Power Mage 5

by Hondo Jinx

  At last, her frantic begging stumbled and tripped, and all words were lost to heaving sobs.

  She coughed and gasped and wiped at her good eye, hauling back on the reins of her emotions, the single iota of rational thought left to her screaming that she had to get her shit together and calm the fuck down, because the huge, black-and-white tiger wizard glaring down at her would show no pity, especially to someone ugly-crying on her hands and knees among thousands of smoking corpses.

  When she finally mastered her emotions and lifted into a kneeling position, Alex cried out with surprise and fresh terror.

  Directly before her, hovering six inches above the charred carpet of cadavers, was the huge tiger man.

  “Alex,” he said, and his voice was deep and rich and oddly musical, oddly alluring, truth be told, suffused with authority and intelligence, wisdom and power, and… faintly, oh so faintly, a note of tenderness. “Alex?”

  “Yes,” she said, staring up at him.

  “Are you prepared to serve me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll do anything.”

  “Good,” the tiger man said, and his deep voice settled over her like a soft blanket of blackest velvet. “There is no more pain.”

  And just like that, Alex’s pain vanished. “Thank you,” she gasped with sharp relief.

  “Alex, take the phone from the inside pocket of your blazer.”

  She didn’t even consider questioning the command, much as she hadn’t even considered questioning how the tiger man had known her name or that she was carrying a phone in her pocket.

  She retrieved the phone and held it out to him.

  “I don’t want your phone,” the tiger man said. “You need it. You need to use it. For me. Will you do this, Alex?”

  She nodded. “Yes, anything.”

  But then, looking down, she whimpered.

  Her phone was fucked. Royally. In the ass. With a meat fork.

  The screen was cracked, and when she pushed the button, nothing happened.

  The sliver of her mind still capable of thinking in formulas and fractions weighed in, suggesting the electrical death storm had fried her Android.

  Alex stumbled through an apology, trying to explain this to the tiger man.

  “This is not a problem,” he said, and the phone vibrated in her hand, coming back to life. The screen, still cracked, nonetheless lit up, showing her bland wallpaper of choice and all the icons she was accustomed to seeing there.

  How had he…?

  But she didn’t even bother finishing the question because let’s face it: focusing on the insta-repair of her fried cell phone while ignoring the context of a gigantic tiger man who had just flash-fried a whole sports arena of people would’ve been headline burying of Biblically epic proportions.

  “You will be my herald, Alex,” the tiger man told her. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is your fate,” he said. “This is your destiny.”

  She nodded.

  “You will film me now, film my message. And you will deliver my message to the fuggles.”

  “The… fuggles?”

  “The masses. Your people.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I will. I’ll do anything you say.”

  “You will tell them of my glory,” the tiger man said, drawing out the final word in a throaty grumble. “You will tell them of my power.”

  “I will.”

  “From here you will go straight to the major news networks, where you will share this footage and deliver my simple message.”

  “Your message?”

  “I am.”

  “You are… what?”

  “I am,” the tiger man said again. “That is all they have to know. I am.”

  Alex nodded and drew up her camera, and thirty seconds later, it was over. She did as she was told, filming him as he hovered above the dead, stared into the camera, and delivered his two-word message.

  Then he was gone, blinking out of existence just as abruptly as he had appeared.

  Alex fell sobbing to the ground. Her pain returned. This agony was terrible—though nowhere near as terrible as her fear of crossing the tiger man.

  So she struggled once more to her feet and started across the carnage, clutching her phone tightly as she stumbled over the uneven turf of charred flesh.

  It was slow going, and repeatedly she stumbled and fell, dragged down by the dead. Her ankle, among other bones, was broken, and her equilibrium was out of whack, related in some way, perhaps, to the persistent ringing in her ears. On top of all this, she had lost a shoe, and something was wrong with her skirt, which seemed to have half-melted, shrink-wrapping her damaged legs and half-fusing her upper thighs.

  Each time she fell, it was harder to rise again, her resolve and terror losing ground to the avalanche of exhaustion and pain pounding down on her.

  At some point, it all became too much, and Alex did not rise. Her will crumbled, falling away alongside fragments of thought as she descended into unconsciousness, sprawled among the dead.

  Later, she awoke, startled by voices. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious. It could have been a second or an hour or a thousand years.

  But it was still day, and she still lay among the corpses that carpeted Times Square wall to wall for as far as the eye could see.

  Except they were no longer alone.

  Living people walked among the dead.

  Five people, six… all of them dressed in black jumpsuits, carrying rifles and moving across the carnage in a skirmish line that stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk.

  Were they soldiers? Police? Agents from some government bureau?

  Maybe the FPI! her dizzy mind quipped brightly. These fuckers take their meetings really seriously!

  Alex shook her head to clear it.

  Or at least, she tried to shake her head.

  But she was too weak to do more than tremble.

  “Find all survivors!” a woman at the center of the skirmish line demanded.

  From this distance with only one working eye, Alex couldn’t see the woman very clearly. She saw only the black jumpsuit, the woman’s slender build, her red hair fluttering behind her like flames, and the fact that she and she alone of the searchers, was not carrying a rifle. What the woman was carrying, Alex soon realized, was command.

