Fire and Thunder

by Bowen Greenwood

  Connor didn’t answer right away. Sensing the tension between the two of them, Terri cut in.

  “Why were you there in the first place? Just happened to be walking by and saw a mugging going on?”

  Connor happily turned back to her and away from Kila. “I perch on top of tall towers watching out for crime, then swoop in to save the day. That’s tradition for people with powers, right?”

  She gave him a courtesy laugh for the obvious joke, and then waited for a real answer.

  “Mr. Moses wants to talk to you about that. He’s a prophet, you know. He sees things and knows things sometimes. He saw something about you, and he wants to talk to you about it. I’d better leave it for him, though.”

  She looked at him hard before saying, “That kind of thing makes me awful suspicious: people knowing things about me and being all secretive about it.”

  “Don’t be. Prophecy is to encourage people. If Mr. Moses knows something about you, it’s not going to be something bad.”

  Terri recognized that as a paraphrased version of a verse she had heard in her father’s church, but she had never seen it applied so literally before.

  “OK, so if there’s a prophecy about me, you must have come out looking for me. How did you know where to look?”

  “Well,” Connor replied, fidgeting nervously, “I really want to let Mr. Moses talk to you about this as much as possible, but the way Anna’s teleport gift works, she tells God where she wants to be, and poof, she’s there. Anyone touching her goes with her. So she just prayed to be with the person Mr. Moses saw in his vision. We hid behind a silver sedan and waited until you came walking out, but then the mugger showed up from the shadows and attacked you.”

  At the mention of her name, the red-haired young woman named Anna walked up. She had changed out of her gi and into jeans and a blue t-shirt with an American flag on it. Her red hair was still up in a ponytail from the workout.

  “Hi. I know no one’s name ever sticks very well when you do a big group introduction, so I’m Anna. Nice to meet you one-on-one.”

  “Thanks. How could I forget you, though? You teleported me here. That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, and that includes seeing balls of fire fly through the air.”

  Anna smiled. “The teleporting is really fun, once you get used to it. But those fireballs, though… The plan was, I was going to hide behind the car until Connor had dealt with the mugger. He’s bulletproof and I’m not. But then, before I could come out, that whole scene with Sebastian and Mr. Fireball broke out.”

  Connor jumped in. “I think it’s interesting that it was just like in the story about James and John that we get our name from. To me, it’s a really dangerous development. I want to find him and deal with him.”

  “Deal with him how?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know yet. But his power isn’t something the Legion should have. They have no qualms about hurting people anyway. If they have the power to set people on fire, it’s going to get worse.”

  “Maybe we could turn him over to Maven Flake? She’s pretty decent about figuring out how to hold people with powers.”

  Terri cut back in, having listened quietly to the entire debate. “Who?”

  Anna replied, “Maven Flake is the lady from the government who’s in charge of investigating people with powers and gifts. She had both Connor and I in her custody at one time. Her whole job is to keep people with powers from hurting others. She could probably do it for Fireball.”

  Terri knew perfectly well who Maven was. They had just argued yesterday about whether she, Terri, was ready for field work. But what people with abnormal abilities thought of her – now that was valuable intelligence.

  Anna walked out of the dojo. Connor and Pitch went off to a corner together. Kila wandered away. Soon only Terri and Renee Wales, the girl she’d sparred with, were left. Renee’s hair, normally a shade lighter than her sister Anna’s, grew a shade darker it was so wet with sweat from the class. The entire right sleeve of her gi was soaked for the same reason.

  “Come on,” she said to Terri. “I’ll help you find your room again.” The two of them walked down the hall together.

  Chapter 7

  “Pitch, you seemed a little off today in the sparring. I know you’ve got better timing than that.”

  Connor made the statement, and then started the process of draining a whole liter of water while he waited for Pitch to reply. The bigger boy took his time.

