Sinister: A Paranormal Fantasy (Sinisters Book 1) (12 page)

Matt made eye contact with Anna. “Does he do this a lot?”

“All the time. Anything math, physics, or finance-related, he’ll stare at for hours without making any sense.”

“I noticed something too,” Matt said, when it became apparent Oliver wouldn’t say more. “The bowl sitting in the middle of the room—or the half bowl, anyway—wasn’t cut in half." He could feel something niggling at his brain, and he sat still for a minute to let the thought form. When he realized what had bothered him, he looked up. "It looked like someone had made it disappear. As if it was used to create something else. You know.” He looked at Anna.

"You mean, like the apples?" Her eyes widened. "I bet you're right!" She bounced on her stool. "Doesn't that mean that Caracalla is one of us, though?"

Matt felt dumb for not realizing that at once. If Caracalla could use other objects to create new ones, he must be a sinister. And if he was a sinister, shouldn't that mean that they were on the same side? His stomach churned. Luke hadn't mentioned that Caracalla was a sinister, but it made perfect sense. How else could he be doing something that involved some sort of connection to hell?

Anna's expression showed she was as confused as he was. She bit her lower lip, then said, "I think we need to ask Elias about him."

Matt nodded in agreement. He wasn't sure if she intended to ask about Luke or Caracalla, but either way, they needed more information. He surprised himself when he said, "We should create something near the markings and see if we can figure out what Caracalla was doing."

Anna leapt off her seat and nodded to him. "Go for it."

Oliver braced his hands on his thighs and rose, joining Anna. The pair looked expectantly towards Matt. Silence fell in the apartment as the furnace shut off, almost as though the room were waiting for him as well. He wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on his pants and focused on the chalk decorating the floorboards. Taking a deep breath, he thought again of a feather, trying to recreate the feeling of connectedness he’d had that morning. A worry that he would fail intruded, breaking his concentration. He shoved the thought aside, frustrated at his own lack of discipline. He returned his attention to the ground. The air nearby suddenly brushed past him and a white feather, no bigger than his index finger, appeared in the center of the bare spot. He sighed with relief.

For a split second after its appearance, Matt could have sworn the air above the feather wavered, pulled down as though a string attached to it had been tugged. A faint whiff of sulfur permeated the air.

The group stared, but nothing else happened.

“Hey, didn’t the list say ‘metal?’ Maybe we need something heavier.” Anna suggested. Oliver's eyes were wide, staring at the feather, but he nodded fervently in agreement.

“I'll do it,” she announced, stepping forward. She sucked in a breath and gazed at the ground.

A tornado-force wind slammed into Matt's back. Above the roar, he heard her let out a small scream and saw her fall to her knees. He raced forward unthinkingly, wrapping his arms around her waist and dragging her away from the bare floor. Oliver followed closed on their heels as Matt reached the recessed window and flung up the bottom half, the wood creaking in protest against the force he used. The three of them gasped as air once again filled the room.

“Thirsty,” Anna croaked, sinking to the floor with her back against the wall. Her head fell to rest on her knees. "Forgot...five feet."

Matt looked over at her, taking in her pale appearance. “I should have reminded you.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he could feel his heart racing as though he’d just finished a full soccer game.

Anna shuddered, but she looked slightly more human. Matt turned to get her a glass of water and caught sight of Oliver staring open-mouthed at the center of the room.

“What in the world were you trying to make, cuz?” he asked.

In the space that had only seconds before been empty rested a large lump of…something. It was roughly the size and shape of a computer, but where it should have had a screen, curlicues of dull metal sprouted out. Matt’s eyes followed traced the curlicues as they spiraled toward the ceiling, ending in flat silver pads the shape of leaves. He let his gaze rest there a while, ignoring the worst of it, before he decided he needed to face it at some point.

He let his eyes drop to the floor, where the box was stuck to the side of a gaping red hole about three feet in diameter. The edges were bowed slightly, as though the hole had pushed the air itself out of shape. The sulfur scent was much stronger than when Matt had made his feather.

In a daze, he forced one foot forward, then another. In a few seconds, he stood next to the pit and leaned forward to peer in.

A viscous red smoke swirled inside, slithering over itself in long waves. It was nearly opaque, but he could see the faintly darker outlines of something inside the pit. One seemed to be getting bigger.

With an almost audible snap, Matt’s brain returned. He stumbled back from the pit and looked around frantically, hoping a way to seal this hole would appear. Nothing did. He needed to think. How had the pit gotten there? After Anna made her insane computer appear, the pit had too, so they were probably tied together. If the computer made the pit appear, maybe moving it would make it disappear. He focused on the box, shutting out the sound of Anna’s harsh breathing. He pictured the room empty, the box scattered into tiny particles of air.
Go
, he willed it. And then Oliver gasped.

