Godsend (The Circle War Book 1)

by Matt King

  “And what might that be?”

  He leaned his forehead against the grating. “It hits their brain and goes down the spinal cord. That’s what she told me. The brain can’t handle the energy, so it starts sending out all kinds of signals to the rest of the body and the muscles can’t take it. They start vibrating, faster and faster until they get so hot, the whole body goes up in flames.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

  “I’ll tell you what I do know,” Jimmy said. “I know you’re fruitier than a basket of apples and crazy, to boot. Why don’t you tell me how you really did it? We can trade tips. Or maybe you can let the little girl inside you tell me, if that’ll make you feel better. Did you name her something pretty? I bet you did. I bet it’s Sally or Wendy or something.”

  “Her name’s Amara, and when she comes, I hope she kills you first.”

  Another fit of laughter spilled through the vent. One of the guards came by and kicked the door to Jimmy’s cell. Jimmy waited until the officer walked away before speaking again. “You’re the craziest god damn guy I ever met. Hey, if you got all these special powers, how come you’re sitting in a cell by me? Hell, I’d have killed every guard in here my first day if I could do all that. You’d be reading about me while I was sipping on tequila in Meh-hi-co.”

  Michael held out his hands, wishing for the change to come. He wondered when it would happen, when he’d finally be able to control when he turned. She told him he’d learn on his own, and when he did, the world wouldn’t be able to stop him. He thought for a second about how those words would’ve sent him into a fit of crying only a few days earlier. It was another thing Amara was right about; he was starting to crave the feeling. It was like stepping into bath water that was hot enough to make you wince. Once you got used to it, it started to feel good. After a while, you wanted it even hotter.

  “How about you show me,” Jimmy said.

  “Show you what?”

  “Your little trick. I want to see it in action.”

  “No,” Michael replied, “you don’t.”

  “We got thick walls in here. You won’t hurt me.”

  “Walls won’t make a difference. If I go off, everybody dies.”

  Jimmy snorted. “I don’t know about those blue-suited bastards standing outside these doors, but I feel pretty damn safe and secure. Besides, what are they gonna do? Electrocute you faster? Pile on a few more murders to your rap sheet? Hell, we got nothing to lose in this bitch.”

  A blast of air sprang from the vent, breaking up their conversation. For a few minutes, at least, Michael could enjoy the silence. He arched his back so the air could get underneath his collar. His arms looked pasty white beneath the fluorescent lights, but they weren’t the color he was hoping for. He wanted to see the ash again. He wanted to see the cracks form along his veins just before he felt the rush. Maybe if he thought about it—really thought about the spark he felt when it first began—he could do it at will.

  He took himself back to the first time it happened. He remembered sitting on the benches in the lobby, waiting for the next bus out of town and still reeling from the first time she spoke to him about his gift. There were so many people. He was nervous. He remembered feeling that nervousness in his stomach until it was replaced by something else. There was a tension in his chest. The first thing that went through his mind was that he was having a heart attack. The tension turned into warmth, and that’s when he first noticed his skin begin to turn. It started on his arms. The ash rose out of his skin in blossoming patches. His veins turned from blue to black, and once his skin finished its transformation, the black lines gave way to blazing red cracks. That was the moment he wanted so badly to recreate. It was the climax of something beautiful.

  He replayed the memory over and over. I want the heat. I want the heat to come.

  You can’t control it, his father said, laughing.

  Michael clinched his eyes.

  She’s watching you, and she’s disappointed, Michael.

  Finally, like the spark of a match, he felt the tension in his chest. His heart beat wildly. He opened his eyes and turned his arms, looking for the change. Tendrils of heat formed beneath his ribs. Michael closed his eyes and let it take hold.

  The air conditioning shut off abruptly, leaving the vents free of noise. Jimmy didn’t let the opportunity go to waste.

  “You didn’t fall asleep, did ya?” When he didn’t get an answer, he raised his voice. “Oh, yoohoo! Calling little Amara!”

  Michael didn’t answer. All across his arms, the ash bloomed.

  “Hey, chicken shit. You over there playing with your energy balls?”

  “Are you next to the vent?” Michael asked coolly.

  “Hell no. I’m on my cot.”

  “Come closer.”

  “The hell for? You gonna give me a kiss?” There was a shuffling sound as Jimmy moved across his cell and sat down next to the vent. “Okay, now what? Should I close my eyes?”

  “Oh no,” Michael said, smiling at the red cracks forming on his skin. “Keep them open. This is something I want you to see.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bear pulled Ray’s wheelchair up the last of the front porch steps and left him beside August while he went back to get the rest of their things. A green tank the size of a soda bottle sat in a webbed holster behind Ray’s back. In a show of defiance, Ray left the cannula sitting on his lap.

  “Where’d the pretty lady get off to?” he asked.

  “Meryn? She’ll be around.” August looked up at the moonless sky through one of the porch’s screen panels. “She’s probably hanging out in a cloud somewhere, just waiting for the perfect moment to sneak up behind us.”

  Bear came back to the porch with Ray's yellow duffel bag in his hand. “I’ll go put this in the guest room.”