  “New girl. Terri Jackson. Why’d you bring her here? I know we’ve been going out gathering people with powers, but she doesn’t have any. I asked her. So why’d you go get her?”

  Connor lifted an eyebrow. “That’s what had you sparring so much worse than usual?”

  “Not really. She just… Well, she has a lot of questions. Some of them got me thinking.”

  “About…?”

  “The Legion.”

  Connor nodded. “It still bothers you?”

  “She just brought it all back, Connor. I wish I’d never listened to Sebastian. I wish I’d never let him talk me into the things we did back then.”

  “Prayer helps for things like that, Pitch.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “I’m serious. I’m not just repeating things because Mr. Moses says so. It helps to know there’s someone powerful on your side and that he listens to you.”

  “I do know that. Connor, you just invited me in without ever asking any questions about what I’d done and whether I was trustworthy. That’s way better than I deserve. Obviously, God’s real for me to get a miracle like being here. I know God forgives and gives us second chances, but it’s hard to feel it. My head says that’s the past and you’re forgiven, but my heart still feels like I can never escape those bad times.”

  Connor put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, facing him. “I hear you man. It’s not like I know much about this either. Anna’s the preacher’s kid. I’m just trying to learn as I go. But one thing I figured out: sometimes, if I’m having trouble feeling forgiven, it helps to go looking for an ordinary person. We can’t see God, but we can see another human. Apologizing to them sometimes makes it more real for me.”

  Pitch gave his friend a light punch in the shoulder, acting like it was all cool. But as he turned and walked away, he didn’t look any better to Connor than he had during martial arts class.

  ***

  The luxury around them finally began to fade into the background for Terri, after she’d been in awe of it all morning. She no longer stared at the marble floors, or the busts and statues, or the teak doors.

  “I’m glad we got to spar together,” she said. “You’re the only person here even close to my own age. I mean, other than Mr. Moses, I think everyone here is in high school.”

  Renee nodded and showed her a brief smile. “Yeah, it’s nice right now. But when you live here you can feel a bit like a weirdo. Like what’s this grown woman doing hanging out with high school kids all day?”

  “You’re, what?”

  “Twenty-four. And the Sons of Thunder make me feel like I’m ancient.” She flexed her shoulders, rolling them around a bit. “Especially after Connor’s karate class. It would be good to be sixteen again.”

  “So why do you train to fight? If you guys are serious about believing these powers come from God, why wouldn’t you go to a monastery in the desert, or spend all day praying or something? Why not work with the government? How are you so sure this is the right thing to do?”

  “I do spend a lot of time praying, Terri. And I tried the desert retreat thing once, too, before I knew Connor and the rest. I was learning about my gift for healing, and I wanted to pray and fast, so I went into the desert outside of town. I brought an entire pack full of not much besides water, and just decided to stay out as long as I could, alone with God.

  “I was on day 3. It was really the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Desert heat, no food, hard physical hiking… So when I saw the injured person lying on the canyon floo
r, at first I thought I was hallucinating. I ran closer. The blood leaking out on the desert dirt was real. I think her hair might have started out blonde, but the blood made it look black. And she groaned — it was a girl about my age, maybe a bit younger. She tried to cry for help, but she didn’t have enough energy — life, I guess — left to do much more than croak.”

  Renee lost herself in the view through the window and fell into silence for a few moments before going on.

  “I had prayed for people to be healed in church before. With my father there. In a comfortable environment. But for diseases. For sickness. For… I don’t know, not like pain is ever normal, but… ordinary things. Praying for that girl… I’m not going to describe it for you. Just trust me. She was injured worse than I had ever seen. It was like a horror movie. or one of those car accident videos from driver’s ed.

  “I just threw myself down beside her and bawled. Well, after I screamed. And all I could do was say, ‘Help her God,’ over and over again. Crying it; weeping it.

  “She got up whole, Terri. Completely healthy, uninjured, whole. Blood still stuck her hair together, and dyed the desert, but there were no more wounds. No more injuries.

