“Okay,” I say. “All that makes sense. What are the gangs I need to worry about?”
“All of them,” Mr. Jackson says. “Compared to the meager skills of a human, any witch is a deadly foe.”
“You handled the witch at my house pretty easily,” I point out.
“I had the element of surprise and plenty of experience on my side. Never underestimate the magic-born. That’ll get you killed.”
Killed. The word hangs heavy in the air, but I ignore it, moving on. “So which gang wears black hoods?”
“The Necros,” he says immediately. “They’re led by a powerful warlock known simply as the Reaper.”
“Then they’re the ones who took Xave. It’s what Beth’s note said.” My voice, along with my excitement, rises slightly.
Counter to my own eagerness, Mr. Jackson shakes his head, his expression grim. “You don’t know what she meant, son.”
“Then enlighten me,” I say, feeling an icicle of fear slide through me.
“The Necros don’t deal in the living—they specialize in the dead, raising them to use as their slaves.”
~~~
Despite my promise to the contrary, I fall into a deep well of despair. The thin shell of hope I’d been building around myself crumbles to sawdust, and I find myself clenching the pillow and blanket to my chest.
Mr. Jackson puts a firm hand on my shoulder and then leaves me to torture myself.
Two steps forward and ten back. It’s like every twist and turn in my life has led me down a path with more potholes than the last, until finally, I’ve reached the precipice of a cliff built on the lives of those I’ve lost.
Jump, my soul tells me.
Just one step forward and gravity will do the rest.
Do it. Do it. DO IT!!!
“No!” I scream, hurling the pillow against the wall, knocking a large painting from its hook. The painting falls, hitting the floor with a heavy thud and then toppling forward where the glass shatters into a million diamond-like shards, tinkling like wind chimes.
Mr. Jackson is at my side in an instant, pulling me off the couch, dragging me behind it, covering my mouth with his large dark hand. He raises a finger to his lips, his eyes wide and white.
What have I done? If any witches are nearby, they’ll surely come to investigate. While my biggest mistake was clinging to a fool’s hope, Mr. Jackson’s was trusting me with his life.
It’s the longest ten minutes of my life, waiting. Expecting the door to smash open, like it did during Salem’s Revenge. Preparing to fight for my life, against an enemy wielding weapons I might never fully understand.
But it never happens. Ten minutes pass and Mr. Jackson lets out a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he says, in a surprising turn of events.
“What?” I say. “No. I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re just trying to help me, and I’m screwing things up for you.”
His eyes soften and gone is the grizzly sword-swinging witch-lecturing warrior, replaced by the familiar neighbor who never failed to offer a wave when I passed by and he was sitting on his porch.
“I know this is hard,” he says, and this time I don’t argue with him. “Your friends are probably gone.” He doesn’t say dead, which I appreciate. “But you’re not. And maybe I can help you stay that way.”
“I still have to try to find them,” I say, feeling stupid and childish, like some little kid who searches for his pet bird even after finding its feathers dangling from a cat’s mouth.
“I know,” he says. “But first you need to prepare. And then we’ll go together.” He grips my arm and then, to my surprise, pulls me into a hug.
~~~
Beth’s laughter fills the air, the bright, cheery sound joining the rustling of the apple tree’s leaves and the birdsong from the orchard around us. We’re meant to be picking fruit, but climbing the tree was too tempting to pass up. After over a year of dating, we’re getting more and more creative with our outings.
Our feet dangle below us. If one of our sandals were to slip off, they’d land practically right in the basket full of red, green, and yellow apples.
She leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. “I’m glad you’re a football player,” she says.
I bury my lips into her hair, relishing the clean smell of her rose-scented shampoo. “You don’t even really like football,” I say.
“Yeah, but your broad shoulders make great pillows,” she explains, kissing my bare skin. A thrill shoots through my nerves, and I find myself unable to breathe. I manage to exhale slowly, trying to keep my cool as she rests a hand on my tank top, right over my heart. It’s thudding so loudly I swear it’s going to burst right out of my chest. As she continues to kiss a line up my shoulder to my neck, I slip a hand around her waist, just under the bottom of her shirt, and tuck a thumb in the waistband of her shorts. Her skin is warm and brown and smooth. She lets out a sigh and tilts her head, her lips rising like a cresting wave, meeting mine at the perfect spot, melting together. Her tongue slips in my mouth, wresting all self-control from my brain and sending my body into a frenzy of desire. Desire to be with her forever, to hold her, to touch her, to say things to her I’ve never wanted to say to anyone.
But do I dare? I learned from a very young age that to give away one’s heart is to risk its destruction. And the walls I’ve built around my own heart are tall and thick and surrounded by a moat full of hungry crocodiles.
Will I lower the drawbridge for Beth?
I pull back suddenly, knowing the answer is yes and that I already have. I know exactly what I have to say, as if the words are running through my veins.
The words disappear. They have to be perfect, for she deserves no less. What would I write in my journal? What have I written in my journal?
My mind goes blank, a black sheet of empty space. I’ve got nothing.
“Uh…”
“Rhett Carter, if we stopped kissing for ‘Uh,’ we might as well go back to picking apples,” Beth says, but there’s no real anger or truth to her threat.
