The Boys Are Back in Town (39 page)

All save one.

As they swarmed past him, the man Will James would one day become stood defiantly staring at Dori. He remained motionless as the last of the people exited the building, and Will realized immediately what his older self had been doing. He'd been helping with the evacuation, shielding their exodus, making sure Dori didn't try to attack them or prevent them from leaving.
Watching the floor show,
Will thought.
I don't think so. Getting everyone out of the way, more like.

Future Will started across the gym toward the small group of people frozen in place around the burning corpse of a kid none of them had known very well. Will found himself hoping his older self had a plan, because for his part, he figured they were all going to die.

H
ANDS UP
as if in surrender, Will walked toward the center of the gym, where Dori had hold of Bonnie and where the remains of Trey Morel still smoldered. Ashleigh and Eric were perhaps a dozen feet from her. Young Brian stood shakily, still drained from the spell he'd cast. On the floor, Young Will sat up with one hand clamped to his shoulder.

It isn't broken,
he remembered.
Just dislocated.
He might have tried to heal it, but he didn't dare waste the energy. Regret and guilt weighed upon him.
Healing spells. If I'd just gone to Dori after it happened . . . even if I wasn't strong enough to heal her, if I'd just tried, it might have prevented all of this.
But to do that, he and Brian would have had to reveal to Dori what they had done, and neither of them had been prepared to do that.

Will swore under his breath. More than ever, he wished the strings of new memories that were formed every time he altered his own past would show more, would reveal the outcome of his present circumstances. But the scene playing itself out there in the gym was not over yet. Its outcome was still lost in the mists of fate.

“Well, well,” Dori mused, “this is a surprise. You've got balls, I'll give you that. I figured you ran away like Brian.”

As he moved closer Will had a better view of Dori. She was still a young woman, only twenty-seven, but hate had twisted her. Her mouth was pinched with sourness and there was poison in her eyes. Around her, the others remained unmoving, unwilling to break the circuit that had suddenly been established between the two of them.

“You used Nick.”

“He liked it,” Dori mused.

“And it was you who killed that kid Kyle's family, jumping back to our time.”

She gave a small pout. “The little puke who was helping you? He didn't die? Shit. All that popping back and forth for nothing. Well, I can always catch up with him later.”

For a long moment Will could only stare at her. There was no way to argue with the venom in her veins. He shook his head.

“I'm sorry,” he said, and his remorse was genuine. “What we did, Brian and me . . . it was stupid and cruel. I can't even imagine what it felt like, the things that happened to you that night. I'm sure it won't matter to you that we had no idea how . . . effective the spell would be, but—”

“Curse,” Dori snarled, her chest rising and falling as hate boiled up within her. “You know better, Will. ‘Spell' is such a coward's word for what you did. You cursed me!”

When he had come up abreast of his younger self, in line with the others who formed an odd half-circle around the trio in the middle—Dori, Bonnie, burning Trey—he stopped.

“We didn't know—” Young Will began.

Young Brian interrupted him. “For Christ's sake, Dori, yes, all right? We put a fucking curse on you! We're teenage boys. We were screwing around and you were the obvious target. You hated me! Even with all the bullshit and venom you spewed I still never really hated you, but when we had to pick someone to try it out on, you were my first choice. I wanted to tell you I was sorry a hundred times, but I couldn't, 'cause that would mean talking about the magic, and I figured you wouldn't believe me anyway. And you know what? I'll tell you something. After the first couple of months, I stopped wanting to apologize. You were still as nasty to me as you'd always been. So you know what? Fuck you!”

A small breath escaped Will's lips. He stepped toward Brian, one hand out. “Hang on, Brian. Look, none of that is the point.”

Dori had been glaring at her brother. Now a giddy, wild laugh spilled from her and she glanced over at Will. “It isn't? Sounds pretty much to the point where I'm concerned. But no, Will, you've grown up all full of wisdom. Why don't you tell me what the point is?”

