Blood Oath: Part three: Chapter 7-9

Chapter Seven
As Adrian sat in the booth at Captain Larry’s Fish Food restaurant, Boone looked over a menu from his bottle.
“Hey Adrian,” he asked, “could you move me to the other page? I can’t see the top from here.”
Sighing, Adrian lifted the bottle and placed it at the top of the next page.
“Okay, okay—I know what I want now.”
“What do you want?”
“I want ‘Captain Larry’s Golden-Brown Treasure.’” He started to speak like a pirate as he read the description. “‘A hearty helpin’ of the best the sea has to offer. Ye will be swimmin’ in ten jumbo shrimp,’ (an oxymoron if ye ever heard one, matey),” he added, “‘two planks of codfish, a salad of the finest greens to be found on land, crispy chips, and our famous Crow’s Nest Rolls. Argh, it be a fine meal!’” He looked up at Adrian. “What will ye be having, Adrian?”
Adrian tried not to laugh. “I’m having the fishtail sandwich. Oh, here, comes the waiter! I’m going to have to hide you.”
“All right then, matey!”
Holding in his laughter, Adrian put Boone back into his pocket.
The waiter, too, spoke like a pirate. “What can I—ow!” He ran into the corner of the table. “Sorry, just getting used to the eye patch, matey. This be my first week sailing with Captain Larry. What can I get for ye?”
“Um, I’ll have the Golden-Brown Treasure and a fishtail sandwich.”
“Yo-ho!” laughed the teenage pirate, scribbling into his order book. “Two meals? And for such a skinny lad too! Fine, fine, so be it. What kind of dressing do ye want on yer salad?”
Adrian froze up. “Um…” He didn’t know what kind of dressing Boone wanted.
“Ranch, ranch, ranch…” Boone whispered hopefully in the darkness of Adrian’s pocket.
“We have a wonderful bleu cheese, if yer stuck.”
“No, I think I’ll go with…Italian.”
“What?!” whispered Boone. He rammed the side of the bottle against Adrian’s left thigh.
“No, wait!” Adrian stopped the waiter as he interpreted the signal. “Make that…sweet and sour!” Another thump. “Sorry, um…the bleu cheese?” He hit him again. “Um…no, wait…”
The waiter looked annoyed as he stood pen in hand, ready for this customer to make up his mind. “Look,” said the kid, who appeared to be about seventeen, losing his pirate accent, “all we have left is ranch. Do you want that?”
“Um…I guess…”
Boone stayed still in the pocket.
“Yes, that’s it! I want ranch dressing!”
“Fine,” the waiter sighed. He walked back to the kitchen.
Adrian once again removed Boone from his pocket.
         “Are you kidding me?” Boone hissed. “You guessed sweet and sour and bleu cheese before ranch?”
         “Hey, I’m a fan of Italian myself. Ranch just didn’t come to mind.”
Boone put his hand on his forehead. “What, do you think dressing preferences are genetic or something?”
         “They could be…”
         “I like ranch, you like Italian, and Alison prefers sweet and sour. Yeah, genetics.”
         Adrian twitched a little when he heard Alison’s name. The image of Jasmine’s death flashed in his mind again. He could envision it almost perfectly—Alison’s snarl and cold, hard eyes, his dad’s sinister laughing face in the background…but something wasn’t right. In his mind’s eye, he could no longer picture Boone’s face. Even though it was as clear as day in the room’s memory, it was no longer visible in Adrian’s.
         Adrian glanced over at his brother, who was currently amusing himself with fun spells.
         “Hey Rocky,” Boone said in an imitation of the moose Bullwinkle, “watch me pull a rabbit out my hat!” First he made a top hat appear, and then he pulled a fluffy white rabbit out of it. He put the rabbit back into the hat and then made the hat disappear. “Thank you!” He bowed, then looked up, pretending to be annoyed. When he snapped twice with both hands, hitting his hands together each time, the little bottle filled with applause. “That’s more like it!”
         The waiter came towards the table with the food.
         “And now here’s something we think you’ll really like!” Boone squeaked like the famous flying squirrel, eyeing his oncoming meal. Adrian stuffed Boone back into his pocket.