  “I thought you were upstairs?” August asked.

  Ray flicked the metal arm of his wheelchair. “These things don’t work well with steps, as you may have noticed. Doctor said the days of me enjoying my privacy on the second floor were over.”

  “It’s what I’ve been saying for years, Daddy. Those stairs are too much for you.”

  Ray shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe so.”

  Bear shouldered the duffel bag. “I’ll be back down to get you as soon as I put some of this stuff away.”

  “Bear,” Ray said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like a few minutes alone with Mr. Dillon.”

  “You want me to take you inside?”

  “No, I think I like it out here.”

  Bear left them alone, but not before bringing a blanket out to lay across Ray’s legs. August peeled off his jacket. He set his swords on the table between two rockers, then took the seat next to Ray.

  “Don’t you get tired of lugging those things around?” Ray asked.

  “I’m used to it. Besides, you’d need a crowbar to pry them away from me after the last few days I’ve had.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Ray crossed his hands in his lap. A fly landed on his fingers, but he didn't brush it away.

  “You’re sounding better,” August said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your voice. It’s stronger.”

  “Steroids,” Ray replied, tapping his chest. “Doctor gave me a shot before I left. Gave me pills for the stuff, too. Suppose I can add them to the pile, as it were.”

  August couldn’t think of a good way to continue the conversation, so he looked at his watch instead. It was close to midnight. The air was finally cool after another unusually hot day, and the overhead fan pushed the breeze around in lazy turns, bringing in the smells from the flowers surrounding the front walkway. It was almost enough to make him forget the stale smell of the hospital.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Ray said. He didn’t look at August. Instead, he stared out at the street light in the distance.

  “Yeah,” August replied. “It was a close call.”
r />   “It shouldn’t have been. Do you know what a DNR order is, August?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Well, neither did I until tonight. It stands for ‘Do Not Resuscitate.’ Funny how something like that can just show up as a checkbox on a form.”

  Even though he knew the answer, August asked the question anyway. “Did you check it?”

  Ray nodded. “Now, I’m telling you this under the assumption that you won’t say a word to Bear, at least not until I’m through the keyhole.”

  “Promise,” August replied. He sat for a moment, drumming his fingers on his knees. “What is…I mean, should I know—”

  “It was my grandfather’s saying. He lived with us once he got along in years. One afternoon, he was pouring a glass of milk when he suddenly he just fell to the floor. When he woke up, he could barely speak. His whole face drooped to one side. I know now that it was a stroke, but back then I thought he was melting. He told me that he saw something when it happened. It started out as a little black dot in his vision that he said looked like a keyhole. Everything just sort of gravitated toward it, and he eventually went through. He talked about the other side of the keyhole like it was the most glorious thing a man could ever see. I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently.”

  Ray took hold of the cannula lying across his lap. He held it for a moment in his fingers, turning it absently. He gave a shallow sigh before looping the ends over his ears. “I suppose death isn’t something you have to worry much about.”

  August shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that.” He pictured Talus’s eyes through the fire before Meryn’s warning. He will kill you, August.

  “Dying kind of takes the fun out of being immortal, doesn’t it?”

  “Not immortal. Mostly-immortal.”

  “Oh. My mistake.”

  Bear's footsteps shook the boards above the porch. The ceiling fan wobbled.

  “You know,” Ray said, glancing up, “we’ve had quite a few revelations between us in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “You got that right,” August replied.

  “You care for one more?”

  “That depends. Are you going to tell me you turn into something, too?”

  Ray laughed briefly. He tried in vain to stifle the coughs that followed. “No, nothing like that. You asked me about Bear’s nickname when we first met. I told you there was time for that story later, but I think ‘later’ has taken on a new meaning. One way or another, I don’t think you and I have too many more opportunities to enjoy a quiet evening on a porch like this. Not if what Meryn says is true.”

  “She’s kind of a downer. I’ve never had her show up to tell me how great things are going.”

  “Something tells me you don’t mind much why she shows up, so long as you’re around when she does.”

  “She’s okay,” August replied. “I guess.”

  Ray smiled. “It’s like that, is it? I see. Anyway, I wanted to tell you how Johnny came to be called ‘Bear.’”

  “What's left to tell? I thought we got a pretty good idea of that at the church.”

  “This speaks to your current situation, August.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  Ray pulled his blanket up to his stomach. “I may not have told you this yet, but Bear lost his mother when he was a teenager. Beth was her name. She died out in the fields one day while Bear was playing over at that oak tree by the drive. Heart attack. Her death hit us both pretty hard. Johnny quit school right afterward to help me on the farm, even though I told him I wanted him to finish his education. He wouldn’t have it. I tried to make him go anyway. Then I’d end up finding him out in the barn or pulling weeds in the field when he was supposed to be at school. He just wanted to be close. I guess he was afraid something might happen to me like it did his mother.

