Arik gave a grunt, and his body fell forward as Gunther stepped to the side, and out of his way.
A great gout of flame erupted from his back where Gunther’s blade slipped through.
The flames around Arik’s body grew higher, and pine needles on the ground around the castle caught fire. Continue reading 1943: Part 6
The armor-piercing bullets didn’t do much more than the normal ones.
They knocked Arik backward, some of them ricocheting off him, ripping his suit jacket around his left shoulder. A little blood dripped into the fabric. A wisp of smoke rose from the wound.
“Gunther,” Joe said. “Fire in the hole.” Continue reading 1943: Part 5
Even with the room’s high ceiling, the man’s head stayed less than an inch away. Slouching, he stepped inside, putting him within arm’s reach.
Joe stepped back. He swung his arm to the left, hoping it would cross the circle. It hit an invisible barrier.
Magic, he thought. Continue reading 1943: Part 4
They’d sent him in because intelligence said the Nazis were building a superweapon. This wasn’t technology. The Nazis were summoning demons. Joe knew he didn’t know anything about magic, and he’d never heard of a Sunday School that went into the specifics of demon summoning.
His hadn’t for sure. Continue reading 1943: Part 3
Quiet was, of course, a matter of opinion.
Joe guessed that in the opinion of the soldier pushing up the hatch on the tower’s roof, he hadn’t been quiet at all.
The soldier stared up at him, and slammed the hatch shut. Continue reading 1943: Part 2
June 1943, Germany. Somewhere in the Black Forest:
The castle stood on top of a hill. From his position in the forest, Joe wasn’t impressed. It didn’t match up to the castles he’d imagined when he’d read Ivanhoe. This castle wasn’t much more than a big tower connected to a house. Both were made of stone, but at the end of the day it was smaller than the old monstrosity of a house that Giles Hardwick had grown up in.
He found it hard to make out details in the darkness, but the moon gave enough light for him to notice the two soldiers standing at the top of the tower.
He’d have to kill them both, and he doubted it would be quiet. Continue reading 1943: Part 1
We stepped outside.
Daniel shut the door behind us, and we stood on the walk in front of his front porch, stopping next to a light shaped like an old gas street lamp.
Looking back at the house, I asked, “Is he getting worse?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like one of his good days. He knew who everyone was, and he was in a good mood. It’s so stupid. Do you think he’s worse?” Continue reading Turning Eighteen: Part 8
I had to admit he made sense, but I couldn’t say I liked it.
When push came to shove, I didn’t want Sean to go to jail for killing Ray. You could argue that Ray’s standard operating procedure was driving people past what they could emotionally handle, and then killing them while they were too tortured to think straight.
It didn’t take much to see that if your strategy was based on giving people an irrational need to kill you, it could come back to bite you someday. Sean just happened to be the biter. Continue reading Turning Eighteen: Part 7
“Why won’t I like it?”
Sitting up a little straighter in his chair, Mr. Cohen said, “I think we need to take a step back before we talk about that. I asked for your thoughts on what happened because I think you need to hear yourself say them.
“I’m a big believer in taking a look at the whole picture. Can our legal system take care of the problem? What about letting the superhuman community handle it? And is it worth it? In my experience, you can never ask, ‘Is it worth it?’ enough.” Continue reading Turning Eighteen: Part 6
Unsure of what to say next, I paused.
Daniel’s dad said, “Start where you think the beginning is.”
“Well, the real beginning’s back in December when we found Ray at Haley’s family Christmas party, but that would take too long, and you could say the next beginning is when Ray killed Sean’s dad at graduation, but I think the beginning that matters was when Sean told Rachel and I that he was going to kick Ray’s ass, and beat us to the cottage…” Continue reading Turning Eighteen: Part 5