  The red-haired woman shouted again. “It is imperative that we find any and all survivors.”

  Yes, Alex thought. It is im-fucking-perative that you find any survivors.

  Alex tried to call out to them but couldn’t. Tried to lift her hand but failed.

  She was badly hurt and needed serious medical attention immediately. More importantly, she needed to get out of here before the tiger man returned.

  Tiger man?

  The absurdity of it all smacked her in the forehead. Had that really happened?

  It couldn’t have happened, could it?

  It must have been a dream or a delusion. This was all due to something else.

  A terrorist attack, her mind chirped, desperately seeking a way out. We’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since 9/11, and now, by God, they’ve gone and done it…

  But no.

  Absurd or otherwise, she understood that the tiger man had been real.

  He had done this. And he had meant what he had said.

  Unless she delivered his message, he would return… and if he did, no one in the world could save her.

  Get it together, she told herself. Come on, Alex. Call out to them before they’re gone. Lift your damned arm. Do something!

  But she was so weak, she could only twitch and mutter.

  “Survivor!” a man’s voice called nearby. “A survivor, Agent McLeod!”

  Relief flooded into Alex. She opened her eyes—cursing herself for closing them in the first place; she hadn’t even been aware that she had—and saw a man in a black jumpsuit sniff the air excitedly and point toward a survivor.

  But no
t her.

  The skirmish line had moved down the street, almost out of view.

  As Alex watched, wishing with all her heart that she could call out to them, the black-clad team turned toward a man in a charred business suit rising up jerkily as a zombie from the dead.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” the man cried, holding out an arm to them. “There was… a tiger… he… please help me… I—”

  But whatever the man had meant to say disappeared, along with his mouth and face and body as his words and thoughts and flesh burned in the river of flames that rushed from the open mouth of the red-haired woman.

  8

  Crossing the room, Brawley pulled the phone from his pocket and answered. “Braxton.”

  “You watching TV?” the gruff voice of Remi’s father asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, you’d better damn well tune in.”

  Brawley glanced back. Tammy stood with her arm around Ty, suspicion dawning on her face.

  “Can’t right now,” Brawley said. “Just tell me.”

  “The Tiger Mage attacked again. A big one this time. Times Square. Thousands dead.”

  As Braxton explained what happened, Brawley felt feverish with sudden rage.

  “They’re calling it a terrorist attack,” Braxton said, “but get this. Some fuggle woman filmed the Tiger Mage and gave news stations the footage. They ran it before the Order got involved.”

  Brawley whistled. The world had changed forever just like that.

  “It’s a hell of a mess,” Braxton said. “People are losing their shit. Globally. The Order is reining them in, burying the story and changing the narrative, but they’ve got their hands full like never before. Janusian the fuggle lover is going ballistic. And meanwhile, the FPI is running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

  Brawley glanced out the window and saw one of Pa’s ranch trucks coming up the long gravel driveway.

  “It’s go time, son,” Braxton said.

  He didn’t have to explain what he meant. Braxton had given Brawley the phone back in Florida, saying he’d call for only one reason.

  He was fixing to break Remi’s twin sister, Winnie, out of the FPI’s supermax prison, the Chop Shop.

  “Not yet,” Brawley said.

  “The hell you mean, not yet?” Braxton said, his voice growing louder with every word. “This is it, son. They’re scrambling. The Order, the FPI, everybody. The Chaotics are all stirred up, too. The time is now. I’m getting my baby girl out of that goddamn dungeon!”

  Braxton’s voice throbbed with desperation and shame and love for his daughter. Brawley knew that the king of the Scars hated himself for not rescuing Winnie sooner but also knew that any rescue attempt up to this point would’ve been a suicide mission.

  The Tiger Mage’s latest attack might have opened a new door.

  But Brawley wouldn’t hit the Chop Shop until the RV, the mobile cloakers, and an actual damn plan were all ready. And he wouldn’t leave while his people were so vulnerable to an attack by the remaining Hermanos Coronado.

  But he wasn’t going to explain all that to Braxton. Not now. And especially not with Tammy and Ty watching and listening.

  So he just repeated, “Not yet.”

  “You promised you’d help,” Braxton growled.

  “I did,” Brawley said, keeping his voice level. “The promise stands. But—”

  “Stop fucking around, Brawley! The time is now. Not later. Now!”

  “I need time.”

  “For what?”

  “Things I gotta do. To protect my family.”

  “To protect your family? I’m your father-in-law, in case you’ve forgotten. Winnie’s your sister-in-law. We’re your damned family. Now stop fucking around and tell me you’re on your way or go back to playing pocket pool and put Remi on.”

  The man’s emotions had clearly gotten the best of him, so Brawley let it slide.

  But then Braxton said, “If you’re afraid, just say so!”

  Brawley said nothing, letting the words hang between them.

  After several seconds of silence, Braxton said, “Aw hell, son, I know you got big balls. But this might be my only chance, Winnie’s only chance. I gotta get my baby girl out of that hell hole.”

  “My promise stands. I’ll help you when the time is right. I’ll be in touch.” And he hung up on him.

