The old guy wouldn’t let go of me, clinging and weeping like a child. It seemed that the group effort had cured his cataracts and probably a host of other ailments that had been plaguing him. He was strong and energetic after being healed, and I was weak and very uncomfortable being hugged by a naked man who stunk of burnt bacon. His name was Delas Nobles, and he pledged his life to me in gratitude.

“What’s your name, Brother?” The Reverend McDanial asked as I staggered to my feet. He was trembling like a puppy, over-excited and ready to piss on the floor.

“Emmett Carter,” I replied, then continued with the information that these folks seemed to require for establishing hierarchy in rural clans. “My maternal grandmother was Velma Smith nee May, my father was John Aaron Carter.” Those were the big names people would know. My grandmother well known because she was a switchboard operator at the telephone company before it went electronic, and she was very active in the community before her death. My father was known for his supervisory position at the Plainview paper mill before his retirement. What he wasn’t known for was the nearly two dozen patents that the company bought from him over the years.

Reverend McDanial nodded. “I knew your grandmother, she was friends with mine. I think most of the town turned out for her funeral.”

“Yup,” I nodded, squeezing past the Reverend as I headed back to the horses.

“God has given you with a powerful gift, Brother Carter,” he continued, following me through the narrow hallway. “You need to stay and help these people…”

“I need to get my daughter, Reverend,” I said, entering the church proper. People had gathered inside as the news of the so-called miracle had spread, filling the aisles and spilling in between the pews. “And that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll be back in a week.”

“But we could use…”

I pushed my auric arms out, gently pushing the crowd away from the centre of the aisle like Moses parting the Red Sea. Surprised squawks filled the chapel as people were nudged aside.

I turned to the man, looking at him for the first time. He was my age, perhaps. Maybe a bit younger. His hair was dark, not yet grey but thinning up top. Brown eyes, clean shaven face, some Spanish ancestry evident in the bone structure of his face and skin tone, blue spark near his heart. I didn’t know him from Jack, which wasn’t surprising. I had moved back to the area less than a decade ago for an early retirement.

“No buts, Reverend,” I said firmly. “Family comes first. Organise these people, scavenge what you can, prepare for winter. Old man Pigott should be passing through shortly, give him what aid you can.”

Emotions from the people surrounding me became overwhelming, disorienting. Feeling drunk, I pushed my way out of the crowd and towards the front door, escaping the prayers and clinging hands that found their way over and around my invisible tentacles. Emerging into into the light, the people crowded around while the good reverend began a spirited oration.

Sparky and Miguel were gone. My heart sank into my boots as I looked around for them. All my gear was on those horses, I needed them to get to Astrid and bring her back home. Maybe someone took them to be watered? Or led them away from where the food was being served? I scanned the crowd of people looking for the man I had told to watch the horses, bitterly expecting him to be the thief.

He had moved to a different table, eating and laughing with two companions. I shoved my way roughly out of the crowd.

“Where’s my horses?” I asked, walking over to where they sat.

“I ain’t your dog,” he growled. “Last time I seen those horses they were heading towards Plainview.”

Rage boiled inside me. I took a deep breath, then another, pushing down the anger. Just push it down. Be cool. Just. Be. Cool.

Fuck this shit. I’m tired. I just wallowed in the misery of a dozen other people. Fuck this bastard.

Rage exploded from me, two psychic tentacles lifted my target and tossed him off the bench and sent him tumbling into the gravel a dozen yards away. The joyous noise of the people turned to shrieks of dismay as I stomped across the parking lot towards the target of my anger. He rolled over and tried to scuttle away like a crab, yelling incoherently. His companions jumped from their seats and a tentacle lashed out, catching them in the knees and sending them to the ground.

*Any person capable of angering you becomes your master. ~ Epictetus *

Fuck you, Epictetus. I’ve been to anger management classes. He didn’t make me angry, I’m angry at myself for being stupid. I just want to hurt him. I want him to be just as scared and hurt as I am right now.

I thrust a tentacle through the urine coloured aura surrounding him, pushing, boring, drilling through the dense field and aiming for the spark inside. I could feel him resisting as I forced my way through, clutching at the invisible spear worming its way in, fighting against my efforts. The tentacle sank into his body and latched onto the spark in his chest. I grabbed it and squeezed, shattering it into pieces while he clutched at his chest screaming like an animal, convulsing in the gravel. [1] I watched him, still angry, unsatisfied, my monkey brain painting pictures of me being burned at the stake.

If I wasn’t so angry, I would have laughed at the vision. I could wipe these people out and eat them for brunch.

I looked over at the crowd of people, then up at the baleful eye of Methuselah’s star overhead, and shoved the two fools behind me to the ground again, holding them there with invisible hands. The reverend stared at me with wide eyes, shock and betrayal written on his face. His angel had turned into a demon.

“You had one damned job!” I yelled at the bastard lying at my feet, clenching my fists, wanting to flay him alive and nail his hide to a tree as a monument to my stupidity. “Watch my horses. That’s all I asked!”

