We took the other shortest way to my neighborhood since the Canal Path was partially blocked due to the Route 1 bridge being somewhat collapsed. We went south about three hundred yards to the university’s back parking lot and then down the hill, breaking open the crummy security bar on the chain link fence they had in the way.

  We busted our asses going as fast as we could because we could hear all kinds of weird shit going on. Explosions, shrieking, and otherworldly noises were coming from the main campus and some of the residential buildings prompting us to haul ass to my house. Luckily, nothing wanted to tango with an armored dude and his friend the human truck, both of whom were decked out in intimidating medieval weaponry.

  “Your house?” Elvis questioned, pulling up short as we turned onto my street. I saw what he meant and I couldn’t believe my own eyes. My little picturesque suburban house was completely overgrown with trees and thorny vines and bushes! It was a little hard to tell as everything mixed together in a slowly writhing mass of vegetation.

  “Hey honey!” Sandra called out, standing on a branch of some kind of unidentifiable plant matter that extended up and out from the house. Her blonde hair was whipping in the wind from being forty feet in the air but I could see her wide smile from here.

  “What the-” I started, slowly walking forward. Elvis stayed where he was.

  “If your wife did that then I’m going to be back here.”

  “Smart man,” I muttered as I kept on walkin’, taking it all in. The writhing amalgamation of vegetation was hard to piece together. The constantly moving bits made it hard to figure out exactly what was what. It’s like three somewhat related puzzles had been put together but it still magically fit together. Some part of my hindbrain said that plants shouldn’t move like this.

  I stared at the latest version of my house. Some of that madness was from an oak tree, I recognize the many-fingered design of the leaves, but the other stuff was off-putting. The thorny rose bush from the front yard enveloped the structure of the front porch and the other side of the house where I originally got the cutting was overgrown with vines as well. The berry bushes had crawled up using the rose vines as an anchor for their growth but there was another tree in the center of the wall that wasn’t there before.

  The branch supporting my wife descended and she hopped off, giving me a big kiss. “Isn’t it awesome!” She squealed, hugging me and dancing around. “You’re not going to believe this!” Grabbing my hand, she dragged me to our backyard. “Look!”

  The weird silver tree we created earlier this morning was glowing a bit in the sun and two of its dark brown seed pods were split open. One of them was empty and the other had a dark blue crystal orb with four blocky spikes sticking out.

  “What happened?” I asked, walking around the tree and examining the seed pods. The empty one fell into my hand the moment I touched it but the split one warmed with skin contact.

  My wife brightened like the morning sun, her excitement putting a smile on my face. “Oh you’re NOT going to believe it! I did what you suggested, commune with the tree? Well, I was meditating and growing our garden like I did earlier, but our garden was fine, ready to be picked actually. And! And!” She took a deep breath as I made the motion to slow down. “The energy I gathered didn’t really have anywhere to go so it started to seep into the tree.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Sooooo, I slowly guided the extra energy, you know, gently feeding it into the tree here as it felt a bit empty and the seed pods started draining the power like a starving baby goat! Those two pods split and I harvested the first one! The others weren’t ready yet though.”

  Her shit-eating grin was throwing me off. “AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED!?” I said dramatically, playing along with her storytelling style in which she spoon fed tiny bits of the story at a time.

  “Well then I was holding the seed pod fruit thing and dropped it completely by accident buuuuuut, it landed between the oak tree and the vines and BOOM! New growth! Then I had to act fast as it was growing out of control so I took control of the steroidal growth and it’s what let me grow a living security system for the house!”

  My face went from frowning in suspenseful confusion to jaw-dropping partial comprehension and then right on back to not know what the fuck was going on. I gave my most intelligent response yet, “Huh?” I turned around to look again at the silver tree and then at our house. “I don’t understand . . . how did that?” I asked, pointing at the open seed pod with a crystal fruit and then the house, “Get to that?”

  “The seed! My magic! It boosted my plant magic! It worked! I focused my magic through the crystal fruit and BAM!” She gave a little jig, her ass completely scrambling my brain for a moment. “I saw things! The seed is the answer! It’s a living battery of pure magical power! It supercharged what I could do! I saw so many things, infinite possibilities unfolding in my meditation! This is only the beginning. I used what we had lying around and the plants already living here!”

  I just stared at her, her enthusiasm wearing down my disbelief through sheer force of contagious joy. “I combined the strength and frame of an oak tree with the thorns of the vines and the tenacity of the raspberry bushes to make a super plant! It ate most of the metal you had around the house and now it’s super strong and nothing will be able to break into our house!”

