The Wizard Returns: Book Three of the Wizard Born Series (9 page)

A gargantuan animal lumbered away from him along the trail. It had the massive upper body of an oversized gorilla and walked on all fours like one, but its hind legs were longer. It had brownish-gray, leathery skin, and even at a distance he could see that its huge hands ended in long, lethal-looking claws. Its head was shorter and broader than a gorilla’s, and had ears that looked like short horns. It slowed for a moment and sniffed the air, then stopped and scanned the skies as if it somehow knew Jamie was near, even though he was invisible. That’s when Jamie noticed its glowing eyes.

They’re red!
The monster opened its wide mouth, revealing wicked, dagger-shaped teeth, and it snarled, then raised both arms in the air and roared. Jamie flinched behind his shield.
I hope it can’t see me
. Then the beast dropped back on all fours and loped away.

That was no bear
, Jamie knew.
That’s a demon!

Jamie waited until they were safely back in his father’s truck before telling them what he saw.

“A demon!” Carl said, glancing over his shoulder at Jamie in the back seat. “That can’t be.”

“It’s a demon, Dad. You know any other animal that looks like a cross between a giant gorilla and a grizzly bear, has red glowing eyes, and skin like a dinosaur?”

“There’s got to be another explanation.”

“Sounds like a demon to me,” John Paul said. “Red eyes...whoa.” He turned to look at Jamie. “Why didn’t you just blast it?”

“Demons are immune to magic.” He wrinkled his brow and stared at his knees while he considered the situation. “I’ll have to sort through Eddan’s memories, but I’m pretty sure that’s right. And Eddan was scared of them. I definitely remember that.”

“But how did it get here?” Carl asked. “Did it climb up from Hell or something?”

“Probably slipped through a naturally-occurring doorway. Could be from another world, or even another universe. Doorways like that are rare, but they do happen occasionally. Might explain why I felt that magic twinge a couple weeks ago at the basketball game.”

“What?” John Paul said.

“I can feel it when someone does magic. Not witches’ magic, for the most part, but wizards’.”

“That thing’s a wizard?”

“No, but demons have power. That’s what makes them doubly dangerous.”

“Is it a threat to the park rangers?”

“Not at the moment, because it was heading the other way at a good clip. But you might want to suggest to Hank that they close off that section of the trail for a while.”

“What am I going to tell him when he asks why?”

“I don’t know. We definitely can’t tell anybody outside of our family about this.”

“What are we going to do about the demon?”

“I don’t know that either, Dad.” He scratched his scalp and stared out the window as they drove out of the park. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Why don’t you come fishing with us?” John Paul said. “Fishing always helps me think.”

“I got something I gotta do with Rollie and Bryce. I’ll make a doorway for you, though.”

Carl steered the truck onto the main road. “John Paul, I want you to stay for dinner. We need to talk about this.”

“I’ll bring Fred.” Jamie said. “She may be able to help.”

* * *

Jamie drove his old blue Buick past the Hendersonville city limit sign while he finished telling Rollie and Bryce about what he’d seen earlier that day.

“A real demon?” Rollie widened his eyes. “You mean, like from Hell?”

“I don’t know where it’s from,” Jamie said, “but it slipped through an opening from somewhere and now it’s killing hikers on the Appalachian Trail.”

“Man,” Bryce said from the back seat. “I gotta start hanging out with a different group of friends. Too much weird stuff happening with you guys.”

Jamie looked in the rearview mirror at Bryce. “I can turn around right now and take you home if you want.”

“Heck no. Not until we do this experiment with Rollie. I want to see how fast he can go. What’s the men’s world record for the mile run?”

“Three-forty-three. I think Rollie will smash that.”

Rollie crossed his arms and frowned. “I still think this is silly.”

“Like I told Fred when we first figured out that she was a witch,” Jamie said. “You need to know the limits of your power.”

Rollie slapped the seat beside him. “I don’t have no power!” Then he cleared his throat and said in a lower voice, “I mean, I don’t have
any
power.”

“It’s okay, Rollie. Gramma’s not here to correct your grammar.” Jamie turned right at a fork in the road and said, “But you definitely have power, and we need to see how much.”

“Do you really think Rollie can break the speed of sound?” Bryce said. “Will we hear a sonic boom?”

