The Wounded World, Part 1 free porn video

Mantra is the creation of Michael W. Barr. Mantra and other characters originally introduced in Malibu Comics are the copyrighted properties of Marvel Comics, Inc. THE WOUNDED WORLD Part One By Aladdin A story of Mantra Chapter One THE LITTLE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE When God commanded this hand to write In the studious hours of deep midnight, He told me that all I wrote should prove The bane of all that on Earth I love. William Blake As I begin this account, I struggle to make sense of the senseless. I have walked a strange and terrible road, I think, these pages shall in due course make that clear. I pray that I stand now at road's end, but can I be absolutely sure? After what I have experienced, can I ever again believe in anything just because sight and sound, taste and touch, tells me that it is real? When did it start? Did an evil, impersonal force enter our universe? Is a mad god to blame? Was it all inevitable, or did I share the blame with others for letting it come to pass? Was Chaos let loose because I lost the very battle that I had most needed to win? Must tell my story, lest it slip away. I know I should start at the beginning and will dry, but that is no longer easy for me. Beginnings, middles, and endings are not what I used to think they were. # Armageddon began, for me at least, at The Mall, the largest shopping center near my home in the L.A. suburb of Canoga Park. School had started for Evie and Gus and most of what they needed for their classes we'd already picked up in late August. The evening of Thursday the fourteenth we were seeking just a few more odd items that the kids had only belatedly been told that they'd need. I was new to school shopping, just as I am still new to parenthood. The kids' grandmother, Barbara Freeman, had filled in for me September of last year. Lately, though, "Mom" had been grumbling that she expected her daughter (meaning me) to get back to full-time mothering. Barbara loved her grandkids, but also felt that she had a right to a life of her own. She was putting her late husband's passing behind her and now wanted to bask in the autumnal glow of her Golden Years, instead of endlessly covering for (what she assumed was) an emotionally troubled daughter. Her assumptions were reasonable enough but all wrong. Mrs. Freeman didn't know that Eden Blake had died two years ago and the man Eden had loved had taken spiritual possession her body. I, Lukasz Theodoricson, had been living Eden's life ever since, resentfully at first, but with more tolerance and resignation as time went along. I had never known before how much a life could be enriched by a family. After a rough start, things seemed to be going fairly smoothly. I was a enjoying the current outing especially, getting a kick out of the kids' changing expressions as they beheld the different merchandise in the school supplies section at Target. I began to imagine that if shopping for school supplies with a couple of youngsters could be so much fun, taking them along to buy Christmas presents later in the year would be even better. That would be December. How audacious now seems to have looked ahead even as little as three months. But I suspected nothing that evening, just as the Indonesian islanders had suspected nothing as they went about their business in the deep shadows of Krakatoa in 1883. While passing by the writing supplies in the back-to-school section, Evie said to me, "Mommy, can I get one of those eraser tops? I chewed the rubber off my pencil." I frowned down at my dark-haired little girl. "Evie! How can you do anything so silly? It's not healthy to chew on some dirty old pencil eraser. Do you want to get sick?" "It wasn't my fault!" she averred with wide-eyed earnestness. "The eraser kept climbing into my mouth and I just kept on chewing without knowing I was doing it." "Pencils can't climb into people's mouths. People have to put them there. You're too big a girl to be chewing on things that aren't good for you." "I know, Mommy," she sighed glumly. "Knowing is okay," I told her, "but knowing doesn't get you anywhere unless you think ahead and to do the right thing." "Do you always do the right thing, Mommy?" She had me there! I've done a thousand things I'm sorry for. The trouble with life, or so I supposed then, is that one can't change the past. "Nobody can be right all the time," I finally said. "But everybody has to try to do the best he can. Think about it. People do so many foolish things even when they're working hard at being good. The world would be in a terrible mess if most people weren't at least trying." While the youngster seemed to be considering this bit of wisdom, I scanned the pen and pencil display and espied a packet containing a dozen eraser heads. Simple division told me that they averaged less than a dime apiece. That was within the family budget, so I took a pack and handed it to Evie. "Will this do?" "Oh, yeah!" she chirped. Then her attention strayed for the umpteenth time. "Look at the ultra tablets! They didn't have them in the other story we were at." I glanced down and saw several neat stacks of writing tablets with photographs of well-known heroes on their covers. They represented the cr?me de la cr?me of popular ultras. Prime's stack had only a couple left, but Warstrike's didn't seem to be moving at all well. I noted a Mantra cover, too, and scowled. This was a picture I had never posed for; a model in facsimile armor had probably stood in for it. Another thing that I noted was that Mantra stack was higher than Prime's. I shrugged this off. Probably there had been a rush on Mantra at the outset and the tablet had already been restocked. Or maybe not. But I'm trying to fight down my pessimism. "Evie, can you use another tablet?" "Can I have a Contrary?" I looked askance. "She's pretty," Evie explained. "Isn't Mantra pretty, too?" The Evie grimaced uncomfortably. "Oh, sure. But Mantra is pretty like a mommy. She's not hot like Contrary!" I was amazed. "Evie Blake, how do you know what's hot and what's not at your age?" "The big guys said she was hot." "What big guys?" "The fourth graders!" I crossed my arms. "Well, those wolves would know what they're talking about, I suppose. Doesn't anyone at school think that Mantra is hot?" "I do!" put in Gus, now coming into our aisle. "Mantra's hotter than Contrary. And she sure doesn't look like anybody's mom!" ~She looks like your mom, Junior~, I thought. I wondered why it was that it bothered me that my daughter didn't think Mantra was as "hot" as Contrary, at the same time that I felt equally irked that my son thought Mantra was even hotter. "She does so look like a mommy!" declared Evie. "Ultra ladies never have kids! I know all about them from the comics." "They could if they wanted to!" the little girl insisted. "Movie stars do!" "Kids are for dorks," Gus pontificated. I picked up a Contrary tablet and handed it to Evie. I also took one of Mantra. I'm a sucker for buying Mantra collectables. Maybe that's because as a knight of Archimage we never got any personal notoriety. Mantra has been a celebrity from her first appearance and was quickly taken to heart as a role model for schoolgirls. But what means even more to me is that Mantra is the legacy of Eden Blake. It had been her dying wish that I protect the children and use her magical talents for the good of all. She didn't actually express the latter sentiment, of course, but I know that what I'm doing with her powers is what she would have wanted. "By your rules I'm a dork, too," I told Gus. "Thanks for setting me straight." I looked about. "You kids are getting loud; people are frowning at us." "Let the jerks frown if they want to!" declared Gus. "Why do we always have to care what people think?" I sighed. Junior was well on his way to becoming a grumpy teenager. "You should care