by A. Q. Owen
I shoved the tip of my blade forward, thrusting it through the base of his neck and then yanked it out as quickly as it had entered. His forward momentum stopped suddenly, and he froze in place. His fingers dropped the sword to the floor and grasped at the mortal wound in his neck as it leaked his life’s blood down his chest. The thick crimson liquid splattered on the floor as he stumbled backward toward the window.
I watched as his right heel caught on the floor behind him. He lost his balance and fell back, his shoulders and back striking the glass first. The window shattered, and a moment later his feet followed his body down into the night.
I rushed over to the window and looked out. He was lying lifeless on the ground, his head and arms twisted at grotesque angles. I turned around and looked at the man on the bed. He wasn’t moving anymore, and his screams had gone silent. The mattress, sheets, and blanket were completely soaked in blood.
I didn’t know what time it was or how long I’d been able to sleep, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I had to get moving. Dark outside or not, staying at the inn was no longer an option.
I dressed quickly and gathered my things before stepping out into the hallway. I looked both directions and was relieved to see the corridor was still clear. After all the noise, I figured at least one or two patrons would have come out of their rooms to see what the source of all the commotion might be.
There was no reason to stick around and find out if they would or not. I ran down the hallway to the stairs and hurried down the first flight. Then I heard the sounds of footsteps and voices coming up from below.
I knew it was too easy.
I quietly opened the door to the second floor and closed it gently behind just as the men in the stairwell rounded the corner to the flight just below me.
I kept my weight against the door and listened as they rushed by on their way up. One of them said something about the bitch in 311. I thought it might be the innkeeper, but there was no way to know for sure without looking and I certainly wasn’t going to do that.
The second I heard the door above slam shut, I charged back out into the stairwell and ran down the steps two at a time.
I reached the lobby and sprinted toward the door. I was almost there when a man’s voice halted me in my tracks.
“Don’t move another inch!” the man shouted.
I slid to a stop and stayed put. I didn’t need to turn around. From the sound of his voice and the location from where it came, I knew who it was.
“Turn around nice and slow,” he said in a thick country accent. “And keep your hands where I can see ’em.”
I did as told and shifted my feet, inch by inch, until I was facing the innkeeper. He was holding a crossbow, pointing it directly at my chest.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. “I paid you for my room.”
“That’s true,” he said with a nod, “but I figure, a young girl like you with that kind of weapon and that much loot must be some kind of a criminal. Seeing as you’re down here, I suppose you must have avoided the sheriff’s men.”
Sheriff? I’d heard stories from my parents about a local warlord the people called the sheriff. He was anything but law abiding. Crooked to a T, he terrorized the outlands, forcing people to pay heavy taxes to stay under his umbrella of protection.
He was no better than the bandits that roamed the forest paths, maybe even worse. As soon as society began to crumble, this so-called sheriff took advantage of the chaos and formed his own sort of government, putting himself in charge of it all as a kind of monarchy.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You can just let me walk out of here, and I’ll never come back.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, missy? See, I’m thinking I take that money from you and turn you in to the sheriff for a handsome reward. A little double dip, if you like.”
I sensed the guy had an itchy trigger finger. I could see it trembling on the weapon, almost as if he was hoping I’d try something so he could kill me right then and there.
I closed my eyes for a second and then opened them again, taking in the entire lobby. I remembered what Darius had told me about feelings, thoughts, and how the two combined to produce miraculous things.
I could really have used one of those little magical miracles right about then.
“Put your sword on the floor, nice and easy,” the innkeeper said.
Footsteps thundered down the stairs as the men he’d sent up returned from the room.
Fire, I thought. I need fire. No. That’s not what Darius said. He said if you need something, you won’t have it. Appreciate it. But how can I appreciate something that isn’t here?
I recalled what he said about imagination, using the power of the mind to put yourself into a place where it felt like the thing you wanted was already there.
The footsteps drew closer.
I closed my eyes and thought hard about what it would be like to create a fireball and hurl it at the innkeeper. Try as I might, I couldn’t conjure the feeling.
My eyes opened, and I saw the men’s boots rounding the last corner of the stairs. I couldn’t do it. I was no magician or miracle worker. Right at that moment, I’d settle for being fast as lightning. I could make a move, catch the crossbow bolt, and take down all the men coming after me.
My heart started pounding at the thought, and I felt something strange course through my body. There’s no other way to explain it than some kind of pulsing in my veins.
I looked down at my hands. My fingers were perfectly still. I twitched my right hand to see if I could control my movements. It blurred right in front of me.
“What are you doing? I said take your sword and put it on the floor!” The innkeeper’s voice boomed through the lobby.
Three men stopped on the main floor and waited by the stairs, watching me with cautious excitement.
They clearly weren’t accustomed to seeing young women in this area.
