Third Power

by Robert Childs

  “Oh, I’ll say,” Scott piped. “But I’m sure we weren’t interrupting anything, right?”

  Amy hurriedly stepped outside and closed the door. In a hushed voice she implored him, “Please, Steve, you can’t stay here.”

  “Why not? You have company or something?”

  Scott cleared his throat loudly.

  Amy glanced at him, clearly annoyed. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. No one’s here but me, but…I have to meet my mother where she works. We have some errands to run.”

  Scott looked away, rocking slowly back on his heels. “She’s ly-ing,” he sang, splitting the word into a high then low note.

  “Will you shut up, please?” Although his eyes never left Amy’s own, the edge in Steve’s voice clearly addressed Scott.

  Scott shrugged and leaned against the guardrail. “Well, she is.”

  “Amy, please, this is important,” Steve said. “We have a lot to talk about and we don’t have much time. It’s more than just you and me.”

  Amy glanced nervously over her shoulder and replied in a wavering voice, “This is kind of a bad time.”

  Scott snorted, “You got that right.”

  “Shut up!” Steve and Amy shouted together.

  The front door opened then and a young man stepped into the porch light. He was lean of figure, with short, black hair parted to one side, and his brown eyes appeared somewhat larger behind the wide glasses upon his nose. The gray Levis he wore matched the gray sweater, the sleeves of which he had pulled up over his forearms.

  Steve, however, recognized him immediately from pictures Amy herself had shown him. Mike Simly, her supposed ex-boyfriend.

  “Well, hello!” Scott declared, coming forward off the guardrail to shake Mike’s hand in hearty sarcasm. “Imagine meeting you here! Ya’know, I’ll just bet that you’re shadow number two. Tell me something, what lap were you on before we so rudely interrupted?”

  Mike shook hands, looking thoroughly confused.

  “Oh, but where are my manners?” Scott said slapping himself in the forehead with his palm. “My name is Scott, and this is my friend Steve. And, of course, you already know his backstabbing girlfriend, Amy.”

  Steve’s muscles in his face clenched along his jaw line. He turned on his heel and descended the stone steps in a rush. Amy started after him, calling his name as she went, but he continued without showing the slightest intention of stopping.

  “Steve, please! I didn’t mean for you to find out like this!”

  At that, he whirled so suddenly he startled her to a halt. “And just how did you expect me to find out?! Run into you two making out at the movies? I call, I text, I leave voicemails, your mother lies to me about where you are...”

  A touch of humiliation played on Amy’s face and she did not say a word at the accusation.

  Steve put his hands on his hips and laughed. “You know something, I was actually starting to care about you. I really was.”

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I tried to call you last weekend but you were gone. And then when you called me back I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “You’re sorry?” His voice grew louder. “You’re sorry!” Steve shifted his gaze to the front door and he raised his volume again, clearly for Mike’s benefit. “Do you remember when I first met you; how you described him to me? No, please, let me refresh your memory. You said you broke up with him because he was too much of a chickenshit to stand up for you—or for himself. You would go dancing and he would sit back like a frightened little boy when someone asked you to dance and wouldn’t take no for an answer. What does that tell you about someone, Amy? He didn’t even have the balls just to walk up and say, ‘I’m sorry, pal, she’s with me.’”

  Amy looked away shamefully. “I know what I said.”

  Steve nodded. “And now I find him here with you.” Steve spat the words.

  When she didn’t respond at first Steve made an exasperated sound and turned to go. He had not gone three steps when she suddenly blurted out, “I’m not afraid of him!”

  Steve stopped as though frozen. When at last he turned back, it was very, very slowly. “Afraid of me?” Empathy flowed across his face and softened his hard countenance, loosened the rigid set of his shoulders as he moved up to the next step between them. “Oh, Amy. You should have told me. If this is about last weekend…” He reached up to touch her face but she flinched.

