BURN
Book Three of Salem’s Revenge
David Estes
A nightmare awakens,
Opening one bruised eye.
Although they scream, it doesn’t listen,
Doesn’t care,
Doesn’t feel,
Doesn’t hate nor love.
Only takes.
And because it breathes fire, the world will burn.
Burn, Rhett Carter
Chapter One
Rhett
He returns, screaming and bloody, half-dragging himself through the gate.
The witch hunter scout had been missing for thirty-six hours, and already the other witch hunters had begun playing a macabre game of Guess The Death where they’d place bets—mostly risking cigarettes and packs of beef jerky—on how the scout had been killed. As it turns out, the few optimists in the bunch who predicted he would return under his own power took the entire pot.
When they roused me from a fitful sleep to let me know the scout had been spotted on the outskirts of our perimeter, I immediately warned them not to go to help him. Cruel, but necessary. The scout’s return could be a trap—a way to lure more of us out to our demise. So we all watched in horror as he fought for every inch, painting a streaky red trail in his wake. Floss, the leader of the witch hunters, was bouncing her knee the entire time, as if barely restraining herself from running to his aid.
He made it. Somehow, someway, he made it through the gates on his own, and if there was a trap, it failed. A few of the Clairvoyants, or Claires, that I’d summoned begin tending to his wounds—not with bandages and ointments and medicines, but with magic—laying their hands upon his head and murmuring in a language that I can only describe as elfish. Their laughs carry on the wind like running water whenever I tell them that.
Up close, the scout’s wounds are numerous and serious. In another life I wouldn’t have been able to look at them. Unlike my best friend, Xavier Jackson, who lived for the goriest parts of horror movies, I was the one who’d look away and say, “Let me know when the zombie stops gnawing on her brains.” But now the bloody evidence of unrestrained violence lying on the ground before me is just another day at the office.
Returning my attention to the injured scout, I inspect the damage. One leg is bent awkwardly in the wrong direction, a sharp splinter of bone protruding from his flesh, sticky with rust-colored blood. What appear to be bite marks from an enormous jaw wrap around his bare abdomen, raw and enflamed and leaking something green and infected-looking. There are scratches on one side of his face—well, claw marks would be a more accurate description—running from chin to forehead, having apparently slashed through one of his eyes, which is now curiously missing, as if it’s been plucked from the socket. He’s missing one arm, lopped off just below the shoulder, which now ends in a stump, severed veins hanging like thick threads.
My expert medical conclusion: this dude should be dead.
Instead, he appears to be in excruciating agony, his body writhing as if wracked with seizures, his face feverish and sweaty, and his lone remaining eye bulging with strain, as if something is trying to push it right out of his skull.
“He is already gone,” one of the Claires says, surprisingly speaking aloud, removing her glowing hands from his forehead. “There is nothing we can do.” She has shiny black hair and deeply dark skin, her eyes as fathomless as ebony, glittering with specks of light, as if radiating the very stars themselves.
I don’t understand. I’ve seen them heal those on the verge of death before. I’m about to ask, but she has already read the question in my mind. Someone wanted him to make it back here alive, she says in my head.
“Who?” I speak aloud, getting a few strange looks from the other witch hunters, who are clearly only privy to my side of the conversation.
The Claire turns away, her eyes raking over the scout’s wounds. Of course, the answer’s obvious. “The Shifters,” I murmur.
“Those damn evil beasts,” Floss mutters under her breath. More colorful curses follow, basically promising death to each and every member of the witch gang known as the Shifters, who carry, among other powers, the ability to transform into animal form. Their leader, Flora the black panther, has been running them wild around our borders ever since we defeated her arch nemesis, the General known to humans as President Washington. With nothing to keep Flora in check, she’s already killed four of our witch hunters. This poor guy will make five.
But he’s not quite dead yet. His mouth opens and closes, gasping like a fish out of water, and his chest heaves. Sharp, raspy breaths scrape from his throat and between his chapped, blood-crusted lips. “Flora,” he says.
The collective group gathered to watch this grisly spectacle seem to lean in as one, breaths held, hands clasped tightly together, as if in expectation of some terrible news.
The scout’s eye suddenly sharpens and seems to focus, and his body ceases to convulse. “The Shifters will devour your wretched flesh and feast on your unworthy souls. At long last, the Earth shall be cleansed of human excrement.” The final message delivered, his eye rolls back in his head and his spine arches before collapsing back to the ground, unmoving.
The scout is dead.
“Well that was fun,” I say.
Chapter Two
Laney
Two days later
They move with balletic grace, their heels narrowly skimming the bed of rose petals spread across the area they’ve decided to occupy while in New Washington. Although they appear human to the naked eye, they’re not. It’s not just their unnatural beauty, nor their profound wisdom. It’s something more.
Something about the way they carry themselves, about the way their skin seems to glow under the height of the noonday sun. Something enigmatic. Like Trish was, even at only nine years old. These are her Children, as weird as that sounds. She was their Mother, having been reborn in this time, continuing the series of reincarnations available only to the Clairvoyants.
They’re witches, all of them.