  Sandra gave a coy little smile and then did a happy jig that completely distracted me in the best and worst of ways. With one finger, she redirected my chin so I had to look her in the eyes. “I know you were worried about security and now it’s all taken care of.”

  With laughter in her eyes, she pointed at a dull ax lying in the yard. What used to be a sharp edge was heavily notched, evidence of her smashing it into something not meant to be sundered by a mere ax from Home Depot.

  “Fuck me!” I breathed. “It worked!”

  Not really how I had planned it but the stupid tree does in fact fruit a crystalline seed that boosts and/or expands magic beyond its normal boundaries. A devilish smile crossed my face.

  “Oh, my, god!” I said, crushing my wife with a bear hug. “This just got spicy! This has the potential to take my Alchemy to a god-like level! With it, I could craft all kinds of insanity: super-futuristic gadgets or incredibly powerful personalized weapons or maybe we can even carve out my own underground society!”

  My mind ran wild and I almost forgot to breathe, my brain shooting into overdrive.

  I had other ideas too like using the crystal fruits to infuse pre-Advent bullets with mana so that guns could work or hijacking the Embrey Dam on the Rappahannock River to convert hydroelectric power into a never-ending source of mana. But what mattered most of all to my wife was that Sandra could use this to experiment with her Wayfinder ability, maybe giving it a boost so she can figure out how to use it and we can go get our families.

  Snapping back to reality, I crushed my wonderful wife in yet another hug, breathing in her sweet scent as I spun her around. “Holy fucking SHIT woman! You’re amazing! Do you realize what this means?” I yelled, setting her back down. Her face flushed as I gave her a big sloppy kiss on the forehead. I did have to double check though. “You can do this again, right? Feed mana into the tree to make it produce?”

  She nodded. “It’s not a quick process, I have to gather the energy slow enough that it doesn’t disturb or kill the nearby plantlife and feeding the gathered energy into the fruit is a delicate process. Also, the process takes a toll on the tree, so we need to do this slowly. We probably need to feed the soil when we get the chance.”

  I hugged her again. “That’s fine! That’s great! I mean, fucking tight! Ok, we need to experiment with this but think about it hun, this might be what we need to get to mom and dad, yours and mine.”

  Sandra squealed, wiping at the tears springing from her eyes. “You mean it? How?”

  I touched the second crystal fruit still hanging from a branch, tapping it twice. “Ok, we need to cover one necessity first. Take your time and get this fruit ready. We’re going to need it for one experiment and then we can let the tree rest.” Sandra put her hands on her hips. “Honey, it’s fine, I think I can make something with this and the medical supplies I got from CVS. I got the feeling that this crystal plus my Alchemy can create some sort of magical healing device, which means we don’t need our neighbors for their faith healing and it should be rechargeable.”

  “First, that’s a wild statement.” Sandra said with a raised eyebrow. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “You’re right.” I conceded, scratching my head. “But something is telling me we need to haul ass on getting ready and this tree and my Alchemy are two important pieces of our survival. We gotta experiment while we have relative peace. Who knows how long that’ll last. Plus, I can’t get what the crazy man who talked to an ArchAngel at the church told me.”

  “A week right? Isn’t that the feeling that you got too?”

  I squinted at my wife, waiting for her to explain.

  She sighed at me, gesturing all around at the weirdness that had taken over suburbia. “The message! The one that said ‘war is coming’. There was a feeling built into that that gave the impression of seven days and a wakeup. We get seven days before something happens.”

  My uneasiness grew and I glanced back at my stockpile of medicinal supplies. Something told me she just might be more right than she knows.

  Sandra started to pick through the wagon, rustling through the boxes of pills and liquid antibiotics. “So that’s what’s in the wagon, huh?” She asked, trying to peek over my shoulder. “Amoxicillin, opiates, high powered mold infection killers, muscle relaxers, you really could be a drug dealer for a week with all this.” Looking up, she nodded at a large form across the street. “Say, who was hauling all this with you?”

  I shrugged. “My new minion, don’t worry about it. Depending on the rest of the day we might get ourselves a sweet deal out of it. I saved his life, so he feels that he owes me.” I happily omitted some of the details of meeting Elvis. “Now, back to what I was saying.” I rubbed my gloved hands together like an evil genius. “Okay, you do your meditation thing again and get our moneymaker to produce magic power crystal fruits, be sure to not strain the golden goose, and at the end of the day, we’ll experiment with two of them to see if we can activate your Wayfinder ability.”

  “I’m still not following,” she said, frowning at me.

  “Think of it like giving you a boost, like the people trying to work out a specific muscle but they don’t feel it so you have to poke it while they use it.”

