Chapter 20: Practitioner (End)

Staten Island, NY The knocking woke me up. It definitely wasn’t the soft-sounding polite knocking either.  Whoever it was, they were full-on

Staten Island, NY

The knocking woke me up.

It definitely wasn’t the soft-sounding polite knocking either.  Whoever it was, they were full-on banging at the door; slamming it with their fists and kicking at it too.  All telltale signs that the person had been at it for awhile, and that I had slept right through most of it.

It was annoying.

No one likes to be woken up with banging noises.  Actually, scratch that.  No one likes to be woken up, period.  Don’t believe me?  Put your favorite song as your alarm for a week and see how you feel about the song after.

Besides being annoyed, I felt like shit.

My back hurt, no doubt from being bent over the floor through the whole night preparing summoning circles.  My neck ached something unholy and cracked audibly as I moved it from side to side.  Probably from reading by candlelight.  But that wasn’t the end of it.

The burn on my hand had turned into a big fat red welt and I saw the beginning of clear-yellow pus beginning to drip out from the blister.  It hurt something unholy and I winced in pain just by looking at the full extent of the wound; my brain finally registering the pain into something more than it actually was.  For some reason, my legs were sore too and I groaned as I forced myself up.

My head hurt too.  Great.

The banging had stopped.  It was followed by a hushed conversation.  A girl and a guy, judging from the voices.

“Did you hear that?  I told you he was in there.”  I thought I heard him sniff.  “I could smell him.”

I sniffed my sweater.  Godammit, Jain.

“We should have come back later.”  The girl this time.  She must have taken over because there was a polite knock this time.  “Jain?”

I didn’t bother answering.  Ignoring whatever was happening outside, I went over to the kitchen and ran my burnt hand over cold water.

It all but short-circuited my brain.

White streaks of pain wracked through my entire arm like lightning.  But I gritted my teeth and kept the hand there until it felt all but numb.  Did I see a first-aid kit somewhere?  Maybe not.  Just as well.  The thought of pouring alcohol into the wound didn’t make the morning any better.

“He’s in there.  Just ignoring us.”  The guy took over again, “Hey! We’re just here to talk.”

He must have kicked the door pretty hard, because the RV freaking shook.

But that wasn’t the only thing that happened.

My sixth sense immediately went on full-alert, throwing off the morning brain-fog and making my body full-on ready to run, fight, anything.  It was a needle sharp stab to the mind, a sudden jolt that sent me reaching across the floor for my gravity knife.  The whole sensation was accompanied by what sounded like a gunshot.  An ear-ringing, fear-inducing, popping sound that made me freeze like a deer in headlights.

There was a loud yell outside, as something went ‘Thud!’.  Exclamation marks included.

“Lev!”

Without thinking, I ran to the door and opened it.

Considering the fact that I spent most hours of the night summoning Korean folktales and nursery rhymes, my brain wasn’t fully functioning yet.  I had almost forgotten that we were in the middle of the annual New York blizzard.  It didn’t help that I spent the last few hours being accustomed to candle light.  So the sun reflecting off of the bright snow almost blinded me and it took a second to understand exactly what it was that I was looking at.

It wasn’t snowing as harshly as it had the night before.  Snow danced downwards fleetingly, slow but all-consuming too.  There was no hint of the sidewalks left, just snow.  Even the other RVs and mobile homes were covered, turning into igloo-like structures.  A serene scene from winter wonderland, where childhood dreams of a white christmas with snowman and carrot noses became more than just a dream.

Naturally, I was drawn to the only sources of color: my guests.

It was the girl who saved me from the bird-freak-monster thing.  Despite it being below freezing, she wore the same outfit as yesterday.  The colorful track jacket and leggings underneath.  But today she’d swapped out the sneakers for boots.  You know the ones.  Brown, lined with fur and rhymes with mugs.

She was pretty too.  She had this whole ‘girl next door’ mixed with ‘outgoing girl that everyone at school wants to be friends with’ vibe going for her.  It was slightly muted by the oversized track jacket hood that hid most of her head.

The guy lying on the floor, clutching at his ribs and groaning on the other hand, now he was what girls would call ‘hot’.

