Their taunts and insults, along with their continual abuse of him, had eventually taken their toll on Howard. One day, after a particularly vicious assault that had included being sodomized then beaten, Howard had been filled with rage, and an unquenchable thirst for vengeance. He’d yearned for it, longed for the dark feeling of revenge, of retaliation. He’d read that revenge was a sin. The teachings of the Bible had advised him to turn the other cheek, to forgive those who’d trespassed against him. But with bright-red blood trickling from every orifice of his body and the sound of jeers echoing in his head, retribution had beckoned him. In that moment, he had turned from God, had charged God with turning His back on him first. He had succumbed to the sinister seduction of score settling. He’d known what he’d needed to do to avenge all the atrocities Tom and Greg had committed against him.
Several of the guards had been smokers. Having had lit cigarettes extinguished on his bare torso before they’d ravaged him, he had known all too well of their filthy habit. Smoking had been the least of their many odious, deviant behaviors.
Since the guards had maintained order though regular acts of brutality, they had not feared disobedience. They had never guessed that Howard, the smallest, weakest prisoner, would take one of their numerous lighters that had littered their office, a refillable silver-plated lighter. And they had not expected him to relieve them of a container of lighter fluid either.
Though they had not concerned themselves with insubordination, they had been vigilant, always watching. Howard had been forced to wait until nightfall late one evening to steal out of his room, down a long, dark hallway while everyone else had slept, to collect the lighter and flammable fluid. He had moved with agility he’d never known he’d retained, had crept down the corridor with the silence and stealth of a cat and had gathered his tools unnoticed. From the guards’ office, he’d skulked back to the dormitory and searched for the cots Tom and Greg had occupied. Their bunks had been positioned side by side, almost touching. Like jackals, they’d stayed close to one another, existed as a vile pair.
Howard had stood at the foot of their beds and had felt the darkness stroke him with shadowy fingers, guiding him, pushing him. With a steady hand, he’d opened the canister of lighter fluid and had squeezed it over them, saturating them with the accelerant, careful to soak the small sheet that rested between their beds. Then he’d taken his thumb and rolled it over the flint. The wick had lit immediately, its golden flame swaying bewitchingly. He’d been mesmerized by it, had needed to tear his eyes from the small flicker long enough to toss it atop the sleeping boys. The lighter had landed exactly where he’d wanted to place it: on the sheet their bunks had shared. The material had caught fire immediately, and the fire had instantly spread along pathways created by lighter fluid. Both Tom and Greg’s bodies had begun to burn. It had taken the boys several moments to rouse from their slumber and realize what had been happening. They had awakened with a start, screaming and crying out in agony as their skin had begun to burn. Howard had merely watched, a sense of satisfaction filling his chest as he’d smelled the fetid odor of smoldering flesh. Tom and Greg had begun to thrash about wildly, trying to pat their bodies and smother the growing flames. Their efforts had been useless, though.
As they’d thrashed, Tom had released a guttural shriek and had lunged forward. He had latched onto Howard and had held tightly. He’d felt the heat of Tom’s blazing form, had watched as his own clothes had begun to burn as well.
Tom had looked like a man possessed. He’d howled out, a raspy war cry, just inches from Howard’s face as flames crept up his neck and began to blister his chin and cheeks. Howard had tried to shove him off, tried to pry Tom from him, but each time he had resisted, Tom had tightened his grip.
The last thing Howard Kane remembered about that fateful night was Tom pressing his fiery face to his, a blazing kiss of death, then the feeling of blinding pain searing his entire body, pain unlike any he’d ever experienced. Voices had sounded from some distant void, and oblivion had tempted the edge of his vision. He’d resisted at first, had focused on the voices that had likely belonged to other guests at his internment camp, or perhaps emergency personnel. He would never be sure to whom the voices had belonged to as he had surrendered to the nothingness that had called for him.
The next memory he’d had was lying in a hospital bed. Weeks had passed and he’d been told that he had suffered third-degree burns over the majority of his body. He’d been wrapped in lengths of white bandages, his blisters crusting and festering beneath them.
During the time he’d spend in the hospital recovering from his near-fatal burns, he’d sunken into a deep depression. He had realized that he had not avenged the wrongs perpetrated against him. He had not emerged the victor. Tom had the final laugh. Tom had taken from him the only attribute that he’d retained during his stay as a ward of the correctional system: his looks. Ironically, it had been his looks, his attractiveness that had bordered on feminine prettiness that had generated such a hedonistic frenzy among the other inmates. And even that had been stripped of him. Howard had been mutilated beyond any form of recognition, body and soul. He had been transformed from a beautiful twelve-tear-old boy, to a monster. And all of it had happened in the name of vengeance.
For months, his understanding of what his life had become had felt like bobbing lifelessly in a bottomless, blackened sea with no land in sight. Despair had crashed against him like mighty waves, drowning him. His dejection had lasted for nearly half a year, until one day, God had sent him a sign.