  “She was healed.

  “All I could do was put my face in the dirt and praise God. I gave him my word right there — my life belonged to him, to heal more people like that.

  “And it wasn’t long after I made that promise that someone in my church told the government about my healing. That led me to the AAA and Maven Flake, and they in turn led me to Connor. It came so close after I made that promise; to me, it was hard to miss the message. I’m supposed to be here with Connor and the Sons of Thunder.”

  Terri listened so intently, she never noticed Ethan Moses walk up to them. He smiled once he had their attention, then spoke.

  “We spend a lot of time sharing our stories of our gifts here. Renee’s is one of the best. May I talk to you for a moment, Ms. Jackson?”

  Renee took the hint right away and went into her room. Mr. Moses showed Terri back to her own quarters. and promised to be waiting in the conference room after she’d had a chance to shower and change back out of her new gi.

  Terri watched him walk away, and then hurried through the process of cleaning up after the workout.

  Time for some answers.

  ***

  Drake Tesla leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. His height meant he took up a lot of space sitting like that. He sipped a tall cup of coffee, black, still steaming. Coffee shop patrons hummed around him, pecking on their laptops or pressing their noses into books. Outside, the dawn transformed into a full-fledged Vegas day, which made his seat near the window uncommonly warm.

  Drake felt comfortable with heat. His power made that inevitable. But while a handful of fire didn’t faze him, everything else in the world left him empty, angry, or both. Life grew harder every day, since…

  He sighed. The pain faded gradually with time, but if he started down those old pathways, hurt came back as fresh as the day it happened.

  Last night, Spooky had one of her moments of knowing the Truth. “A chance for vengeance against Pitch for someone he wronged. Find Terri Jackson. Find Terri Jackson at the scene of Pitch’s crime.” Pitch had been part of the Legion once — oh, how well Drake knew it! — until he had defected with Connor. So when Spooky told Sebastian about her newest nugget of Truth, he apparently assumed he was the one it spoke about — the one who would have the chance for revenge. Arrogant as usual.

  Lost in the memory, Drake wondered why Sebastian came and asked him to come on the mission. For months, Drake had been either locked in the Legion’s prison or confined to his quarters, considered unreliable after the night everything fell apart. And yet now, after no contact for months, Sebastian came and asked him to take on one more mission. Why? Perhaps the leader of the Legion wasn’t as arrogant as Drake assumed. Perhaps Sebastian knew that Drake, too, was someone who Pitch had wronged.

  At first, of course, Drake rejected the offer right off the bat. Why would he take orders from Sebastian? He wanted to set the guy on fire, not follow him. But because of Spooky’s Truth, Sebastian held a bargaining chip Drake could not refuse.

  Revenge against Pitch.

  It was the only thing he wanted more than revenge against Sebastian. So, for the first time in almost half a year, Drake came out of confinement and went on a mission. So far, he felt like the whole thing was a waste.

  The coffee shop sat in a corner of the vast parking lot of the former Star of Fortune casino. Once a mighty colossus of the “Sin City” gambling establishment, the Star of Fortune now stood empty, abandoned, and falling apart. A few local small businesses – like the coffee shop – had sprung up in the parking lot; however, overall, the empty casino reminded Las Vegas of the dangers of hubris.

  Drake sneered. Hubris indeed. He had been at the Star of Fortune when it had died. Everything he cared about had died with it.

  Once, Drake had a girlfriend. Like him, she had possessed an abnormal ability. Like him, she had savored the fun of learning what she could do, of testing her new limits. Together, they had discovered how much fun life could be when the word impossible lost most of its meaning. She had glowed with life; she had radiated emotion.

  She was dead. Murdered. And the memory refused to fade.

  Rich, full brown hair hung around Drake’s neck. A little bit longer than usual for a man, it reflected the sunlight. A muscular neck balanced on his broad shoulders, and powerful arms crossed over his strong chest after he set his coffee cup down. His black clothing followed the rules in the Legion. Everyone wore all black, and the Enforcers wore tank tops.

