by David Estes
~~~
“You ever wonder how I found you?” Bil asks me the next day. We’re somewhere in West Virginia, cutting a southeastern track diagonally toward Maryland and eventually to what used to be Washington D.C.—now called New Washington.
I look at Bil to see if he’s being serious. I’ve already asked him that exact question twice, and both times resulted in a huge fight. But that wasn’t him, I remember. At least not the normal him. “Uh, yeah,” I say. “How’d you find me?”
“You know that night on Mount Washington, when I ditched you?”
How could I forget the witch panther, Flora, and her two Hallucinator bodyguards? Getting taken captive isn’t something you usually forget. But I don’t say any of that, I just nod.
“Before I left I put a tracker in the heel of your boot,” he says.
“You did what?” I feel a spike of anger in my chest.
“Would you rather I’d carried out my mission and killed you instead?” he asks. Not waiting for a response, he says, “Sorry, buddy, but at that point I wasn’t sure about you. I wasn’t prepared to kill you, but I didn’t know whether you might switch sides, like President Washington suspected you would. Tracking you was the next best option to killing you, just in case I needed to find you later.”
That makes sense. And clearly it was him making the decisions, not his alter ego. I hate to admit it, but I understand now why he did what he did. “Where were you when everything was going down?” I ask.
“Trying to warn you,” he says. “I hadn’t seen you in days, since the Shifter took you inside the stadium, and I was beginning to wonder whether you really had joined the Necros. But something told me that wasn’t it. Either you were dead—which didn’t feel right—or you were captive. I was still in contact with New America and had been informed that the strike would occur later that day, so I sprang into action. While the witches were on a routine patrol, I managed to jump a Pyro and take him out. I stole his clothes and used a little magic trick—his heat retardant gloves and some rubbing alcohol—to show the Wardens I was a Pyro, and managed to sneak in.”
Major. Freaking. Newsflash.
“You were there?”
“Hells yeah I was there. If it wasn’t for being a Resistor, I would’ve been killed seven or eight times. I even got bit by one of those zombies.”
I pull up short, the beautiful lines of Beth’s chin and lips and nose flashing in my mind. The empty unseeing craters that used to be her eyes. “They aren’t zombies,” I say.
Bil stops, too, looking at me strangely. “Who cares what you call ’em?” he says. “They’re the walking dead.”
“They’re Reanimates,” I say, surprising even myself at how pedantic I’m being. The Reaper did the same thing once, during one of our long conversations.
“I don’t care what we call them. They’re scary,” he says. “And they bite like, no offense Hex, like wild dogs.” Hex cocks his head to the side as if to say, What does that have to do with me?
I let out a deep breath. He’s right. It doesn’t matter what we call them. Beth was never one of them, not really. Xave made sure of that. She was the only one that never tried to attack. She just spoke my name, in that rattling, chilling way. It was her voice, but not her voice.
It wasn’t really her, I remind myself. Just her body—nothing more.
“Where’d you get bitten?” I ask.
“I’m pretty sure you’d rather not see,” Bil says, chuckling to himself.
“I didn’t ask to see.”
“In the butt-ocks,” he says, doing his best Forrest Gump impression.
I snort. “You’re kidding.”
“Alright, I guess I’ll have to show you.” He starts to turn around.
“No no no no no, that’s quite all right, thank you,” I say quickly, covering my eyes in case he ignores me.
Bil laughs. “I was really hoping Laney would be around so I could show her, too,” he says. “Shame she had to go off on her own.”
Thanks for the reminder. “She’d just as soon shoot you as talk to you,” I say. “You’re not exactly in her good books.”
He starts to say something, but I cut him off. “Thanks for trying to warn me of what was about to go down,” I say. “You risked your life.”
“It was more for Laney,” he says, smiling widely. “She may hate me, but I like her. And I was never in any real danger, not with my ska-zillz.”
“Being a Resistor,” I say drily.
“We’re blood brothers,” he says with a wink.