The Lord’s sign had come in the form of literature. A volunteer who’d brought books and magazines to patients in the hospital he’d stayed at had dropped a Bible on her way out. Howard had groaned before stooping to pick up the holy book. He’d had most, if not all, of it committed to memory during his eighth year of life, when his father had gone to prison and his mother had taken to drugs and men. He had not touched a Bible in some time. In the hospital, he had begun thumbing through it and was reminded of verse after verse of testimony that supported God’s ability to forgive him of his egregious sins. He had flagrantly offended God, as many had before him, but God had forgiven them. And he had known God would forgive him, too.
Standing in his hospital room, Howard had felt right holding the Bible in his hands, in his heart. Each word had nearly jumped off the pages, resonating with truth, with sense. He had known from that point on that everything that had happened had happened for a reason. He had been tested. His suffering had been part of God’s plan for him. Even his disfigurement had made sense in that divine moment. Vanity issues had been eliminated in one swift motion by his burns. He had known that no woman would ever want him, especially since his burns had spread over the lower half of his body destroying any chances of procreating or partaking of marital relations. He had beamed at the notion that God had chosen him, had freed him of the burden of marriage and parenthood, of pride and conceit. With all of those factors eliminated, his life had been unfettered. He had been granted the opportunity to devote his life to God and His work. He had been alleviated of the duty of creating a life for himself; one had been created for him. He had sinned, had claimed the lives of two people, and would in turn, devote his life to God and pay penance for his offenses.
From that day forward, Howard had begun reading from the Bible each day, had repented each day, begging for the Lord’s forgiveness. On his eighteenth birthday, six years later, all of his doctors and therapists in the federal hospital that had held him had unanimously decided that he had turned a corner. They had believed he had been rehabilitated. They had credited his devotion to Christ for his turnaround, and no longer saw him as a threat to society. He had been released, freed to pursue his holy quest.
Propped against a wall in the hallway of the Church he’d founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, Howard’s breathing began to calm. His pain began to subside. While the event he’d just experienced, the agony of the Sola’s sin, had been devastati
ngly real, his recollection of his path had confirmed what he had always believed. He would find the Sola and kill her as God had ordered him to, and he would end a plague intended to beset the planet before it began.
Chapter 4
Standing on the steps of Herald Falls High School on Monday morning, Arianna felt her stomach roil. The weekend had passed far quicker than she would have liked it to, and she’d only spoken to Luke on the phone. She hadn’t seen him, or anyone else from school, for the entire weekend. What had happened at the nightclub, though certainly fresh in everyone’s mind, had not been discussed again. But inevitably, it would be brought up, and likely sooner rather than later. She dreaded that moment. She breathed deeply to calm her stomach and her nerves and pulled one of two twin doors toward her.
Stale air immediately greeted her. Invisible heat blowing from dusty vents filled the halls as fully as the roar of chatter from students that lingered there. Both the sound and the smell overwhelmed her, stifling and choking her. She’d been to school for more than a week, had walked the same hallways in a building that had maintained the same ambient temperature for a week. Yet, the atmosphere seemed to have changed. She had changed. Her senses felt heightened.
Voices echoed loudly along the corridor, louder than they had the previous week. A group of girls huddled by their lockers laughed, a grating cacophony of high-pitched staccato sounds that scraped at Arianna’s eardrums. She strained to ignore them, but the harder she tried, the more she focused on them, the shriller they became. When finally they stopped and began talking again, after Arianna had moved past them, she could still hear their conversation as clearly as she would have had they been standing right beside her.
“John is such a player,” one said.
“I know. I don’t know why Cheryl puts up with his crap,” another said.
“He cheats on her all the time. She has to know,” a third voice added.
Arianna turned and looked over her shoulder. She could barely see the girls any longer. But impossibly, she could still hear their catty conversation. She quickly tried to focus on something else, anything else, all the while her heart thumped frantically. She wondered whether this was one of the new skills she’d gained, whether enhanced senses were among them. She reasoned that surely, shifting criminals and chairs were the extent of her talents, along with generating fire. Either way, she decided to find out. Further down the hallway, her English teacher stood at the threshold of the faculty lounge door speaking intently to her gym teacher. She stared in their direction, and focused on the two teachers.
“So we can meet tonight?” Mr. Smith asked Mr. Davis.
“Yes. My wife will be out of town until next week. Come to my house. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves,” Mr. Davis suggested.
“Ooh, perfect. That’s even better than our usual spot,” Mr. Smith crooned. “I can hardly wait.”
Arianna could not believe what she was hearing, that she was hearing it at all. Her two teachers, who’d plotted a secret rendezvous, had been so far away, there would have been no possible way for her to hear what they’d said. But she had. She’d tuned in to their conversation as simply as she would have tuned into a radio station; And with crystal-clear reception. Her stomach began to twist and she pressed her hand to her belly, the realization of yet another skill made plain. In the distance, she watched as the men parted. To another onlooker, their interaction seemed normal, professional. Arianna had assumed that if she were able to hear their conversation at all, and it had been a longshot, it would have been a boring, benign conversation. She had been wrong in both assumptions.
Now, as Mr. Davis approached, heat shot straight to her cheeks. He nodded in acknowledgment of her. She smiled weakly, and avoided eye contact. She would see him soon, but with the information she had unwittingly stumbled upon, she wondered how she would ever look at him again without her cheeks blazing.
