by A. P. Moraez
The bearded one with the crooked nose promptly grabbed Billy by the underarms and carried him to Henry’s side. They were forming a half-moon now, and Leo strolled up to face them.
Billy looked lost, when, sobbing, nose bleeding, he lifted his head to face Leo. He struggled once or twice against the man holding him in place, but gave up after that. “Why?” he growled out, tears running down his dark cheeks.
Leo rolled his eyes, letting the arm holding the gun drop. “You were just easy, that’s all,” he said, for once in the night looking genuinely upset. “You knew the area, had just been kicked out of your parent’s house. When I found out you’d just landed a job right where I needed eyes and ears the most, everything just fell into place. Was nothing personal, Billy boy.”
“No,” Billy rasped out, sobbing. “No.” He was shaking his head, shaking.
Logan was shaking in Ash’s arms too, probably a side effect of losing so much blood. He had to do something. But if Leo suspected he was trying to free him, he’d probably kill Logan on the spot.
“Be strong,” Ash murmured against Logan’s ear as he squeezed Logan’s shoulder. “I’m right here. We’re getting out of this. Just be strong for me, okay?”
Sapphires, liquid, regarded him with a mixture of faith and love and fear. It broke his heart.
“I’m sorry, Ash,” Billy said amidst his sobs. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. I’m so, so sorry.”
Ash made sure to look him in the eyes as he nodded. It wasn’t his fault. If anything, it was Ash’s fault. He should’ve finished the job. Should never have been cocky and arrogant, trusting in flames.
“It actually is a shame,” Leo said, sounding disappointed, “all of this. You’re a good boy, Billy. It’s sad that now you’re gonna have to go.”
Billy opened his mouth to reply, but then suddenly brought both hands to the sides of his head. He let out an anguished, loud cry. Something about it pierced right through Ash and made him shiver. His arms, dormant and absent until this point, warmed a little. It was different from the other times, though, where they felt like Ash’s skin was boiling, right before they froze all over. They just warmed a little and then softly transitioned to cold. Like a breeze in a winter morning. Like a warning; a greeting. The very air in the room changed and Ash could swear he could feel the electricity in it. It cracked and sparked, almost imperceptible, before his senses.
The man that’d been holding Billy in place let out a cry of his own and released the boy, who fell to his knees, still clutching his head. The man was staring at his hands, dumbfounded, mouth agape.
“What the fuck?” Leo shouted, furious. “I didn’t say you could let him go.”
“He burned me!”
“What?”
“He burned me,” the man reinstated, shoving his hands forward. And they were burned. Raw and pulsing, skin melted and blistering.
Ash’s heart skipped a beat. He let his eyes fall to the boy kneeling just a few steps to his side right before there came the distant sound of several car doors being slammed shut, coming from outside.
Ash prayed that it was the other teams that Henry had summoned before they foolishly put their plan in action. Prayed that it wasn’t even more of Leo’s minions getting back from a mission or something.
It was probably the former, judging by how Leo’s eyes widened in apparent shock and his face flushed.
He turned to them with a forced smile. “Well,” he said, “this has been fun and all, but I’m afraid we’ll have to cut the evening short, boys. Who goes first?”
Billy let out another anguished cry and Ash could swear little sparks of light were dancing all over his exposed forearms. His neck and what he could see of his left cheek by this angle. It was like… like little waves of light, minuscule, swirled and danced along his pores. The air felt heavier by the second and the boiling-freezing in his arms seemed to get more intense by the second.
Leo brought his eyes back from Billy and raised his right arm. “Well, let’s start with the oldest,” he said.
Ash felt more than heard Logan’s muffled scream at the same time the gun fired.
Ian shot back against the kitchen counter, head hanging back from the head shot. Blood had spilled everywhere behind him, and Ash barely managed to hold back a scream. Ian was dead. The closest thing he’d ever had to a father for most of his childhood. The kind, dedicated man who’d never abandoned Logan’s side, being more of a father to him, too, than anybody else ever had, was dead.
