by Scott Wilson
Annika shrugged awkwardly. “I got it from the shops.”
“You ‘got’ it? You mean, you stole it?”
“Yeah, well what do you expect?” Annika said sharply. “We don’t exactly have any money or anything else to trade. What were you gonna do? Try and sell your Iltech photo? Offer rides on your crippled horse? Come on, Caden. This is what we have to do.”
The bubbling acid in Caden’s empty stomach was screaming at him to eat the food, but at the same time he knew that the easiest way for them to get caught was by stealing. He’d already made one risky move coming down to the stage. Now they needed to lay low and figure out how to find his dad, not commit more crimes. If that meant chewing on sticks and foraging in the woods, then so be it.
“We can’t steal food,” Caden said. “Or anything. This town is weird, Annika. You didn’t see what I saw on stage. This guy came out, Father … something. And he—”
“Let me guess,” Annika said knowingly. “He put his hand on someone and they turned to dust, right?”
Caden was taken aback. “Yeah, how did you know?”
“Did you forget? I used to live in Salem. I’ve seen what Father Yohan can do, and I knew I didn’t need to see it again. All I wanted was to get us some easy food.”
Caden felt like an idiot. With everything that had happened he’d forgotten that Salem was where most of the Nobodies had come from. He was the one who was different, basically born and raised at the Home. But for Annika it was like being in her own backyard again.
“Listen,” Annika said, trying to sound sympathetic. “I’ve stolen from these shops a hundred times. Now you can either eat what I have here and be thankful, or you can starve. It’s up to you. Either way I’m going back to get some more before everyone returns. Here, hold onto this and try not to eat it all.”
Annika shoved the bounty of food toward Caden. He reluctantly took it. It still didn’t feel right. Seeing him not eat anything, Annika sighed and ran her fingers through her hair.
“I mean, you want Deber to get better, don’t you?”
“What does Deber have to do with this?” Caden asked.
“How do you think we’re going to pay an animal doctor to treat her? And do you honestly think they’re not going to know what kind of arrow hit her? We have to bribe them with something, food or whatever else we can get, or else they’ll just turn us over to the Holy Police.”
Caden felt overwhelmed. There was so much he didn’t know. It was bad enough when he found out he wasn’t fully human, but now he was finding out he didn’t even understand how real human society functioned. As if reading his mind, Annika spoke up.
“I know how this town works, Caden,” she said. “You worry about finding your dad, and I’ll worry about making sure we don’t starve. Deal?”
Caden didn’t say anything. He bent over, leaned his mouth on one of the apples cradled in his arms, and took a giant bite with a satisfying crunch.
“These aren’t nearly as good as what we had at the Home,” he said while chewing. But that didn’t stop him from finishing the apple with another three massive bites, then start sucking down the juicy strawberries one by one. Annika laughed and shook her head.
“All right. You stay here. I’ll be back with more. Then we can find a doctor for Deber.”
“Do you want me to come?” Caden asked, his chin dripping with strawberry juice.
“Uh, no offense but you’ll just get us caught. You try to detect those electrical signals or whatever that spider told you to do, all right?”
Caden didn’t argue. Annika snuck out of the alleyway and back onto the road, moving as fluidly as a cat. Caden helped himself to another apple and tried to remain as hidden as possible.
As he waited, Caden focused on trying to sense something—anything. That was what Tooby had told him to do, and it was the only way he was going to find his dad. When he’d stood on the slope earlier and had seen the stage, he’d felt a strange pull toward it, and then there turned out to be a calculator there. Maybe that pulling sensation was what he was supposed to be feeling?
But no, Caden thought, that couldn’t be it. He’d felt the same pulling sensation when he’d talked to that old woman in the street. And she was about as electric as a potato. He had to be missing something.
Caden’s thoughts were cut off by a scream. It was Annika.
