My Angels Have Demons (Users #1) (16 page)

"Are you serious?" Carter asked.

"Why wouldn't he be?" Barber asked.

"Well no offense, but you're just a kid," Carter said

"I'm man enough to beat you," Barber countered.

"Touche'," Carter said.

"I'll leave you guys too it," Walt said.

Carter followed Barber to the center of the yard in front of the big house.

"So you think you can beat me again?" Carter asked. "I'm a lot more comfortable with my powers since the last time you faced me."

"But we're not using powers today. You heard the General. You're going to need more than powers to protect yourself," Barber answered.

"Oh now this I gotta see," Carter said. "You're going to beat me up with your fis-" Carter was cut short as Barber did a sweeping leg kick, taking Carter's feet out from under him.

The yard softened his fall, but wet mud smeared the side of Carter's face as he lay in the rain soaked grass.

"What's with you always catching me off guard? You never even said go."

Carter feigned that he was getting to his feet, but he changed momentum and lunged forward tackling Barber around the knees and pulling him to the ground. Barber tried to roll away, but Carter took his back, grabbing Barber around the neck.

"How do you like it when someone sneaks up and knocks you down, huh?" Carter growled as he choked Barber from behind. "Doesn't feel so good now does it?"

Barber couldn't breathe let alone speak. After only a few seconds, when the boy started turning blue, he finally tapped Carter on the wrist letting Carter know that he was done.

Carter let him go immediately and the two sat in the damp grass, staring at one another, panting with exhaustion.

"Okay. Now I can really show you something," Barber said.

Carter spent the rest of the afternoon mimicking Barber's dazzling display of moves. The kid was like something out of a bad Kung Fu flick, only his moves seemed to be effective.

Barber spun into a jumping roundhouse kick and Carter did a bad impersonation of the move.

"Well that was pathetic," Carter said.

"Don't worry you'll get it," Barber said.

"Where does all this optimism and loyalty come from? Especially for Walt, I just don't get it?" Carter asked.

"Where do you think I learned all this? It sure as hell wasn't from my parents." Barber threw a wheel kick and Carter tried to do the same. "Put all your weight on your back leg," Barber told him.

"So he taught you somethings, so what? He tried to have you killed the other day," Carter said.

"He didn't try to have me killed. He just doesn't want us to back down the way he did."

"The way he did. What do you mean?" Carter asked.

"He didn't tell you? When he was in the military and all those women and children were killed. He watched it all happen and he didn't do a damn thing to stop it. He's regretted it everyday since. That's why he pushes you so hard, so if you're ever faced with a similar situation, you can make the choice that he didn't."

*****

Carter pushed all of his energy to his feet. Fire flared up around his legs as it bounced up off the ground. Still he pushed more of his fiery blood down to his feet, and nothing happened. Carter gnashed his teeth together under the strain. Sweat beaded across his forehead, but he still remained firmly planted to the earth.

"God damn it!" he billowed between panting breaths.

"You're doing it all wrong." A voice called from behind him.

"How?" he asked. "How am I doing it wrong?"

He was exasperated with his own shortcomings, and his foul tone showed it.

"You've gotta heat up your whole body first. Then once you've pent up enough energy, and only then, do you release the fire within you down into your feet," Dan said coming up beside him.

The man looked withered, even for him, and he walked with a cane, which Carter had never seen him do before. His normally leathery skin was pale, wet, and mushy looking, as if Carter could mold it like dough.

Carter sighed.

"I did that," he said.

"Then you didn't do it right," the grumpy old man said. Dan whacked him with the cane in his thigh.

"Jesus, what's gotten into you today?" Carter asked as he rubbed the spot on his thigh that would most definitely have a welt later.

"You're wasting my time," Dan snarled. "You've barely begun to master any of the techniques I've shown you. Now clear your mind and focus."

Carter did was he was told, fearing another whack with the cane.

"Now close your eyes," Dan said. "Feel the pumping of your heart."

Carter kept his eyes shut tight and listened carefully to the pumping in his chest getting louder and faster as he summoned the fire within him, but refused to let out it.

