Mayhem (3 page)

We order and minutes later, the pizza comes, extra cheese
and pepperoni, just the way Krystal likes it. She takes a slice and the cheese oozes all over the place, steam floats from the topping as she guides it to her mouth. For a minute I think maybe she'll put the slice on her plate. But then she puts it right up to her mouth and takes a bite. As she chews, Krystal fans her mouth and I laugh.

“You do that every time,” I tell her. And she does.

“I know,” she says, still chewing, sucking air into her mouth to cool it off. “Can't…help…it.”

So we're eating our pizza, enjoying each other's company, or at least I'm enjoying her company. Then the door opens and in walks trouble. I feel it before I even see them. And it only takes about two-point-four seconds for them to notice me and close in.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” says Mateo Hunter, with his close-cropped black hair and beady eyes.

His sidekick, Pace Livingston, is right beside him, dark blond hair and eerie light gray eyes. He smiles down at Krystal.

“If you were looking for a date, you could have just called me, baby,” Pace says to Krystal, wrapping his hand around the end of her ponytail.

She yanks away and I instantly sit straight up in my seat, ready for anything.

“Leave us alone,” I say in a voice that lacks a whole lot of conviction or confidence for that matter. But that's usually the case where these guys are concerned. It's not that I'm afraid of them, I'm not. I just don't want any trouble, or at least that's the way I used to think about dealing with them. It was just easier to fly below everybody's radar if I could. I tried to mind my own business, stay out of trouble, do my schoolwork and
help my dad and Pop Pop. Lately, however, I've been thinking about my life a little differently.

“Shut up, tracker!” Mateo snaps, then reaches over and helps himself to a slice of our pizza.

“Let's go, Jake,” Krystal says. She's looking at me with this concerned look in her eyes. I wonder if she knows what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking right now.

I hope not.

Strike him,
the voice inside my head warns.

“Not yet, sweetheart. We're just getting to know one another,” Pace says, trying to slide into the booth next to Krystal. She doesn't move over so he's kind of hanging half on and half off the seat.

Under the table my fists tighten. “Get away from her,” I say through clenched teeth. Only it doesn't sound like my voice. It sounds stronger, more forceful.

Pace looks over at me like he's just realized I'm sitting there. “Make me,” he taunts.

“Yeah, tracker,” Mateo adds, tossing his half-eaten slice of pizza down so it falls on the table right in front of me. Bits and pieces of cheese and sauce splash onto my shirt.

“Jake,” Krystal says. “Let's just go.”

She reaches across the table to try and grab my arm but I pull back and push out of the booth. “I said, get away from her,” I repeat to Pace.

My eyes are focused on him now. Heat is coursing through my veins like I've been injected with liquid fire. It pumps through me, making the muscles in my arms ache and my thighs tingle with what feels like more strength.

“And what if he doesn't?” Mateo asks, getting up in my face. He's so close I can smell whatever type of gel or gook
he puts in his hair to make it shine like rain. He's glaring at me, hatred seething from his pores.

I know the feeling, it matches my own. He wants to fight. I want to oblige him. Every muscle in my body flexes.

“What are you going to do, tracker?”

Mateo and I are about the same height, five feet seven or so. I remember him from the Little League baseball team, the one I only played on for a half season because Dad got tired of picking me up out of the dirt—where Mateo and his friends would always push me. But that was then. I'm not seven years old anymore, and Mateo is not going to continue pushing me around.

“You don't want this,” I say very slowly.

“Jake.” I can hear Krystal calling my name. She's standing now. She stands by my side and grabs one of my arms. Her touch is like electricity, sizzling through my body. I want to pull away to stop the force of the connection but I can't.

“Don't, Jake,” she says, her voice a little lower. “It's not worth it.”

“You gonna listen to your little girlfriend, Jakey?” Pace says, stepping up behind Mateo.

“Hey, what's going on over there?” The deep voice of the manager interrupts our argument.

But it doesn't drown out everything or everyone.

Strike him. Hard.

It's the same voice from earlier, the one that feels eerily like another part of me. My fists clench and I feel my right arm lifting.

“No!” Krystal yells putting herself between me and Mateo. “Don't. Do. This.”

Her eyes are serious, locked on mine as she speaks. I focus
on them, on their almond shape and root beer–brown color. Her skin looks so smooth, like Pop Pop's coffee with lots and lots of cream. Her lips are small, kind of heart-shaped, and her hair is so dark, so silky and long. My fingers are unclenching, flexing, as the urge to run them through her hair replaces the hot rage seething inside me a few seconds ago.

