For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun (35 page)

“As you wish,” Sol said. With a whipping gesture as fast as lightning, he sent Bobby flying over the edge, down into the box canyon, bouncing horribly off countless rock formations before smashing into a jagged outcropping that finally stopped him. He tumbled with a sickeningly smooth motion into a low, dark nook, falling out of sight. The last I saw of him, his body looked more like a bloodied amorphous mass than a person.

“You son of a bitch!” I shouted. My entire body tensed, and this time I could actually feel the cells rearranging themselves into stone. I swallowed. Even that was hard to do, too dry. I was so tense, the power building so strongly in me, that I felt I wouldn’t have control. That I would be at the full mercy of the parasites within me.

A sharp wind snapped at my shirt, and I noticed the distant sky again. Much darker, and that darkness was much closer. And much bigger. It spread as far as I could see on the horizon behind Sol. Slowly, I spun around, taking in the sky in all directions.

The wall of darkness filled the horizon. Everywhere.

“What… is
that
?” I asked, mostly to myself, but Sol answered anyway.

“That, John, is a very large, very deadly sandstorm.”

“But it’s coming from every direction at once.”

“Yes. It is not what you would call a
natural
weather phenomenon. It is almost exactly circular, and it is contracting. Shrinking toward this spot. Soon the circle will collapse upon us, John. Are you prepared?”

“Why?”

“Because I am, John. Because I need you to decide, a final decision, in these final moments. Join me, or the storm will tear you apart and even your formidable powers will not stop it.”

My hair whipped around as the hot wind spiraled. “But you’ll die, too, then. And if that’s what I have to do to save Holly, I will. I’ll stand here and let the storm destroy me, just like it will destroy you. Then she’ll be free.”

“Not exactly, John. I have no intention whatsoever of being here when that storm arrives. I have my own means of escape, I can assure you. But you do not. And Holly does not. If you will not choose to ally yourself with me, then both you and Holly will die. Here.”

The sandstorm seemed visibly closer already.

“Then I’ll have to give you my final answer,” I said, lowering my eyes to the ground.

“And what, pray tell, is that, John?” Sol crossed his arms, waiting.

“I’ll do it.” I let out a huge breath, terrified at what I was saying, what I was about to do.

“Now, finally, some sense from you, John. Good. You will find that I am hardly the monster you think I am.”

“I’ll join you.”

“Yes, good.” Slowly Sol nodded, white teeth bared in a wide smile, contrasting sharply with his dark olive skin.

I looked up, holding his eyes with mine. “I will join you, and stay with you until the end.” And with furious vengeance, I reached out with my mind and locked Sol in place, his arms still crossed against his chest. He was frozen, posed like a mummy in a sarcophagus. Whatever means of escape he’d planned was useless, and the sandstorm was closing fast. “I’ll stay with you until the bitter end,” I said, “and we’ll watch each other die when this storm crashes down upon us.”

Sol raged against me, trying to break free, but my grip was iron. I was determined to hold him. I knew I still wasn’t any good at controlling or stopping objects, holding them, but I was going to try, with everything I had, to my last breath. Sol’s face twisted into a gnarled mask, the only part of his body that could move, and he screamed in a hateful rage. “John Black!”

I nodded. “And when you’re dead,
Branco
, then I’ll know my sister is free from you, you bastard.”

12

Honestly, I was surprised it worked at all, that I could hold him even for a moment. I believe now that my exhausted resignation to simply
do it
and to keep doing it until we both died was the secret that made it stick.

Sol struggled, veins bulging on his forehead, but the rest of his body was motionless, held firm. He uttered a low, guttural sound. He was a bear with his leg in a trap, wanting nothing but escape.

And then I could feel the push. At first it was as ineffective as holding your hands up against a rushing stream to keep the water from touching you. But his efforts grew as mine waned. I used every ounce of fury in my body to hold him, but my grip seemed to slip faster the more I tried. Soon, I was joining him in yelling through clenched teeth.

Finally, my hold broke, like a dam finally giving way to the great flood behind it. I didn’t release him gradually, but all at once. Suddenly he was free, I was staggering backward, and he was attacking.

Sol leaped toward me, swinging his hand in a terrifying arc. When his flat palm struck me in the stomach, I couldn’t do anything to stop myself from flying backward, like a ping-pong ball hit with a baseball bat.

I was launched out over the box canyon, and soon found myself plummeting to the sandy floor below, just like how Sol had dispatched Bobby.