"Keep it pent up for awhile longer then slowly visualize the blood running to your feet."

With some discomfort, Carter could feel the blood withheld in his heart being pummeled by the pounding thuds in his chest. His heart was like an engine, and his blood was the fuel that fired it.

"Now let it all out," Dan said.

A wave of nausea washed through his stomach as the blood pumped down his chest and into his stomach, but he grimaced through the pain, kept pushing, and it soon passed. A burning sensation ran down his thighs and into his calves. Then, in one throbbing burst, the fire ripped through the bottom of his feet. With his eyes still closed, Carter could only hear the roaring flames whipping beneath him.

"Now open your eyes."

Carter's eyes shot open. He was staring at the tree tops. His gazed darted to his feet and the rocket fire like flames that came from them. Dan was standing far below with his neck arched up to look at him.

"I'm doing it!" Carter shouted, and before he finished the words his heart sank.

It hadn't occurred to him until that moment that he was afraid of heights and he did not know how to get down. The fire from his feet stuttered.

"Oh no," Carter said. Then he was falling. He dropped a good ten feet before he steadied himself again and the fire flared back to life. "I'm scared of heights," he called down to Dan.

Dan just shook his head.

"You picked a fine time to figure that one out," Dan said. "Just drop down real slow like."

"How do I do that?"

"Let off the gas of course."

And Carter slowly removed the heat from his feet, hovered for a moment, and began his descent back down to earth.

"That was amazing," he said once he was back on firm ground.

"It was something. Don't know if I'd call it amazing." Dan coughed violently and blood spurt from his mouth.

"Are you okay?" Carter said and he had to catch Dan as the old man lost his balance and fell back, crumpling into Carter's arms.

Dan's breathing was shallow and there was blood coming from his mouth, so much blood.

"Walt! Walt!" he screamed for help. "Fuck this." Carter scooped the old man up into his arms and carried him out of the forest. "Just hang in there bud. We're going to get you some help."

*****

"There's really nothing much we can do for him," Doc said. Many hours had passed with Carter waiting patiently in a chair in the corner of the room.

"What do you mean? There's gotta be something," Carter said.

"Dan's an old man," Walt said. "It's his time."

"All we can do now is make him comfortable," Doc said as he injected what Carter assumed was morphine into Dan's IV.

"That's it huh? So we're just giving up on him?" Carter asked.

"That's all there is," Walt said. The General put a hand on Carter's shoulder. It was a move that struck Carter as out of the ordinary for Walt, but maybe the normally hard assed General was hurting too. Walt and Dan had known one another for many years.

"Is it all right if I stay with him for awhile."

"I don't see much harm in that," Doc said. "Just don't expect much of a conversation. The drugs are going to have him sleeping for quite for some time."

"We'll leave you alone so you can say your goodbye," Walt said and with the Doc in tow, the pair trudged up the steps and into the main floor off the big house.

Carter took a seat and rested his weary head on the handrail of Dan's hospital bed and stared at the floor. The room was completely silent except for the beep of Dan's heart monitor as his weak pulse bobbed up and down.

"Are they gone yet?" A voice snapped Carter from his sorrow and scared the living shit out of him all at once.

"Dan?" he asked hardly able to believe his eyes. "But the doc said you'd be out from the drugs?"

"Hot blood," Dan said plainly. "It burns off the drugs real quick. You should know that as well as anyone."

And it was true. It took Carter massive doses to just catch a buzz, making his days of drug use all the more dangerous.

"Are you okay?" Carter asked.

"Do I look okay to you boy?" Dan was sweating profusely and his skin was gray.

He coughed and again Dan had a mouthful of sizzling blood that stained his teeth red.

"Honestly, you look like shit," Carter said.

"Fuck...you," Dan said, but he barely got the words out.

The old man's breath was shallow and speaking was almost beyond him. "You should leave now boy...while you can."

"I'm not going anywhere," Carter said keeping his ass firmly planted in his chair. Dan's gray skin began to glow with an orange hue as if some inner light of his soul was trying to break free of its mortal coil.

"Look...away...boy," Dan growled.

