I rested a hand on his, and he opened his eyes again. They were ablaze, bright, like fire at midnight. It startled me at first. As he looked on, an electric current passed between us. It rushed over my skin, causing my insides to tingle in almost painful delight. Slowly the fire in his eyes faded to smoldering embers before the deep darkness emerged again.
“Is she gonna be okay?”
The skaters had gathered around, all color drained from their faces.
Jared winked at me before turning to them. He placed a finger over his mouth. “Shhhh,” he whispered.
Their eyes opened and shut as though trying to clear their heads. They stood up straight, then went back to jumping anything unfortunate enough to be in their paths, laughing and shouldering one another as they rolled down the street. The fact that I lay on the pavement after being hit by a truck seemed to have been forgotten.
I beamed at him. “How did you do that?”
A dimple appeared at the side of his mouth. “Magic.”
His eyes sparkled like the air around us, and I had to force myself to focus.
A male voice intruded into my thoughts. “I know a little magic myself.”
I looked up and gasped. Cameron was standing on my other side, aiming a rifle point-blank at Jared’s chest.
Jared raised his hands instantly as if to block the gunfire. “Be still,” he said in a harsh whisper. And the air thickened, the world slowed to a surreal halt, a frozen labyrinth of objects and people—either out of place or out of time, I couldn’t decide.
Despite this, Cameron discharged the rifle. Bullet after bullet collided with Jared’s chest.
I jumped wide-eyed with every shot fired, feeling as though each deafening sound struck me physically. But no bullets hit me. They hit Jared, each round punching through his body.
The shock of witnessing such violence immobilized me. But only for a minute. Instinct took hold. Without thought, I tried to get to my feet, to block the lead from entering Jared’s body. Before I could lift myself off the ground, however, Jared placed his knee on my chest and held me down.
“What are you doing?” I screamed, clawing at his leg, trying to squirm out from under him, to no avail. I turned my head from Jared to Cameron. “Stop!” I tried to be heard above the roar of the gun. “Cameron, please stop!”
When the rifle was spent, an eerie silence echoed off the buildings around us. The acrid smell of gunpowder stung my nostrils and left a smoky trail in the air.
Cameron grinned at Jared. “Be still?” he asked with a chuckle. “That’s the best you got?” He pulled back the bolt and began reloading the rifle. “News flash, Reaper, that crap doesn’t work on me.”
Jared stood and I took the opportunity to scramble out of the way. Then I realized he’d just done the impossible: He stood.
“I wouldn’t say that’s the best I’ve got,” he said with a shrug, “but it impresses the girls.”
“Yeah, so do bottle rockets.”
“There’s no blood.” I stared up at Jared in disbelief, unable to blink, to comprehend what had just happened. “There’s no blood. He just shot you.”
I studied the frozen world around us: A mother peered into a store window as her daughter giggled and licked a dripping ice-cream cone, a sizable dollop inches from the ground. A skateboarder hung suspended in the air, his skateboard clinging to his feet as he jumped a park bench. His friends cheered, their laughter captured in time like a movie on pause. The camera crew across the street was staring as if in shock at a delivery truck as it passed through the intersection.
Still lying on the ground, I looked back at Jared, at the holes the bullets had torn into his chest. Yet he was standing, breathing. None of it made any sense.
Especially the smile on his face.
He eyed Cameron from underneath his lashes, flashed him a menacing grin. Then he changed, almost glowed, became so transparent, the bullets fell through him to land on the ground in a succession of light taps.
“That wasn’t very nice,” he said, becoming solid again. His white T-shirt still bore the holes of its recent abuse, each blackened by the blast of gunpowder. But not even a blush of red stained it.
Cameron sighed as he dropped another shell into the chamber. “I know,” he said in almost bored contemplation. “My manners suck. I like to chalk it up to a dissatisfying childhood.”
“I’d chalk it up to that narcissistic personality disorder laced with a smidgen of schizophrenia. Your mother would be proud.”
Cameron’s head snapped up in disbelief. Anger watered his blue eyes and hardened his strong features as he chambered a shell and again pointed the gun at Jared.
I leapt to my feet. “No, Cameron!”
Without unlocking his gaze, he shoved me roughly back to the earth, too intent on baiting Jared to bother with someone so apparently inconsequential.
“You’ll tell Mom hi for me, won’t you?” Cameron asked as he eased the trigger back. He received only a click for his effort.
“Magic,” Jared said with a wink.
Undeterred, Cameron took the rifle in both hands and swung. But Jared caught it millimeters from his face and slammed it back into Cameron’s jaw. He stumbled back, tested his jaw, then charged.
The fight that ensued seemed more mystical than real, as though two gods had chosen Earth as their battlefield. Each possessed strength beyond explanation.
I sat horrified. I winced with every throw, tensed with every collision of fist and body. While the earth stood still, a heated battle raged on the quiet streets of Riley’s Switch. And with every swing, my breath caught, certain it would cause the death of one of them.