****
Willa pivoted from the counter directly into a customer waiting behind her. Coffee rolled over the lip of her mug, and scalded her bare hand.
“Shit.”
“Déjà vu.”
A smile spread on Willa’s face as she looked up at the historian. He looked exhausted, but seemed strangely unbothered by that fact.
“Hey,” she said, grinning like a fool. “It’s really good to see you.”
Since the battle at PPG Place, she had seen him only a few times. She would never admit it, but avoidance had become her modus operandi. Elijah and Chem represented loss, and there were plenty of reminders around without adding them to the mix.
The poet and the historian found a table near the window. The early May sun warmed her thin frame. She watched Elijah’s medallion sway over his slightly wrinkled button-up.
“You’re wearing it,” she said.
“Yeah, I thought it was time to embrace who I am—what I’ve become.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I’ve decided to stay in Pittsburgh. Piece together enough classes to keep food on the table. I’m thinking I can do some good around here.”
Willa’s eyes widened. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. I’ve realized how easily we become entangled in a place when we get involved. It’s time to stop being so objective, I guess.”
Willa chuckled. “Funny, coming from a historian.”
“If the last couple months have taught me anything it’s that history can be personal. It has to be.” He paused. “I’ve also thought a lot about Brooke since that night.”
Willa looked down; her eyes stung.
She pictured her grandfather and the monster he died defeating.
“I know it hurts,” Elijah continued. “You won’t believe this, but Brooke Alarawn was a good person. Her intentions were noble—no matter how misguided. Chem’s serum changed her, and we all got caught in the middle of it.” Elijah paused and felt the gravity. “I’ll never forget what your grandfather gave for us.”
Willa looked up, and nodded. “I’m sure it was important for him. Paying back the universe for past missteps, or something like that. That last poem he used, I think he meant it for me. I think he wanted me to know that his decision was his own, that we shouldn’t feel guilty about his death.”
Though she said it to comfort the historian, she also knew that it was true. And Willa didn’t feel guilty about Edwin’s death.
She felt angry.
Elijah took a sip from his coffee. “So, what about you? What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to take some time. My powers can be used for good, but I need to get control, develop them. I know the path now, but for a while, I need to walk it alone.”
Sadness grew in Elijah’s tired eyes. He reached across the table, and placed his hands over hers. “You don’t need to be alone.”
Willa wanted to accept the historian’s words, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Sean. About Edwin. About her mother. Someone was responsible for their deaths, and Willa would find out who. But the risks she planned to take were too great for Elijah, and she refused to make him a party to her vengeance.
“I’m sorry. I have to go,” Willa said, glancing at her watch. “It’s good to see you, Elijah.”
“Yeah. Stay safe.”
Willa smiled through pursed lips.
She ran her delicate hand across the historian’s back and then left the coffee shop.
EPILOGUE
Two men in perfectly pressed suits walked across the main dining room of the upscale, South Side restaurant. They weaved through the kitchen and down a back set of stairs. A low ceiling topped the tight hallway. The air was musty and damp.
Passing storage rooms and racks of foodstuffs, the bald man in the front finally rapped his knuckles on a solid oak door.
It wasn’t a secret knock, nor was it casual.
It demanded entry.
“Come,” a muffled voiced said from the other side.
The room was nothing like the hallway—ornate and lit with warm, indirect lighting. It had a sweet smell. Deep reds and blacks gave it an air of importance. A pool table and wet bar on one side made it look like some overdone man-cave. Cribs, Pittsburgh edition.
Across from the bar, a man reclined on an overstuffed leather couch. His feet were propped up on a table. Ice cubes, swimming in brown liquor, filled the tumbler in his hand. Age seemed lost on him, though he must have been somewhere between forty-five and sixty. Turning over a hardbound volume, he dropped his feet to the floor and stood with a certain ease.
“Gentlemen, welcome. It seems things got a little out of hand.” The man nodded at a copy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that sat tri-folded on the coffee table.
Rex laughed. “Out of hand? Everything went precisely as expected.”
“Really?” the man asked, behind raised eyebrows.
“Of course,” Rex replied. “Why do you think I convinced Alarawn to hire the historian? Do you think all of this could have happened by chance?”
The ageless man joined Rex’s laughter.
“Well, then. Sit down, both of you. Tell me more about your masterful orchestration.”
Rex’s laughter ceased. “After you.” He spread his hand out toward the seat in deference.
The man dropped onto the couch.
In one practiced move, Rex reached into his jacket and drew a Sig Pro. He sank three rounds into the chest of the man on the couch. Then he turned to his partner, whose mouth was wide open.
“What the hell?”
“Had to be done,” Rex said.
“But…”
“And so does this.”
He turned the gun, point blank, and shot one 9mm round through his partner’s forehead.
Rex wiped the gun, tossed it on the couch, and turned to leave the building.
Rain fell hard on his shoulders as he walked the streets of the Steel City.
****
Thanks for reading The Catalyst.
