Sure enough, he passed through a clearing, and found an ice cream truck. The brightly-colored menu had faded, and brown pine needles carpeted the roof of the truck. The truck appeared empty, but he had no desire to double check. The truck had a dark and dangerous feel. One he couldn’t explain, but he knew it was wrong. Misplaced.
He continued walking, and found more lost vehicles. An empty, battered school bus that might have sat on the bottom of a lake for a decade. An ambulance. Old cars with broken windows and gutted engines. He couldn’t imagine why they would be here. He could feel the wrongness. Fear. His fear, or a fear that came from the air itself, it permeated everything.
He decided to pray then. He didn’t know what to say, so the prayer became wordless. An acknowledgment of God. He knew God didn’t need words to hear him anyway. He knew what went on. He knew what would happen. And He knew what Patrick should do. Patrick wanted to pray for safety, but he didn’t know if that was God’s plan. Maybe Patrick needed to be in danger to save the girls, even die. So, no matter how scared he felt, he wouldn’t pray for safety.
He felt her presence before he saw her. A woman, waiting by a rusted tow truck. She walked toward him and smiled. He should have found her beautiful, because by all visible signs, she was. Tall, and graceful, and glowing with life. But she didn’t seem beautiful to him. She seemed wrong, broken, repellant.
“Julie?” Even as he asked it, he knew she wasn’t Julie. She looked similar, with reddish blonde hair and green eyes, but five or six years older than Julie. And although they looked similar, this didn’t look like the girl from the photo.
She shook her head, still smiling. “No,” she said.
“What are you?” For some reason, “what” came out instead of “who.”
“I am everything.”
When Patrick didn’t reply, she went on.
“You see, you are one thing. You are the perfect version of that one thing, I admit. But still one thing. One brief, fleeting moment in time. And no matter how perfect that moment might be, we all know perfect moments don’t last. They may linger as memories, but time ravages them all. You are one perfect moment, but I am every moment, of every day, of every year, for all eternity.”
“Where are Julie and Evangeline?”
She laughed. “I see. You’re here to save them. Am I right?”
Her twinkling laughter made him feel nauseous. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Aww, aren’t you sweet? And handsome. I think, even more handsome than your brother. Especially, when you have a few more years on you. Too bad I won’t get to see that. Follow me.”
Patrick didn’t move.
She cocked her eyebrow. “Well, you could go back the way you came. But that wouldn’t be very heroic, would it?”
Patrick followed her. A house loomed between the trees, as misplaced and broken as the rest of the refuse.
avid headed toward the place that made the most sense. The gas station where Julie and Evangeline had disappeared. If something horrible had happened to one of his sons, it happened in that damn forest.
“We’re being followed,” James said.
“I know.”
David glanced in his rearview mirror. A royal blue Prius had followed them for some time now, a royal blue Prius containing Thea Prescott. He couldn’t get a good look at her from the mirror, but he could feel her magic and could make a guess. He didn’t see anyone else in the car with her.
“Who does she think she is?” James asked. “Stalking two dark wizards all by herself?”
“Maybe just she’s headed to the same place we are.”
James scoffed. “I don’t know.”
“Normally I wouldn’t be concerned about a lone, middle-aged woman, but I know better. If she does plan on attacking us, what do you think she will do?”
“Hard to say. If it was hand to hand combat, she’d use some kind of fire or heat. But there are plenty of other ways to attack. More indirect ways. She could cause us to be in a car accident, for example.”
“How do we stop that?”
“Don’t worry. I got it under control. You drive.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m already doing it. I have been since I sensed her close by. Using a repellant spell. Her magic probably can’t penetrate the shield.”
“What do you mean, ‘probably?’ “
“If she’s a better wizard than me, she could find a way around the spell. I doubt she can. But I’ve learned not to underestimate people. Especially, petite kindergarten teachers driving a Prius. She’s got danger written all over her.”
David didn’t know if James joked or not. They had gotten closer now, and David spotted a plume of black smoke on the horizon. His throat and stomach constricted at once. He feared he was too late. At least something already burned. He promised himself—if any summer wizard had harmed any of his kids, he wouldn’t worry about misdirection spells anymore. He would murder John and Thea Prescott, and anyone else who threatened them.
“Smoke,” James said. Like David couldn’t fucking see it. David thought he could smell it seeping in through the air conditioner vents. David’s hands shook on the steering wheel and he hoped James didn’t notice. He had to drive. He had to be active. He couldn’t stand sitting even if the car hurtled forward at ninety. He needed his own foot on the gas.
A car coming from the other direction slammed on its brakes and did a squealing high speed U-turn on the highway. David thought he recognized it as the Prescott’s Honda Pilot. Before he could react, the SUV sped up and rammed him. He heard the bumper crunch and the glass break before he registered what had happened. His brother’s car skidded into oncoming traffic and an eighteen wheeler was seconds away from pulverizing them when the car rushed forward at unnatural speed and off the road. The airbags inflated as the front bumper wrapped around a pine tree.
David’s heart hammered and his head hurt. He felt blood trickle from his temple.
