Rick trotted back into view, in the shape of a wolf. His muzzle was coated with blood, his nose flaring frantically, and he barked to get my attention before he ran out the backdoor. Taking my cue, still gasping for breath, I followed.
Standing in the backyard, Sean Duff was outlined by the light of the half moon. Rick was trying to bear down on him, growls of frustration audible over the wind. Duff was spinning his arms in small circles, his eyes screwed up in concentration. Small funnels of wind, miniature tornadoes, formed across the yard, scattering lawn furniture, rocks, and other debris in a deadly torrent.
Duff was either crazy or desperate. Evidently, they had not expected to be met with resistance. He should have been running away as fast as he could, not risking an attack as dangerous as this one. He was every bit as likely to be struck by flying debris as Rick and I were.
That said, I resolved to end this quickly.
Duff hadn’t seen me come outside, his attention focused on Rick. For his part, Rick was doing an excellent job of distracting him; each time the agent tried to move, Rick darted forward, teeth gnashing. Quickly, I knelt down and concentrated on the grisly task ahead of me.
The wind blew crazily, lawn chairs flew around me, Rick snarled, and Duff shouted in frustration. More twisters filled the yard, and time slipped away from me.
I put all of that aside, and focused my will. I reached once more toward the earth below, feeling the hum of energy deep inside the planet. I readied myself, and prepared to release my will, my intent, upon the ground surrounding Duff.
Then I heard a canine yelp of pain, and my heart nearly stopped. My eyes snapped open, and I casted about for Rick. I saw him on the ground, chest heaving, back in his human body. Blood dripped from a wound above his temple. Duff shouted in triumph, and raised his arms toward the heavens to deliver a finishing blow.
I screamed in rage, an inarticulate declaration of fury, and released my will into the earth before Duff could react.
Gravity once again adjusted itself at my direction, focusing its inexorable pull on the area directly beneath Duff. For a moment, he seemed aware that something was wrong. He began to turn around, but did not have time to complete the motion. Within a matter of seconds, the gravitational pull became exponentially more powerful, and Duff collapsed under its pressure. His bones were pulverized, his flesh crushed. Soon enough, he was an unrecognizable bloody smear of gore and human remains against the flattened earth. At the moment of his death, the tornadoes dissipated, and I rushed towards Rick.
“Rick, c’mon, please be okay. Rick,” I begged, kneeling next to him. He was breathing, sucking in great gasps of air, but his eyes were closed. I swept aside a lock of hair to inspect the wound on his head. There was a small cut and a wicked bruise, but not much else. I felt around it gingerly, and thankfully didn’t feel anything that would indicate a cracked skull.
“Talk to me, Goose,” I murmured.
“Fucking, ow,” Rick said. I grinned despite myself.
“Hey. Guess what.”
“What?”
“We won!”
“Hey, look at that. Good job, team. Can you give me a second? I need to fix this.”
I backed away, curious. Rick sat up, and his eyes closed as he concentrated. After a few seconds, I watched as the cut above his temple knitted itself back together. There wasn’t even a trace of a scar. When he was done, he offered me another grin.
“Okay, that’s not fair,” I said.
“Perk of the job, yeah.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here. And, um.” I blushed. “You should probably put pants on.”
“Right. Pants. Pants at a time like this.”
“I’ll make sure Jason is okay.”
I turned and ran back inside, just as Jason was coming back in through the front door. He appeared unhurt, except for the cut on his cheek and a scrape on his forehead.
“Ms. Tress,” he said casually. “I presume you’ve taken care of the other two?”
I nodded.
“Good. We need to go. I have a go bag in my car. The authorities will likely be here shortly. Can we meet for a short time at your house?”
“Yes, that’ll be fine.”
Jason nodded, and shuffled off to his car. Rick returned from the back of the house, freshly re-panted. Sirens began to split the night. We looked at each other, and headed through the front door. Jason joined us at the bottom of the driveway, we piled into my car, and headed home.
***
We spent the remainder of that day making plans. After all, there was work to be done. Days of terror lay in front of me, weeks in which I would question everything I held dear. Us few, just us three, stood against a wave of violence the likes of which the world had never seen. Our odds of success were low, infinitesimal in the scheme of things. But we had to try.
Jason left in the late afternoon. He said that he had a place he could go, and that, soon enough, they would wish they hadn’t driven him from his home. I believed him.
The only comfort we had was that none of us were alone, that we had each other. When the world around you burned to ashes, the only thing that could keep you standing was the person next to you.
My work would begin in earnest tomorrow. That evening, however, belonged to me, and to Rick. As I guided him by the hand to my bedroom, where we would make good on the promise made the day before, I felt that, if I could only hold on to one single thing in this world during what would follow, it should be him.
