I raised my left arm, fist pointed upward, shielding my chest. My right arm hung near my waist, ready to punch.
I didn’t punch Skewer.
Pushing down on two buttons on my right palm, I blasted him with the sonics.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 7
I raised my left arm, fist pointed upward, shielding my chest. My right arm hung near my waist, ready to punch.
I didn’t punch Skewer.
Pushing down on two buttons on my right palm, I blasted him with the sonics.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 7
Punching yourself in the face isn’t a great tactic in most fights, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The ice fell off my helmet and hit the floor. I swung back out onto the bumper behind the only remaining door, and tried to get a second to think.
I could blast away with the sonics, distract everybody, fly into the middle of them and start punching, but I didn’t like my odds. Besides Keith’s uncle didn’t deserve to have his ears bleed from the noise.
Then the solution struck me. I’d lean out, blast one of the rear tires with the sonics, and they’d have to stop. If they didn’t, I’d blast the other tire.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 6
We didn’t break into the house, though we did think about it.
“No,” Daniel said. “We don’t have any justification for it. Sean’s mom and little sister are home anyway, and they don’t know anything.”
We left and went home.
* * *
I ended up going through the whole story with Lee after practice. It wasn’t an official team practice. I happened to know that he was going to be at the studio and rode there after school.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 4
By the time we got there, there were four of us. Vaughn met us in the air. Jaclyn met us at the house.
The house didn’t stick out normally. A white, two story house in a subdivision full of modern, two story homes of almost exactly the same design (basically a rectangle), it didn’t have much of a chance of looking ominous. The lawn had been mowed, the bushes clipped. The trees still looked bare of leaves, but, if the rest of the yard was any indication, not because the owner had neglected anything.
Tonight the house stuck out. The front door hung by two of the three hinges. The windows in its upper half had been shattered. Its metal body bent inward.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 3
Vaughn never got hit by the lightning.
When the strikes stopped, he stood there unharmed, smiling nervously, glass shards and glass craters surrounding him.
“He’s cheating! You can’t do that.” The King of Storms shouted at Lee.
“He’s controlling weather.” Lee said. “Get on with it or yield.”
Continue reading King of Storms: Part 12
“Let’s get on with it then,” Lee said.
Both Vaughn and the King of Storms turned to look at him.
“Neither of you is going to change their name so now it’s time to come up with another way to handle it. You’ll want to choose seconds and Vaughn, you get to choose the weapon if it’s a duel.”
“Duel?” Vaughn sounded incredulous.
Continue reading King of Storms: Part 11
Above us, the cloud became darker, extending across the dune toward Grand Lake.
“Relax,” Lee said. “We both know that if I were coming to kill you, I’d have already tried by now.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m training them.” He waved vaguely in our direction.
Continue reading King of Storms: Part 10
The thing faded into the storm and disappeared. Between the darkness and the possibility that its body might have been nothing more than falling rain, I didn’t know whether it had teleported away or simply ceased to be.
Either way, the rain changed from a downpour to nothing in the space of ten seconds.
As the rain ended, the clouds thinned, letting the sun illuminate the puddles in the road and the mud across the street in the parking lot.
Continue reading King of Storms: Part 9
By the time Haley, Jaclyn, and I got changed and went downstairs, Vaughn had calmed down, but we didn’t get to talk to him much. We said goodbye in the parking lot and watched him drive off in his mother’s Audi.
Then I drove Jaclyn and Haley home, Haley next to me in the front and Jaclyn in the back.
Continue reading Bullies and Counselors: Part 4
“Worked for your grandfather in the ‘worked for one of his companies’ sense or in the ‘foot soldiers in his Legions of Evil’ sense?” I asked.
“A little of both,” Vaughn said. “Actually a lot of both. All their grandparents were pretty high up in both places. Grandpa hired in a bunch of his people into positions where they could have a legal paycheck. Fact is, he did more than that, whenever he found someone that his potions could affect, he moved them here. I think it was one of those ‘breed a super race’ ideas. Obviously, it didn’t pan out.”
Cassie said, “The kids didn’t have powers?”
Continue reading Bullies and Counselors: Part 3