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chapter thirty-five

I sat up in bed, looked around my dark bedroom and turned on every light.
 
I appeared to be alone.
 
I put my hand over the amulets and knew I was alone.
 

I was shaken.
 
Was it just a dream or did she sink into my dreams?
 
If it was the latter, how did she get inside me?
 

And then I knew.
 
I hadn’t put a shield around the apartment when I went to bed.
 
Without it, she easily could have wedged herself into my mind to plant her warning.

I wasted no time.
 
I imagined a shield enclosing the apartment and could literally hear the walls tightening.

I had to act.

If the amulets were going to be taken from me—or at least attempted to be taken from me by her or by him if she failed—that meant I had only limited time to take down Joe Whitehill, Rob Maxwell, Alan Stewart and Mike Hastings.
 

And I’d be damned if that wasn’t going to happen, so it meant only one thing—I needed to move.
 
I needed to hurry.
 
And I needed to be clear on what steps to take next.

I needed to talk to Jim.
 
I reached out to him and asked if he could come over.
 
His answer came immediately.
 
“Give me twenty.”

I swung my legs over the bed and walked into the living room.
 
There was no time for twenty.
 
I teleported him over now.

He appeared near the entrance to the kitchen, wearing nothing but a ratty robe.
 
He looked dumbfounded.
 
“I told you to give me twenty.
 
Jesus, boy, can’t a man get dressed?”

I imagined him in his clothes, clipped a cold beer into his hand to appease him and asked him to have a seat.
 
He did, but the way he looked at his beer, it was clear he was unhappy with it.
 
“This ain’t a Bud.”

I switched it.

“Lite,” he said.
 
“Bud Lite.
 
That’s what I drink now.
 
Gotta keep the weight off.”

“What weight?
 
You’re skeletal.”
 
Amused, I changed it again, this time giving him an entire six-pack.

“Shit, that’s better.”
 
He cracked one open and took a pull.
 
“Cold as ice.
 
What’s the problem?”

“I think two witches were here tonight.”

That got his attention.
 
“What do you mean ‘think’?”

“They were in my dreams.”

“Then they were here.
 
That’s what they do.
 
They fuck with your head.
 
How long ago?”

“Ten minutes?”

“So, let me guess.
 
One was the woman from the other night.
 
Who was the other?”

“A man.
 
Older.
 
Said she worked for him.”

“Then you really are in the shit.”

“Why?”

“Because that was her master.
 
He’s the one who wants what you got.
 
Last night, she was coming to get it for him—not for her—but she failed.
 
He knows anything could happen to those amulets if he doesn’t move fast.
 
And he’s probably going to want mine.
 
If he’s willing to come here himself and corner you in your dreams, then he’s serious.
 
He’ll order her to get all of them.
 
If she screws up, he’ll send in other witches.
 
I don’t think he’ll do the job himself.”

“I don’t think he’s even technically here.
 
When he was standing next to her, he looked like a holograph or something.
 
I could see straight through him.”

“See?
 
Even at this point, he doesn’t want to be in the same room with you.
 
Here’s what you’ve got to understand, Seth.
 
He will protect himself at all costs.
 
He’s probably lived for hundreds of years and he’s not about to give that up now.
 
He’ll send in others to do his dirty work for him.
 
But even he has his limit.
 
He’s not stupid.
 
He’ll only go so far.
 
He won’t lose his army over this.
 
And he sure as hell won’t risk his own life to get the amulets himself.
 
If you can show him that you can defend yourself successfully time and again, he’ll step away.”

“I could barely keep her off me, Jim.
 
What if he sends in six just like her?
 
There’s no way I’ll be able to defend myself against them.”

He stared at me for a moment and then lowered his eyes.
 
“What if you had all four?
 
What if I gave you the rest of mine?
 
What then?”

“You’d be defenseless.”

“But I wouldn’t be a target.
 
There’d be no need to come after me.
 
And with four of these around your neck, you’d definitely be as powerful as her and a few others.
 