         “Here be yer meals,” the waiter grumbled, placing the food on the table. “And, of course, yer ranch.” He clunked the little dressing cup down violently and walked away.
         Boone’s hungry eyes sparkled with delight as he saw the plate of food. “C’mon, give it to me! I’m hungry!”
         “Hold on,” Adrian told him. He placed his hands, palms to the food, at the side of the plate, and pushed them together until the plate disappeared and his hands clapped. When he rubbed his hands on the bottle, the plate appeared inside, proportionately correct.
         “Yes!” shrimp and fries flying everywhere, Boone quickly dug into his meal. He began to sing with his mouth full. “No more than fish, netted by what they refuse to see. Soon they will be fried, and eaten by me!”
         Adrian’s expression changed. He knew that song. That was a dark magician’s children song. Just like most people wouldn’t know that “Ring around the Rosy” is a sinister song about the Black Death, many dark children never learn the true meaning of their nursery rhymes.
         “Please don’t sing that song, Boone,” Adrian quietly pleaded to him.
         Boone was perplexed. “Why not? It’s just a harmless kid’s song.”
         “No, it isn’t. It’s about slaughtering mortals.”
         Flipping a shrimp over in his hand, Boone said, “I don’t understand you, Adrian.”
         “What do you mean?”
         “I just don’t understand your attachment to mortals. I mean, they’re mortals!”
         “They’re still people.”
         “People who can’t see what’s in front of them, who refuse to see what’s in front of them! Magic! Instead of grasping all of the possibilities of what they could use this gift for, they waste years hunting us and burning ‘witches’ at the stake!”
         “So they’re afraid of dying. You know that feeling you had when I was about to toss you out of the window? They feel that every time their car slides on some ice, every time a large number of them get trapped in an elevator. You felt that feeling for the first time today, and you have to admit it made you want to do some crazy things.”
         “You’re wrong,” Boone murmured.
         “What am I wrong about?”
         “I feel mortal every day of my life. I’d just never seen it…thatclose.”
         “Why would you feel mortal?”
         “I know that if I slip just a little, dad could kill me. He killed mom, he wants you dead…I don’t want to turn into you; you’re a hunted little rabbit. I mean, I’m set to graduate valedictorian this spring—I haven’t told dad yet in case it doesn’t work out—and it’s not like I did it for me, I worked for valedictorian because Alison was, and I fear that if I don’t live up to the standards she set nine years ago dad would kill me.”
         Adrian didn’t say anything.
         Reaching into his tiny pocket, Boone pulled out a pocket knife. After contemplatively moving it around in his hand, he flipped it open. “Adrian, watch this.”
As Adrian had done so many times, Boone slit his finger tips. He then pressed his blood-soaked fingers against the glass.
         Adrian squinted at the tiny scene, and then his eyes grew wide. His hand picked up the glass bottle in swift disbelief.
         “Surprise,” whispered Boone, tears in his eyes. “You’re not alone.”
         The miniature handprint against the glass was a deep red.
         Adrian tried multiple times to speak, but nothing came out for a long time. “Why haven’t you said anything?” he finally managed to ask.
         “Let’s go back to when you were sixteen, shall we? Remember what happened when you finally got up the nerve to admit you were white?”
         As much as he would’ve liked to forget, Adrian did remember. His father tried to kill him almost as soon as the words slid from his lips. At that point, Adrian left home and lived with his best friend, who was just moving.
         “Boone,” Adrian quietly questioned, “why did you kill Jasmine? She was the last thing I had, and I loved her more than anything else.”
         “Alison would have killed her anyway. It looked better for me if I joined in. It was too late to stop them. You know what it’s like, Adrian. Think of all the people you’ve killed because dad made you. I didn’t want to do it.”
         Hands shaking, Adrian gripped the cork on the bottle and popped it out. A bright light rushed from the bottle, and then the bottle disappeared. Boone now sat across from his brother in the booth, “Golden Treasure” in front of him.
         “You didn’t keep me in there long, did you?” Boone mumbled, moving his hands around in front of him. “By the way, Adrian, I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is five.”
         “Five?”
         “Lives. Five saved souls. I mean it’s nothing compared to your…two-hundred?”