  She rolled her eyes even as tears welled at the corners and threatened to spill over. “It’s not about last weekend!” She shook her head. “I mean, it is partly. I’m afraid of what happened, I’m afraid of that man you fought with, and I’m afraid of you!”

  Steve’s confusion, his longing, and heartache were etched on his face. “Amy, please, I know we can figure this out. It’s just a misunderstanding. You just don’t know—”

  “Will you just stop?” she pleaded, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “We can never work.” She wiped at her eyes and then folded her arms across her chest. With a sniff she said, “You know everything else, so you might as well know it all.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mike and I started seeing each other again two months ago,” she replied. “I was wrong before when I said those things about him. He doesn’t believe in violence and I see now that is what I need. I want stability, Steve, and with Mike I will always know what to expect.”

  Steve didn’t appear to hear this last, so stunned did he appear by this revelation.

  Two months, Scott thought equally shocked. If she had been dating them both for that long then that meant…

  “Then Mike has known about you and I since we first met,” Steve breathed. “He knew you were already seeing someone else and he dated you anyway?”

  “Steve, I know you’re angry—“

  “You’re damn right I’m angry! I’m angry as hell at him but how could you do this? I trusted you! I told my friends they were wrong about you!”

  Mike made as if to move down the steps but Scott placed a cautioning hand on his shoulder. “And just what do you think he’d do to you when you got down there?” Mike stopped abruptly, then his brow knit in concern. After a moment, he turned again and trotted back up the steps. Scott laughed.

  Steve looked up and met Mike’s uncertain gaze with unadulterated hatred in his eyes. Even Scott wondered briefly if he was going to have to jump in front of the cowardly ex-turned-current boyfriend to stop Steve from delivering a beat down that would make a WWE wrestler proud.

  “You should probably leave now,” Scott said steadily to Mike, his eyes never leaving his friend. Something was definitely not right about Steve. Scott had never seen him so angry; so enraged. It was like watching a barely contained explosion threatening to break free from inside him.

  Steve’s hands slowly balled into fists. Her betrayal burned him through to the core, bringing with it an unbridled fire of rage that bordered on madness. His heart was breaking inside and his anger set fire to his turmoil. He could have dealt with Amy’s rejection, but to be so deceived and betrayed by someone he had feelings for—whom he had trusted—left him torn, confused, and furious.

  A new sensation gripped him then, a red-hot pain growing in his chest as if a firebrand was trying to burn its way out through his sternum; the call of it so primal, so instinctual, so visceral, he was amazed he only noticed it now. From the darkest depths of his soul, for the first time, Steve wanted to kill another human being.

  He fell to his knees then and screamed as pain like that of a lightning strike ripped through him.

  Scott raced down the steps toward his friend while across the way his father’s van rocked violently on its wheels as Kayliss thrashed furiously within.

  Amy looked on with terror in her eyes from Steve, to the van, and then back to Steve again. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

  Steve felt as though his insides were on fire and he closed his eyes against the searin
g torture of it. Scott appeared at his side then and tried to help him stand but Steve blindly shoved him away with such force he left the ground and landed a dozen feet away on the lawn.

  Steve’s hands clenched and unclenched as his second pain-wracked scream sent Amy running back up the steps. Mike held the door open for her and she rushed by crying hysterically.

  *KAAAAAAYLIIIIISS!*

  On his back, Scott clamped his hands over his ears, but the psychic wail was not a physical sound. He looked up then with pain etched on his face, to Steve and the glowing circle of light beneath his shirt, then to his father’s van, that rocked up perilously on two wheels before settling once again to all four. Pausing only a moment to wipe the trickle of blood running from one nostril, Scott jumped up and then ran to the van. He pulled the handle to the sliding door and, with a terrible roar, Kayliss burst forth from the vehicle.

