Terminal City: Book One in the Terminal City Saga

by Trevor Melanson

  “In other words,” concluded Rowland, stiffening his spine, “one day, you will have to kill someone.”

  “What’s your point?” Mason supposed he might be right.

  “My point,” said Rowland, “is that if you have to kill someone, and you will, although it will not be me, then you will need to know how to kill. What I did to that bug on the beach… to that cop— that is what you need to learn. Necromancy allows you to take life, to tear a spirit from its body. In more ways than one. Some necromancers are better at it than others. But you will be one of the good ones because, like it or not, you are like me, touched by death, an expatriate in the Living Realm. As you will soon find out, that comes with both benefits and drawbacks. You will live a cold life, always as an outsider, even more so than now, more so than you can yet imagine. But you will also be one of the most powerful necromancers on this planet, if you choose to be.”

  Mason hadn’t thought of it that way before, but he acted uninterested. “What are you getting at?”

  Rowland reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a perfectly folded piece of paper. It was yellow from age. “Learn this spell,” he said. “Learn it soon. Learn it well. It is the quickest of its kind. When your life is on the line, timing is everything.”

  Hesitantly, Mason accepted the gift. Rowland, he realized, was trying to win him over; it wasn’t working, but it wasn’t not working either. “I take it this is every necromancer’s second most important spell,” he said.

  Rowland didn’t entertain mockery.

  “Why are you here anyway?” asked Mason, tucking away his new spell.

  “I do not follow,” replied Rowland.

  “In Terminal City, I mean. Why here? Why now?”

  For once, Rowland took a while to find the right words. “The mountains, the ocean,” he said, “they remind me of a place in which I spent a considerable amount of time.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “New Zealand.”

  Mason had always wanted to go to New Zealand.

  “There are also a lot of necromancers here,” added Rowland, “in Canada. Privacy is key to our existence. There is no shortage of unoccupied space north of the cities— space to practice, space to hide, space to be ourselves.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” replied Mason.

  “I need to get gas,” said Rowland, spotting a station at the intersection ahead of them.

  They had just re-entered Terminal City after another day’s drive, and the first signs of evening were showing. In about twenty minutes — that was Mason’s estimate — they would part ways. He couldn’t wait. And not just because he wanted to rid himself of Rowland’s company. He also wanted to call Asha, but his cell phone had died before he was able to find a signal. Although, after all this, he might need a second to himself first.

  Rowland turned into the gas station. “Wait here,” he told Mason, who didn’t need to be told.

  Mason still felt exhausted. Not sleep-deprived — he’d gotten a good night’s worth — just drained. He needed a break from all this. He needed to not feel like the weight of the world was pressing down on him, and yet he knew it was. The pressure he felt wasn’t just in his head. His responsibilities were real, and he couldn’t escape them. Still, he would try to relax when he got home.

  Rowland finished filling the tank and went inside the store to pay. Mason, meanwhile, was sort of surprised that Rowland sometimes paid for things.

  Or maybe not. Mason watched from inside the car as the door Rowland had just stepped through flew back open at the behest of a dishevelled, horrified-looking man. Mason recognized him immediately. It was Mr. Huxley.

  After nearly tripping over his own feet, Mr. Huxley picked up his pace and bolted toward the black SUV parked directly in front of them. He stopped for a second when he saw Mason, a stunned expression on his face. Then out came Rowland, not exactly running but stepping briskly and with deadly determination. It took Rowland a couple seconds to spot Mr. Huxley, but as soon as the inquisitor’s van started rumbling, he found his mark.

  Rowland might have killed him then too, but Mr. Huxley got off the first shot. A bullet whizzed past Rowland’s head. He ducked instinctively and then conjured what looked to be a barrier — an opaque, red sphere that encapsulated his body — in the same second Mr. Huxley sped out of the station.

  This time, Rowland ran. He slipped into the driver’s seat, started the ignition, and slammed his side door shut as the car began to roll. He tried to peel out of the parking lot as Mr. Huxley had done, but the light down the road had just turned green and the traffic against them.

