by G. P. Ching
Chapter 19
This Might Be Cooler Than It Sounds
“Something else has happened, hasn’t it?” Dr. Silva said, staring at Jacob in that unblinking way that made him think she was reading his soul.
“Yes,” he replied. For the first time, he wanted to tell her what happened. He wanted to try it again. “I shot myself out of a puddle—about twelve feet, I think.”
She clapped her long fingers together and laughed. “This is terrific news. Let’s see if we can make that happen again and maybe stretch it into something more useful.”
“More useful? More useful for what?”
Dr. Silva was already pulling over the hose, wetting down the grass in front of the sunroom. “How much did you need?”
“I don’t really know. It soaked into the ground. I guess I ran it for a couple minutes.”
A puddle formed at Dr. Silva’s feet.
“You pulled it from the ground?”
He nodded.
“That’s a very powerful gift, Jacob. Think about the implications. I wonder if you even need this,” she said, waving the hose. She turned the water off.
“Show me. Jump to the roof of the sunroom.”
He took his place in the middle of the puddle. The hum of the water surrounded him, whispered to him. He concentrated on the roof. Nothing happened.
“It’s not working,” he admitted.
“What was different last night?”
“Well, I was trying to get to my friend … wait, I think I remember now.” He pretended Malini was on the roof. To protect her, he needed to get to her. The panicky feeling came again, the urgency. All at once, he was flying through the air. He bent his knees to absorb the impact of landing on the slate shingles.
Dr. Silva cheered from below. “Wonderful! What was different that time?”
“I remembered that I had to pretend I was protecting her to make it work. It was the same in the parking lot and the school. When I felt like I had to protect her, that’s when it would listen to me.”
“Her who?” Dr. Silva pursed her lips.
“My girlfriend, Malini.”
“Malini Gupta? The insurance agent’s daughter?”
“Yep.”
“That must be the trigger then—the desire to protect. You must be a Horseman. I suspected it from the beginning but this confirms it. The trigger makes sense if you think about it. For as long as I’ve known you, I’ve known you were loyal to the people you care about. The desire to protect is an urge to act on that loyalty. First it was your mother and now Malini.”
Horseman. The label sounded ancient. Jacob wasn’t sure how much of her story he was willing to believe, but being called a Horseman didn’t bother him. It was as close to an explanation for what he could do as he was going to get.
“What now?”
“Come on down and we’ll try something else.”
Jacob prepared himself mentally and jumped. The water rose to meet his feet and carried him gently to the earth, like a falling geyser.
Dr. Silva was in front of him in an instant. One second her hands were empty and the next a staff appeared in a flash of blue light.
“Ask the water for a weapon,” she barked.
All at once, her eyes turned vicious and her lips pulled back from her teeth like an animal. She wielded the staff in her hands, her feet set wide. Dr. Silva could be scary when she wanted to be.
He searched the hum of the water and pretended Malini was standing behind him. The staff was the threat. He concentrated, searching the hum for the best weapon, something to defend her from the staff.
The water sprayed into his hand in a steady stream that filled his grip. As he tightened his fist, he was surprised to feel resistance. Never taking his eyes off Dr. Silva, he lifted the water from the ground; only it was no longer water but a broadsword of solid ice. The double-sided blade glinted in the afternoon light, as hard and sharp as steel. It was three feet long and perfectly balanced in his hand.
How was it possible that the ice wasn’t freezing his palm or melting in the sun? There wasn’t time to think about it much. Dr. Silva’s staff came around toward his head. Jacob circled the ice sword and made contact, gouging the wood. She spun and thrust the staff under her arm toward his gut. He swept the sword downward, blocking the staff.
The movement was much faster than humanly possible. It was as if the sword was anticipating his direction. Each time the blade made contact with the staff, he instinctively knew how to counter the attack. She parried, and he advanced. The battle went on until Jacob was covered in sweat and thankful for the cold hilt of his weapon.
Then, with lightning speed, Dr. Silva slashed the staff down toward the top of his head. Jacob’s sword responded, flying upward in an arc. Only this time the water melted and reformed around the wood. He completed the circle, allowing gravity to help drive the blade around, and wrenched the staff from Dr. Silva’s hands.
She stared at her empty fingers, surprise brightening her eyes.
“Congratulations, Horseman,” she said. “You have won your first battle.”
She bowed formally. Her hands spread to the sides in a gesture as ancient and out of place as a medieval knight jousting on a city street. Jacob was as sure as he’d ever been that she was not human. But he’d given up on asking her what she was. The truth was, it didn’t matter; she was the only hope he had of getting his life back.