         “Three-hundred-seventy-two. But I’m an EMT. I kind of get told where the dead people are.” He looked into Boone’s eyes. “But five is a good start.”
         Looking down at his cut fingers, Boone sighed. “And…it’s black. Did it do that to you until you admitted you were white and completely switched sides?”
“Boone, it still does that to me.”
“It does? What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve done everything I could to be good, but I guess I’m still dark somewhere.”
They were in there own little world. They had been completely oblivious of the pirate theme of the restaurant until their waiter came back.
“And who might ye be?” he inquired in character.
“Oh, this is my brother. This is who the ‘Golden Treasure’ was for.” Adrian softly smiled towards his younger sibling. “He just joined me.”
“I hope yeh like ranch dressing!” the young waiter half-grumbled.
“I love it, although my brother tells me he couldn’t remember that. Sorry for any inconvenience.”
The waiter seemed to feel a little better after the apology. “Well, can I get yeh anything else, me hearties?”
“Um, no, but thank you,” Adrian replied. The waiter walked away.
“Hey Adrian, you want to know something weird about that waiter?”
“Besides the fact that he speaks like a pirate?”
“Yeah.” Boone paused. “He reminds me of a friend of mine from Whitewall.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You know why that’s weird?”
“No…”
“He’s a mortal, and yet…it’s like…I could see myself being friends with him. I could see myself hanging out with him.”
“See Boone, it’s—“
“That’s not the weirdest part. The weirdest part is that I’ve felt that about mortals before, but this time I can actually say it! Adrian, I’m free!”
Adrian smiled. “All of my friends from school were mortals.”
Knitting his brow, Boone inquired, “Yeah, about that…You’re a lot smarter and more skilled at magic than I am. How did you fail the entrance exam?”
“Well…Boone, you’re the only one that knows this, okay?”
“What?”
Leaning in, Adrian whispered, “I failed on purpose. I knew every single answer like they were asking me to solve two plus two, and I marked incorrect ones on purpose. Then on the visual exam, I flubbed up every single spell intentionally. Setting the principal’s eyebrows on fire was a nice touch, I think.”
Boone’s jaw dropped. “You did what?! Failed on purpose?! Why?!”
“I always knew that everything we did as dark magicians was wrong, and I didn’t want to go to school for it.”
Boone shook his head. “I can’t believe it. So all this time…it’s possible that…you’re the…”
“Most powerful one in the family?” Adrian chewed on a piece of ice.
“Yeah.”
He shrugged. “I might be.”
Leaning back, Boone thought for a moment. Then he jumped forward. “Okay—here’s the question that no one in my class could answer. A real magician is caught at Salem and burned on a stake of spruce wood. Now, the magician’s hands were completely tied up, and yet the fire went out, the stake and ropes melted away, and the executioner died and his skin turned to ash. How did this happen if the magician could not use his hands to perform spells?”
Adrian ate another ice cube. “The bigger question is: how is it that no one in your class knew that?”
“Do you know the answer?”
“Duh. He had the blood of his accuser smeared on his chest.”
“What?”
“I can’t believe you don’t know that!” Adrian replied, bewildered. “It’s a classic dark spell! The blood of your accuser smeared on your chest combined with spruce wood is an automatic escape from persecution. Either this guy knew he was going to be burned on spruce wood or he had a chip of it in his pocket to finish the escape.”
Boone’s eyes narrowed. “2m-ym over k to the seventh, where m is the force exerted by the common Red Death spell, y is the time it takes an average person to die from it, and k is the number of people you could kill in a crowded room in one minute with it.”
Adrian sighed. “6.66, duh. That’s why Red Death is called the ‘ultimate dark death’. The spell point calculations for it come out to exactly 6.66.”
“What’s the point value for…the Soul Regained charm?”
“It uses a different formula, of course, but the score is a 10.94.”
Boone shook his head. “You faked the entrance exam?”
“Well, enough about that,” Adrian changed subject. He stood up and put the exact change for the meal plus a tip on the table. “Let’s get going.”



Chapter Eight
Outside, with the smell of frying fish drifting further and further behind them, the snow continued to fall silently. It blended softly with Adrian’s light blonde hair and created harsh speckles upon Boone’s black hair.