I’ve been watching the Claires all day. I cringe each time they laugh, grit my teeth when they frolic in the grass, and clench my fists when they bite down on shiny red apples.
Because Trish isn’t amongst them. My sister is gone, having sacrificed herself to save my life only a week ago on this very lawn. The stretch of verdant grass leading up to the destroyed White House has become the temporary home of the Clairvoyants, as if they wish to honor my sister—who they call “Mother”—by settling atop her hallowed ground.
And yet they’re laughing. They’re enjoying themselves. They’re eating and drinking and playing as if the world is still turning, as if the seasons are still changing, as if life can just go on even after a soul as pure as Trish has left the earth’s flanks.
Of course, they’re right.
Of course, I hate them for it.
I squeeze my eyes shut so hard it starts to give me a headache. A voice says, Have peace, and although I hear it as clearly in my head as if it was spoken directly into my ears, I know it wasn’t.
My eyes flash open and she’s there. With long white hair and even longer limbs, she’s what my now-dead Uncle Willy—God rest his bald-headed soul—would’ve called a tall drink of water. She’s beautiful in an unachievable kind of way. She’s an airbrushed model without the airbrushing. Her eyes are as blue as the ocean and more piercing than twin daggers. It’s hard to tell if she reflects the sun or the sun reflects her.
“Peace is for idiots,” I say, which is the obvious response. I’d have spoken it directly into her mind, like she did to me, except I don’t have freaky mind-invading abilities like she does.
Like my sister did.
Peace is what your sister would choose, she says.
My magged-up Glock with infinite ammo weighs heavy in its holster. It doesn’t seem to want peace, not when there are evil hordes of magic-born to be killed—present company excluded, of course.
I say nothing, goin
g back to my cringing/teeth-grinding/fist-clenching.
Why are you here? she asks.
“Here as in New Washington, or here as in Earth?” I say, avoiding the question.
She offers a sparkling smile. Huh. I didn’t expect a timeless, ageless witch to get my humor. Here, she says, sounding as patient as a psychiatrist in my mind. With thin, delicate arms extended, she motions toward her witchy sisters. My dead sister’s Children.
“I—I—”
God. Rhett would love to see my words stuck in my mouth once in a while. Hell, he would pay to see it. I vow to never tell him about this particular conversation.
The words do not exist until you speak them, the Claire says.
I know she’s right, as usual. It’s like the words are trapped in my heart, bits and pieces of letters trying to take shape into something meaningful, but always ending up in piles of meaningless garble.
Trying to exercise a smidgen of the same patience as her, I change the subject. “What’s your name?” I ask.
Her long white dress swirls around her bare feet when she curtsies. In this life, I am Tara, she says.
In this life. Meaning that in her past lives she was someone else, a completely different person. And suddenly the words that didn’t exist, the words I’ve been avoiding, take perfect shape in my heart, shooting through an artery, into my throat, over my tongue, and out my mouth. “Will Trish remember me when she’s reborn?” I ask.
Dead silence hammers in my temple as Tara studies me curiously. Since I’ve learned that Clairvoyants are the only magic-born to reincarnate, I’ve been reluctant to believe it, even for my sister. But that’s not true. I’ve tricked myself. Over the last six months I’ve seen so many unbelievable things, so many impossible things, that the idea of my sister not reincarnating is almost less believable than the alternative. Oh how my world has changed.
Eventually she’ll remember all things, she says. Her words are slow and careful, as if chosen with the expert eye of an art connoisseur selecting the next pieces to buy for her collection. Her words imply more than they say.
“But I won’t be her sister anymore,” I say, understanding.
Tara shakes her head. Not in the way you want, she says.
I know exactly what she means. Trish won’t care about me. She won’t love me. At least, not like she loves her Children. She won’t even be Trish anymore, taking on some other name that won’t suit her at all.
“When?” I ask.
I can feel Tara’s warm mind-fingers massaging my brain to get to the true meaning of my question: When will Trish be reborn?
Not even her Children know, she says.
“Yeah, but what’s your best guess? A month? A year? A decade? A century? What’s the average?” I realize I’ve raised my voice. The other Claires are looking. Staring. I stare right back.
When it’s her time again, Tara says, making me want to scream.
I don’t. I turn on my heels and stomp away as ungracefully as a charging buffalo.
It sucks being human sometimes.
Chapter Three
Rhett
“This place needs a new name,” Tillman Huckle says, jamming his thumb so hard against his controller I half-expect him to punch a hole right through the plastic.
Instead, there’s a huge boom and a zombie’s head disappears in a spray of blood and ichor. The headless corpse continues to lurch forward for another three groaning steps before collapsing in a heap on the floor. Hex, my German shepherd, bounds forward and barks at the screen.
I have the sudden urge to draw my sword. The screen is so big—covering one whole wall of Huckle’s van—that the video game almost seems real. There are zombies everywhere, closing in on Huckle’s character, a dark, swarthy dude with muscles like cannonballs. It reminds me way too much of when we fought the Reanimates on Heinz Field.
Huckle’s van is even bigger—on the outside it looks like a normal vehicle, but on the inside it’s a giant warehouse—having been magically pimped out by a few witches who turned out to be feigning kindness in an effort to infiltrate the last major pocket of surviving humans.