  Sandra just stared at me blankly. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  I rubbed my face with one hand before trying a different analogy. “Okay, you can maybe use it to inject a bit of extra power in you to shake something loose, possibly rattling your magic to the point where you see where it is inside of you so you can do it on your own whenever you want. Like when they use that dye in the medical shows to find the cancer, the stuff that shows up on the MRI so they can take a picture of where the cancer is.” I handed her back the shell and pointed at the tree. “Keep this safe, this right here babe is our ticket to ruling the world.” I snapped my fingers. “Oh, shit, I have to tell you about my crazy ass day so far.”

  Her face had a thoughtful expression on it. “Sure, but I have an idea . .” Using our tenuous mental link, I heard her speak through it. [Wow, kinda forgot about this thing for a while. How far do you think it works? Think we can use this like a walkie-talkie?]

  I sent back, [I forgot about this too! Damn, this is too useful for us to not remember.] I fumbled around in my head for a bit. [Here, take a look at my memories if you can.]

  Concentrating on the events of the day starting with walking towards Citgo, I replayed everything in my mind, the zombies and the crazy gang (somehow managing to leave out my deal with Elvis), and then almost dying from the clash of titans to getting all the good stuff from CVS. My plans and imaginings about what we could do and how we could do it also unfolded for her. Our mental communication flowed faster than speech normally allowed, emotions and understandings underpinning each transient thought as it went through my head. Her own experiences of the day leaked through, the joy at actually getting to be one with nature during her meditation, the rush of power while directing flows of ambient essence towards her plants and her home. I pulled back instinctively as our thoughts began to meld too far.

  “Ok,” I said aloud, rubbing my forehead. “Ow. We are going to have to practice that slowly. That was-”

  “Intense!” Sandra gushed.

  “A bit much.” I said hoarsely at the same time. A hurt look crossed her face but it disappeared so fast I must have misread her. “That kinda hurt.” I massaged my temples.

  Tossing her hair back, she smirked. “You do have emotions!” She teased. “You have all of them! How come you don’t communicate that with me?”

  I ignored her teasing jab and walked into the house with her, muttering something about ‘starving my ass off while you sit on a plant all day’. Sandra playfully shoved my shoulder and we talked for another ten minutes, getting our plan for the rest of the day straight. She let me know that she was going to continue her meditation and crazy plant magic experimentation as well as directing the flow of ambient energy in the area to the silver tree but I made her promise not to use anymore of the fruits until I got back.

  I was going to get a house set up for Elvis (thank god she didn’t question me further on that) and then raid the Olde Towne Firearms shop about a mile downtown. I really wanted to keep my wife away from the violence as much as possible and having Elvis serve as my tank and enforcer would allow Sandra to keep her gentle heart as long as possible. It might be a disservice to shelter her but this woman would bake pies for hardened criminals if I let her. No cause was too big and no problem too small. Every Wednesday night she still worked at the local soup kitchen and donated to the Goodwill every chance she got.

  But I couldn’t help it, I kept coming back to all the possibilities of what my wife and I could do with those crystals and the way those things could enhance our abilities. Then another part of my brain perseverated on the fact that shit was going to hit the fan, worse than what it is right now. Disasters have come and gone but humanity has a dark side. We are primal creatures and the very thin skin of first world America was about to be peeled back.

  I shuddered to think about the rest of the world.

  Several days without adequate food, limited supplies of drinking water, and having to tough out no power which means no air conditioning or easy travel, that’s nothing compared to the remaining population getting powers that gave the Norse and Greek mythology its popularity. I can shift earth and lift cars AND I can rearrange base materials into whatever I want, so what happens when a hungry person with the power of a demi-god sees what he wants?

  What happens to the prisons when the worst of the worst get their hearts’ desires and the freedom to exercise it?

  With the wagon unloaded by Sandra using her telekinesis, it was a cinch for my wife to organize and store everything away. I watched her offhandedly grab a bag of Doritos for herself to munch on as I restocked on water, making sure to grab a few water bottles for Elvis. The day was starting to get hot.

  “Oh babe, I made you turkey sandwiches and there’s some snacks in there too. Share with your ‘minion’, I made a lot.” She said, making air quotes with a laugh. I grinned, knowing I was still the luckiest man alive. Grabbing the plastic bag filled with the food, I kissed her deeply, pulling her close before giving her a goodbye hug.

  “Thanks babe.” I said, checking to make sure I had everything before heading out. Taking two minutes to scope out the area and finding it devoid of animalistic creatures baying for blood, I quickly walked down the street.