about insulting people when you don't have to," I explained, "so you can win friends and influence people -- instead of getting yourself into a lot of fights. If you wind up with a bad reputation, you'll have a hard time getting along in life." He looked pugnaciously unconvinced. "Come on. We'll pay for this stuff and get something to eat at The Kids' Club before we go home." I thought the youngsters would go for having supper at the Mall's child- themed restaurant, my cooking being what it is. I'm trying to bone up on the culinary arts, but I'd honestly rather break and reassemble a MP5A3 than make a casserole. The serving line was a long one and Evie and Gus, perpetual motion machines worthy of scientific study, hurried to get in queue in front of me. Standing there behind them, straining to see the menu, I suddenly registered a funny feeling. I went on guard, having been blindsided too many times over the years by encroaching danger. I peered out of the corners of my eyes, trying to figure out what was out of place, and noticed a short, stout man with a round face and red hair. He was staring at me. This in itself wasn't too unusual; Eden Blake could have been a supermodel if she hadn't opted for the riches and glamour of marriage, family, and a data analyst's career. But there was something about the little man that just didn't sit right. Was it merely the fact that he was staring? I'm usually not so thin-skinned. If I rebuked every passive-aggressive ginzo that ogled this body, my voice would have been as broken as Pete Seeger's. In my opinion, if this guy kept his distance, his bad manners would do neither of us any harm. Just then I noticed that he was slinking into line behind me. I stood there watching him out of the corner of my eye, just in case he tried anything. ~Ouch!~ I hadn't expected him to act so quickly. The creep had stuck me with something! I swung about, ready to try out some of my recently-learned Aladdin fighting techniques for women, but --- ~But he wasn't there.~ I glanced left and right. How could a man of flesh and bone have disappeared so quickly? Something was not right. Just then a strange feeling came over me. ~Damn the luck! Had he injected me with some sort of drug?~ I was trying to think what to do when the lunch line started moving quickly, like a speeded-up film. My heart must have skipped a beat when I saw ~myself~ step right out of my body and move on ahead like everyone else, as if I were a ghost and no longer part of the scene at all. Worse still, other people, coming up from behind, were passing right through me! It was like I had no substance; I felt them less than I would have felt a light breeze. The queue accelerated to the speed of a freight train, until the crowd's mouse-quick movements faded into a blur. I clenched my fists. The pervert must have shot me up with some sort of hallucinogen, or else I was experiencing the first symptoms of an unknown poison. I reeled, my perceptions all askew. The twilight glow was fading. The sun acted like an electric light with someone turning the dimmer down. That impression lasted only briefly. Before I knew it, everyone was gone and I was standing in an empty room with just the night-lights shining. When I tried to move, my feet couldn't get any traction from the floor. There was a lightening and then a darkening of the restaurant, and then another lightening. I shut my eyes, staggered -- And opened them to a sunlit view of a -- a ~parking lot~. # Dazed, I leaned against the green sedan parked behind me. It took me seconds to realize that I was solid again. When I collected my thoughts, I noted the motel sign looming before me. What was I doing here -- wherever ~here~ was? What could have swept me away from a shopping mall and out to a budget motel? And something else was wrong. I had glanced at my watch. It was seven after ten -- in the morning obviously. Where were the kids? A crazy thought came to mind. Was I still myself? This is a question that wouldn't have occurred to most people, I grant. But I've been spontaneously switching bodies since long before Mohammed met the angel. Likewise, I'm used to being thrown into strange locations and situations all unprepared. The last time this had happened to me, I'd become the mother of two. It didn't take more than a glance down to confirm that I was still a woman, but was I still Eden Blake? I turned and squinted at my reflection in the car window. With relief, I saw that I still looked like Eden. Slightly calmed, I took stock. I wasn't wearing the jeans and pullover that I'd had on at the mall. Instead I was dressed in a blue-skirted suit with a silk ascot. In my hand was my familiar purse. Though I recognized the outfit, I couldn't remember changing into it. Was it possible that someone was controlling me, making me do things that I couldn't remember afterwards? Or was I sleepwalking? I didn't feel sleepy or drugged, just confused -- and who wouldn't have, losing so much time and finding himself in a strange place? ~Damn it! Where were the kids?~ ~Don't fly off the handle, Lukasz. Don't attract attention.~ Okay, I was still Eden Blake. I felt fit and my face looked fine. As far as I could tell, nothing nefarious had been done to me physically. Some fifteen hours had passed, though, and these would have to be accounted for. I was at a motel, an Econo Lodge. This was a well-known franchise catering to less-affluent travelers and tourists. Well, that figured, considering my income. First things first. I needed to get the address as a reference point, so I straightened and walked toward the office. Under the shade under the canopy, I noticed a mailbox and checked the address stamped on it. ~San Francisco.~ What? How had I ended up in San Francisco? I entered the tiny lobby perplexedly, to look around and see if the look of it would bring back any memories. The clerk, a Latino lady, glanced up at me brightly. "Meesees Blake, isn't it? How are you thees morning?" She knew me. Motel clerks didn't know out-of-towners unless they're current guests. On impulse, I checked my purse and found a motel key. The Econo Lodge logos and a room number were embossed on the violet plastic key holder. I then glanced up at the clerk, who was still waiting for me to reply. "Oh, I'm fine," I said. "I just thought for a minute that I'd lost my key, but here it is under the tissues." The clerk smiled blandly and nodded. I turned and went back outside. There was no obvious menace in sight, so I reasoned that the next logical step would be to check out the room I apparently had rented. In front of the door that sported my key number was parked our family car. I had completely overlooked that little detail beforehand. I shook myself. I needed to be sharper. Chances were that some sort of game was afoot, and wherever Mantra is concerned, games usually turn out to be painful and bloody. I put the key into the lock, turned it. At the last instant I decided to summon up my magical shield. An ultra never knows when he is walking into a hail of machinegun slugs, or some other, equally unwelcome, surprise. That is, I ~tried~ to call up my shield, but nothing happened. To my dismay, I felt as inert as a stick of firewood. The magic just wasn't coming. Concentrating harder failed to light the spark. I didn't like this one little bit! What was wrong with me? As I tottered there, disoriented, someone inside must have heard me or seen me through the window and now opened the door. The knob, as it swung away, slipped from my fumbling grasp and I found myself looking into a face that I knew well. ~Very, very well.~ * * * * * Chapter Two TERROR PLUS FIVE She went out in Morning attired plain and neat Proud Mary's gone Mad said the Child in the Street. William Blake I stood gazing down at Evie. She looked nonplussed, as if surprised to see me. Glancing over her head, I saw that she was alone, but the room seemed to be crammed with our personal belongings. Whatever was going on, it had the look of a serious relocation. "You just left, Mommy. Did you forget something?" ~Oh, brother, had I!