Children of the Earth

by Anna Schumacher

  Owen looked down at his boots, where blood was drying to a rusty stain on the toes. “I know, Dale. I’m sorry. I’ll keep it off the rig from now on, I promise.”

  “Yeah.” Dale shoved his hands deep into his pockets, refusing to meet Owen’s eyes. “It’s not just that. I wish it were just that. But this . . .” He gestured at Owen’s blood-soaked clothes and heaved a deep sigh. “People are saying things about you: that you’re not an ordinary guy, that you’re touched by the devil. There’s a lot of talk in this town, and I don’t like to listen, but all this blood and no cut: I gotta say, that gives me the creeps.”

  “So what are you saying?” The electricity in Owen’s limbs had relocated to his brain, buzzing so loud he could barely process Dale’s words. All he knew was that they weren’t good.

  Dale looked up finally, regret in his eyes. “I’m going to have to let you go, Owen. I’m a fair guy, so I’ll let you go with an extra week’s wages, but that’s the best I can do. I’m sorry.”

  Owen felt a storm building in his chest, anger clouding his vision.

  “You mean, I’m fired?” he shot back. “Just like that? After being one of the best roughnecks you’ve had since this thing opened?”

  “I wouldn’t call it being fired.” Dale struggled to keep his voice even. “Think of it as a leave of absence. Once this all blows over, you’re welcome back.”

  “Whatever.” Owen kicked at the ground, feeling the electricity build and throb in his veins. “I know how to call a spade a spade. I’m so glad I just practically killed myself trying to keep your rig from exploding.”

  He turned and stalked off, the storm inside him gaining power, threatening to spill out into the world. Dale called after him, but he refused to turn around, afraid that if he did it would be his fists instead of his mouth doing the talking. He had to get out of there. The currents zinging through his body thrummed with rage as he ran for the parking lot, blood squelching in his boots.

  His breath came in jagged gasps as he jumped in his truck and slammed the door. In the corner of his rearview mirror he saw Daphne running after him, calling his name, but he couldn’t stop even for her, not then. He needed to be alone with his thoughts and his rage, to put as much distance between himself and the oil rig and Carbon County as possible before the surging, strangely addictive power took over and turned him into something he didn’t recognize. Something strange and dangerous. Something he’d sworn to himself he would never become.

  • • •

  Daphne stopped running, tasting the dust from Owen’s tires and feeling his sudden absence like a cavity in her heart. She knew something had happened, something bad, and she’d wanted to comfort him ever since the rumor that something had happened to him started zinging through the rig.

  But something in his eyes had stopped her when he strode past, something monstrous. It was more than anger—it was molten rage, rage that could tremble mountains, the same evil glare she’d seen in her vision. It was only when his back was turned and he was walking away from her that she’d regained the will to run after him, but by then it was too late. She saw his eyes meet hers in the rearview mirror, but then he was gone, the truck accelerating out of the parking lot and racing away down the road.

  “Owen.” She whispered his name, small and hopeless within the vast ring of mountains. Fear and pain dug into her flesh like nails, making her choke on her breath and clutch at her arms. It felt like her skin was tearing open and her guts were spilling out into the dust, and as she opened her mouth to scream, her eyes rolled back in her head and, for the second time that week, her vision went black.

  Vision of the Great Divide

  And yea, the ground shall rumble and trees shall fall

  And a great fissure will open in the earth.

  On one side, the Children of God raise

  Weapons of justice, defending the divine;

  On the other, the Children of the Earth

  Chant to their demon god,

  Raising Beelzebub from the pits of Hell

  To destroy the righteous.

  The earth shall tremble

  And the fissure shall grow,

  Releasing fire and demons

  Brought unto us by the Children of the Earth.

  And yea, my child, my prophet,

  When the fissure opens and the earth divides

  You shall find yourself on the side of evil,

  Separated from the righteous by a crack in the land.

  You shall tremble,

  As the demon children reach for you

  With scaly claws

  And green hellfire in their eyes.

  In this moment of truth

  Your heart shall divide

  Like the crack in the earth

  And in this moment you must choose

  Heaven or hell?

  Good or evil?

  The holy light of the divine

  Or the stain of Satan upon your soul?

  10

  MANAGING A BAR WAS LIKE having a permanent ear to the pipeline of Carbon County gossip. Booze loosened lips, and as the taps flowed and the night wore on, the patrons of the Vein spilled more secrets than drinks. Even without their collected powers, the Children of the Earth knew exactly how many gallons of crude oil the Peyton rig pumped each day, who was prospecting where and how little success they’d had, which of the drifters had been fighting up at the old motocross track and who had won. They knew every item on the police blotters, every new face that rolled through Elmer’s Gas ’n’ Grocery, every starry-eyed born-again who joined Pastor Ted’s flock. They even knew who occupied beds in the county hospital and what (or who) had put them there.

  Luna had planned to use Kimo’s powers of location to find her missing contractor, the one with one gray eye and one brown, but the rumor mill whispered everything she needed to know. She caught snippets of conversations: “beat up by a girl” . . . “that chick who works the Peyton rig, the one they call a prophet” . . . “strangled him with her own two hands, put ’im in a coma” . . . “they say she was having a seizure, that her strength came from God” . . . “in the county hospital, not sure if he’ll pull through” . . . “good riddance if he doesn’t, attacking a woman like that.”