  Steve attempted to stand, forcing his muscles to obey him, but the world around him swayed like tall grasses in the wind. He lost his balance and staggered to his right, falling to one knee. He would have fallen face flat on the sidewalk had not Kayliss buried his head in the young man’s chest. Steve looked dazedly at the animal for a moment, as if not recognizing what it was that held him up, then recognition flashed and he placed his hands on the tiger’s massive shoulders to steady himself.

  *Get me out of here,* Steve thought, concentrating even with that effort. The tiger turned around and then crouched. Steve half fell across the animal’s back, clinging blindly to his thick fur and burying his face in its depths.

  Scott watched as Kayliss rose and broke into a full run with his friend clinging tightly to him like a second skin. “Wait!” he called after them. When the tiger did not stop, Scott climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine roared and the tires chirped against the concrete of the driveway as he pulled out and veered into the street. When he reached the intersection, he hit the brakes, looking left and right quickly but saw no sign of them.

  “Damn it! he yelled, slamming the steering wheel with his fist.

  Chapter VI

  The great tiger moved along the pavement. This street was dimly lighted and less traveled than the busier thoroughfares crisscrossing the housing complexes they left behind. A few times the big cat moved into the bushes, behind a hedge, or a parked vehicle, concealing them both from passing traffic when necessary.

  Steve stirred slightly, sensing his companion’s unease. The pain remained with him, but less intense than before, now more a constant throbbing hurt throughout his body. Something new was taking shape within him, a part more in tune with the power that coursed through his veins and fed on the raw heightened emotional state responsible for its genesis.

  Kayliss cocked his ears forward at a sound floating on the salty air. It was too far away to be heard by human ears but Steve could hear it through his connection to the animal. Several voices came to him through that connection as well, and the smell of food. The tiger’s ribs expanded in time with Steve’s own inhalation, taking in the smell of cooking meat mixed with alcohol, perfume, suntan lotion, and wood smoke. Kayliss left the road and followed the scents down slope in the direction of the water. The slope leveled off and in ten minutes, the powerful animal padded silently within the protection of a tall stand of pines.

  Steve lifted his head wearily as the trees gave way to a dark parking lot. He caught sight of a sign and forced his eyes to focus in the ill light. “West Seattle Park”.

  Kayliss crossed the parking lot, moving from shadow to shadow, and passed through yet another stand of pine before emerging onto the soft sand of the beach beyond. The air was warm and the crescent moon above cast little in the way of light, allowing the murky night to shroud their presence. The tiger moved to a large log, flotsam that had drifted ashore on the high tide, and settled himself with his side against it. Barely a hundred feet away now, Steve could make out the voices of the people himself drinking, eating, and generally enjoying themselves before a fire on the beach. A line of saliva dripped from the tiger’s open mouth, the scent of food stronger than ever, but made no move to leave.

  Steve released his hold on the tiger’s back and slid to his knees in the sand. Go ahead, he thought to him.

  Kayliss leaped over the log and padded soundlessly across the beach toward the firelight.

  “You learn something new every day,” Steve whispered to no one, commenting on his ability to make his own thoughts heard. He listened for a while to the waves gently lapping the shore and the cool wind that caressed his cheek, filling his ears with its hollow sound. How beautiful the water appeared just then. The way the moonlight—what little there was—sparkled across the surface. And the way the ripples farther out moved in gracefully toward him, rising six or seven inches as the depth of the water decreased, and then finally broke over the sand.

  He then snorted derisively. For centuries, men have sailed the seas and all of them, generations of humankind, have always referred to the briny blue as a she. Before, he had believed the word just a way of anthropomorphizing the deep, like men often referred to their cars. But no, he understood better now; they used it because that’s exactly what she was: a woman. A scowl replaced Steve’s bitter smile as he stared across the rippling surface. He could see her now; Amy, laughing and playing out there on the water, taunting him to come out and join her—only so she could reveal her true nature and drag him to the bottom like some mythical sea hag. The ocean was like that, beautiful at first glance, but full of dangers that would gleefully snare the unwary.

