Destruction: The December People, Book One

by Sharon Bayliss

  His light illuminated the busted Expedition. She could hear splashes and squishes as he moved through the water and mud. Even though he moved close enough that she could hear him breathing and muttering, his light pointed away from him, and she couldn’t see his face or any part of him at all. But he had to be the right man. Not only because no one else would live in a place such as this, but also because she could feel his magic. He had a heavier presence than anyone in her family. She imagined him as a black cloud gliding over the rocks.

  The thought gave her the briefest flash of fear. If she could feel him without needing to see him or hear him, he could do the same for her. She guessed her magic couldn’t be as black or saturated. She had practiced magic for only a little over a month, and he had practiced magic for years. She would look like a wispy breath of steam compared to him. But, still, she was the only living thing for miles, and she was a witch. They say wizards can always sense other wizards in their presence.

  He aimed his flashlight precisely in her direction. He had to feel something. Otherwise, he would have pointed his flashlight into the car first. The rock did its job keeping her hidden… at least, the self visible to the eye. He pointed his flashlight inside the car. He reached his hand through the passenger side window where Emmy had climbed out, and she heard a click and a rustle. He took a white slip of paper out of the glove compartment and examined it under the flashlight beam. Their car insurance slip. Emmy had no idea whether or not the name David Vandergraff had any meaning to him, and she couldn’t see his face for a reaction. Either way, Colter had her father’s name now, and his home address. He folded the slip of paper and put it in his pocket. No going back now. He had to die.

  Then he did something unexpected. He turned off his flashlight. He might as well have disappeared.

  “Did you see that?” Jude asked.

  The rain had lightened, and they headed farther into nowhere on Route 67.

  “What?”

  “It was like… a light. Way off the road over there.”

  David pulled over again. A flimsy lead, but the only thing even close to useful they had run into for a while. Jude fiddled with the map on the GPS.

  “It looks like there’s a road just a few hundred yards up. Go there,” Jude said urgently.

  “Okay.” David’s heart rate quickened. It could be wishful thinking, but he thought he could feel whatever Jude had tracked here. He had the vague sense the two of them weren’t alone anymore. Someone or something was out there.

  Sure enough, they came upon a dirt road. It had the same barely-there appearance as the one Colter had lived on outside of Monahans. Someone had unscrewed the street sign from its pole. Maybe, against all things rational and logical, they had actually found him. But, if Jude tracked Emmy, then she had found him, too. She had beaten them here.

  “Turn off the headlights,” Jude said. “We’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage. He can see us coming.”

  “It’s too dark to drive without them.”

  “Let me drive then.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I can drive without them.

  “You’ll drive us off a cliff.”

  “I can do it. I’ve done it before. I can drive on I-10 during rush hour blindfolded. Trust me.”

  David wanted to argue but hesitated, remembering whom he talked to. “Dear God, you really did that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh fuck,” David said.

  He pulled the car over and switched places with Jude. Jude turned off the headlights. David wouldn’t say it aloud, but Jude’s blind driving impressed. Jude drove slowly but steadily. Then the sound of the tires against rock changed, more of a splash.

  “Stop,” David said.

  “What?”

  “Are we driving through water?”

  “There’s some water on the road, not much.”

  “No. Stop.”

  Jude stopped the car.

  “Flash floods in the desert are dangerous,” David said. “The soil can’t absorb the water, and it rises more quickly than back at home.”

  “Fine, then we’ll walk,” Jude said. The determined Little Leaguer remained somewhere. He wouldn’t give up, even if it meant walking through the desert blindly.

  “Okay.”

  David had never been a Boy Scout. He had no flashlights, no water, and no compass. As soon as he opened the car door, he stepped into water up to his ankles. Of course, he had no spare shoes or socks. He hadn’t brought anything with him but his keys, wallet, and a hunting rifle. And, of course, Jude. David opened the trunk and pulled out his rifle, as much use as it would serve in the dark.