  It was enough. In the blustery cold of an autumn afternoon she wrapped herself in her moss-colored cloak and borrowed Ciaran’s rusty Honda, soothing herself with old Grateful Dead tunes as she drove to the hospital, humming dreamily along.

  In a sterile white room she found her contractor unconscious, his neck covered in bruises: purple where Daphne’s fingers had pressed into his flesh, yellow around the edges where the blood had ceased to flow. The hospital had washed his hair, so that the thin strands fanned gently behind him on the pillow, fluttering with the even push and pull of an oxygen tube that fit over his nose and mouth. Even with his eyes closed, it was obviously him: the nobody who had drifted into the Vein one night and promised to do anything she asked of him, anything at all.

  Now he’d left her with an even bigger mess than before. There was no telling what he’d remember or where his loyalties would lie when he came out of the coma, and if Luna’s name was on his lips, she’d have a lot of explaining to do.

  She sighed, taking one of his limp hands in hers, flinching as his yellowed nails brushed her palm. It was hard to control someone unconscious, their will buried beneath layers of beta waves thick as winter quilts. But with her Earth Brothers and Sisters around her at last, her power was growing. She drew energy through her throat chakra, the center of communication, and felt it vibrate within her body and flow through her fingers. Blue was the color of communication—a bright, clear blue that pulsed with clarity and intention—and so it was a blue light that started in her throat chakra and flooded her senses, eventually spilling out into the hospital room and bathing the unconscious man lying bel
ow her in its glow. As waves of power surged between them, she located his will, withered to the size of a pea, weakened almost to extinction.

  She spoke to him silently through the pulsing blue light, sending him a message of surrender, telling him that it was okay to let go, that only machines stood between him and eternal peace.

  Like iron being smelt in a furnace, she felt the shell of his will bend to her message. His hand went cold in hers, and the blips on the heart rate monitor above his bed slowed, then flatlined, filling the room with a loud, dull, endless tone. Her work was done: The contractor had slipped from this world into the next, taking with him a story that would never see the light of day.

  An alarm sounded, and a flashing red light blinked to life over the door, illuminating the room in a candy-cane glare. A cry of “Code blue!” keened from the nurse’s station, and Luna ducked out of the room and walked quickly down the hall, her boots flowing silently over the white tile floor.

  Working her magic always left her feeling a little spacey and light-headed afterward, like the air around her was made of feathers. She almost collided with a team of nurses and doctors thundering down the hall.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured, shrinking out of the way. She thought gratefully of the warm, cozy loft above the Vein, of the strength she’d find in her family. Soon she’d be home, and the necessary business with the contractor would be nothing more than a vaguely unpleasant memory, one more tiny battle in her war to save the earth.

  A fat-fingered hand closed tightly on her shoulder, and she jerked her head up, emitting a small gasp. She found herself looking into a piggish pair of eyes, shadowed by the brim of a policeman’s cap.

  “Where do you think you’re going, little missy?” the sheriff sneered.

  Luna stood tall, resisting the urge to sink her fingernails into the fleshy back of his hand. “Home,” she said simply.

  “And just what were you doing here in the first place?”

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “Who?” The sheriff’s breath smelled of halitosis and lard.

  Luna had been to enough protests to know her rights. “May I ask why I’m being detained?” she asked politely.

  The sheriff’s face went from the sickly color of pizza dough to a furious purple. “Listen, you don’t ask the questions around here. I do. Got that? Now you’re coming with me, and you’ll keep your mouth shut until I tell you to talk, and when I tell you to talk you’ll tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nuthin’ but the truth. You got all that?”

  Before she could answer he grasped her arm roughly and yanked her into an empty hospital room, slamming the door behind them. He tossed her across the room so that she half-flew, half-stumbled against the bed, her hip slamming into the steel railing. Vines of pain blossomed down her leg as she looked up to find him blocking the door, an ugly sneer spreading above the collar of his uniform.

  Luna found her balance and leaned back against the bed, letting her cloak fall open. Underneath it she wore a midriff-baring halter top and a long, flowing skirt that rode low on her hips, her legs clearly visible through the sheer fabric. The sheriff’s mouth dropped, and she watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed a long, deep gulp.

  It was almost pathetic how easy it was to control men. Half the time she didn’t even need to use her powers—just flash a little skin, bat a few eyelashes, and they were eating out of her palm.

  “Now what did you want to ask me, officer?” she purred, sliding her body against the hospital bed in a way that made sweat glisten on the cop’s forehead.

  “Uh . . .” The sheriff struggled to regain control. “Well, it’s awful suspicious that you’re here, see. Cause there are only two people in the ICU you could be visiting right now, and one of ’em’s just a baby with a high fever. I think you’re here for that guy, the one in a coma.”

  “And what if I am?” Luna tossed her head.

  “Well.” The sheriff’s eyes roamed up and down her body as he struggled to formulate a reply. “He’s in here ’cause he attacked a girl, see? And if you’re his friend, you might know something about it.”