“Not if my theory is correct. Rollie isn’t actually moving through the air all that fast, so there shouldn’t be a sonic boom. He’s not moving through space quickly, he’s moving space itself.”

Rollie gave Jamie a sideways look. “Just when I think you’re getting less geeky, you go and say stuff like that.”

“How far out are we going?” Bryce said. “This road looks deserted enough, and it’s pretty straight.”

“This is good.” Jamie slowed and pulled to the side before stopping. “You guys get out here. Bryce, you got your phone?” Bryce held it up for Jamie to see and he and Rollie stepped out of the car.

“Give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll call you when I’m ready,” Jamie said, then he checked his odometer and drove on. At exactly one mile, he pulled over onto the shoulder, parked, and got out. He slipped his phone from his back pocket, called Bryce, and held it to his ear with his shoulder. “Okay, I’m good.” Jamie set his watch to stopwatch mode and waited for Bryce’s reply.

“Hang on,” he heard Bryce say. There was a short pause, and Jamie heard Bryce and Rollie talking. Then Bryce put the phone back to his mouth and said, “Ready? Go!”

Jamie pressed the start button on his stopwatch and looked down the narrow, two-lane road. Scrubby oaks, just beginning to put out new leaves, lined both sides as far as Jamie could see. Off in the distance, he saw a tiny blur, fast approaching. It grew larger with each second, and Jamie glanced at the time.
Twenty seconds
. From straight on, Jamie couldn’t see the individual phases of Rollie’s travel, he only saw only one continuous blur. At about the three-quarter mark, Jamie glanced at the time again.
Forty-seven seconds. Amazing
.

Jamie stopped his watch the instant Rollie zipped by, and he read it aloud when Rollie slowed. “Sixty-nine seconds. A new world record in the Mile Run.” He repeated it over the phone to Bryce and Bryce whooped.

“Wow,” Rollie said with an exaggerated nod. “Am I good or what?”

“Do you think you can go any faster?”

“Never know ’til you try, right?”

Jamie put his phone near his mouth again. “Bryce, he’s coming your way. Get your watch ready.”

Rollie took off running, quickly vanishing in the distance, and soon Bryce yelled through the phone, “Forty-one point six. That’s incredible!”

Jamie could almost hear Rollie’s grin from a mile away.

“He wants to try it one more time,” Bryce said. “He’s catching his breath. Get ready, Jamie.”

“Got it.” Jamie reset his watch to all zeros and waited for Bryce’s signal. A few seconds later, he heard him yell “Go!” and Jamie pressed start and looked down the road.

He picked out Rollie’s streaking form much sooner than before, and within moments, Rollie zipped past him.

“Thirty-point-one seconds!” Jamie read the time aloud. “Did you hear that, Bryce? Thirty-point-one.”

Jamie slapped hands with Rollie and heard Bryce cheering through the phone, “Rol-lie, Rol-lie, Rol-lie!”

“Incredible, dude,” Jamie said. “Just incredible. That’s almost a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Can you believe that?”

Rollie smiled and looked down at the asphalt for a moment, nodding his head gently. “Too bad I can’t tell my dad, huh?”

“You can’t tell
anybody
. But still, that was impressive. Think you can go one more time.”

“That’s enough for today. Let’s head back.”

* * *

Jamie looked up and smiled when Fred squeezed his shoulder and sat next to him at the big table in Jamie’s dining room. Jamie’s parents sat at either end, and John Paul was on the other side from Jamie, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “That was some fine cookin’, Rachel,” he said in his Louisiana accent. “Mighty fine. I love roast pork.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. Is it hard to cook for yourself, since you’re a bachelor?”

“I’m the Master of the Microwave,” he said proudly, as if it were a sought-after title that deserved a medal or a plaque.

“You were married, weren’t you? What happened with that?”

“My ex-wife couldn’t put up with my job. She
thought
she could handle it, but...you know. Late nights, sometimes. Long hours. Scumbags shooting at you.”

Rachel looked across the table at Carl. “We know all about that.”

Carl shrugged innocently and an awkward silence filled the room.

Jamie felt Fred take his hand under the table, and when he glanced at her, she was fighting back a smile. He thought
, This is a good time to change the subject
. “So...what do you think about Rollie running a thirty-second mile? Pretty awesome, huh?”