  He turned on the car’s emergency lights. It would drain the battery, but if he didn’t do it, they would lose the car as soon as the lights went off. They didn’t have cell phone service, so if they lost the car, they’d have nothing to help them stave off hypothermia and mountain lions until the sun rose.

  “What are you doing?” Jude asked.

  “We can’t lose track of the car.”

  “But… the light.”

  “We won’t be with the car, so it won’t matter.”

  Jude grumbled something but didn’t argue more. He darted along the unflooded part of the road and immediately disappeared into the now total dark. If David hadn’t been able to hear Jude’s feet against the gravel, he would have already lost him. David scrambled along in his wake, his feet squishing with water with each step. Then, a ball of light shot away from where Jude walked.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  “What was that?”

  “I was just feeling the air, and it was like it caught on fire.”

  Jude raked his hand through the air, and tiny sparks followed in its wake.

  “There’s so much magic here,” Jude said. “Can you feel it?”

  “Yes. Do you think it’s coming from him?” David asked.

  “No. It doesn’t feel like that. It’s like it’s coming from the air. Or it’s in the rocks. The place has extra magic. It would be an awesome place for a wizard to live though, wouldn’t it? It would make all your spells stronger. And if anyone saw anything, they’d think it was those ghost lights.”

  Jude started walking again, slower, perhaps afraid to set off more accidental fireballs. David breathed heavily, searching the horizon for more signs of life.

  “I was thinking something,” Jude said. “Do you think that killing a person would hurt your soul?”

  “Yes,” David said without having to think about it. “Why?”

  “I’m worried about what you said, about Emmy’s soul. If I’m keeping her soul safe, and not her body, then she won’t be able to kill him, will she? Because killing him would hurt her soul. I might not be protecting her at all. I could be putting her in more danger. It doesn’t seem like both her soul and her body can be safe at the same time. What do you think?”

  David’s head hurt, from the cold, from exhaustion, from stress, and he couldn’t wrap his head around the question.

  “I don’t know. All I know is that if we get to him first, she can’t kill him and he can’t kill her.”

  “Do you want me to kill him?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because your soul is still good.”

  David didn’t miss Jude’s implication about his own soul. “It’s my job to do. If I had done it sooner, Emmy wouldn’t have felt like she had to. I’m done asking my kids to take on my burdens.”

  “It’s too late for that, I think,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

  Emmy crouched behind her rock. She had her gun clutched in her hand and mentally reviewed her mother’s instructions on how to use it. You can’t screw around with guns, but if you’re ever in danger, I don’t want you to hesitate, she had said. She took shallow breaths through her nose and felt the air to find his magic. She remembered more of her mother’s words. Only in darkness can you truly see. Only in silence can
you truly hear. She closed her eyes so she would stop trying to see like a Mundane.

  She couldn’t hear his footsteps. That scared her because it didn’t make sense. She shivered so much she feared he might hear the subtle vibration. Only in fear can you truly feel.

  She stuck her fingers in her ears so she would stop trying to hear footsteps. She had to feel with her deeper senses. It worked. The left side of her neck prickled. She felt him there, on her left. And he felt close. She sensed that he stood only a few feet away, looking at her. She still couldn’t hear him. No breathing, no shifting gravel under his feet. She heard nothing but the wind skating across the earth. He must know some kind of spell to cloak himself. If he saw her there, why didn’t he do anything? The fear surged in her again. He wasn’t a rational being. She couldn’t predict his next move.

  Then, he lunged at her.

  She couldn’t hear him, but she could feel the dark cloud race toward her as if it had been caught in a wind. She scrambled to her feet and ran. The scattering of gravel and her own fast breathing distracted her other senses. She couldn’t tell how close he got. She could run fast but didn’t know if it would be enough. For all she knew, he could fly.

