Waking Light

by Rob Horner

  Which meant we had an edge, however slight.

  Turning back to Crystal, I saw that her eyes were open, staring at me. "You're glowing, too," she whispered. "Only it's white." Then her eyes widened as she made the connection. "You're glowing white because of your power! And they're red," her voice rose noticeably, bringing the park tenders faster, "because they're demons!" she finished.

  I turned, and they were upon us. Crystal scrabbled backward, crab-like, before rising to her feet. The lead man, one of the guys my height, was only ten feet away, closing fast. He was already changing, arms elongating, talons sprouting from fingertips like a time-lapse film. The other two lagged behind. The second one was also transforming, beer belly sinking in faster than a Billy Blanks customer after a dozen TaeBo workouts, though the third seemed to be holding back.

  The first of the three demons rushed in, right arm extended, claws splayed. It swung for my face, trying to gouge my eyes with razor-sharp talons. I reacted instinctively, bringing my left arm up and slanted out. Our arms met in a vicious collision, sending a shock wave vibrating into my shoulder. These things were a lot stronger than me, their bones much harder. If I hadn't learned that during the fight with Dave in the bathroom, it certainly sunk in now. One wrong move, one misplaced block, and a simple swing like that would break my arm.

  I couldn't recover in time to counter. My feet weren't set properly, and I was stunned by the sheer power behind the swing.

  I hopped backward, barely avoiding the monster’s left-hand follow-up, this time aimed at my midsection. The hop let me set my feet. I was ready and in position, and the thing was a little off-balance, having swung across its body twice in rapid succession and in opposite directions. I wheeled on my good ankle and thrust out behind me, left foot pushing away in a neat back-kick, connecting solidly on the creature’s middle. The light flashed and he flew backward.

  I completed my turn in time to see the second demon's arms swinging for me. With no time to sidestep or block, I did the only thing I could think of, dropping to my stomach and into a plank position. The demon's arm made a whooshing sound as it passed through the air over my head. I rolled over and saw the thing had almost moved past me, so great was its momentum. Then one of those clawed feet slammed down, absorbing the forward motion and enabling it to stop instantly. A widening of the jaws revealed three-inch fangs as it grinned, ready to come at me again. And it was directly over my feet.

  I didn't need any training to know what to do in that situation. Toes pointing straight up, I kicked right into the thing’s crotch. The demon face contorted into an almost human expression of sickening pain in the split second before my power manifested, blasting it up and away.

  "Johnny, look out!"

  Crystal's warning barely registered as a flash of movement sent me rolling to the right, narrowly avoiding the huge foot stomping down at my head. It was the first demon, the one I'd kicked in the stomach, back in the fight. It came for me again, sensing an easy target in my supine form. I sent my right hand up to meet the descending foot.

  The fact the demon's foot was bare wouldn't register with me until later. In the moment, all that mattered was preventing the thing from caving in my skull. My hand met the foot and light flashed. Then there was only my hand, thrusting up into nothing. Crystal gasped, and I got to my feet as quickly as possible, expecting another attack.

  I whirled and saw...nothing.

  "It disappeared," she said, her voice an awed whisper.

  The observant part of my mind, the little note-taker you can never really turn off, tried to remind me something similar happened earlier, in the bathroom. It wanted to reason, and from the insistence of the thoughts, it was probably onto something important. But this was not the time for reason, because my eyes found the third demon, still standing well back us. The reason he kept a safe distance between us was also apparent.

  He was still in human form because demon fingers don't fit well inside a trigger guard.

  He was older than us, probably around thirty. I wasn't paying much attention to his features, though. No, what had my complete and undivided focus was the .38 Special in his hands. The bright sunlight glinted off the clean, chrome barrel. And from the steady, fluid motion of the gun barrel, tracking me as I stepped sideways in order to put myself between him and Crystal, it was obvious he knew how to use it.

