The Demon's Apprentice

by Ben Reeder

  I limped into the cafeteria as the bell rang, and made my way over to the Goth table after I piled enough food on my puke-patterned tray to feed an army. It was time to pay the price for being strong and healing fast. As I stuffed my face with hot dogs and cheeseburgers, Lucas and Wanda joined me.

  “Dude, your arms!!” Lucas cried in alarm, noticing the angry red scrapes that ran from my wrists to my elbows as I reached for my third carton of milk. “What the hell happened to you?” he demanded.

  “A football team tackled me. Hard. A lot.”

  “That must have hurt!”

  “Yeah.” What else could I say to something that obvious? I changed the subject. “Is everything ready to go for this afternoon?”

  “Yeah, the Falcon is fueled up and ready, and she’ll be waiting at docking bay 94.” Lucas laughed at my puzzled look. “From Star Wars?” he said hopefully.

  “Still not getting it,” I muttered.

  “You’ve never seen Star Wars?” he asked incredulously.

  “Um, no. My dad was pretty strict about some things.”

  “Oh, no,” Wanda moaned. “He’s about to witness to you, Chance. Run, while you still have a social life.”

  “Dude, no witnessing needed. You just have to experience Star Wars in all its glory. We can watch it this weekend, so you can catch up with the civilized world, and get more of my jokes.”

  “Actually,” I said, wincing inwardly at Wanda’s inevitable reaction, “I’d like that.” Wanda only rolled her eyes good-naturedly. That crisis averted, I went back to the serious business of eating.

  When the bell rang, Wanda and I headed for the greenhouse, ready to take the next step in our plan. As we took our seats, I was even more aware of the girls in cheerleading skirts across the aisle from us, and I could have sworn I felt their eyes on my back all through class. I saw my chance as Dr. Corwin walked down the rows, handing out botany study sheets.

  “Uh, Dr. Corwin?” I asked, as he laid the sheet down in front of me.

  “Yes, Chance?”

  “Could I drop by after school today and talk to you about the placement test?” I tried to keep my voice pitched as low as possible, but he had evidently never heard the word “subtle.”

  “Certainly, Chance!” he said with obvious pleasure. His voice carried across the room. “I’ll be here for a little bit after the pep rally!”

  “Thanks,” I muttered over the giggles that came from the other side of the room.

  “Oh, man, you are getting the major booty check, Chance,” Wanda whispered, as Dr. Corwin moved on. I rolled my eyes and tried to go back to my worksheet, drawing a cross section of a leaf, but it wasn’t an easy job. “You wear a pair of tight pants one time, and suddenly you’re a piece of ass,” I growled.

  Wanda’s smile surprised me as she leaned back and gave my seated bottom a mock appraisal. “It’s not bad. Now you know how we girls feel when guys stare at our ass or tits all the time,” she offered smugly.

  “I’ll keep that in mind next time I ogle your boobs,” I told her before I turned back to my work.

  She chuckled and bent to her own work before Dr. Corwin could make it back by. The bell, of course, took its own sweet time in ringing. French and shop class were mostly goof-off sessions, and then it was time for the pep rally.

  My first pep rally. I was excited, since this time, I would be experiencing it from the bleachers instead of waiting outside to make a deal with a cheerleader, geek, or jock for whatever dream they wanted me to make come true. Just walking in to the gym, I could feel the raw power coming from the place. Pack five hundred kids from fourteen to eighteen into a big room on a Friday afternoon and play some marching music real loud. Even if it’s badly played, you’ll get five hundred pulses jumping a little quicker, and five hundred sets of hormones working overtime, especially when you add a dozen or so athletic, attractive girls in short skirts jumping around. It’s a little like a hormonally enhanced version of a nuclear reactor, energy wise.

  The marching band was already going, playing some song I’d never heard before, or maybe playing one I did know so badly I didn’t recognize it in its clever new disguise. Either way, the drummers were doing their thing well enough, and working the ancient magick of rhythm on the whole crowd. Add to that the candy the cheerleaders were throwing to the people in the bleachers, and I figured the gymnasium would be pretty much orbital by the time everything was done. I found a spot next to Lucas and Wanda, or I should say, one opened up when I got close enough for the kid in it to see me coming. Having rep as a badass helped sometimes. They were both grinning like loons as I sat down, and I could see the pile of candy wrappers at their feet.