Don’t worry, Elijah, Willa, and Chem will be back very soon. L.E. and C.M. are currently wrapping up the rest of the series and they can’t wait to show you what happens next.
Sign up here for updates from the authors. If you join their mailing list, you’ll receive Willa’s Spellbook for free.
This is a REALLY cool companion to The Catalyst. It includes the spells that Willa is studying and her reflections on poetry, life, and the events of the book. Chris and Lee have been calling it the director’s cut.
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Purchase The Crucible, Book 2 of Steel Town Heroes on May 18, 2016, to find out what follows the battle at the PPG Tower.
Now, join us for a short preview of The Crucible!
****
THE CRUCIBLE PREVIEW
PROLOGUE
Oh, God, please.
Rob Vinton hadn’t spoken to a higher power since the last election cycle. Four years ago, he prayed for the life he always wanted.
Now, his lips moved for the only life he had.
Vinton spun his weight to the left and skidded around the corner of a building like an 80s-era cartoon character. Metal trash cans rattled as he slapped them to gain his balance. He splashed through puddles in the back alley potholes. The air hung damp from the late evening rain.
A three-piece suit and wingtips weren’t built for speed, but the out-of-shape 40-something aimed to break his high school mile record.
He ran with everything he had, until everything he had wasn’t enough.
“Shit,” Rob yelled. The alley terminated at a brick wall.
Unlike the thriller movies Vinton was so fond of, there was no fire escape to climb, no
broken windows to crawl through, and he certainly couldn’t fight like Jason Bourne.
One similarity existed: He was being hunted.
Making himself as small as possible, Vinton crouched in the corner behind a dirty box spring, the only piece of cover available in the dark alley. The smell of rotting garbage filled his nostrils.
The sound of metal on concrete pierced the night air. Vinton held his breath. His heart thumped in his chest. A giant, silhouetted in the street lamps, stepped into view. Its slow, laboring steps shook the ground. The monster passed by with great intent, seeking its prey.
Rob Vinton reached for his phone and pushed the power button in hopes that he could pull just enough juice to make a distress call. He cursed himself for leaving it unplugged. The Android symbol came to life as the creature turned toward him. Its features were unclear, but the red glowing cracks permeating its body were unmistakable.
The beast took a heavy step forward; its form loomed larger than life.
“Come on, come on.”
Warning: 2% Battery Life flashed at the man.
He swiped for an emergency call, and prayed again.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“Thank God. I’m trapped. The metal monster. It’s after me,” Rob Vinton whispered into his dying phone.
“Sir, you need to speak up.”
“I can’t. It’s…” A giant hand grabbed the box spring—Rob’s tiny shelter—and threw it down the alley. Rob lay exposed. He looked up into the glowing red eyes of the creature born from hell.
“Your work is over,” the monster said with a growl.
“No,” Rob screamed.
“Sir, you need to speak up.”
The monster raised its fists and dropped them on its victim.
It struck again and again, until there was little more than dental records and a stray fingerprint to identify the lifeless body of Robert Vinton.
****
Willa Weil
The air was thick with condensation in the dank, low-ceilinged basement. A single bare bulb compensated for the dim light filtering in from outside. The cellar was empty except for a Pittsburgh toilet in the corner, an old-time single-speed bicycle with deflated tires, and Willa’s new gear.
She had set up a gym, small enough to fit the fifteen-by-twenty footprint, large enough to transform her into the woman she needed to become.
Standing in front of an old full-length mirror salvaged from the back alley trash, she inspected the work accomplished in eight short weeks. The academic had always been rail-thin. Some might have mistaken her physique for fitness but that was woefully inaccurate. She was simply built like a waif, a fact that had never bothered her. But Willa’s security in her body shattered, along with many other things, during the melee at PPG Place. Afterwards, the magician dedicated her time into shaping her frail body into a killing machine.
Killing was always on her mind.
May marked a pause in her nearly ten years of teaching. After her final class last semester, she had said goodbye to Elijah and left a note and her cat at Chem’s apartment. The message was simple: She needed to get away, to clear her head. Between the death of her prize student, Sean Moretti, the revelation about her mom’s brutal murder, and her grandfather’s sacrifice to save her and her friends, the men understood her melancholy. They let her go without protest.
“Where’re you heading?” Elijah had asked.
“I don’t know. Pretty sure I’m going north. Rent a cabin near the Finger Lakes. I always liked it up there.”
She had forced a smile and the lie. She had no desire to leave the city.
Willa moved into her grandfather’s tiny apartment in Squirrel Hill. Sitting in the alley on the back side of a larger house, it was modest but reflected Edwin’s tastes and temperaments. He had moved there soon after finding his daughter-in-law, Willa’s mother, dead in his own home. The man couldn’t stomach returning to the scene of the heinous crime. Although Edwin was secular, the Jewish neighborhood of Squirrel Hill made him feel at ease and connected to his roots.
The poet-magician squeezed her fists and tightened her thighs. Muscles appeared in places they had never been before. Bending her right hand up to her chest, she felt the biceps tense up and burn. Patches of red, darkest on her elbows, bled up toward her wrists. Her knees and shins were similarly marked—an inevitable consequence of the training.
