Boy Sorceress Pt. 03

I amplified the sound coming from them and listened in on the argument. The hookers demanded they be carried and insisted the Alphas fix things, right away. They demanded a car. The Alphas kept their cool and repeatedly explained their tactical situation. They refused to carry all the hookers at once, cause that would leave only the wounded among them free to shoot at me. They were trying to fix things, but they couldn't with their communications jammed. They refused to split up again. That had led to three of them getting knocked unconscious. They presumed that the other three had met with an even worse result.

The hookers didn't much care for the men's arguments and had a sit-in. The men didn't look very happy, but they didn't use violence against the girls. I had expected them to be way more callous with their charges. I guessed they had their orders and wouldn't deviate from them.

I laughed with relief when the men gave in and arranged the girls into a huddle. They set a few on watch and then joined the girls in the huddle. It was almost two in the a.m. and they were down for the count. Now, I only had to worry about the Thirteeners coming along to see what was going on with their human sacrifices. I was ready for that.

I spent the rest of the night keeping vigil over the small group of half-frozen security men and hookers huddling together on the side of the road. No cars came along until around five thirty in the morning. The three I had taken out came to by then. All the security men jumped up and blocked the road, forcing the pickup to come to a stop. I looked at the sky. A thick cloud cover rolled in and obscured the moon, which was barely above the horizon. It was almost over.

The pickup driver's cellphone couldn't get past my jammer, either, and four of the men wound up climbing into the cab, or the back, to go get help. I remained with the girls until I could see that the moon had set.

I cried as I drove off. I had stopped the sacrifice from going down. No one died. I went home, got into my dry, warm bed, and slept like the dead.

I woke up around noon and took the time to stretch. I wished I could take a personal day. I had been in knots for the past three weeks, but my work was far from done. I foiled them one time. They still had eleven more chances to increase their powers and they were doubtlessly going to change their plans for the next one.

Still, I guessed I had time for a proper breakfast before I had to get back to my surveillance. Or start fixing the Interceptor. I didn't even want to think about what the armor-piercing bullets had done to it.

I turned on the TV in the living room and went into the kitchen to scramble some eggs. I got some tomatoes, mushrooms and sausage from the fridge and began cutting it all up. That force field from last night stopped bullets and that must have cost me a lot of energy. Shooting a bullet is as cheap as a cartridge full of gunpowder. Maintaining an all-around field of that amount of force for as long as I had done last night? Whoa, Nelly. I didn't even want to think about it. I was going to change back into myself and step on the scale as soon as I finished with breakfast.

The news came on the TV, just as I put the pan on the stove. "Our top story today is the new massacre committed by the Riverside Ravager." I froze. "Eight beheaded bodies were found this morning in the countryside just north of Springfield." I had failed. My legs gave in and I collapsed against the refrigerator. "We go live to the scene, where our own Charlie Weston is waiting for us. Charlie, what new information have you been able to find out?"

"Hello, Jessica. It's still too early for the authorities to comment on their investigation, but we have been able to find out that all eight of the victims were employees of a security firm based in Springfield. A spokesperson for Alpha Security Solutions made no comment when asked about it, but..."

Of course. The Thirteeners had simply slaughtered the night shift. Well, half the night shift. Why had I thought that they wouldn't do that? Why had I assumed that they would act logically and not slaughter their allies? Why had I not stopped those men from getting to the mansion?

I had made dozens of plans for stopping the hookers from being sacrificed, but each and every one of them had hinged on the night shift guards being the ones to go pick up the hookers. That was the way they had done it every night I had watched them. The day shift had been the one that did that last evening. It was a colossal oversight on my part.

Why had I thought, even for just one moment, that I could pull this off and not fuck it up?

I sat on the cold tiles and listened to the news drone on about how this meant that I had also murdered the three other Alpha guys three weeks ago. They enumerated the long list of my victims and brought a shrink into the studio to tell them exactly how deranged I was. I couldn't give a shit anymore.

The Thirteeners were killing people left and right, even their own allies. They had murdered my parents. They had murdered my lover. They had pinned everything on me. They planned to take over the world. They could still pull that off. They could now cast spells when seen by less than a hundred and four disbelieving minds. If they sacrificed eight more times, their limit would be at over forty-five billion people.

They were going to pull that off. These fucks were actually going to make humanity their bitch.

