The Carver's Magic (22 page)

Three
Mississippi
. (Inhale)

She’s really gone.

Someone is going to die.

I let my fire fill me until it suffocates me. Who would have my sister? If I teleport to her, it could be an ambush, so I had to think carefully and teleport to who had kidnapped her. I picture the vampire bitch in my mind and teleport. She’s the first on my list of people who might have her. She took her once already.

I land in a small, rain-soaked alleyway. It’s drizzling and the air is humid, making me feel more uncomfortable. It smells like ocean and mildew mixed with a musky something that was tickling my nose. On both sides of the alleyway were hand-made cardboard and tin houses. Some houses had tin roofs, others had tarps. At the end of the alley I saw the toothy leach leaned over a young man, no older than twenty. He was limp and I supposed he was dead or about to be if I didn’t do something.

One more reason to take her out. I held in my fire, patiently stalking my prey. Lifting my index finger, I crooked it and knocked it on the hollow streetlight twice.

With unnatural speed the black lady was facing me, white eyes, and fangs stained with the blood from her victim. She ran her tongue over her red stained lips. “They must have gotten her,” she smiled as she talked.

I was momentarily conflicted. If I kill her now I would miss out on the information about the who took my sister and why. The desire to see her shrivel up to ash had its emotional satisfaction pounded in my head. My fire very much liked that idea. Or I could try and get the information out of her, although that could take hours maybe. I had never interrogated anyone before.

Decision made. I let my fire slowly slither up my throat and exhaled it out slowly. The fire slowly slid out of my mouth, like a snake, its small red fire scaly beads slithered around my neck and down my body heading straight for the vampire.

The vampire snickered, “You don’t scare me, Carver.” She watched the snake-like fire move towards her with amusement. Then as an after thought, she said, “I should thank you for challenging me. Now I get to kill you with no reprisal.”

She crouched, hissing as her fangs elongate even more. The vampire blurred in my direction, I blinked waiting for a hit, but the fire on the ground exploded, shaking the ground and blowing the makeshift houses to splinters.

I looked around. Debris and ash chunks flip flopped in the air, falling with the rain. I brushed off my pants before teleporting to the next person on my list. The blonde chick with the ugly orange eye shadow. I don’t know why she gave me the creeps but she just did. And if she had anything to do with my sister’s disappearance, I planned on thinking of a very good punishment. My fire was out for vengeance.

I felt high on my own power as I teleported, keeping the creepy chick clear in my thoughts. I landed in an old campground. The ugly orange lipstick wearing chick sitting on a white, plastic chair picking at her fingernails.

I whistled.

She looked up and squinted as if she didn’t know what she was looking at. Then she cursed and started running as if her life depended on it. My gut was right. Something was wrong with this chick because she acted as if she knew exactly who
I was. And the fact that she was running from me alluded to a nefarious motive.

I pulled the fire to my palm and threw the ball in her direction, giving it a small lead. She screamed as the fireball missed her, she kept running toward the forest. I teleported closer to her and knocked her into a large, Sears Tower-sized tree. I grabbed her uncombed hair and kicked behind her knee letting her fall, “You have two seconds to tell me why you took my sister.”

She scrambled out of my reach looking wide eye at me, “Shit, you’re a fire Carver? You’re her aren’t you? Don’t kill me, please. We have been looking for you.” She licked her lips and looked around her as if anyone could help her.

I pressed my lips together keeping my rage in check, for the most part. I stopped before her and flicked my fingers letting my fire scales land perfectly in her mangy hair.

“No STOP!” She shook out her head patting it quickly. “I’ll take you to her! Just let me go. I swear!”

Not bad for my first interrogation. I pulled on her hair to stand her up, “I have a special link to my sister. I know she’s alive. I want her back now.”

The girl’s scared expression melted away as her eyes began to glow orange, accompanied with a wicked smile. “Richard. Say hi to the halfling’s adopted sister.” I turned quickly to see a tall man, with short, dirty blond hair and aqua blue eyes. He looked a hell of a lot like Shane.

“I’m impressed with your abilities, Beth. I can see why you are a perfect Carver for my son.”