“Okay,” huffed Boone through chattering teeth, “put me back in the bottle. It’s warm in your pocket.”
“Too late, you’re free now.”
Boone wrapped his arms tighter around himself as he shivered. “How much farther?”
“If I told you, you’d probably cry.”
Boone whined, “But it’s so damn cold! Where are we going anyway?”
“Home.”
The snow made an awkward kind of crunch as Boone stopped dead in his tracks. “What? Why? Do you know how far that is?”
“A few hundred miles.”
“Is there a reason we’re walking? Is this some kind of insane pilgrimage? Couldn’t we just drive there?”
“Well,” Adrian started, sarcastically, “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that! Driving! What a novel idea! Why didn’t I just do that? One of them dang new-fangled automobiles!” He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe if I had a car with an engine that didn't get turned to snakes and rats…”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“But at least now it’s coming back to haunt you.”
Boone skittered forward to make up his lost space. “Is there a reason we’re going home?”
“Revenge.”
“Revenge?”
Adrian started growling, “Dad, Alison, Boone—oh, sorry, scratch that last one. I’d just grown kind of used to saying your name, too. I guess you’re off the hit-list for now. But dad and Alison took my last shred of hope in this dark world.”
Feeling awful, Boone put his hand on Adrian’s shoulder. “I’m sorry—I didn’t want to. You understand?”
Adrian sighed. “Unfortunately, I do. I’ve been there. I’ve killed more innocent people than I’d like to admit.”
“You really loved her, didn’t you?”
“I only wish I could’ve died in her place. She was pregnant, you know.”
“I do. When she told us—it made dad and Alison angrier but only made me more nauseous. I mean, not only was I killing my brother’s girlfriend, I was killing my niece or nephew. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to just proclaim my whiteness right then and there and run, but dad was already in a killing mood, and…”
“Your instincts kicked in. You were going to save yourself, I understand.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. It’s not like telling dad there would’ve saved her—it’s not like I was choosing between us, Adrian. Please, just know that. If it would’ve saved her, I would’ve told him and fled. But, if anything, it would’ve sealed her fate.”
Sighing a cloud of frozen fog, Adrian silently continued forward. He did know. His past was coming back for him in the form of his younger brother.
They continued silently for another two hours. Boone knew no amount of apologizing could ever make this right, and Adrian didn’t want to hear Boone try to make it right.
“Adrian,” Boone finally said, voice crackling from underuse in the cold, “it’s getting dark. I think maybe we should stop somewhere soon. It’s going to get below zero. That sign back there said there’s a town about a mile up ahead. I can already see lights.”
“Probably a good idea,” Adrian quietly replied. “Although, I don’t think I got sixteen hours-worth in today.”
“I hate to tell you, but I think sixteen hours of walking is a very…hopeful…number.”
“Boone, even at that rate it’ll take us five days to get there.”
“Five days?” Boone moaned. “Are you serious? I don’t walk that kind of distance.”
“You do now.”
“Please, I’m begging you; put me back in the bottle!”
“Hey, I’m suffering here, too.”
“‘Ice can’t freeze me when you’re near,’” Boone quietly sang to himself. “‘Fire can’t burn me when you’re here. Baby, save me from it all. Baby, help me up when I slip and fall…’”
“I don’t think I’ve heard that song yet. Who’s it by?”
“My girlfriend. Dad doesn’t know about her. You and she have something in common, though—you’re the only two people in the world that know I’m white. She is too.”
“She’s a musician?”
He nodded. “Give her a guitar and she’ll give you a song. About anything. At the drop of a hat. She once wrote an entire five minute jam about why ketchup is superior to mustard.”
Adrian smiled a little. “What does she look like?”
“She has really short, tomboyish brown hair, blue eyes that might be described as faded, but not in a bad way or any way that detracts from them, and a smile that’s too pretty for any dark girl to have. And, like I said, dad’s not even aware that she exists. That’s one good thing about being sent away to school, I guess.”
“He’ll find out eventually. You can survive a couple of months of dating her without dad knowing, but…”
Boone laughed. “Adrian, I’ve been dating her since the beginning of freshman year! I think I’ve done a pretty nice job of keeping her a secret.”