He had dark features, starting with his dark hair which was done in a french-crop.  He wore a black T-shirt that said ‘Panic! @’, with rest of the letters faded out, and a black leather motorcycle jacket.  A real one, where the zipper goes diagonally and it’s dialed up with chains and zippers.  Even lying flat on the snow and cursing, I could tell he was well over six-feet tall, so that no one would ever accuse him of being 5’11 and a half.

Girls would call him hot on account of his general good looks.  Me on the other hand, I’d call him hot because he was smoking.

I mean like, actually smoking.  Like smoke-detectors going off in my kitchen so open up all the windows kind of smoking.

He groaned again, turning over and messing up all the snow.

“What the hell?”  I heard myself say out loud, “Are you ok?”

The guy growled out an answer, “I said I’m here to talk.”

Apparently, he was well enough to talk and that significantly lessened the growing sense of panic.

“What are you doing here?  Who are you guys?”

“Lev, you ok?”  The girl asked.  She was kneeling in the snow and if it bothered her any, she didn’t show.

“No, do I look ok?”  But despite the answer, he managed to stand with minimal assistance from her.  Brushing the snow off his jacket, he looked at me, “Answer my question first.”

For all the smoke coming off of him, he didn’t look too bad.  It didn’t help that his clothing was all black, so it might be hiding scorch marks, if there were any.

It also didn’t help that from my point of view, they’d showed up at my door, unannounced, woke me up after a whole night of working, and were accusing me of doing something I didn’t do.  Not to mention, it was freezing and I was out here because of them.

“You’re going to have to get more specific than that.”  My reply came out flat, like I was looking for trouble.  Not rude, but not as friendly as before.  The facade of friendliness brought on by an onset of sudden panic had disappeared from my voice.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

My heartrate began to pick up.  There’s always a small amount of fear that gets sprinkled in with the bravado when you’re confronting someone for the first time.  A healthy dose of nervousness that comes with traversing untraveled territory. 

He stood up straight and I realized something: he wasn’t skinny at all.  When he moved, the t-shirt tightened over his chest and the leather jacket slightly flexed over his biceps.  This guy worked out and it showed.

“I’m talking about you activating your wards on me.”  Pushing on his head with one hand, he cracked his neck.  His eyes were a shade darker than I thought they’d be, more obsidian than blue.  “And you better explain yourself soon, because I’m two seconds away from ripping into you.”  He finished by spitting a word like a curse, “Magus.”

He was coming on strong.  And it triggered some ugly memories.  Ugly instincts honed from years of learning that if I didn’t stick up for myself, no one would.

“That sounded like a threat.”  I said quietly and met his stare dead on.  “I don’t like threats.”  I gulped.

He stared at me and I could see him thinking.  I’d been in situations like this before.  Where someone was about to throw a punch.  Trying to look nonchalant, I leaned against the doorframe and shoved my hands in my jean pockets, never taking my eyes off him.

“Lev,”  The girl in the track jacket stepped in front of the much bigger Lev, putting her hand on his shoulder.  “Remember why we came here.”

He kept glaring at me, fingers twitching.  “He fired first.”

“He didn’t fire anything.  The whole place is warded and you know better than that.”  She said, “You’re not even hurt.”  She let out a frustrated sigh and turned to me, “Do you remember me?”

“...Yeah.”

She gave me an expectant, and a little bit hopeful, look.  “Well?  Anything to say for yourself?”

I bit my lip.  In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have a lot of experience with girls.  Especially girls who even show me a little bit of kindness.

Besides, she’d saved my life.  I think.

The thing was, the whole thing was a little bit fishy.  I had no idea what kind of situation I was dealing with here.  Which only proved her point; no point in getting off on the wrong foot until I had a better idea of what kind of trouble I was getting into.

By now, my brain was slowly working the rust out of its gears.  Something that Emyrith said last night, about ‘protections’ and ‘rules’ in place.  Whatever had happened to this guy was related to that.  I was sure of it.  Which explained a lot actually, considering how many freakish things were prowling around the RV but never came in last night.

I let out a sigh.  “It wasn’t me.  I think… I think it fired on its own.”

After I finished, the guy, Lev, did the strangest thing.  He cocked his head and then sniffed the air.

…Weirdo.

“Ok.  I believe you.”