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He knew that casinos had cameras that watched their parking lots, but as long as no one approached his Cherokee he doubted there would be any reason for security to notice them. People darted through the rainy night, hurrying to get to their cars or into the casinos. He hoped that none of those figures hidden by shadows and rain were looking for him and Jax.
Once he had turned off the wipers, with the way the rain was coming down, it was hard to see much in the blur of water flowing down the windows. Alex gestured off to the left.
“Over there are some outlet stores. We can get some more clothes there, but they don’t open until morning.”
She gazed into the distance where he pointed. “Morning is still hours away.”
“So we’d better get what rest we can.”
“But I—”
“Didn’t you say that you weren’t paying good enough attention and you almost got us killed? You need sleep to stay alert.”
Jax sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Maybe we should try to get some rest while we can.”
Rather than go out in the rain and get wet going in through the tailgate—and risk being watched by security—they both climbed over the seats into the rear cargo area. With the way the rain was coming down he was pretty sure that any security camera that happened to be pointed in their direction wouldn’t be able to see anything inside the Jeep.
Alex kept a blanket and a small duffel bag filled with emergency gear in the back. He spread the blanket over the floor, then pulled the cargo shade over them and hooked it in place. Once it was secure he turned on a small LED light from the bag. It wasn’t bright, but in the confined space it was more than ample. Jax watched him as he squirmed out of his jacket.
“Lie down,” he told her.
She didn’t object. He put the duffel bag under her head for a pillow, then draped his jacket over her, covering her as best he could. She had to pull her knees up to fit in the small area.
“Thanks,” she said as she watched him.
Alex nodded as he leaned back against the wheel arch. It wasn’t very comfortable, but he found it far preferable to being someplace where guys from another world could suddenly pop up and break his neck.
Once they were settled he turned off the light. Yellowish lamp-light from the tall poles leaked in around the edges of the cargo shade. The rain running down the windows made the light waver softly on her face. She was still watching him.
“We need to figure out our next move.”
Alex shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe it’s over.”
Her face was a picture of incredulity. “Over?”
“Maybe we’ve finished it, tonight. Bethany is dead. Once they all realize that they’ve lost their leader, isn’t it likely they’ll quit? Maybe you’ve already accomplished what you came here to do.”
Jax twisted a thread sticking out from the edge of the blanket for a moment as if trying to find words, or maybe trying to decide how much she wanted to tell him.
“I can see why it would seem that way to you, Alex—I really can—but it’s more complicated than that. Queen Bethany wasn’t the real problem.”
She certainly had seemed like a problem to Alex. “What are you talking about? She came here from your world. You said that they have probably been interfering with my family for a long time. She killed Ben—you said so yourself. She wanted a Rahl heir for herself, and then she planned to kill me.” Alex folded his arms. “She even had some guy buy my paintings and ruin them.”
“The man who did that had no connection with her.”
Alex frowned. “How do you know that?”
“Because when I was looking for you through the mirror in the gallery I saw the man who ruined your paintings. His name is Sedrick Vendis. He had nothing to do with Queen Bethany.”
“Sedrick Vendis? Who the hell is he? And what do you mean he had nothing to do with Bethany? What’s this all about?”
Jax lifted a hand, urging him to calm down. “Queen Bethany was on the same side as these people, but lately she’s been operating outside of areas where she belonged.”
“You lost me.”
Jax sighed. “Bethany was a petty queen, but she was ambitious, so she aligned herself with powerful people. In the course of helping them she apparently learned about you and saw an opportunity for herself. Somewhere along the line she hatched a scheme to gain more power. She snuck here behind their backs.
“The people who have been coming here, who have caused your family trouble, the people who are endangering both our worlds, weren’t aware of what she has been up to. If Sedrick Vendis had known that Queen Bethany had taken to meddling—especially if he had known what she was trying to do with you—he would have killed her himself.”
“So who is this Vendis character?”