Hex barks. We should keep moving, I think he says. But no, that’s not it. He’s stiff, his black/brown body frozen as if encased in ice. His tail is between his legs, not wagging like usual. His black-capped nose is pointed off the road, toward where there’s some kind of a sprawling business park.
“What is it, boy?” I say, crouching beside him, resting my hand on his dark coat. Hex twists his head around to look at me, his eyes dark, his teeth bared. He turns back to the office buildings and lets out a low growl.
A shout breaks the hazy silence, punctuated by the crisp crack of a gunshot.
Hex vanishes.
~~~
“Where’d he go?” Bil hisses, crouching low beside me, where my dog used to be.
“He does that,” I say. “He’ll find us.”
More gunshots erupt, echoing across the relatively even terrain. Bil and I flatten ourselves out on the highway.
“We should make for the tree cover,” Bil says. “Find a place to hide.”
“Don’t you want to know what’s going on?” I whisper.
“Sorry, my Resistor abilities don’t include stopping bullets. I’d rather face magic than guns any day.” Bil rises up to his knees and starts crawling across the road. I glance at him, tempted to throw a rock at his butt and provide an injury to match his Reanimate bite, but then turn back toward the office park.
Someone dashes along the sidewalk across the front of the first floor offices, a sword swinging from one of her pumping arms, her long, black ponytail bobbing behind her. Her gait is graceful and lithe, as if she’s running on her toes with the wind at her back.
I’d know her anywhere.
The Silent Assassin. Deadly and focused, her narrow Asian eyes seeking her next target. She’s been hunting witches for longer than I have. She’s one of the original members of The End.
And if Silent is here, that means the rest of The End is here, too.
I whistle a breath between my upper and lower teeth and consider my first move. Everything I know about The End cycles through my head. As far as I know, they’re the largest group of witch hunters around. They work for New America, seeking out large pockets of magic-born and calling in coordinated missile strikes on witch strongholds. I’ve seen them in action. Morgantown, West Virginia. Washington, Pennsylvania. And, of course, Heinz Field, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Piles of dead witch and warlock corpses. One of their missiles would have killed Laney, Trish, Tillman Huckle, Hex and I, if not for Trish’s magic-infused scream, which exploded the rocket in midair, saving us all.
What are they doing here? There’s only one likely answer:
Fighting witches.
Adrenaline churning through my veins, I take off, keeping as low as I can, following a side road that twists from right to left into the office parking lot, which stretches between the rows of two-story buildings.
When I reach the first intersection, I peek around the corner. The place is huge, more like a residential suburb than a business park, stretching on for at least ten blocks, crisscrossing roads separating each row of office buildings. Halfway down the first block I find the action, and somehow I’ve managed to come in from the back.
A tall, bearded, grizzly-looking warlock stands in the middle of the road, his arms above his head, palms open, as if he’s appealing to the heavens, to some greater power. His lips are moving.
In front of him are two witch hunters, members of The End, one of whom I re
cognize and the other who’s a stranger to me. The one I recognize is the Mad Sheriff. As his nickname suggests, he’s a cowboy-hat-wearing, boot-stomping, gun-spinning ex-lawman who, when the witch apocalypse hit, broke out of his padded suite in a place called Sunset Mental Rehabilitation somewhere in Texas.
The woman across from him, who I’ve never seen before, has short brown hair and is holding a short knife, gleaming in the sunlight. And she’s cursing Mad S with a string of obscenities so long and colorful I have the urge to cover my ears.
The Mad Sheriff lifts his pistol, and instead of aiming at the spell-muttering warlock, he points it at the other witch hunter, who takes a step toward him, her knife slashing the air in front of her.
What the hell are they doing?
Although I’m too far away to see Mad pull the trigger, I hear the boom and see the kick of the gun in his hand. The woman’s head snaps back, the knife flying from her hand and high in the air, before clattering to the asphalt next to her dead body.
They’re killing each other?
