Magus

by R H Frye

  Mike laughed. “Well, I’ve found over the years that even the biggest badass can’t survive a bullet through the head.”

  John laughed briefly before the wound in his ribcage made him gasp in pain. The renewed discomfort served another purpose as well. His mind cleared and he suddenly realized that there was another question that he needed answered. He turned to Mike and with sudden strength grabbed the man by the scorched front of his shirt. “Where the hell is Sarah?”

  Mike’s face grew pale through the soot that covered it. “Oh God, John. I just don’t know. I sent her to the front door to try to help the people inside.”

  John forced himself to relax his grip. He leaned back on his hands and said, “Help me up.”

  Mike wearily pulled himself to his feet and somehow found the strength to help the wounded shaman up as well. He never seriously considered trying to talk John out of looking for his love. Something deep inside of him knew that there was no use.

  The friends were just about to hobble around the house when John stopped. “Do me a favor, would you? Find something to cut that fucker’s head off, grab his jewelry, and bring it with you, okay?”

  Mike stifled any questions that he may have had and moved to do as John had asked. John stumbled around the ruins of the house and sent his thoughts out in search of Sarah.

  Epilogue

  Sarah awakened to the bright lights and antiseptic smells of a hospital room. It took a long minute for her eyes to adjust to the unaccustomed light, but at last she found that she could focus readily enough on the room around her. Her eyes stopped their restless roaming when she saw the person that she was seeking.

  “John?” She said his name quietly, but he jerked as if he had been shot.

  When the alarm faded from his eyes, he asked her gently, “How do you feel, beautiful?”

  Sarah thought for a few minutes before she answered. “Well, we won, right?” John nodded. “Then I feel great.” She thought it over for another minute as she took a quick mental catalogue of her circumstances, and finally she added, “Well, maybe my leg doesn’t feel so hot, but under the circumstances, who cares?”

  John smiled as he moved his hands carefully towards Sarah’s injured leg. Sarah watched in silence as the shaman’s hands began to glow with a golden light, but she broke the silence with a startled gasp of pain as the light began to penetrate the cast on her knee and energy began to pour into her severely damaged leg. Tears sprang from her eyes and she whimpered in agony as the shattered pieces of bone began to move about and rearrange themselves in the proper order. For a time the pain became so intense that Sarah feared she would pass out from the intensity, but abruptly the pain ceased and a cool feeling of relief and rightness replaced the agony of only a moment before.

  John tapped the cast on Sarah’s leg lightly with the tip of his right index finger, and the plaster turned to dust. Sarah’s leg was smooth and perfect beneath the light patina of dust that covered her knee. She flexed her leg slowly at first, and then with growing confidence as she discovered that her ruined knee was as good as new. She lunged forward and caught John in a fierce embrace. Tears of relief spilled from the eyes of the two lovers, and they sat surrounded by the glow of their love for a long, untold time.

  An irritating, persistent itch above his right ear finally awakened Matt from a deep sleep. He tried to lift his hand to his head to scratch the itch...and it was then that he realized he could not feel his hand. In fact, he could not feel anything below his neck. Matt’s eyes flew open, and he looked in panic around the room, but there was no one nearby. He rolled his eyes downward to study the bed and he could see the call button for the nurse lying just beside his limp hand, but try as he might, he could not force the hand to reach for the button. With a growing sense of terror, he realized that he could not force any other part of his body to move besides his head.

  Finally, the fear became too much for the young man, and he began to scream. “Nurse! Oh God, somebody please tell me what’s going on!”

  Matt was still screaming and sobbing when John walked into the room and gently pushed the nurse that was trying to comfort her patient out the door. He turned towards Matt and reached out hands that were already beginning to shine with a golden glow.

  In the room directly above Matt’s, on the floor of the hospital that was reserved for psychiatric patients, screams could be heard faintly through the window, but the room’s occupant did not care.

  Danny sat staring at things unseen and ignored the world around him. Psychiatrists, medical doctors, nurses, and friends would come and go in a steady stream in the days to come, but Danny was unaware of them all. His mind was locked away in a tiny room of its own design, and none could say whether he would ever escape that small, safe place again.

  The girl seemed exotic and dangerous to Liam, but that only added to the fun. There was just something about her that caught his eye. He could not help himself as he trailed her into The British Museum. She seemed completely unaware of his presence, so with growing confidence he followed her deeper into the museum.

  The shadows of evening were slanting deep into the dusty halls of the museum, and Liam was beginning to grow tired of the game when the girl abruptly stopped. She was standing in front of an exhibit that read, “Artifacts found near the Standing Stones of Stonehenge.” Much of the exhibit was exposed to the open air, but a few items were enclosed in a glass case. The girl’s attention was focused on the case, and Liam drifted closer to see what held her attention so.

  Liam was made bold by the girl’s apparent inattention to his proximity, so he stepped right up to the case beside of her and looked closely at the artifact that she was studying. The target of her intense scrutiny appeared to be nothing more than a five-foot-long, exquisitely carved piece of oak. He found it odd that such a piece of wood, no matter how intricately carved, should hold her attention so completely, so he rudely jostled her elbow to try to get her attention.

  The girl ignored Liam completely and continued to study the artifact.

  Liam was most definitely unaccustomed to being ignored in such a manner, so he grabbed the girl’s arm and roughly shoved her around to face him. “Just what the bleeding hell is so interesting, eh?” he snarled at her. He intentionally squeezed her arm in a grip that he knew to be painful, but the girl only smiled sweetly at him for a long moment. Then she replied with a word that Liam did not understand.

  Carol shattered the case with a thought and a word, grabbed the staff, and walked calmly away amid the clamor of alarm bells. Behind her, the rude young man burst into flames and collapsed into a messy puddle in front of the broken display case.