“No, I—” I start, my mind cycling through random words that don’t seem to fit together the way I want them to. “I just wanted to tell you that…” I love you. I freaking love you, Beth, with all of my heart, in every waking moment and in every dream at night. The pedestal I have you on is so high it communes with the clouds, touches the moon, showers starlight across the night sky. You saved my heart the moment I met you.
I picture my fingers stabbing the keys, bringing my thoughts to life on my screen. I could say them out loud. I could.
“Just tell me,” she says, a twinkle in her eye.
“Kiss me,” I say.
“Now that’s a demand I can get behind,” she says.
And when her lips meet mine this time, I don’t stop, willing the words I left unspoken to reach her through each and every kiss.
~~~
I wake up gasping.
Can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t
Breathe
I realize my nose is congested and my mouth closed, my lips shut tighter than a clamshell.
I open them and suck in a ragged, shaky breath, the whoosh of air sweet and somewhat painful in my lungs.
I never had the chance to tell Beth everything I felt for her. Could she feel it? Why couldn’t I…
(…just say it?)
Why did she have to…
(…die?)
Hot tears spill from my eyes, rushing down my cheeks, dripping off my chin, soaking Mr. Jackson’s blanket.
I sit up quickly, the empty sadness morphing into a hot plume of anger in an instant. I want to throw something, to hit someone, to cry into someone’s shoulder, to run and run and run until my legs give out and my heart explodes and I’m so exhausted that I can’t feel anything.
Instead, I turn around and hit my pillow as hard as I can.
Sobbing, I fall back, my head fitting perfectly into the punch-hole in the pillow.
~~~
>
Today we’re going on what Mr. Jackson referred to as “a field trip.” I’m guessing it won’t be to a museum or the planetarium or the zoo. Well, unless the zoo doesn’t have cages and habitats, and the animals are free to slaughter each other as well as the people paying to see them. Then it would be exactly like going to the zoo.
We transition from the suburbs to the city, sneaking along back alleys and the sides of buildings until we reach our destination: the service door for a hotel on Market Street. The elevator doesn’t work, so we climb the stairs and file into one of the rooms, which was apparently unused on the night of Salem’s Revenge, its king-size bed still tightly made. Mr. Jackson motions me to a thick-draped window and we peer down to the street four stories below.
“What are we looking for?” I ask.
“You’ve been asking a lot about what’s happening in the world beyond my house,” Mr. Jackson says. “Well, you’re about to find out.”
I spot a young girl, no more than nine, barefoot and creeping along the sidewalk, hiding behind cars and peeking in garbage cans. Scavenging for food, most likely. “Is she a witch?” Mr. Jackson asks. A test. Part of my training, which seems to have become a 24/7 part of my life.
“She’s too young,” I say.
“Wrong, son.”
“So she is a witch?” I ask.
“No,” Mr. Jackson says. “But your reasoning was wrong. Witches are born, not raised. Age is meaningless when it comes to magic. The most wizened old warlock or brand new witch babe are equally deadly to us.”
The thought of child witches—baby witches—almost makes me gag.
“So what then?” I ask.
“Think,” Mr. Jackson says. He’s started saying that more and more, like I’m some idiot jock and not in three AP classes and taking an early SAT prep course.
Was in three AP classes and taking SAT prep.
But I do. I think about it. “She’s being too cautious. Witches think they rule the world. If she was a witch she wouldn’t be scavenging or hiding.”
“Right. Now watch.”
I hear them before I see them. A keening howl from the sky. I look up, but the blue atmospheric expanse is unmarred by cloud or intruder. The girl starts to run, her little legs carrying her forward much faster than I would’ve expected.
But not fast enough.
A strange ripple creases the air, almost like a disturbed pool of water, providing the only evidence of the attack. The girl falls, her long black hair flapping behind her like dark Halloween streamers. “Mr. Jackson!” I shout, starting to get up. “We should help her!”
“It’s too late,” he says. “We’ll all die if we try to intervene now.”
I hesitate at his logic, with one foot stuck firmly in place and the other aimed for the doorway. Frozen in place, my mind races with indecision.
The howling grows louder and louder, and then the sky is filled with dark streaks, rocketing toward us and past us, trailed only by their shrieks and laughs. Witches and warlocks, riding…broomsticks?
“They call themselves Destroyers,” Mr. Jackson says. “The flying spells only seem to work well on their kind.”
He catches me staring at the little girl, who is trying to get up, but can’t seem to push against whatever invisible force is pinning her to the sidewalk. “The Destroyers have also mastered the dark art of petrification.”
I feel the urge to do something, to try to help the girl, but it’s just not in me. It’s never been in me. Two seconds later, it’s over. The air ripples again and the girl screams before she crumbles like stone, breaking into fist-sized chunks that scatter across the sidewalk.
My heart seems to deflate like a popped balloon and I say, “We let her die.”
“Better than all three of us dying,” Mr. Jackson says. “You can’t save everyone.”
“I can try,” I say. Do I really mean that?
“Then perhaps my trust has been misplaced.”
