from her eyes.

              "I think we should start in on the book now, if that's alright," Stuart said after a few moments of pregnant silence.

              "I agree," said Hazel, releasing a breath she had been holding for quite some time.

              "Fine," Connor said, still glaring at Kit. "At least the book will gives us some answers." 

              "No." Kit spoke as though she were speaking from a grave. Her voice was hollow. Her eyes dark. But she was resolute.

              "No what?" said Stuart.

              "No we're not just going to dive into the book again. Not without some clarity."

              "You're joking. You're seriously about to lecture us on getting clarity?" Connor shook his head. She ignored him.

              "You don't have any idea what we're up against. I know what this realm contains - the good and the bad - and I've seen this Magician in action. Just because I'm not spilling my guts doesn't mean I'm the bad guy." She shot Connor a look. "But we all need to understand that if we continue down this path, it's a war. A war that we'll have to fight on their terms, on their turf, and by their rules. Anyone who isn't willing to fight - for what's right, for those they love, for their very lives - should get up and leave. Right now."

              They all adopted serious expressions, struck by the weight of Kit's words. She showed no anger or bitterness, but spoke with slow, methodic intention.

              "I'm in," said Connor. "For my dad." He paused, remembering his most recent trip to the Void. "And now for my mom, too."

              "Me, too. For my family," said Stuart.

              Hazel put a comforting hand on his arm and said, "So am I. For my sister."

              Kit nodded.

              "Then let's get to work," she said. "We have a lot to learn."

              "Wait, before we do," Hazel shrunk back, as though afraid that she'd spoken out of turn. She continued anyway. "Maybe Connor should call home. Maybe it wasn't really his mom's hourglass." She looked at him.

              "It was. But thanks."

              Kit reached into her pocket and handed him her cell phone. He met her gaze, and she nodded.
There will be no winning this war,
he thought, and he took the phone.

              "Alright. Thanks."

              Dialing the numbers for his home, he felt a knot cinch itself into position with painful tension in his stomach. His home number rang and rang. Nobody answered. In his mind he could see the house empty and dark, a horrific scene in the living room, or maybe the kitchen, and the sound of the ringing echoing throughout. He pressed the red phone on the screen to end the call and dialed the neighbor's number.

              "Dan Amerson!"

              Dan always presented a chipper disposition regardless of time of day, circumstance, or event. Connor had always envied and appreciated his outlook on life, and often felt envy that he couldn't feel the same way.

              "Hi Dan, it's Connor. Have you seen my mom? I can't get a hold of her."

              Silence.

              "Ah, Connor, bud. I thought someone would have called."

              "When?"

              "Last night," said Dan.

              "What happened?"

              More silence.

              "Dan, tell me what happened!"