I expect Mad S to spin on the warlock and take him out next, but instead he points the gun at his own head. My breath catches in my lungs.
I see the black, egg-shaped projectile before I spot the witch hunter who threw it. As it arcs through the air, I follow its path backwards to where another familiar witch hunter stands stalwart on the roof, wearing his usual protective eyewear. They call him Eddie X. The X is for eXplosion. And the grenade he tosses does just that, bouncing twice and then bumping against the warlock’s feet, before combusting in a bright pulse of orange flame and a ground-shaking
BOOM!
Smoke fills the street, temporarily obscuring my vision, but as it clears I can just make out the Mad Sheriff on his knees, shaking his head, looking confused. He was just far enough away from the blast to survive it. Beyond him are a blackened circle and the remains of a blown-apart warlock body.
Everything I just witnessed clicks together, forming a clear picture of what I’m facing:
Hallucinators.
The mind-bending witches and warlocks use magic to trick their enemies into seeing what’s not really there, usually to the point where their victims kill their own friends or even themselves, as Mad was about to do before Eddie’s grenade saved his life.
I’ve faced Hallucinators twice. The first time Mr. Jackson had to save me from slashing my own skin to ribbons when I believed there were spiders crawling all over me. The second time I managed to fight off their magic using my Resistor abilities.
Hopefully the third time’s a charm and not a curse.
There are more shouts as forms emerge from the haze. Other witch hunters, most of whom I’ve never seen, new recruits perhaps. The Silent Assassin, her Japanese sword deadly and sharp at her side. And, finally, their leader, the man they call Graves, after his nickname, Gravedigger, from his successful career in mixed martial arts. His arms are stained with tattoos, darker than the rest of his deep brown skin. His biceps and chest bulge against his tight black t-shirt as he barks out commands like a general to his troops.
More forms materialize further down the road. Magic-born. A witch and a warlock. The Silent Assassin, who is helping the Mad Sheriff to his feet, suddenly stiffens, her head snapping upwards toward the sky. Naturally, I follow her gaze to the bright blue sky, so empty there aren’t even any wispy clouds marring its expanse. And yet…
…the Japanese warrior slashes at the sky as if she’s being attacked by some winged demon. A hallucination, plain and simple. The Mad Sheriff ducks, nearly losing his head to a sweeping slash of Silent’s sword. She’s on the move now, dodging and ducking and fighting her way through whatever invisible foe assails her mind. A witch hunter falls beneath her sword, then another, their chests opening up in blood-bubbling streaks.
Graves is the next target, as his hands go to his head, grabbing it on both sides as if trying to hold it in place. No, not holding it, pulling it, as if trying to tear his own skull from his neck. Is that even possible?
The rest of the witch hunters spring into action, but not to attack the warlocks. To attack each other. Caught in the throes of their own hallucinations, they tackle each other, stab each other, and in the case of the Mad Sheriff, even shoot each other.
I’m witnessing a massacre. And as much as I hate The End, I can’t watch them get murdered by the Hallucinators. Maybe they’re not all as evil as their leader. Maybe there’s still hope for some of them.
With the Hallucinators concentrating on whatever fiction they’re pushing into the witch hunters’ heads, now’s my chance.
I spring into action, my sword already out, dashing toward the warlock, who’s facing away from me. Five steps away, four, three, two. Evidently hearing my footfalls, he whirls around, his eyes widening as I slash my sword toward his neck.
He ducks, throwing himself hard to the ground. I’ve got so much momentum that I can’t stop, my feet carrying me over his body, which I leap past, skidding to a stop and spinning to face him. His hands go up and his mouth moves and the ground beneath me cracks open.
As I jump aside, barely avoiding getting swallowed up by the chasm, I watch in horror as red-scaled hands emerge in a burst of flame. Not far behind is the single-eyed head of a demon, its mouth open wide to reveal several sets of knife-like teeth. Pulling the rest of its body, which stands three times as tall as me, from the crack, the freakish demon stands before me and roars.
