Random Acts of Sorcery (16 page)

Jay normally worked the 6-10
shift at DG, but he had taken off this week so he could get some homework done. He needed to get his Social Studies project done by Friday, and assignments from his other classes had started to pile up as well. However, even though he was supposed to be writing a paper, he kept making excuses to look at the internet. Angry at himself that he was wasting time, he closed the browser.

Cassie probably has this all finished
already. She gets assignments done like a machine.

Jay frowned; her grades were starting to get better than his, and it worried him. It wasn’t that he minded her outdoing him, but if her grades got too much better, he wouldn’t be able to apply to the same colleges. He couldn’t imagine going to school without her.

He jumped up when he heard a loud bang from downstairs. It sounded like someone kicking the front door in. He turned around, unsure.

But it couldn’t be that, could it? I’m sure there’
s a logical—

Then he heard his mother scream, and he bolted downstairs. He followed the noise to the kitchen, where a man he didn’t recognize was holding his mother
by the throat. His body felt ice cold; he wanted to help his mother, but he was too petrified to move.

His mother’s panicking eyes found his, and the man turned his head to see Jay standing in the doorway. “There he is,” he said, pushing his mother aside.

“Jason, get out!” his mother screeched. To Jay’s horror, the man turned around and backhanded his mother across the face, and she fell to the floor.

“Mom!” he yelled. He made a move towards her prone body, but the man pulled out a handgun and was pointing it at his chest. Jay’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“Why?” he managed to breathe out finally. It came out as a wheezing sound.

The man smiled. “Don’t
worry, I won’t kill your mother. She’s an innocent,” he took a step closer. “It is you who has sullied your humanity by conspiring with the demons.”

“Demons?” said Jay, walking backwards. His feet seemed to be moving without any input from his brain. “I-I don’t know any demons. What gave you the idea that I know demons?”

The man closed his eyes and said a prayer. “Brothers, now I take this one’s life and destroy one more of the Dark’s vassals, in the name of the Lord.” His lips continued moving, but Jay couldn’t make out any more words.

“I’m not a vassal!” Jay cried. Considering he was about to die, suddenly he felt very calm. “I’m not even a servant, because I can’t do anything! Ask anyone!”

There was a blur of motion, and before Jay could move, Dmitri was on top of the man, his elbow pressing down on his throat. It had happened so quickly that Jay hadn’t even seen the vampire enter the room.

Dmitri looked up at Jay.
“You alright?”

Now that he was safe, he started hyperventilating. “My Mom, she…he hit her…is she….” He gasped.

Dmitri frowned at the intruder. “Stay down a minute,” and he slammed the man’s head into the kitchen floor. Satisfied that he was out cold, Dmitri got up and knelt in by Jay’s mother.

“I think she’s alright,” he said, listening to her heartbeat.
“Just knocked out. Still, let’s get her to the hospital.” He stood up and looked at Jay matter-of-factly. “I’m calling 911.”

Jay still wasn’t breathing very well. “But…can we tell the police…we can’t tell them about…stuff.”

Dmitri shrugged as he reached for the kitchen phone. “Not my call what we tell them. But your mother needs an ambulance.” He touched the intruder’s body with the tip of his shoe as the phone rang. “And him? I want this one in a cell.”

***

Nyesha was reading through one of her old medical textbooks, snacking on some Gummy Bears as she did so. Now that she could go out during the day, there was no reason why she couldn’t start attending medical school again; she just wasn’t sure if she was ready.

Besides, any program here will
probably make me start over from the beginning. There’s no way they’re going to take my credits from before. Then they wouldn’t be able to charge me for all the introductory classes all over again.

She heard someone shoot the lock off her door, and dropped the book on the couch. Before the intruder could even raise his gun arm, she had him pinned to the wa
ll. She was still chewing on a Gummy Bear.

“If this is a home invasion, you picked the wrong apartment,” she noted dryly. “What do you want?”

He spit in her face. “Die, demon whore.”

She raised an eyebrow; that was a new one.

“Now, who told you…” she started, when she heard sounds coming from the other room. Her green eyes widened.

Oh no, the girl. Another one must have come in the window or something.

The man she had pinned started to laugh at her panic; a raw laugh, like a crow’s call. She stopped his laughing with a quick punch to the throat, and ran to go find Aeka.

When she threw open Aeka’s door, she realized her worry had been premature. Another black-clad intruder was shuddering on the floor, a boxcutter jutting out of his neck from an odd angle. Aeka, wearing a simple white tank top and shorts, looked unharmed. She raised her head from the prone man and looked at Nyesha.

“He said that all the demon’s servants will die. There must be more out there.”

Nyesha nodded. “I’
m going. Stay here and—”

“No,” said Aeka, pulling the boxcutter out of the man’s neck in one smooth motion. He made a pitiable, gurgling sound. “I’m going with you. I have a holy sword.”

***

“I can’t believe you beat me with an orange/purple deck,” said Matt, leaning back from the table. “You shouldn’t have lasted five turns with that.”

Ethan grinned. Normally Eugene didn’t let him go downstairs to play at the game store at night, but he had been doing so well with his Latin practice that the vampire had allowed an exception. “It’s easy, if you know how to balance it.”

“It’s easy, if you know how to balance it,” Matt mocked in a high-pitched voice, looking at the ceiling. “You realize people spend years mastering deck balance, don’t you?”

Somebody yelled, and Matt stood up from the table in alarm. Ethan didn’t move, but his already pale face paled further.

Someone in black was walking down the center aisle of the store holding a handgun in front of him. “No innocents need to die; I’ve come for Ethan Buckley,” he said. “Ethan, Little Ethan, where are you. You can’t hide from me, not when you stink of black magic. You rolled in the muck like a stinky little pig, didn’t you?” He laughed. “Little piggy will burn in hell.”