Matt threw him an annoyed glance, his concentration completely broken, but forgot his anger the moment he saw what had caught Oliver’s attention. Oliver’s eyes were squeezed shut, his shoulders hunched up to his ears. A dark cloud was floating in front of him, somehow radiating an air of menace. It was shaped like the play dough snakes he’d made as a kid, fat in the middle and tapering to a point on either side. A sliver of cloud had created a tentacle-like extension and was brushing against Oliver’s arm.

Without thinking, Matt yelled, “Stop!”

“What?” Oliver choked out. “What did I do?”

“Not you, the—” Matt gestured at the cloud.

“What?” Oliver said again, looking bewildered.

Matt felt a flash of frustration. It was getting hard to keep track of what ordinary people could and couldn't see. Well, explanations could wait. He spun back to the mist.

The cloud had actually frozen at Matt’s command, and now, as if it had a face, it rotated ninety degrees to face him. As it did, a feeling of déjà vu swept over him. Where had he seen this before? He gulped.

“Go back in the pit,” he commanded, trying for a firm tone. His voice came out as squeaky as a six-year-old girl's, but there was a rumbling beneath his words, like rocks scraping against each other under a wave, that seemed to have caught the cloud’s attention. Then it spoke.

“Do you know who I am, boy? What I am? You are a child playing with a gun, and you will get hurt.” The voice stabbed his brain like millions of shards of glass, lancing through every part of him.

Matt fell to his knees, feeling as though his brain were on fire. He clutched his head, trying to hold it together as the voice burned a path through his mind, ripping away the essence of his being as it went. He fought back, anger rising in him as the cloud tried to take away his self.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Matt panted, straining to eject the words. “As far as I know, you’re just a puff of dust that blew up out of that pit.”

The cloud laughed, and Matt felt his mind go blank at the awfulness of the sound. Though it had no face, Matt could hear the sneer in its voice as it said, “I am a soul banished to hell, and you have freed me. You haven’t even the power to return me, though your attempt was adorable.”

Matt shook his head defiantly, but the familiar feeling suddenly made sense. When the tiger had attacked him, it had gone after something that looked like a shadow—or a patch of black smoke. This creature was the same thing, and if that were the case, he definitely needed to get rid of it. It had no right being in this world. Putting as much force in his voice as he could muster, he said, “You will go back.”

The cloud seemed to shrivel into itself and began gliding back toward the pit, then stopped abruptly and started laughing again.

“You truly thought you’d rid yourself of me, didn’t you? You haven’t the power to return me to hell.”

Matt could feel doubt lacing its fingers through his mind, telling him that maybe the soul was right. Maybe only Luke had power over the souls in hell. He was just a human.

No
, he reminded himself,
I’m a sinister
. That had to count for something. And since he’d managed to free the soul, he ought to be able to return it.

He sucked in a deep breath, gathering his strength to him. With his eyes focused on the dark swirl, he raised his left hand and pointed to the pit. “Go.”

The voice that came from his chest hardly resembled his own. It rumbled up from deep within his lungs and echoed out of his mouth like a shout across a barren canyon. It spilled over his lips and spread across the cloud, wrapping it in sound. The soul shrieked as it tumbled into the opening. The last echoes of Matt’s voice followed it down.

The hand that fell to Matt’s side was shaking, and for a moment, all he could do was stare after the soul, watching the smoke coil lazily around.

“I’m sorry.” Anna’s timid voice sounded behind him. She had raised herself from the floor and come to stand a few feet from the edge of the pit. Her eyes were round as quarters, and her right hand covered her mouth. The skin that showed around her hand was still pale.

Matt shrugged, though he felt as shocked as Anna looked. He didn’t want her to feel guilty about what she’d done. They’d been trying to do exactly that, they just hadn’t thought through the consequences. “We just need to close the pit and it’ll be fine. And I think we learned some interesting things.”

Oliver stepped beside Anna and handed her a glass of water. He seemed to have completely recovered from his shock. “Oh, there’s a pit?” he said cheerily. “I wondered what you both were gawping at. You think we should get some dirt from the garden and fill it in?” he asked. “Or maybe we could cover it with a rain tarp. Oh! Superglue, that’d fix it. Fixes everything.”

“I thought we’d try to seal it the same way we opened it, but yours are good ideas too,” Matt responded wryly.

“Oh, the big bad leftie thinks he knows better,” Oliver teased.

Anna smiled slightly, and Matt realized Oliver had been trying to cheer her up. She had gulped down the water in seconds and was starting to get some of the color back in her face. “I’ll do it. I caused it, I’ll fix it.”

She stepped near the edge and knelt, and Matt couldn’t help but flinch at the sight of her so close to where the soul had vanished. He saw her close her eyes, nostrils flaring as she took in a breath of the sulfur-laden air. A moment later, a gust of wind hit him in the face, blasting out from the center of the room. The pane of window glass rattled, and he heard a distinct crash from the kitchen as one of the dishes from their breakfast fell to the ground. As the air steadied, he opened his eyes.

Anna still knelt next to an open pit. He felt a twinge of disappointment as he saw that, despite the insane box she’d created completely vanishing, the opening to hell hadn’t budged an inch. He picked his way across the mess on the floor and knelt beside her.