Unfortunately, the fake worked and what was left of the U.S. military was wiped out during an epic battle I’d rather not remember.
It’s been a long, hard week since that battle, and tensions are high between the humans and their magic-born allies. As a group, we’re leaderless. More and more, both groups are looking to me to speak for them, something I’m not thrilled about. I guess that’s what I get for being the one to insist they form the bond in the first place. At least no one has been killed for two days, ever since Flora’s bloody message was delivered by the mortally wounded witch hunter scout.
“What name?” I ask.
“Beats me,” Huckle says, switching his character’s weapon to a double-edged axe, which he promptly uses to hack off another three undead heads. “But New Washington won’t work anymore. People are scared enough as it is. New Washington has become a curse word around here. We can’t live in a place named after the witch who almost killed the lot of us.”
He makes a good point, even if changing the name of New Washington seems like the least of our worries. Even still, we need something to give the people hope. Something to help us start over. Something to make us all feel connected to each other. A new name might just do that.
“How about Unity?” I say.
Huckle laughs, and at first I think it’s because he’s just used a grenade launcher to blow up a pocket of the walking dead. “What about Peaceville? Or Harmonytown? Or did you consider The Land of Butterflies and Kittens?” Huckle says.
Hex chuffs his own sarcastic response, and for once I’m glad I don’t speak dog. He also raises a leg and pees a rainbow of colors that fades away, as if evaporating into the air. It’s the closest I can get to training him to go outside.
Now I really want to draw my sword.
“Ha ha,” I say. “Shoot a guy for having an idea.”
Huckle pokes at the controller and his character turns away from the zombies and aims his gun right at my head. I flinch when the barrel explodes with fire and smoke.
Huckle laughs. “I’m just saying you need something less…fluffy.” He throws his controller down and watches gleefully as his character is mauled by the zombies. Turning to me, he tries to smooth down his messy hair, which keeps popping back up the moment his hand passes over it. He pushes his glasses higher on his nose, at least three strips of duct tape holding them together. For a moment, the world seems normal again. Or at least more normal than it’s been in a long time.
“Alliance,” I say.
Huckle raises an eyebrow and then stands. With awkward, loping strides he moves along the side of his van-warehouse, running his fingertips across the various weapons resting neatly in racks on the wall. Gleaming swords made of cursed steel; portable explosives filled with potions; guns loaded with magic bullets, like Laney’s Glock.
My friend pirouettes, raising his long arms clumsily over his head like the world’s worst ballerina. I smirk and wait for an insult that never comes. “I like it,” Huckle says. “We’ll call this place Alliance.”
Hex barks and it sounds like “Yes!”
~~~
As we leave from our daily visit to Huckle’s van, I think about the news I received earlier. A lion was spotted prowling outside the perimeter fence. Then a jaguar. Other beasts followed: wolves, snakes, cheetahs, bears… No, they haven’t escaped from a zoo. Shifters, transformed into wild animals. Their spells require only a few drops of a child’s blood and a dash of evil.
Finally, a lone panther, which moved so swiftly between the trees that it was nothing more than a blur of black, appeared, eventually stopping to stare with gleaming yellow eyes through the fence. There’s no doubt in my mind the panther was Flora, the leader of the Shifters.
It’s the first sign of the Shifters since the scout was killed. The witch hunters have seen them perhaps a half-dozen times since Tris
h gave me a vision just before she sacrificed herself to save Laney. In the vision, the last remaining humans were being mercilessly murdered by the Shifters. I don’t know if it was a promise of the future, or a warning of what might come to pass. Either way, I’m not taking the Shifter threat lightly.
In this case, the human perimeter guards fled the border, racing across the uneven terrain for the cover of the buildings of New Wash—no, the buildings of Alliance. The name feels good on my lips and in my head. But can a name really change a bunch of scared humans into the warriors they need to be?
Without the assistance of our magic-born allies—the Claires and the (cough) Necros—we’d have been overrun with Shifters already. As it happens, the magic-born were able to stand their ground at the border and scare them off. There simply aren’t enough witch hunters left for the humans to stand on their own.
A few months ago I wanted to kill all the dead-raising Necros, including their leader, the Reaper, who turned out to be my mentor, Mr. Jackson, but now they’re helping us. They’re helping me. It’s a weird world, I think wryly.
Hex stops and looks up at me, pawing at my leg. I realize he’s stopped because I’ve stopped. The weight of the world seems to close in around me. After all the battles I’ve fought, after all those I’ve lost, the earth is still a haven for evil. Will there always be another enemy to defeat? I wonder. Will the circle continue from one side to the other and around again, never reaching an end? Is the idea of peace between humans and magic-born a child’s dream?
The whole world feels as if it’s been cast under a dark shadow. Wait, no. It’s just a cloudy autumn day. We may be surrounded by supernatural beings, but there’s nothing unnatural about the weather.
Hex farts loudly, drawing my attention. And yeah, it smells like roses. Sometimes I think my dog can do no wrong. He whines softly, his mouth opening and closing as if attempting to engage in conversation.