But I couldn’t let Sol get away like that. I wouldn’t let myself be crushed on the rocks below without one more try, one more fight. As I fell, I sent a mental dart deep into Sol’s mind, small but meant to cut. Whether it was the effect of my powers or simple human adrenaline, I saw it all in slow motion — me tumbling downward, Sol reeling from my attack. Then I dropped down and our line of sight was broken.

I knew that somewhere below me was a craggy wall or pile of rocks, something that I would soon be landing on spine-first. Yet I could think of nothing to stop it.

I crashed hard into several rock formations at once, too many to rationally understand. My head, back, right arm, each was smashed and cut and broken. Then I bounced and tumbled, slipping through a small gap in the rocks and flipping over, ripping up my hands, tearing my face. I vaguely noticed blood, my blood, spraying everywhere. Finally, I came to rest on the sand, crumpled like discarded paper.

I pulled in a ragged breath. Then another. Near me there was nothing but silence, but farther out, from every direction came the sound of the storm, closer still. The storm is what made me move. The storm would kill my sister. I had to move.

Forcing my will upon my body, I directed it to reassemble. Like a scene from a horror movie, my back bent over until it found its original line. My legs straightened. My skin pulled gashes back together. Slowly, slowly, minutes or days later, I stood.

“You see, John.
This
is why you are special.” Sol’s voice echoed from the lip of the box canyon. “Why you matter so much to me. Could Bobby do what you just did? No, he is still somewhere, either dead or healing slowly. But you. I can see it. You have forced your body to heal, and to do it
now
.”

My neck rotated awkwardly, like it was snapping back into position, and finally I could see him, coming down from above. Not climbing down.
Drifting
down.

How the hell is he doing that?
I thought.
It almost looks like he’s flying.
In the moments while he descended and the last parts of my body corrected themselves, I think I understood. I was seeing Sol’s getaway car. He was using his ability to move objects with his mind, only the thing he was moving was himself.
Damn, I wish I’d thought of that.

Sol landed gracefully only feet away. “John, I would very much like to extend my offer to you once more, one final time.” He grinned, a wide and charismatic grin. Then it fell. “But you have now tricked me twice. I will be forced to move ahead on my own. And you, John Black. You will now die.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. An invisible fist clenched around my lungs, pushing out all air, clamping down on my heart.

I raged. I tried to fight it off, screaming my anger and desperation. I knew that if I couldn’t stop Sol immediately, I would die. Powers or not, he was preventing my heart from pumping blood, my lungs from getting air. I had minutes to live, maybe seconds.

Again I screamed. I was letting everyone down. Holly, Mom, Bobby. I felt the guilt of all the people Sol would kill in the future, or enslave, or whatever he had in mind. Every cell in my body tensed, awaiting the end that I could no longer forestall.

It can’t end like this. I have to fight harder!

But there was no greater rage to tap. No larger pool of energy or anger.

Sol came close, standing right in front of me, looking down into my eyes. “For what it is worth, John, I did not want it to come to this.”

And he raised one hand over me, the executioner’s axe.

I closed my eyes.

And accepted the reality of my death.

13

As soon as my eyes closed and the outside world disappeared, a calmness came over me, replacing all the rage.

Forgive me, Holly. Forgive me, Mom. Forgive me, Bobby. I failed. Forgive me, Dad. I couldn’t protect them.

The calmness grew, expanding throughout my body, and became a peace. The peace of the dead.

Milliseconds slid past like years. I faded into nothing but that peace.

And somewhere deep, deep inside that peaceful feeling, that feeling of waiting for fate, there was something different.

A beat.

A very tiny beat.

My heart was beating.

Calmly, I mused on this, considering it to be inconsequential. The last heartbeats of a dead person.

My mind escaped my body, I suppose. I wasn’t above myself looking down, I was simply more
of
myself than I’d ever been before. The peace invaded my arms, hands, fingers. My legs, feet, toes. The surface of my skin felt warm. Not hot and dry and parched, like it had been in the desert, but warm with the glow of life.

Life?

I sipped a small breath. Although only the tiniest amount, glorious air came into my lungs. I sipped again. More air.

I could feel the blood flowing through me, each drop. I could feel the air oxygenating that blood. I could feel every cell in my body being nourished and returned to life. I could feel myself becoming…
alive again
.

And I felt not just Sol’s grip on my lungs and heart, but the
nature
of that grip. Like discovering the key to a locked door, I suddenly understood how it worked. How it could be dismantled.

Slowly, calmly, as if in a trance, I opened my eyes.

Again, the earth shook with a quake. The leading edges of the storm were whipping at the top of the canyon walls. In moments, the whole thing would crash down upon us.

Still, I moved in slow, calm motions, deliberate. I looked into Sol’s eyes.

