The Undead Pool

I couldn’t help myself, and I stumbled after him as the mystics took control. You will stop! I demanded even as I felt my feet pulled out from under me. Snarling, I spun as I hit the floor. Edden’s shocked expression flashed over him as I raised my hand to strike him.

“Enough!” I shouted at the mystics as he let go and fell back. Groaning, I curled into a ball. It took all my strength to keep from killing him, from killing them all with a blast of wild magic. Panting, I huddled where I was, but the mystics refused to believe that some people were worthy of trust and others weren’t, that people were different, not the same.

“We have to go,” David whispered, and I pulled my head up. They were both looking at me, and nodding, I shakily got to my feet.

“Sorry,” I said, giving the hole in the wall a last look. Edden is my friend, I tried to explain to the mystics. David, too. I trust them with my life.

End them, the mystics clamored. End all of them. Every single last one.

“You will not,” I whispered, ill as the wild magic they were giving off turned my stomach. What if they got back to the Goddess? They might give her the idea to end us all.

“Rachel?”

It was David, and I waved his reaching hand away. “Don’t touch me,” I panted, afraid the mystics would misunderstand. “I’m okay. Let’s go.”

Dark face sorrowful, he nodded. He gave Annie one long glance before turning and going out before us, the alpha in him making him graceful and resolute. He has left the dead before, I realized, not bothering to explain to the mystics the emotions I was feeling. It wasn’t fair. Hell, it wasn’t even just.

In the distance was the noise of battle, and I wondered how many people they’d brought—that, and where Ivy and Jenks were.

Ivy and Jenks? the mystics wondered, and I had to explain it since the once-splintered mystics outnumbered the handful of voices that had a grasp of friendship. Understanding bled through them like water, and slowly the confusion eased.

We crept into the hallway, and I thought my sock feet looked odd on the flat brown carpet. “We can’t go the way we came in,” Edden said tersely.

“Garage is that way,” David said. “I’ve got three packs out there ranging about. We get out of here, we’ll be fine.”

“Which way? These hallways all look alike to me.”

David made a face. “It’s that way,” he muttered, pointing and getting us moving again. “I can smell garage.”

I felt small between them, even with the thousand voices echoing between my ears, numb as I was pushed along like a leaf in the wind. “Rachel, stay behind me,” Edden said as we paused at the fire door.

David put an ear to the door, listening. “I think we’re good.” He opened the door a crack and looked through. Silence and darkness met us. Behind came the pop of guns. They’d lost their meaning, but my unhelped slash of alarm brought the mystics awake.

End their dream! a slew of voices insisted suddenly.

Be still! another, smaller faction insisted, and that was the one I upheld, turning the tide though we were outnumbered. I couldn’t tell who was who anymore. They were all mixed up, all of them driving me crazy.

I can’t do this forever. Confusion seeped up from the corners of my mind as David beckoned me through and into the dark. I could feel an open space, hear an echo from their shoes, and grit scrunched under my sock feet.

“Let me find the light switch,” Edden said, his voice drifting away. It was an undead vampire’s garage, and the best were usually lightproof. This one was no exception.

Found it, I thought, the mystics in me reading the patterns of electricity in the unseen wall. With a thought, I flipped the energy flow and the lights came on, flicking eerily until they warmed up. Dust coated a row of cars, and Edden pulled his hand back from the light switch, never having touched it. Seeing his unease, I shrugged. “Thanks.”

Pace increasing, we shuffled for the small door at the end of the room. There had to be at least half a dozen, all small and fast. A thump shook the floor. Edden looked at David in question, and the younger man shook his head.

“Ah, can you do any magic?” David asked, not knowing that I’d switched the light on.

“The trick is to keep from doing it,” I said, thinking the jet-black car we were passing was beautiful—sparking a mystic conversation in me about why I used mass to move through more mass instead of just moving in the space between. I had to get rid of them before they drove me crazy.