Authors: Christopher Smith
And then came a familiar voice.
“They can’t take it from you, Seth.
They know the rules.
If you already have an amulet and want another, like they do, you can get it one of two ways.
You either can agree to give it to them or they’ll kill you for it. That’s how it works, just like I told you.”
I turned and saw creepy Jim leaning against an SUV.
There was a beer in his hand.
He looked nonplussed.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Don’t worry.
Nobody clones this shit.”
He pulled down the neck of his shirt and exposed an amulet of his own.
“You don’t think I’d really part with yours if I didn’t have one for myself, do you?
My grandfather had two.
He got this one when he killed one of the bastards who tried to take his away from him.
It let me know you were in trouble tonight so I thought I’d come over and have a look.”
He took a swig off his beer and glanced over at the brutes.
“Looks like it was right.
You’re in the shit.”
“We want both amulets.”
Jim looked over at the thug who made the demand and shrugged.
“Then come on over and get ‘em, buddy.
But watch yourself.
You might end up with more than you expected.”
And then, in what seemed like milliseconds, Jim turned, put his hands on the black Nissan Murano he was leaning against and propelled it toward them.
He moved so quickly, he was able to catch them off guard.
The SUV soared through the air, collided against their chests and sent them tumbling back, pinning them beneath the vehicle.
“They’ll get up,” he said to me, crushing the empty can of Bud against his forehead and tossing it aside.
“Be ready.”
“How far will they go?”
“Boy, they’re here to kill us.
Now, how far do you think they’re going to go?”
The Murano began to shift.
One of my neighbors came to their door and opened it tentatively just as the SUV blasted thirty feet into the air, where it somersaulted and then crashed to the pavement.
Gas started to spill from it in a heavy stream.
A spark ignited from inside the ruined electrical system and the vehicle exploded with a force that blew off its tires and doors.
A wave of heat seared my face.
I was aware of people coming to their windows.
The men got up quickly.
The taller of the two glared at the person in the doorway, whose mouth was hanging open.
He slammed the door shut in his face and I knew right now what was happening in every apartment.
People were on their telephones.
The police would be on their way.
If they were going to go for the amulets, then they’d need to do it now and with everything they had.
And so I stretched out my hands and unleashed bolts of electricity from them.
The bolts spiraled out of me and hit them hard in their heads, forcing them back.
Jim did the same thing, but he aimed at their amulets, likely so they would have difficulty tapping into them.
Lights in the parking lot dimmed.
The world seemed to grow a little smaller.
In the distance, I could hear the sound of a police siren.
And then a car swung into the lot.
It stopped.
In the light of the burning SUV, I could see the driver as he turned toward me.
Alex.
I watched him step out of the car.
The shock on his face was something I’d never forget.
But I couldn’t lose my focus now and so I ignored him.
The larger of the two men stretched out his own hand.
“Watch him,” Jim said.
I slashed at his hand with the electricity, but even from here, I could tell he was stronger than me and so I pressed harder, but to no avail.
The man started coming toward us and for the first time, I got a look at him in the electricity’s sizzling blue glow.
His face was round and doughy, pitted with pockmarks and a sporting a healed gash that sliced across his forehead and curled around to his left eye.
He was so heavy and thick, he stomped when he walked.
He lowered his eyes as the electricity bored into him.
He seemed unfazed by it.
He walked into it without hesitation.
He was closing the distance between us rapidly with a murderous look in his eye.
And so I did what I could.
I turned my right hand into a gun and shot him between the eyes.
He stopped for a moment and took a step back.
He seemed to absorb the bullet.
He shook his head as if I’d thrown a rock at him and then he looked hard at me.
I could hear the police siren growing closer.
Jim was managing to hold his own.
I shot again and this time blew out the man’s left eye.
He bellowed not in agony, but in rage.
I lifted myself in the air above him and started pumping bullets down into his head.
He turned his hand into an elongated sword and started swiping it at me.
I darted left, then right, all while trying to take out his brain, which revealed itself each time I tore a bullet into it.
The problem was that the wound healed quickly moments later.
His amulet was powerful.
The faster I shot, the faster he did his own triage.
I’d never seen anything like it.
If he could heal himself, I’d never be able to take him down.
He looked up at me and jumped, his sword swinging out and coming straight toward my neck.
I ducked and became invisible.
The sword swept the air just above me.
But could he see me?
He swung again and this time, he came so close to cutting me in half, I knew he could see me, so I reappeared and teleported away from him.
He followed, swung and missed.
And then, above us, I saw a hovering figure.
It was a woman.
She was dressed in a tight red pantsuit and wore a flowing red cape.
She was about forty feet above me, her arms at her sides, her right knee lifted to her chest, her left leg an extended exclamation point that looked as if it could drive straight through the earth like an ice pick.
She started to lower herself toward me.
It was too dark to see her face, but her hair was brown and it lifted above her as she dropped.
“Give me the amulet,” she said.
“Do it and I’ll kill him for you.
You won’t be harmed.
You have my word.”
The thug looked up and swung his sword at her.