“No,” Billy cried, but didn’t rise to his feet; didn’t look up. He was clutching both sides of his head with such strength that his lean arms were bulging, a few veins popping up. He was rocking back and forth on his knees, sweating and breathing heavy despite the abnormal cold brought by the blizzard howling outside, like he’d just ran a mile. “No, no, no,” he mumbled more to himself than anyone else. And the air around Ash got heavier and heavier. Couldn’t anybody else feel this? The energy? The abnormality of all of it?
“Now,” Leo said, “I can’t decide which would be the most fun…” Ash stopped breathing when he aimed for Logan’s head. But then Leo shifted it to Duke’s, to Billy’s, then Ash’s. They locked eyes. “If it’d be killing all of them before you, so you can see it and know that I’ve taken from you exactly as you took from me before you die. Or if I should just kill you first and let that one,” he jutted his chin out and to the side, indicating Logan, “suffer a little on his perfect little life before it ends. It’s all so… equally tempting.”
“No, no, no…” Billy was chanting. He was clutching his head so hard, it was like he wanted to smash it. Rivulets of sweat were running down his face and he was shivering. And those little sparks of light that one could easily have mistaken for reflections of the fluorescents above on his shiny, dark skin, were now bigger. They shone and sparked under his skin, danced on the corner of his eyes. Were they seeing this? Were they feeling this?
“Oh, well,” Leo finally said, eyes on Ash and gun trained on Logan, “I suppose this all started with you, so it’s fair you suffer the most before it’s over. Anything you wanna say to your boyfriend before he goes?”
Ash just looked at Logan and the helplessness in the sapphires made him lose his breath. They locked gazes and Ash wanted to just say everything he needed. That this wasn’t over. That they’d see each other again. In another life. They’d find their way to each other again. But all words escaped him before the fear emanating from those beautiful eyes that’d been his whole world for practically his whole life.
“Well,” Leo said, gun clicking in his hand, “don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”
He lowered his arm and took aim, then pulled the trigger. Ash closed his eyes. Nothing was worth it anymore. All the suffering, all the pain, for what? Logan was dead. Logan was dead and nothing made sense anymore. Breathing wasn’t worth it anymore.
The deafening gun shot filled the room at the same time Billy’s scream did. He’d never heard such heart-felt, deep scream; it raised the hairs on both his arms, and made them pulse warmer; colder. Boiling. Freezing. And from behind Ash’s eyelids, everything turned that weird orange-white-yellow you see when you close your eyes and turn them in the direction of the sun, only one thousand times stronger. Ash instinctively brought his arm over his eyes, fearing to be blinded by so much light. Apparently, this time he wasn’t the only one hearing and feeling things. Cries echoed all around the room, and it was so bright.
In just a few moments, though, it subsided, and Ash opened his eyes.
With rigidity instigated by equal amounts of dread and curiosity, he twisted his face to the side, expecting to see the worst. And what he saw made his heart stop for a second, before it restarted drumming wildly in his chest.
The bullet was there…
…floating in the air, as if stopped in time, a mere inch from Logan’s face. Logan was breathing so fast, shoulders going up and down. And when their eyes connected, a few tears dr
opped from Logan’s eyes.
Everyone had their eyes fixated on Billy, who was still on his knees in the middle of the room. Leo was paralyzed, gun dropped to the floor, and only then did Ash register that it had turned orange-red. Like… like it was hot; really freaking hot. At melting point. Leo was clutching his right hand to his chest, eyes so wide they threated to pop out of their sockets.
No one was moving. No one was saying a word. But that static was in the air, strong as ever, and Ash’s arms were getting to that familiar point where the boiling-freezing was so intense it made him tremble on his feet.
They all watched, stone-still, as Billy propped a hand on the white tile under him — how it cracked right in the middle upon contact with his hand — and righted himself, until he was firmly on his feet, shivering, facing Leo.
