by Bob Dattolo
“What do you want?” At least my voice didn’t crack again. Nor do I smell so overwhelmingly of blood. Things are looking up in the world!
He sneered at me, which I have to say I don’t like, “What do I want? You were with them again. You were with her!”
I leaned against the lockers, finding standing way too difficult for me right now. “You know what? Go to hell, Syl. I’ll drive whoever I want wherever I want. You’re not my boss. You’re not my father. You’re just a kid I met in school two days ago. I don’t get why you have a problem with any of them. Marisela and Tara are beautiful girls. Funny. Intelligent. Just because they don’t look like a human knockoff doesn’t reduce who they are. So they don’t look human. I don’t care. Because, guess what, you’re not human either. I’m not human.”
I looked him up and down, trying to gauge whether or not he attacked Melissa with magic, “As for you and Melissa? I plan on calling you out every single time you’re a dick to her.”
He leaned over me, “You have no idea what she’s done!”
I so badly wanted to poke him in the chest, but I didn’t. I nearly got distracted by feeling Nathan approaching. He glowed in my head and I wanted to crush him up in a hug so badly. “You’re right,” I fought back to the conversation, “I don’t know what she’s done. How about you enlighten me? I don’t think it’ll change my mind about anything but go for it. Here’s your shot. Make it count.”
He squinted, anger filling his face even more than before, “She’s a destroyer! That’s all she does. Destroys! She took something that was amazing and turned it to shit…then it just got worse. It’s wrecked…everything is wrecked because of her!”
The anguish and anger coming from him are real…I just don’t care much. “That’s a shame…except you haven’t really explained much here, Syl. You’re an overbearing bastard to her. What you’re doing isn’t the reason why. Any more than the outcome of what she supposedly did is what she did. How did she wreck anything? How did she destroy anything? From what I’ve seen, she’s lost and scared and lonely…”
He pushed at my chest with a finger. I don’t have the energy to break it or stop him, so I let him push me back into the lockers, “She showed up…everything was perfect. My life was perfect. Then she showed up. Fucked it all up from the beginning. Everything changed. Everything. Then it just got worse. No magic? That made everything worse…until the truth came out. It came out and everything in my life is destroyed. My family is gone. My mom’s dead. My father is…he treats me like shit. All because of her! He doesn’t trust me, because of her! She ruined my life!” Spit was flying towards the end, but I didn’t wipe it from my face.
Too much information hit me in that little explosion. Too, too much.
Yet all of it points to Syl and Melissa being brother and sister.
“Is Melissa your sister?”
His chest heaved as he sucked in deep breaths, trying to corral his anger.
“Is Melissa your sister?!?”
He pulled away a little his lip came up in a sneer, “She’s not my sister. She’s trash.”
Then he walked away, stalking through the moving kids and disappearing down the hall.
What the hell, man? Why can’t this be normal?
Or is this normal? Maybe I missed that in the TV shows I’ve watched. Since I haven’t watched that many, that’s a possibility. Are kids across the country being shoved into situations like this where their friends are being systematically beaten down by others? Where kids are being thrown out of houses as teenagers and forced to live in freaking caves, in fear for their lives from their own brother? Half-brother?
Why is this garbage allowed? Why don’t people stop this kind of crap? I don’t…I can’t…
Noise from a side corridor drew my attention and I drifted that way, only to see Dave come flying, hitting the ground and sliding, books being tossed everywhere. Laughter followed him, and my blood flash-boiled as four familiar faces followed him. “Awww, what’s wrong, loser? Your cunt of a hero not here to…” Warren caught me watching. I expected him to freak out at being seen, but he didn’t. He smiled and tapped the guys next to him, “Lookie here. It’s the cunt. What’s wrong there? I think you said something about…”
His smile died as the thing inside of me had enough of this garbage. It pulsed forward, filling me, letting me feel the dead all around me in greater detail. I can feel bugs and rodents in the walls and ceilings. Bodies buried below the school. There’s a mass grave of what I swear are humans out beneath one of the little open garden areas. I bet the school would freak out about that. They’re only about 30 feet deep, but I can feel them. Literally hundreds of bodies waiting for me to call for them.
Mom, goddess of battle, guide me if this turns into a fight.
I felt a ping from her coming back and a wash of power…as well as a spike of fear and concern.
It’s funny, when I connect with people that pray to me, I send a ray of golden light at them. With Mom, she shoots them with an arrow. I kid you not. That’s funny to me and makes me smile every time that I think she just did that to me. Apparently, the prior goddess of death would shower people with rose petals for some reason that I don’t know. Mom doesn’t know, either. Somehow and for some reason, we each pick something that resonates with us for some reason. I can get the arrow thing for Mom. She’s rather battle-focused. For me? I don’t know, I sort of picture the whole ray of light and choir of angel thing…
Yet none of that is making me smile now. No. I want blood. I want pain. I want screaming and crying and gnashing of teeth. I want mountains of corpses rotting in the sun, festering, bloating, popping, and sending sprays of rancid fluids across the ground as I roll on them, feeling the putrescence across my skin.