~ I stepped past the little girl, trying to make sense of it all. The queen-sized bed, newly made, was the only furnishing not loaded with boxes and cartons. What had happened? Just fourteen hours earlier we had had no plans to go out of town, and yet here we were -- in San Francisco, no less -- with a pickup load of household gear. Was I on the run? Had someone discovered my Mantra identity and forced me to go to ground? I sat down on the bed, bemused. Evie stepped up, her brow arched uncertainly. "Wasn't Jack-in-the-Box open?" she asked. The Jack-in-the-Box was a fast food franchise, I knew. "Oh, you want breakfast?" "Yeah." "Sorry. I didn't check it yet. I wanted to...to look in on you instead. Is everything all right?" I saw some slight hesitation in her wide blue eyes. "I guess so. Did you see something else bad outside, Mommy? Is that why you came right back?" ~Something else bad?~ The way she'd phrased that question made me wary. "How are Grandma and Gus?" I asked, as nonchalantly as possible. Evie took in a sharp breath. "Grandma was okay last night. Don't you remember we talked to her? And Gus, he's still in jail, isn't he?" ~"Jail?"~ If I was trying to sound natural, I wasn't having much luck. I decided to drop the subtlety. "Evie, these questions of mine sound funny, don't they?" She nodded. "Something just happened." "Something bad?" Her little hands tightened into fists. The tyke needed reassurance, so I enveloped her softly into my arms and drew her close. "Evie, I sort of need your help." She looked up into my face. "Are you okay? You don't feel sick, do you?" I rested my chin on her shampoo-scented head. "Shhh, it's not like that. It's just that I -- I suddenly seem to have...~forgotten~ a few things. Did I seem all right when I was with you before...before I went out to the Jack-in-the-Box?" "You seemed okay, 'cept that you still weren't Mantra." ~Still weren't Mantra?~ Oh, brother, this was bad! My powers hadn't just glitched out momentarily. They'd been missing long enough for Evie to know about it and to stop being surprised. "Evie, I don't know why it is, but the last thing I remember was us being in The Mall last night, standing in line to buy dinner at the Kids' Club." She gave a startled jump. "No, Mommy! That was last Thursday!" She'd said ~Thursday~ like it was a hundred years ago. "What day is it now?" I asked. "It's Wednesday." "Wednesday the twentieth?" "Yeah!" This was getting scarier and scarier. "Darling, did something...bad...happen since Thursday? I can't remember anything about the last six days." I felt her tremble. "You ~can't~ have forgot, Mommy!" "Please, sweetie, tell me what I've forgotten." "It happened right after you got home Friday. We were all so afraid!" Whatever "it" was, she was ~still~ afraid. Evie had always been amazingly brave. What in Creation could have put her into such a state? Did it have anything to do with my sudden loss of magic? Gently, I ventured, "Evie, is there some grownup who knows about the bad thing that happened? I'd like to talk to that person, so you won't have to remember and be scared." She shook her head. "There's just Lauren. Gus tried to kill her, too." "G-Gus? Gus tried to kill somebody?" She nodded. "Did -- Did he hurt you, darling?" "No, but he chased me and he said he was gonna hurt me. Then Laddin came and Lauren helped them beat up on Gus and take him to jail." Somebody wake me up! The Lauren she alluded to had to be Lauren Sherwood, the children's favorite babysitter. What was this about sending Gus to "jail"? The name "Laddin," threw me for an instant, before I realized what she was trying to say. "Do you mean 'Aladdin'?" "I guess so." Aladdin was the secret government agency I worked for. How did Evie learn of it? I was careful never to talk shop in front of Mom -- Barbara Freeman, I mean -- or the kids. They thought I worked for the C.I.A. Had I let the name slip over the last few days, or had something more sinister occurred? "Is Lauren okay, then?" I asked. Evie nodded again. "We saw her on Monday, remember? She wanted you to go back to being Mantra again, but you said you couldn't and she had to be Mantra now." Lauren be Mantra? How could Evie come up with such a bizarre idea -- if it wasn't true, that is? I felt like I'd fallen down a rabbit hole. "Pumpkin, where is Gus? What do you mean he's in jail?" This was too much. She started to cry. I hugged her close, soothing her as best I could and waiting for her to speak again. "M-Mommy," Evie stammered, "is Gus ever gonna get out of jail? He isn't gonna be a -- a ~lifer~, is he?" Did the authorities really have Gus? Was the charge murder? Whom did he kill? "I don't know, darling. I don't know anything about what happened. I just can't remember." "Did you stop remembering because Gus hurt you so bad? Does your head ache?" "No, my head feels fine. How did Gus hurt me, Evie?" "He zapped you. He was mad at you and wanted to make you die! I almost thought you ~did~ die. I -- I don't want to lose another mommy." Her words choked off, but a moment latter she gasped, "I-I don't want everybody I love to be in heaven, e-even if it is nice there." I kissed her. "Evie, you've had a rough time of it, I can see that. But if I'm here it's because God wants me to be with you and not up in heaven. And I want to be with you just as long as I possibly can." She drew herself tight against me and, as I held her, I tried to reason things out. Gus had tried to kill me? Why? Whatever could have made him so violent? He was a heedless, lazy, and sometimes rebellious boy, but he'd never displayed a wantonly violent nature, not even against animals. What did Evie mean by "zapped"? How could the world have changed so drastically in just six days? I had lost my magic, apparently after an attack by Gus, and then Lauren had assumed the role of Mantra. On top of that, we seemed to be living in a different city.... It wasn't adding up. How much of this strangeness had to do with Lauren? For a year I had known that the teenager was a potential witch. One of Boneyard's demons had played on her teenaged angst and building resentments to lure her over to the Dark Side, somehow awakening her capacity for magic. Lauren had used her powers to go after her enemies - - other schoolgirls who had snubbed her. I had tried to reel her in before I realized how dangerous she really was. Her magic turned out to be of the world-class type and I was floored and stunned when she turned on me. Only Evie's pleading had prevented her sitter from giving me the ~coup de grace~. After that bit of unpleasantness, Lauren had realized the enormity of what she had nearly done and came out from under the demon's influence. In the months since, she had displayed no sign of magical talent, but I suspected that she hadn't lost the potential for it. Magic had to be natural to her; no minor demon could have imparted such sorcery to an ordinary person. I had been expecting Lauren's other shoe to drop for a long time, and now it had. I mean, it had if I were to believe Evie. Why, exactly, would Lauren start calling herself Mantra? Was it because she knew I'd been put out of action and considered herself my heir? "Evie," I asked, "did Lauren look like herself, or did she change to look like me again?" The little girl shook her head. "She didn't change. She just got magic. Mommy, why are so many people we know getting magic?" "Gumdrop, who else got magic, besides Lauren, I mean?" "Gus got magic, but it made him angry and mean instead of happy. He acted like he hated everybody, even you. Everything Lauren or me said made him mad. It was awful!" Was this true? Could Gus have gotten magic and gone on a rampage, like Lauren before him? It made no