“How the hell did you manage that?”
Shrugging, Boone replied, “I don’t know, but that’s more than three years and three months, and dad is still clueless. I think we give him too much credit sometimes.”
“I probably could’ve kept Jasmine a secret longer if she hadn’t insisted on meeting the family. You could’ve at least let Alison go on thinking that she was a white magician instead of a mortal.”
“I did that for your girlfriend’s protection.”
“How the hell did telling Alison and dad that Jasmine was mortal help her?”
“Dad’s not afraid of white mortals, but he’s scared to death of pure white magicians. He would have killed her on the spot if he’d thought she was one.”
“Then why hasn’t he killed me yet?”
“You’re not pure white. By pure white I mean a magician who was born into a white house.” Boone looked down at his feet. “A lot of the shit I’ve done that seems evil was actually an attempt to help, believe it or not.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“I know you hate to, but think back to the scene of Jasmine’s death. What was the worst part of that? I mean, besides her dying.”
Adrian’s eye twitched as he thought about it. “You,” he grumbled. “You wanted to…I mean, Boone, she’s a human being!”
“I know. I thought I might be able to convince dad to actually let me do it, too. I just wanted to get her out of the room, cut her loose, and then run. Unfortunately, dad was a little more careful with her than a lot of the others, and he just wanted to get out of there.”
“So, wait. You weren’t actually going to rape her?”
Stopping, Boone yelled, “Adrian, what kind of monster do you take me for?”
“Hey, give me time. I just found out you’re white today.”
“Okay, fine,” he replied as they reached the town. “But another thing—I tried to help after she was dead, too. Now, I had Alison with me, so I couldn’t make it too obvious, but I picked an alley that was kind of near to the hospital and would hopefully be near enough that you would find her fast.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered—I’d just started a thirty-six hour shift because the Russian—that’s what we call him, because his name is really hard to pronounce—was just heading home for the holidays and Bill had called off sick, so I told them I could handle a thirty-six hour shift if I napped in between calls. So I wasn’t going home anytime soon. If someone else hadn’t found her and called me out…”
“I’m sorry. I tried.”
“I know. I heard the woman’s description, looked outside and saw the traffic that was just getting released from the wreck down on the interstate (which is where almost everyone else was), made some lame excuse of where I was going, and ran there. It was twenty-seven hours in the cold and snow. It was too late.” He sighed and finally looked around at the town they were in. “Well, it’s quite a bit bigger than Halton.”
“There’s a motel over there.”
The flickering neon sign actually said MOTE, but at least it matched nicely with the chipping pink paint job on the building. The doors were painted a mint green and the numbers were crooked and falling.
“Well, it’s better than nothing, I guess,” Adrian mumbled. They walked across the street and knocked entered the main office.
Harsh track-lighting, a thirteen-inch TV, and a man napping behind the desk greeted them.
Boone rang the bell. Then he rang it again. And again.
The man snorted in his sleep and then fell back into his peaceful slumbering.
“Hey!” Boone yelled, hitting the bell repetitively in his frustration. “I’m ringing the damn bell, now where’s the service?”
The man jumped up, a last snore escaping him as he did. “What?”
“We’d like a room for the night,” Adrian told him, calmly.
The man blinked and looked at his customers. “Well, not the strangest couple I’ve seen here, I guess.”
“What? No, we’re brothers,” Adrian assured him.
“Oh. Well, there’s only one bed in the rooms, hope you know.”
“It’s okay.”
“It is?” Boone whispered to him, unsure.
“It is,” Adrian whispered back, waving his wallet as he put it back in his pocket.
“Fine, I guess it is.”
“Third building, second floor, room 666,” the man said, handing them the key and leaning back into his chair.
“Of course,” Adrian grumbled as they left the main building.
“How the hell do we end up in room 666?” Boone asked.
“Because it’s just our luck.”
They ascended the stairs of the third building and began looking for their room.
“Here it is!” called Boone. “The one with the pentagram scratched on the door!”
Getting pissed at his misfortune, Adrian grumbled as he place his left hand over the mark and tapped it with his right hand. The pentagram disappeared. “There. It’s not now.”
