On the Verge (A Charmed Life Book 1) (5 page)

She reached the shops rather soon, only two blocks on.  She turned to walk along the shops, slowing down again now that there were people in view.  Pretending to look at a store window, she instead glanced back at the man who had taken the same turn and was still behind her.  His face was shadowed, but it seemed Native American, and familiar, but she couldn't put her finger on it.  She glanced up to see what shops were upcoming, and turned into a convenience store, quickly stepping up to one of the shelves and staring sightlessly past whatever was on the shelf as she glanced out the corner of her eye at the front window.

The man walked quickly past, not even glancing into the store.  Tracy let out a soft sigh of relief - it had been her imagination.

“I'm afraid I can't let that cat in here,” said a quiet voice at her shoulder.  Tracy turned in surprise to see a young cashier, a high school boy.

“Oh, sorry,” replied Tracy.  “I'll just be on my way, then.  Sorry.”

Even though she logically could tell herself that it was all in her head, she couldn't help but think she could feel him, somewhere nearby, almost point to him.  She'd anticipated him showing up at the window, sure, but of course she'd seen how fast he'd been walking, and had subconsciously calculated it – no sense being ridiculous, or making herself paranoid.

She stepped out onto the street again and walked on with Nameless shadowing her heels.  She smiled at the small gray cat, fondly.  “It's amazing that you stick with me,” she said quietly to the cat.  “I've never seen a cat take to someone like you've taken to me.” Nameless looked up at her as if listening, then ignored her to go chase after a plastic bag blowing along in the light wind.  Tracy laughed merrily.

She quickly passed beyond the shops and was in a residential area again, less than a dozen blocks from home.  The buildings were shifting from houses to apartment complexes again.

“The weird thing is,” she said to Nameless, “I can't get it out of my head that I can feel that guy, like he's out there.  Can't wait to get home, my imagination's just running away with me.”

She walked along, trying to shake off the rising feeling that she was being watched, that someone was circling around her.  Every person that came past made her even more nervous, though she could have pointed to her imagined stalker somewhere else.  Why was this happening? She had never felt this paranoid on a walk, before.  Perhaps it was because of how depressed she had been feeling before she left.

Tracy was passing by a basketball court when she felt the goosebumps hit.  She knew someone was there before they stepped out of the buildings on either side of her, loosely surrounding her and closing in.  Nameless hissed angrily, pressing against her ankle with his fur bristled.

They stared right at her as they closed in on her.  It felt surreal, something that only happened on TV.  “You gotta be kidding me,” she muttered.

“No kidding,” said one of the guys.  They all looked younger than her, late teens or early twenties, dressed in expensive and sloppy clothes.  Everything took on a strange, super-detailed experience.  It wasn't in slow motion, but with how many of the stupid little details she was noticing, it seemed like it should be.  Two of the boys were black; two were white.  One had a strange little scar just over his eye.  Another had a smudge of something brown just under his lip.

For some reason, she noticed the mist.  There was a fog rising up around her, and she would have thought it was far too cold for a fog.  She noticed the thrumming, somewhere far away.  Perhaps there was machinery working away - road construction or some sort of generator - but in her fearful imagination, she matched it up with the footsteps of one of the thugs approaching her.

They closed in around her.  Her gaze focused on the one boy whose footsteps she imagined resonated with that far away machinery.  She couldn't say why, but he drew her attention - perhaps because of that imagined tremor his every step created.  There was nothing to indicate he was the leader or somehow important, but she seized upon it and had a focus, watching him.

They laughed at her - the sound making her still more afraid.  She was afraid, but she was frozen, frozen and watching, not sure what to do.  She knew she could run, but her weary legs, already having been walking or jogging for the past hour, might not carry her very far, except perhaps for adrenaline, but could she count on that? They were getting closer.  She might be able to make it home if she ran, but could she run? Would they chase her? She didn't know.  And the front door always stuck.  She always thought as a private joke that it was the movie mistake, but here was the movie situation happening all around her.

“I noticed you, girl.  I noticed you - you're fine,” said the one she had looked at, a white boy with dirty blond hair.  “I could feel you, baby.  Blocks away, yo hotness called to me.”

The other boys chuckled.  “Thought he was crazy,” said one of them.

“Wanna go ride the tornado?” asked the first boy of her, grinning, and she feared he wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.

They closed in around her, and it seemed the mists were closing in around them, too, heightening the unreal element of the whole situation.  It felt like a dream, like a fantasy, as if it didn't exist.  It wasn't happening, not to her.  Please, not to her!

They were reaching out to her, and it was like there were more than four – dozens of assailants, all reaching out to her - she couldn't face them all.

Then a shadow fell across her eyes, fell across the boys.  Just a shadow that flicked past, nothing more, but when the shadow flicked past the face of one of the thugs, that boy's face snapped to the side as if he had been struck, complete with the meaty sound of impact.

The sound was so far away, delayed, as if she was watching the events from a great distance.  The shadow flickered rapidly over the boys around her, striking them, pushing them aside, scattering them, sending them fleeing into the mists except for one which was battered down to the ground as the others ran, fled, were gone, into the mist, past the concrete corners of buildings, down the street, even their voices disappearing as they fled the shadow that was now also gone.

No, another shadow came from the mists, except this one was man-sized and it wasn't flitting, it was walking, walking out of the mists and resolving into that young Native American man, the one that had been following her, and now she recognized that he had also been the one at the supermarket, the one that had seemed so confused, as if he had recognized her.

He looked at her, eyebrows lifting.  “Huh,” he said in surprise, “I would have thought it was you, not him.” She didn't understand a word he was saying.  The words were English, but they didn't make any sense, put together.