“Go to hel—”
“We’re already there.” Mr. Jackson’s tongue is quicker than mine. Just like his sword.
My face frown-heavy, I stare at Mr. Jackson, anger and resentment smoldering just beneath the surface. I’m angry at him, but I’m even angrier at myself for not acting. Mr. Jackson stares right back, and I wonder where the kind and emotional man who embraced me yesterday has gone.
I turn away to look out the window. The dark smears stop painting their way across the sky, becoming the very real witches and warlocks that they are. No broomsticks, just black-leather-garbed people—I use the term loosely—hovering in the air, laughing and joking and gazing down Market Street.
They stop laughing when a thunderous BOOM! explodes from somewhere in the distance. A huge black ball splits the street in half, knocking one of the Destroyers from the air before the others can even consider moving. The blond-haired leather-wearing witch flies back fifty feet before slamming to the street, her body a mangled mess of exposed bones and spouting blood.
Witches bleed just like the rest of us. Mr. Jackson made a point of saying that three times before I’d even had a bite of my breakfast this morning.
Mr. Jackson pushes in beside me again. “Slammers,” he whispers. If Destroyers are the ultimate air threat, then Slammers are the ground forces, built like tanks. Just yesterday, after I almost got us killed, Mr. Jackson taught me all about the largest witch gangs, how they’re all locked in the ultimate struggle for territory and power. They might’ve united at the beginning in order to wipe out most of humanity, but as soon as the dust settled they splintered like split firewood, as different from each other as dogs from cats. How he’s learned all that from his staticky shortwave radio, I have no clue.
As if the witches hunting us aren’t bad enough, now the world has erupted into witch gang wars, fought with magic and a level of violence beyond the bounds of technology and the strength of men and women.
But hearing about it was one thing; watching it in action is a whole new universe of crazy. The Slammers have the ability to grow to the size of two men, giants, walking on legs that are more like tree trunks, sporting fists the size of bowling balls. They march down the street, barely taking notice of the dozens of ripples streaming through the air, sent toward them by the Destroyers.
When the ripples hit them, the Slammers freeze for a moment. Can it be? I think. Can the Destroyers paralyze them as easily as they did that poor little girl? A moment passes, and then another.
More ripples in the air, crashing into the Slammers, who now look hard and chiseled, like monstrous statues. One of their feet moves. Then another. Then their arms. With the sound of a wrecking ball demolishing an old brick building, the Slammers break free of the petrification spells, slamming their fists together with cannon-like BOOM!s.
Black balls fly from their pounding fists, knocking Destroyers out of the sky like flies on the face of a flyswatter, turning them into witch and warl mush. Some of the balls hit buildings, shattering glass and knocking through walls, sending shards of rubble to the street below.
Only two of the Destroyers manage to survive, retreating high into the sky, where the Slammers’ weapons can’t reach.
Once the Slammers have stomped away, we sneak back to Mr. Jackson’s house.
I refuse to speak to Mr. Jackson after what I witnessed.
Today I got my first real taste of the new world. I brush my teeth a half-dozen times before bed and my mouth still tastes sour and bitter.
Chapter Seven
“They deserve to die,” I say. My mouth feels hot, as if the words are superheated.
“Maybe,” Mr. Jackson says, which is quickly becoming his favorite response to anything I say. He could make a career out of never telling me anything.
“Maybe? Did you see the same magic-born I saw? They’re murderers, all of them. They can’t even get along with each other. Don’t you think the world would be better off without them?”
“Do you know each and every one of them?” Mr. Jackson as
ks.
I grit my teeth and throw him a look. “I’d rather not, thanks.”
“How do you know they’re all evil and deserve to die? Who made you judge, jury and executioner?”
I look away, because, in a way, I know he’s right. What they did to us, we did to them. Only they did it on a much larger scale. “It was genocide,” I say.
“If you can’t even be honest with yourself, how can you possibly be honest with me?” Mr. Jackson says.
“I—” I don’t know what to say, because I’m not sure what he means.
“Look, son, you’re not pissed because the witches killed a whole bunch of people you didn’t even know. It might make you sad and disturbed and a whole lot of other things, like when you watch the news and some strangers are killed in a car accident, but this is not about everyone else, is it?”
I swallow because I know he’s right. This is about Xave and Beth. Even my righteous anger at the murders of my latest family takes a backseat to my two best friends. And that’s when I know what I have to do. “I want revenge,” I say, hating how much I love the sound of that word in my mouth. I almost say it again, because of the way it makes me feel, how powerful I can be when I’m focused on that one thought. It’s almost as if I was never sad and broken at all.
“Okay,” Mr. Jackson says. “At least you’re being honest with yourself now. Someday you might have your chance.”
“No,” I say. “I want revenge now. I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Mr. Jackson. Saving my life and taking me in and…everything. But I’m leaving. I can’t stay here any longer.”
“Okay,” Mr. Jackson says. “You can leave when you can defeat me in combat.”
All the strength and hardness blows out of me in a single breath. I’ve never been much of a fighter, but I am athletic and he’s old. “Thanks,” I say, confident I’ll be leaving in no time.
Chapter Eight
Before training one day, I ask, “So we’re going to try to find a group of Necros?”