Someone blocks my sight of the four mages, but it isn’t until a huge hand sends me crashing into the lockers that I realize someone just struck me. Blood filled my mouth as I pushed my way up, finding my principal standing there, arm extended as his eyes go big at realizing he just struck a student.
“What…Ceri…I.”
A voice behind me cuts through the noise in the hallway, “What have you done to my daughter!” Mom moves through the crowd of kids, sending them to the walls as her power surrounds her. She looks the same as always, but she’s letting a little more of her out. She took in my look, knowing what the situation is with me. Then her eyes widen as she looks beyond the principal and sees Dave on the ground and the four somewhat terrified mages.
They’re not terrified enough.
She shook her head, “I see. These must be the boys you told me about. The ones that you warned?”
“They are.” My voice didn’t sound human, even to my ears. I nodded at Dave, “He’s the one they’re bullying.”
She stared at him, sniffing gently, only to smile, “I see. Dave, is it?”
“Yes?” He pushed himself up, leaving his books for now.
“You are the one being bullied here. Do you want my daughter to step in for you?”
He looked back at his bullies, then faced us again. In some manner that I can’t quite understand, he changed…just a bit. “No ma’am. I can handle this.” His voice sounded different. Not very, just enough to stand out. He is always so timid and shy sounding, yet this isn’t even much different from that. Yet still…what is it?
She nodded and patted me on the shoulder, “I think you can back off, Ceri. Or challenge them. I’m okay either way.”
My principal straightened his tie, “Now see here, we don’t allow fighting in our schools!”
He stopped talking as I stared into his skull, “I’m not fighting. Those four were bullying Dave. You seem to condone bullying, is that it? Bullying, but not standing up for yourself?”
He sputtered, “Now see here, young lady! We do not…”
Magic rocketed around him, stabbing at me so violently that it nearly knocked me to the ground. In my head I saw a combined spell from all four of them, and my power surged f
orward, surrounding me in a titanic wash of light. My nerve endings had less than a second to bellow out their agony before I saw the floor rushing at me.
Chapter 14
A cool cloth across my forehead was the first thing I felt. Not that I recognized it as that. I had no idea for the longest time. I just felt it moving back and forth, then coming back a little colder after a minute. When it clicked, sound began rushing in, filling me in fits and starts.
Then I heard it. Daughter-mine, goddess of death, come back to me. Come back to us. Please.
It was a struggle, but I got a tiny shaft of golden light to hit Mom. I could barely see her in my head, and normally I can see her like she’s on a 4k TV when she prays to me that way. I feel ravaged. Torn apart and not quite put back together.
“She’s back. At least a little.”
Other movement let me know that someone else was nearby. My nose finally told me that it’s Melissa. It beat my ears by maybe five seconds.
“How can you tell? She looks exactly the same? She’s looked the same since yesterday!”
Another wipe across my forehead, “I can tell. We have a…bond, if you will.”
Opening my eyes sucked. Big time. First of all, it took way too much energy to do it. Second of all…it barely happened. If anything, I feel even worse after trying to move and hardly being able to do it.
“What happened? Where am I?” My voice cracked and was so rough that I had to try to say it three times. Three times when Mom can hear a fart from 100 feet away. I’m not even joking.
So can I, usually, which is why kids in school were so carefree about things. You can’t hide pooping when everyone knows you are doing it. It just doesn’t even become a thing due to that.
Another wipe across my brow, telling me it really is a washcloth of some sort. “You’re at home. You…you were hit by a spell from those boys and you attempted to respond…and you collapsed.”
Dammit… “What? Why?”
Another wipe, “You’re too thin with magic. I’m…I’m frankly surprised you’re alive. If you weren’t what you are, I’m not sure you would have lived. You’ve read the books. When a mage loses all of their magic, it takes a miracle to keep them alive. You still have some magic inside of you, but it’s bare and thin. It had been slowly coming back, but you seem to have used up quite a bit of it, and what you’re left with right now…like I said, you should be dead.”
Dammit all… “What happened with the mages?” That took four attempts to get out and required a tiny sip of water to finish it.
Her smile made me try and smile in return. Not that it happened. “I felt their spell. They weren’t trying to kill you, but it was a solid attack against you. I challenged them and their families in your name. They have until Sunday night to respond or it will be assumed accepted.”
Melissa touched Mom’s arm, “You should have seen it. I caught the tail end where you collapsed. Your mom…oh my God, it’s so impressive!”
“Thank you, dear.”
“You challenged them in my name? What does that mean?”
“It means that the fight is yours, except you can call a champion since I called it myself.”
“Uhh, if I collapsed just trying to get my magic to work and I should be dead, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to take them?”
“That’s why I did it that way. It allows me to take the challenge in your place.”
Hmm. I can’t like that, honestly. Then again, I sort of want them dead. Juuust at my hands. Not hers. I’d take it either way, but darn it, I want to be the one to do it!
Trying to move didn’t do much. At all. “How do I fix my magic? I don’t even feel like I can move.”
She sighed, “I’m not surprised. You are worn thin. Away. I highly doubt you are even going to be able to go to the bathroom on your own. You are so damaged right now that eating is going to be an issue. I’m not sure how you’ll digest right now. You may have to start with soups.”