“Let's just leave,” she says again, and this time threads her fingers through mine.

Her touch is no longer electric but warm, soothing, like it's pushing everything bad away.

“Awww, isn't that sweet,” Pace taunts.

“Get out of here, all of you.” The manager is right up on us now, grabbing Pace and Mateo by their shirt collars and pulling them toward the door. “You two,” he shouts back at me and Krystal. “Pay your bill and get going.”

With Mateo and Pace gone, my heartbeat returns to normal. Everything seems to return to normal, my muscles don't tingle and I'm no longer seething with rage. Everything except I'm touching Krystal. Or rather she's touching me. Anyway, I like it.

We walk to the counter, she's still holding my hand. I use the other hand to reach into my back pocket and pull out a ten to pay for our pizza and drinks. I'm so into the feel of her hand in mine and the way she's looking at me that I forget my change and just walk right out with her by my side.

I could stay like this forever, with her hand in mine. But the stickiness of the heat outside greets us. And on top of the streetlight on the corner we walk by there's a black bird. It looks like a crow or a raven—whatever, they're from the same family. But its beady little eyes are on me, directly on me.

Next time.

The voice echoes in my head and I look back at the bird, which opens its beak like it's the one speaking.

“Where
are we going?”

Charon was tired of hearing the question. Beside them Lor, in his dark earthly form, groaned. It was no secret that Lor didn't agree with Charon's plan to include mortals. But Charon felt differently. They'd used other mortals, possessed them and made them do their bidding, but this one was different.

“Where we will be safe, for now,” was Charon's only reply.

It was hard to find a safe place here on this Earth, since there were now so many magicals. They could no longer remain in the Majestic. News of his betrayal and Styx's vengeance was spreading. The magicals were taking sides, forming allegiances, building alliances—some to him but most not. There were some who were trying to help them, the children of Styx—the Mystyx, as Lor discovered they were called. Styx wanted him to suffer, to never surface again. But Charon had other ideas. Her children had to join forces to kill him. That meant they had to band together to use their powers at the right place and the right time. Discovering their true purpose here on Earth wasn't going to be easy.

There were four of them and they were all different. Styx was smart, she had chosen wisely. Just as she had thought to protect them in some way. Charon had yet to figure out how.
That's why he'd summoned Lor. The dark beast was so hideous he couldn't reveal himself in the Majestic. He appeared as thick black smoke. This allowed him to see and hear things that others couldn't, so he could at times go undetected. It also allowed him to plant the seeds of fear in the children of Styx.

His goal was to divide and conquer. One of the Mystyx in particular was going to make that a lot easier. The boy called Jake was an open portal for darkness, his strength the perfect power to utilize. If he could simply woo him away from the others.

“Why can't we stay in Lincoln?”

Lor switched sides, covering the boy with his darkness. The boy—whose given name was Franklin but was called boy anyway—did not seem bothered by it.

There was something about this boy, something just a little dark and a bit more dangerous than the Mystyx or any of the others they'd channeled.
It wasn't obvious, in fact,
he thought. It was probably overlooked. This boy seemed inconsequential, but that was not so. Charon was positive of that fact. That's why he took him. This mortal would come in handy in his fight for power if Jake did not make the right choice.

 

“I can't wait until school starts. We're going to be juniors and you know what that means,” Lindsey said in her usual overly excited voice.

I didn't like her when she first came to Lincoln and some days she still rubs me the wrong way. But overall I guess she's cool. Especially since we know she's a Mystyx.

But she still talks too much.

It's been a couple days since the incident at Maggie's. School
is about a week away and my dad's finally letting up on all the chores. I swear I feel like I'm being abused as child labor sometimes. But today we're at the pool, just hanging out. It's a public pool, behind city hall. Some of the Richies have pools in their backyards, so this is for those who can't afford that luxury.

We got here early to grab the best lounge chairs, ones that aren't beat up and cracked. We dragged them along the deck on the opposite side of the pool from the diving board. All four of us sit and watch while Lindsey talks.

“What do you think it'll be like? Our junior year, I mean,” she says to no one in particular. But we all know she expects an answer.

Krystal, who is sitting in the chair beside me with the hottest baby-blue two-piece bathing suit I've ever seen, answers first.