  “Here.” I said, finding Elvis chilling in the shade. I tossed him a few foil-wrapped sandwiches. “Eat up, I actually need to take you somewhere first to get your head fixed and that’s a bit more important than your house right now. The church a few streets over has healers. We have a few friends there too.” And I meant it too, what I said about getting him his own place. The cluster of houses closer to the end of the street where we were would actually, or probably, work out well for him. He was so big that I felt like we may have to build up from scratch.

  “Thanks,” Elvis grunted, drooling as I unwrapped my own sandwich.

  We both sat in the shared yard for the cluster of four houses at the end of the street. Peace and quiet would have happened if the young man next to me didn’t eat like a starving chicken, pecking at his food with a cavernous maw that would put a great white shark to shame. Not even three minutes had gone by and he was done with his and I was only halfway.

  “No.” I glared at him as he eyed my bag. The dirt underneath it rose up like a desert dune and sloughed further away from him, carrying the bag like a thieving mole. “Mine.”

  “You said-”

  “I know what I said!” I interrupted, taking a drink to wash down the thick turkey sandwich. “And you got fed. There’s more food but you’ve had enough now for us to get through till the end of the day. Besides, you getting your head fixed is more important. Trust me, we’ll get more food later.”

  *********

  Sandra

  My husband knows me so well. I got to do all the things I’ve always wanted to do, make an epic garden, play with wicked cool plants, and make food. Shoulda been one of the Amish . . . . maybe I was in a past life. This apocalypse is like camping in ‘strange’ mode. On the one hand, nothing works. My fridge has kicked the bucket, the basement freezer is out, air conditioning has gone kaput and fire is required to heat things up. Everything took a hundred year step in the reverse direction. All of my nice appliances were suddenly pointless. Now, on the other hand, I can use magic and mature plants at a pace that’s visible to the naked eye, which means the Irish standard of living is upon us.

  POTATOES!

  But really, as cool and as unreal as it all seems right now, I’m very grateful that Grant took the time to turn our house into a magically enhanced fortress with a defensive stone wall for a fence. It served as the perfect foundation to my living security additions. Now, I can keep working on the things that really matter, getting this place situated properly so that we can figure out my Wayfinder ability.

  God I hope he’s right, that this will be exactly what I want. I just can’t imagine how lost and afraid our families must be right now. My parents are old and my brother has a couple kids and my husband’s family is up in Northern Virginia which is way more populated than where my relatives are. More people equals more danger.

  Tucking rebellious strands of hair behind my ear, I looked over the house we’d come to know and love. I did have to laugh, the plant covered structure absolutely looked like something a mad horticulturist would come up with. I had a trippy dream last night, that Disney movie with the smart house with a bad attitude, well what if it was made out of plants? And then my meditation experimentation went a bit overboard and then we have a mutated facsimile of last night’s dream.

  At least it’s pretty cool.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Grant

  Figures. First Christian Church was not too happy to meet my new buddy Elvis. The idiot had to mention, and I bear the slimmest sliver of responsibility for not telling him to keep his mouth shut, his Greco-Herculean heritage. When someone says ‘show me your status’, you don’t have to freaking do it! Our ten-ish minute walk to get here was peaceful up and to the point of the zealots losing their goddamn minds. Too many flaming swords were pointed in our direction for my liking.

  “Heretic!” “False gods!” “Deceiver!” “Satan!”

  I wanted to put one of their massive oaken pews through a fucking wall but I didn’t out of courtesy for the simple fact that nobody had actually attacked us yet. They reminded me of chihuahuas, all bark and no bite. Except that they technically had the ability to be a threat. A few of them were actually flaming swords in the air in our direction. So maybe a chihuahua with a shotgun would be a better descriptor of this situation.

  I stood in front of the poor giant of a kid as a pious crowd surrounded us in the center of the auditorium of the small-ish church. The atmosphere had gone from blissful surviving refugee camp to ‘grab your torch and pitchfork’ real quick even though the zealous bastards were more than welcoming at first. Blades glowing with a hot white fire revealed themselves as the men in Sunday best suits inched closer, their faces in the throes of righteous fury while the women both young and old held up handfuls of burning Angelic fire.

  Every scrap of darkness and shadow was immediately banished from the area. Not two minutes before this moment of ignition they were very peacefully and sweetly discussing setting up gardens and building church member housing on their property. Soft, calming light emanated from everywhere, the church seeming to have a source of illumination without a central point of origin. It was cool but very disconcerting, I noticed that there weren’t really any shadows in the building.