sense. I'd sooner believe that Evie could manifest magic. She was at least a female in a bloodline that seemed to produce witches. Was it possible that Evie was mixed up and telling me about a nightmare she'd had? But if so, why did I have amnesia and why had we made this unplanned move? Why had my powers gone south? I needed more information from somebody -- from ~anybody~. "Where's Lauren?" I murmured out loud. "She must be in school," Evie replied. "That's where I wish I was. All my friends are there, Mommy. I also miss Grandma, Aunt Lila, and Mrs. Griswell." I stroked her hair. "Poor little thing. Can you tell me why we came to San Francisco?" She turned even sadder. "You said you wanted to work in Sanfrisco so that you could visit Gus at Laddin every day." Aladdin was keeping Gus in custody? Even though Aladdin had never cared much for legal niceties, it would have no interest in imprisoning a juvenile delinquent, not unless he was an ultra. Evie couldn't know how it operated, so it gave credence to what she was saying. San Francisco, interestingly enough, was the location of a secret federal prison for ultras. That had to be why we had packed up and moved so suddenly. As a trusted Aladdin employee, I probably could gain access to the boy on a regular basis. All at once, I got a strange thought. What if Gus's powers were originally mine? Could my magic have inexplicably moved from me to him? That would explain a lot. If only I could get my Mantra talents back, Aladdin would have no reason to keep him locked up. What was I saying? How could I possibly undo something that shouldn't have happened in the first place? "Evie, darling, I'm going to talk to Lauren after she gets home from school. Once I understand what went wrong, maybe we can set things right." She was suddenly all eagerness. "Can you make all the bad things go away?" "I'm not sure, but I promise to do my best. Tell me, was everything still okay when you, me, and Gus got back from the Kid's Club Thursday night?" She looked confused. "You're forgetting again, Mommy." "What am I forgetting?" "Gus wasn't with us. Gus never wants to go out anymore, not since the bad people made him ugly." I regarded her incredulously. This detail didn't belong anywhere in the scenario I was constructing. "I don't understand. Gus looked perfectly all right last Thursday. And I remember he was with us. Don't you remember how you two were talking about ultra ladies in the Target store?" Evie shook her head. "It didn't happen that way, Mommy. Maybe you dreamed it." Somebody had to be been dreaming something; I was willing to grant that much. "What's this about Gus being ugly? What bad people are you talking about, Button?" That put her over the edge. I let her cry herself out against my shoulder. "There, there, honey. If it's too awful, you don't have to talk about it." "It was the bad fairies," she finally whispered through her tears. "What bad fairies? When?" "Last spring. They caught me and Gus in the garden and took us away to fairyland." Fairies? How had fairies got involved? This just had to be a dream, either Evie's or mine. "What garden?" "The big one that Mrs. Dimsdale has. I thought I saw fairies hiding under the flowers and I told Gus about them. He didn't believe me and so I said I'd show him. When we were looking under the leaves, the ugly fairies got us." I knew for a fact that Gus had been fit and fine all summer. He had joined the Cub Scouts in July and was having a grand time of it. And Mrs. Dimsdale had never once mentioned that her garden was infested with fairies. "What happened after the fairies got you, Sweetums?" I coaxed. "The good fairies saved me, but the bad ones took Gus away. You came into fairyland to get us, but you found me first. By the time you caught the bad fairies, they'd done some magic to make Gus look ugly like they were." I remained calm, amazingly so. This was only because I no longer believed that any of the wild things she was saying was true. Maybe Evie was ill. Maybe I had brought her to San Francisco to meet with a child psychologist. Still, logic told me that I would have chosen a Los Angeles doctor and not willingly disrupted our lives by making such a radical relocation. "Why would the bad fairies do something so nasty to a little boy?" I asked softly. She sniffed. "You said they told you that Gus had special blood and they wanted him to be their fairy king. You brought Gus back, but he still looked like the ugly fairies. He was so sad. He always wore a pillowcase over his head and wouldn't come out of his room. He didn't believe that anybody could love anybody so ugly -- not you, or me, or even Grandma." She shook her head. "I don't like fairy stories anymore, not since they were so mean to Gus." I kissed Evie. Then, deep in thought, I lifted her off my lap and stood up. A moment later, I found myself standing at the window staring blankly into the sunlit parking lot. ~Oh, God, please let this be a weird nightmare.~ I tested myself for lucid dreaming by trying to pass my fingers through the aluminum sill, but it felt solid. What I was seeing and hearing seemed to be reality, but it was too crazy. Before I jumped to any conclusions I had to get some outside input. With Lauren out of touch, I decided to call Mom and find out what she knew. With that thought, I checked my purse for my new phone. It wasn't there. I turned. "Evie, do you know where I put the cell phone?" She slid off the bed and retrieved the missing object from the nightstand drawer. "Thanks," I said, taking it. When I punched Barbara Freeman's number into the pad, I got back a message telling me that the number didn't exist. "Evie, the operator says that Grandma's number is bad. Why should that be?" "I dunno." I brought up my digital call list on the phone screen, but found that I couldn't recognize any of the numbers on display. The possible truth suddenly dawned on me. If my guess was right, I was in a bad way. I needed to test my new theory. Showing the screen to the little girl, I asked, "Evie, are any of these phone numbers Grandma's?" The pointed to the second line on the menu and said, "That's the one." It wasn't any number I recognized, but I tried it. A ringing sound told me that that some phone existed at the other end. The receiver was picked up and I waited with bated breath until I heard Barbara Freeman's voice. "Hello?" "It's me, Mom. Are things okay there?" "I'm fine. Is Evie all right?" "Oh, yes, but, Mother, there's a new problem." "What?" she asked edgily. "This might sound strange, but all of a sudden I'm having some pretty bad memory problems." "Memory problems?" After a pause she said, "Well, I don't wonder, considering what you've been through. Do you need me to help you to look after Evie while you're being treated?" "Maybe. What bothers me most is not what I've forgotten, but that I'm beginning to wonder if some of the things I do remember are wrong. Mom, is there any reason that I would have thought that your number was 818- 346-8357?" "For Heaven's sakes! I don't know how you'd come up with that. I've had this same number since before you and big Gus were divorced." "Mom, Evie said something about Gus -- little Gus -- that I don't understand. It's about him becoming ugly last spring. The last I remember, he was looking just fine. Do you know why she would say such a thing?" A deafening silence answered me. "Mom?" "Eden, you're in worse shape than you think! Is there anyone in San Francisco that you can leave Evie with while you're getting some help?" "Mom, you haven't answered my question. Is Gus all right?" "Oh, Eden, you're frightening me! You're having a serious breakdown. Gus ~did~ change. All he and Evie could say is that some fairies kidnapped them. Mantra was somehow involved, too. Eden, stay indoors and try to rest. I'll fly in, but don't drive to the airport in rush-hour traffic. It may be too dangerous