“Probably the same as last year. I really don't believe in that upperclassmen status thing. We'll just be regular students, enduring another year of bad cafeteria food and mediocre classes.”

Sasha smiles, turning her head so that she looks at Krystal as her large-frame sunglasses slip down a little on her pert nose. “You've got a point there,” she says.

“What about you, Jake? What do you think it'll be like?”

I shrug. “Just another year.” What I don't say is that it's another year that I'm closer to getting out of Lincoln. I can't wait to blow this town and get on with the rest of my life. What that entails I don't know for sure. At one point I thought I'd go to college, maybe become a gym teacher or something like that. But now, with all the changes, I don't really know. What
I know for sure is that whatever adult life involves, I won't be doing it here in this town.

“Well, I think it's going to be fantastic,” Lindsey says. “C'mon, let's go for a swim.”

She stands first, taking off her white rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses and tossing them on her chair. Lindsey's a cute girl, I guess, if you go for that type. Petite and pert is what I call her. She's about five feet two or three and doesn't have curves, but you can definitely tell she's a girl. Her one-piece black bathing suit is simple and understated, but fits her bubbly personality for some reason.

Lindsey wears black to block out others' thoughts because she's telepathic. She says it helps her stay sane. I guess it would be kind of weird to walk around hearing everybody's thoughts all the time. I know I'd go crazy if I had to deal with thoughts other than my own.

And other than that voice that keeps popping up. The one I hear on a daily basis but refuse to tell anyone about. The one that makes me feel all-powerful.

“Yeah,” Sasha adds, standing in her bright yellow two-piece. “It's hot, we need to cool off.”

Sasha's the girliest of our bunch. Her long dark curly hair fans out down her back. She's real tan, too, so she looks exotic or something.

Just over her shoulder I see Antoine Watson walking toward us. Twan dating Sasha was a little weird at first, but is kind of cool now. I don't really like being the only guy in the bunch all the time. So sometimes when we hang out, Sasha brings Twan along. A good testosterone balance, I think.

And the dude is so totally hot for Sasha it's amazing she doesn't melt.

“What's up, Jake?” Twan says as he approaches, giving me a nod of his head.

I nod back. “Hey, Twan,” I say because I call him what the rest of his friends call him, not what Sasha calls him.

Sasha is instantly all smiles. I turn and look down at Krystal who hasn't gotten up from her chair yet.

“You coming?” I ask and reach my hand out to help her up.

She smiles, takes my hand and stands. “Sure.”

There are a lot of girls here at the pool. Some in plain old bathing suits and some in scraps of material that should be illegal, but I don't really care about any of them. The one person I really like is walking next to me.

She lets go of my hand, so I have to be content to just walk beside her. I'd love to put my arm around her like Twan's doing with Sasha, but I don't know if she wants me to. She doesn't talk about Franklin much but I know she still thinks about him. Maybe she's not ready to move on. Maybe she doesn't want to move on with me. Maybe…

“Stop daydreaming and get in,” Krystal says nudging me with her elbow before slipping into the water.

I look up and notice that everybody's already in. So I jump in, pressing my knees to my chest with my arms so that I make a big splash. As expected, the girls squeal and Twan laughs, giving me a high-five once I'm in the water.

Swimming, getting closer to Krystal—it all seemed normal, fun even. But as the afternoon wore on, I felt like this was only the beginning. Not of the fun, but of the changes to come. Changes that I can't tell whether they are good or bad. Changes that make me feel weird, and somewhat afraid.

 

That night at the dinner table, I decide to ask Pop Pop about his brother and the gravesite.

“I saw Uncle William's grave at the cemetery the other day,” I mention casually, while forking a roasted potato into my mouth. I chew fast even though it tastes fine.

Pop Pop is just poking at his food, but Dad freezes totally. I look over at him and he's giving me the strangest look I've ever seen from him.

“What were you doing at the cemetery?” he asks.

Something to know about my dad, he's not into the supernatural stuff—at all. Nope, Harry Kramer is a straight-and-narrow maintenance worker at the local utility company. He does his job and he takes care of his family. That's it. Or at least that's the way it's been since my mom left.

“Just hanging out with a friend,” I say as nonchalantly as I can.

“Are you and this friend weirdos or something? Who hangs out at a cemetery?” he asks.

