by Rob Cornell
The wall opposite the shadow had a massive scorch mark from floor to ceiling. Parts of the plaster toward the center of the blackened wall had crumbled away to show the blackened studs within, as if something had struck there, hard. The mark itself formed a starburst pattern outward from the indentation and left only the wall’s corners unmarked. My father had been found on the floor in front of that wall, body twisted at the waist as if a pair of giant hands had wrung him like a wet rag.
The sight of it made my stomach turn.
They had found Mom against the opposite wall, her back propped against it, her legs splayed out in front of her, her eyes open but completely unresponsive to any stimulus. The only sign she was alive had been the rise and fall of her chest from breathing.
She would remain in that lost state for three years.
The assumption at the time was that whatever had killed my father—something obviously magical, especially considering the residual energy that hung in the air weeks after the two of them had been removed—by “luck” had only injured my mother.
Standing in the room now, imagining the scene as it was that day, I could interpret it a different way. Mom on one side of the small room. Dad on the other. A massive expelling of magical power blasting toward my Dad’s side, creating the scorch mark, but also backfiring to knock Mom out and rattle her brain.
I didn’t need to complete the connection.
Mom did it for me.
She pointed at the blackened wall. “I did that.”
I swallowed and shook my head.
No. It can’t be.
I meant to say it out loud, but my mouth refused to form the words, leaving them to echo uselessly in my skull. My mouth, apparently, had gotten sick of voicing my denial.
Mom pivoted, pointed to the opposite wall. “I stood there.”
Her voice sounded distant and cold, like a coroner at an autopsy describing her findings.
I didn’t know what to say. If I couldn’t deny it anymore, what the fuck could I say? This was worse than anything else that had happened since the day I learned my father had been killed and my mother left only a breath and a heartbeat away from death herself.
Worse than getting infected by vampire blood. Worse than finding myself in debt to a four-hundred year-old vampire in a thirteen year-old’s body. Worse than feeling my own self-control robbed from me while another, even older vampire, used his thrall to command me like a puppet. Even worse than finding out that the woman I had fallen in love with had played a part in the whole damn mess from the start.
No. There was nothing to say.
I moved up behind Mom and wrapped my arms around her. She stiffened at first, then gradually relaxed and started to cry. A few seconds later my own tears screwed up my vision. The triangular shaft of light pouring from the corner of the window broke into a white starburst to match the black one on the wall.
We stood like that for a while. It felt like forever and only a second at the same time.
Mom squirmed loose from my hug and turned to face me. Her face was so pale, it looked practically translucent. The dark circles under her eyes might as well have been bruises.
“Why?” she asked.
My stomached dropped. “You don’t remember?”
She shook her head. “Why would I do that to Walter? To the man I have loved longer than most mortals live?”
I didn’t state the obvious—if she didn’t know, I sure as hell couldn’t answer. I could not, in a zillion years, imagine any sane reason.
“Maybe it will come to you,” I said. “Maybe we just need to let the Maidens’ magic do its work.”
Her eyebrows rose while the corners of her mouth turned down. “You believe me now?”
I glanced at the scorch mark. I knew there had to be some reasonable explanation. There had to be. But I couldn’t ignore the horrible ring of truth to her memory, now that I stood where it had happened.
“I don’t want to,” I said.
She drew the collar of her sweater closed again, and hunched her shoulders. The air in the room had seemed to drop a few degrees, though the mid-morning sun should have begun to warm the air outside.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked.
She turned. The grit of dust and broken plaster on the floor grinded like sandpaper under her soles. “Can I have another few minutes? I’m sorry. I just want…”
“You take as much time as you need.”
“This must be so hard on you,” she said. “You must hate me.”
But I didn’t. Not even close. And it twisted my guts when she said it.
“I don’t want to hear that kind of bullshit from you again.” I scooted around in front of her so I could look her in the eyes. “Got it?”
“But—”
“No. Never again.”
Her gaze searched my face with fierce concentration, as if she were trying to memorize my features down to the slightest sprig of stubble on my chin—which there was plenty of, since I hadn’t shaved in a while.
“I’m so proud of you, Sebastian.”
I wasn’t sure where that had come from, but I didn’t argue the point.
She must have glimpsed some doubt in my expression. “I mean it. You’re only thirty-two, but you have shown a strength I haven’t seen in some sorcerers twice your age.”
I smiled. “I had good teachers.”
She patted my cheek. “Give me a few minutes here, okay?”
The thought of leaving her alone in this room did not settle well. “Mom, maybe—”
“Please. I’ll be fine.”
With a pit in my stomach, I went outside to stand on the front porch, keeping an ear cocked to listen for Mom. The porch creaked under my weight, and I felt the same give to the wood as I had going in. But I chanced staying put so I could get to Mom quickly if she needed me.
A breeze ran through the tall grass, making the blades rustle and undulate. The sound was like white noise, soothing. I closed my eyes and listened to it. Some of the tension that had wrapped around my neck and shoulders relaxed. I wished for a deep, fresh breath of clean air, but the hidden dead critter in the weeds ruined that. After we left, maybe I would take Mom over to the river. We could sit on one of the park benches and stare across the water toward Canada. Get some coffee to keep our hands and our bellies warm.