I’m. Screwed.
Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, something pushes back and a thought pops into my head: Not real.
The ground shakes beneath me as the red-skinned demon stomps toward me, his forked tongue snaking out and cracking like a whip.
Not real.
Another step, another shake of the ground, which feels so real, like an earthquake.
Not real.
The monster is so close I can smell its rancid breath, feel the waves of heat emanating from its fiery red skin.
Not real. The creature is not the enemy. Your own mind is the enemy. Not! Freaking! Real!
I hold my breath and tighten my muscles as the beast swings a wild punch at my head and—
His fist passes straight through me.
There’s a gasp behind me and I let out my breath, fully in control now, the crack in the street disappearing, seeming to suck the imaginary demon with it.
“How did you do that?” the warlock demands as I turn toward him, my magged-up sword feeling as light as a feather in my hands.
I shrug. “Does it matter?”
Still in shock, the warlock doesn’t even move as I stride forward and thrust my sword deep into his gut, pushing the tip all the way through his back. His face, uncomfortably close to mine, goes tense for a long second and then completely slack. When I slide my sword from his skin, it’s slick with his blood, and he crumbles on lifeless legs.
One left, I think, turning away from the corpse.
The final Hallucinator, a witch with long hair that’s half-purple, half-black, is muttering incantations so quickly the entire lower half of her face is twitching.
This is up to me, I think as I start toward the witch.
Movement on the roof catches my attention. Eddie X raises his hand, preparing to throw another grenade.
The witch is on one knee, still alive, her forehead bleeding profusely, dripping into her eyes. She lifts her chin and raises a single hand, her gaze snapping toward the rooftops.
But then he doesn’t. The grenade drops from his loosened grip without being activated, glancing off the roof and tumbling over the edge.
I suck in a sharp breath as time seems to slow down, the explosive falling end over end, spinning, spinning, and then clanking off the hard concrete sidewalk. The grenade bounces once, sending it over the curb, where it rolls across the street before coming to rest against Graves’s unmoving form.
I let out a long breath, thanking the U.S. army or Tillman Huckle or whoever provided The End with that grenade for m
aking sturdy explosives.
And then Eddie jumps.
Chapter Sixteen
Laney
After what is beginning to feel like the longest night in the history of the world, dawn has arrived. The sky is lighter, not fully illuminated by the sun yet, but signaling its impending arrival. As Xave and I make our way to the front of the short train of Necros, birds start singing overhead, as if announcing our arrival.
This early in the morning, I wish they’d just shut the hell up.
When we reach a small clearing we find the makings of a temporary camp: a ring of stones with ashy, charred logs in the middle, the remnants of a long-dead fire pit; a stump next to it, where someone likely sat to cook dinner; extra kindling, never used, in a pile off to the side.
So what? I think. What’s the big fuss all about? Why are we stopping for this? I’m about to voice my questions when I notice the Reaper crouched down, inspecting something.
Xave notices at the same time. “What’s that?” he asks.
The Reaper turns, holding up a bit of cloth, brown and old and tattered. There are what appear to be bloodstains and scorch marks dappled across the front of what I now realize isn’t just a piece of cloth—it’s a coat. I cover my mouth with my hand to hide my surprise.
Because I’ve seen that coat before.
Trying to keep my breathing steady, my eyes vacant, I hide my true thoughts.
Or so I think.
“You’ve seen this before,” the Reaper says.
I look at Xave, who stares at me blankly. Turning back to the Reaper, I feign surprise. “You mean me? No, it’s just a coat, right? I’ve never seen it before in my life.” Any hopes I might’ve had of winning an Oscar for my performance vanish as even I can tell how shaky and too-high-pitched my voice sounds.
“Laney,” the Reaper drones. “Whose coat is this?”
I’m not sure why it would matter one way or the other if I tell him, but for some reason I’m hesitant. After all, according to what the Reaper told us back in Pittsburgh the owner of the coat is supposed to be dead. So I do it. I tell him.