“James?” David asked.
James had flecks of blood on his forehead and face as well, but could still crawl out of the broken passenger side window with the unnatural strength and flexibility of a giant spider.
Once he got out, he looked back at David. “You stay, I’ll go.”
David tried to open his own door, but it stuck. David pulled at the handle and shoved his weight against the door, but he couldn’t budge it, and he didn’t know why. He thought James’s protective spell had pushed them out of the way of the eighteen wheeler. Maybe the protective power of the spell had lingered.
David heard two gunshots.
In response to the sound, David crawled out of his own window with a lot less grace. He put deep cuts in his hands and legs in his rush to see where the shots had come from.
Then it felt like a dream. It had all happened so fast. In one moment, he sat next his little brother in the truck. And now, he looked at him lying face down, blood soaking the parched earth around this head. This couldn’t be real. He had wandered into a nightmare, that was all.
Thea, also on the ground for some reason, reached a shaking hand toward James’s body.
“John, no,” she said.
“He went after you. He was going to hurt you.”
David knew he should pay attention to the man with the gun. He should look up. He should move. He should fight. He should run. But he could only watch the stain of blood around his brother’s head grow larger. Lying there dead, he transcended time. He was the little boy David had once tried so hard to protect. He was the grown man who had stepped out of the car first, this time to protect David. And he was the old man he would never become. The one that should have grown old with the man he loved.
David finally looked at John. He still held the gun. His hands shook and he looked pale. He had been staring at James’s body too, until he felt David’s glare on him.
“He attacked you,” John said in a wavering voice. “I had to.” David assumed John spoke to Thea, but he kept his eye
s on David.
John pursed his lips and squared his shoulders, steeling himself. David didn’t fear being shot. He didn’t fear anything. He felt numb. He felt gone. It wouldn’t surprise him if he saw his own body bleeding on the ground.
John stood several yards away. Despite his lack of training, perhaps David could find a way to attack with magic, but he knew a bullet would be much more…decisive.
“John. No,” Thea said.
David felt a rush of heat. The heat rippled the air like an invisible explosion. He thought his eyelashes might have seared off. When the heat passed, John was on the ground and Thea stood over her husband. She had his gun, but held it limply at her side.
Thea tossed the gun in David’s direction. David looked at the gun sitting in the straw-like grass, feet from him. The numbness had started to pass, and his hands trembled. He felt grief saturating his body. Thea’s actions made no sense, but he didn’t care. He moved toward his brother and felt like he had floated there, hovering above him as a ghost.
He wanted to touch the body. He wanted to feel the heat of his brother’s body before it left forever. The warm blood soaked the knees of his jeans as he kneeled next to him. He pressed his head into his brother’s shoulder.
Then, Thea grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up. She pressed the gun into his unwilling hands.
“What do you want?” David’s voice sounded thick, as if he spoke under water. He could barely speak, let alone understand why she handed him a gun. He looked over at John still passed out on the ground. The man should die. David should kill him right now. Was that what she wanted? He didn’t want to leave his brother’s side. Grief had surpassed rage. He wanted to wait for the warmth to pass, for the bleeding to stop. He had missed out on so much of James’s life. He wanted to be there beside him for every moment of his death, even though could tell from the gaping hole in his skull that James’s life had ended as soon as the bullet hit.
“I’m tired of you not fighting back,” Thea said. “There is no sport in it.” Her tone didn’t match her words. She sounded as if she held back tears of her own. “I’m tired of not getting credit,” she continued. “I’ve done so much to you, and you don’t even see it. I was the one who burned down your housing development in Tangled Woods.” She laughed a shaky laugh that sounded more desperate than evil. “I ruined your business. You lost your house, your money, and your dignity. And I did it all just to spite you.”
David stood to face her, the muscles in his body spasming in strange places, like his forearm and his jaw.
“But that wasn’t enough,” she continued. “I wanted to hurt you more. So, I set your house on fire, with you and everyone you love inside. I wanted you and your children to burn. I wanted them to scream. First afraid…fearing death. Then, begging for death to stop the pain. I wanted my fire to rip the flesh from their bodies, and leave them nothing but charred bone and ash. I wanted to send you and your babies to Hell where they belong. Hell…where your little brother is now burning.”
She glanced at the gun in David’s hands. “So, knowing this, there is only one thing to do. You will kill me. You, David Vandergraff, will kill me, Thea Prescott. And then, the prophecy will be fulfilled.”
This last part sounded too formal, too specific. It reminded him of the spell Rachel Colter had cast. The one that destroyed the talisman of protection over her brother. Thea wanted to cast some kind of spell.
David dropped the gun and grabbed Thea by the neck and throttled her. “Why do you want me to kill you?”
“No…” she said between gasps as he restricted her air supply. “The gun….blood…there must be blood.”
“Why do you want me to kill you?” he asked again. His mind swirled with darkness. He wanted to kill her. She deserved to die. She had to die. But he didn’t trust her. Some of what she had said had been true, but some of it had been a lie. But his senses had become clouded, so he couldn’t sort it out. The hate and rage inside him erupted from his hands around her neck. He could feel her going cold.