It would take a freaking army to stop them now. I couldn't do that alone. I frowned. Didn't they just piss off a private army?

If one Alpha stands guard, all the Alphas stand guard behind him.

Couldn't I point the Alpha boys in the right direction? I should have done that weeks ago. This would have been over by now. The Thirteeners would have been in the ground. Those eight men would be alive. Tears came out as I grasped the magnitude of my failure. Eight more grieving families and their pain was all my fault.

I could never forgive myself for that. No one could ever forgive me.

I wailed in anguish and hammered my tiny fists against the fridge. For some reason, Skip came to mind. He had been a waste of skin and air, just like me, and he had brought misery to all that loved him. I had done that, too. But he had changed his life around. What was it that he had said?

I had no choice but to confront my inner asshole.

He had been stuck inside a tiny cell, all alone without his drugs, and he had changed for the better. I wished I could do that, too. But what was my drug to shed? Where would I find my cell? How could I confront my failures? I had no idea, but I knew I had to find the answers to those questions.

I thought about it long and hard. I even got up from the floor and moved to the couch. I tried breaking the questions down into smaller ones and guide myself to answers by writing everything down. I was completely lost inside my own head, but quitting was not an option. There were eight funerals being planned and they were on me. I had to figure this out. It was my responsibility.

The news came on again. They talked about me, of course, and how I had slaughtered all those people. Their shrink was back on and he talked about my many psychological failings. He was completely wrong because I had not actually committed any of those murders. I had merely led the murderers to the victims. That still made it just as much my fault.

Then he talked about when the first signs of my disorders could have first been spotted. He was scaring every parent in the state to get their child tested ASAP. It was a fairly blatant plug for his child psychology practice.

I was going to turn the TV off when they showed a photo of me as a kid. It had been taken at the house of a childhood friend of mine. I had been a guest at his birthday party and my party hat was hanging crooked as I made a face at the camera. I almost laughed. I looked ridiculous enough in the photo all on my own, but this quack trying to use it as an illustration of the early warning signs of my insanity was like something out of a Monty Python sketch. I shook my head at the absurdity of the situation.

My mirth passed quickly and anger supplanted it.

I stood up and paced the room, yelling at myself for being stupid and at the universe for being cruel towards me. Then I turned to the TV and yelled at the reporters for spewing lies. I yelled at the shrink for being a greedy, little, fearmongering, lying sack of shit. A cop came on the screen and I yelled at him for being a failed sack of donut-munching shit that couldn't solve a crime if it...I actually couldn't come up with an end to that sentence.

At that speechless moment, I had the first epiphany of my life. It was so small a thing, such a tiny idea, yet it changed everything that was going on inside my head.

This wasn't my fault. At all.

I was just an innocent bystander. I had not murdered anyone. The Thirteeners going around murdering people I knew was not my fault. I had done my best to keep the people I knew safe, but ultimately, their safety had not been for me to ensure. I had not failed anyone, or their trust. All the blame lay solely on the heads of The Thirteeners and the miserable excuse for law enforcement we have in these parts.

The only thing I had done wrong in the past month was believing the world's lies about me being the bad guy and thinking I had to right everything on my own. Now that I realized that, now that I accepted that in my heart as the truth, I was done with that shit. No more kph running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

I had nothing to atone for, no reason to hide. I was not the bad guy here.

The bad guys here were the fucking incompetent cops, led by that thundercunt FBI agent Hernandez, whoever the fuck she was. Mentor said that mind control wasn't really possible, so all this shit that had fallen on my head was actually her doing. It was the cops' fault. They had failed the public trust in a spectacular way. I was just a stupid boy with chronic bad luck who had his head on backwards because he had been depressed for a year.

Well, my head felt like it was on straight now. I wasn't going to work this thing all crabbed anymore. I was going to root out the reason for the police blaming everything on me. I was going to eradicate that reason with extreme prejudice. I should have done that the moment it first started happening.

Mentor had said that the corpses had to be left where they could be found so the world would have a chance to fight back. After I got the world to realize who was really to blame here, I was going to see to it that everyone with a gun for hundreds of miles around knew exactly where to find the remaining Thirteeners.

I sighed and sat back down on the couch. They weren't Thirteeners any more. They were One-Oh-Fours now. Taking them down was going to be a bitch of a challenge and all the reasons why I had not turned to the cops in the first place were still valid.

"Shitfuck."