I ground my teeth.
The Carvers
. I thought I got away from them. I even did a special spell so that my parents couldn’t find me, and if they so happened to pass by me they wouldn’t recognize me.

“Why don’t you let Fennel go and we can talk like adults,” Richard said in a smooth voice as his eyes returned to normal, but I wasn’t an idiot. He was dangerous and his calculating eyes were sparkling. He was smiling on the inside.

I dropped my hold on the ugly, orange-eyed Carver with a horribly embarrassing name. She stumbled, catching herself with her hands. I choose not to kick her back down because I am being the bigger person.

“Bitch,” she coughed.

My foot perfectly connected with her hip. She slid several feet into another mammoth-sized tree. The old man tilted his head as if to ask if that was necessary.

The answer?
Yes
.

“Is this when you tell me you didn’t know you took my sister? Is this when you placate me? Or is this where you give me a sentimental story about the Carver’s War?” I blinked slowly, looking a combination of bored and ready to strike.

“Just like my son,” he curled his hand into a fist. It was the only thing that alerted me to his feelings. “You don’t understand how important it is to stop this war. You don’t understand the genocide on our kind.”

Okay so he was going to go with the sales pitch.

I clicked in my mouth, “I’ll tell you what I told my parents. This is my life.”

“Said the spoiled brat,” said a boy with dark, messy hair, and a scar on the right side of his face. He was resting against a tree with a white ear bud in one ear while the other hung freely.

“Who are you? Nutmeg?” I asked.

His screwed up face didn’t like my question, “You’re so selfish that you can’t see how much our kind is being exterminated one at a time. You’re too high and mighty to even consider it. That’s a spoiled brat. One who had a sweet life growing up and still has one. I, for one, wouldn’t expect much from someone like you.”

“Brad.” Richard’s warning fell on deaf ears.

Brad the Jerk pushed off the tree and I saw for the first time at least ten other people, surrounding us. “Must be nice to be so powerful that the Magic Council has ordered all supernatural to leave you alone. If you were like us, you would see what being a Carver is really like.”

Yeah right. Like I got a free pass.

I didn’t like this jerk. Another girl stepped up. She was wearing tight red pants and a white tank top. On her wrist was the beginning of a tornado tattoo that stopped at her shoulder. Around it were several outlined houses with a series of numbers inside of each one. There was only one that looked like a trailer house. Ah the irony was not lost on me. I squelched a smirk. She folded her arms and said, “The prophecy is wasted on someone like you, fairy lover.”

“Oh, like you’re any better Isla. How long have you kept your little wolf boy on a leash?” Another guy said, with dark olive skin, shoulder length black hair and a longer nose, with a set of blue eyes Mother Earth would be jealous of.

A gust of wind blew past me, towards the handsome Carver. His eyes glowed towards the trailer trash Carver seconds before was flung back, hitting the gigantic tree behind me.

The earth shook and I held out my arms to steady myself.

“That is my last warning,” Richard looked at trailer trash Isla and pretty boy. “You two better learn to get along or I’m going to let you both go and see how you fare on your own.”

It shocked me to see the fear in their eyes. They were afraid of living on their own? Was this a cult of some sort?

Richard looked back at me, “You will have to excuse Isla and Amir. They aren’t used to guests.”

I couldn’t keep in my arrogant huff, “They’re Carvers.” No excuse needed.

All of their eyes locked on Richard as if I just insulted him, “You don’t know a thing about them little girl. I’d watch how you talk about your own kind.” He had widened his stance taking up more space. His arms on his hips made him look bigger and it did absolutely nothing to intimidate me.

“You may run this lunatic’s camp, but you don’t scare me, and since you are stupid enough to take my sister from me you must have a few screws loose.”

The group of Carvers seemed to encroach on Richard and I. I scanned their eyes. I dare them to try something. Mentally I was crossing my fingers,
Make a move kiddos
. Trailer trash Carver made the first move. I teleported behind her kicking her in the back of the knees causing her to land on her hands as she rolled over and shot out air in my direction. I teleported again next to her, dropping a small fireball in her hair. She screamed and the air around started swirling. It was no longer just coming from her, it was as if she was calling on all the air around her.