  He was only fifteen feet away. There was no way he could miss from that distance.

  "Put your hands up," he growled, his voice low and gravelly, like Dave’s voice when he talked to me back at the school. The second demon rose behind us. A quick glance showed he couldn’t straighten from a huddled crouch and would probably need to mount a search for his family jewels. The moans and pathetic whimpers were still several feet away. It wouldn't be coming to help the gun-toting demon anytime soon.

  "Get them in the air, boy. The leader may want you alive, but he won't be too upset if I have to kill you, either of you."

  I didn't see any alternative to doing what he said, not right then. After all, he had a gun.

  And then an idea struck, one of those Holy crap, this is crazy and there's no way it can possible work kind of ideas. Simple. Might be stupid. Might not even work.

  Then again, if I didn't try something, it wouldn't matter whether it worked or not, because both Crystal and I would either be dead, or demons, which probably amounted to about the same thing.

  I raised my arms in front of me, until they were about shoulder height and parallel to the ground, my hands at a ninety-degree angle, pointing up. The demon saw my motion and was apparently satisfied I wasn't going to try anything. He looked behind me, perhaps checking on his partner. The instant his eyes shifted focus, I brought my hands together. It was the most ludicrously exaggerated clap you can imagine.

  My thoughts went like this: my hands expel force when they hit something. Force from one hand plus force from another hand, might equal force-squared, or might just be force times two, but that should be enough force to...I don't know...to do something. Maybe I'd played too much Street Fighter II in the mall arcade, and my head was filled with images of Ryu and Ken sending out their hadouken wave-motion fist attack. After all, what did I really know about my new abilities? I was counting solely on my power's projection of force.

  And it didn't let me down.

  From within my hands came a wall of force, an almost-invisible wave of power, transparent but shimmering white, arcing out from my hands. Its speed was astonishing. Before the demon even registered I'd done something, it was caught up in the shockwave. Its arms flew outward, the gun torn from its hand and flung far off to the right, well out of reach. His body flew backward, landing ten feet from where it started. A second later, the glass windows of the park office exploded into the building, littering the floor inside with millions of shards.

  As the tinkling of glass faded, I reached behind me, found Crystal's hands, and pulled her as we headed for the Colt. She resisted for just a second, then got moving. From behind came shuffling noises, perhaps the one with the sore crotch taking up the chase. The man who'd threatened us with a gun, still human, rose slowly to his feet. He was directly in our path so, without pausing to consider the moral implications of striking a person who wasn't a direct threat to me, I swung out with my left hand as we passed, my fingers tight together, striking with the knife side, the pinky side, at his chest. The knife-hand connected solidly, and the light flashed, and once again the demon-man was airborne. I didn't see where he landed, didn't even spare him another glance, too intent on getting to the car.

  Crystal raced ahead, jumping into the passenger seat. Getting the keys in the ignition went smoother this time, and then we were backing up, turning, aiming for the park exit.

  A sharp crack sounded, and in the rear-view I saw another young man, a different one, with his left hand cupping his testicles and his right hand wrapped around the butt of a pistol. It was the second demon, and he'd recovered the .38. Though he'd missed once, the
distance wasn't far and our odds of being so lucky a second time weren't that good.

  I floored the accelerator, shifting quickly to second gear, just as another shot sounded, this time accompanied by a dull thunk as the bullet lodged somewhere in the back of the car.

  "Crap!" Crystal shouted, but then we were out of the parking lot, turning left back onto Princess Anne Road.

  Survival instinct said to keep the pedal floored, but experience won out, and I eased off. There was no way the demon could hit us now; we had to be out of range. I got my speed under control, just above the forty-five mile per hour limit. Beside me, Crystal had calmed down, assessing what she'd discovered about herself.

  "I can tell when people are demons," she said, pausing slightly between each word, like she was working to convince herself.

  "They glow red," I confirmed.

  "But how?"

  "It's probably what the white light did for you. Or to you," I corrected myself.

