Awakening - The Last Science #1

Interlude II - Selling One's Soul - II

  The world shifted. Brian felt air whipping at his cheeks and hair. It was how he imagined a wind tunnel must feel, being surrounded by rushing wind trying to unbalance him. He tried to steady himself, and found his foot falling much more forward than he'd expected. His momentum vanished in an instant. Brian let his eyes slide open.

  They'd travelled all the way back to the old RV park outside the town, some ten minutes by foot from the place he'd seen Jackson burn the two men and an easy half hour from where they'd stood only moments earlier.

  "What did you do to me?" he asked, ripping his arm away from Jackson's grasp and stumbling backward.

  "I brought you here to see, like I said. Nothing more." Jackson pointed at the nearest mobile home. It looked as though it had been abandoned decades earlier. There were cheap plastic chairs set out front, and a few cardboard boxes of empty beer bottles scattered around the exterior. The RV itself was dark, as dark as the night sky above them, but the side door stood slightly ajar. As the wind stirred past them, it swung wide and clacked against the wall with a foreboding echo.

  Brian wasn't one to scare easily. He'd been a landlord for many years now, in cities that far outstripped tiny Rallsburg, dealing with any number of strange or disturbed tenants. He'd had knives drawn on him, hurled himself between domestic fights, and evicted the worst of humanity more than once. With the relatively light sheriff's presence in Rallsburg, he'd grown to rely on himself and himself alone to keep his properties in line. The college kids he usually rented to these days weren't so bad, but a few of his other residents featured the worst and weirdest the Northwest had to offer.

  Not one of those many encounters approached the level of unease he felt staring at the shadows just inside the door. His skin was crawling as he walked forward and tapped on the door lightly.

  "Anyone home?"

  "There's no one well enough to answer you in there," Jackson replied, so calmly that Brian shivered. He noticed that his companion seemed fatigued from their journey here. Jackson was leaning heavily against the wall, and made no moves to follow Brian into the RV. Dreading what he would find inside, Brian pushed the door open gently and took a step into the interior. It was still too dark to see anything. He felt around for the light switch near the door and flicked it on.

  He wished he hadn't.

  "There exists a certain trading ground, a neutral territory where magic users can trade information and materials," Jackson started, his even tone completely at odds with the horrors contained within. Brian was barely paying attention, his eyes fixed on the bisected young man seated before him. "It stands within a pocket, for lack of a better term. An area larger on the inside than the outside, a rift in space."

  Brian finally tore his gaze away from the man—or more precisely, the lower half of the man, for the torso and head were nowhere to be found—and overcame his disgust enough to view the rest of the room. The pool of blood seeping out lead him to spot the second young man, who Brian guessed to be an RSU student based on his age and what remained of his clothing.

  He began murmuring a prayer, feeling tenfold more religious today than he had in his entire life. The second man was covered in burns, his clothing scorched and in tatters from the flames. The skin was blackened, and some parts simply seemed to melt away from the body into puddles of flesh.

  "Such a space can't exist without someone to maintain it, and the woman who does so keeps a tight lid on the secrets of creating it. Even I have no idea how she pulls it off. Since it remains the only truly secure location to trade something as volatile as magic, she can take a high tax from her customers," Jackson continued, stepping into the RV, seemingly unconcerned with the flies angrily buzzing about the room. Brian felt his throat constrict and only narrowly avoided letting his gag reflex take over entirely.