in your state. I can be at the motel by about seven. Be very gentle with Evie until I get there, girl. You're just not yourself!" * * * * * Chapter 3 THE ULTRAMATE SOURCE Prayer is vain, I called for compassion: compassion mocked. Mercy and pity threw the gravestone over me and with lead And iron, bound it over me forever: Life lives on my Consuming: and the Almighty hath made me his Contrary... William Blake "Mommy, you look so funny," Evie said. My conversation with Barbara Freeman had filled me with a terrible thought: What if this little girl was not my daughter after all? If I wasn't delusional, the strangeness around me had to be real. If real, I couldn't possibly be in my own universe any longer. I knew that parallel worlds existed. In an alternate reality people might have duplicates living slightly -- or even radically -- different lives. Only a few months before, my magic had glitched and sent me into a different version of Earth, a world so like my own that it had taken me hours to figure out what had gone wrong. I'd even met another version of Evie there. I regarded the anxious-eyed little girl, wondering about her mother's strange mood. Here she was thinking that I was the person who loved her most in the world, the one she could always count on, while in reality I was a stranger she didn't know at all. My first loyalty couldn't be to her, God help me, but to my own family. My greatest fear was that I couldn't get back to them. Nothing else mattered as much. I would have to leave this little girl. I looked over my shoulder. Wasn't the local Eden taking a long time getting back from the Jack-in-the-Box? It would be better if my counterpart never saw me. But could I return home? It damned difficult to escape from an alternate dimension. Last spring it had taken all my natural magic plus a boost from outside to win free of the one that had captured me. In this world, without any powers, I might be hopelessly marooned. I wondered with growing anxiety why the local Mantra and I lost our powers at the same time? When I started to think of another scenario of what the truth might be, the horror of realization rushed to my face and changed it. Evie drew back, startled by my sudden change of expression. With a determined effort I controlled the incredulity inside me. This woebegone child didn't need to be frightened anymore and needed someone to comfort her. I glanced about again, hoping against that the other Mantra would return. Why in hell wasn't she back? I didn't like to think. I forced a smile and opened my arms. Evie sprang into them, but when I hugged her I was really hugging my own Evie far away, the Evie I was worried I might never see again. "Easy, Pumpkin," I said hoarsely. "Life hasn't been nice to us Blakes lately, but we're tough people and we're going to get through this all right. Grandma said she was coming to see us tonight. She'll help me take care of you until my memory comes back." "She is? That's terrific!" "Yes, isn't it?" I said with reservation. She loved her grandma, as most children do, but I was a good deal more conflicted in that relationship. When I needed a little emotional support, the Barbara Freeman I knew wasn't always there for me. She was a stern woman, very sensible and cerebral, only intermittently warm and comforting. Worse, she had been at a loss to understand why her daughter had suddenly started acting strangely and so for some time had been regarding me warily. How could she guess that an outsider had been possessing Eden Blake's body for the last two years? In causing her to come to San Francisco I hoped that I hadn't caused my counterpart any major problem. I only hoped my missing twin was still in a condition that made her able to have problems. Evie continued to cling to me. Despite all, her hug felt good. She was very like my own Evie. What, I wondered, was going on back in my home world? What did it mean that I remembered seeing my old body walking away from me in the line at the Kids' Club? Had that flashing impression only been a hallucination? Had my real body been stolen by some sort of possessing entity? I had encountered such creatures before. With Boneyard's patronage, Thanasi, my most dangerous enemy, had become an identity thief, flitting from body to body as the need or whim struck him. Had Evie and Gus fallen into the power of a similar being who was now impersonating me? If so, what nefarious purpose motivated her? What were her intentions toward the children? I kept looking at the window, still nursing a fading hope that the Lukasz/Eden of this world would show up. "Dumpling," I said to Evie, "did I mention earlier what was I going to do today? After breakfast, I mean." "Uh-huh. We were going to talk to a man about getting us a new place." "Do you know the name of the man?" "Uh-uh, Mommy. You just called him a man." "Did I talk to him on my phone?" "Yeah. When I was still in bed." I had no interest in keeping that appointment, and didn't think that the other Eden would either, not today at least. Consulting the cell phone menu again, I chose to re-ring the number listed just before my call to Barbara Freeman. "International Exports," came a receptionist-type voice on the other end. This reply didn't throw me. I knew that "International Exports" was the dummy company that Aladdin hid behind in San Francisco. If the local Mantra had transferred down to Frisco to be near Gus Jr., she naturally would have been in contact with the local office. "Uh, this is Eden Blake. I'm a new transfer. May I speak to my unit chief?" "Oh, yes, Mrs. Blake," the woman responded. "Just one minute." Very soon a new voice came over the line and I was surprised to recognize it, "Sarn here, Blake." Dr. Sarn had been my hard-as-nails division supervisor back in L.A. I didn't know what she was doing in San Francisco, so I went into a walking-on-eggs mode, trying to feel out the situation without letting Sarn realize that I didn't have a clue about what was going on. "I was wondering if there were any new developments. You can imagine how worried I am." I hoped this question made sense. If Gus wasn't being held at Aladdin, as Evie implied, I would quickly have to make some excuse to explain what my ambiguous remark meant. "Your boy is showing periodic signs of consciousness," Sarn answered. "It might be good if you were here to speak to him the next time he wakes up. How are you doing with your move?" "It's going slowly. There's just so much on my plate right now. I was going to talk to a real estate man today, but I'm not feeling well and I'll have to reschedule. I'll need some time off." "More than the week you asked for?" "I hope not." So, Eden was on leave. Well, that figured. "You really ~do~ sound stressed, Blake. You ought to see a company psychologist for some counseling. In-house medical service would be best. It wouldn't be wise to go to an outsider. You might misspeak yourself and your work is classified." Did ~everyone~ on this weird planet think I was nuts? "I've never believed in psychology, Dr. Sarn. I'll only go that route if I have no other choice." "Well, you've already shown how tough you can be, so go ahead play it your own way. But don't push yourself too hard. You're not a superwoman." These days I certainly wasn't! "If Gus wakes again you'll give me call, won't you?" "Naturally, naturally," replied Sarn, her clipped tone serving notice that she had no more sympathy to spare for one day. "Be sure to file your report on Sunday's mall fiasco when you come in." "Uh, sure. I guess that catches us up on things. Bye, Doctor." "Good-bye yourself, Blake." What report did she want? What in blazes had happened at the mall? Did she mean The Mall on Sherman Way? Did it have anything to do with my weird experience at the Kid's Club? No, that couldn't be. That had occurred in my world, not on this one, and on Thursday, not Sunday. And what could