  Ty was gone, apparently banished by his mother.

  Tammy stood there with her arms crossed over her chest. “Who was that?”

  “A friend,” Brawley said.

  “A friend?”

  “If you prefer, I could switch my answer to none of your damn business.”

  Tammy’s eyes flashed with anger. “What’s your promise? What are you going to do? Something dangerous, isn’t it?”

  Brawley spread his hands. “I thought you were going to town.”

  “That was Remi’s dad, wasn’t it? The girls were talking about that. Her sister, the Chop Shop.”

  Brawley just looked at her. “With all due respect, darlin, what I do is my business, not yours.”

  “Bullshit,” Tammy said. Moving jerkily, she pulled a pack of Newports from her pocket, shook one loose, and swapped out the crumpled pack for a lighter. But instead of lighting the cigarette, she pointed it at Brawley, saying, “You might think it’s your business, but you’re wrong, mister. It’s our business, too. Your wives’ and mine and Ty’s and Hannah’s. You can’t just go off and get yourself killed.”

  “Listen,” Brawley said. He had no idea what he was going to say next, just that he wanted to get in front of her anger before she blew a head gasket. He had enough on his plate without having to deal with an irate woman.

  Tammy started shaking her head then surprised Brawley when tears started rolling down her cheeks. There were no theatrics, no sobbing, no sign she was even aware of the tears.

  But Brawley hated to see them. He moved forward and wiped one away with his thumb. “It’s all right, darlin.”

  “I’ll wipe my own damned tears,” Tammy growled, batting his hand away. “And no, it isn’t all right. I don’t like this. I don’t like it, and I don’t want you to go.”

  “A promise is a promise,” Brawley said.

  “Oh yeah?” Tammy said, and her eyes flashed with sudden anger. “And what about your promise to Ty?”

  “What are you talking about? I didn’t promise anything to—”

  “Like hell you didn’t. You might not have called it a promise, but you think that matters to a seven-year-old boy? I heard what you said to him, Brawley. I was out in the hall, and I heard what you said about being a stepdad to him. It was beautiful, so beautiful it almost broke my heart… but it was also terrible.”

  “I meant what I said.”

  “I know you did. And so does Ty. That boy practically worships you, Brawley. There is nothing in this world he would rather have than a stepdaddy. Especially one like you. A real man who walks tall and handles whatever life throws at him? What boy wouldn’t love to have a father like that? But how do you think Ty will feel if you go out there and get yourself killed? What do you think that would do to a boy who already watched his father die?”

  “I don’t—”

  “No,” Tammy interrupted, backing toward the door, and again she pointed the unlit cigarette at him. Her hands were shaking badly. “Sort your shit, Brawley Hayes. Figure out what’s important to you. And don’t you ever promise my son another thing unless you mean every damned word of it.”

  With that, Tammy stormed out of the room.

  Brawley considered stopping her but decided to let her cool off instead. Tammy had a point. He had meant every word he’d said to Ty, and he suspected that Tammy knew that, but she was nothing if not a loving and fiercely protective mother.

  Tammy’s footsteps thumped downstairs.

  He heard the screen door knock in its jamb and went to the window to see Tammy dragging Ty out of the house. Being pulled along like that, Ty suddenly l
ooked less like a little man and more like what he was: a seven-year-old boy stuffed with a fragile, seven-year-old heart.

  Shit.

  Tammy waved Ty into the truck then shut the door and just stood there for a second. He could see her shaking even from this distance.

  Tammy lit her cigarette, took a long drag, and exhaled a stream of pale smoke. Then she closed her eyes and pressed her palms into her temples.

  Brawley was tempted to snipe her with Seeker juice. Not to warp her views but to ease her pain.

  He didn’t, though. Let the woman work through it on her own, at her own pace, in her own way. She had to decide what was right for her family and herself, and he reckoned with tough choices, sometimes pain was part of the equation.

  The truck he’d spied earlier pulled up.

  Tammy opened her eyes and watched three young women pile out, not enough clothing between them to stitch together a respectable outfit.

  Arabella, Tessa, and Ursula exploded with that excited, raucous laughter peculiar to pretty girls in packs. Wearing short shorts and bikini tops and carrying beers, they looked like a trio of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models leaving a post-shoot cocktail party.

  Arabella laughed loudest. He’d never seen her in so few clothes before… and wow.

  The busty blond Bender didn’t just look like a swimsuit model. She looked like the damn cover model, like prime Kate Upton… only prettier.

  Even the psi hobble around her neck couldn’t ruin her appearance. In fact, Brawley barely even registered the collar she hated so much.

  “What?” Arabella said to the other girls, who were laughing and shaking their heads. “He’s kind of mean, but he’s hot. I totally would.”

  “You’re such a slut,” Ursula laughed, and gave Arabella a shove.

  Brawley couldn’t help but notice the shove’s effect on Arabella’s cleavage. Her bright yellow bikini top looked about two sizes too small for the big, round breasts she’d mostly squeezed into them.

  Then Arabella straightened, noticing Tammy standing there, and said, “Oh, hey.”

  Tammy squinted at them over the cigarette, then blew smoke over one shoulder. “Hey.”