  “How do you know he attacked her?” Her throat chakra was exhausted, but she breathed into it nonetheless, feeling the blue aura of persuasion turn the air around her cool and vibrant. It sensed the sheriff’s desire and lapped at it greedily, drawing it out like a leech suckling blood.

  “Well . . . ’cause she says so, that’s how.” The sheriff took a step forward as she undulated against the bed, sending blue tendrils of light deep into his mind. She cocked an eyebrow, daring him to go on, and laughed on the inside as he struggled to catch his train of thought. “She says it, and she’s got witnesses,” he finished lamely.

  “Did they witness an attack? From start to finish?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. The guy I questioned said he came in when the two of them were on the ground and she had her hands around his neck. There was a knife there that I guess he was going to use on her.”

  Luna’s breath was a silk thread pulling the sheriff toward her. The suspicion had vanished from his eyes, replaced with an eager, blazing need, and she visualized his opinion changing, curving in the direction of hers until they were train tracks running parallel into the distance.

  “You know about Daphne Peyton, though, don’t you?” She tilted her head, engulfing him in the cool jade of her gaze. “This isn’t the first time she’s tried to kill a man and call it self-defense.”

  “I—I guess I did know that,” the sheriff stuttered.

  “She may look innocent,” Luna continued, “but she’s murdered before. And if you don’t keep a close eye on her, she might do it again.”

  The sheriff was inches from her face now, eyes popping as he tried to take all of her in: her body, her eyes, her story. He didn’t notice the blue light radiating from her in waves and giving the room an underwater glow, entering his mouth and ears and nostrils and locating his centers of desire, pulling them from him on invisible currents.

  “I guess I never thought of it that way.” His voice was wooden. “I—I’m really sorry, miss. I shouldn’t have detained you like that. You—you’ll let me know if there’s any way I can make it up to you.”

  She could have let him go then, her mission complete. She could have gone home to the warmth and safety of the loft above the Vein, to the open and adoring arms of her family. But the blue light had found something else in him, something unexpected: a desire that cut deeper than lust or power, a desire stronger and more powerful than them all.

  “Actually,” she whispered, wrapping the shriveled remnant of his soul in an indigo web, “there is something you can do for me.”

  “What?” His mouth barely moved.

  “Go back to the station and file all of this in a report. Then meet me at Hatchett Lake tomorrow at sunset.”

  Luna waited until he nodded his understanding. Then she brushed by him and glided out the door, leaving the sheriff frozen and open-mouthed, staring at an empty hospital bed.

  11

  THE NEEDLE ON HIS GAS gauge was pushing toward empty when Owen finally returned to Carbon County. He’d lost count of the time spent barreling down highways and climbing abandoned back roads, the blood caking dry on his clothes and his knuckles white on the steering wheel, every mile unleashing a new torrent of questions.

  He’d been going well over the speed limit, but his truck still couldn’t go fast enough to staunch the waves of anger and fear broiling in his blood. Even with the windows rolled down and the wind whipping against his cheek, he felt like a lobster boiling in a pot. There was only one true release when life got this tangled, and it was a release he’d denied himself for too long.

  Not bothering to change clothes or shower off the blood, he grabbed his old leather jacket and wheeled his vintage Husqvarna out of the garage. Even after months of neglect, the chrome accen
ts winked at him in the pale beam of his porch light, an old friend welcoming him back. The bike felt warm and pliant under him as he settled into the saddle and kicked it to life, its metal frame yielding in a way that even Daphne never could, a way that whispered of being at his mercy, a minion of his will and his alone.

  The cool autumn afternoon embraced him as he flew over back roads, dipping and leaping to avoid potholes. The wind tousled his hair and crackled the changing leaves, filling him with elation he hadn’t known since the town had shut down the track and he’d had to relegate his bike to the garage. As the Husqvarna gathered speed, he felt his thoughts begin to slow and untangle, the adrenaline working its way into the steady focus that had won him first place at countless races across America before Carbon County and Daphne had claimed his soul.

  Within minutes he was at the drifters’ camp, maneuvering the bike around weather-beaten tents and trailers, immune to the dirty looks and dirtier words the prospectors flung his way. The gate to the track loomed before him, the rusted eye of the padlock glowering a dare.

  Revving his engine, he sped toward the gate, gripping the bike between his knees. He nosed the wheels off the ground, and a moment later he was airborne, the gate’s metal arm receding beneath him as he lunged toward the stars. I wish I could stay this way forever, he thought in the middle of the jump: suspended in the air, in that moment when speed overtakes gravity and time slows, when everything seems to stop.

  He braced himself to land, but instead of coming down on the other side of the gate his bike rose higher into the air, past the point where gravity ought to have caught and landed it.

  The earth rushed away, the pitted and unkempt motocross track smoothing to a dark ribbon below him. Thin, cold air rubbed his cheeks raw and froze his breath. The ground was so far away it looked like a map crinkled by mountains, and still he continued to rise.

  I wish I could stay this way forever. The words, his thoughts from just moments before, pounded in his brain.