occur at the Mall that would be of interest to Aladdin? I shifted toward Evie. "Scrumptious, did something happen at the Mall Sunday? I mean, something that the people I work for would be interested in?" She gave a little moue. "Well, you and Lauren said there was a big enemy robot there scaring people and Lauren had to fight it." A big robot? Oh, well, of course. I'd thought it had to be something like that. Sheesh! "The Mall on Sherman Way?" "Uh-huh." "Evie, you know that I have -- or used to have -- a desk job at the C.I.A., right?" She nodded. "Well, would you happen to know if Mommy is doing anything different now? My boss made it sound like I was, but I didn't want to ask her and sound dumb." "Did you forget that you're a secret agent now, just like La Femme Nikita on TV? You get to carry a gun and everything." How could that be? My undercover job in Britain had been one-shot favor to the company -- and also to me, since it involved a magical artifact that I was personally interested in. Sarn -- my Sarn -- had been so impressed with how I handled the case that she invited me to enter fieldwork fulltime, but I'd said, "No thanks." Operational agents could be pulled away from home unexpectedly for weeks or months at a time. They would also have to do rotten things to innocent people. Why had the Eden of this universe agreed to go along with that? Was she so different from me, or had different experiences changed the direction of her life? I tried another number on my phone menu and this time got a real estate office. I confirmed that "I" had a mid-day appointment and asked for a postponement, using illness as an excuse. With that taken care of, I had the next couple of days to myself. I had to do some research to test my theories, but I couldn't leave the tyke all alone in a strange city. If her mother didn't return, she was my responsibility. As they say, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. "Evie," I said, "do you feel like going out with me?" "Sure! But you told the man you were sick." "I fibbed. I want to do a secret mission." "A secret mission? And I can be your sidekick?" "Yes. The first thing we need to do is go to the library." "Are there robots or bad ultras at the library, Mommy?" "I certainly hope not!" # The city map in our car helped me find some municipal parking about three blocks from a branch of the San Francisco municipal library. Evie stayed close by my side after we left the ramp, even closer than is usual with my own Evie. I thought maybe she was feeling insecure because of her recent fright. Or maybe it was ~me~ she was frightened for. Might this Evie be determined to protect her mom from sudden danger now that she wasn't a super-powered ultra? I took her little hand and squeezed it. She was an easy child to love. What ~would~ I do if an emergency arose? It could. Much of the rough stuff I've had to deal with over the years, especially since becoming Mantra, wasn't provoked by me. There's something about being an ultra -- or having close ties to one -- that makes a person a target. If something happened, I couldn't do more than grab Evie and run -- which was a depressing thought. We passed by a paperback-and-news shop called the Readmore and I impulsively led Evie inside. What I saw in the display headlines took me by surprise. Until this instant, I hadn't realized that the Blake family hadn't been the only victims of the weekend's horrors. We hadn't been, not by a long shot. I bought the ~Los Angles Times~ on the spot and also asked for a copy of ~The Ultra~, but the clerk told me that he'd never heard of the latter. For people interested in ultra-gossip, he recommended a newsprint weekly called ~The Ultramate Source~. I wasn't familiar with the title and this inclined me to believe even more firmly in my alternate-world theory. A short way farther down the street was a coffee shop. Evie was hungry, so I bought us both breakfast. While devouring my java, sausage, and eggs distractedly, I poured through the ~Time's~ lead story, the one about disaster in New York. This was a staggering new wrinkle. The paper said that more than a quarter of New York City had been blasted to rubble by a mysterious explosion on Sunday night. Millions had died. At first a terrorist- delivered suitcase-sized nuclear bomb was suspected, but the initial radiation checks read very low and suspicion for the catastrophe fell on a team of mostly-unknown ultras sighted just outside the blast zone, on the southern edge of Central Park. One was a giant of a man in armor, and with him was some yo-yo swinging a scythe. A woman in a black cat suit was seen hurling ~shurikens~ and carrying on pretty much like an out-of-control ninja, while another female had flown overhead and launched energy bolts at the army unit that had first spotted the group and opened fire. But two members of the gang could be tentatively identified. One matched the description of Amber Hunt, a name familiar to me. Hunt had been part of a theta-virus-infected ultra-team called the Exiles that had briefly operated up to about two years ago. A laboratory accident had decimated the group and the injured survivors had gone their own way. Hunt had risen from the ruins of the Exiles' headquarters deranged and had almost destroyed the world by releasing intense electro-magnetic energy, beginning with harmless infrared and mounting toward deadly gamma. The New York disaster sounded like her modus operandi, except that her target was smaller. But what floored me was the allegation that one of the ultras was a crime-fighter called 'Strike. I knew that name from my own world. It had been the nom de guerre of Brandon Tark before he'd re-christened himself "Warstrike." The 'Strike of this world seemed to be a heavy-weapons enthusiast of the same stamp, while the name of "Warstrike" appeared nowhere in either the ~L.A. Times~ or ~The Ultramate Source~. To have Tark involved in something so villainously destructive didn't smell right. On the other hand, the man mentioned in the paper wasn't the Tark I knew. Even back in my own reality, he had suffered a severe breakdown. The man had pulled out of it, fortunately, but if something like that had happened here, too, he might have lost his marbles and become capable of almost anything. Still, I didn't want to believe the worst. Maybe 'Strike had showed up in New York trying to apprehend Amber Hunt and wasn't actually running with her gang. The holocaust in New York would be the main story for weeks, but I couldn't be distracted by it. The Blake family mattered most. I've seen many cities die in my time; I've seen whole nations perish overnight. But I've never had a family to preserve and protect; I had to keep my priorities straight. True, this family wasn't really mine, but what else did I have to do with my time? The ~Times~ made it clear that the U.S. still had the same president and first lady. The so-called co-presidents were making speeches continually, feeling our pain while answering friendly reporters' softball questions and trying to give the impression that they were on top of things, even though they both sounded absolutely clueless. Critics were clamoring that federal relief agencies were moving too slowly to help survivors. Of more interest to me was the fact that while a lot of familiar politicians were in the current news cycle, a lot of leaders I knew of went entirely unmentioned and persons whose names I'd never heard of occupied major offices. Was it madness or a parallel world? Pay your money and take your choice. I couldn't do anything for New York. My chief concern had to be for Canoga Park and the Blakes. I found the story I'd been hoping for in the back pages of ~The Los Angeles Times.