  “Shit.” Rowland punched the steering wheel with his palm. The car honked.

  “Did you know he would be here?” asked Mason.

  “Sort of,” replied Rowland, his eyes locked on the stream of cars barring their path. Finally, a small break— Rowland took it. They flew out of the gas station, nearly scraping the front end of an oncoming car as they turned sharply into the far lane. There were angry honks. Mr. Huxley was two intersections ahead of them now, but Rowland was accelerating fast, his Cadillac roaring like a rocket.

  “You sort of knew he would be here?” said Mason. “I don’t understand.”

  “I sensed him,” replied Rowland, “not unlike how I sensed you back on that beach.”

  “But he’s not a necromancer.”

  “No, but I met him once before. Everyone’s spirit is unique. You can learn to recognize them like you would someone’s face, only you do not need to be looking at them. You just need to be close enough to sense it.”

  The light ahead of them turned red, but Rowland tore through it anyway. He’d closed the distance between him and Mr. Huxley to one block, but there were still three cars in his way.

  “It is an imprecise art,” continued Rowland. “Had I known exactly where he would be, Miles Huxley would already be dead. Instead, I am chasing his fucking van through the fucking streets of Terminal fucking City.”

  Mr. Huxley made a right a second before the next light turned red, leaving Rowland locked in between idle cars. But Rowland wasn’t playing by the rules of the road; he spun his steering wheel clockwise and drove up onto the sidewalk. A passer by stopped in her tracks as Rowland ripped down the pedestrian path in his roomy Cadillac, nicking off someone’s side-view mirror as he went. He made a sharp right turn at the intersection, off the sidewalk and onto the road with Mr. Huxley, who was now in clear sight. Rowland revved his engine. Mason clung to his seat belt.

  There weren’t as many cars on this street, and Rowland accelerated to double the speed limit. But so did Mr. Huxley, who was about a hundred feet ahead of them. Still, Rowland was going just a bit faster, and they were catching up.

  A siren started wailing from behind them. “Fuck,” spat Mason, peering over his shoulder. “It’s just one.”

  Rowland didn’t seem to care. Mason wasn’t sure he did either— or perhaps he just wanted to see Mr. Huxley dead as much as Rowland did. Maybe even more so.

  Mr. Huxley turned at the next intersection, his tires skidding, onto Granville Street, one of the busiest roads in Terminal City. Rowland followed, hugging the corner, but so did the cop car trailing them. Mason thought he could hear a second siren now.

  “He’s driving into downtown,” said Mason.

  “He is trying to get lost in the crowd,” replied Rowland, “but I will not let him. I promised Miles Huxley I would kill him the next time we met. I am a man of my word.”

  “Why the fuck did you let him live the first time?” asked Mason.

  “To deliver a message for me.”

  The way into downtown was over Granville Bridge, which had four lanes, two in each direction; Rowland weaved between them, passing car after car, until Mr. Huxley’s SUV was nearly beside them. The sirens were getting closer too.

  “Once I am abl
e to see him,” said Rowland, “he is as good as dead.”

  “Got an escape plan?” asked Mason.

  “I will do what I must.”

  Mason didn’t like the sound of that. They were close enough now that he could read Mr. Huxley’s licence plate, but the man himself was just out of sight, if only for a few more seconds. Perhaps realizing the danger he was in, Mr. Huxley made a move, swerving into Rowland’s Cadillac. The car shook, but Rowland didn’t lose control; instead, he returned the favour, smashing the front end of his colossal car, which was nonetheless smaller than an SUV, into the inquisitor’s back door. Mr. Huxley didn’t fare as well. His van started spinning. It was bad news for everybody.

  Rowland hit the brakes, but he was going far too fast to stop in time. They smashed into the side of Mr. Huxley’s SUV— this time unintentionally. The seat-belt strap across Mason’s chest punched him like an anvil as the two vehicles skidded to a halt. But the screeching didn’t end there. The car behind them swerved into the opposite lane to avoid the collision, hitting a truck head-on for the effort. Mason watched the pile-up through the window on Rowland’s side: car after car, smashing into one another like confused dominoes.

