Chapter One
There’s Nothing Kind About Man
The fighting seems to spring out of nowhere. One minute I’m walking down the street, minding my own business, and the next I’m standing in the middle of a riot.
I’m turning the corner onto Campion Row, one of the main shopping avenues in Tribane, when my eye latches onto a fist making contact with somebody’s face. Then, when I have the chance to scan the area, I notice that there are hundreds of people fighting one another. Just going at it like they’ve all suddenly taken crazy pills or something.
A thin, mousy looking woman, who seems like she wouldn’t normally harm a fly, is pulling down hard on the hair of a blond woman and spouting angry profanities right into her face, spittle flying from her contorted mouth. What are they fighting for? Was there some sort of protest supposed to be happening today that’s gotten out of hand?
I take a step backward, almost instinctively, because my gut is telling me it’s a bad idea to venture any further. I turn around to go back the way that I came, but find that the riot has rapidly spread and now there’s no way out. Only a moment ago shoppers were wandering calmly about the street behind me, and now they are basically kicking the living shit out of each other. Nerves build up inside of me, as I try to figure out if perhaps I’m dreaming.
A group of teenagers band together, throwing bricks and smashing the large glass windows at the front of an electronics store. Okay, I can’t even begin to fathom where they might have gotten the bricks from. It’s not like people generally carry them about on their person. Several employees come rushing out to try and stop them, which only functions to create more fighting. The teenagers throw kicks and punches at the employees who wear pale green polo shirts, name tags and dark blue slacks.
At first the employees try to prevent the teenagers from doing any more damage, but now it seems like they’re just as angry as the rioters. Fighting viciously for no real reason. I step away further, backing myself up against the concrete wall of the building behind me. Two men fall to the ground a foot or so away from me. The man on top is pummelling his opponent’s face in, bloodying up his nose, and I’m sure creating two horribly purple-black eyes. The man being hit looks like he’s on death’s door, his body limp within his abuser’s grasp. I can’t just watch this happen.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I shout at the man who’s still throwing punches like nobody’s business.
The man ceases in his persistent beating to turn around and glare at me. There’s a rampant, crazed look in his blue eyes. He’s wearing a grey woollen top and corduroy trousers, sensible brown shoes and his balding dark hair has speckles of grey in it. He looks like somebody’s straight laced father, an accountant or a financial advisor doing some shopping on his day off. Not some mental case who would randomly beat on a passing stranger. All of a sudden, he lets go of the man he’d been punching.
“You little tramp,” he seethes. “What did you just call me?” The anger and hate in his words strike me as displaced, since I didn’t actually call him anything. I only asked him what he was doing. The fighting and looting is still going on around me, but all I can focus on is this man’s bloodshot eyes and the saliva that has begun to drip from his mouth, like a rabid dog’s drool.
I press my entire body even harder against the concrete wall. I have no escape route, and the man is quickly advancing on me.
“I – I didn’t call you anything,” I tell him, but he doesn’t even seem to be listening any longer.
“I heard what you said, you fucking bitch, you’re going to pay for that now,” he spits.
“I swear, mister, I didn’t…um, maybe you’re hearing things.” Okay, that probably wasn’t the most clever thing to say. But I tend to get rude when I’m frightened. If this man were a supernatural being, like a vampire or a warlock, I would have no hesitation in using my magic to fight him. But he’s only a human, so I don’t know if my sparks would simply incapacitate him or kill him, and I wouldn’t want somebody’s murder on my poor, abused conscience. She’s already heavily saddled as it is.
“Don’t you tell me I’m hearing things, who do you think you are?”
His jaws clench as he fists his hand and brings it down on me, punching me right in the cheek, once, twice, three times. Fuck that hurts. Sorcerers and ancient vampires might be psychos, but man can be a cruel bastard when he wants to be. Then he lifts his right leg and lands several kicks to my shin and one in the ankle. Right, well I had tried to save my conscience the addition of murder, but this prick has it coming. Without much effort I summon my magic, sparks tickle my palm which I raise and use to smack him directly on his forehead.
Immediately they burn his skin and he leaps away from me, a look of pure, undiluted rage marring his benign features. A vile C-word escapes his saliva ridden mouth, and I wince at the harshness as well as the pain he has just inflicted on me. I glance across at the electronics store to see that the teenagers are now making their way out of the place laden down with looted items such as laptops, iphones and digital cameras. One of the employees grabs onto a fleeing looter, pulling him to the ground and punching him hard in the ribs.
When I look back to my own opponent I realise that he’s advancing on me again so I dodge out of the way, dropping the shopping bag I’d been carrying that had contained a few new novels I’d bought today. Oh well, I suppose losing a couple of books is worth avoiding another punch in the face. The man comes at me yet again, but I turn on my heel and leg it through the mêlée of combating shoppers. I can hear him grunting just behind me so I put more force into my run, my lungs burning in the process. I really need to exercise more.
A few minutes pass and the chase continues. It’s not long before I seem to have gotten away from the riot. That fucker is still on my case though, so I abruptly stop and turn around to face him.
“Back the fuck off,” I scream at him, and it shocks him out of his anger.
Now he starts blinking his eyes and shaking his head, as though trying to rid himself of a daydream. He peers at me, at my face that he had been hitting only minutes ago, and his expression clouds with confusion.
“I – I’m so sorry,” he mumbles, “I don’t understand…” then he trails off and starts shaking his head again while running his hands over his face.
“Sorry for what? For trying to beat the living shit out of a woman you don’t even know, or for the man back there who you have probably left irreparably injured?” My indignation consumes me as I take a step forward to confront this man who appears all but harmless now.
“I don’t know why I did that, why I hit you…I just felt – crazed.”
Something isn’t right about all of this. To quote Shakespeare, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. There was no protest on today, I would have heard about it on the news this morning if there had been. No, there is foul play afoot, and I’d be hard pushed to believe it didn’t have something to do with the Sorcerer Theodore being back on the scene.
“Go home,” I tell the man, “and maybe say a prayer to whatever God you might believe in that the man you beat is going to survive. Oh and perhaps call an ambulance for him while you’re at it.”
Although as I’m saying this, I can already hear the sirens approaching in the distance, sirens for both the police and an ambulance, inte
rmingling together to make an unpleasant high pitched wail, like a cat when it tries to sing in the middle of the night. We used to have a cat on our street when I was growing up who would wake me every couple of nights with the most God-awful mewling.
But anyway, I suppose I’m getting off the point, the point is, the paramedics are on their way. I should probably hang around and get checked out, but I can tell that my injuries are mostly superficial. However, as Finn would say, I’ll be limping like a motherfucker for at least the next few days after the number mister fisty cuffs here did on my leg. He’s still staring at me, bug eyed. Without another word I turn away from him and start my limping journey home. He calls to me, telling me to wait a minute, but I don’t acknowledge his pleas. It takes all of my self-control not to turn back and give him the finger.