  “Looks like you’ve been busy already!” I had to yell over the crowd.

  Lucas nodded and dumped a handful of sugary delight into my hands. “We got here early!” he yelled back.

  From where we were, high in the bleachers, I could see all the banners the cheerleaders had made, with “Go Howlers!” and “We’re #1!” painted on them. Pictures of battered pirates were mixed in with the fierce wolf-looking things representing the Howlers and the Northview Pirates. It was barbarism reduced to ink and paper.

  It was also a great place to pick up a ton of free-floating aggressive energy. The air was charged with it, practically crackling to my mystic senses, it was so thick. With that thought, I dug into my book bag, flipped open my pocket knife with my thumb, and let the point of the blade dig into the still-fresh cut I had made Wednesday. When I felt the slickness of blood on my fingertip, I let the blade slip closed and felt around until I found my telekinesis power rod. There was a tingle against my fingertips, and I felt the hair on my arms stand up as a cool wash of magick pulsed from the center of my being, down my arms and into the TK rod. With the connection between my blood and the rod, I could channel magickal power into it. I needed to have it next to my skin, so I palmed it and pulled it from the bag.

  Suddenly, the band started up, and I felt the first wave of insistent, martial power slap against me like a hot wave of static. The song brought everyone to their feet, and I certainly couldn’t resist the urge to get up myself. I felt the rod sucking up the energy I was pumping into it, as the lodestones and quartz did what came naturally: drawing and storing power for use later. The cheerleaders got everyone chanting, which drew even more potential into the air, and the rod drew it all in as fast as I could channel it.

  Between the cheerleaders, the music, and the speeches by the coach and Brad, who turned out to be pretty charming when it suited him, the whole school was in a frenzy before it was all said and done. Brad and the coach dedicated this game's win to Mr. Chomsky, which only hyped everyone up even further, in spite of the somber tone of the speech. I was beginning to wonder if my little rod could hold any more juice. Then, as if the whole pep rally had been written just for me, it ended with the school song, which acted as a damper and a focus, keying more to pride and loyalty than to raw force and aggression. It had a feeling of solidity and endurance to it, so it served as a good point of closure. I wove the threads of my will through the song and directed it around the TK power rod, sealing the stored energy inside it for use when I might need it. Both the rod and I were pumped as full of energy as we could be, and I found myself grinning. This wasn’t so different from what I was used to…just less grim. More innocent.

  “Man, that is a weird look for you,” Lucas said from beside me. Wanda’s head was bobbing in an emphatic nod.

  “What?”

  “You, smiling like that,” Wanda said.

  “It’s a little scary,” Lucas said as he raised his hands with his fingers making a crude cross.

  “I’ll get right back to scowling, then,” I joked. “This was fun!”

  “You’ve never been to a pep rally before?” Wanda asked.

  “They didn’t have them at the boarding schools I went to,” I lied smoothly. “I’m gonna go talk to Dr. C. You guys go get ready to follow Brad and his crew, okay? I’ll
catch up with you as soon as I’m done.” I grabbed my bag and headed down the bleachers toward the door.

  As I went, I caught sight of Brad and Alexis by the other set of doors. Alexis was in his arms, looking up at him, looking like she was trapped. Brad’s face was set in hard, angry lines, but there was a hollow look in his eyes that told me he had just lost something, too. All was not right for Princess Pop Star and Prince Not-So-Charming, it seemed.

  The halls were empty. You didn’t have to give students a reason to clear out on a Friday afternoon. I jogged toward the botany lab, which was even further back, and even less likely to have anyone in it, hurrying for my own reasons. Though talking to Dr. C had been mainly an excuse, I found myself really wanting to make it into the advanced science classes. That much, at least, Mr. Chomsky had been honest about. It beat the Nine Hells out of being just another juvenile delinquent. As I jogged along, though, my shoulder blades began to tighten up, and I started to get the feeling that I wasn’t alone in the halls.

