Edith Buckner leaned down and laid a hand over the man’s heart. “Breathe,” she commanded. A shimmer stretched out from her hand.
The man bucked up violently, like someone had seized him by the belt and yanked. Then he fell back onto the floor.
“He’s still not breathing,” the first man said after a brief inspection.
Edith repeated her command a second time. During this instance, the shadows seemed to recoil from her.
A moment later, the man let out a large breath. Then he sucked it back in again.
“He’s alive.”
“Edith saved him.”
Gathering her robe around her, green light slithering through her horns and the tattooing on her face, Edith looked at Warren. “I’m glad you’ve come.”
Warren didn’t know what he was supposed to say. Part of him wanted to leave immediately. Just start running and not stop until he was somewhere out on the street.
“Your arrival isn’t any too soon,” the woman said. “Another few days, if you don’t learn how to mask your ability, the demons will feel you pass by and you’ll never be able to evade them again. Your suggestion trick won’t work then. They’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
“But I didn’t do that,” Warren said, pointing to the man, who appeared panicked and not quite sure of where he was. “He must have just…just had a seizure.”
“That wasn’t a seizure,” Edith said. “That was power. I’ve never seen anyone stop someone’s heart with a word before.”
“I didn’t—”
“He did,” one of the viewers commented. “I felt the power in his voice.”
Warren wished they would shut up as he watched the fallen man wander around shell-shocked, led and comforted by the man who had tried to treat him. I didn’t do that. I couldn’t have done that.
Yet he knew he had.
“Your powers started manifesting themselves when your stepfather tried to kill you?”
Tensely, Warren sat in an overstuffed chair and faced Edith and a man she’d introduced as Jonas. Jonas had asked the question. In his thirties, he was over six feet tall, almost as tall as Warren, and was built more heavily. His eyes were dark but glowed silver with energy. Although no one had said it, he was clearly the leader of the group, but Edith was close behind him.
Like the others, Jonas was heavily tattooed, but he had a number of scars and piercings as well. Several of them looked extremely painful.
“I don’t know,” Warren answered. After the close call out in the corridor, he wasn’t sure what to believe.
“You caused your stepfather to kill himself,” Jonas said.
“He had it coming,” Warren said defensively. “He’d killed my mother and shot me.”
Jonas held up a placating hand. “That wasn’t an accusation. Your stepfather sounded like an evil man.”
“He was.” For the first time Warren saw the strange growths on the back of Jonas’s hands. They’d been attached just below his wrists. Even with his improved vision, Warren could barely make them out. Writhing and twisting, they looked like small tentacles.
They were in a small room off from the main one. The building’s whole top floor had been mostly converted into one large area. Only four offices remained. Both rooms that Warren had been in featured strange graffiti on the walls and floors. There were also artifacts that he’d never seen before but that seemed somehow familiar.
The robed people sat in small groups. They ate and tattooed each other, working on totally naked landscapes of flesh. Others read from books and scrolls or practiced some kind of meditation exercises.
Others came and went all the time, bringing supplies and news of what was happening in the city.
“It’s just that most people don’t come into that kind of power at such an early age,” Jonas said. “In fact, I’d wager to say that no one in this room can stop a man’s heart with a word.” He smiled a little, and Warren knew it was to allay his suspicions.
For the most part, Warren knew he could read the man. Jonas wouldn’t be able to lie to him. But he could hide things from him. Warren felt those hidden things lurking around behind the man’s thoughts.
“You’re unusual,” Edith said, smiling.
“To say the least,” Jonas agreed. He reached into his robe and brought out a coin. Holding the coin in his hand, he looked at Warren. “Can you lift this coin?”
Thinking it was a trick, Warren hesitated a moment, then reached for the coin.
“Not with your fingers,” Jonas instructed. “With your mind.”
Warren took his hand back. “No.” Of course I can’t. That’s ridiculous.
“It’s not ridiculous,” Jonas said. “Before you came here tonight you didn’t think you could see in the dark.”
Warren acknowledged that with a nod.
“Many things that you thought of as impossible were possible even before the demons invaded the city,” Jonas said. “Reports of those things—out-of-body experiences, precognition, extrasensory perception—were in the news. You’ve heard of those?”
“Yes.” Warren didn’t know how many books on the subject his mother had bought and read and reread.
“The problem has always been the plethora of pretenders. There was no way for the public to separate trickery from true power.”
Warren had believed that everyone his mother had seen was a grifter only too glad to take his stepfather’s money. He’d never seen any true magic.
Not until the night your stepfather blew his brains out.
Jonas licked his lips and turned his attention to the coin. “Plus, before the Hellgates opened, the powers that had manifested had been slight by comparison. Only flashes and glimpses of what would come. Do you know what telekinesis is?”
Warren shifted. “I know what it’s supposed to be.”
“Indulge me.”
“You’re supposed to be able to lift things with your mind.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No. Of course not.”
Jonas smiled at him. “Why?”
“Because it’s not real. No one can do—”
Jonas took his hand from beneath the coin. The coin floated in midair. “Some can.”
Warren stared at the hovering coin. He felt the power Jonas was using to