  “Not Satan!” I yelled, hefting my shield and ax in front of me. “Hercules!” Probably not the best time to throw a shitty joke in there but my hopes of diffusing a crowd were all I had in the face of these numbers. “Mike! Isabella! Where you at?!” I looked around desperately as Elvis and I slowly walked backward. I raised my voice, veritably booming and almost scaring myself. “Earl! Mansfield!”

  “I didn’t do anything?” Elvis mumbled numbly, holding his hands up. He looked like a huge child that had broken a porcelain vase by accidentally bumping the table.

  Purest white luminescence flared, completely whiting out all vision for three seconds. “Enough!” The suddenly quiet crowd parted as Pastor Mansfield stepped forward, his command granting him a presence that wasn’t there a scant twenty-four hours ago. At least a third of his wrinkles were gone and his cane wasn’t supporting his weight anymore, merely something to hold on to, a reminder of the years lived that he left behind. The damn preacher had even put on a bit of muscle, filling out his suit in the chest and shoulders. Even his silver hair had gained some color. “My child-” He started.

  “Apparently not!” I scoffed, glaring at the crowd as my grip tightened. “Christian charity my ass!” The crowd started forward again but Pastor Mansfield held up one hand, stopping them in their tracks. I was just getting started however, my temper bringing my intelligence score down just a hint. “I bring you two of your own flock back to you, protect them on their dangerous journey, and now I bring you someone else who needs your help, your healing, and THIS is how you treat the patient and the messenger?”

  I watched all their faces as I vented. Faces of quelled rage were mixed in with shame. “I even told you people that I had news-”

  “He’s right.”

  I shut my mouth as the magically de-aged preacher openly admonished his flock, rounding on them with sudden fervor. “Do we turn away those seeking help? Do we pick and choose when we show our love? Serena!” The slender teenage girl from the day before stepped forward. I didn’t catch her name yesterday but her solemn eyes held a religious fire that scared me a little. Pastor Mansfield slowly walked over to Elvis, putting his aged hand on Elvis’ elbow. “Attend our new friend.”

  The culty feel of this place was starting to get to me. From the almost explosive display of mob anger to the religious fervor that made all of their eyes gleam like inspectors for the Spanish Inquisition, the shivers running down my spine were screaming a message that was somewhere between ‘run for your life’ and ‘they want to wear your skin’. Not having shadows was also disconcerting. It’s not natural for anything to be this bright.

  We humans were not made to exist in a land this bright. Our eyes are keyed to the subtle differences in light, meaning shadows are integral to how we perceive the world. It kept throwing my depth perception off. I noticed that it didn’t bother anyone else here.

  Elvis looked at me and then back at Serena, squinting as he worked out the situation. I nodded. “Go on, sit down in that pew, I’ll be right over here.” I took a deep breath and tightened my grip on my axe as my magic flowed through my armor and every piece of metal coating me. If I had to, I could magically fling the shards of metal in my armor outward, turning myself into a human grenade. I watched as my overlarge friend delicately stepped through the crowd to sit in a pew near the back, and I was impressed that he chose the one closest to the door. Dumb luck or unconscious strategic thinking? I may never know.

  I almost laughed as his knees smacked into the pew in front of him, the setup not accommodating to someone of his immense size.

  Mansfield led me to a card table off to the side with three chairs some church ladies set up. As he sat down, one of them pushed in his chair while another filled up a glass of water for him. The matronly woman sniffed at me before pouring another glass. I definitely noticed that she only filled the glass up a third full.

  Asshole.

  Looking her square in the eye, I tapped the table twice in front of my cup with my small ax and gave a rude ‘eh-em’ cough. Only when she filled it up did I sit down. “Thank you!” I said, pointedly shaking my head at her. Putting my weapons on the floor next to my feet just in case I needed them, I rolled my shoulders and hunched forward over the table. A lone shadow or a weird trick of the light grabbed my attention off to the side for a moment and when I looked back, Earl was calmly sitting in the other seat.

  “Ahh!” I yelped, pushing my chair back. “How the fu-”

  “Please do not curse in God’s house.” The cheerful expression of the good father was strained as he lay his large old person Bible with the massive font down in between us. “I understand you have news?”

  Earl barely grinned. The pious asshole knew he scared the shit outta me, appearing like that. “Good news or fun news?” His hand drummed on the table. Even though there was no wind, the flap on his suit coat flared a bit revealing his wicked looking dagger.