Boone put the key in the lock and clicked the door open. When Adrian flicked on the light switch, about five cockroaches scurried away. This made Adrian jump a let out a little squeal.
“Adrian, they’re cockroaches. Come on, they’re not that scary.” Boone made a jar appear, flicked the lights back off, and made a light appear at his fingertip.
“What are you doing?” Adrian asked.
“Shh,” Boone hushed him. He slowly walked into the room. Aiming his little beam of light at the walls and floors, Boone managed to find and capture seven cockroaches in the jar. He closed the lid and flipped the light back on. A few more scurried away.
“You missed a few, Boone.”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to get them all!”
“What were you doing, then?”
“Catching a few. They’ll be useful tomorrow, trust me.” He sat the jar on the dresser and then lay down on one side of the bed.
“How will they be useful tomorrow?! They’re cockroaches!”
“Trust me. They will. Now, I’m going to sleep.” He kicked off his shoes, threw off his coat, and pulled the blankets over himself.
“Me too,” Adrian sighed. He stripped down to his t-shirt, jeans, and socks and joined Boone.
His mind began wandering as Boone snored beside him.
Adrian grumbled as he made his way to the kitchen.
“This is the—“
“Yeah, I know, Jas. ‘This is the first day of the rest of my life.’” He kissed her cheek as he sat down in the chair beside her with his coffee. “Doesn’t change the fact that I just worked twelve hours and then slept five.”
“I know, baby,” she said, hugging his neck. “But there’d be a lot more dead people in the area without you.”
“Yeah, yeah. And without you, fewer teachers could take the day off.”
“Hey! You know, Mr. Lotts is going to be retiring from the high school at the end of this school year, and they’re seriously considering me for the position.”
“Finally!” Adrian shouted.
“Hey, I’m sorry that I don’t have a steady teaching job yet, but—“
“No, not that, I mean Mr. Lotts. I think he was a hundred and twenty when I started going to that high school seven years ago. But do you really want to teach high school math?”
“I’m not going to teach math. Ms. Anderson, who teaches accounting, is looking to move to Mr. Lotts’ class, for a change of pace.”
“Oh, sorry, because accounting is that much different than math,” Adrian sarcastically grumbled.
“Wait, there’s more. Mr. Isaacson, who teaches home ec., wants to switch to accounting. Shut your mouth, no, I’m not teaching home ec. Mrs. Vaughn always wanted to teach home ec., so she’s taking that class, which leaves her English class for me!”
“So…a math teacher retires and you get to take his place by teaching English?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Adrian, I’ve always wanted to teach English! She also teaches two honors English classes! It’s perfect!”
“The English department has had a new teacher for, like, three months, and they already need to find a replacement,” Adrian grumbled to himself in the dark. He fought back tears as he finally fell asleep in the dirty motel room.



Chapter Nine
“Wake up,” Adrian said as he shoved his younger brother off of the bed.
“Ow, what the hell?” Boone rubbed his head as he pulled himself up from the floor. “Why couldn’t you just shake me like normal people?”
“I did—for the last ten minutes!”
“Oh. Well, still, you didn’t have to push me like that.” He put on his shoes and coat and grabbed his cockroach jar.
“Do we really need those?” Adrian whined.
“You’ll thank me here in a minute.”
“Will I really?”
“Hey,” Boone said as they went out the door, “cockroaches are very useful creatures, if you’re a magician, that is.”
A smile starting at the corner of his lips, Adrian asked, “What have you got up your sleeves, Boone Alastair?”
“I told you to never call me that, Adrian Anlon!” he snapped. “And you’ll see. But first I want breakfast.”
“Don’t call me Adrian Anlon! And are you kidding me? You’re going to walk into a restaurant with a jar of cockroaches?”
Boone held out the jar of cockroaches in his right hand and tapped his chin with his left. “Good point. Fine—I’ll make use of the roaches first and then we’ll go eat.”
They walked down the stairs in by the glow of the floodlights in the parking lot. At six o’clock, the sky was still as dark as it had been that night. Boone turned at the corner of the building and snuck behind it.
“So, what exactly do you plan on doing with the cockroaches?” Adrian asked as he shivered against the cold.
“Well, with seven, we should at least be able to get a decent jalopy.”