Take a moment to forget all the damn tragedy we’d suffered over the past several months.
We deserved that much, didn’t we?
Something rustled in the grass to my right.
Not wind.
Something moving through the tangled weeds.
I kept my eyes closed another second, listening for the sound again. Probably a squirrel, though it had sounded bigger than a squirrel. A stray dog? No. The movement had been too furtive for a dog.
Cat, then.
I heard it again, snapped my eyes open, and twisted in the direction the sound came from. For a second, I didn’t see a thing—just long enough for me to doubt my hearing.
Then a cougar leapt out of the grass, bounded onto the porch, and launched itself at me.
Chapter Four
Can’t be a cougar. Not in the middle of Detroit. Not—
That quick thought was all I had time for, then the cougar struck me in the chest with its front paws and knocked me backward. I hit the porch on my back, and the cougar landed on top of me. Between the impact and our combined weight, the porch gave way. The boards broke open like a mouth and gulped us down.
The landing onto the cold, soggy dirt under the porch blasted the air out of my lungs. At the same time, the cougar flexed its claws and ripped open the front of my shirt, raking a burning set of scratches down my chest in the process. Then it stuck its face in mine, its furious gray eyes sizing me up, maybe trying to decide which part of me it wanted to chew through first. It opened its mouth, showing its yellow fangs, and screeched at me. Its warm breath smelled surprisingly sweet.
The initial shock of the cougar’s attack snap
ped loose, and I remembered I was a fucking sorcerer. I drew on my magical energy and fed it with my fear and panic, which gave me an extra boost without having to squander my natural power. I had always known strong emotion could affect the heft or focus of a spell. But my tussle with Logan Goulet, Detroit’s former eldest vampire, had provided a quick lesson on just how effective that force could be, and I planned on a more deliberate use of that trick from now on.
I gathered the stagnant air under the porch, bending the element to my command, then blasted it upward to carry the cougar with it.
The animal twisted and pedaled helplessly as it sailed off the porch and out of my view. I heard it thump to the ground a few feet away.
I shot to my feet, my boots squishing in the wet earth. With a small slice of my conscious mind, I filtered some of my magic into the bloody claw marks down my chest. The pain dissipated instantly, and by the time I hoisted myself out of the hole in the porch and stood on the top of the cement steps, I could feel the itch of healing flesh.
I scanned the ground below for the cougar.
Nothing.
Sure, the grass was tall, but I should have seen something as large as a freaking cougar in there somewhere.
The skin on the back of my neck tightened, and my scalp tingled with the anticipation of another attack. I thought about jumping over the hole in the porch and into the house, but I didn’t want to draw the animal inside with Mom in there. Instead, I called on the air again to surround me and concentrate into a shield. My air shields had taken on automatic gunfire without a hitch. No way a damn cougar would get through.
I scampered down the steps onto the approach and planted my feet for optimal balance. Let the cougar come to me. I would watch it bounce off my shield then torch it with a conjured fireball. That would probably set the grass on fire, but I could deal with that easily enough. I wasn’t really worried about attention from law enforcement. Cops had written off areas like this, much like those who had been forced to flee due to eviction notices or the encroaching blight.
I looked left and right, but still didn’t catch any hint of the cougar’s location.
What the hell was a cougar doing here to begin with? Escaped from the zoo? I hadn’t heard anything about an animal on the loose, but I hadn’t exactly been plugged in to local news lately. Had a few issues of my own to deal with.
Just a few.
A cold prickle ran up my spine. I also felt the familiar buzz of gathering magic.
What the—
I heard the whoosh of something bursting from the grass behind me a second before that something plowed right through my shield and into my back.
I flew forward into the grass and hit the ground. The overgrown lawn crunched under me while the surrounding grass blades curled around me as if they wanted to pull me into the earth. A foot from where my face landed lay a maggot ridden carcass, decomposed beyond recognition, with only a few matted patches of its pelt still remaining.
The smell roiled up my nostrils and gagged me.
When the weight of the cougar slammed onto my back, the taste of my hot-sauced scrambled eggs from breakfast gushed up from my stomach and burned my throat. Magical energy rolled off the overgrown kitty with such strength I felt like I’d touched a live wire. It set my teeth on edge.
Obviously, this was not a cougar. And whatever—or whoever—it was, possessed enough power to blow through my shield as if it were no more than the plain air it had started as.
The cougar dug its claws into me.
I threw my head back and howled, eyes watering from the ripping pain.
I howled again as the beast slowly drew its claws down either side of my spine as if unzipping my skin.
I tried to conjure another shield, but the pain kept tearing into my focus. I tried to gather that pain and use it as magical fuel. That didn’t work either. I simply couldn’t keep together enough of a magical thread to weave a spell with. Meanwhile, the gouges in my back started to burn and sizzle as if the cougar had dumped some kind of poison into each gouge. The intense sting pushed me toward the brink of unconsciousness. The edges of my vision turned dark.