“No…” she spluttered. “Blood…please, blood.”
David could feel death spilling from his own hands. Not by repressed oxygen, but from something deeper. Just pure death, coming from inside him, and saturating the little woman’s body. Her eyes rolled back and he noticed white flecks in her eyelashes. Ashes.
He released her and she crumbled to the ground, but he could still see her chest rising and falling. He hadn’t taken her life. He looked up to see that the fire had eaten its way through the drought-ridden forest quickly, igniting the dry trees with vigor. The smoke had taken over the whole sky, and the black cloud rising over the forest reminded him of a massive thunderhead. It blotted out the sun. He heard sirens.
Thea grabbed him by the ankle. “Kill me,” she said again, in a strangled whisper. “With the gun.”
He shook her off. He turned back to his brother and squeezed his hand one last time. He left the gun on the ground and ran towards the flames. Thea could have shot him in the back, but he knew she wouldn’t. He could read people. And she had the most complicated intentions and motives of anyone he had ever met. He had no clue why she had attacked her husband, and then begged him to kill her. But he knew she wouldn’t kill him.
He had to get to his kids. He ran along the road, limping. He hadn’t realized he had hurt his leg in the accident until he started to run. He wouldn’t get to the fire fast enough this way. Thea’s Prius sat by the side of the road, with its royal blue paint untouched by the accident.
Hating having to move backwards when his body wanted to fly towards the smoke, he limp-ran back toward Thea. He wished he could fly. Wizards in movies could fly.
Thea cowered when he ran back at her, still on the ground, but she looked at the gun and looked back at him hopefully. Maybe she thought he had changed his mind.
“Give me your keys.”
“You’ll have to kill me for them.”
David lunged at her. She didn’t have a purse, so he hoped she had the keys in her pocket. Despite wanting him to kill her, she fought back, kicking and scratching at him as he tried to get to her pockets. A lot more vicious than her little body would suggest. He tried to subdue her with magic, but she was better. She resisted his dark magic violently, trusting another wave of toxic heat toward him. She reminded him of a frightened animal shooting poison at a predator.
David had to scuttle away, but only for a moment. He turned toward her again. “Give me the damn keys. All I want is the keys. We don’t have time for this. It’s a distraction. Distraction. Distraction.” He chanted the word a few times and knew he sounded crazy. Distraction was the only word that could get him to leave his brother’s body. He needed to find his sons.
David turned and looked at the smoke again, and when he looked back at Thea, her eyes were on the sky too.
“My babies are in there,” she said.
As soon as John roused, his head burst with pain. His whole body felt dried out, and he half expected to see leathery claws instead of hands. He never knew what she planned to do anymore. He’d had his eyes on the dark wizard, and never thought to defend himself against her.
He smacked his lips, trying to generate saliva. It took him a moment to remember what he had done. It didn’t fully hit him until he saw him lying there. Face down, in a pool of his own blood. John might have vomited if he any fluid left in his body. He trembled instead, the pain in his head intensifying.
This was her fault. He did this for her. Because of her.
Only official vehicles remained on the road. Perhaps they had closed the road because of the approaching wildfire. He had cast a concealment spell around them when they approached the dark wizards so nosy Mundanes wouldn’t bother them. The spell continued to work, and cars sped by as if he and the dead man were invisible. He knew the spell would make it so no one would look over, or if they did, they wouldn’t care about what they saw. It would slip in and out of their mind with no lasting effect. He didn’
t want anyone to see what he had done, but he could hardly remember ever feeling so lonely. His entire world had shifted to the point that the sky above him might shatter. But no one cared. No one noticed.
He hadn’t realized how vividly he still remembered that night. But when he saw the dark wizard knock Thea to the ground, the images flashed through his head again.
John and Thea had travelled the world together. They had visited countries few others would. Countries torn apart by war and poverty. Dangerous places. Places where women were still treated like property. Places where Westerners could be killed just by taking a step in the wrong direction. But they had been brave. They had been careful. They were there to do good. To give vaccinations. To teach the children. That goodness protected them, or he’d thought it had.
The true danger lurked closer to home, and found them on June 21st, 1993. The summer solstice. He knew that wasn’t a coincidence. That had been part of the fun. Part of the joke.
John and Thea had gone to the grocery store. They bought food to bring to a solstice gathering later that night. Thea had planned on making strawberry pie. He remembered this because when the attack happened, the strawberries scattered all over the floor. The strawberries never made it into pie. Instead, they grew blue fuzzy mold. After the attack, he would find them everywhere, serving as a constant reminder. A moldy strawberry under the couch. A dried strawberry tucked under a rug. Smashed strawberries would never come out of the damn carpet.
They had left the door of their apartment ajar as they brought in the groceries. Five winter wizards took their chance. Burst in without warning.
They beat him. They raped her.
For no other reason than because they existed. Beauty and life and happiness and the light of angels filled Thea to the brim. And they hated her for it. They wanted to take it away.
And he failed to do anything to stop it.
Watch Me Burn: The December People, Book Two Page 19