  My heavy sigh made him wince. Scratching my head, I tilted my head towards Elvis. “Welp, unfortunately it’s really neither of those, or both depending on your outlook.” I spent the next twenty minutes laying out specific events of the day as I didn’t really want to disclose all of my secrets: the fight with Elvis’ former friends and the near brush with Death from the two superhumans flattening Fredericksburg like they were bastard children of a meteor and the world’s largest bouncy ball were the main focus. I didn’t forget to tell Earl and Pastor Mansfield about the fact that the police officers did have working firearms but I kept my suspicions about their lack of supply to myself.

  And maybe this wasn’t the smartest topic to cover, but I also put forth my working theory of the new state of religion. Both of them, surprisingly, listened to me intently as I went over the fact that Elvis had a bloodline directly related to Greek mythology, the church’s own healers had faith-based healing magic, and the conclusion that if magic is real then a whole lot of other things such as certain religions might be way more real than ever before.

  I pointed out the historical examples of Japan’s kamikaze bombings with their roots of Shintoism back in WWII and the wars with the Middle East and their jihad with its roots in Islam. Just to make sure I covered the possible horrific implications, I also alluded to the ancient Aztecs and their penchant for bloody subjugation and even more terrifying lust for sacrifice.

  “And you think we might start our own crusade, is that it?” Earl grunted, casually lighting a cigar as his eyes narrowed. The lighter’s flame danced across his fingertips before dissipating.

  Pastor Mansfield put his hand on Earl’s shoulder. “We’ll have none of that here.” I raised one eyebrow as I looked at the dispersed congregation, some of them still eyeing me as if I shouldn’t be caught dead in a church.

  I answered his glare with my own. “Ya sure? Not that it matters but this is the Bible belt. You aren’t the only Holy game in town. There’s a church every other block around here. And I believe the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades won’t be far from anybody’s mind.”

  Looking around at the fervent crowd that was casually trying to be surreptitious and eavesdropping on our conversation made me chuckle darkly.

  “Boy!” Earl laughed, leaning back in his seat. “I don’t think anyone here’s gonna touch you unless you let them. Most of the flock here don’t have a clue what they’re doing yet and even less of them have thought about the next few days.”

  “Look,” I started, pulling a small chunk of cast iron off my armor. Taking a minute, I started molding the iron right in front of them so they could see what I was doing. Their eyes got big as I literally molding solid iron as if it were clay. Just to drive the point home, I pulled off another chunk and clinked them together so they knew it was metal that I was shaping with ease. “You have to understand that for better or for worse, magic is here and here to stay. You have to think about the long term, you have to leverage the skills of the people you have here into something resembling a functioning society. Think about it, you guys have people here who can HEAL!”

  I looked them both dead in the eye, trying to force my message into their brains. “Do you have any idea how valuable that is? How crucial to our survival, humanity’s survival, that one simple yet incredibly powerful ability can be?”

  To make my point, I smashed the iron chunks together and divided it into two pieces again before slowly pushing the gray mass back together to form a seamless whole. “Use those gifts, heal people, heal the sick and the blind and the old and the broken.” The metal blob morphed slowly into a coffee mug, then a small knife, and then into a perfect sphere. “Let the community come to you and build with you, but if you let a scared bunch of sheep with angelic weaponry poke at just-as-scared-bears, then even I won’t be able to save you.”

  Earl leaned forward, his eyes tightening as disbelief warred with self-righteous anger. “You think we should sell healing? Partition out the miracles of God?”

  Pastor Mansfield frowned. I held his gaze without flinching.“I thought better of you, boy.”

  At first, I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The sheer naivety just came off as ridiculous. But then it hit me full in the face. He was serious. This old fart couldn’t see past his own nose for two seconds to see another point of view. At least try to think about it before pushing back. Not asking you to convert to a new religion that’s for damn sure.

  “First off, I grew up a long time ago,” I growled, flexing my magic as the sphere of iron fluidly turned into a small replica of a missile, then into a plate and then finally settling into a wickedly detailed simulacrum of one of the monsters I’ve killed. Idly drumming my fingers on the table, I reshaped the iron into a beautiful dagger. “Secondly, I said ‘grow your community’. How are you going to do that unless you offer something? Think about it, who is going to want to help you people out more than Elvis? The big lug has been working with diminished mental faculties because of some kind of curse! How grateful is he going to be in just a few minutes? Huh?”

  Pastor Mansfield and Earl looked at each other meaningfully as I continued to adjust the shape of the dagger to have blood groves and a thicker hilt. “It’s really not that hard,” I continued. “Ask for some supplies next time they come back or help with something around the place. You don’t have to charge much. Ask for future benevolence. Please, tell me you’re not that one dimensional in your thinking.”

