Tom Dowd - Burning Bright

Synopsis MISSING: Mitch Truman, heir apparent to an entertainment megacorporation. He may have fled his parents for the sake of love, but is magic is involved the reason could be darker

WEALTHY: Dan Truman, CEO of media giant Truman Technologies, doesn't care how much it costs-he wants his son back. He'll hire the best to find his heir, even if their motives are suspect

EXPERIENCED: Kyle Teller's done this job before. He knows the tricks of the trade, and not only because he's a mage. He thinks finding the missing boy will be easy. Why shouldn't it be?

Part I Chicago 14 August 2055

watching her, he thought of the thunderstorms of his childhood He'd grown up on the Plains, far west of the Mississippi, but not far enough that the Rockies were anything more than an imagined wisp on the horizon on the clearest days. Thunderstorms were common the year round by then, and he and his friends would run along the edges of those freak storms as they raged across the prairies. It was thirteen years since the Great Ghost Dance had broken the power of the United States of America, and Kyle Teller was nine years old.

The storms were a sign the Great Spirits were pleased the land had been restored to the People, the tribal shamans said. Running, yelling, and chasing each other in the cool of early evening, Kyle and his friends would each take the part of one of the powerful totems that had returned to rouse the people from their oppression.

Listening to the growing winds and gauging the smells in the air, they'd celebrate the re-Awakening of magic, and watch to see from where a powerful storm would spring and in which direction it would run. Then, energies spent with the storm's, they would return home, finish their chores, and prepare for the next day at school. Kyle didn't need to study as much as the others did, but he still had to prepare. His mother was Anglo, which meant having to face worse things than class work at school.

When it came to running a storm, though, Kyle was the best. There were times when he could feel its energy deep within him long before any clear signs of it appeared. And when the storm finally did rise, to him it was an elemental flower unfolding, slowly, inevitably, until nothing could keep it from bursting free over the land. He saw the progression, felt the patterns, and could see how the storm would arise and how long it would last. In the games of the children, he was always Coyote, for only the Trickster would gift such sight upon a half-breed.

Often he heard the elders sing powerful songs of how the great Winds and Rains were spirits beyond the control of Man and unfathomable by Reason. Once, Kyle had even seen one of those spirits with his own eyes at a Calling near Salina that he and his sisters had attended with their grandfather.

There, the spirit had been summoned by three young shamans. Proud and brash, they reveled in their new power to make the legendary spirit appear at their call. This was a great and mighty being, full of the heart of the air and the sky, one of the shamans had said. A power to be respected and honored, said the other. Kyle had watched as the supernatural tower of swirling, glistening air, vapor, and majesty that was the spirit became visible to the thousands gathered in the decaying parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart.

The spirit, one of the shamans said, danced with the energy of life. Unbound, the spirit was the storm, inexplicable and beyond comprehension. Even as an awed and frightened child, Kyle had thought their words strange.

He had watched many a gathering storm back home, out in the weed-choked fields behind the house, felt them as they raced across the plain, and seen only forces he could understand. It was true the storms were beyond anyone's control, but he could see how they grew from changes in temperature and the play of other forces. He could see the lightning build, feel it jump from ground to sky, and understand. That knowledge thrilled him, but he felt no mystery, no urge to dance in its presence.

It was only years later that he would know why he saw things as he did, as few others could. Even the shamans to whom his parents took him when they finally realized his talent at first refused the ultimate truth. Could the Great Spirits have been so cruel as to put a boy of power among them and not give him the gifts of dance and song?

They could, and perhaps had. The boy had the ways of magic Awakened within him, but where inspiration and spontaneity fueled the shamanic magic of his people, he used logic, reason, and deliberation. Kyle Teller, to the final humiliation of his father, was a mage.

The forces shifted, the balance changed, and he felt the storm in her quiet.

"Ironic, isn't it?" she said, her voice calmer than he'd expected as she scooped the last of the bread crumbs from the counter and into the long, outstretched fingers of her other hand. "For years we barely saw you because of your work."

The stark lights of the kitchen made her pale and darkened her hair to nearly black. He knew she hated the lighting in the room but that it was too expensive to change the fixtures.

"And now you only see me when I'm in town on business," he said.

She nodded, now busily brushing away the wrinkles creased into her fashionable suit from sitting. The fabric responded, its freshness jumping back to life at her touch. Kyle wasn't used to seeing Beth dressed for me corporate world. It was wrong for her-too restrictive. She was an artist, a dancer, not the secretary she now pretended to be.

She spoke, but had already turned to another task. There were, after all, dishes to be done. "Sometimes I think we see you more now."

"You know that's not true."

She bent carefully to rearrange the contents of the dishwasher. "Maybe not. But it does seem that way."

Something was bothering her. He could sense it in the timbre of her voice, in the way she avoided his eyes, in the attention she paid to tidying up after dinner. And whatever it was had to do with her, not him, or else she'd have said something by now. Kyle played back in his mind all the events of the past hours: his arrival, his surprise at seeing Beth in a business suit, the gifts for Natalie, the details on Beth's new job, playing with Natalie and talking with the two of them, eating dinner, after dinner

"I saw a bottle of your sister's medication in the bathroom," Kyle said. Beth stiffened, but something made him blunder on. "How's she handling things?"

Beth turned toward him slowly. She didn't snap at him and her eyes showed only the barest sign of the anger Kyle knew he'd evoked. "All things considered, Ellen's probably managing better than I might have."

He tried to force himself to wait. There was more. He thought he knew what it was, but he'd let her tell him. Let her speak her own words. For a change.

She crossed her arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter. "But I am worried. She's-"

"It looks like they increased her dosage."

Bern nodded. "I don't think she's taking it, though."

"She left the bottle here."

"Exactly. And I think she's started meeting with some of the people from her group. She says she needs someone to talk to."

That didn't surprise Kyle. "The conditioning she was subjected to is hard to erase. The drugs should reduce most of it, but if she's stopped taking them"

"I don't understand why she won't talk to me," Beth said, her anger turning to pain. "I've told her to stop by or call anytime. But instead she sneaks off"

Kyle took a step toward her and gently laid one hand on her shoulder. Beth didn't look up. "She goes to them because-right or wrong-she thinks there's no one else who understands. You read that report I had sent to you. That's exactly the kind of dependence the Universal Brotherhood tried to create in people to keep them vulnerable and believing the Brotherhood was their one and only hope.