"Why? What's happening?" Carter asked grabbing Dan by the arm. "Doc! You better get your ass down here!"

"Doc...can't help...now." Dan's skin was red hot.

Of course, it didn't bother Carter in the least, but he was beginning to panic, unsure of what was happening to the old man. Light shot from Dan's mouth, ears, and eyes. Flames burst through the old man's wrinkly skin and a blood curtailing, gut wrenching scream erupted from Dan's mouth.

"No!" Carter shouted.

He leapt from his seat, grabbed the blanket covering Dan's waist, and threw the blanket over the old mans chest in a vain attempt to smother the flames.

"No! No! No!" he screamed repeatedly as the white hot fire burned clear through the blanket. Desperately, Carter threw himself over Dan's body, but the fire would not be extinguished. The skin on Dan's arms turned to charcoal, blackened, and then flaked off. The exposed flesh beneath the skin was burnt to a crisp. Carter was surrounded by a fiery hell he could not put out.

He stood up as Doc came running down the stairs.

"What happened!" Doc shouted when he saw the smoldering husk that used to be Dan.

"He died screaming," Carter said. "He died the same way I killed Fox."

"Who's Fox?" Doc asked.

There was ash all over Carter's face, shirt, and hands. He was covered in the chalky substance that had been Dan.

"I'm going to die screaming," Carter said realizing this wasn't an isolated incident, but that when a Scorcher died he was burned alive. "I'm going to die screaming."

#

Chapter 16

The Narcotics Anonymous meeting the following day after Dan's death was a solemn one for Carter. He sat quietly and when Vince made his way around the group, Carter refused to speak, and no one dared to push the issue. Carter couldn't quite put a finger on why he was so devastated by the death of a man he barely knew. Maybe it was that he had so little time with the old man, or maybe it was because the old man's death was so horrific, but most likely it was a selfish endeavor. He knew without a shadow of a doubt what awaited him at death, and it wasn't pretty. He would burn. Burn the same way Dan had, and the same way he had burnt Fox alive.

He would die screaming in pain.

Carter was in such a daze, he hardly noticed that Vince was about to end the meeting, but before Vince could, the door leading to the hall slammed open. A towering figure stepped into the room dressed in a long black coat and military style boots. The attention shifted from Vince to the mysterious man, drawing even Carter's interest. The heavy boots clopped against the wood floor as the man in black stomped to the head of the table.

"Can I help you with something?" Vince asked as the man approached.

An aura of unease wafted through the crowded room like bad body odor.

"I'm looking for someone," the man said.

From his pocket, the man produced a wallet sized photo. He handed it to Vince. Carter knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, without seeing the photo, who was on that picture. Carter flipped his hood up and pulled it low while the man in black had his back turned too him.

"Sorry, never seen him before," Vince answered politely.

The man in black snatched the photo from Vince's grasp.

"I'm looking for this man." He held the photo out for everyone to see.

Carter kept his eyes on the floor, wondering who would be the first to give him up.

"My name is Devin. I have a friend who is very interested in the whereabouts of this individual."

The man's heavy boots let Carter know that he was circling the table.

"The man's name is Carter."

Carter winced when the man said his name.

"Alaric is looking for him. You all know Alaric. You all know that crossing Alaric is very dangerous, so save yourselves a lot of headache and tell me where he is."

Carter had a real pickle on his hands. On one hand, he wanted nothing more than to save his sorry skin, but on the other, he had really grown to like some of the members of the group. The last thing he wanted was to create a nasty situation for Walt, Vince, Cody, or even Barber. He had to get the mysterious man outside. Maybe there Carter could make a break for it, try and run away. The heavy foot falls were getting closer now. Carter was about to give himself up, when a pusher named Gary panicked.

"He's right there!" And from the corner of his eye, Carter caught a glimpse of Gary, a fat man with a bald head, rising to his feet with his finger extended in Carter's direction.

Devin's dark eyes shot down to Carter, sitting slumped over in his seat, and they made eye contact for a brief moment, both of them wondering if Carter was going to put up a fight. Carter had no idea of what the man was capable of, and that only scared him all the more.