He leaned over the groaning boy, the one she had focused on, the blond-haired boy she imagined had made the ground shake with each step.  The man shook his head and picked up something from next to the boy, looking at it.  “Huh,” he said, again.  “Earth.”

What was he talking about?

“Well, I guess that's that,” he said.  He reached out his hand, and shadows came from the darkness to flit around him like they had flit around the boys, but instead of attacking they settled into his palm, formed into a overly large knife.

“Ah,” said Tracy, finally understanding.  “I'm asleep.” She knew she was asleep - this didn't happen awake - but still she was terrified, terrified of what had almost happened, terrified of a man with a knife of solid shadow.  A thrill, despite the terror, moved deep inside her, and the mists reached out for the coalescing shadows and scattered them, tearing them apart, tossing them away.

The Native American man looked at her in shock.  “You are!” he exclaimed in amazement.

There was a weight on her wrist, a light weight, but unfamiliar, and when she looked it was a charm bracelet, gleaming silver in the light filtering through the mists, with a single round charm hanging from it.  She had no idea where it had come from.

“Let me see that!” he exclaimed, reaching forward for her wrist.  She reacted without thinking, her muscles moving before her brain even realized what was happening.  She grabbed his elbow, grabbed his hand, the hand that had a dagger of shadow in it just moments ago, and gave it a twist and a push, pulling the wrist down, pushing the elbow up, against its joint, twisted awkwardly for the man, centimeters from breaking his elbow, making him dance in pain at the end of her grip.

He was shouting something, something she couldn't quite understand.  She doubted he knew exactly what he was shouting, himself, but it sounded something like an apology, something like a surrender, and she let him go.  He fell back, clutching at his arm, amazed at the pain that had almost receded but not quite.  She knew from experience the arm would be sore, a memory of pain running up and down it and into his brain, a memory of helplessness that would be even more terrible than the pain, the knowledge that she could have done anything to him.

For herself, she had never used it to quite that extent before, used it on someone who hadn't expected it already, and the fear in his eyes, the fear of someone being hit with that when they hadn't been expecting it, that scared her.  It scared her what she could have done.

The small metal … whatever … that the Native American man had taken from the thug shimmered and lifted into the air from where he had dropped it in the disabling pain Tracy had inflicted on him.  It floated in front of her, spinning slowly in the light refracted through the mists.

“Awwww, geeeeze,” groaned the man.  “I just won that!” He sighed and gestured at her.  “Go on, take it.”

Tracy wasn't sure what else to do.  The small metal diamond floated there, glittering, majestic despite its simple shape, as majestic as only those things that defy the laws of physics can be.  It just … hung there in mid-air, as if thumbing its nose at the universe, waiting for her to claim it.

So she did.

Her fingers closed slowly around the smooth, cool metal, and it shifted and grew a little smaller in her palm, shrinking a bit in size until, she noticed, it was the same size as the one on the mystery bracelet about her wrist.

“What do I do with it?” she whispered.  Somewhere in the back of her brain, the screaming heebie jeebies threatened to send her running, shrieking, down the street from this violation of reality, but there was also a childlike sense of wonder that was shouting over the panic.  This is
awesome
!

“You use it.  I guess you clip it onto your … charm bracelet? And keep it for when you need it.” He looked down as Nameless licked lightly at his wrist, looking concernedly up at him, then walked over to twine around Tracy's ankles.

“What do you mean?” she asked, even as her hands followed his suggestion.  The charm was a small diamond marked with a jagged line suggesting a mountain.  She thought of what he had said when he picked it up.  Earth.  The tremors as the boy walked.  What if it wasn't her imagination? It was impossible, of course, but … but then, it had been floating in mid-air, waiting for her to take it.  Impossible was relative just at the moment.  The charm that was already there had the shape of a cat's head, and had two different sigils on it.  One was soft curving wisps, suggesting a cloud … perhaps air … while the other side had a trio of wavy lines that could only mean water.

“It's a token.  It's concentrated magic.  Congratulations, you're in the secret group of people who can't live a normal life because these things popped in on us,” he grumbled bitterly.  “Look, I'll be happy to answer all your questions and fill you in on what's going on, but can we get out of the cold and wet?  This weather's quite impossible.  Is your place nearby?”

Tracy stared at him.  The man was so casual about this, so casual despite having just been in a fight - two fights, actually, one won and one lost…

“No …” she murmured, softly, those panicky jitters suddenly swelling up.

“Ah, rats, well, then-” he began to reply as he picked himself up off the concrete.

“NO!” she cried, louder, and her feet were moving, fleeing, running, trying to escape the weirdness that she knew was already jingling around her wrist.  Trying to escape the violence that had occurred, the violence that could have occurred, fleeing into the mists that closed tightly behind her and followed after her, muffling her footsteps and sealing her from sight.  But most of all, she was running to try to get away from the part that had thrilled in the adventure of it, and wanted to find out more.

She managed to run all the way to her apartment complex.  The mist disappeared as she fiddled with the stuck lock, feeling about ready to scream as she nervously worked with it until finally the door clicked open.  Nameless bounded in through the door quickly, avoiding her feet and leading her up the stairs to her apartment.

She was so glad that she had forgotten to open up the window, because right now she didn't want to deal with cold.  She dialed up the heat and stripped out of her clothes, hurrying into the shower.

The water was warm, soothing, cleansing.  She stayed under the hot water until her fingers started to prune and she worried the steam would set off the fire alarm.  The water sluiced off her, stealing away the nervousness, stealing away the stress, until the adrenaline finally wore off and the exhaustion that took over drove out everything else from her mind.

She stepped out of the shower into the steam-filled bathroom, wrapping one towel around her hair, and using the second, larger towel to dry off the rest of her.  The charm bracelet was lying in a metallic heap on the corner of the counter, glinting teasingly at her.  She glared at it fiercely.