  "But I never saw the light," she protested, and now she was the one wanting to argue against the evidence of her senses.

  "But that doesn't mean it didn't affect you," I said, slowing to turn right onto Independence Boulevard. We weren't heading back to the school; that would be tantamount to surrender or suicide. The route we followed would take us to my house. My intentions weren't clear to me yet, but somewhere in my head there was a plan, struggling to take shape.

  I continued. "Think about it. If all of this is a part of some grand plan, and we're meant to work together as a team, then it makes perfect sense for you to have an ability of some kind." This kind of talk wasn't normal for me. I'm stubborn as a mule, sometimes, but not the kind of person to rub salt on a wound or find a way to twist someone else's words against them. I looked sideways at her, expecting to see annoyance or even anger on her features, but instead there was concentration, as though she was resolving herself to the fact of her power rather than questioning its source.

  "Maybe," she conceded, then fell silent. She had a hand on her forehead, like she wanted to ease a headache. "I thought it was something with my eyes," she said softly.

  "What?"

  "I first noticed it in Mrs. Roger's class, this red haze around her. I thought maybe I was getting a migraine like my mom gets, and she says there's always a halo of light around things before the headache starts. But when Mrs. Rogers started passing out those statues, they had a little glow, too."

  She reached out and grabbed my arm. "It's brighter now, like maybe it was just waking up before. You're brighter now, almost too bright to look at directly."

  We passed the intersection of Lynnhaven Parkway and Independence Boulevard and that's where the police cruiser pulled up behind us.

  Chapter 9

  Don't demon and drive

  The cop pulled into the lane behind me, and I performed that instinctual set of checks all drivers perform. Speed? Just at the limit, but not over. Position in lane? Centered, no wobble. Tailgating someone? No, and I hadn't passed a light yet, so there was no question of having run a red or chased a yellow.

  The cruiser, one of those powerhouse Crown Victorias, edged closer, and I could see the officer in my rearview, leaning over his wheel, staring below my line of sight.

  He was checking my plates.

  "Hold on," I said to Crystal.

  "Why? What's up?"

  "Maybe nothing." I gave a head toss, an indication for her to look behind us. To her credit, she didn't blatantly whip around in her seat. Instead, she looked at the side mirror.

  Though the cruiser's lights hadn't yet come on and its siren was still silent, something about the way he tailgated me, that sphincter-tightening closeness, said it was only a matter of time before he tried to pull me over.

  "Damn!" she swore.

  The lane was clear before us, and I accelerated slightly, going against the common thought which made people slow down anytime a cop pulled up near them. It put me over the limit just a hair, creating a small gap between the police cruiser and my Colt. The officer immediately accelerated to fill the gap, then began matching our speed again, more proof, if any was needed. This wasn't some coincidence.

  He was after something. Maybe the second bullet knocked out a taillight. Or heck, maybe he was just curious because there was a bullet hole at all.

  "What does he want?" Crystal asked, fear evident in her voice.

  The irony of the situation struck me. Only a couple hours before, while listening to the news, I'd been contemplating going to the police, seeking their aid. Just thirty or forty-five minutes ago, we'd cheered for Chip as he worked the crowded field of vehicles pursuing us away from the high school, getting them off our tail and allowing us to escape. Now here we were, nervous all over again, because one had taken an interest in my car, eyeballing it like it was the suspected vehicle in a recent bank heist, or like it was Christine just waiting for an opportunity to reveal its evil nature.

  It wasn't fair. The police were supposed to remain as a wild card in my deck of tricks, people in authority to whom we could turn if all else failed.

  The cruiser's lights came on.

  My intuition was screaming, telling me to lose him, that something about the officer wasn't right, in the same manner it warned me about those park attendants.

  The red and blue flashes filled the car, reflecting off the mirrors, sending streaks of faded color across our faces. This time Crystal did whip around, staring out the back window. Almost immediately she faced forward again, her lips a thin line.