  Getting them to shift their current mindset was harder than I expected. I grew up in church and my wife went a bit when she was young. I’m well familiar with some of the blindspots that come with this paradigm. I know they’re not all the same but the cloth can only be so different from town to town. Church folk have the whole ‘charity’ mindset so ingrained into them that it’s hard for them at times to work in a ‘business’ mindset. Problem is, charity only goes so far in paying the bills. Shit, if the Amish can be actual sharks at their farmer’s markets then so can these new age freaks.

  “Well, he ain’t wrong,” Earl muttered begrudgingly, picking up the iron dagger and testing the edge against his thumb. A thin line of crimson welled up and he put his thumb in his mouth. “I don’t fancy squaring off one of them supers. None of us can flatten a building like that, even if it is unbelievable.” He pointedly stared at Pastor Mansfield. “I couldn’t do it and it might kill you to try.”

  “No, no,” Pastor Mansfield groaned, massaging his temples. “He’s telling us the truth as he believes it, which is enough for me.” I started at his words, glancing at the wide Bible in front of him that softened its glow. “And he’s right, if we want to survive, our best option is to put our trust in the Lord and build His church. A community will allow us to do more than survive, we will thrive!” He slammed his fist down on the card table. I could have sworn I heard bells ringing from his pronouncement.

  Earl leaned back, picking his teeth with my dagger. His eyes faded into a black darker than a moonless night. Then, his pupils twisted until each grew a pinprick of the brightest light.

  Instinctively, my armor sprouted blades as I suddenly stood. My legs knocked my chair back into the wall as I jumped up. “Hey! What the f-”

  “Peace! Peace!” Pastor Mansfield interrupted. He placed his hands on Earl’s shoulder. “Earl, he doesn’t know what you can do. Perhaps it is time to place faith greater than a mustard seed in our ally. He has only helped to the best of his ability.”

  Even though the old man called for peace, Earl’s eyes looked like they were less than two seconds away from either cutting me into pieces with holy lasers or about to release a demon straight out of the depths of hell. My instincts turned up the volume as I scooped up my shield and ax and kept backing up.

  Earl blinked. His gray eyes took the place of the freaky ones and he sighed. A thin line of blood spilled down his cheek from his left tear duct. “Phanuel’s Eyes-” Earl started.

  “The Angel of Truth.” Mansfield interrupted again, clarifying for me.

  Coughing in annoyance, Earl kept on. “Phanuel’s Eyes, my main ability, allows me to see the Truth of the Matter. Our good shepherd here next to me can hear the truth but verifying it has a cost. I can see far more of the matter than I desire.” His gloved hand absently wiped the blood from his face. “Back in the Middle East, I served as the lead convoy driver because I always managed to spot the IEDs and EFPs. I assume it’s the basis for my current abilities.”

  That didn’t make me feel better. The man’s countenance screamed that he was on edge and ready to attack. It didn't matter what he was doing, he came off like a naked blade hungry for more blood even after drowning in a river of the stuff. I took another slow step back towards where Elvis was being treated.

  Earl sighed and then called out, wiping the blood from his cheek. “I mean you no harm! I helped you before, didn't I?”

  I stopped. Bastard. He did. He gave me important information about my Alchemy, something that would’ve possibly taken me weeks to figure out.

  “Fine.” I snapped. I grit my teeth, forcing my hands to be still. “Fine! Then tell me why I can’t get it out of my head that you’re going to bite my head off the moment I turn around.” Shivers of forewarning gripped my spine, the sheer weight of some premonition that I was about to be chewed up and spit out followed by being burned alive. I steeled my resolve and stood even straighter, gripping my ax and shield so tight that they creaked in my hands. “What are you doing? This isn’t normal. Something about you feels extremely dangerous, like you’re a bomb and someone’s about to purposefully cut the wrong wire.” Eerie shivers ran down my spine. This feeling got worse, the primal one in the back of my brain screaming that I had stumbled into a cave of a hibernating bear and that I was one wrong move away from waking it up.

  Earl and Pastor Mansfield looked at each other and then at me. The good pastor’s face screwed up with worry. “There might be a reason . . . it’s the consecration.”

  I balked at his answer. “The wha-?”

  He held up his left palm. In the center was a small but rough circular scar that looked barely healed. “We all joined hands and prayed for protection and comfort in this time of need. We prayed for blessings and oversight, for this House of God to be our fortress in our tribulations. It wasn’t supposed to activate for another hour. Magic is more powerful than we were led to believe.”

  Mansfield held up his other hand to show the same scar. “Now we bear the mark of our Lord and His temple is protected. Any who are not of the flock and not immediately aligned with our purpose feel a need to leave. And our protector is empowered in this place.” Pastor Mansfield turned to look at Earl and nodded. “Earl Lancaster is far more powerful here in and on church property than outside of it.”