“That’s amazing,” Carl said. “I guess there’s no doubt that he has magic, now.”

“No, there’s not, and I’m sure that he could do a few simple spells if he wanted to. But when I offered to teach him some, he got mad, like I was asking him to cut off his arm or something.”

“Rollie’s in a tough spot, Jamie. His father won’t be able to accept the magic like we have.”

“It’s too bad,” John Paul said. “We could use Rollie’s help dealing with this demon.”

Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know what difference it would make. The demon is immune to magic.”

“What if we just shot it with a high-powered rifle? I got a Remington .308 that’ll stop a rhino.”

“The bullets would bounce right off, I think.”

“What if you dropped a big boulder on it? You can do that, can’t you, with your magic?”

“I could, but it’d probably just make him mad.”

“So what do we do?”

Jamie leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms loosely. “I don’t know. I’m going to sort through my cache of Eddan’s memories, but I don’t know what good it will do. In the meantime, we can look through the spell books Fred got from Rita and Cassandra’s house. They might have something.”

Fred gave her head a tight shake. “I’ve been through three of them so far, but I haven’t seen anything about demons. Just potions and hexes and stuff.”

“We still should go through them. There’re all we have right now.”

“I could use some help. There are a lot of them.”

Jamie rubbed his chin and stared at his plate for a moment. “I checked some websites on my laptop earlier tonight, but all I found was the Biblical stuff and the weirdo, dumb stuff that you’d expect.”

“Right next to the zombie-vampire-werewolf-ghost stuff, I bet,” Carl said with a cynical half-smile.

“Yeah, pretty much. I’m not holding out much hope for finding anything on the Internet, but....” He shrugged.

“We gotta check anyway,” John Paul said and let out a short laugh. “You know, we never covered this in the police academy.”

“Good thing,” Carl said. “All the recruits would quit.” Carl looked at John Paul, and his expression turned serious. “I really appreciate you helping us out with this problem. You’re the only other trained lawman who knows about the magic and the demon. I can’t tell anybody else about it, none of the rangers or other cops.”

“I’m glad to help, Carl, and maybe some of my experience dealing with Rita and Cassandra will pay off. I don’t know how, though.” John Paul counted on his fingers. “So what’s that give us? A full-fledged wizard, a reluctant wizard, a witch, and two cops? Think that’ll be enough against a demon?”

“I hope so,” Jamie said, but deep down inside he doubted it.

Chapter 9

After returning from the grocery store on Sunday afternoon, Rachel paused before closing the garage door. She heard angry shouts coming from Rollie’s house across the street.
That sounds like Garrett. I’ve never heard him do that before
. She stared at the two-story brick residence, the home of Jamie’s best friend for the last thirteen years, an anxious feeling rising in the pit of her stomach. She shook her head and went inside with her groceries.

Twenty minutes later there was a knock on the front door. “Can somebody get that?” she called, her hands covered with flour. “Jamie? Carl?”
Oh, darn it
. She washed up quickly, snatched a couple of paper towels and dried her hands on the way down the hall.

She opened the door to find Rollie with a distraught look on his face.

“Mrs. Sikes?” His voice was strained.

“Rollie? What’s wrong?”

“My dad...he found out....”

“About the magic?” He nodded wordlessly, and she held the door wide for him. “Come in, Rollie.” She put her arm around his shoulders and walked him into the family room. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

Rollie closed his eyes and swayed slightly as he collected himself. “I called Jamie a while ago, to...to ask him if he’d had any luck thinking of a way to block my magic. I thought it was a good time ’cause my mom was shopping and my dad was supposed to be playing basketball.” He took a couple of shallow breaths. “I even took the phone out on the patio to be on the safe side. But my dad was home, trying to taking a nap...his bedroom window was open.”

His eyes began to glisten and his voice cracked slightly. “He heard everything, Mrs. Sikes,
everything
. We...we had a big fight and he kicked me out of the house.”

“Oh, Rollie.” Rachel took him in her arms and patted his back. “I’ll send Carl over there when he gets home. He’ll talk some sense into your dad.”

“I don’t think he can,” Rollie said miserably.

“Well, you’re welcome to stay here ’till your dad calms down. Do you want to spend the night?”