  The sound of a padlock slamming down against a locker stopped me in my tracks, and I spun in place, while my left hand dug in my book bag for my freshly charged TK wand. After a few seconds, I found it and palmed it, drawing my hand out slowly. Soft laughter mocked me from the suddenly dim hallway, and I realized that the lights had been turned off behind me. My eyes narrowed. I was being hunted, stalked. Of course, the hunters had no idea how dangerous their prey really was. If it was Brad and his buddies, thinking that numbers and a little mystical mojo was going to give them an unfair advantage over me, they were in for a huge surprise. I turned my back on the darkened hallway and continued back down the hall toward the greenhouse.

  The first attack caught me flat-footed. The only warning I had of something coming was a dry scratching sound, then I was flying through the air with the memory of a heavy weight slamming into my back. I hit the ground with my hands out, and dropped the TK rod with a clatter and a curse. It landed a few feet further down: as good as a couple of miles, if I didn’t get to it fast. I rolled onto my ass first, though, trying to see who or what had attacked me. My brain was dimly aware that I hadn’t heard sneakers hitting the ground, or even hard-soled shoes. Rolling to one side was all that saved me from the second pounce. Even so, I felt it hit the ground beside me, and found myself looking into the blue eyes of a huge gray wolf. I remembered the eyes because they were over rows of about a million big teeth, separated by a gray muzzle and a black wolf nose. And there were teeth, in case I didn’t mention that. My roll had put me closer to the rod, but the wolf’s landing had put it closer to me than I was to the rod. Bad odds for me: better than great for the wolf.

  Desperate, I backhanded it across the muzzle, letting my knuckles slam into the soft tissue of its nose, and cried out, “Bad dog!” It yelped, probably mostly in surprise, and recoiled. Before it could recover, I pulled my feet up and pushed myself along the slick tiles toward my rod, the only weapon I had. The push wasn’t quite strong enough to get me to it, so I laid myself back out and stretched for it, just barely grasping it in my fingers. I heard a snarl and the scratching of claws as the wolf tried to get some purchase on the tiles himself, and turned back to him in time to see him gather himself and leap into the air at me. I thrust the rod at it and yelled “Ictus!”

  A column of solid force exploded from the slender tip of the rod, caught the wolf between his forelegs mid-leap, and flung him up. Straight up. I wondered for a brief second how far I would have sent him if the damned concrete ceiling hadn’t stopped him, but just the sound of the impact was pretty impressive. I shook my head as the muffled sound of air being displaced echoed down the hallway, and dust fell from the ceiling. Then two hundred pounds of fur, teeth and muscle hit the ground a foot away from me with a muted yelp.

  “Bad dog!” I said again, shaking the rod at it for emphasis “BAD! DOG! No biscuit!” Of course, even as I was cracking wise, I was scrambling to my feet and backing away. As hard as I had hit it the first time, and after hitting the ground like a bag of wet cement, it was still scrambling to its feet. It shook its head and looked at me with curiously intelligent, human-looking eyes. It circled to my left, and I kept the rod pointed at it. After it made it as far to the left as it could, it turned and paced back toward the right until it reached the middle of the hall. I struggled to keep my rational mind in the moment, trying to guess what the wolf was going to do next and plan against whatever that was going to be. The challenge was that my hairy monkey brain was gibbering about how the walking, glaring wolf should have been a doggie-shaped splat mark on the ceiling, instead of still trying to eat me, just like in the stories.

  I gaped as it arched its back and changed, becoming more human shaped, without losing its fur or any of those big damned teeth. It straightened to face me, and towered over me by a good two feet, with long claws extending from its fingertips. Long claws and opposable thumbs. My lips pulled back from my teeth, which were not even close to as dangerous looking as the wolf’s, but then, I was armed with something far more dangerous than tooth and claw.

  Evidently, it noticed my confidence, because it turned its head and barked. I stepped into the middle of the hall as two more half-wolves emerged from the shadows behind him. I heard a heavy claw scrape on the tile behind me, and ducked instinctively when I heard the half bark of a wolf from behind me. The gray wolf stepped aside in time to avoid getting hit by the one that had tried to jump me from behind. The new one was black all over, sleek and lean with corded muscle; it landed gracefully and turned to face me. The other two, darker gray and dark brown, came up to flank the gray one, and I found myself faced with even more teeth than before.