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Preview of Shattered Focus
Focus Series – Book 3
Available Now on Amazon
When I was seven, my dad took me ice skating on a pond in our old neighborhood. It was early in the winter, but it had been an unseasonably cold autumn, and the water had frozen a few weeks before then. My father laced up my skates for me, an excited grin on his face. He had a permanent limp from a hockey injury he had gotten while playing in college; he now walked with the assistance of a cane. He’d never be able to skate again, but he could experience it vicariously through me.
Carefully, he pulled me up onto my feet, and I staggered over to the edge of the pond, awkward on the skates. I had never done this before—the closest I had ever gotten was the time I had borrowed a friend’s rollerblades for an afternoon. At my old man’s encouragement, I cautiously stepped onto the ice.
Contrary to my expectations, I did not immediately windmill my arms in a futile effort to maintain my balance. Instead, I found myself moving slowly forward, my feet gliding as the blades cut through the ice. My dad, looking on in delight, explained how to do a basic duck walk, shouting advice at me from the shore.
Soon enough—far sooner than I could have possibly hoped—I was scooting across the pond at a reasonable speed, getting more comfortable by the minute. Soccer had been a total letdown for me—I just didn’t have the speed necessary to keep up with the other girls. Softball was a complete bust as well—strikeout after strikeout, and then I got beaned by a line drive while trying to play right field. Maybe ice skating was something that I just had a knack for, something that I could actually learn!
The first warning that something was wrong was a subtle noise, and a strange one. It sounded artificial, like a metal cable pulling taut and vibrating for a second
before relaxing and repeating the process, over and over. To me, it was just an odd sound, and I was having too much fun to care too much. To my father, who had practically grown up on skates on ponds and lakes across the northeast, it was a sign of trouble.
I was on the far side of the pond when he called me back. His voice was remarkably calm, but there was a trace of concern in it. I had no clue what was happening; I had only been skating for a half hour, and was a little disappointed. But I listened anyway, and headed over to him. My one (foolish) rebellion was to move slowly, taking my time. If we were going home, after all, I wanted to enjoy myself as much as I could.
Then came another noise, this one much louder, sounding like Velcro being ripped apart, only a thousand times greater in volume. Suddenly, my father was screaming at me to get to the shore, any shore, to move faster, to get off the ice. His voice was panicked, and his eyes were bulging in terror.
I had listened to my dad the first time, and had moved directly to him, across the center of the ice in a straight line. Unfortunately, that was where the ice was thinnest—though I had no idea at the time. My dad’s voice scared me, the expression on his face adding to my fright, and I picked up the pace as best I could, duck walking as fast as possible.
It wasn’t fast enough. One moment I was gliding towards my father, tiny legs pumping wildly, and the next moment a massive hole gaped open at my feet. I caught a glimpse of Dad sprinting towards me, his bad leg slowing him down, and then I was in the water.
It felt like I was punched in the chest, but I barely registered it. The water was cold, cold enough that it immediately sent me into shock. I was only dimly aware of how bad my situation was; my adolescent mind had practically shut down, almost as though I had become a passive observer of my own fate.
I sank like a stone, my heavy winter jacket, mittens, and ice skates dragging me to the bottom of the pond. I knew how to swim—it was one of the few physical activities that my dad’s injury didn’t impede too much—and I tried to make it back up to the surface. But between the shock to my system and the combined weight of everything I was wearing, I was only able to rise a few inches.
Time seemed to slow down for me; it felt like minutes were passing for every second I spent down there. The pond was only a few feet deep; a grown man could wade through it and the water would only reach his chin at its deepest point. But I was only seven, small for my age, and the surface was agonizingly close, yet infinitely too far.
Approximately thirty seconds—I still don’t know how long I was under—after I fell in, my vision began to darken around the edges. Panicking, I vainly struggled against the greedy water, which didn’t seem to want to let me go.
Reflexively, involuntarily, I inhaled a small amount of water.
In the years since this incident, I’ve read books and seen movies that almost seem to romanticize drowning. I’ve heard people say that it’s not a bad way to go, that it’s peaceful, maybe even painless. Maybe they’re trying to cover up the truth of the matter, or trying to convince themselves that when Uncle Pete died in that boating accident, he didn’t suffer, that it was just like going to sleep.
Well, it wasn’t.
It.
Fucking.
Hurt.
It felt like I had swallowed acid, burning its way down my throat, where it promptly began eating away at my lungs. The only thing I am thankful for is that the sensation didn’t last long. My vision darkened further, and I started to lose consciousness.
Just before I passed out completely, I felt myself yanked upwards by something. Then I blacked out.
The next thing I can remember is shivering in my dad’s car as he drove to the hospital. He had snagged the hood of my jacket with his cane, and pulled me out of the icy pond. A few chest compressions were all that was needed to expel the water from my lungs. But it didn’t get rid of the pain; it felt as though I had gargled with broken glass, and every breath was agony.
We got to the hospital, where I was treated for potential hypoxia, which is basically oxygen starvation. Thankfully, there wasn’t any lasting damage, and I was discharged after an evening under an extremely comfortable electric blanket.