  Her leg exploded in pain. She had hit a large rock at full speed. Her face hit the hard ground, and she could feel the dirt embedding itself in her cheek and hands. She couldn’t help but cry out. The anguished bleat didn’t sound like her, but it didn’t matter whether she screamed or not. He could find her now. She reached out to feel her shin, half-expecting to feel bone sticking out. Her bones remained inside, but an egg-sized bump had already surfaced.

  The gun. Where is it? She patted the earth around her on her hands and knees. The pain distracted her from the use of her other senses, but she guessed he stood right over her. Watching her. Biding his time. Why wouldn’t he be? She made as much noise as a rockslide. Then her hand hit something hard and smooth. The gun. She clutched it to her chest again like a teddy bear, but something about it scared her. He had let her find it. Maybe his wizard vision worked only on living things and he simply didn’t see the gun in the dark.

  She stood and had to stifle another scream when she put weight on her leg. The end of the line had arrived. She couldn’t run anymore, at least, not far or fast. Even as she raised the gun, he didn’t move. The clouds parted, and the new moon sky gave off enough starlight to show her the outline of a man standing four feet away from her, staring at her, and saying nothing. She didn’t understand how a man could be so silent. She didn’t even hear breathing. She visualized his heart beating in his chest and tried to feel it, tried to make it her target.

  She pulled the trigger. Click. She pulled the trigger again. Click. Something was wrong with the gun. He moved toward her slowly. Click. Click. She dropped the gun and tried to run.

  He grabbed her by the hair.

  With no options left, she filled her lungs with air and let out a scream that bounced off the mountains, and with it, she unwittingly released a fireball that rose from her chest and shot across the blackness. She wanted someone to find her, although she could tell by the blackness for miles around that no one would hear her scream. He threw her on the ground, and she clenched her fists. Part of her had prepared for this moment ever since he turned off his flashlight. If he got her, she would fight to the death. She would bite, punch, kick, claw, and elbow until he killed her. That was the only way Emmy Vandergraff would go down.

  But he took that last choice from her. He put his hand at the base of her spine, and she went limp. And when all the power had left her, she remembered to pray.

  “Jude!” David shouted. “Jude!”

  He had run too far ahead and had disappeared.

  “Dammit, Jude!”

  He feared Jude would slip away. Disappear. And he’d never see him again.

  “You’re too slow,” Jude said. He had stopped to wait.

  “Are we still on the road?”

  “Sure, it’s right there.”

  “It’s still so dark… and quiet,” David said.

  “So?”

  “If she was here, wouldn’t we have seen or heard something by now? We’ve been going down this road for a while.”

  Jude pointed excitedly as if he had spotted Santa’s sleigh. “Look!”

  David whipped around. A little trail of light faded into the horizon. Then, in the opposite direction, he saw another one. A basketball-sized globe of light hovered a few feet above the ground, then shot sideways before it diverged into two balls and then disappeared.

  “Is that what you saw that made you want to stop here?” David asked.

  “Yeah. I saw a light like that.”

  David shivered. Now that he had stopped walking, the air had grown colder. His jacket and the box of ashes within provided little warmth.

  “What?” Jude asked.

  “It’s just… what do you think that was?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know what it’s not. It’s not flashlights, headlights, or lights in a house. If I’m not mistaken… they’re the Marfa lights. Ghost lights. A mirage caused by temperature gradients or UFOs, depending on who you ask.”

  “What are you saying?”

  That they’re completely lost. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud. “We’ll keep going. This road has to lead to something; that’s assuming it’s really a road and not a dry river bed.”

  “It’s a road,” Jude growled back. “We’re close.”

  David followed Jude at a jog. The faint light given by the stars illuminated his outline, and he kept him in sight even though his lungs seared from panting in the cold air and a stitch in his side made him want to double over.

  Then Jude stopped. He stared at something in front of him.

  “What is it?” Jude asked.