Learning she had the ability to move objects and people with a sweep of her hand, to manipulate their state of being, and that she had suddenly amplified hearing, made anxiety tear at her lungs, making her feel as if their capacity had been severely diminished, and sent her stomach churning anew. The overly warm temperature of the building and her racing heart conspired with what felt like the beginning of a panic attack. Arianna began making her way to the ladies room.
She navigated clusters of students, narrowly dodged getting leveled by a football jersey-clad giant walking backward and was about to round the corner to an alcove with the bathrooms tucked within it when Luke suddenly appeared beside her.
“Hey,” he said cheerfully.
Arianna sucked in a breath, startled. “Enough with the ninja routine!” she said and placed her hand over her heart.
“Sorry,” he said with genuine concern. “I probably shouldn’t have done that after what happened this weekend. That was fucking stupid of me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she tried to comfort him. She did not want him to treat her differently. And she certainly didn’t want him to feel bad for being himself. “I’m just tired this morning. I’m jumpy when I’m tired.”
“You don’t need to make excuses, Arianna,” he said and looked at her with his shimmering silver eyes. He took her hand and pulled her out of the hallway into the alcove. Once they were alone, he lowered his voice and said, “I saw the news report Saturday morning, too. That guy, the guy that caught on fire, died. And the other one’s not talking. I’m glad the bastard’s dead, but I’m feeling pretty jumpy myself. It’s all so freaking crazy.”
Arianna leaned into him and he wrapped her arms around his waist. He smelled inviting, of soap and aftershave and minty toothpaste. She could not believe she had involved him, though not purposefully, in the twisted mess of her life. He deserved better, deserved to be with someone normal, someone who wasn’t a witch guilty of murdering an attempted rapist.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured into his shirt.
She didn’t think he’d heard her and was shocked when he released her from his embrace. He quickly pulled away from her and held her at arm’s length. He stared into her eyes, stared so intensely she worried Luke was looking right through her, seeing her for what she really was: a monster. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he surprised her by saying. “That thug had a rap sheet longer than my arm, according to the report, and he and his buddy were trying to rape my sister and my girlfriend. I’m glad he’s dead. The world is better off without him.”
She did not argue his point and was grateful when he pulled her against his hard chest again. The racing rhythm of his heartbeat was a welcome reprieve from the noise level in the hall. She wanted to stay with him, hide out in the remote nook near the bathrooms with her faced buried in his sweatshirt for the rest of the day. But the sound of Stephanie’s voice snapped her back to reality. Stephanie approached from a staircase behind Luke.
“Luke, there you are!” Stephanie said testily. “You disappeared as soon as we got here.”
Stephanie froze when Luke turned and Arianna became visible.
“I was looking for Arianna, Steph. Didn’t know I needed to tell you where I was going at school,” Luke said.
“Whatever, asshole,” Stephanie said and scowled at them.
“Hi Stephanie,” Arianna attempted, but Stephanie did not respond. Instead, she turned on her heels and walked away.
“What the hell?” Luke said, annoyance lacing each of his words. “Hold on a second, Arianna. She’s not getting away with being a bitch to you today,” he said and dashed off after Stephanie.
“Hold on!” he called to his sister.
Arianna watched as Luke caught up with Stephanie near the stairwell. She stared after them, forgetting her newfound ability would allow her to hear their every word. When she heard their voices clearly, she tried to focus on the chatter around her, tried to hum a song, but nothing worked. Nothing she did drowned out their conversation.
“I told you Luke, there’s something wrong with her!�
� she heard Stephanie argue. “Something weird happened and I’m telling you, her eyes were glowing red in that damn alley. She set that guy on fire and killed him after she messed up his friend.”
“Oh come on, Stephanie! Not this shit again! You were fucking drugged out, and now you’re gonna try to convince me of some crazy-ass story that my girlfriend set a guy on fire with her eyes. Listen to yourself! You sound like a nut, or worse, a druggie. Either way, I’m not listening to your shit anymore!”
“So you’re okay that your girl over there is a freak and a murderer?” Stephanie antagonized him.
“Have you completely lost your mind? Those assholes got what they deserved! They were trying to rape you, and probably would have killed you afterward, in case you forgot. I would have killed them myself had I been there. Shit! I wish your half-baked story were true. I wish Arianna set that scumbag and fire and cooked his ass!
“Do you hear yourself? You’re the one who sounds crazy. It was murder, and we need to tell the cops!”
Arianna wished she could ignore their conversation, ignore Stephanie’s distrust of her, disdain of her. But try as she may, theirs was the only sound she heard in the school. All other conversations had faded. Only Luke and Stephanie’s voices remained.
“The cops? They’ll put you away!” Luke countered.
“Like hell they will!”
“Seriously,” Luke said and sounded as though he’d gained a degree of control over his temper. “Do you really want to bring the police into our lives so they can get a look at mom? They’ll definitely haul her off, I’ll be on my own and you’ll go into the system as a minor.”
Planet Urth Boxed Set Page 31