~ It had a small picture of the "new Mantra," side by side with some old photo of me. Though ~The Ultramate Source~ had depicted 'Strike/Warstrike in a new costume, Mantra looked like herself. The copy said that no one had seen the "old" Mantra in public for more than a month and speculated that the new Mantra might be the retired or dead heroine's daughter. Due to Evie's information, I of course could see at once that the newcomer was Lauren Sherwood dressed up and masked. So, Mantra had been missing in this reality. I had an idea what was going on. In my own universe I'd also been keeping a low profile, ever since wrapping up the British caper. Due to a trick I'd played, Aladdin believed that they had Mantra under lock and key and I didn't want to disabuse them. "Have you seen a picture of Lauren yet?" I asked Evie, showing her the page. "I wonder where she got that armor." Then I looked more closely at the printed image. "Hey, she's using my sword!" Evie nodded. "She got the armor from inside your cloak, Mommy. Your sword was lying on the floor when she came out, and she grabbed it to be able to fight with all those monsters that Gus'd made with magic." I regarded her sharply. Gus had made monsters with magic? Oh brother! On my best day I wouldn't have known how to do that. It took a mega-wizard to pull off such a stupendous feat. My old patron Archimage was one of those who could conjure creatures that acted like they were alive. In fact, he had created my enemy Kismet that way. For Gus to do likewise as a rank beginner required a demigod's power. Lashing out in childish anger and armed with omnipotence, he could very well have overwhelmed his sorceress mother with a sudden attack. She simply wouldn't have been prepared for a little kid having power even greater than Boneyard's. "Evie, if Lauren has my sword, where's my gold armor and cloak?" "Oh, they're in that box you put under the bed at the motel, Mommy," she responded brightly. I felt relieved, even though I wasn't sure what good magic armor could do me in my current condition. "Uh, Evie, how did Gus get the armor off -- me -- anyway?" "He made you disappear out of it when you were dizzy on the floor." Her expression changed and she swallowed hard. I had to be careful. Her emotional condition was fragile. "Was Lauren very scared?" I asked, attempting to get her mind off her worries. "I guess she was. But she was really brave, too. If I get to be an ultra someday, I hope I can be just as brave as Lauren." ~As Lauren?~ # It seemed like the end of an era. The Mantra of this world had been defrocked only five days earlier and already Evie had found a new role model. Her mother, though still dearly loved, had been condemned to the class of humdrum grownups and no longer excited her imagination. As much as I sympathized with the Mantra of this reality, I wished that she were here. I had plenty of troubles of my own and didn't want to have to work through hers, too. But if wishes were horses.... I couldn't put the question off any longer. I had to know whether the thing I most feared had really happened. And I had to discover that terrible truth without distressing Evie. "Evie, there's something else I've forgotten. Can you tell me if these are the same clothes that I was wearing when I went out to Jack-in-the- Box?" She took a good look at my outfit. "Uh-huh," she nodded. "Did you think you had on something else, Mommy?" "Yeah," I replied softly, as if it were no big deal. "The mind can play tricks sometimes." My heart sank. If I was in her mother's clothes, this body might not be the one I was used to. It almost certainly was not. I had to face the facts. I was occupying the body of this world's Mantra. I must have expelled the soul living inside it. That's why her powerlessness had become my own. I've had about a thousand bodies during my existence. I killed a thousand men and one woman to get them. Gazing down at Evie, so innocent, so unsuspecting, my whole body ached with emotion. If this body-switch had been like all the others before it, I had probably killed her mother. Her ~second~ mother. It was just too much. I didn't know what I could do for her, except try to keep her from learning the truth as long as possible. Despite my abysmal mood, I forced myself to keep reading ~The Ultramate Source~. In it I found references to totally new ultras, but they didn't sound like heavy hitters. Who in hell was the pathetic "Thorn Boy," or the crime-fighting acrobat named "Jack Dancer"? In the ultra-obituary section I learned there had been some goof in armor who had announced himself as "The Chaotician" and then gotten killed by a mysterious back-shooter even before anyone could figure out whether he was a hero or a criminal. The Strangers still existed, but their brief citation failed to say what their current membership was. The four mercenary ultras of Solution were still doing their thing, though in semi-retirement. This, interestingly enough, was the same situation prevailing with them back home. But the UltraForce had shrunk and now consisted only of Prime, Ghoul, Topaz, the Black Knight, and Prototype. They were based in Headless Cross, Arkansas, not Miami, Florida. More amazingly, Prototype was no longer Jimmy Ruiz, but Bob Campbell. In my reality, Campbell had been the first Prototype, but had been forced into a grudging retirement after losing an arm in an accident. Also, Campbell's wife Felicia, a specialist in ultra-oriented medicine, was now part of UltraForce's support staff. Then I read something that made me wonder. The UF had always operated under an official government sanction, but the paper made it sound like they actually had federal security agents looking over their shoulder and giving them advice. Aladdin had it in for Hardcase for good reason. Was that why he was no longer on the roster? But what about Contrary? "Evie, have you ever heard of a couple of ultras named Hardcase and Contrary?" Evie perked up. She loved to talk about ultras. "Everybody's heard of Hardcase, but who's Contrary? What can he do?" She didn't even know that Contrary was a woman! If a major figure like Hardcase could be missing from the UltraForce and a mover and shaker like Contrary was completely unheard of, how many other people in all walks of life were missing, in many cases replaced by strangers? This was a peculiar world. "Darling, what about somebody called Warstrike? Have you heard of him?" She shook her head, but didn't say anything. She had suddenly grown very sad-looking. "Is something bothering you, Evie?" "I've been thinking, Mommy, does God always answer prayers?" Only then did I realize that she hadn't called me "Mantra" all day. When I'd been Mantra, I would have appreciated that. It would have implied that my being her parent was much more important than my being her hero. Now I wasn't sure what it meant. "Why do you ask, Honey Pot?" "'Cuz ever since I was little I've been praying for God to bless everybody, especially you and Gus. But he didn't. Why not? Does he think we're bad or something? Did we do something wrong?" I gazed into her woeful blue eyes. A crisis of belief. I felt at sea. What Evie wanted to know the very thing that had baffled philosophers for thousands of years. I took a deep breath. Philosophers were able to dodge life's important questions. Parents didn't dare to. * * * * * Chapter 4 THERE'S NEVER AN ANGEL WHEN YOU NEED ONE Tell me where dwell the joys of old and where the ancient loves? And when will they renew again...the night of oblivion past, That I might traverse times and spaces far remote and bring Comforts into a present sorrow and a night of pain? William Blake "Evie," I finally replied, "what you're asking is something that wise men have never been able to answer." She swallowed hard and the corners of her mouth turned down. "Maybe those wise men just aren't very smart." "Maybe not. But I think that God's knows that if people on Earth are good, they can watch out for each other. He sent His Son to us back in Bible days to teach us all how to be good, and He rewards