I had time to think that the last thing I would ever see were the maggots weaving their white bodies through the greasy lump of a long dead rabbit or raccoon or whatever had come here to die. Once this cougar had finished ripping me apart, the maggots could make the short trip over to start working on my corpse. They’d probably start with my eyes.
As the pain cut through me and pushed me closer and closer to the black, I thought I heard shouting. I couldn’t make out the words. I couldn’t even put together a coherent thought of my own. I cut myself some slack, though. After all, I was pretty sure the cougar had torn off enough of my back to expose my spine.
Then I thought I recognized the voice.
Mom.
All of a sudden, I felt the cougar’s weight push me against the ground and then lift off of me.
No!
It was going after Mom.
But before I could so much as wonder how to save her, the darkness swallowed me.
Chapter Five
I dreamt of shouting. Of soothing voices. Of promises.
Beeeeeoooookaaaaaay.
Haaaaaangiiiiiiiinnnnn.
Seeeeeebaaaaastiaaaaaaannnnn.
A few times I think my eyes fluttered open. Through a drunken haze of pain I saw a man’s face looming over me. I’d never seen him before. I couldn’t see his hands. He was doing something with them. It tickled. And hurt. And tickled.
I faded in and out. A couple of times I saw Mom’s face pushed in next to the strange man’s. Between their heads I saw a dome light, the kind you found in cars, seated in an expanse of black that stretched beyond my narrowed vision.
I tried to say something. My jaw felt like Styrofoam. My tongue tasted about the same. I tried to talk, but I heard some croaky voice speaking over me. When I realized the noise came from my own throat, I gave up and quickly sank into the darkness again.
A hundred years must have passed before I finally opened my eyes and could keep them open. First thing I noticed was that strange dude watching me with concerned lines drawn over his brow. Next thing was the cool and smooth feel of a hand holding mine. I recognized that hold.
I managed to turn my head and saw Mom looking down at me, her eyes wet, but her mouth pulled into a tight smile. She gave my hand a squeeze.
The third thing I noticed was a complete absence of pain. My back felt sweaty, and it itched a little. But that was it. The cougar attack might as well have been a dream, only I could remember how it felt to have the flesh peeled off my back with vivid certainty. Dreams did not hurt like that.
The man drew his lips into an O and exhaled slowly. “That was too much of a close call,” he said.
I studied his face while the rest of my senses came back online. He had thick, dark gray eyebrows that met in the middle, a few hairs shy of a unibrow. He had a matching goatee, the grayness too smooth for the product of age. I had a feeling his hair had always been that color. His scalp was shaved, but even the stubble had the same shade.
“I’m so very sorry,” he said.
My lips stuck together for a moment when I tried to speak. My jaw felt more substantial than Styrofoam now, but the dry, plastic-y flavor still coated the inside of my mouth. I couldn’t work up any saliva, so I didn’t trust my voice to work very well. I surprised myself, though, with three coherent words.
“Who are you?”
He smiled. A kind smile that reached his eyes but didn’t interfere with the concern in them. It was the kind of smile a doctor might offer at your bedside.
“My name is Markus Hope,” he said. “And I’m afraid I’m the one who gave you those nasty scratches on your back.”
I just about choked on my pasty tongue.
He rested a gentle hand on my chest. “Relax. You’re healed now, but you’ll still suffer some wooziness for a bit.”
I ignored his warning and
tried to sit up.
He let his hand fall away from my chest, not trying to stop me.
“Sebastian,” Mom said.
I got up on one elbow, which quivered when I put my weight on it. I clenched my teeth and fought against flopping onto my back again. This was a point of pride. To hell with his caution. If I wanted to sit up, I could damn well sit up.
Apparently, he didn’t want a chance to say I told you so, because he took my free arm and helped ease me up the rest of the way.
My head spun, and a pit of nausea dropped in my stomach. I pressed my lips together to keep from spewing. I squeezed my eyes shut, but that only made the spinning worse. I opened them and focused on a spot on the floor between my knees. That’s when questions about my whereabouts rose a little higher than how crappy I felt.
Thin red carpet covered the floor. I sensed a sort of hollowness to the floor I couldn’t make sense of at first. When Markus shifted his weight beside me, the room seemed to shimmy. I might have mistaken it as a symptom of my dizziness, but my head was spinning, not rocking from side to side.
I swallowed down my impending upchuck and looked up to take in my surroundings.
Tinted windows. Facing leather bench seats. Black fabric on the ceiling, along with that dome light I had seen during one of my surfacings from unconsciousness. I had thought then that the light looked like it belonged in a car. I had been pretty much spot on. Only this wasn’t a regular car. It was a limo.
A chill washed through me as I remembered the last time I had sat in a limousine. Logan Goulet had nearly brought me with him into vampire land. I had been one bloody taste away from undeath.
My heartbeat kicked like a kangaroo. I scraped my heels against the floor, pushing myself away from this Markus guy. The rational part of my brain got body-checked by panic. I held my hand out as I scrabbled up against the door. Warmth had already coalesced in my palm without my needing to consciously tap my magic.