  “Crap,” I muttered as I realized just how deep in the shit I was. If I waited for them to attack, I was a lupine Happy Meal. If I attacked, I might get one or two of them, three if I was lucky, and I would have a few more seconds before I ended up as a buffet for the four-legged and furry. Still, a few seconds was better than none.

  “Ictus! Ictus latior!” I yelled, sending as wide a wave of force as I could manage crashing down the hallway. It took the two on the left and bowed them over the leading edge of the wave, throwing them into the darkness. The black one caught the edge of the strike, and got sent skidding down the hall. It worked better than I had hoped, but the darker gray one was still there, and it gathered itself and leaped before I could bring the rod back to bear on it.

  We went down in a heap of fur and limbs, and I felt its teeth close on the collar of my leather jacket, just below my right ear. It drew its massive head back for another try, and I slammed my left fist into its ear, pouring every bit of the augmented strength I could muster from my stolen charm into the punch. It lunged again after the second punch, and I barely managed to wedge my right forearm under its jaw, barely keeping its teeth from closing on my throat. I smelled fetid doggie breath and held my arm up as it tried to rip my face off.

  Only leverage was keeping me in one piece just then, since the wolf was depending on nothing more than his weight to bring his jaws to my flesh. He still had friends, though, and I didn’t know how long they were going to be out of the fight. As he clawed at me and snapped his jaws together, I tucked my legs up between us and pushed as hard as I could, hoping to bounce him off the ceiling again with my borrowed strength. He sailed up and away from me in a slow, gentle arc, and landed on his feet maybe four feet away. I felt my arms and legs suddenly get heavier as the strength augment worked exactly the way it was designed to, giving out after a certain threshold had been reached. It had been made to keep its user dependent on the supplier, and it worked like…well, a charm. Suddenly, I was just plain Chance again, not ÜberChance.

  Chance 1.0 was still not a guy to mess with lightly. I still had the TK rod, and I was still the most vicious bastard I knew. I just wasn’t ready to go hand to hand with two hundred pounds of wolfman. The trick was to keep this fight on my terms instead letting it happen on his. I started off by pointing the rod at him and crying o
ut “Ictus!” again before he could get his feet completely under him. He managed to duck under most of the blast, only taking part of it across one shoulder, but it was still enough to knock him spinning and off his feet. He hit the ground and rolled, coming up on all fours with fangs bared and a snarl rumbling from his throat as he turned his head to face me. I could see all seven feet of his left side as he gathered himself to spring again. I knew he was waiting for me to try to throw another blast at him, and I was waiting for him to jump. If he managed to twist in mid leap, or if I misjudged my shot, though, this fight was over. For a moment, the tableau held, then the wolf’s eyes flicked to something behind and above me. I didn’t dare take my eyes off of him, but I couldn’t be sure of who or even what was behind me, either.

  As I debated on how to get out from between the wolf and whoever was behind me (I was being optimistic, and assuming it was at least person-ish), I heard a soft coughing sound as something hit my furry foe in the shoulder. There was a little puff of fur flying, and I could see a rough circle of pale flesh where whatever it was had hit him. He let out a yelp of pain and recoiled. Another soft cough of air sounded from behind me, and another circle of bare skin appeared on his flank, then two more in rapid succession. I heard steps from behind me, and a tall figure in a black plastic mask and a leather jacket came up beside me as the big gray wolfman took a couple of steps back. The brown wolf came forward snarling and stepped between the newcomer and the gray.

  The man beside me dropped the huge handgun he’d been using in my lap as he drew another pistol from a holster under his right arm. “Hang on to that for me, will ya?” he said casually as the long-barreled gun came up. A red dot appeared on the brown wolf man’s body and he pulled the trigger. This gun made a louder bark and spat a thin tongue of flame from the end of its smooth barrel. The wolfman yelped even louder than his gray friend and turned tail. All four scampered into the darkness with a scratching of claws. I took the heavy gun in my lap and pointed it down the hall, like it would help somehow. I got to my feet as I scanned the hallway, and even looked behind my masked rescuer, since I had been caught from behind both by him and the black wolf. After a few seconds, the sound of claws on tile faded into silence, and I turned to the masked man in front of me.