He was smug, happy. With the thinnest tendril of my mind, I reached into his thoughts, although he was completely unaware. I saw Holly, sitting in her chair on the sandy floor of a canyon, somewhere nearby.

And then I found something so unexpected that I nearly lost my control.

Sol was terrified.

But of what?

From his point of view, I was near death, my lungs and heart still crushed by his grip. He was only waiting for the inevitable. My calmness, to him, was merely the first stage of death.

I sent the tendril deeper.

What are you afraid of?

The storm. The sandstorm, massive and encroaching from all directions. Strong enough to rend our flesh and body, rip apart our very cells, destroy us both.

The sandstorm.

Sol didn’t make it
.

He was desperate to escape, terrified of what would happen if he didn’t leave.

I sent the tendril deeper.

The storm wasn’t the only thing he was afraid of. The earthquakes. He hadn’t been making those, either.

Sol was frightened that there was something much more powerful, more powerful than himself, or me, or both of us together, and that it was on its way to us.

This
was Sol’s great need for me. He knew there was something very strong out there in the world, and that only with my strength, the strength of others like me, might he have a chance against it. But I had spurned him, made it clear I wouldn’t join him. A world with some unknown power
and
me aligned against him was unacceptable. He needed me to die
now
. And then, he very, very much needed to escape.

The heavy blow of his fist finally came down, intended to crush me as the air and blood had already left me. With all of Sol’s physical power gathered close, pulled in for one massive strike, he hit me. In my new calmness, I could discern the sheer force he put into the blow, and to me it seemed that such an attack might crack the very surface of the world.

And yet, I didn’t flinch.

His hand hit its mark and fell aside. Almost bounced aside. There was a sound like a dull metal gong, but I was unharmed.

“What’s this?” Sol asked, looking at me in complete confusion.

With a slight gesture, I swept aside his hold on my lungs and heart, his power falling away like droplets of water. Sol’s eyes were huge, bulging. The terror that he’d kept hidden now came to the surface, multiplied by the new fear of what I’d just done. He stepped back.

Any semblance of composure was gone. Sol was raving, a lunatic consumed by fear. The dry, gritty wind whipped his hair, framing his twisted face in a mane of frenzied motion. “I am destined for greatness, John Black. You know this to be true.”

“No,” was all I said.

Sol screamed, a wordless sound full of hate. The charismatic, powerful being was gone, replaced by a hideous, panicked demon. “If you will not die,” he spat out with all the bitterness of his twisted soul, “then
your sister
will.”

“No,” I said again.

Sol made it one more step.

The tendril I’d put in his mind sparked and flared like a magic wand, and every molecule of water within his body, making up most of Sol himself, came together and
froze
. I didn’t simply hold him in place: that was no longer useful to me.

Calmly focused on his feet, I leeched the heat from his body. The water in his toes froze first, his skin quickly frostbitten and blackened. Then the arches of his feet, his heels. Working up through his ankles, legs, into his torso. From bottom to top, Sol stiffened as my peculiar magic did its work.

It happened quickly, sliding relentlessly upward, but still deliberately enough to be agony for him. In my peaceful trance, I saw the pain, but it seemed more curiosity than concern. The wave of ice continued, reaching his core, freezing his lungs.

And with his last breath of air, he rasped at me. “You have beaten me, John. But you have also beaten yourself. And Bobby, and your sister. Look!” His eyes flicked upward, toward the top of the canyon walls. “The storm is upon us! And so we will die together. The new powers of this world shall be extinguished in this very moment because of you, and the human race will continue its pathetic and futile march into the bleak winter of its nothingness.”

I slowly tilted my head up, thoughtfully pondering the raging storm, nonplussed by Sol’s ranting.

“Even now, Holly is dying!” he shouted.

Then I raised a single digit, the index finger of my right hand, and placed it to my lips.
Shhhhh.
And the ice froze Sol’s neck, his chin, his entire face. Only his wild hair remained free, shooting in every direction above his head.

Even in my detached state, I thought Sol looked like a mad version of the man who once had his greatest victory on this spot, General Avery Tulloch. There would be no victory for Sol here, nor anywhere else. The process was complete.

Sol was frozen solid, wretched in his anguished appearance. A devil who had threatened not only my family but the world, now caged forever.

I let my finger fall from my lips, and reached out toward him. Extending my arm, I tapped the center of Sol’s chest with a resonant
thud
that seemed to echo off the canyon walls.

And Sol exploded into a million pieces, perhaps a thousand million. Ice and whatever else he’d been made of, in so many tiny, glinting fragments. Puzzle pieces that could never be made whole again, scattering in the whirling wind, gone.