  The eyes of the women in the coffee shop told him he wore the sleeveless shirt well, but he just didn’t care anymore.

  Under the table, where no one else in the coffee shop could see, he opened his hand and let a tiny little flame grow over his palm. Then he clenched his fist, squelching it, as he hoped one day to squelch the life out of the boy responsible for Hope’s death.

  Revenge was the only reason to even look at Sebastian, let alone listen to him. Sebastian deserved death almost as much as Pitch did. But for now, Sebastian offered him the hope of finding Pitch, so his justice could wait. The fire of justice.

  This ability to form fire in his hands, or cause it to fall from the sky, made life too dangerous on the outside. Before he had joined the Legion, anyone who had noticed his abilities with fire had called him a freak or crazy, until he wound up in a government testing facility.

  And it was so hard to control! When anger rose up, the fire came with it. When bleak depression washed over him, his hands burned with fire before he even knew it. Emotion, exhaustion, distraction – these were reliable pathways to fire flying from his fists or raining down around him. Out in public, that was a guaranteed ticket back to the AAA’s holding cells.

  Once, the Legion gave him a channel for all that. Now, it was nothing but a conduit for pain.

  Drake gazed out the window. With half his mind, he watched for Terri Jackson to come back to the spot where she had been mugged, in hopes of recovering her phone. With the other half, he remembered what it felt like to enjoy the company of other human beings. Before Hope died, he might once have enjoyed sitting in the midst of all these people in the coffee shop. Now, he cared for none of it, except the hope that this would lead him to Pitch.

  So far, though, waiting brought Drake nothing but bad memories.

  Chapter 8

  A ponytail kept her light brown hair out of her eyes. She still wore her white gi from martial arts class. Kila Dent walked down the marble halls of the Tower of the Son until she came to the wing with everyone’s room in it. She passed her own room and knocked on the door to Pitch’s. He had a football poster on the door.

  “Just a second!”

  When the door opened, Pitch’s shirt hung out from his jeans in a couple places, like he’d rushed tucking it in. Water still drippe
d from his brown hair — he’d taken a shower after martial arts class, before they had to go to Renee’s history lecture.

  “What’s up, Kila?” Pitch stepped back from the door, letting her in.

  “You seemed pretty distracted in class. You OK?”

  Pitch’s room had two chairs, and he sunk down into one of them.

  Kila remembered the day that created an unbreakable friendship between the two of them. The government came to wipe out the Legion’s headquarters. A full scale battle broke out between kids with abnormal abilities and soldiers armed with automatic weapons and armored personnel carriers. Real warfare ensued — combat where both sides tried to kill their opponents. With his telekinesis, Pitch ranked high among the Legion’s weapons for that kind of battle. He and Kila fought on the front lines together. She told him where the soldiers were about to strike, and he threw massive boulders at them.

  Then Connor Merritt walked onto the field of battle without a care in the world. He strolled up to them as if he was out in a park on a spring day. He talked to them about a better way — about using their gifts differently. About not fighting, not killing soldiers, and not following Sebastian.

  Kila and Pitch walked away from the Legion that day. They joined the Sons of Thunder, and started over. Anna Wales and Ethan Moses introduced them to the idea that their abnormal abilities actually represented the miracles of the Bible in a new and different form.

  Some people in the Sons of Thunder started out there. Others had no idea about their gifts, or which side they were on, until the Sons had found them.

  Pitch and Kila, though, turned their backs on friends in order to be here. They paid a price to join the Sons of Thunder. It made them friends in a way not many other people could share.

  Pitch had posters of a few different professional football players on his wall. There was a jersey that he had once worn when he played the game in high school. Otherwise, his room was mostly empty. They left the door half-open, so people could see in but maybe not overhear so readily.