  I squinted in confusion as my feet were almost pushing me out the door. Literally. A metaphysical force was shoving my ass out the door.

  “Not. Without. ELVIS!” I snarled, forcing myself to be still. Even that couldn’t stop the involuntary quivers that warned me of incoming judgment.

  Loud smacks rang out as a wide matronly figure came out of nowhere and whacked both of the old men in the back of the head with her oversized book. As the pages fluttered, I could see that it was one of those with the words in really big font to help old people read.

  “DEREK WILLIAM MANSFIELD!” More smacks heralded the wrath of my portly savior. “EARL LANCASTER!”

  Oh it was too good not to watch. She was a beautiful sight, thick arms that held a southern old school grandma’s muscle from incessant baking and decades of labor in the garden wielded that large hymnal like a holy mace. Each thick papery thud slammed her wisdom into their dense skulls as both men cowered under the fury of a better, more durable generation.

  “THIS IS NOT HOW WE TREAT GUESTS! NOW IS IT!?”

  I almost shed a tear. Pure joy. Absolute comeuppance. Magnificent karma. And I got to witness it.

  Before I knew it, the southern whirlwind completely rearranged my situation. My rear end was parked at a far nicer table in the church’s kitchen with a fully healed Elvis and a platter of cookies and thick sandwiches sitting in front of us. A tall pitcher of almost frozen lemonade demarcated the unspoken line between the guests and our fervent hosts.

  I let out a small, evil grin. Bread and water sat in front of Earl and Mansfield

  Before we knew it, the consecration ritual had been hastily modified to accept Elvis and I as full guests with no restrictions as long as we meant no harm.

  Elvis wept as he tore into the food without a care. I tried to be stoic but couldn’t help my big smile as Meredith Gelder, or better known as Granny Wick, doted on us like lost children. “This’un here looks just like ma’ boy!” She tittered, wiping Elvis’ cheek with a napkin as she simultaneously snatched a cookie for herself. “Strappin’ corn fed bull to toss a log and smack a bully. Can’t be lettin’ a big’un go to waste, now can we? I know more than a few of our lovely lasses that be needin’ a good man to keep them on their toes. Didn’t Abraham have a couple wives, bet you could handle more than one of these lost lambs needing a strong hand to guide them. ”

  A soft cough from Pastor Mansfield drew the wrath of Granny Wick, her glare had them sweating as they weathered her ire for a few more seconds. “Just because one of you boys decided to go down the path of Paul and not get a woman doesn’t mean that the rest have to follow you. I can pick out three girls that would be happy to share this’un.” Her large hand squeezed Elvis’ cheek. They both gulped out a ‘yes mam’ before she put her Bible down and snatched up a wooden spoon. Faster than a scared rattlesnake, she rapped their knuckles with the spoon.

  I raised an eyebrow. “You want a taste?” Granny Wick asked, waving her spoon in my direction.

  I lightly shook my head as I folded my hands on the table. “No mam, just uh, making sure Elvis here is all good to go. His color looks better. If you’re the one who healed him or got someone to hustle on that, thank you.”

  She preened at the compliment regarding her organizational abilities. She turned to look at Elvis, fetching him another glass of milk to go with his lunch. The bulky young man looked good, much better in fact. A new healthy tan accentuated his chestnut brown hair and his dark but joyful eyes. A sort of fresh innocence belied his size, almost lending the air of a carefree buffalo to his frame.

  Catching my searching gaze, Elvis swallowed food. “Check it out! Check it out!” He burped and then shouted, “show full status!”

  I slowly read the magic floating screen of data.

  Trying not to grit my teeth at some of the ridiculous information I gleaned from Elvis’ status sheet, I focused on the good parts. Three of his outlined characteristics went up due to his being healed, which meant that he’d been surviving with a handicap so far. Imagine if that curse from the psycho goth chick was put on a normal person. They would have absolutely been a mindless drone under her control.

  Letting out a relieved smile, I patted Granny Wick on the hand as I noted the missing veins of black that used to peek out from Elvis’ hairline. He even looked like he spent a solid month getting trim. “They really healed ya good?” I confirmed, letting my own magical senses wash over him. “You certainly feel healthier.”

  “He better! Big BOYA ova’ heya ate half of my cookies and four sandwiches!”

  I glanced at Granny Wick as she smiled proudly and then proclaimed without a hint of reluctance, “Show status!” Her heavy, wide hands clapped down on my shoulders, rattling me to my core.

  My eyes nearly popped out of my skull. “Son of a bi-!”