“I hurt myself that badly?”
Her eyes turned even more serious, which I never would have thought possible, “Yes. I am telling you the truth, Ceri. The full truth.”
Melissa’s tears were pretty much evidence to me, “You look…” She picked up what looked like a new phone, snapped a picture, and showed it to me. “Umm, your mom got me this phone. She said I can have it…but this is what you look like.”
I don’t look like me. Oh, I have the same eyes and teeth…but I look like a death camp survivor. If there’s an extra ounce of fat on me, it’s not in my face. When I used the sickle that housed some of my power and drained it to raise Mom again, I looked like the stereotypical angel of death. Skeleton body, cloak, and all. Now? Now I look even more like death than before. That should be impossible, since I was a literal skeleton before. It just looks so much worse since I have skin.
“What the hell…what happened?”
Mom pushed the phone down, “When you attempted to use your magic, your body pulled from your own life force. You drained yourself. When you fell, your heart had stopped beating. It didn’t start again until we were nearly halfway home.”
Melissa looked devastated, “You were so…so limp. It’s like you were dead.”
“She was dead. I know I told you otherwise…but she was dead.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Not impossible. Just not normal. My daughter is…singular, if you will. Even with that, I have never seen someone so drained not die. Ever. I have lived a long time and have seen countless hundreds of thousands of deaths in my time. Every time a draining like this took place, the person died with half as much damage done to them. Every single time. The only time that someone lived longer was when the draining simply happened so quickly that their brain was still ticking for long seconds after they should have been dead. In this case? Her heart stopped entirely and stayed that way for nearly eight minutes.”
“How…how can she still be alive?”
“My daughter is…special.”
I grunted, sounding more like a cough than I expected. My heart skipped several beats and stopped for nearly 30 seconds before starting again. Mom and Melissa looked on in horror at hearing it.
I was just dead again.
Again.
That…honestly, that pissed me off.
Pissed me off, yet I could feel something calling to me for that brief, shining moment. Calling me even more than it does normally. It was like magnet drawing at me, trying to bring me to it. Yet no matter what I did, I couldn’t get myself to move more than a twitch.
“Outside…bring me outside…”
Melissa’s tears started even harder, “She wants to die outside!”
She missed my look at her, “Please…outside.”
Mom picked me up, cradling me close, “Are you sure about this?”
I hit her up with a prayer and my weak voice at the same time, “You’re my mother. I follow you in all things…but there’s something I need. And it’s outside.”
She stared down at me and nodded as she pinged me back. “As you wish.”
Melissa continued crying as we stepped out back, and the feeling called to me even harder as we cleared the back door. Mom went to put me on one of the chairs, but I didn’t want that. “No…woods.”
I can feel life leaching away from me at the edges. It’s becoming harder and harder to think…yet the draw is irresistible. So, so strong.
She watched me closely again as I struggled to blink, then she headed off into the trees behind her house. Our house. Our family home.
Into the trees, where I can feel death waiting for me.
There’s death all around me once we get into the trees. It’s everywhere. I can’t call it because I’m so weak, but I want to. So badly.
There are dozens of hundreds of dead bugs and smaller animals all around us. Up in the trees, inside of the trees, and into the ground. There are so many of them that they’re actually overpowering my ability to see.
“
Set me down…by the tree.” I hoped she knew which one I meant. I can’t exactly move to another any time soon.
She somehow knew what I meant and put me down on the crinkly leaves, then crouched next to me as I stared up at her. I can feel the death. The leaves are dead, but they’re a castoff of the tree. It’s like trimmed hair. There’s a tiny bit of death in it, just not enough.
I’m not even sure why I want to be here, but I feel…I feel at home. Like this is where I’m meant to be.
My heart began slowing as I felt the leaves under me. So slow. My beating heart began to labor, struggling to push blood through my body…then it stopped, leaving me looking up at Mom. “Squ…squirrel…” Please let her understand me. I can feel it. It’s so close. So very close.
Everything started to fade to black at the edges and swoop in to the center as my body began to shut down. Just as I lost the last bit of light, I felt the blessed heat of the squirrel I meant rest on my chest.
It burned white hot against me and made me want to purr from the contact. It’s…it’s simply amazing.
The heat flared hot, then hotter, and my heart jumped into beating again, sending a pulse of life through my body.
“What the fuck just happened? Why did that thing burn up like that?” Melissa stared down at me in shock, while Mom had the strangest look on her face.
“That’s it…that’s it. That’s what Cerwon always meant.” No matter what I did, I couldn’t ask her to clarify.
Mother, goddess of battle…what? I have no idea what you mean. And I can’t quite talk right now…
She smiled, wiping at tears, and held up another small dead body. “Cerwon once told me that she recharges with…” she shrugged, “King Jarroh never allowed her to access the catacombs I told you about. I think this might be why.”
She placed the dead mouse thing on my chest. The connection was instantaneous, and it began to heat up, then send a tiny spike of fire straight into the air that I just barely saw. A sliver of energy flowed into me.