Dad's a big guy, broad shoulders, beefy calloused hands from using them all day at work and again at home. I've got his chocolate-brown hair as my mom used to call it, and his eyes. He wears plaid shirts all the time. I mean, every day of the week, every day of his life. I don't think I've ever seen him in anything other than a plaid shirt. It's almost like maybe he missed his calling and was supposed to be a lumberjack instead of a maintenance man.

I shrug. “No. Just looking for something to do around here.”

“Well, why don't you try studying?” Dad says, picking up
his chicken leg and taking a huge bite out of it. He's angry, but I don't know why.

“School's out, Dad.”

“You can still study. There's always something to learn, Jake. And if you want to make something of yourself you've got to have book smarts. Don't be like me, only using your hands all the time. You've got a good brain. Learn how to use that.”

“He's got the power, too,” Pop Pop says quietly. “No use in trying to ignore it, Harry. He's got it just like William had it.”

“Not at my table,” Dad says slowly. “Not in my house.”

“Can't hate it away, son. It's there. Plain as day, it's there.”

“Where's Uncle William?” I ask, figuring this conversation is going to happen no matter what. And Dad's going to be pissed no matter what.

“He ain't there,” Pop Pop says. “Never was. My mother just wanted the questions to stop.”

“Pop,” Dad says like he's warning his father not to go any further.

But Pop Pop just waves his wrinkled hand at him. He drops his fork, giving up trying to mash the potatoes with it. I reach over and mash them for him. But Pop Pop just keeps looking at me.

“Be careful, Jakey. Will didn't know how to handle his power. But you, you can do it. I know you can.”

“How do you know?”

“That's enough!” Dad yells, throwing his napkin onto his plate and standing up. “We will not talk about any of that hocus-pocus crap in my house.”

Pop Pop frowned. “It'll be here whether we talk about it or not, Harry. It just is.”

Dad shakes his head, his expression serious. “No. I won't allow it.”

“Just like you didn't allow Cecilia to do what she needed to do. You see where that got you.”

The look Dad is giving his father is anything but nice. I think if Pop Pop wasn't so old and frail and Dad hadn't been raised to love and respect him, my father may have been tempted to hit the old man. My father's fists are clenched at his sides and his eyes are dark. The lobes of his ears are red, which means he's about to blow.

“I don't want to hear her name in this house. You hear me? And you keep feeding my boy with this magic hoodoo and you'll be watching
Jeopardy
in that old folk's home in New Haven.”

Dad storms away from the table, yelling behind him. “Eat your dinner and clean the kitchen, Jake!”

Sure. Eat my dinner. Clean the kitchen. Go to school. Get good grades. Don't ask questions.

That's what he wants from me. Always has.

Unfortunately, I have lots of questions. Always did. One of them is why did my mother leave. But I'd always known to never ask my dad that. Now I'm wondering if Pop Pop knows. For an old guy, he seems to know an awful lot about everything.

“Poor boy, never did get over her leaving,” Pop Pop says when we're alone. Then he takes a deep breath and lets it out through his thin lips.

“Jake, this power is bigger than me or your dad, or even your mother. You've got an important job to do. I've been
sticking around all this time just to tell you that. To guide you, I guess. Otherwise my old body would have keeled over by now.”

“Don't say that, Pop Pop.” I don't like to think of him dying. Even though his Alzheimer's is advancing, he also has a bad heart so he's sick a lot. But he's the only one I can talk to. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to him.

“It's okay, Jakey. I'm fine with dying—when it's my time. I still have some work to do with you, though. Some things to tell you.”

“Things about the power, about the Darkness?”

Pop Pop's blue eyes look glossy for a moment. “It's more than just darkness. It's a living, breathing evil and it's coming after you and the others because it knows you're the only ones who can stop it.”

“But how? How do we stop it, Pop Pop?”

“You have to choose good over evil. No matter what, Jakey. You have to choose good. Evil makes him stronger.”

“And that's what he wants? To grow stronger? What happens if he grows stronger?”

“Mayhem,” Pop Pop says, then coughs.

I get up and pat him on his back lightly. He coughs some more until it sounds like mucus is coming up through his chest. I reach for his glass of water and hold it to his lips. He takes a sip, then another. “All hell's gonna break loose if it gets stronger. And I mean that, Jakey. Things we've never seen here on Earth will take over. There won't be a world as we know it anymore. Evil will take over and we'll be done for.”

I stand very still listening to his words and must have looked a little stunned, too, because Pop Pop puts one of his hands over mine. I look down at the spidery blue veins threading
through his hand, at his long fingers and nubby nails. I don't know what else to say.