She easily darted away, laughing as she did so.
And then it came to me.
This was what Jim warned me about.
This was a witch.
I looked over at Jim and saw that the other man was closing the distance between them.
They were winning their war.
The police car was close now.
At this height, I could see the flashing lights reflecting down the street.
The blade swung at me again and this time it nicked my arm.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” he said.
“No, you’re not.”
In an instant, I turned my own hand into a blade and when I swung it, I swung it hard.
He saw it coming and immediately backed away from it.
I missed him, but I saw my mistake.
There was only one way to do this.
I swung again and this time stretched out the blade as far as I could.
It worked.
It sliced through his neck, his head toppled off his shoulders and it smashed face-first onto the pavement.
The police car was closing in.
I looked down at Jim, who was losing the fight.
I lifted him in the air next me and pointed up to the woman who now was looking at those flashing lights.
They crossed her face, revealing it in strobes.
She was about my age and she was beautiful.
And then she started to spin.
“That’s not the one who came after me,” Jim said.
“It’s a different one.”
She was creating a wind storm.
The trees bended toward us and the leaves lifted off the ground, swirling around us.
What was she trying to do?
Distract us?
Lift the police car off the ground?
Put a tree in its path?
Before we lost time, I told Jim to cut off the man’s head, as I had.
He did so with success.
I waved my hand over the Murano and made it disappear while Alex watched.
I dropped us both to the pavement.
We collected the two amulets and put them on.
The feeling was indescribable.
The power that overcame me was intense, unyielding, ferocious.
I felt as if my heart was going to burst through my chest, that my skin couldn’t contain the unrelenting rush.
In the absence of the amulets, each man turned to ash.
Jim fanned their remnants away as the police car turned into the lot.
I looked up at the witch, who no longer was spinning.
Now, she was just staring down at me.
I created a ball of fire in my hand and hurled it at her.
But she was quick.
The fireball struck the bottom of her shoes and knocked her off balance, but she was still able to dart away and disappear.
I turned around to face the police and when I did, I faced Alex instead.
He was standing there, horror on his face, betrayal in his eyes.
“Alex—”
“What are you?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.
Answer the question.
What are you?”
I felt filled with defeat.
I was about to lose a friend.
I answered honestly because he at least deserved that from me.
“I’m not like you.”
“Then what are you like?”
“I’m different,” I said.
“I can do things.”
“What things?”
The power of the two amulets was almost too much for my body to bear.
My veins thrummed with an energy that was foreign to me.
I was intoxicated by it, entranced by it.
I tapped into each amulet and asked them to answer Alex’s question.
The response that filled my head was as haunting as it was absolute.
I looked him in the eye and told him the truth.
“I can tear apart the world,” I said.
chapter thirty
book three
WITCH
On Friday, I called in sick so I could absorb the events of the night before.
I was shaken.
Jim and I killed two people.
Scratch that.
We decapitated two people.
Or, at least, I think they were people.
We turned our arms into swords and swung clean through their necks in an effort to keep whatever the hell they were away from us and our amulets.
We murdered them and the idea of it made me sick, even if we did act in self-defense.
The way they turned so quickly to ash after killing them made me question whether they were human at all.
I didn’t know what they were.
Neither did Jim, though he was worried.
Those two amulets had been with him for years and never had he received the attention I was seeing.
Why the sudden interest?
Was it because of what I could do with one amulet, let alone with the two I had now?
Had the amulets grown in power over the years or was it just how I interacted with them?
When we left the scene, he warned me that this was just the beginning.
And then there was the matter of the witch, who appeared out of nowhere.
She came for my amulets.
She got away, but she’d be back.
So would others.
Would I be prepared for them?
I had no idea.
When the police came, I erased everyone’s memory of the event—the cops, the people in my apartment complex, but not Alex.
He was my friend.
If we were going to move forward as friends, I had to tell him the truth.
We hadn’t spoken since that night, but Saturday was coming and with it, Jennifer and Alex were supposed to stop by for pizza and a movie.
I’d tell them everything then, but to be safe, without them knowing, I had to make sure that they could never tell another person.
It was too risky.
But if they were indeed my real friends, which I felt they were, my intrusion wouldn’t matter.
They’d keep my secret anyway.
Originally, I’d planned to take out Hastings, Maxwell and Stewart by Saturday, but not now.
Now I had a witch to deal with and I needed to take things more slowly and constantly be aware of my surroundings in ways that I hadn’t been before.
I thought of Jim and wondered how he was.
He didn’t have a phone, so I imagined myself on the road that led to his trailer, hoping to catch him outside.
He was there, sitting in a lawn chair that was so old and beat up, it looked as if it might collapse if he shifted the wrong way.
He saw me appear beyond a stand of trees and lifted his beer as I came forward.
“Don’t tell me,” I said.
“You want another?”
“Ask me in five.”
“Quite a night,” I said.
“You could say that.”
“You alright?”
“Son of a bitch would have got me if you hadn’t snatched me in the air.
But I got him.”
“I need to ask you some questions.”
“I figured they were coming.”
