chapter 7

The brakes squealed and the long bus finally came to it's final stop, with a grateful smile I stepped off the stairs and looked up at the grey, pregnant clouds, it was going to rain but that was fine in Chicago when it rains it doesn't smell as bad.

 

I heard the lighter flick a few times behind me and Karrey swore under her breath, I snapped my fingers discreetly and the small flame came to life, she thanked me around the joint in her mouth and she drew in a long pull. Walking up next to me I put my hand on the small of her back and we began the hike to my apartment, she coughed and the sweet smoke blew past my face.

 

"Brave, smoking that stuff out in the open like that."

 

She shrugged and I smiled at her expression,

"Honestly, I don't care. Besides things seem to work out when you're around."

 

Chuckling I pulled the joint from her lips, she was getting more and more clingy but to paraphrase I didn't care, I liked her and she liked me.

 

My mouth filled with the heavy smoke and a few small drops of water landed on my cheeks, the bright moon reflected off of every rain drop and it seemed as if the two of us were walking through a hail of knifes, silver glinting and shining off the blacktop under our feet.

 

"Nice city."

 

I noticed she was craning her neck to look at all the tall buildings and the spot lights that cut through the pouring night,

 

"Yeah babe, don't do that, you look like a tourist and I don't want to get mugged before we get back to my place."

 

She apologized and looked at her feet, I felt a little bad but it's the truth, you look out of place in this city and before you know it you're looking down the barrel of a gun.

My clothes were soaked and so were hers, I looked down her top at the wet blouse and smiled, we didn't have time for anything serious on the bus but when I got her home....

 

She was kissing me when I kicked the door to my flat open, I spun her around and dropped her on my couch, a few more kisses and my hands started wandering over her wet clothes, I was distracted terribly and didn't hear the emberassed cough until the third attempt to get my attention. I looked over the couch top, one hand still up Karreys shirt the other pointed like a gun at whoever was in my apartment.

 

It was then that I noticed the state of things, clothes everywhere, my drawers were lying empty on the ground my matress was drug over by my bookcase and had a long cut down the middle, all my books were gone or ripped up and tossed into a pile on the floor, my tv was shattered and lay on it's side.

Anger bloomed in my chest like a rose and I must have begun to draw power without realizing it because Karrey yelped in pain from the heat of my palm.

 

"Sorry, doll."

Another cough and I looked down the hall at the figure standing there, his glasses reflecting the moon light coming from the long window that looked over the skyline of Chicago.

My outstretched finger popped and crackled and the figure put his hands up and stepped into the moonlight,

 

"Settle down, Justin. It's me."

 

I sighed and looked down at Karrey who wore an expression of fear and confusion on her pretty little face.

 

Whispering in her ear I kissed her closed lips and sat up and let her get out from under me, looking at my visitor with curiosity she followed my instructions and left, closing the door behind her.

 

"The f**k do you want, Charlie?"

My handler, Charles Whether, was a man of indetermined age somewhere between twenty and fourty his hair a mix of grey, and brown, and blond, he was tall and skinny, his trademark trenchcoat was still wet from the rain and he wore his round glasses low on his nose. He had been my friend for a few years now and knew how to keep me from hurting myself and others, when things got too wierd I turned to Charlie. It was one of those little coincidences that led to him waiting for me here instead of making me hunt him down from whatever Wisconsin cabin he was hiding in.

 

"I knew you were alive Justin."

 

I got up and looked him up and down,

"Abbracaddabra."

 

He nodded his head at the code word,

"As I say, I create."

 

I waved my hand at the chaos around me,

 

"What happend here? Who am I going to have to burn alive for this?"

 

He shrugged, his boney shoulders crinkling the trenchcoat, he liked pulp detective novels and liked to think of himself as a character in one of those books, mysterious and smart.

 

"I don't know but it could have been any number of people, after word got out that you were shot in that club all bets were off. I just got here too but by the looks of it this place was ransacked a few times, each one by a different group of people, each one more desperate than the last."

 

Shaking my head I walked over to a pile of my clothes and picked up a clean shirt that wasn't cut in half,

"So they wanted my book, understandable,"

 

I slipped the shirt on and yelled to Karrey, the door swung open and she walked back in with a scared look on her face.

 

I looked at her expression,

"What's wrong doll?"

 

Than I noticed the person behind her, and the gun he held to her neck, the barrel pushing against her artery.

 

Charles cursed and took a step back, the figure clicked the hammer and told him to stop moving in a thick german accent, I put my hands to my side and tried to calm him down but in truth I didn't even hear the words, my mind was racing and the heat was rising in my chest, my stomach was flipping over like an overturned boat and the ground beneath my feet was rippling like a disturbed pond.

 

I was hoping he wasn't some sadistic b*****d and he would take a shot at me to try and stop my incantation instead of just plugging Karrey to spite me.

 

He pointed the gun at me and I recognized it as an old single shot revolver from the civil war, old mechanics and sparse pieces, little for me to mess with. This guy was no amateur, keeping himself behind Karrey he pulled the trigger, the explosion sent her to the ground covering her ears and crying in pain, Charlie tried to fall behind my kitchen counter and I just floated there a foot off the ground and watched the bullet as it approached my heart.

 

Invisible strands of magic stretched from my body and tried to wrap around the ball of metal but I couldn't stop it, something was special about that gun, or the man who held it was something more because I tried everything and that angry piece of lead just crept through the air. Unstoppable and deadly all I could do was watch it spin forward and hope I could take the shot and return with my own. The Andrew Jackson school of gunfighting, that's where I graduated from, with top honors.

 

It hurt, like a hundred hornets stinging me in one spot while getting hit in the chest with a baseball bat swung by a gorrila. I fell backwards and fought the darkness, I heard him walk forward, a loud click as he readied another shell, my white ceiling began to turn a shade of alarming red and I couldn't feel my arms. It was over, the final paragraph of my life and I'm lying here on my back bleeding out while some German psycho gets ready to shoot me again with an ancient piece of history.

 

They say you never hear the one that kills you so when another explosion rocked my eyeballs and made my ears sing I knew it wasn't for me. A few moments of fear for Charlie and Karrey but then I saw my friend lean over me, his glasses off, and a lock of brown hair hung down his face, a small shotgun rested in the crook of his arm, smoke rising from one of the twin barrels.

 

I tried to thank him for the save but all that came out of my mouth was blood.

 

The taste of copper and the smell of gunsmoke was my lullabye as the darkness finally came in from around the edges.