He dropped the food and ran out of the alley. There was a crowd gathered. The butcher was back, standing high above everyone at over seven feet tall and as wide as a horse, wearing a blood-stained apron. He had monster-like wild hair and stone piercings in his ears and lips. He held Annika up effortlessly with one hand, his thick sausage fingers wrapped around both her wrists. She kicked and wailed and tried to free herself, but the butcher just grinned with yellowed teeth, watching her like a fly trying to escape his grasp.
“Well look who’s back,” he cackled. “My best customer who never paid for anything.”
There were laughs from the crowd. Caden felt helpless. He knew stealing was a bad idea.
“Let go of me!” Annika yelled. She swung her legs at the butcher, bit his fingers, spat in his face, but nothing she did even so much as made the giant man blink.
“Last I heard they sent you away to the sin farm. Looks like you managed to weasel your way out of there too. But you’ve gotten sloppy. You’re out of practice, dear.”
“Don’t call me ‘dear,’ you giant freak,” Annika screamed. Her words did nothing. He just kept staring at her with a smile the size of a scythe.
“If you escaped from the sin farm once, I guess that means I’d better not take any chances this time. I’ll deal with you myself.”
Still holding onto squirming Annika with one hand, the butcher reached inside his shop for the stone cleaver. Annika froze as he caressed her arms with the blade.
“Hey!” said a woman in the crowd. “If that girl ran away from the Home, then maybe she’s the one upsetting Gotama and causing all this ruckus. You should turn her in to the Holy Police immediately!”
Things were getting worse by the second. Annika was trapped, and now Caden was in danger just by standing there. If he tried to help her, the entire town would be after them both.
“Don’t worry,” the butcher said coolly. “I’ll turn her in to the Police. After I make sure she can never steal again.” He then turned to the crowd and brandished the cleaver, causing everyone to step back in fear. “And if I were to tell the Church she happened to lose her hands in an accident, I don’t think anyone would argue with me, would they?”
Everyone in the crowd shook their heads. The butcher smiled and returned the cleaver to Annika’s wrists. Caden was out of time. Even if he ran full speed he wouldn’t reach Annika before her hands were lying on the ground.
Caden had felt this way before. Powerless. He remembered when Dom had shoved him to the ground at the Home, come at him with the sledgehammer in the stable, and a hundred other times in the fields when he’d bullied Caden while no one was looking. Each time Caden wished he could just thrust out his hands and send a giant blast of air right at Dom to send him flying away. But though he’d tried, nothing had ever happened. He’d just gotten punched in the face or kneed in the stomach.
But out of instinct, Caden’s hands extended themselves again. All he could do was hope for a miracle like he’d seen on the stage. He closed his eyes and grit his teeth and spread his fingers as wide as he could. He had to save Annika!
Something happened. A tingling sensation buzzed inside Caden that he’d never felt before. It was warm and filled him from toes to nose, like a million fireflies shining bright inside him. On and off, on and off, on and off, faster and faster. Inside it suddenly felt hot, so hot that Caden needed to let it out. He couldn’t control it. It was coming out whether he wanted it to or not!
Caden shook, the palms of his gloves ripped, and something invisible erupted out of them, slamming right into the giant butcher’s
stomach. The man let out a mountain-shaking roar as he was launched straight up into the air above the houses and crashed into the brick roof of the building behind him. He sunk deep into it, splashing brick fragments and splintering wood. He lay there unmoving in a cloud of dust as shrieks of terror rang out. Annika looked unhurt, standing in the road with her arms up like they were still being held. She stared at Caden in shock as if he’d just caused an explosion with his bare hands.
Which made sense, because he had.
Everyone looked at Caden in wide-eyed silence. There were no more screams, just the horror on everyone’s faces as they slowly realized what had happened. Caden stood paralyzed by what he’d done. His hands were still out in front of him, incriminating him. The palms of his gloves were shredded, and the red Xs shone through as brightly as if his hands were on fire.
“It’s him!” shouted someone in the crowd. “That boy is the one who’s angering Metl!”
“We’ve found the sinner!”
“Get him before he escapes!”