Light so bright that it rivaled the sun itself was dancing now freely over his forearms and his hands; neck and cheeks and forehead. It was like it was coming out of him, from his very pores. And his clothes — his clothes were catching fire. Little spots here and there, sizzling and turning black right before a hole revealed Billy’s black skin underneath, little sparks of light dancing there too. It was… it was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful in the most terrifying way possible.
Billy was clearly struggling against something, judging by his heavy breathing and the way he kept his fists clenched at his sides.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Leonardo Lazarus. Shouldn’t have meddled with what doesn’t belong to you.” Billy’s voice was different. Like… like it had a bit of a feminine quality to it. An echo. It got a shiver running down Ash spine, and he just couldn’t look away. He was clutching Logan’s shoulder so tight it must be hurting, but he couldn’t help it. What the hell was going on? “You dealt in darkness your whole life. It’s time you met the power of the light.” Billy twisted his neck around and a little smirk pulled at his lips. His eyes weren’t there anymore. None of the deep brown, almost black, piercing irises. They’d been filled by that white-hot light that had managed to burn most of his clothes away by now. “All of you.”
Then he turned to look at Leo again just before saying, “Ash and Ash’s friends, you should look away.”
Ash looked away from the boy for the first time in minutes to see that Logan and everyone else had squeezed their eyes shut. Leo’s guys were all alarmed and red-faced. The one with the burned hands brought an arm to the front of his eyes too, but something about Billy’s smirk told him it wouldn’t protect him.
When Billy screamed, the feminine quality to his voice was gone. It was just him again, rising until he was a few feet from the floor, mouth open in the air as he screamed.
The first two beams of light shot from his eyes, the third from his mouth. Their path left a trail of destruction on the cabinets and split the walls in half. And when they hit Leo and focused on him, guided by Billy himself, the man just… he just turned to dust. One moment he was there, then nothing. Like he’d never been more than… more than a thought.
Ash barely registered the other men’s screams before everything exploded in blinding light all around them. It came from Billy in waves; from his back, arms, eyes, and mouth. Ash almost pissed himself, thinking he’d turn to dust too, and brought a late arm up to protect his eyes while he tried his best to cover Logan’s. But the light didn’t hurt him. It caressed his skin like nothing more than a warm breeze on its path of destruction. There was screaming and the sound of rock cracking and wood splintering, glass breaking. It seemed to last for hours, but truly was over in a matter of seconds. When Ash dared to lower his arm and take a look around, all of Leo’s guys were mere piles of dust on the floor. Diana was hugging Henry tight, and he was hugging her right back. Duke was sweating and Ash had never thought he’d ever see that man scared. He was clutching his chest, sweating over the blood that had caked on the top of his head, looking at Billy like he was seeing the devil himself.
All the abnormal light was gone, leaving them only under the fluorescents, and so were Logan’s and Duke’s restraints and gags. They were free. They were free and Billy was just floating there, naked, head hanging back, like a real-sized doll hanging on invisible strings. Until he fell to a pile on the floor.
Ash ran to him and cradled his head on his hands. He took off his coat and covered the boy with it.
“Billy!” he shouted, shaking the boy lightly. Nothing. “Billy, wake up!”
Ash was about to shake him again when Billy’s eyes fluttered open. Ash let out a low laugh, relieved, but it didn’t last. Because in just a moment the dark, familiar, kind eyes started being flooded in white again. Blinding white that threatened destruction.
Static filled the air again. It pulled and shoved him all at the same time, and Ash had to let go of Billy’s head on his lap when the waves started dancing there. Smoke rose from his coat protecting the boy, filling his lungs with that particular stench of burned cloth.
Ash rose to his feet and stared, not knowing what to do.
A movement to his right caught his eye and Ash turned around to see better. Logan was standing next to his chair, leaning heavily on Duke, who was hugging him to his side. Diana and Henry were still hugged, too, paralyzed.
What had caught Ash’s eye was Leo’s gun, still glowing that orange-red, which was floating just a few feet to his side, eye-level, between him and his friends. Just a moment after he noticed the floating object, everything started to shake around them. The floor, the ceilings, the cabinets. Everything.