“He’s the right-hand man to Radell Cain, the real power behind all the trouble. I could hardly believe it when I saw Vendis here that day. It’s a bad sign that Vendis himself would come here, and that he was that close to you. Vendis is the one Cain sends to do his dirty work.”
“What do you mean about them endangering your world? What’s Cain after?”
Jax sighed. “Power. In the end it’s nothing more complicated than that. Just like other people throughout history, he lusts for power. He doesn’t care what or who is destroyed in the process, as long as he gets what he wants. It’s hard to believe, but deaths in the millions mean nothing to men like that. They only care about power for themselves.
“For the longest time we had peace and prosperity. People valued hard work and achievement. Most of us had a sense of the goodness of life. Over time, though, those kinds of things came to be seen as outmoded by more and more people who felt entitled to prosperity without effort. They resented being told that their desires were a recipe for ruin.”
“You mean they blamed the messenger.”
Jax nodded. “There are always people like Radell Cain who are ready to take advantage of public resentment. He played on people’s emotions by blaming everything on those who were still productive and prosperous, saying that they were uncaring and insensitive. People swooned at Cain’s simplistic, populist notions. He made what was really nothing more than simple greed sound somehow morally righteous. He made taking what others had worked to earn sound like justice. People ate it up.
“In the middle of unrest and difficult times, Cain won people over with promises of change—a new vision, a new direction. He made change sound like a miracle solution to all our problems. People mindlessly embraced the notion of change.”
“I guess people love hearing that nothing is their fault,” Alex said, “that other people are to blame for their troubles.”
Jax nodded. “For a lot of people it beats hard work and personal responsibility.”
“So, what was the great change that Radell Cain wanted?”
“He made magic into a scapegoat. He said that it tainted everything it touched because it was unfair. So, to solve all our problems, he called for bold change: a world without magic.”
Alex shrugged. “I live in a world without magic. What’s wrong with that?”
“But you live in a world with technology. In many ways technology and magic are interchangeable. You could almost make the case that for all practical purposes they’re really the same thing. Most of us don’t really understand the complexities of magic, like with my journey book, we simply use it. In your world there must be people who understand the complex technology of phones, but I bet that most people using phones don’t really know how they work.
“Technology, like magic, helps everyone live better. It doesn’t merely help you to survive, it helps you to be prosperous and healthy, to live longer, to live better. But because magic is used by everyone, and actually understood by so few, that knowledge has become distrusted and viewed as someho
w sinister. Radell Cain plays on those common fears.”
“How is it that you know so much about the technology we have and yet you didn’t know how to make tea?”
“We’ve studied things here as best we could, learned what we could, but it’s only a dim overview captured in small snatches. We partially grasp the great sweep of how technology applies to life here, but we never understood all the details.
“We know, for example, that you somehow use cars and trucks to help you get places, deliver food and goods, but we don’t understand how those machines work. We know they’re important only because we see them all the time. We’ve seen people talk on phones, and while we never understood exactly what they were, we got the general idea. We once saw a red vehicle arrive to help an injured person, saw hoses and boxes and strange technology used to save their life. While we don’t know what was being done or how it worked, we grasped that it was something like a healer in my world would do.
“What little we know is mostly a result of trying to learn about the Rahls in your world as we tried to figure out what Radell Cain is after, here. During that search we saw things, learned a little about the technology you use. Our view, however, is profoundly limited. It’s like a deaf blind man trying to recount a visit to a new place.
“While our tools are limited, we did the best we could. It took decades just to isolate the Rahl line here. That’s why I know a little about your grandfather’s history and how technology is woven into your lives. We know a few random, isolated things. Making tea just wasn’t one of them.”
“So you’re saying that what Radell Cain wants to do in your world is the equivalent of stopping us from using technology?”
Jax nodded. “It’s not the same, exactly, but it’s a good enough comparison. And he doesn’t merely want to stop people from using it—he wants to entirely strip the world of it, take it entirely out of existence. He paints it as a utopian world.”
“Do you think it would be as bad as you fear?”
“Some of us understand exactly what it would mean for us, and we’re terrified.”
