“This is a disaster!” Nigel Peters wailed behind her, tearing at his hair. “What can we do?”
“You can help,” Liz said briskly, too busy to be polite. She simply began to remove everything in her purse and piled it in his hands until she found Boo-Boo’s packet. “Ah!”
Government regimentation of magical and psychic phenomena might have seemed to be a foolish enterprise, but when they did something, they did it right. The instructions on the side were in very clear, legible print. Liz held the envelope underneath the nearest spotlight to read. Augmentation powder needed to be applied to the area where enhancement was required. It worked by the Law of Contagion. To her delight she saw there were instructions for group use. That ought to be the answer to her power problem. She stuffed everything back into her bag and set it on the floor. She opened the envelope and very carefully sprinkled it all over herself.
“They’re going crazy out there,” Peters said.
Liz opened her arms up and held them in the air. The force gathering around them was like a balloon pressed against her face, suffocating her. It was nudging against the walls, beginning to uproot the supports. If this didn’t work, the whole building could come down on them.
“Nigel,” she said. “Calm yourself. Put your hand on my arm and just concentrate on being open. That’s all you need to do. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know if I can just open up,” Nigel said, backing away a pace. “My analyst says I have commitment problems.”
That tore it.
“Do you want my old friend to continue to be your meal ticket?” Liz bellowed. Nigel, startled, halted in place and nodded. “Then, do it!”
“Can I help?” Laura Manning asked. “How about the others?”
“Anyone who can,” Liz said, grateful for the makeup artist’s take-charge attitude. “Touch me.”
“Come on, you lot!” Laura shouted, waving her arm at the others. “Group hug!”
Roadies and stagehands gathered from all over the backstage area. In between renewing her incantations, Liz barked orders at the others who crushed into the cramped space between the speakers.
“If you cannot reach me, then put your hand on the shoulder of the person nearest you. Keep calm. Meditate if you need to. Do not panic! It is necessary to remain calm. If you can’t do that, then please move away. Thank you. That is all.” She started chanting again.
The others bundled around, trying to find a comfortable handhold. Liz was tugged and pulled in so many directions she felt like the last cashmere sweater at a jumble sale. She tried to catch her breath to protest. Suddenly, Lloyd loomed over her. He bellowed at the group.
“’Ere, all of you! Sort yourselves out now.” The tugging and pulling stopped. “What do you want me to do?” he asked Liz.
“Join us,” she said. “I could use your strength.”
“Anything for Fee,” he said. “I do love her, you know.”
Liz smiled. “I know.” The big man put one arm around her from behind and gestured to the others. In no time, he had them arranged in a nice, orderly, spider-web huddle, with more people gathering in.
The cluster of humanity with Liz at its core made Michael do a double-take on his next turn around the stage, but he continued on as though nothing unusual was happening. Bless him, he was an angel. Even after getting a hotfoot from little fireballs that had filled the stage, even after getting chased by laser-light monsters, he still kept his head. He trusted her. That gave Liz a warm feeling deep inside.
She was grateful to the rest of the crew as well. Even some of the ones who had been frightened before by the magical demonstration she and Boo-Boo had been forced to perform earlier had dared to join her. The rest were just grateful to have someone to hang onto while scary things were happening. She didn’t mind having a friendly shoulder nearby herself. This was the single biggest magical exercise of her life—perhaps the largest on earth at that moment. She must not fail. She must not. The lives of thousands—not to mention her job—depended upon it.
Liz exerted herself to calm the group around her first. They were full of nervous excitement. If she broadcast the tension they were feeling, then the whole place could go up for grabs. She had a lucky moment while Michael performed a guitar solo at the front. While everyone focused on him, she drew in the blanket of peace for just one moment from the arena to wallop her crew into order. Their shoulders relaxed visibly. As soon as they were properly softened up, she opened up and threw her new, totally revamped and much more powerful calming charm over the crowd of fans.
When she did, she felt evil in the air. The magical charge that built up during a joyful event should be benevolent, or at worst, neutral. There was no doubt at all now that something within reach was trying to change that goodness into malignity. Stay pure, she urged through the link, radiating out to the very edges of her web of influence. Beauty. Justice. Generosity. Calm. Dark influence licked at the edges of the mass enchantment like a black flame. She must not let it catch in the fabric of it.
The others in her little group, even the least sensitive among them, seemed to feel the pull towards unity and leaned inwards, squeezing the breath out of Liz. The only protest she could make was a squeak. Lloyd heard the faint noise and shoved hard at the nearest offenders, making room for her. Liz gasped in lungfuls of air.
She began to feel hopeless. Though she was grateful for everyone’s help, she had little chance of stopping an onslaught of these proportions herself. In spite of the efforts of the band, the malign quality that had crept into the music earlier had taken a firm toehold. While not a deep-seated fan of Green Fire’s music, Liz had had to admit that they knew about composition, structure and creating mood. Except for the songs meant to scold, their repertoire tended to uplift, even liberate, the listener. What went into the microphones was positive. What came out of the speakers was growing steadily more negative. Liz found herself fighting a battle she couldn’t keep winning for long.
It helped her a lot to have other people’s energy to throw at the building wave of darkness, yet what they had to offer was limited by their lack of training. As Nigel had said, he had commitment problems. Others were blocked for just as many reasons. There just wasn’t enough power. If she could have made contact with audience members, she might have been able to channel them into creating a more positive cycle. She was afraid to try. Such an action could backfire hugely if word of trouble started going around the auditorium. One whisper of black magic, and 80,000 terrified people would stampede for the doors.
All the people gathered around were depending on her, and her alone. She wished that Boo-Boo was there with her. It was a frightening thing to be left to her own meager devices. She wanted desperately for her mission to succeed. She gave a short, bitter laugh. Yes, she wanted to save the world. Willingness must count for something.
Not enough, she thought forlornly. If Boo-Boo failed to stop Robbie and Ken, all was lost. She sensed the bottom of the well in what the others had to give her, and drew hard on her stored fund of Earth power, the last drops of which Boo-Boo had fed her before he went away. Once again she felt herself tiring, almost falling back into Lloyd’s strong arms as she surrendered even the last ergs of her own life-force to stop the evil from taking over. She was sorry for Fionna. It must have seemed like an amazing bit of good luck for her to have an old friend assigned to protect her. Too bad that Ringwall hadn’t seen fit to send a more able and experienced agent to her rescue.
In a moment Liz would lose her grip on the containment spell, and the whole maelstrom would wind itself up into the largest force of darkness that this city had ever seen. She started to feel dizzy as the drain leached away her very consciousness. In a moment she would collapse like a deflated balloon.
Softly, a trickle of psychic energy began to creep up through the soles of her feet into her body. Liz felt it rise from the floor, running along her legs and body, straightening her spine and flowing out of her hands and her mouth. It couldn’t be coming from Boo-Boo. He wasn’t this powerful. Liz grew concerned as a mental probe she sent to feel for the bottom of the well of energy dove down for ages. There was no bottom. It felt gigantic. Endless. What incredibly powerful person could have arisen out of nowhere to help her? It couldn’t be anyone in the company, nor a member of the audience, yet it poured from a single source. Who was her mysterious benefactor?