Brows knitted in consternation, heart secretly hammering despite his exterior calm, he gestured around the gym. “This. This is the point. Yes, we fucked you over. You were embarrassed and inconvenienced. Humiliated, fine. You lost your boyfriend, who was a prick anyway, by the way. On that count we did you a favor. The truth is, if you hadn't been hit by that car, we probably would have thought the whole thing was a scream. And even if people whispered about you behind your back, you would've gotten over it. But the pain. The hospital. Your legs? We never meant for any of that to happen, Dori.

“But all of this . . . what you've done? It isn't the same, don't you see that? Are you so completely insane that you don't see what you've done?” His voice faltered, and when he spoke again there was anguish in it. God, he missed Lebo. And now the stink of burnt human flesh was in his nostrils. “You've taken lives. You've ruined the hearts of girls who never did anything to you. And this was all for what? To get back at me and Brian?”

Dori smiled, and for the first time he thought he saw some of the girl he knew in there. But whatever remained of her was shattered and jagged like broken glass. “You, mostly. I always hated Brian. He was a fucking weasel. I expected it from him. It was so much worse knowing you were in on it, Will. I always thought you were a good guy. Until you and my brother took my life away. Made me a laughingstock and a cripple.”

He shook his head in horror. “Do you even hear yourself? Look what you've done!”

“I know.” With a beatific smile she laid her head back and opened her arms as if to welcome a lover. The lights flashing around the room dimmed and the shadows flowed toward her, collecting around her, clinging to the contours of her body, even masking her face, though the way it formed on her hair it was as though the darkness had enwrapped each strand.

Released from Dori's grip, Bonnie fell sprawling on the floor, a grateful sob escaping her lips. With one hand she wiped blood from her face, and she got up on her knees, trying to scramble away.

With a flick of her wrist, Dori summoned a cloud of shadow from the air. It knocked Bonnie over, pulled her back, thrust itself at her mouth and nose, and began to gag and suffocate her. Bonnie tried to scream, but the darkness choked her. Her eyes were wide; a veil of shadow moved over her retinas, blacking them out completely. She spasmed and bucked against the parquet floor.

“Dori, no!” Young Brian snapped.

Will's younger self ran to Dori, tried to pull at the darkness, but it slipped through his fingers like mercury. Ashleigh screamed as Eric pulled away from her and ran at Dori.

“Eric, no!”

Cloaked in shadows, music and color passing through her as though she were not there at all, Dori turned to face Eric as he ran at her, shouting obscenities. Will wanted to grab him, pull him back, but he knew it was too late. She raised both hands, middle and ring fingers folded back, and as she muttered something she made a motion as though she were pushing down upon the air.

With a double whip crack that echoed across the gym, both of Eric's legs broke and he crumbled to the ground, crying out in pain and shock. Dori wasn't done. She thrust her tongue out and gave a serpentine hiss. The darkness misted like black spit and floated across to touch Eric's hands. Instantly he began to shout in alarm. His eyes widened in horror as he raised his hands and turned them on himself. Formed into claws, his fingers began to tear into his own face.

The witch scowled at Will. “Makes your little pussy magic act look like card tricks, doesn't it? Now, let's see, what fun have I reserved for Ashleigh?”

“Will!” Young Brian shouted, and both the younger and the older turned to glance at him. “There's no hope for her. Do something!”

Bonnie was dying. Eric was killing himself. Ashleigh was next. Brian was right. This thing his sister had become was beyond redemption. They had no other choice. Eyes locked on Dori's, Will uttered two words.

“Kill her.”

W
HEN THEY HAD PLANNED
this, Brian had never imagined that the monster those words would be spoken about would be his sister. Back in their time, in the future, he had not seen her for more than three years. Yet as he lurked in the shadows and watched, listening to every word, he felt only the smallest temptation to reveal himself, to abandon the plan. They had known that whoever was behind this was far more adept at magic than any of them, that none of the little spells and hexes they had learned would be strong enough to destroy the magician behind the terror of the past week. That made it all the more important for them not to show all of their cards before they were ready.

The element of surprise would work only once.

From the place where he lurked, so close to the ceiling of that cavernous room, he could have reached out to touch the rafters. Of the seventeen spells he had mastered in the time when he had played with magic, levitation had always been his favorite. Of all of them, it was the one he continued to be drawn to over the years. He had sworn off other magics as too dangerous, and somehow unclean. But levitation still felt as wondrous as he had once naïvely believed that all magic would be.