I looked up at the innkeeper and shook my head. “I think I’m going to keep my sword. Tell you what, though, if you put down that crossbow and tell your friends here to back off and let me leave peacefully, maybe I won’t kill you all right now.”
The puzzled look on the innkeeper’s face said it all. He started chuckling. The other three immediately joined in, laughing loudly.
“You’ll never make it through the door, sweetie. Now put that thing down, or I’ll put a bolt through that pretty little neck of yours. And I really don’t want to do that. After all, me and the boys would prefer to keep it clean…for now.”
“Have it your way.”
I turned around and started for the door. He pulled the trigger. The cold feeling zipped through my body faster. I spun back toward the desk and saw the bolt flying at me. It was as if the thing was moving in slow motion. I stabbed at it with my hand, wrapped my fingers around it, and snatched it out of the air.
Then everything sped up again.
The innkeeper stared at me like he was seeing a ghost. The other men stopped laughing and shared his bewildered gaze.
I flipped the bolt around in my hand, still feeling the strange sensation in my veins. Then I reared back and flung the projectile at the innkeeper.
The sharp tip sank deep into his right eye before he even realized what happened. He squealed and shrieked, grabbing at the wound before he fell to his knees.
The other three pulled out their swords and ran at me.
The first was a guy with a shaved head and tribal tattoos etched onto his neck and skull. He swung his blade with reckless abandon, left then right and back again, trying to hack me to pieces.
I parried the first, deflected the second and third, and then took a step toward him, jumped in the air, planted a foot on his shoulder, and flipped over him. On the way down, I drove the tip of my sword through his back. The blade stuck out of his chest for a second until I jerked it out of his torso to take on the next guy.
As the first attacker fell to the floor, the
other two split up to take me on from opposing sides.
I kept my head on a swivel, watching one then the other, slowly spinning in a circle as they danced around me, prying for a weakness.
The one to my right must have felt like he found one because he stabbed at me with the tip of his weapon. I knocked it aside easily and slashed his arm as I drew my blade back to deflect the attack I sensed coming from the other direction. I dropped to one knee, spun around, and raised my sword flat just in time to block the second guy’s attack as he chopped the edge of his weapon toward my head.
I swept my free leg around and caught his right heel. The force knocked him off balance and sent him sprawling backward. His arms flailed as I sprang from the ground and rushed him.
Again, things slowed down as I charged the enemy. He tumbled backward in slow motion as I jumped through the air and kicked him in the chest—once, twice, a third time—until things sped up again and his back struck the wall.
He slumped to the floor, gasping for air. The sword in his hand dropped next to him. I touched his neck with the tip of my blade and stared into his vapid eyes.
I heard the other man mutter something unsavory about me under his breath, and I turned in time to see him reach his arm back with a dagger in it. I put up my hand and felt a rush of cold pulse through my arm. Suddenly, the molecules in the air swirled around and in an instant formed a wall of ice in front of me.
He couldn’t stop his throwing motion, and the dagger smashed into the ice, harmlessly driving its tip into the frozen shield.
I looked at the bizarre anomaly while subconsciously driving my sword’s tip through the neck of the man who still sat on the floor. He gurgled for a second, and I felt his legs kicking while he struggled to remove the weapon—like that would help.
Then I yanked the blade out of him and stepped around the ice wall.
“What the hell?” the last man asked. “You’re a witch!”
“Just a minute ago you were calling me something else that rhymed with that,” I said. “And no, I’m not a witch.”
“The hell you aren’t.”
He took off toward the exit. I held out my hand again, and several icicles formed in midair. I shoved my hand forward, and the ice flew across the room. The deadly points sank into his back and neck, driving deep into his flesh.
He yelped for a second before slowly dropping to the floor in mid-stride. Blood oozed out of the wounds as I stepped toward him. I hovered for a second, staring down at him as he writhed in agony.
“Witch,” he said again.
I shook my head. “I told you. I’m not a witch.” I raised the blade and swept it through his neck in one clean cut, removing his head from his body.
The lifeless eyes stared at the far wall as blood spurted from arteries and veins, pooling instantly around the corpse.
I wiped off the blade on his shirt and shoved it back into the sheath, still uncertain about what was happening to me. I was sure about one thing, however: whatever was going on had given me a power I’d never felt before.
10
I didn’t hang around the village long after the blood storm at the inn. The last thing I needed was a bunch of angry townspeople coming after me with flaming torches and sharpened farming tools.
I retrieved Billy and raced out of town until I could no longer see the flickering glow of the streetlights, and then slowed him to a trot.
Once we were at a casual pace, I started thinking about what had just happened. It’s hard to explain except that I just sort of felt those strange things into being. On top of that, it was as if once I knew I could perform one miracle I realized I could deliver another more easily.
I’d moved so fast I caught a crossbow bolt. Now that the moment was over and I had a chance to ponder what happened, things started swirling in my head. The forest twisted and turned to my left, and the mountains to my right seemed to grow taller and taller, like some kind of demonic monster.