  “A few years down the line, Bear started to get big. Really big. August, you’ve never seen so many city boys in suits show as much interest in a farm boy as those men from the colleges did back then. They wanted him for all kinds of sports: basketball, football…you name it. He’d turn them down, but they just kept coming. That’s when we started camping on weekends. We frequented a spot in the Pisgah forest not too far from here. I liked it because it was a good bit off the beaten path, so not many folks around to bother us. We called it Trout’s Corner. It was a...flat little beach area on the elbow of a river. Deep water and not too fast-moving, which...made for good fishing.”

  Ray took a break to let the oxygen recharge his lungs. He looked like he’d just crossed the finish line in a triathlon.

  “You want to finish this some other time?” August asked.

  “No,” Ray replied. “I won’t go on too much longer. Anyway, Trout’s Corner became something of a second home to us. Lots of trails around that Johnny used to love exploring. I’d usually go along, but one day I decided to stay back at camp and let Johnny go off on his own. Like I said, he was already big as a house. I didn’t worry about anything hurting him. I spent the morning fishing. Trying to, rather. Nothing was biting around camp so I moved on down the river a little ways and ended up on a line of boulders along the bank. After a bit, I saw Johnny waving at me on the other side of the river from the top of the ridge. He was pointing at the creek, shouting something, too, but I couldn’t make it out.

  “Then I looked over and saw a black bear walking across the rocks. It was big male. Normally you can scare them away by making a racket, but the only thing I had was my voice. I started yelling at him to git. Tried to make myself seem big and mean.”

  “I might’ve tried for ‘flavorless.’”

  “That kind of acting is…beyond my abilities, I’m afraid.” He paused to regain his breath. “So, the bear kept coming. I had a couple of fish sitting on the rock and this bear was only a couple of days out of hibernation. I didn’t have anywhere to go. My back was to the river and he was already coming up the rock I stood on. He walked straight past the fish toward me. I tried hitting him with my fishing pole first, but it didn’t do anything except make him mad. The next best thing I had on me was a filet knife, only it was on the rock next to the fish. I went for it…and that’s when the bear hit me. He charged and knocked me over.” Ray gestured with his hands to show himself tumbling down.

  “I fell between two rocks and hit the back of my head. I didn’t know which way was up. All I knew was that the bear was clawing at my hip, trying to get me out so he could finish me off. He grabbed hold of my leg with his jaws, right here” He pointed to his thigh. “It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. He tugged at it and kept biting cause he could see it was working. I was nearly free of the crevice when I heard this…incredible roar. At the time, I didn’t know where it was coming from, I only knew that it wasn’t the animal chewing on my leg.

  “The pain was total, if you catch my meaning. I couldn’t see straight. All I knew was that at some point, the pressure on my leg stopped. The bear dropped me and I fell back down in the crevice. I wasn’t conscious for too much longer after that. What I heard, though, was something I’ll never forget. It was a wild rage. Something got hold of that bear and made it scream. All I could see were blurs, but it looked like another bear had come to fight. There was a snapping sound, just like the one I heard when the bear took hold of my leg. That’s when the fight ended. I remember being just as scared about the bear that came to my rescue as I was about the one that attacked me. Wasn’t anything I could do about it, though. I blacked out and didn’t wake up until I felt a tug on my shirt. When I opened my eyes, I saw Johnny’s face. He was carrying me through the woods. He had been crying for a while, I could tell. I couldn’t talk much, but I asked him what happened. He just said that...he got there as fast as he could…” Ray’s voice raised higher as he tried to complete the sentence. He lifted his glasses to wipe his eyes. “And that I didn’t have anything to worry about anymore. I called him ‘Bear’ ever since. The bear that came to my rescue.”

  “But you didn’t know,” Augus
t said. “Not until…”

  “Not until what happened in the church, no. Like I said at the hospital, I always thought he was special. I just figured God would give me a sign one day about what it all meant. Turns out the sign was more like a billboard. All this time, I thought the stuff I saw while I was stuck between those rocks was just hallucinations. I thought Johnny, as big as he was, had taken down that bear on his own.”

  “Crazy,” August said.

  “Yep,” Ray replied. “That’s kind of the word I was thinking of, too.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I mean, to see that happen to your son? That’s gotta mess with your head.”

  Ray thought for a moment. “This may seem odd to you, but when I saw him change today, I was so proud. Maybe I was supposed to think that he was cursed, or similar, but the only thing that ran through my mind was that he’d been blessed. Someone up there saw fit to choose my son for a gift. I don’t think I’d feel more prideful if I saw him win a gold medal.” He blew his nose on a handkerchief taken from his overalls. “I’m sure your dad would feel the same way.”

  “I don’t know about that,” August replied.

  “Oh?”

  “My father skipped town before I was born.” In truth, he hadn’t thought about his family much in the past ten years or so until then. Strange how easily things like family were forgotten. He wondered if his mother were on her third or fourth husband by now.

  “You weren’t raised by wolves, were you?”

  You don’t know how close you are. “No, not really,” he said instead. “Parents didn’t leave much of a lasting imprint. There was a guy who once thought of himself as my dad, though.” The words were out of his mouth before he could hold them back. Ray looked back at him expectantly. Too late to turn back now. He didn’t need to hear the grisly details of the years spent with Coburn, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to tell the story to someone.