  Things had just gone from bad to much, much worse.

  At least he appeared to be relatively intact. Rowland seemed uninjured as well, though Mason couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing. Without saying a word, Rowland unbuckled his seat belt, cracked his back, opened the side door, and stepped out onto the street, either too angry or too single-minded to speak. Probably both. Mason wasn’t sure if he should leave the car too. He didn’t want to be spotted, certainly not by the cops he could hear approaching. For the moment, he stayed inside and kept his head low— Rowland was bound to make a scene.

  Mr. Huxley’s van had tipped over in front of them, and Mason couldn’t tell if the inquisitor was still inside. Rowland was on his way to find out; he conjured another red barrier and stepped around the engine like an enraged executioner.

  But he became madder still when he realized Mr. Huxley had survived the crash intact enough to flee his vehicle— and was nowhere to be seen. That meant the chase would continue, except now the cops had caught up. It wasn’t the police themselves that concerned Mason so much as what Rowland might do to them. After all, he’d already seen him kill one cop in the last forty-eight hours.

  Of course, this time there was an audience— and a rather big one at that. Traffic in both directions had ground to a halt, and now people were popping out of their cars to see the pile-up. The cops had also abandoned their traffic-jammed cruisers, and at least six officers were jogging toward them. Surely, more were on their way. Mason could hear the faint beating of a distant helicopter.

  An audience, indeed.

  “Hold it right there, buddy,” yelled one of the cops, a young woman. The others were close behind. They stopped about fifty feet in front of Rowland and took out their guns.

  “Oh great,” muttered Mason.

  Rowland turned around to face them, his barrier still up. It was faint but not invisible, and Mason could see the confusion in their eyes as one asked, “What the hell is that?”

  Six pistols were now fixed on Rowland, but he didn’t look too worried— just exceptionally frustrated. Mason could hear sirens coming from every direction, growing louder and louder. Backup was on the way.

  “Stay where you are,” yelled a different cop, “and put your hands up!”

  Rowland was not going to abide. He did stand still, however, but with his hands at his sides and his gaze firing at them like shots. After a few seconds, it became apparent — at least to Mason — what he would do instead. Or rather, what he would have these six cops do to one another. Their gun-wielding arms began to move, rotating away from Rowland and toward their colleagues.

  “My arm— I’m not doing this! What the fuck!”

  He was playing puppeteer with their spirits, six of them all at once, while they were still alive and conscious, something Mason hadn’t known was even possible. The realization that it was— it scared him.

  Of course, they wouldn’t be alive, let alone conscious, much longer, and Mason didn’t know how to intervene. Desperately, he screamed at him — “Rowland, don’t!” — but it was too late. The six shots went off in unison. The cops fell together at once, like graceless theater performers. The applause followed in the form of panicked screams, but the show wasn’t over yet. The backup had only just arrived. Mason needed to get the hell out of there.

  With no time to waste, he unsnapped his seat belt and climbed over the driver’s seat and out the door. He crouched behind the Cadillac, out of Rowland’s view, and then snuck over to the blue car parked behind them. More cops were closing in on Rowland, and no one noticed Mason fleeing the scene.

  Once he was far enough away, Mason stopped crouching and started speed-walking, peering over his shoulder at the mess behind him. Unfortunately, it was about to get a whole lot messier.

  Now shots were being fired at Rowland, albeit to no avail; the barrier around him bent space and curved the trajectory of every approaching bullet, sending them flying anywhere but toward their target. Still, Rowland retaliated, a little less elegantly this time, ripping out the spirits of two nearby officers. They collapsed like ragdolls. But Mason knew the worst was yet to come. The police helicopter was drumming loudly overhead, and Rowland had just taken notice.