I snapped my head back and forth to shake off the sudden rush of vertigo.
“Get it together, Eve,” I said to myself. “Don’t overthink it.”
How could I not overthink it? I’d just conjured ice out of thin air and moved faster than a flying arrow.
My heart sank. I needed Darius. He could give me answers to all these questions. I feared that without him I’d never learn what was happening to me.
I rode for hours as the moon gradually made its long journey across the sky to the far horizon. At one point, I thought I heard something coming in the forest, another vampire perhaps. It turned out to be nothing, probably just a woodland animal.
After what seemed like forever, I reached the crest of a hill, and Billy and I rounded the top, the lights of the city coming into view.
I imagine back in the days when we had electricity it must have been a spectacular sight to behold. I remembered going there when I was younger. My parents took me to the zoo, the amusement park, baseball and football games. Electricity meant civilization. Being under those untold millions of lights, being in the glowing, throbbing heart of the city, I felt alive.
Thoughts about those times brought back other memories, ones of friends and relatives who would come with us on short trips to the city. We’d load up the cars in a convoy and drive the hour south. We kids brimmed with excitement as we anticipated what fun things we’d encounter.
As I stared out at the darkened skyline, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to my friends after the fall.
My parents warned me not to go looking for them, not to worry about them, that their families had taken precautions. Something in their voices told me they were lying. I had a horrible feeling my friends were either dead or imprisoned.
I pushed aside the pain welling up in my chest. I’d learned long ago that emotions were something that could get you killed. My parents ingrained that in me.
Darius had put me in touch with my emotions in a new, different way that I was still trying to unravel, which still didn’t mean I was ready to welcome back sad memories of days gone by.
The skyline was full of soaring buildings, skyscrapers that reached to the stars. Before we’d lost electricity, all the structures would be lit up, doing their best to blot out the stars in the dark sky above. Now, only a few buildings twinkled with electric light. The rest were dark, for the most part, save a few windows that flickered with candlelight.
The cities of the realm had become dangerous havens for all manner of miscreants; at least that’s what my parents told me. The fact that my father and mother were brave enough to go into town to buy supplies made me wonder if they were less intelligent than I first believed, or maybe they were just brave.
Off in the distance, on the plains stretching out to the east of the city, I saw an orange glow. It had to be a bandit campfire. My parents told me they were all over the land between the mountains and the city.
Not zealots and certainly not believers, the bandits were clans of people who’d banded together after the fall to survive by stealing, killing, and pillaging. Dad told me the zealots left them alone since they weren’t in the cities.
I immediately sized up how far away their camp was and figured if I stayed close to the forest edge, I’d be okay—as long as there weren’t any other dangers lurking in the shadows.
The thought caused me to hurry my horse along, not that the city would be any safer.
The cities, according to discussions with my parents and, more recently, Darius, were filled with agents working for the zealots. They didn’t call themselves zealots. They preferred to be called Zionists, but we knew what they really were: reckless, power-hungry people who used religion as leverage to prop themselves up on a pedestal and take down anyone who was different.
The scam had worked, and now they ran the city.
It was different depending on where you lived. In the northern kingdom, comprised of what was formerly Canada and the northern United States, the zealots had been weaker and fewer in number. The
kingdoms to the west were very much the same, having been taken over by criminals and warlords. That only made things worse with the zealots. They believed themselves to be the true light shining in a dark world, a beacon to bring people back to their one true religion. Whatever that meant.
The journey took another hour before I could smell the fires coming from inside the city. The old interstate roads loomed above me to the right. I’d known better than to go that way. Bandits and other criminals would be waiting, watching those roads. There was nowhere to hide there, and any traveler foolish enough to go that way would be easy pickings.
Instead, I ventured down an old back road into town. The road went through what used to be a neighborhood, though I doubted anyone lived there anymore. Maybe a few outlaws or bandits, but the bandits tended to stay farther outside the city, safe from the reach of the zealots and their police.
Billy and I wandered through the subdivision until we reached another hilltop that looked down into the city.
I stopped there and got off to investigate while my ride helped himself to a bit of clover in what used to be someone’s yard.
A tall chain-link fence surrounded the downtown area. The road I was on stretched before me and passed through a section where apartments, bars, and shops had once sold their goods to the masses. Now the buildings were dilapidated. Some had collapsed. Traffic lights hung loose on wires that no longer carried any current. Abandoned cars lined the streets.
I could see the gate leading into downtown. It was surrounded on both sides by guard towers. Two fires were burning on either side, and there were armed guards.
The men in the towers would have bows. I’d seen them before on my last foolish venture into the city. I had to get by them, but if I tried to go directly through they’d put up a fight.
Based on my experience at the inn, I knew I could handle myself, but these were well-trained soldiers not drunken degenerates. Beating the guards would be a tougher task, not to mention they’d sound an alarm to bring in reinforcements.