I wasn’t afraid of water after that day; I still swam at the beach without any fear.
But I never did go ice skating again.
The memory of the experience resurfaced strongly as I watched the four Water agents on the monitor. They stood at the edge of a high cliff of ice, ocean water a few feet in front of them, yet hundreds of feet below. Behind them lay a massive expanse of ice, frozen ground stretching out for as far as the eye—or, at least, the screen—could see. Ice behind, and water below, just like seven year old me skating across a barely frozen pond.
Slowly, as the Water agents fed more of their will into the endeavor, I saw the water at the bottom of the cliff begin to freeze. Chunks of ice started to form, clinging to each other as they rose. Agonizingly slowly, great columns of the frozen water ascended from the ocean, dark grey liquid converting to bluish white solid.
After hours of exertion, the ice cap had extended to cover an extra four hundred square meters. To put that in real terms, four human beings used magic to freeze six and a half billion gallons of water. I’d call that a good day’s work.
I heard one of the agents radio back in over the intercom, his voice exhausted.
“All done here.”
The woman next to me, Connie Praeger, the head of the Water faction, answered back.
“Good work, guys. You can come on back home.”
“See you in a bit. Have a latte ready for me.”
Connie chuckled and hung up the receiver. Then she heaved a great sigh, and turned to me.
“Any questions, Nora?”
I shook my head. “Not really. It’s kind of amazing, actually.”
“I just wish it were worth more,” Connie lamented. “The Greenland ice sheet is melting at almost this exact rate every year. We’re literally just fighting for a stalemate, and we just don’t have the resources to do much more than this, not when so many of us have to deal with droughts.”
“Still, you’re doing that much at least.”
“It’s a matter of timing,” Connie told me. “It’s still winter. Accumulation isn’t the problem; it always gets cold enough for the ice sheets to expand over the winter months. The issue is that it melts too much during the summer, and it can’t make up the deficit.”
“So why didn’t you send agents during the summer?”
“We didn’t have any available. There are only eighty-four of us, Nora. When you have millions facing dehydration, starvation, and malnutrition, you’re kind of obligated to help them first. If we could send agents down there a few summers in a row and actually prevent any melting from taking place… well, it might make a serious difference in the long run.”
“That sucks.”
“It does indeed,” she agreed. “I don’t want to push you, but we could really use you in Water. Every other faction has far more active agents than we do.”
“I know, ma’am. I haven’t made a decision yet.”
“When you do, I hope you’ll keep us in mind. You could do a lot of good here.”
“I think you’re right, ma’am,” I agreed. “Have you had any luck with the other initiates?”
Connie scowled. “Two of them joined Air a few days ago. I did manage to convince one of you, a young man named Nicholas, to join Water the day before yesterday. But I haven’t heard from him.”
My blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I haven’t seen or heard from him in two days. He was supposed to report for hands-on training yesterday. He isn’t answering his cell phone or his landline.”
My pulse quickened. This might actually be a lead. “Have you sent someone to check things out?”
“Haven’t had the time. I’ll report it to Gabriel when I get the chance. I’m still hoping he’ll turn up with a hell of a hangover and a fistful of excuses.�
��
“Okay,” I told her, carefully keeping my voice neutral.
“Anything else, Nora?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then you can go for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes ma’am. Good night.”
“Night, Nora.”
I turned and walked out of the Water operations room, heading down the hallway as quickly as I could. I needed to get to my car, to talk to Rick, to make plans.
Three weeks ago, Rick, Jason, and I had uncovered some information. This led us to believe that Focus, the organization of wizards I had basically worked for since I was ten years old, had become corrupted. Of the five factions of Focus, members of at least one of them were involved in a plot that would lead to the deaths of thousands, if not millions of people. Jason, the former head of the Fire faction, had been discovered by traitors from Air, who tried to kill him. The three of us managed to kill them before they could kill any of us, but Jason had a big target on his back. Since then, Jason had beaten a “tactical retreat,” as he insisted on calling it, leaving me on my own to uncover more information during my work with Focus.
Over the next three weeks, I had poked around as much as I could get away with, had asked a lot of questions, had tried to make friends, and had even (to Rick’s chagrin and disapproval) attempted to seduce an Air agent—unsuccessfully (to Rick’s amusement and pleasure). I had found nothing—no hint of impropriety, not a single shred of evidence that anyone in Focus was even working against the organization, let alone any details about what they were actually planning.
Until now.
Focus initiates are true believers. We don’t do these jobs for a paycheck (though we do get paid, and quite well, I might add). We do it because we’re called to it. The stated mission of Focus is to make the world a better place. We don’t even take credit for it—nobody outside of the supernatural community even knows we exist as anything except a run-of-the-mill nonprofit. We join Focus because we believe in the goal, and because we want to be a part of something better, something bigger than ourselves.
Shifting Focus (A Paranormal, Urban, Fantasy Novella) (Focus Series Book 2) Page 7