  Shots were still being fired at him from a growing onslaught of police, but he’d turned his attention to the sky. He wouldn’t want that helicopter following him, which meant it had to be dealt with. Mason knew that all he needed was a line of sight to the pilot. Then the helicopter passed over the bridge and turned back around to face him. The pilot was partially veiled by reflections on the windshield, but for a necromancer like Rowland, it would probably be enough.

  Mason didn’t see the kill, and for a second thought maybe Rowland had missed, like a sniper with a subpar scope. His wishful thinking quickly faded as the aftermath became far more apparent. The helicopter began flying toward the bridge, tilting awkwardly to one side. Mason started running. Then everyone started running, save Rowland.

  Mason first felt the impact. The vibration knocked him off his feet and onto his elbows. He rolled over and saw the fiery explosion, spreading in bursts, from the helicopter and then from cars caught in the chaos. Luckily, he was a couple hundred feet away at the end of the bridge, but even still, he felt anything but safe. The center of Granville Bridge had become a veritable inferno.

  The ground shook again. Then the steel beams below began to shriek. The firestorm had stopped spreading, but its reckoning was only now reaching its climax. Just as Mason scrambled to his feet, the middle third of Granville Bridge collapsed into itself. Cars, concrete, and fire fell into the ocean below, splashing and sizzling. Mason kept running, eyeing the destruction over his shoulder. He didn’t slow down until he was off the bridge.

  Police cruisers, fire trucks, and ambulances were everywhere now. Mason had never seen such chaos. He veered off Granville onto 1st Street to avoid being seen.

  He could hear the disaster for blocks and blocks— the screams, the honks, the sirens. But part of him couldn’t help but think there might be a silver lining in all this. Rowland had been right at the center of that explosion. Anybody else would surely be dead — and it pained Mason to think that a handful probably were — but, then again, Rowland wasn’t anybody else. He was Rowland, and he did have that barrier around him. Could it have withstood all that? Mason hadn’t a damn clue. He also wondered whether or not he really wanted Rowland dead, though after seeing him kill all those cops, his doubt was diminishing.

  All things considered, Mason figured this ended one of two ways: either Rowland was dead, and his promise to the Spirit Realm fulfilled, or killing him, if that was still the plan, would be even harder than he had imagined.

  Chap
ter 21

  Asha slid her laptop into the over-stuffed backpack dangling from her shoulder and joined the crowd of students pouring out of English 120. It was a big class, her biggest, in fact. But they weren’t the only students forming a crowd; in the hallway, Asha spotted dozens craning their necks upward at a small TV anchored to the ceiling. It looked like they were watching something on the news. Curious as she always was, Asha went in for a closer look.

  “What happened?” she asked the nearest onlooker, a young man with shaggy brown hair.

  “Granville Bridge,” he replied. “It just, I don’t know, collapsed or something.”

  “You’re serious?” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “Well, not the whole thing,” he explained, “just the center.”

  “How did that happen?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I just started watching a second ago.”

  Asha turned her attention back toward the television. They were playing an amateur video from just before the bridge fell, shot on a cell phone by the looks of it. Her fellow students watched on eagerly. The footage showed a pile-up at the center of Granville Bridge, at least ten cars, forming a barrier across all four lanes.

  “Jesus,” said a guy to Asha’s left.

  But that was just the beginning. The shaky camera shot upward to a helicopter flying over the bridge, trailing the chopper as it swivelled back around. Then it was flying toward the bridge— and it became clear that something was definitely wrong. The helicopter looked out of control, diving awkwardly toward street-level, toward the labyrinth of crashed cars, until finally— boom. People gasped. It looked like something out of a movie. An orange explosion erupted from the heart of Granville Bridge, rolling upward into the early evening sky. That’s when the camera was dropped and the footage cut out.

  “Oh my god.” Asha covered her mouth with both hands.

  The news anchor was speaking again, but the TV was muted and out of reach. Still, many stayed watching as Asha left the building, trying but failing to digest what she’d just witnessed.