Even drops of blood were being dragged up from the small pool Logan’s injury had left on the floor. It was as if… as if gravity itself couldn’t rule over them anymore. Even Ian’s body, now freed, started to rise, circled by floating drops of his own blood. The kitchen drawers were thrown open, one by one, and their contents spilled into the air. Forks and knives and spoons, all floating higher and higher, circling, like whatever force generated that vibrating static that rose the hair on Ash’s arms governed them in a circle. Slowly they started to move, round and round, the small group of people in the middle. It was scary, but beautiful.
While Ash’d been busy checking all of that out, Billy had risen to his feet.
“Billy!” Ash cried. “What’s happening? Are you okay?”
His eyes were all white now, glistening; so much light. His face was expressionless, vacant. Billy opened his mouth to reply, but then cried out and wrapped his arms around his middle.
“Billy!” Ash cried, throwing a concerned gaze to the dangerous, floating objects all around them. They were still doing their slow dance, but something was changing.
There was a buzzing in the air, like before, but it wasn’t alone anymore. Maybe it was just his musician’s ears, but it couldn’t be just him that was hearing it. A peculiar melody that sounded like a dull siren in the air. It vibrated all around them like a warning, and it was making his markings react in tandem to its calls. Warm. Freezing. Boiling. Cold.
Billy’s scream cut the air. He had one hand clutching his stomach, the other holding his head. He opened his so far squeezed shut eyes and turned them to Ash and, for a moment, Ash feared that those beams of light would fly out and strike him too, turning him to dust. “Get out,” Billy wheezed out through clenched teeth. “I can’t hold it for much longer. Ash, get out. Take them away from here. Get out,” he sneered. “GET OUT!”
Ash’s heart was beating so fast, it hurt. “Come on!” he shouted to the others. “We have to get out of here!”
In just a second he was hugging Logan’s left side. “Go!” he told Diana and Henry, who seemed to be frozen in place.
“Ian!” Logan cried as Ash and him dragged him out of the kitchen. He had his neck twisted to the size, eyes fixated on his old friend, now gone, floating in the air in the middle of everything else.
“We can’t, Logan,” Ash said, then pressed a kiss to Logan’s chest as they crossed the archway that led from the kitchen to the living room. “We don’t have time.”
Logan looked devastated, but nodded and brought his eyes back down.
Just as Ash said that, a horrible, deafening cry came from the kitchen they’d just left behind.
They all stopped in their tracks and looked back around. Billy was floating in the air, head thrown back in a silent scream, arms and legs outstretched, as if being torn by whatever it was that was inside of him. Everything that had been flying slowly around him now looked like… like a hurricane.
Something cracked right above them. The ceiling had a massive crack right in the middle and it was just then that Ash realized that the walls to the archway to the kitchen were all starting to disintegrate themselves. Because even at a distance it was clear for everyone to see that Billy’s skin was now cracking as powerful light came from underneath. His mouth, nostrils, eyes. They were nothing but waving light.
“Come on!” Duke urged. “This is going down. We have to go!”
Thankfully, the front doors were right ahead, on the other side of a foyer that led to the lush living room they were now in. They threw it open and were met by a black, muscular guy. One of Duke’s guys that Ash had seen sometimes around O’Farrell’s but didn’t know the name of him. He had a gun up, pointing at their heads.
“What the hell is happening?” He barked, letting his gun drop, as they filed out of the house. “We’ve been trying to get in for minutes now, but nobody could break in. What the fuck is going on?”
Duke just clutched the guy’s shoulder on his way out. “Later,” was all he said, right before another screeching scream came from behind them. As soon as everyone crossed the door, it slammed shut behind them on its own accord.
They just looked at each other and kept on their way to safety.
There was a commotion across the street. Around twenty people, plus Duke’s teams. Around nine or ten Mercedes cluttering the sidewalk along the street, up to four or five houses down.
“Wait,” the guy said as they dragged him as far away as possible from the house in a rush. “There’s still someone in there. We can’t leave them.”