Suddenly Caden found the strength to move. He spun around ready to bolt, but another crowd was already blocking his path from the other direction. Both mobs closed in on him, the hunger to destroy Iltech raging in their eyes.
Caden was trapped from all sides. The crowd cautiously encircled him, wary of the horrible power they’d just witnessed. Caden thrust his hands out at them, trying to summon the same power as before. It made them step back momentarily in fright, but that was all. Whatever miracle had happened before wasn’t happening again, no matter how hard Caden tried.
As the mob closed in, Caden thought to himself, this is it. He wasn’t going to meet his father. He was just going to die here, either at the hands of these people or by being turned into a pile of dust on stage. He had so many questions, and now he was never going to find the answers.
That’s when it got dark.
The transition was so quick it was like someone had blown out the sun. One second it was daytime, the next all of Salem was shrouded in darkness. Midnight had decided to show up early.
It only took one shriek to see what had happened. Metl, still massive in the sky, had eclipsed the sun. There was no longer a shining ball of light above, only darkness and that terrifying X.
The mob quickly forgot about Caden, but even more so once the water began to flow. In the streets all around, water began streaming past like a river, growing deeper and more intense by the second. Everyone ran yelling toward higher ground, flailing their arms in the air hysterically. It felt like the world was ending.
“Get out of here!”
“Metl has sent a flood!”
“Run away! The sinner is planning something!”
Far from “planning anything,” Caden stood there alone, not having any idea what was going on. He was surrounded by darkness, knee-deep in churning water, and more confused than ever. Annika ran up to him, splashing her way through the newly-formed canal.
“Caden! What’s going on?”
“I don’t know!” Caden shouted to be heard above the screaming mob and rushing water. “But let’s get out of here before they come back.”
A familiar voice came from the shadows.
“Well, Blondie, it looks like you were lost in the bad way after all.”
It was the old woman from before. She didn’t sound the same. The feebleness in her voice was gone. She was standing in the middle of the gushing water as solid as a statue, arms crossed, giving off an aura of strength that she had not had before.
“What are you doing here?” Caden asked.
Annika was shocked. “Caden, you know this person?”
The woman laughed. She shrugged off her burlap sacks and let her straw wig fall into the flowing water. The old woman was gone, and someone new—someone Caden would have guessed was from a different planet—had taken her place. She wore a sleek black uniform, heavy black boots, and was draped in a flowing black cloak. All the black made her blue hair with yellow streaks stick out even more, as well as the red scars that spread down her neck like branches on bare winter trees.
But what Caden noticed most of all were the blue glowing Xs on her palms.
“I can assure you, Split Ends, that Blondie here doesn’t know who I am,” she said to Annika with a grin. “But I know who he is.”
“Then tell us who you are!” Caden yelled.
“Well, well. Getting pushy, are we?” she snickered. “But I guess it was only a matter of time before we met. The name’s Jadice, formerly known as Twelve—of the Twelve Apostles. It’s a group I’d get to know if I were you, Blondie, seeing as they’re trying to kill you.”
Chapter 9
The angel Weapon
Caden wasn’t sure what was the worst thing happening. Metl eclipsing the sun and casting a shadow over the world, the river he was still standing in that had suddenly flooded the town out of nowhere, or the woman in front of him, Jadice—or “Twelve” or whatever her name was—with her yellow and blue hair and bright glowing palms. At least he wasn’t being cleaved to death or engulfed by an angry crowd.
But despite that small reassurance, Caden’s mind was on the verge of explosion. Today had been nothing but shocks and surprises. He needed answers.
“Who are the Twelve Apostles?” Caden blurted out. Jadice sighed.
“It’s, uh, really kind of a long story. Can we talk about it somewhere else, where the people are a little less … murder-y?”
Splashes behind Caden made him turn around to a new mob of townspeople, this time armed and ready. They were carrying flaming torches to light up the darkness and were armed with wooden clubs and stone knives.