You might even be as powerful as him.”

He reached behind him and took them off.

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“It’s my decision.”
 
He got out of his chair and handed them to me.
 
“Put them on.”

“I don’t know if I can handle four.
 
When I put on the other one last night, it made me feel as if I was going to blow apart.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, you’re not going to blow part.
 
Stop being a pussy and put them on.”

I held them in my hands for a moment and then, deciding to take the leap, I pulled them over head and let them rest against my chest.
 

It was like last night, only more intense.
 

The rush, the thrumming in my head and throughout my body, the energy igniting within me—it was almost too much.
 
I put my hand to my forehead to press against the pressure building there and noticed that when I did, my fingertips were glowing.
 
I looked over at Jim, saw the concern on his face and then imagined a mirror in front of me.

It looked as if heat was rising off my body.
 
I could see it coming off me in waves, as if I was a piece of pavement baking on the hottest of summer days.
 
My sight seemed brighter.
 
Everything about me was more substantial.
 
It was a good fifteen minutes before I began to adjust.
 
Jim got up to get me a glass of water.
 
He handed it to me and I accidentally crushed the glass when I gripped it.
 
The water soaked my right leg, but it quickly evaporated in the sheer amount of energy I was giving off.
 
I looked at my hand and was sure it would be bleeding from the broken glass, but it wasn’t, regardless of the few shards of glass that were stuck in it.

“I should take them off,” I said.

“Don’t.
 
Just adapt to them.
 
It’ll pass.
 
Give them a chance.”

He was right.
 
We sat together for the next few hours and I did adapt to them, even though I was absolutely aware of them in ways that I hadn’t been before.
 

When he was finished with the six-pack, he leaned forward.
 
“How are you feeling now?”

“Forget the world.
 
Now, I feel as if I could tear apart a universe.”

“That’s probably unnecessary.
 
When that witch comes for you, now you’ll have a fighting chance.”

“How do I kill her?”

“You’re going to have to be quicker.
 
You’ll need to outsmart her.
 
You’re going to have to come up with something she wouldn’t think of.
 
Something that will drop her stone cold.”

“And if others come?”

“Rinse and repeat.
 
Up your game.”

“I’m not ready for this.”

“You’d better be.
 
Or just hand them over to them now and be done with it.”

And that’s all I needed to hear.
 
It brought everything back into focus.
 
“No way,” I said.
 
“If I lose these, it will screw me out of taking own Whitehill, Hastings and the rest.
 
I’m not letting that happen.
 
They killed my parents.
 
While I’ve got the power to take them down, I’m doing it.”

“What do you have in mind?”

I told him.

And Jim laughed.
 
It was a crazed, strange kind of laugh.
 
The laugh you heard when someone thought you were so out of your mind but so dead on target that the absurdity and the audacity of it slew them.

“Think I have a chance?”

“Chance for what?
 
Chance of joining that Gibson girl in an institution if they catch on to you?
 
Yep.
 
You’ve got one big fat mother of a chance of that happening.
 
This shit you’re talking about is crazy.
 
So crazy it might even work.
 
You sure you want to go there?
 
Won’t be pretty.”

“They got me into this with a blaze of fire, and that’s how they’re going out.”

Jim leaned back in his chair and pulled on his beard.
 
He studied me for a moment then shrugged.
 
“When, then, shit, boy.
 
What the hell?
 
You’re more bad ass than Batman now.
 
You’re Conan the goddamned fucking Barbarian.
 
Follow your dreams before that witch comes for you.”

“Or witches.”

He held out his hand for a new beer and nodded.
 
“Suppose that’s right.
 
And there’ll be plenty of them.”

chapter thirty-six

When Jim left, I wasted no time.
 

It was nearly midnight.
 
Joe Whitehill’s weekend job was flipping burgers and putting healthy shit like reconstituted onions and a chemical-induced slap of processed cheese on the crap burgers he made during the night shift at our local McDonald’s, which was open twenty-four hours.
 