“What now?”
“See, if you spend all of your time trying to avoid cockroaches, you’ll never learn that you can turn them into almost anything you want.” The younger brother sat the jar down in the snow and cast a spell over it. In its place soon stood a rather beat up but running twenty-year-old car.
“I didn’t know you could do that with cockroaches!”
“What did I tell you? Get in!”
Hopping in the driver’s side, Adrian grinned. The vehicle had that “old car smell” and came furnished with stained seat covers hiding torn seats, a thick layer of dust and dirt, and a collection of coffee mugs and garbage without a source, including energy drink cans, candy wrappers, foil, and receipts. But, at least it was a set of wheels.
When he started it, the muffler grumbled like it had a hole through it. The car had already gone about 208,000 miles in its lifetime according to the mileage counter. Adrian turned on the heater, which didn’t really matter because it would take the car at least fifteen minutes to warm up, by which time they would already be at a place to eat.
He pulled out of the yard and found his way to the main road.
“Pancakes!” Boone requested. “Somewhere I can find pancakes!”
“Pancakes it is,” Adrian answered, driving and searching at the same time.
Boone slumped down in his seat and joined his brother in looking at the passing signs. “There, Adrian—there’s a Denny's Let’s stop there.”
Adrian turned the car towards the restaurant and began pulling in the drive. His foot slammed on the brake as a wave of cold and darkness slowly slithered along his spine.
“Ouch, Adrian, what the hell?” yelled Boone after his body flew forward and pulled on his seatbelt.
As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, Adrian replied, “I don’t feel much like Denny's today. I think we should go somewhere else.”
“But I—“
“I said I don’t want Denny's, okay?” Adrian snapped.
Boone knitted his brows. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, let’s just get out of here.”
Too late. The car started to move from an outside force, picking up speeds that the speedometer couldn’t even gauge.
“Adrian, what’s going on?” Boone screamed.
With a white-knuckled grip and gritted teeth, Adrian desperately tried to turn the steering wheel in the hopes of freeing the car from its forced path. It was no use; the car continued to be hurled forward at rocket speeds.
“Adrian,” Boone gasped, “what’s going on?”
Before he could reply, the car came to a sudden halt, slamming its passengers into the dash board.
The doors flew open and the dazed young men were pulled out of the vehicle, Adrian harshly and Boone rather gently.
“We knew we’d get you back!” Alison cooed as she hugged her youngest brother. She looked up and glared at stumbling Adrian.
Just as Adrian appeared to have found his footing, he was stricken to the ground again by a crushing wave of magic followed by a twisting of chains.
The metal wound tightly around him in a serpentine fashion, digging into his skin and shortening his breath.
Darrius placed his foot on his son gasping in the driveway and cackled evilly. “You thought you could take him from us, did you? I should’ve just killed you alongside your mother when you were sixteen! You were the death of her, after all. You told us you were white, and I knew that couldn’t have come from the DeRes side of the family. I knew that woman had white in her blood. She polluted the DeRes line by producing you, and she deserved to die. Just like you.”
The chains wound tighter around Adrian, who could now barely groan through the lack of air.
“Stop,” Boone quietly moaned.
Shocked, Darrius accidentally lessened his control over the chains. It was a long enough moment for Adrian to take a deep breath and allow color to return to his face.
“What did you say, boy?”
Boone looked into his father’s eyes, and, for the first time in his life, glared into them. “I said ‘stop,’” he confidently stated. “Let him go.”
“Why you little—you’re like him, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I’m white.”
Alison turned and shoved him to the ground. She kicked dirt in his face. “I can’t believe you!”
With burning eyes he rose back to his feet. “Hey, Darrius,” he yelled to his father, “didn’t you hear me? I said to let him go!”
His father scowled. “Is that what you want? Well then, I’ll let him go!”
The tightly-wound chains containing Adrian lifted off the ground and stood him upright in midair. Then the chains quickly unwound from their prisoner, sending him off like a spinning top into the side of the mansion.
Sliding down the three stories like a bug from a window, Adrian lost consciousness and collapsed in a heap on the thin layer of snow.
Darrius laughed himself to tears. “It’s just too bad that didn’t kill him! Oh well, more fun this way! He’s going to be in so much pain when he comes to!”