“Destroy the sinners!” one of them cried.
“It is Gotama’s will!”
Caden and Annika both made a move to run, but Jadice waved a finger at them lazily.
“No, no, no,” she said. “Here. I know a better way to clean up those unsightly messes.”
Jadice crouched down and thrust her hands into the water. Immediately there was a rumbling like an earthquake. Caden and Annika grabbed onto a nearby building to not fall over, and the mob that had been so aggressive a moment ago was suddenly on their knees, soaked and shaking.
Caden heard it before he saw it. It was the sound of rushing water, like when the stone cauldron at the Home was turned over and emptied, only a thousand times louder. The mob let out a collective yell as a wave taller than the rooftops rushed down the main road and crashed into them, dousing their torch fires and carrying them away in the current. Caden and Annika held on tight as the wake of the wave rushed past them, carrying the struggling townspeople and extinguished torches along with it.
“And now for a bit of insurance,” Jadice said. She stood solid as a rock amid the raging rapids, her hands still submerged in the water. A wild grin flashed across her face. She closed her eyes, plunged her arms deeper down, and let out a powerful grunt that sent splashes up all around her.
From far away in the center of Salem, the sound of wood snapping and bricks crashing mixed with the screams of townspeople. Then again. And again. Three massive geysers of water as wide as houses rose into the air, reaching up as far as the top of the statue-church. They roared like water tornadoes, gushing high above the town they had easily overpowered.
“Let’s get out of here while all those dirty Ants are getting a good washing,” Jadice said. She motioned to Caden and Annika to follow her, but Caden was still distracted by the three massive pillars of water overshadowing the town.
“Did you do that?” he yelled to be heard over the rushing water.
Jadice rolled her eyes. “Yes. Now come on and follow me and I’ll tell you all about my little magic tricks.”
Caden looked back to Annika. She shook her head and pointed in the opposite direction, desperately urging Caden to run away. She had a point. They’d seen what this woman was capable of—creating floods and waterspouts out of nothing. Who was to say she
wouldn’t blast them with a geyser once she’d gotten whatever she wanted from them.
But still, there was something about her that tugged at Caden. Her pull was even stronger than what he’d felt come from the stage. And she knew who he was. It had to be worth the risk to see what else she knew.
“Are you two going to come on your own or do I need to conjure up a wave to push you along?”
Jadice was waiting, hands on hips. There were no townsfolk around, though Caden could still hear their cries. If they were going to make a break for it, now was the time.
Caden gave Annika a shrug and splashed over to Jadice. He waved her over and she reluctantly trudged through the slowly-receding river, clearly not happy about their new ally.
“Don’t worry, Split Ends,” Jadice said to Annika with a smirk. “I’m not going to steal Blondie away from you. He’s too young for me. And too plain. Plus, as a human myself, I have a policy of only dating other actual humans.”
“I don’t think any human could do what you just did,” Annika said bitterly. “So, what does that make you?”
Jadice smiled and looked at Annika with a hint of respect.
“What am I?” she asked. “Little girl, you’ll soon wish you never knew.”
Jadice led Caden and Annika back up the slope they’d slid down what felt like ages ago. Every few seconds Caden checked over his shoulder to see if anyone was following them, but there was nothing but puddles and the occasional yell in the distance. By the time they reached the woods, the three massive water pillars had died down. The sun reappeared from the other side of Metl, giving enough light for Caden to observe the destruction.
The town Caden had seen earlier was gone. There were no people filling the streets. Everyone was shut indoors for fear of the world ending. Holy Police patrolled on horses up and down every road, crossbows armed and ready. The church was surrounded by piles of soaked wood and bricks that had once been buildings. Had just one person caused all this damage?
Jadice was silent as they walked. When Caden asked if they could take a detour to bring Deber along with them, she just nodded. It was then that Caden noticed her face was drenched with glistening sweat. It wasn’t particularly hot out, but Jadice breathed heavily with each step. When they reached Deber, she sighed with disappointment.
