Hellgate London - Exodus Part 11

"The one that Edith talked about," someone else agreed. "The one who talked to the demon."

"She said he'd be coming to us."

"I don't believe what she's said about him." "He's here, isn't he?"

Warren couldn't believe the woman had told anyone about him. Or that she had felt certain he'd show up there.

He felt them moving around him in a circle. Every now and again someone's robe would brush against him. Less often, someone touched him, the tactile impression so light that he barely felt it.

"She says he has power," someone said. "Real power."

"You can see it in him." "Isee it," someone said. "Get Edith."

There was another rustle of clothing as someone left.

Warren stood very still. More than anything at the moment, he wanted to see through the darkness.

A moment later, a voice asked, "Do you really want to see in the darkness, Warren?"

He recognized Edith Buckner's dulcet tones. He tried to face her, but he wasn't sure where she was. "Yes," he said.

"Then," she whispered, "open your eyes and see." Warren looked around in the darkness. "I can't."

"You're not letting yourself. The same power you used to talk to the demon will allow you to see in this darkness. You just have to use that power."

"Look," he said, desperate to leave, "I made a mistake." He knew that wasn't true the minute he said that. He hadn't made a mistake in coming there. He just didn't know what he was supposed to do now that he was there. "I shouldn't have come."

Pain lit up the side of his face. Only after his head jerked to the side and the sound of flesh striking flesh did he realize he'd been slapped.

She'd hit him. Or someone had.

"Open your eyes," the woman commanded. "Open your eyes andsee." "I-"

Another stinging slap nearly drove Warren to his knees. For a moment in the darkness, he felt like he was back in the foster homes, wakened from sleep again.

Fear and anger mixed within him. He'd always sworn he wouldn't go back to being afraid like that. Or be bullied. Never again. He was through being helpless. All he needed to do was find the stairwell, then he could- Someone hit him again. The blow split his lips. He tasted blood. And the rage inside him boiled over. "Open your eyes," the woman commanded.

Warren did, discovering that the pain had caused him to snap them closed. When he opened his eyes, he found that he could see as clearly in the corridor as if on a moonlit night. The sight startled him, and he thought for a moment someone had turned on a light.

"His eyes," someone said. "He can see."

"Edith was right."

A man tried to slap Warren, but Warren caught the man's hand and stopped the blow. Warren felt stronger than he ever had. Even though the man was bigger than he was, he'd controlled his arm like it was nothing.

"Stop," Warren told the man.

A paroxysm violently twisted the man's face. His eyes rolled up into his head. Then he dropped to the floor and lay on his back.

The crowd stepped back from him. One of the men dropped to his knees and tried to wake the fallen man. He checked him quickly, holding a palm over the man's mouth and nose, then pressing an ear to his chest.

In disbelief, the man looked up at Warren and the others. "He's not breathing. I can't find a pulse."

"Joel is dead," someone whispered. "That boy killed him."

Eleven.

Dead.

The word reverberated through Warren's skull. He stared down at the man. "He can't be dead," Edith Buckner said. "The boy didn't touch him."

"I worked in an ER," the man kneeling beside the body said. "I know dead when I see it, and Joel is dead."

Warren's face still burned from the slaps he'd received while blind in the darkness. But that was small compared to the confusion and disbelief that he felt as he looked at the fallen man.

"I didn't do anything," Warren whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "I just didn't want him to hit me again." Memory of his stepfather and mother's last argument came to mind.

"You spent all our money again!" his stepfather roared.

"I'm really close to breaking through," his mother had protested. "I needed things. The money I've spent trying to get in touch with my power isn't going to matter. Once I've achieved mastery over the arcane-"

"Mastery?" His stepfather had never been a patient man. He'd never been a forgiving one either. "You can't even manage a house, you cow! We live in filth! I work hard all day-"

"You're a thief! Don't you go getting sanctimonious with me! I know what you are! You and your friends are just-"

As he always had before, Warren had hidden behind the couch in the cramped living room. His mother's books on magic and lore filled much of the s.p.a.ce, but there were also vid components, computers, and other stuff his stepfather had nicked that he hadn't yet fenced.

Usually there was a lot of fighting, some hitting, and drinking that followed. He'd learned that all he had to do was stay out of the way until things got quiet again.

But that wasn't the case that night. He hadn't known it then, but a drug dealer that his stepfather had robbed a few days ago had figured out who he was and was tracking him down. His stepfather could leave London, gra.s.s to the cops, or die. The drug dealer had already killed one of his stepfather's accomplices.

The argument hadn't ended routinely.

Trapped by his own fear and anger, his stepfather had pulled out his pistol and shot Warren's mother in the face and chest. He'd killed her, screaming curses at her the whole time, blaming her for the desperation that had sent him after the drug dealer's score instead of playing things safely.

Unable to help himself, only eight years old, Warren had started screaming and calling out to his mother.

His stepfather turned the big pistol on him. Warren had known without a doubt that his stepfather was going to kill him.

The first bullet caught Warren in the hip and spun him around. He fell, paralyzed from the pain and the blunt force. The second bullet struck the wall only inches from his head.

That was when Warren had looked at his stepfather and said, "I wish you were dead." And he'd wanted it with every fiber of his being.

Instead of shooting Warren, his stepfather had pulled the gun to his own temple, crying and screaming for help the whole time, and pulled the trigger. The smell of burned flesh, scorched by the pistol blast, had filled the air.

