The Earth Dwellers (48 page)

Under the glow of the half-moon, the wrought-iron fence around our front yard is shining, mangled and bent and ripped in several places. The gate at the end of the brick path is missing…no, there it is! Two jagged halves lie on opposite sides of the yard. Whatever did that is strong beyond imagination…

There are shadows on the lawn:

The dark echo of the big rosebush, tenderly cared for by my father, whose large hands are surprisingly as dexterous as that of a woman’s as he cuts and prunes it on the weekends; a wheel barrow, still half full of mulch—my responsibility unfulfilled—casts a black spot amongst the lush, green grass; the shadows are moving. Not the roses or the barrow, but others, darker and lurking, creeping toward the front door.

There’s a bright flash of light and the rosebush bursts into flame, its thorny stems painted with chaotic red and orange strokes. Glowing orbs appear in the midst of one of the moving shadows and they’re—they’re—

—staring at me.

Unnaturally large eyes in the dark. The shadow raises a finger, points at me through the glass…

The wheelbarrow rockets through the air, spinning and sending clumps of brown mulch flying in all directions, heading right toward me…

I dive and duck just as the window explodes inwards, glass shrapnel raining all around, tinkling like crystal wind chimes. There’s a
whoosh!
and a
whoomp!
and a heavy crash as the barrow bashes into my door.

A scream. Laney.

A shout. My father.

A gunshot. Then another.

Covered in shimmering glass shards, I push to my feet, ignoring the spots of blood welling up from my skin. The wheelbarrow is on its side in the hall, having destroyed my bedroom door. I barely spot my sister’s bare foot as she climbs past and toward the staircase.

“Laney, no!” my mother shouts, clambering over the barrow after her. “Rhett, stay here,” she says through a mop of unkempt blond hair.

My entire family is running toward the danger and I’m frozen, glued to the floor, unable to speak, unable to act.

There’s a roar of agony from somewhere downstairs, another gunshot, and then my sister’s scream, a wail of fear and terror. Something snaps inside me and I can move again, charging through the opening, leaping over the barrow, rebounding off the wall, half-stumbling down the hall. I take a sharp left and bound down the steps two at a time.

A cool breeze hits me in the face, unimpeded by the front door, which is wide open and hanging awkwardly by a single hinge. To my left the couch is overturned, splinters of ceramic from a broken vase littering the wooden floorboards around it.

Where’s my family?

I glance into the yard, where the rosebush is nothing more than a glowing pile of ash. The moving, bright-eyed shadows are gone. Are they inside?

“Mom?” I say, surprised that my voice comes out more than a whisper. “Dad? Laney?”

No answer. Silence. Silence. And then…

A scream. Not inside—but somewhere else, down the street perhaps. Another house. Can’t worry about that now. Have to find my family.

I tiptoe into the living room, stubbing my bare toe on something hard. My father’s gun skitters away, clattering across the wood as more screams fill the night. Screams of terror and pain. Neighbors, friends…what’s happening?

I bend down and reach for the gun…

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice says from behind.

My heart skips a beat as I whirl around, instinctively taking a step away toward the tipped-over couch. Glowing orbs stare back at me, too bright to gaze at directly. I shield my eyes with a hand, trying to discern who or what is connected to the blinding light. “Where’s my family?” I say. A black cloak, thin at the top and flared out toward the bottom, sits below the eyes.

“You won’t need them anymore,” the eyes say.

I reverse another step, feel the gun against my heel.

I crouch down, being watched by the animal eyes the entire time. Blindly grab for the gun. It’s warm and soft. No. Doesn’t make sense. For a moment, I risk tearing my gaze from the black-cloaked menace standing before me.

I’m holding a small, dark-skinned hand. Screaming, I drop it, fall to the side, my breath coming in ragged heaves, my heart in my throat, my brain finally catching up to my senses.

“No,” I breathe. And again: “No.”

LaneyohLaneyohLaneyohnonononono!

She watches me with wide, white, unseeing eyes. Her neck is wet and glistening with spilled life.

Tears blooming like roses, I wail at the presence, at my sister’s body, at the empty room, my cries joining the screams and shouts that seem to be everywhere now. “What have you done?” I cry. I’m dreaming—oh please let this be a nightmare. Pinch myself. And again, harder. A groan gurgles from the back of my throat, a cry of rage and hurt.

I jump to my feet and charge the shadow, forgetting my father’s gun because I don’t need it, don’t need anything but my own two fists and unbridled anger.

I blink and it’s gone.

“You can’t fight me,” the voice says, behind me again, standing over my sister’s dead body. It’s a woman’s voice. I only now realize it.

“Get away from her,” I growl through my teeth.

A laugh. How could she be laughing when Laney is broken beneath her? She must be a demon; there’s no other answer. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You and your family”—she points at the couch and it flips over as if it weighs no more than a feather, revealing the still bodies of my adopted parents—“are coming with me.”

They’re not moving, not breathing: dead like Laney. Just like before. Not again.

I clamp my eyes shut as a flash of pain sears through my skull.

I’m five years old, drinking a juice in the backseat. Watching a cartoon on the screen built into the back of the driver’s seat. My first adopted dad curses and I wait for my adopted mother to correct him like she usually does, but then she curses too, and the car is suddenly lurching to a stop and it feels like my body is trying to rip through my seatbelt. My head hits the video screen just as there’s a magnificent

CRASH!!!

and it’s like the car’s an accordion being played for money by one of the men down by the docks. There’s no space in the back and even less in the front and I’m crying and fiddling with the seatbelt—which
WON’T COME OFF—
and my parents aren’t moving.

