“Settle down, now!” one of them growled. He was sincere in wanting to protect the kids, but he didn’t move or grab me like someone who’s gotten into too many scraps.
“Hey! Don’t you move!” the cop yelled after me.
There was a snap, like a firecracker, then another, then the screaming began. “Goddamn it!” I said, struggling with the two men grabbing my arms. The playground crowd began to part as kids ran. There were two children on the ground in widening pools of blood, near the nine-year-old who was brandishing an old Colt Army .45.
“Fistulae Globis dormiat,” I shouted as I opened my Muladhara lens instinctively, gesturing at the boy’s gun. It wasn’t my most elegant working, but my close-to-a-carton-of-cigarettes-a-day habit was making my lungs feel like they were being grated like cheese as I struggled with the teachers in the oppressive heat. I felt my spell wrap around the pistol in the kid’s hand and then felt the crimson power radiating from the boy tear my working like cobwebs. Muladhara-against-Muladhara energies usually meant the bigger predator won. Not a comforting thought—I was used to being the biggest predator on the playground.
The spell did get his attention, and the boy pointed the gun in my direction and fired. I twisted one of the teachers trying to pin me, wrenching him between me and the gun. The man jerked as a bloody hole exploded in his back. He slid to the ground, convulsing in shock. I watched the life leave his eyes as he slid off me. The kid’s face twisted in anger. I tripped the other teacher struggling with me, and the kid shot him in the face as he fell forward.
The school resource officer who had hassled me at the fence was only a few steps behind me as the second teacher fell. He raised his gun and aimed at the boy. “Joey,” the cop called out, “put that gun down right now, son. Do it, or I’ll have to shoot you!” The kids were fleeing through the double doors back into the school, blocking the cop’s shot. Joey decided to make a run for it with them. “Joey!” the cop shouted and began to move into the screaming stream of children. Joey was lost in the blur. There was a loud bang, and the cop fell onto his back. I knelt beside him and saw he was still breathing, probably a vest.
I picked up the cop’s 9mm and continued after Joey. I don’t like guns. They make it too damn easy to kill. Even psychotics and children can pull it off with their help. However, bullets are faster than just about any magic spell you can care to lob, and I, for one, was not going to be the brain donor bringing magic to a gunfight.
Terror was smeared across the air of the cafeteria—shrieks of sanity being pulled loose at the seams, and sobs of innocence dying. Another gunshot. I dropped low behind a table by the door and found three little kids looking at me with huge eyes, moist with fear.
“Stay here,” I said. “Help’s coming.” In the grand scheme of things, it was the lamest shit I could utter, but it was all I had. That kind of bullshit still played with kids this age. They still believed in “Help’s coming” and “Everything will be okay.” I made my way up the brick hall to the double doorway that led out into Matthew Stone Elementary School’s central corridor. A little girl, maybe five or six, lay by the doorway, her tiny chest dark and wet with blood, her eyes fighting to stay open. They were pretty eyes too.
“Why?” she asked me, weakly. “Why did Joey hurt me? I thought he was nice.”
I knelt by her and brushed her hair, slick with blood, out of her hazel eyes.
“It ain’t Joey, darlin’,” I said softly.
“Am I going to die?” the little girl asked.
“No, honey,” I lied. “There are going to be some nice people coming along in a little bit. They’re going to want you to get up and go with them. You do that, and I promise you they will fix you right up, okay? No more pain.”
“Okay,” the little girl said. She looked past me. “Oh,” she said. “They’re … so … pretty…” She smiled at me, some blood drooled out of her suddenly slack mouth, and she died.
I set the gun down next to her. I didn’t want to touch the damn thing anymore. I closed her eyes, crouched beside her there for a moment, waiting for some higher power to do the right fucking thing by this child and give her her life back. When that wasn’t forthcoming, I got back to my feet. I didn’t worry about fingerprints on the gun; I had cooked up an enchantment on my prints and DNA a long while back that gave computers and technicians fits.
I followed the sounds of fear and death to their source. It wasn’t the first time I had heard those sounds, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last. There were sirens outside now, lots of them. I saw news trucks as I passed a window, clustering around the cops and EMTs like fucking maggots squirming on a carcass. At least they were predictable.
I walked down dark, cool corridors of hastily locked doors decorated with big construction paper suns smiling down on stick-figure children. First names of students, written on little laminated clouds, denoted their homerooms. My boot steps echoed along the tiled walls. I smelled gun smoke and piss. Smeared finger paint art projects, book reports written on wide-lined practice paper with colored drawings to accompany them, were like chains of islands between the doors. I could hear trembling voices whispering behind those doors. The fear of the children and the adults sworn to