Interesting.

I dropped little fingernail sized fire scales over her bright red pants. She screamed that I was ruining her new pants. I felt like I was doing her a favor, they looked horrible on her.

I began to feel all the air around us swirl. I looked up and saw a funnel coming straight at me. The wind was so strong I felt myself being sucked towards the funnel. As I was being lifted into the air I noticed there was no one else around in the clearing. They must be watching from a distance. I was being smacked with debris that the tornado was pulling up along with myself. I grabbed a small pebble. Palmed it, letting my fire heat it. I threw it as hard as I could at trailer trash. Damn, she moved.

She flipped backwards in the gymnastics kind of way. Gusts were swirling crap all around me so I shouldn’t have been surprised when a large tree smacked me from behind. Holding my head with one hand and grabbing for another rock, I warmed it with fire and this time added my magic. I told it to find the one in my mind. Then I threw it, barley escaping another tree.

The next second I was falling.
It happened so fast I almost didn’t catch myself. I hit the ground hard. I was blasted back once more with a gush of wind but it had an extra element to it. It zinged inside of me. I pushed off the floor, quickly looking around for the girl who needed a serious make over. I looked for movement but she was nowhere. Then I saw a lump in the middle of the clearing.

Not trusting her possum stance, I ran at the stupid girl and felt the ground rumble. I stop next to trailer trash and see Richard’s beady glowing red eyes, “You killed your own. That’s unforgivable.”

I look down. The girl’s hair was half shriveled and her clothes had small burn holes. I swallow. The side of her face had a silver dollar sized hole from the rock I threw. My mind wavered a bit. I had no intentions of killing her. I specifically told my parents I wouldn’t join their crusade because I didn’t kill innocent people. In fact, the first person I ever killed was the vampire, and she had it coming. So killing another person was not technically what I was after. I just wanted my sister. My fire on the other hand, was steady and unremorseful.

I wasn’t going to excuse myself. I looked at the man who took my sister. “I’m taking my sister now, and if you ever think to take her from me again, we’ll revisit what’s unforgivable.”

“Before you go Beth,” he said my name like it was a disease, “I want you to know that we took Cory because we felt she was a distraction, Shane needed to find his true partner in life, which, and this surprised me, turns out to be you, the only other fourth generation fire Carver.”

He was looking for some kind of response. I didn’t give him any. But inside the idea of being with Shane makes me want to vomit.

“You see, I know your parents well. In fact, we made sure that you and Shane would meet one day. We made a special necklace that would draw you to my son. The odd part is, the necklace,” he held up a small yellow charm. The one my parents gave me as a parting gift that I threw away a long time ago; Cory had fished it out and had been wearing it ever since, “found it’s way onto your sister’s neck, drawing her to him. And when he broke the necklace he broke the spell that drew the two together, collapsing any feelings he had for her. So much so that when I told him I would kill his little trifling crush if he didn’t return to me, he said, ‘Go ahead, might solve my little problem anyways.’”

That did sound just like the ass-hat and it would solve his bonding problem with Cory. My fire and I didn’t like that. Not at all.

Richard was waiting patiently for my outburst. He was baiting me like the vampire, and just like the vampire, I was hooked. “You like to punish people who interfere with your goals? That sounds pretty childish to me. Or better yet, cowardly,” I said.

Several things happened. The earth shook, and then a large piece of the tree closest to me splintered, as a large boulder headed for me.

I teleported out and straight to Cory, somewhat pleased I got a rise out of the old man. Cory was chained in a stone cellar. She was holding her legs close to her chest. Her head was tucked into her knees. “I said I don’t know where it is,” she mumbled.

I kneeled down and let my magic run over her. I was right. She was alive but the room was cold, she was shivering and she was naked with odd black marks all over her skin. It looked like decayed skin. I slowly touched my hand to her shoulder and she moved quickly away from me, screaming to stop. I held my hands up, feeling even worse for leaving her in here. “It’s me Cory. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She looked around and I saw her eyes were pale, as if clouded. What the hell? I quickly grabbed her ankle and teleported to our house. I ran a scan of the house making sure no one was inside, and then I said another spell to ensure we were safe.