Willa should have been dead.
Marching into the office tower was a suicide mission. If it weren’t for the others, she’d be six feet under with nothing to show for it. Her life would be marked only by a Dickinson poem on her tombstone and another stray cat roaming the streets. But her hand had been forced. Rage, elicited from the knowledge that the Alarawn henchman had killed her student, was too much to control. Everything came loose. And Willa was arrogant enough—or foolish enough—to trust in her undeveloped abilities.
If it weren’t for the final show of magical strength of Edwin Weil, she and her friends would have been killed. After her grandfather’s death, she went dark—underground. She needed focus, not only to develop her magic, but also to craft her body and hone the skills necessary for fighting. She imagined herself as a battle mage of old. And when she was ready, she would seek revenge. For Sean, for Edwin, and for her mother.
Tae kwon do was the first of the arts she tested, but it wasn’t right. Its flair might have reflected a beauty she once appreciated, but her desire transcended aesthetics. Then she moved to aikido and one form of karate but found them too passive. She discovered a match in Muay Thai—a martial art brutal enough to fit her purposes like a glove.
Her knees and elbows grew sore from the jutting attacks she performed day after day. The heavy bag swinging from the old wooden rafters took a beating, yet remained faithful to the task. The poet-magician enacted the progression, habitually grinding it into her bones: jab, spin, knee, elbow—turn for a spell. Her magic and her hate sustained her. She found the ancient dictum accurate: mens sana in corpore sano. A sound mind in a sound body.
She practiced her movements over and over, Rex’s large, bald head filling her mind. Sweat ran down her back. This rote practice, the liturgy of attack, was a construction. She knew it was only the beginning of programming her body and mind to react together as she traded her calling as a teacher for the guild of martial arts. She knew that she could never hope to master both, but modest physical skills coupled with her unique gifts made her an effective weapon.
****
The likelihood of running into Elijah or Chem on the streets of Oakland was slim, but she refused to chance it. Heavy sunglasses and a Pirates hat pulled low masked her identity. Stepping off the bus, she made a beeline for the closest alley. Avoiding the main arteries of Forbes and Fifth, she meandered over to the Cathedral of Learning—the University of Pittsburgh’s sanctuary for the religion of knowledge.
Summer in Oakland brought change. While the university offered more between-term classes than most small colleges did throughout the entire year, the campus—in comparison to the school year—felt empty.
Willa slid into an elevator on the Cathedral’s ground floor. She pulled the key from her bag and ran her finger against its cold, jagged teeth. Fitting it into the elevator panel, she pressed forty-two and watched the number light. Few had access to the top floor of the Cathedral, and since the battle at PPG, its only permanent resident was gone. Edwin, who’d held emeritus status at the university for years, occupied a tiny hidden office at the end of the hall, nested at the Cathedral’s peak. He had occupied that space for longer than she could remember. In Willa’s mind, he had always been an old man in that place.
Standing before the office door, she drew another key. This one was new, at least to her. Edwin had left her everything, including his office and personal affects. She had no plans for it, and wasn’t even sure what drew her there that summer day.
She touched the knob, feeling for the familiar tingle of magic.
There
was nothing. Edwin was gone.
The office still smelled of his aftershave.
Her eyes cut to the massive bookcases leaning in from the outer wall. She smiled. As usual, his library had a new arrangement. She wondered if Edwin had determined one last iteration before his final battle. It wasn’t chronology or geography and it certainly wasn’t alphabetical. She guessed the rows of books conveyed some subtle theme, masked to even the most astute readers. She laughed, wondering if his constant reordering indicated pride or mere whimsy.
“What were you up to, Grandpa?” she whispered into the empty office.
She shuffled through the documents scattered across his desk. Her grandfather’s familiar handwriting filled reams of paper, mostly personal notes on books and poems. She sifted through the pages trying to find something out of the ordinary—whatever that meant for the eccentric man.
Willa’s fingers ran across the littered workspace as she paced the desk’s width. Terminating at a bookshelf, she took time to admire the photographs—the aging professor shaking hands with the luminaries of the literary world. The size of his collection never failed to impress her. Scanning the frames, she stopped at a picture she hadn’t previously noticed. Most of the heirlooms were of Edwin and the greats, but this one was a rare group photo. Edwin stood off to the side, his dour countenance in place. The others smiled broadly. She squinted trying to discern if any of the faces were recognizable.
They weren’t. Or at least she didn’t think so.
She lifted the frame from its shelf and collapsed in her grandfather’s wooden chair. With shaking hands, she turned the latches on the back and eased the aged particleboard out of its place. Flipping the frame, she gave it a little shake. The backing and photo dropped out into her hand.
Sliding her glasses onto the bridge of her nose, she inspected the back of the photo. All it said was: Vox Populi, 1984.
Willa had found the clue she had been searching for.
Steel City Heroes (Book 1): The Catalyst Page 21