The few gamers in the store looked at each other, wide-eyed.

“Dude, are you LARPing?” said Matt.
“Because we don’t do that here.”

The man grimaced and shot Matt in the shoulder. Ethan scrambled under the table, shaking. Matt groaned and sunk to his knees, screaming obscenities.

“I don’t know what LARPing is,” the man said evenly, “But I will destroy all vassals of the Dark. Now, Pig—”

Ethan heard a loud noise he couldn’t identify, then the sound of glass shattering. He whimpered and pulled himself into a ball, trying to make his body as small as possible.
Why won’t somebody help me? Why won’t anybody ever help me?

There was a moment of silence as Ethan cried. Then, he heard a murmuring as the remaining customers began to talk again.

“It’s over,” said Eugene’s voice. “You can come out now.”

Tears streaming down his face, Ethan crawled out from under the table. As soon as he emerged, Eugene picked him up in his arms and hugged him.

“No one’s going to hurt you ever again, child. I promise you.”

“O-okay,” said Ethan. He looked to the side. The man holding the gun had been thrown across the room. The sound of glass shattering that Ethan had heard was the sound of the man’s head going through the glass counter by the register.

Don, one of the assistant managers, recovered his composure first. “Matt, don’t move. I’m calling an ambulance right now.”

“Aaaah I don’t think it’s that bad,” Matt said. “Just…a flesh wound.” Nervous laughter followed.

“Hey,” Matt said to Eugene, cradling his injured shoulder. “Were you a wrestler back in the day or something? You threw that psycho across the room like it was nothing.”

Eugene considered that as he rubbed Ethan’s back softly. “Yes. Yes, I was a wrestler. I was a very good wrestler.”

***

Dwight was halfway through his set with NCWP when he started hearing the screams. The crowd often screamed while he was playing, but this was a different kind of scream, and everyone in the band could sense it. They all stopped playing, confused. Dwight’s last cord still echoed in the air.

The crowd of clubgoers parted like the Red Sea, and eventually a man with a handgun was standing right in front of the stage. “Dwight MacGregor!” he yelled, then pointed his gun in Dwight’s direction.

Without thinking, Dwight jumped to the side, but it ended up being an unnecessary effort. Liam appeared from nowhere and slammed into the gun-toting man, knocking him to the floor. The man managed to fire his gun once before Liam punched him into unconsciousness. The clubgoers were screaming and running for the door in droves.

On his hands and knees, Dwight saw Liam get up to stand over the body of the prone gunman, shaking his head. When the vampire turned to Dwight, his eyes widened in horror, and Dwight realized there was something behind him. He dived again, grabbing his bass guitar as the sound of another gunshot sent shockwaves through him.

His other bandmates had already fled off the stage, not that he blamed them. He shuffled back across the floor of the stage until his back was against the drum kit. He could see Liam lying on his back below, a bullet hole in his forehead. It seemed that even a vampire couldn’t shrug that off so easily. The second attacker put several more bullets into Liam, and the vampire’s body jerked violently. Dwight winced.

“Maggot-eaten hellspawn corpse,” said the gunman, his face a mask of disgust. He then turned to Dwight. But instead of shooting him, he closed his eyes and began a prayer. “Brothers, I now destr
oy another of the Dark vassals—”

He never got to finish his prayer, since he was interrupted by Dwight’s guitar smashing into his jaw. Dwight had scrambled to his feet and swung the guitar like a baseball bat. After he connected the man wobbled, unstable; his face was split open where the edge of the guitar had hit him, but he was still standing. Dwight hit him again with a brutal overhead smash, putting all his strength behind it, and the man went down.

Dwight was breathing heavily, holding his bloody guitar out in front of him. Was it over? Were there more of them?

He sensed a presence behind him and spun around, prepared to use his instrument as a weapon once again. However, Liam blocked the swing with his forearm.

“It’s just me,” he said. The bullet hole in his forehead was still there, but he looked otherwise unharmed. “I have to thank you. I would have failed in my duty if you hadn’t protected yourself. Bastard was a good shot.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Dwight, still holding his guitar in a death-grip. “What the hell was that about? Why would anyone want to shoot me?”

“It’s not just you,” said Liam gravely. “I can sense the others. We’ve saved everyone so far, but for how long?”

***

To say that Cassie was aggravated when she found out about Sam and John’s little trip to Realm would be an understatement.

“It’s one thing if you wanted to go to hell, but why did you have to take him?” Cassie asked, outraged.

“I had a use for him,” said Sam, cleaning the dishes while she shouted at him.

“And that was?”

“Nothing you need to know about.”

Cassie was aghast at that. “Now you’re keeping secrets from me?”

Sam wiped his hands on a clean towel. “Looks that way.”

“What is your problem?”

He threw the towel aside with an angry flick of his wrist. “I’ll trade you one of mine for one of yours.”

“Huh?” She was taken aback.

“Secrets, I mean. I’ll tell you one of mine if you give me one of yours,” he said, crossing his arms and looking down on her. He was close to a foot taller than her, so it wasn’t hard.

What is he talking about? He can’t know I went to the future, he can’t.

She scowled to hide her fear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sam returned her scowl with one of his
own. “I think you know EXACTLY—”

Then he got a strange look on his face and grimaced, her secrets forgotten.

She bit her lip. “What is it?” She could tell from his face it was serious.

“Distress call, from Liam…and Dmitri…and…Nyesha?
Wait, and now Eugene too,” he said breathlessly, rubbing his eyes. “We’re being attacked, all of us at once.”