Because, you know, you never knew when a craving for the sheer quality of that tasty dollar menu might hit you.

Sealing my apartment shut while putting a shield around myself, I teleported to the rear of the building, where there was a stand of trees on the fringe of the parking lot.
 

It was about as busy as I expected for a Friday night—probably twelve cars in the lot, a few belonging to the staff, the others likely belonging to a group of students who recently left the ten o’clock show at our local theater.
 
That’s how it worked around here.
 
Same scene every Friday night.
 
Never changed.

I popped into the restaurant and made myself invisible to everyone but Whitehill.
 
Only he would be able to see and hear me.
 

At the tables to my left was a group of students sitting at the far end of the room, near the general creepiness that was the McDonald’s PlayPlace, in which children screamed during the daytime while shooting down colorful slides slick with germs.
 
They were older, probably in college.
 
I didn’t recognize them.
 
I tapped into their minds and told them to leave.
 
Even though they just received their food, they got up, left the restaurant, stepped into their cars and drove away.
 
Nobody else would come in tonight.
 
I closed my eyes and made certain of it.

“What’s their problem?”

Linda Price asked the question.
 
She was a year ahead of me and while she certainly had enjoyed taking her share of pot shots at me over the years, some of them cutting, she never had been as vicious as the others.
 
Still, I didn’t like her because I didn’t deserve any amount of abuse.
 
Period.

She was standing at a register with a piece of her long brown hair in her mouth.
 
She was gumming it, sliding it between her tongue and her teeth, in full view of anyone who might be entering the restaurant.
 
She was as sanitary-minded as they came.

“I mean, what the fuck?” she said.
 
“They get their food, they sit down and then they leave.
 
Who does that?”

“Don’t use that language in here, Linda.
 
Final warning.”

She looked at her assistant manager—a large blob of a woman with hair so big, it was meant to distract attention from her size, but failed spectacularly in doing so—and said in a lilting voice that she was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again.

“It had better not.
 
You got a trash mouth on you.
 
I don’t appreciate that shit.
 
Now, get over there and clean up their goddamned table.”

As she came around the bank of registers, I held out my foot and tripped her.
 
It was petty, I know, but watching Linda Price take a digger in the middle of McDonald’s was the payback she deserved for every damning thing she ever said to me.

What was great is that she went down with style.
 
She tried to right herself when I tripped her, but she couldn’t and so she stumbled forward, arms spinning like wheels as she reached out for the garbage bin to stop her fall.
 
It didn’t.
 
She collided with it, grabbed hold of it and went under it when it fell on top of her.
 

“Jesus motherfucking Christ shit!” she screamed as the waste of a dozen meals tumbled onto her face.

Her blob of an assistant manager ran over, which was a curious sight given the sheer size of her ass.
 
I checked back where they made the food, but couldn’t see any sign of Whitehill, though I knew he was here.
 
I could feel his presence.
 
He probably was back in the refrigerator area.

“That’s it, Price.
 
I told you to watch you mouth.
 
You’re fired.”

“Fired!”
 
She was squirming like a bug beneath the weight of the trash bin.
 
“Get this thing off me!
 
Get the trash off me!”

The woman lifted if off Price with ease.
 
“I told you not to swear.
 
You swore.
 
You’re out.”

Linda pushed herself to her feet, her hair hanging in her face, her eyes wild with rage.
 
There was a pickle stuck to her breast.
 
Her face was damp and sticky with soda.
 
On her lip was a blotch of ketchup.

“Are you fucking kidding me?
 
I could sue your ass for what just happened to me.
 
I could sue this restaurant’s ass!
 
I’ve hurt myself!
 
Look at my arm.
 
See that bruise?
 
It hurts.
 
And my hip hurts.
 
And my head hurts.
 
I tripped on something in YOUR restaurant and this JOINT is going to pay for it.
 
YOU’RE going to pay for it.
 
I’m so calling corporate on you, Patty.
 
You suck as a manager.
 