“You said there were five amulets.
I assumed because you gave me yours that there would be three people left with them.
Am I right to assume that because we now have four amulets between us that only one person is left with the other one?”
“That’s right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had another one?”
“Didn’t want to.”
“Why?”
“If you knew I had another one, you would have leaned on me.
The whole point of this is for you to rely on yourself.
That’s what you’ve never done.
That’s where you’ve failed.
Trouble is, now you know I have my own and there ain’t shit I can do about that.
Eventually, I want you to feel powerful enough to take on anyone who comes after you
without
having to rely on the amulet.
But now that you’ve got two, all I see is trouble.”
“I’m not going to cause any trouble.”
“You’ve got a witch after your ass, boy.
You’ll be causing trouble because you don’t mess with a witch.
She’s at least as powerful as your two amulets, maybe more.
And who knows who has the fifth amulet?
I don’t.
We may never know, but then again, we might find out.
You can do things with yours that I never could do with mine.
What if the person who has the fifth amulet is a master with it?
What if their one amulet trumps our four?
What if they come here wanting them?
I’m not saying they will, but we can’t count out anything.
Hell, whoever has the fifth amulet could be dead and buried with it for all I know.
We just need to be prepared.”
He crushed his can of bud on his thigh, dropped it on the ground and opened his hand.
I shot a new beer into it.
“Man, I wish I could do that.”
“I’m glad you can’t.
I’d like you around a bit longer.”
“Couple of beers ain’t going to hurt me.”
“A couple or a case?”
He ignored the comment.
“This witch is trouble,” he said.
“She’s going to try to take the amulets from you and she’s probably going to be successful because she’s a hell of a lot older and smarter than you are.”
“She looked young to me.”
“She has the power to look however the hell she wants.”
He looked at my body and my face.
“Just like you.”
“Will she kill to get them?”
“She’ll offer you a choice, but it won’t matter.
You won’t give them up.
I know you won’t.
I can see it in your eyes.
You like the power.
And sitting right here, I can feel the energy coming off you.
It’s crazy.
I can feel it as if it were waves.
As if it were heat.
I’m wearing each of my amulets.
Can you feel me from there?”
“Not really.”
“So, you see?
For whatever reason, those amulets work for you.
They turn you into a force.
I want you to remember what I said to you a few days ago.
You need to check your thoughts.
You need to master them so you don’t think the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Because if you do, whatever you’re thinking will happen.
I have no question about that now.”
He was right.
I nodded.
“I heard what you said to your friend last night.
I heard you say that you felt as if you could tear apart the world.
And you know what?
I believe you probably can, so for the sake of the rest of us, don’t you friggin’ think that or go around wishing somebody was dead.
Because if you do, it’ll happen, especially since you’ve got two of those bastards around your neck.”
“I’ve been training myself to check before I think.”
“Good.
Keep at it.
Think before you react.”
“When do you think I’ll see the witch again?”
“Soon.
Power is what she wants and having two of those amulets armed with the power she already possesses will make her damn near invincible.
She’ll be willing to die for them.
She’ll go after your balls for them.
You need to be prepared for one hell of a fight, because it’s coming.”
“How do you take down a witch?”
“No different than how she’s going to take you down.
At this point, you’re essentially one in the same, only different.
She saw you in action.
You threw a ball of fire at her that knocked her off balance.
She’s probably wondering how the hell she’s going to take you down.”
“She’s a witch and yet she’s human?”
“She’s human, but she’s been turned.”
“What does that mean?”
“At some point in her life, she took an oath, she became part of a coven of witches and they turned her and taught her.
She likely has a master.
They usually do.”
“You said she’s invincible.”
“No, I didn’t.
I said if she gets those amulets, she’ll be damn near invincible.
But right now, she’s about as powerful as you.
Just like you, she can slip up and get her head chopped off.”
“She must have spells and whatever else a witch has.”
“She does.
But you can build a barrier around yourself that will buy you enough time until she breaks through.
If
she can break through.
In fact, I’d advise you to pony up and protect yourself with one of them now.”
“What do I do?”
“You put a force field around yourself.”
“So no one can touch me?”
“That’s right.”
“What if I’m in school and someone bumps into me?”
“Then crank up the pity party, because that poor son of a bitch is about to fly a few dozen feet back in the air.”
I shook my head.
“I can’t do that.”
“You’d better do it.”
“Can’t.”
“Then what’s Plan B?”
“The amulet gets hot when I’m in danger.
Having two of them should amplify how sensitive they are to any situation.
I’ll pay attention to them and put the shield around me if they start to react.”
“Might work.
Might not.”
“Why wouldn’t it work?”
“Because you might be asleep when she comes for you.”
“Then I’ll just go to bed with the shield.”
“That’d work.”
He downed his bear and stood up, the chair toppling over when he did so.
I looked at it.
It was ridiculous looking.
I imagined a new one for him—an Adirondack chair.
Jim just stared at it.
“Now, what the hell did you go and do that for?
My chair was perfectly fine.
It was comfortable.
A good fit for my scrawny ass.”