All those memories spun through Warren's thoughts. Even after fifteen years, they were never far away.

A neighbor had called the police. Warren had been transported to the hospital and turned over to foster care as soon as he was well enough to walk out.

But his stepfather had deserved to die. He'd been the most fearful thing Warren had ever known. He still had nightmares about the man.

Warren didn't even know the man on the floor. He didn't even know if the man was the same one who had been hitting him.

Edith Buckner leaned down and laid a hand over the man's heart. "Breathe," she commanded. A s.h.i.+mmer stretched out from her hand.

The man bucked up violently, like someone had seized him by the belt and yanked. Then he fell back onto the floor.

"He's still not breathing," the first man said after a brief inspection.

Edith repeated her command a second time. During this instance, the shadows seemed to recoil from her.

A moment later, the man let out a large breath. Then he sucked it back in again. "He's alive."

"Edith saved him."

Gathering her robe around her, green light slithering through her horns and the tattooing on her face, Edith looked at Warren. "I'm glad you've come."

Warren didn't know what he was supposed to say. Part of him wanted to leave immediately. Just start running and not stop until he was somewhere out on the street.

"Your arrival isn't any too soon," the woman said. "Another few days, if you don't learn how to mask your ability, the demons will feel you pa.s.s by and you'll never be able to evade them again. Your suggestion trick won't work then. They'll hunt you down and kill you."

"But I didn't do that," Warren said, pointing to the man, who appeared panicked and not quite sure of where he was. "He must have just...just had aseizure."

"That wasn't a seizure," Edith said. "That was power. I've never seen anyone stop someone's heart with a word before." "I didn't-"

"He did," one of the viewers commented. "I felt the power in his voice."

Warren wished they would shut up as he watched the fallen man wander around sh.e.l.l-shocked, led and comforted by the man who had tried to treat him.I didn't do that. I couldn't have done that.

Yet he knew he had.

"Your powers started manifesting themselves when your stepfather tried to kill you?"

Tensely, Warren sat in an overstuffed chair and faced Edith and a man she'd introduced as Jonas. Jonas had asked the question. In his thirties, he was over six feet tall, almost as tall as Warren, and was built more heavily. His eyes were dark but glowed silver with energy. Although no one had said it, he was clearly the leader of the group, but Edith was close behind him.

Like the others, Jonas was heavily tattooed, but he had a number of scars and piercings as well. Several of them looked extremely painful.

"I don't know," Warren answered. After the close call out in the corridor, he wasn't sure what to believe.

"You caused your stepfather to kill himself," Jonas said.

"He had it coming," Warren said defensively. "He'd killed my mother and shot me."

Jonas held up a placating hand. "That wasn't an accusation. Your stepfather sounded like an evil man."

"He was." For the first time Warren saw the strange growths on the back of Jonas's hands. They'd been attached just below his wrists. Even with his improved vision, Warren could barely make them out.

Writhing and twisting, they looked like small tentacles.

They were in a small room off from the main one. The building's whole top floor had been mostly converted into one large area. Only four offices remained. Both rooms that Warren had been in featured strange graffiti on the walls and floors. There were also artifacts that he'd never seen before but that seemed somehow familiar.

The robed people sat in small groups. They ate and tattooed each other, working on totally naked landscapes of flesh. Others read from books and scrolls or practiced some kind of meditation exercises. Others came and went all the time, bringing supplies and news of what was happening in the city.

"It's just that most people don't come into that kind of power at such an early age," Jonas said. "In fact, I'd wager to say that no one in this room can stop a man's heart with a word." He smiled a little, and Warren knew it was to allay his suspicions.

For the most part, Warren knew he could read the man. Jonas wouldn't be able to lie to him. But he could hide things from him. Warren felt those hidden things lurking around behind the man's thoughts.

"You're unusual," Edith said, smiling.

"To say the least," Jonas agreed. He reached into his robe and brought out a coin. Holding the coin in his hand, he looked at Warren. "Can you lift this coin?"

Thinking it was a trick, Warren hesitated a moment, then reached for the coin. "Not with your fingers," Jonas instructed. "With your mind."

Warren took his hand back. "No."Of course I can't. That's ridiculous.

"It's not ridiculous," Jonas said. "Before you came here tonight you didn't think you could see in the dark."

Warren acknowledged that with a nod.

"Many things that you thought of as impossible were possible even before the demons invaded the city," Jonas said. "Reports of those things-out-of-body experiences, precognition, extrasensory perception-were in the news. You've heard of those?"

"Yes." Warren didn't know how many books on the subject his mother had bought and read and reread.

"The problem has always been the plethora of pretenders. There was no way for the public to separate trickery from true power."

Warren had believed that everyone his mother had seen was a grifter only too glad to take his stepfather's money. He'd never seen any true magic.

Not until the night your stepfather blew his brains out.

Jonas licked his lips and turned his attention to the coin. "Plus, before the h.e.l.lgates opened, the powers that had manifested had been slight by comparison. Only flashes and glimpses of what would come. Do you know what telekinesis is?"

Warren s.h.i.+fted. "I know what it's supposed to be." "Indulge me."

"You're supposed to be able to lift things with your mind."

"Do you believe that?" "No. Of course not."

Jonas smiled at him. "Why?"

"Because it's not real. No one can do-"

Jonas took his hand from beneath the coin. The coin floated in midair. "Some can."