“How did you make it disappear?” he asked, partly to distract her from guilt over the pit, but mostly because he was truly curious.

“I just did the same thing I did to create it, only I imagined it was air.” She waved her hand over the opening. “Probably bad air; I couldn’t remember what the nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio is. How do we get rid of this?”

He studied the edges of the pit, searching for a clue. He heard Oliver’s footsteps behind him, and a second later, his sandy mop appeared in Matt’s peripheral vision.

“If it’s really just an ‘ole in the floor, why don’t you just fill it in?” Oliver asked.

Matt looked at him, wondering if he was joking as before, but Oliver looked serious this time. “Fill it in?” he echoed, trying the idea out. Oliver nodded encouragingly. “But it’s a giant pit. I don’t know how deep it is.”

Oliver didn’t look phased. “Then just fill the top. Cover it with something.”

“Huh. Worth a shot.” Matt bent and stared at the pit, his free hand bracing him against the edge. His fingertips brushed the edge, and he was surprised to find it just felt like the wood it was. Focusing, he imagined the hole gone, covered by the same wood that made up the rest of the floor. It was pale wood, worn smooth by years of footsteps and furniture atop it.

The hole snapped shut, and Matt toppled backward from the air that rushed out. He landed on the buried corner of an object that poked uncomfortably into his backside.

“Huh,” Anna said, pushing her curls out of her face. “I didn’t really think that would work.”

Matt released a choked laugh and stood, brushing the grit off his knees. Catching sight of the clock on the wall, he swore. “I’m going to be late for practice. We need to talk to Elias though!”

With a brief wave, he raced out the door.

Ϯ

Matt panted as he raced down the field, ripping grass from the soft ground as he touched his toes to the sideline before spinning around to retrace his footsteps. He had run home from Oliver’s and changed in record time, and he’d made it to the field only a few minutes past one. Still, Coach Huebner had given him a scathing look when he loped up, then set the entire team on wind sprints up to each mark on the field, then back, to the next farthest, and soon until they’d covered the length of the field and returned. And then they did it again. They’d always been his least favorite part of soccer. Today, at least, it gave him time to think.

He had known that sinisters had certain powers, but he hadn’t realized that included powers over hell. He had assumed, based on Elias' explanation, that their abilities were restricted to objects. Thinking back, he realized that Elias hadn’t explicitly said that. As he remembered the way the man had finished their conversation, he realized there was probably a lot they didn't know. It sounded like it might take them a while to master all of their abilities. Twelve hours earlier, shell-shocked from the overload of information, Matt would have been happy to let that be the case. After the events at Oliver’s, he was burning with the need to learn more. He also couldn’t shake the feeling, however unfounded, that they had very little time to stop Caracalla.

What did he know? He tried to lay out the bits of information he’d gleaned over the past day. First, Caracalla was rich and therefore powerful. He had connections to probably every government official in the state. Between the smell of sulfur and the drawings on the floor, Matt was fairly certain that Caracalla knew how to open the connection to hell. Opening a connection to hell released souls, or so it seemed, so it would logically follow that Caracalla was doing something with them. That explained why Luke had been so upset about the loose soul the tiger had gotten. And he was most likely a sinister, which meant that whatever powers Matt had, Caracalla had as well. He’d also had years to practice them.

Matt’s lungs burned from running, so he gritted his teeth and pushed harder. Caracalla, it seemed, had every advantage. What did Matt have? Friends, and a lump of dread in his stomach whenever he thought about his mission.

Coach’s whistle blew, and Matt returned to the sidelines, panting. The team ran through more drills, dribbling the ball up and down and practicing shots on the goal. Despite the cool day, he was sweating in earnest now, beads dripping off his forehead and running into his eyes. After an hour, they finally were allowed to scrimmage. It was his chance to show Coach that he deserved the starting spot at the regionals game on Tuesday. He was far better than Damien, and he just needed to ensure that was obvious to Coach Huebner as well. Saving the world could wait.

He took his spot on the field and faced the center. A breeze drifted across the field, drying the sweat on his brow. Damien was standing in the same spot on the opposite side of the field. Though they were at least fifty feet apart, Matt could feel Damien’s eyes on him. The repeated drills had only served to give him more energy, which he could feel curling within him now. He could feel the energy from his teammates as well. Derek, who stood in the right midfield position, was worried about something. Josh, a lanky junior who followed Damien around like a string was tied between them and was dumber than Chief, stood in the net behind Matt. Waves of glee emanated off of Josh. Matt groaned as he realized that Josh was the goalie for his team, which meant Damien would be shooting against him. Josh was more likely to chuck the ball into the goal than prevent Damien from scoring.

As the strikers squared off in the center of the field, Matt’s thoughts drifted across the rest of the players, sensing hunger, annoyance, and jealousy scattered across the field. He wondered what was causing his teammates to feel these ways, and as he pondered the question, his thoughts finally caught up with him. He could feel his teammates. More than that, he could feel exactly what they were feeling. That was definitely new.