  "He's a demon," she said.

  Without missing a beat, I shifted gears down to third, rode out the sudden lurch, and jammed the accelerator to the floor. No matter how well they may someday make the automatic transmission, nothing has the immediate acceleration of a manual in its lower gears. I held no illusions about my ability to stay ahead of the cruiser; that thing probably maxed out sixty or eighty miles an hour above my top speed.

  I just wanted to create some space.

  He fell back for a few moments, maybe suffering a moment of shock that a tiny Dodge Colt would dare try to run away from him, but then the siren came on and he began to close the distance again. I had to lose him if I could, before he called in additional units. He might be a loner, a singular demon in a department not yet fully integrated, but that wouldn't matter to the other policemen. They wouldn't know what we did. They would only hear the call of a fellow officer seeking assistance. That would be enough to get us arrested. We could celebrate our moral superiority from a jail cell, at least until they found some other way to deal with us.

  The police car gained more ground, pulling up right behind me, looming large in the rearview, so close his grille was invisible below the spoiler over my trunk. The intersection where we would need to turn left, if I still intended to swing by my home, was only a couple of blocks away now, and we were still in the right lane.

  Acting on instinct--what the heck, it hadn't failed me yet--I swerved into the left lane at the last possible moment, gave my brakes a soft pat, nothing more than a threat to the car behind me, forcing him to brake in response, then zipped out into the intersection, running the red, narrowly missing a yellow Puegeot crossing from the right. I cut the wheel hard, grimacing at the loud squeals from my tires and the bone-jarring shudder felt throughout the Colt's frame. The wheel fought back, and I let it rewind, straightening us out, heading back down Independence Boulevard, coming up fast on Mount Trashmore, an aptly named public park built over a completed landfill. (Aren't we Virginians original in our naming policies?)

  Expertly handling his vehicle, the police officer made the turn as well, though he lost a lot of speed, whether from my fake-out with the brake pedal, or because other traffic got in his way, and was now several cars back. With his lights still flashing and his siren blaring, however, the traffic in front of me began to respond. Brake lights came on and turn signals flashed, cars shifting to the right, trying to clear a path for the cruiser.

  I couldn't
let that happen.

  Thinking quick, swerving, I cut off an old, rust-bucket Volkwagen Beetle (it would be almost eight years before the German automaker introduced the new sleeker model), stealing the right lane, narrowly avoiding clipping a Toyota with my rear bumper. Horns blared, for a moment drowning out the siren.

  The light at Edwin Drive was red for me, but I ran it. The cars behind me, Beetle and Corolla, stopped, blocking both lanes, leaving the police car trapped behind them, futilely chirping its siren and honking its horn.

  I kept my speed up until Euclid Road came up on my left, running behind the large Best Products store. The officer cleared the intersection, now small in my rearview, but obviously accelerating, coming closer. Once again violating traffic laws, I swerved left onto Euclid, then took an immediate right onto Kellam Road, which put us on a straightaway course for my home. We couldn't afford to stay on it. We needed a few more turns just in case the cop got close enough to see which way we were going.

  Counting seconds in my head, trying to visualize where the cop was in relation to me, I steered us right onto Onondaga Road, for once having the right of way. The cop still hadn't reappeared in my mirror when I completed the turn, but that didn't make me feel any better. My adrenaline was pumping, fear of capture making me feel like the city was spread out before me, a miniature map superimposed over my vision. I knew where we were and had a good guess where the cop was in relation to us. Our one advantage was he didn't know where we were going, and I did.

  I just needed to get us there undetected.

  The best way to do that was to assume each intersection represented a thirty percent chance he would guess correctly which way we went (continue straight, turn left, or turn right). He might get two of them correct before losing us. He saw the left and could have guessed the first right. Coming out of the turn, not seeing us, he might again guess a right turn, which would put him behind us within seconds.