Melodrama has always been my forte. That, and lying.

Turning from the crowd, I pumped aura through my legs and bolted down the highway, covering ground with the wobbly leaps and bounds of my psychic seven league boots.

Regret was already clouding my thoughts. I had taken my anger out on an asshole, but that asshole didn’t owe me anything. This was ultimately my fault, not his.

It was five miles to the city limits and I covered it in ten minutes, hopping like a frog on my auric legs. The two horse thieves had slowed to an easy canter, believing they had gotten away clean. I was silent as death as I came up behind them. Running between the two horses, I reached out with psychic tentacles and wrapped them around the necks of the thieves. Grunting, I slammed to a stop and yanked as hard as I could. They jerked from the saddles and hit the ground like sacks of dirt. I tightened the tentacles and panted with the effort as they turned blue and struggled for air. After a minute they stopped kicking. I released the tentacles from their necks three minutes later, when silvery motes began to leak from their bodies.

I’d never drained a human before, not counting the vague memory of Robert, and hesitated at the feast before me. All the anger I’d felt, all the rage and justification had flowed away and left me with a choice: Do I eat humans?

Miguel chuffed behind me, shaking his head while Sparky watched me agonise in silence. I felt like they were judging me. Dropping to one knee, I placed my hands over the first thief, averting my gaze from his purple face and bulging eyes. The silvery motes swarmed around my hand and slid in easily; a cool beer on a hot summer day. I drank everything, gulping it down, surprised when the body crumbled to pale dust. A small clear stone resembling a diamond fell to the asphalt when I shook out his shirt. I drained the second corpse and collected another clear stone.

Power filled me, a hundred cups of Irish coffee leaving me drunk and jittery with a nagging headache between my eyes. I inspected the horses and judging they were no worse for wear, mounted Sparky. Plainview creek was a mile ahead, I could water them there and enjoy a few minutes out of the blistering sun. As we trotted along the side of the road, I couldn’t help but focus on the pain between my eyes. I tried to force it away with sheer willpower but the only thing that seemed to help was cycling my aura, swirling it around my body like I did back in the church. Every time I relaxed my concentration the pain would start up again, like someone hammering a nail into my forehead.

The little petrol station at the corner of highway 21 and Hilltop road was a burned mess, but thankfully the old fuel pumps didn’t catch fire. Another church was across the road from it, but this one wasn’t as lucky as Plainview Pentecostal; it had burned to the ground leaving behind a brick shell. Houses were more becoming more frequent now. A small subdivision was behind the church and I didn’t see a single building standing. More buzzards fought over something in front of the church, ignoring us as we passed by. I bet it’s good to be a buzzard these days.

I led the horses down the narrow trail beside the concrete bridge that crossed Coburn creek, my head pounding in time with my heart. I wanted nothing more than to wrap a cool towel around it and close my eyes for a few minutes. Someone had set up camp under the bridge recently, piles of blankets were strewn around the concrete embankment under the bridge, along with some ice chests and totes and a collection of other miscellaneous items, some of which appeared to be nothing more than garbage people had dumped or left behind. The remains of a campfire near the creek were still fresh, warm to the touch.

Pulling a towel from the saddlebags, I soaked it in the creek then wrapped it around my head. The cool, wet cloth eased the pounding between my eyes, which was threatening to turn into a full blown migraine. I sat on the embankment, then lay back to rest a minute. The coolness of the concrete under me soothed my feverish body. A few minutes later I drifted out of my body and hovered over it.

The first thing I noticed was that I didn’t have a spark in my chest like everyone else I’d encountered so far. Maybe I had seen it before, but I hadn’t really been paying attention. I know I’d seen it before, but it just didn’t register. My spark was in my forehead, not my heart, and it flashing like a light house, growing brighter and dimmer as my heart beat.

Millions of silvery motes surrounded me, trapped under my aura, trying to push through my skin and into my bloodstream so they could join the thousands in the cloud circling my spark. Each throb of my heart sucked in hundreds, where they turned into liquid gold flowing through my body. Thinking back to the hazy memories of the lightning strike, I reached out an aetherial hand and collected the motes, pulling them into my astral body then pushed the energy through the silver cord that attached me to my body. The spark in my forehead stopped flashing and grew steady, turning into a blinding beacon as the cloud of sparks surrounding it swirled into an accretion disk feeding the hungry light. A golden disc surrounded the blinding light in my head, flashing intermittently as it fed the hungry source of my powers. [2] Tugging on the cord, I fell back into my body.

Footnotes:

1. The first recorded instance of Shattering. Shattering the mana stone permanently disables mana accumulation and magic use. This process is called "gentling" by ranchers and is used to keep their herd animals from becoming too powerful or using innate abilities.

2. Spontaneous creation of an accretion disk occurs naturally as mana is collected. This process can be hastened in some cases, depending on psychic awareness.

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