  “And you almost got me!” he shouted, pounding a fist into the sand. His anger flared and he felt the pain shoot through him again for several seconds but he steeled himself against it. “You screwed up, Amy! I see you now for what you--aahhhgh!” Steve clutched at his stomach and forced down an urge to vomit as fire tore through him. He staggered to his feet with hate-filled tears in his eyes. “You’re not the only one!” he screamed. He remembered Haldorum, how he had nearly caused his death twice over. All along, Steve thought with wild eyes, all along that wizard has been plotting my death. Yes, yes, it all made sense now. Haldorum wanted him dead so he could wield the power within the crystal, something he would never be able to do while Steve remained alive.

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” Steve swore. He gasped and fell face flat to the sand as his stomach made him wretch violently. The sound of a freight train barreled through his head and his breathing came in short, quick breaths. He screamed the fear that overwhelmed him, but the roar in his head drowned all else out.

  I’m dying, he thought terrified. So many people in this world who try to harm others, so many who deserve to die so much more. “No!” he cried desperately. He could not let this happen. He forced his head up from the sand and looked out across the water. He could see Amy laughing at him, and by her side Haldorum, both grinning coldly and waiting for him to die. The image of Haldorum reached with one hand, ready to snatch the crystal from his still warm neck. Around them both swirled a dark cloud around their feet, the essence of all their lies that had polluted his mind. They laughed gleefully and danced on the surface of the ocean as they taunted him in his death hour.

  Pure hatred flowed through Steve and fed his limbs the strength they needed to lift him from the sand. Haldorum and Amy ceased their jubilant dance when they saw the young man rise to his feet, that look of fierce determination and rage in his eyes. The crystal around his neck flared brilliantly to life with the haunting, wind chime sound of a million shards of glass falling through the air. Steve closed his eyes and allowed that other part of him, the part he felt taking shape deep within to emerge fully. He focused his will, his hatred, his pain, against those who had harmed him. When next he opened his eyes, darkness poured across the whites like roiling ink.

  “You tried to kill me,” he said calmly. Then he bared his teeth as he snarled, “So suffer!” The light of the crystal intensified as Steve unleashed his strength unbridled upon them. There was a terrific rush
of power, like the waters from an exploding dam. A magical ring of white fire ignited the water around the images of Haldorum and Amy, their faces now contorted in fear. The two of them huddled together as the flames grew higher and pressed closer around them. In a matter of seconds, even Haldorum’s tall form disappeared behind the fiery wall burning on the surface of the sound. Steve’s hand reached forward, fingers like claws, and slowly closed them into a fist. The ring closed on its captives until forming a solid column of fire, consuming everything within.

  The satisfaction he felt was but a faint spark of what he wanted. He knew the images out there were only that, projections of his imagination, and he wanted to feel so much more. For that he would need to find the real thing. But first…

  Steve turned his head slowly toward the firelight. Kayliss was somewhere near it and Steve could hear the conversation of the other young people gathered there through him. His emotions seethed under the charge of magic coursing through his blood and, whether because of the situation being fed to him through the ears of the big cat or due to his own proximity to the young people, glimpses of the future kept coming to him like flash stills from a movie. Something bad was about to happen, he knew, and he walked quietly through the sand toward the fire.

  He intended to be something much worse

  Steve watched the three young men sitting around the campfire as they drank, seeming not to care at all how loud their carousing might get. The eldest of them, perhaps in his early twenties, sat next to a blonde young woman who was probably still in high school, dressed in cut off blue jean shorts and a close fitting blue T-shirt. Though she held a beer in one hand, it was mostly full and likely her first, as Steve noted she exhibited none of the drunkenness the other three so loudly and proudly displayed.

  “So then Eric’s got enough balls to tell me—me!” the eldest was saying as though the idea were pure lunacy. “He tells me—Kyle Johnson—to shut the hell up.” He finished off the last of his beer and tossed the empty bottle away carelessly over his shoulder.