Rage built up inside Boone. Without even thinking, he fired a spell directly at his laughing father.
Darrius fell screaming to the ground as his very bones burned like an inferno inside him.
“You little son-of-a-bitch!” Darrius screamed at his youngest. “Ali, get him!”
Alison was way ahead of him. Before Darrius could even finish his command, Alison had hit Boone with a spell of her own, an intense Nightmare charm.
Her younger brother writhed in pain as he was trapped in a world of misery created by his own mind. He was now detached from this world until the spell was broken.
At the side of the house, the middle DeRes was coming back around. His whole body ached, some of his bones were no doubt broken, and blood trickled out of cuts all over his body, but he still managed to pull himself to his feet.
Alison and Darrius were looking the other way as she helped dust him off and make sure he was all right.
Adrian hobbled quietly and determinedly towards them, murder gleaming in his eyes. When he was near enough, he quickly used his magic to tie Alison up and push her off to the side of the driveway. Boone continued to scream in horror and pain at unseen demons.
“It’s just you and me, dad!” Adrian said through a bleeding lip. “I finally have the chance to do to you what I’ve wanted to for years!”
“You think so?” Darrius shouted. “You’re sadly mistaken, boy.”
He launched a spell at Adrian, who quickly blocked it. “Is that the best you’ve got?” Adrian hissed. “Come on, you bastard, I know you’ve got better.”
Adrian felt that one of them wasn’t going to make it out of this fight alive, and he almost didn’t care which one that was.
Darrius responded with a more intense blast, which Adrian again deflected, though it forced him a step backward. “Nope, try again!” he yelled with a touch of insanity.
Furious, his father tried once more. Once more, it was met by Adrian’s counter spell.
Adrian quickly retaliated this time. He bound his father’s ankles and wrists, causing him to fall to the ground, swearing at the top of his lungs.
“You’re going out old-school, you bastard!” Adrian growled as he pulled out his knife.
“You don’t have the balls for that!” his father taunted.
“Don’t I?” With that question, Adrian thrust the knife into his father’s chest. Darrius howled in pain and then lay on the ground bleeding.
Adrian wiped his lip on his sleeve and then turned around to his younger brother.
“Time to wake up, Boone,” he whispered as he broke the spell that was holding Boone prisoner to his own nightmares.
Boone stopped writhing on the ground and just lay motionless, breathing deeply. Finally, he blinked his eyes open.
“That’s better,” Adrian sighed. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
“Not so fast!” growled a voice from behind them.
Adrian whipped around to see his father, unbound, staring at him.
“But how are you still alive?!” Adrian yelled, jumping into a position to defend himself.
“‘Blacker hands’, you little white bitch!”
Boone jumped up beside his brother, ready to fight.
“Oh, am I supposed to be scared of you?” Darrius cackled. “You’re still just a kid! You haven’t even graduated Whitewall yet!”
“Hey,” Adrian yelled back, “I never even went to Whitewall, and I seem to be holding my own against you fairly well.”
“Yeah, but you can’t beat the two of us,” Alison answered. She, too, had gotten free of Adrian’s binding.
“And you already know you can’t kill us,” Darrius pointed out. “The best you can do is torture us a bit and leave us to eventually hunt you down again. Any way you look at it, we win. You’re just not black enough.”
Adrian stood facing his enemies, prepared to attack, but did nothing. He knew they were right.
Boone looked over into his brother’s eyes, dulled with defeat.
“Let’s finish them now!” Alison giggled with delight.
Before she could cast the spell, Darrius grabbed her wrist. “Let’s not.”
Adrian and Boone stared back, wide-eyed. “What?” Adrian asked. “You’re letting us go?”
“Not exactly…” their father replied, a despicable smile creeping around the corners of his mouth. “We’re going to kill you, and it will be slow and painful. And, on top of that, we’re going to make it even worse by having it haunt you everywhere. You know you can’t defeat us, so one day we’re just going to finish you. But you won’t no when, where, or how.”
With that, he thrust them back into the car and sent it far away.
“Now,” he sighed, turning to Alison, “we begin planning their downfall.”
They went back inside the mansion.