  David gave his eyes a moment to make the most of the tiny amount of light. They had come to a massive hole in the earth. Limestone had been cut out in giant blocks, giving the slopes of the hole a stair-step appearance. David scanned the area inside and around the quarry and didn’t see any signs of an active dig. No construction equipment, no Porta-Johns, no foreman’s trailer. He saw no vehicles or any other sign of man.

  “It’s an old quarry,” David said.

  “I don’t understand. Does he live here?”

  David paused before answering. Even though the man was a snake, David didn’t think he lived under a rock. And he would need a vehicle of some kind to make it out here.

  “No,” David said finally.

  Jude kicked the ground, causing gravel and sparks from his magic to spray out in front of him. “No. This isn’t right. I know we’re close. I can feel her.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you did your best.” Enchanted Rock had called to David and Crystal. Perhaps that had happened again. The magic of the place drew Jude here, not Emmy. “It could be the magic from the Marfa Lights, whatever they are. That’s what you feel.”

  Jude sat down at the edge of the quarry and wrapped his arms around his knees. David didn’t remember him looking so much like a child, even when he was one.

  “We failed?” Jude asked as if he had just learned the word. “No. Magic is about believing the impossible is possible. If we believe we can find her, we will.”

  “We’ll keep looking, but we have to go back to the car. We need to drive back to Marfa where there are cell phone towers. That way I can call your mom. Who knows, Emmy could even be back home right now.”

  “She’s not.”

  Jude’s breaths became jerky. He cried and tried to do it quietly. The sound make David hurt from his head to his gut. He hadn’t heard his son cry in more than ten years.

  David sat next to him, not quite sure what to do. “Jude…”

  “Leave me alone, please.”

  atrick had never stayed awake past four in the morning until tonight. He once stayed up until after three one summer night when he snuck out of bed to play a video game he had been addicted to at the time
, but he didn’t feel tired tonight. Or, perhaps, he’d never felt more tired. But he didn’t feel curl up in bed and rest tired; he felt I’ll never sleep again tired.

  Samantha had fallen asleep an hour ago, curled up on the couch next to him. Her painted toes pressed against his leg. He didn’t know if she didn’t want to sleep in Emmy’s room anymore or if she had simply gotten so tired, she passed out where she sat, but it didn’t matter. He liked it this way. He had put a blanket over her and sat at her feet. She didn’t need twenty-four hour guard duty, at least now that Jude had left, but it made Patrick feel better. If he could work it out so he could stay awake for the rest of his life to watch her sleep, he would.

  For hours he sat there and then occasionally visited by Mom to check if she was okay. She gave a sarcastic, “Yes, I’m awesome. How is your day going?”

  Perhaps she thought his staring into space for hours was a weird way to cope. Mom had been flitting around the house doing ridiculous tasks such as addressing Christmas cards for next year. “I have all the stuff out now,” she had said. “I can’t believe I never thought to do this before. This is so smart.”

  Then she baked a pecan pie at midnight, followed by three enchilada casseroles she put in the freezer. All of this punctuated by calling Dad, Emmy, and Jude over and over and over as if she wanted to be the one-hundredth caller in a radio giveaway. None of them answered. Their phones didn’t even ring, just went to voicemail. Patrick couldn’t imagine any reason why Dad would turn off his phone tonight, and simply the fact that it didn’t make sense terrified Patrick.

  He didn’t stare into space because he had gone crazy. He was paying attention. As stupid as his gift of one-second-prophecy was, he still wanted to know. However, waiting for prophecies didn’t work like it did in the movies. He couldn’t tell what thoughts and images came from his own brain and what might be a message. After all, he couldn’t watch his thoughts like a movie. He thought his thoughts. He wrote the movie. He tried to think about Emmy and picture her surroundings. He had a vague sense of fear, but he couldn’t picture anything. In fact, thinking of Emmy made his mind go completely black and silent. He had an idea of what that might mean, but didn’t even want to think it. He had gotten several other images throughout the night—a rushing stream, a ball of fire, and most recently, a pair of giant black wings.