Above the lights, amidst the echoes of the pulsing music whose dancers had all fled in terror, Brian Schnell walked on air.

It was all he could do as he watched the proceedings below him not to cry out. Bonnie was suffocating. Eric's legs breaking made a report like a shotgun blast. The smoke from Trey's charred remains gathered amongst the rafters, and he had to breathe through his mouth. By the time Will gave the word, Brian was ready.

His eyelids fluttered with the concentration required, but he turned himself upside down, controlling his levitation with the tiniest motions of his hands. Then came the most difficult part: wielding two bits of magic at once. With a whispered summoning, white fire engulfed his fists, mystical flame that would tear through whatever defenses Dori erected. Of the four of them—himself and Will, then and now—the elder Brian had the most knowledge of magic.

It was up to him.

Dori glanced at Will when he spoke those words, then she looked at the others—at their younger selves, at twitching Bonnie who was gagging on shadow, at Ashleigh as she tried to keep Eric from ripping his face off—and she shook her head in amusement. She raised her hands, fingers contorted to cast a spell, and pointed toward Will.

Brian plummeted toward her, air whipping past his face, his hands outthrust beneath him. Memories flashed through him, images of Dori as a girl, his baby sister on her tricycle, eating ice cream on the Fourth of July, wearing makeup the first time. Yet they clashed in his head with other moments, with all the bitterness and cruelty, with Mike Lebo's broken, bloody corpse in the road, with the pale, haunted, fallen angel that Tess had seemed at the lakeside, her body and soul violated at Dori's whim.

In spite of himself, Brian wept.

His hands burned.

He gritted his teeth as he whipped down toward her, praying he could reinstate the levitation spell at the right moment, trying not to think about what he was about to do. The faces of his parents kept intruding upon his mind, and his tears seemed to burn him far more than the white fire that roared around his fists.

Kill her,
Will had said. And so he would.

He would never know what gave him away.

Dori tilted her head back and looked up at him. Her mouth opened and he thought she was going to scream her rage. But instead of words, flame gouted from her throat in a bellow of infernal heat that engulfed him completely. Brian smelled his hair burning, felt the fire searing his face and arms, his skin peeling, his tears nothing more than steam.

He grasped at the air, twisting his body around as though he might somehow arrest his fall. Then he struck the floor, his spine shattering on impact.

W
ILL
'
S HEART WAS NUMB.
There was no room to grieve for Brian. Not when he was absolutely certain they were all about to die.

Dori stared down at her brother's burning, broken body, flames leaping from Brian's clothes and hair even as the last embers on Trey's body flickered and were snuffed out. The witch seemed mesmerized by Brian, as though she had forgotten the rest of them completely.

Young Brian fell to his knees, staring vacantly at the fire that was consuming the body . . . the man he would one day become. “I'm dead,” he said, voice flat and dull. “I'm dead.”

The shadow form that had been thrusting itself into Bonnie's throat dissipated and she gasped and sucked greedily at the air, face twisted into a mask of despair. The blood was drying on her cheeks, but fresh tears streaked her face.

Just a few feet from her, Eric at last regained control of his hands. His fingers were covered in his own blood and his face was unrecognizable, furrows torn in the flesh. Will could see bone. His broken legs were still twisted underneath him, and Ashleigh knelt beside him, shushing him, her hands fluttering about as though she wanted to touch him but was afraid to do so. A soft keening noise came from Eric's throat.

With Dori still stunned, all of her focus on Brian's burning body, Young Will glanced over at his older counterpart. Will nodded to him and the kid went to Ashleigh's side. He reached out and touched Eric's forehead with his left hand, and Bonnie's with his right.

“Sleep,” the kid said.

Mercifully, they did.

The elder Will took a few steps closer to Dori, forcing himself not to look at Brian's corpse. “Ashleigh,” he said, without looking at her. “Get Bonnie out of here. Will, snap Little Bri out of it and get him to help you carry Eric. Go. Leave.”