When I open my eyes, they’re still there. My new family, the first one I’ve felt comfortable with in a long time, gone to a place I can’t follow. And the glowing eyes, too, still staring. I run at the she-demon, and this time she doesn’t vanish, and I hit her so hard, like I’m tackling Brent at football practice, but it’s like crashing headfirst into a stone wall. Her icy hands clamp around my throat and she picks me up like I’m not big for my age and five foot eleven and a hundred and fifty pounds. Like I’m the size of one of my sister’s dolls, which Laney will never play with again.

“Guess we’re doing this the hard way,” she says, and I can see her teeth, which are straight and white and in perfect little rows above and below her lips, not rotted and sharpened into fangs like I expected. She squeezes my throat and I can’t breathe and I’m surprised when I realize:

I don’t care.

Breathing doesn’t matter. The sharp rap of the heartbeat in my chest doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now that they’re gone.

And then something hits me, and at first I think it’s the demon, but we’re both flying backwards, and her grip loosens and she releases my neck. I crack the back of my head against the fireplace before slumping to the floor, very aware of the demon beside me. A flash of metal cuts through the darkness and she disappears, like before.

Three faces appear, each identical and framed by well-trimmed gray hair and webs of wrinkles. I shake my head and three faces become one.

“Mr. Hanover?” I say, glancing at the long sword he’s carrying in his left hand. Hastily, he shoves it into a loop on his belt.

“She’s gone,” he says, bending over and picking up my body as easily as the demon did.

“So are they,” I say through the tears and the wave of dizziness that assaults me, and he nods with sad eyes.

“The witching hour has begun,” he says, just before my vision fades and I lose consciousness.

Chapter Two

Two years later

I
stop, drop and roll. It’s what every kid learns to do in school when the fireman comes in and talks to your class in second grade. Except that’s for fire.

And this isn’t exactly fire.

Blue lightning streaks over me, crackling into a moose head on the wall and jarring it loose. Singed and smoking, the giant, antlered hunter’s trophy swings back and forth and then falls.

I reach out to catch it, but another jagged arc of lightning blasts it out of the air. It erupts into flame, bouncing off the wall and catching a couch on fire. The couch I was sitting on not two minutes ago, trying to enjoy a rare chance to watch a DVD I pillaged months ago from a mostly-standing rental store.

My brain is already processing the information at hand, transferring the knowledge to my hands and feet, kicking them into gear before I can fully comprehend what I’m dealing with.

Keep moving. That’s a rule. To stop is to die.

I roll onto my back and snap my legs forward, regaining my feet in one swift motion. My hands are grabbing at the magicked up throwing stars in my belt, which are laced with some kind of potion that cost me about ten cases of instant noodles that I scavenged from a burned out minimart on a highway in Arizona. The seller, an odd character named Tillman Huckle, drives a hard bargain.

The witch is moving, too, her long, unnaturally red hair flashing as she runs with graceful strides that don’t seem to touch the floorboards of the hunter’s lodge that’s been the closest thing to a home I’ve had since I left San Francisco and began my trek to the east coast. Raising a pale-white hand, she shoots another jagged, blue lightning bolt in my direction. I duck hard to the left and flick my wrist, the throwing star spinning away like a Nolan Ryan fastball, right into the path of the—

She abruptly changes direction and the sharp, metal star misses her, imbedding itself in the log cabin wall.

I’m about to chuck another one when she stops. Her mouth curls into a red-lipped smile, her green eyes seeming to cut almost through me. Strangely, my heart begins to race. I’ve fought dozens of enemies since leaving the west coast and each time have managed to stay as cool as fresh lemonade on a hot summer’s day, but now…

I feel unnerved.

She’s wearing a red, lacey dress that’s more like lingerie. A gown that’s meant to attract attention, ultra sexy. An odd thing for a witch to wear. She winks at me and my heart skips a beat. It never does that.

Ultra sexy just doesn't do it for me. Maybe I'm going against nature or a freak or something, but whenever I'd catch a touchdown pass and turn to the crowd, my eyes always skipped right past the short-skirt-wearing cheerleaders to Blythe, who would usually look up from whatever book she was reading to smile at me, her finger keeping her place. And I was never angry that she didn't see me catch the ball or score or anything, because, you know what? If the roles were reversed I'd have my nose in a book too, or be writing, or something other than watching a meaningless game. It was enough to know that she came to be there for me. The book nerd kind of girl is more my type, not the diva in front of me—and yet…

I can’t take my eyes off her.

She frowns, raises her hand, and I dive behind a table, pulling it down to create a bunker of sorts. The drapes over the window catch on fire as thousands of volts of electricity slam into them.

Leaping up, I snap off another throwing star. At the last second, I have the urge not to throw it, even to chase after it once it leaves my grip, but I bite back the desire and watch as the witch, now wide-eyed with surprise, tries to duck out of the way. She’s too slow and the star slices into her stomach, opening up a ragged gash.

There’s one thing I learned early on in my training: Witches bleed just like the rest of us.

Thick, red blood bubbles from the wound. Her eyes narrow for a moment, as if daring me to throw another, and then she rushes across the large room and through the lodge entrance, which is now missing its door.

I’m left speechless and wondering why I’m squeezing the third throwing star so hard that it’s cutting into my flesh.

Chapter Three

M
y name is Rhett Carter and I’m not a witch. Nor a warlock, or a warl as those of us in the business like to call them either. Not even a wizard, or a wiz. I’m just a seventeen-year-old kid—or at least I was before the world ended and you either had to become a man or die. I chose to become a man.

No, more than a man—a witch hunter. The few, the proud—yeah, we stole that from the Marines, but they’re not exactly around to complain.