Correction—as an ASSISTANT manager.
 
You’ll never even see manager.
 
LOOK AT ME!
 
I’M COVERED IN TRASH!
 
Get me a fucking ambulance.”

“You don’t need an ambulance.
 
What you need is your mouth scrubbed out with a bar of soap or to get the hell out of here.
 
Nobody saw you fall.
 
It’ll be your word against mine.
 
I was sick of your prima-donna attitude the first day we hired you.
 
And guess what?
 
I’m making an executive decision to fire you.
 
I want you gone.”

“An
executive
decision?
 
Oh, please!
 
Who do you think you are?
 
The Power Trip Police?”

While they squabbled, I took the opportunity to walk around the registers and head toward the back.
 
Whitehill wasn’t in the refrigerator.
 
Instead, he was standing outside, having a smoke.
 
The door to the backroom was open and I watched him for a moment before I cracked my knuckle on the wall near him.
 
He jumped in surprise and turned to look at me.
 
But the moment he saw me, he relaxed, took his cigarette and crushed it on the pavement.

“What the hell are you doing back here?” he said.

“Just paying a visit, Joe.”

“At midnight?”

“That’s right.
 
Aren’t you happy to see me?
 
I would have asked my parents to come along to meet you, but I think we both know that’s impossible.
 
And the reasons why it’s impossible.”

He shook his head at me but made no effort to step inside, which was curious because if there was anyone who would pick a fight with me, it was this one.
 
Over the years, he’d been worse to me than Tyler or Hastings put together.
 
I’d always considered him to be at least a sociopath, if not a borderline psychopath.
 
He took no one’s shit.
 
He might be short, but he was stocky and built, and he knew how to fight.
 
Dirty.
 
But I was ready for him.
 
Let him bring it.
 
I’d crush him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

“Well, let’s just start with the truth.
 
You do know what I’m talking about, so saying you don’t is a lie.
 
Still, that’s not unexpected coming from a piece of shit like you.”

“What did you just say?”

“You heard me.”

“Say it again.”

“It’s not unexpected coming from a piece of shit like you.
 
Did you hear that?
 
Good.
 
Now, do you want to do something about it?”

He literally was incredulous.
 
Nobody spoke to him like this.
 
Ever.
 
“Are you serious?
 
Is this some sort of joke?”

“No, but I am curious in whether you think this is a joke.”
 
I lifted him into the air and waved a hand over his mouth to silence him.
 
His legs started to kick, so I paralyzed him.
 
For the first time since I’d known him, I saw real fear in his eyes as he floated into the room.

I turned him so he faced a closed white door.
 
It was beat up, but it would work well enough as a movie screen.
 

I closed my eyes and recalled the night my parents were murdered and what I’d seen outside the trailer.
 
On that door, I showed him exactly what I witnessed.

There was Joe with the can of gasoline.
 
There he was pouring it around the trailer.
 
There he was trying to stifle a laugh while he did it.
 
Whenever his image appeared on the door, I stopped it and held the shot so he could have a good, long look at himself.

“So, you see,” I said.
 
“We have a problem, Joe.
 
You were instrumental in killing my parents.
 
You’re a murderer.
 
You’re no good.
 
Never have been.
 
You’ve bullied me and countless others since we were kids.
 
You’re a rotten, no-good, murdering piece of shit.
 
And tonight’s the night you’re going to pay for it, especially for what you did to my family.
 
You’re going down.”
 

I told him exactly what I expected from him.
 
I sank myself into the amulets, grabbed him by the shirt and lowered him down so we were looking each other in the eye.
 

I gave him a jolt and he reared back.
 
I gave him another and he tried to scream.
 
The power I possessed with four amulets was beyond anything I expected or had experienced before.
 
I bored into his brain and he started to shake.
 
His eyes rolled back in their sockets and he started to piss himself, so I let him go.
 
“You’re going to do all of it,” I said.
 
“Is that agreed?”

He nodded.

“Then do it.”