good people by taking them home to Heaven." "But didn't God just make it harder for you to be good, Mommy?" I shook my head. "What happened to me and Gus were just accidents. Anyway, I can still do good things, just like you can." "But wouldn't doing good be easier if you were still Mantra?" "Maybe, but I've only been Mantra for a little while. I can get used to being ordinary again, as long as I have you helping me. Until my magic comes back, I'll just have to do whatever good I can, even if it's only in little ways. That's what firemen, police, and nurses do." Evie glanced dejectedly into her glass. "God should have let you keep doing good in big ways. He could make your magic come back if he wanted to, couldn't He?" I reached out and squeezed her hand. "Of course. He could do anything. But sometimes God's plan is so huge we can't see what it is. Would you know that you were looking at a whale if you only saw a piece of it no bigger than a postage stamp? If I had the choice of being with you, or being Mantra and never be able to see you again, I'd choose you every time." "Why?" "Because you make me smile." She looked down and bit her lip. "It's hard to smile now, Mommy." Would it make her smile if I told her exactly how I felt? I wanted Evie to know how glad I was that she had become my own little girl, but didn't dare tell her. A child could easily misunderstand. What if she thought that I was happy that she had lost her real mother? Words were treacherous. I had to make her understand the way things were through the way I treated her. "Mommy, the Sunday school teacher tells us stories about how angels save people from accidents. She told us about how an angel made himself look just like a stranger and helped a farm family to get a tractor off their dad's chest. He disappeared when nobody was looking, so they knew he couldn't have been a real person. Why doesn't an angel come to help you, me, and Gus?" I shook my head. "Most of the time angels don't come when people need them, and nobody knows why. But there are two different kinds of angels. Did your teacher mention that?" "You mean fallen angels?" "No, Button. I mean good people who help folks out whenever they can. Don't you think God is guiding that sort of person?" "Was Mantra that kind of angel?" ~Kids ask the damnest things.~ "I don't know. Maybe. But what I'm trying to say is that if an angel comes from Heaven to help us, it will be wonderful. But we can't always count on help from that sort of angel. Sometimes, though, a living angel shows up, just when we need him most. Remember how Prime saved all those children from that fire at Toys R Us?" "I guess so," she whispered with a sigh. Then, all of a sudden, she clenched her hands together. I saw that they were trembling. "Evie, what's wrong?" "You f-forgot, Mommy. Ever since G-Gus hurt you and scared me, m-my hands want to shake sometimes." I cupped both her hands in mine and lifted them to my lips. Soon the quaking stopped. "Did -- did we take you to a doctor about this?" "Not yet. You had to go to Sanfrisco on Saturday to see Gus and didn't get back till Sunday. We were both so worried about Gus that we wanted to move really fast. You said we'd see a doctor here." "We certainly will. My little girl has to be well and happy. That's the most important thing in the world." She shook her head. "No. Helping Gus is most important." I nodded. "I'm going to start asking smart people about how we can do that. Maybe one of them will be a secret angel and he'll have a good idea." "Do you really think so, Mommy?" "Lots of good things can still happen to us, as long as we don't lose hope." She seemed to feel better, so I glanced once again at the printed columns of the ~L.A. Times.~ I couldn't help but feel that it was no accident that I had come to this world at such a strange time. It seemed a vain hope that I could get a hint of what it was in the daily newspaper. ~Speak of the devil! ~ A science-section report said that both strategic air defense stations and civilian observatories all across the face of the earth had monitored a series of powerful energy spikes on Friday night. These randomly placed surges had continued with lessening frequency and intensity for several hours. A coincidence? Maybe not. I had to read more. Observers said that the sky across the globe had displayed a purplish glow when the unknown energy field was at its height. Smoky-looking, green-colored bolts had struck the earth at random, but were usually silent and did no material damage. On the other hand, the places where they hit were correlated with of a large number of bizarre human and animal changes. Some individuals gained ultra powers, but some of what happened had been truly horrific -- like an alleged case of mortuary dead coming to life in Pasadena. The corpses had broken out of their mortuary and ranged into the surrounding neighborhood, killing several passersby and intruding into nearby houses. Fortunately, the Strangers had been at hand to stop their depredations and destroy the undead marauders. The article emphasized that authorities were pooh-poohing any relationship between the observed anomalous events and the energy surges. No surprise there. I've worked with Uncle Sam long enough to know that government's motto is, "Lie first and think up a good reason for lying later on." Now the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I read that two energy strikes were recorded in Canoga Park. A little after seven, local time, a bolt had engulfed a home on Leadwell Street where a "special" boy lived. Later the same youngster was seen exercising newly gained ultra- type powers in a destructive fashion taken into custody. The other incident involved a second Canoga Park home. The lady of the house heard a noise upstairs and went to check on her daughter, who had been holding a Mantra fan club meeting. Suddenly the lady was confronted by an abomination in her daughter's room. It fled, but all the girls were reported missing for several hours. When they trailed into their respective homes later in the night, each claimed to have no memory of where she had been. The "special" ultra boy mentioned in the story had to be Gus. But what about the "abomination"? Although there were many Mantra fan clubs in the L.A. area, Canoga Park wasn't all that large and had only one that I knew about -- the clique consisted of Heather Parks and her friends Jessica, Samantha, and Trish. This did not seem like coincidence. A year ago I'd warned those girls to leave magic alone. They were under the wrong impression that I used old- time ceremonial magic and, in trying to follow in my footsteps, they had conjured a demon. It happened to be one that I'd offended earlier, and, having come back, it had done its best to get me killed. "Evie," I asked tentatively, "did anything happen to Heather Parks last Friday?" She looked up excitedly. "Are you remembering things now, Mommy?" "No, it's just that the paper says that some Mantra fans were frightened by a monster in Canoga Park. I know that Heather has a fan club." "It wasn't a real monster. I mean, it was a real monster, but it was only Heather and her friends. They got turned into a monster with four heads." "Four girls became one monster?" She nodded. What kind of power were we dealing with? Whatever forces had been abroad Friday night, they had been godlike in their scope. Had this unknown energy field been great enough to pierce the dimensional barriers and pull me into this world? But how could it have? The surges were registered on Friday and my leap through dimensional space and time -- if that was what it was -- had occurred Thursday evening. Still, I sensed that there had to be a connection. "Evie, are the girls all right now?" She nodded. "Lauren tricked the monster into fighting with Gus. When they starting beating each other up, Gus got knocked out and Heather and