Arrest, Search and Séance : Book 1 of the Fringe Society, R.D. Hunter [good english books to read txt] 📗

too much without stretching and this was my bodies payback. I made a motion to sit up, and slivers of pain sliced their way up and down every muscle and tendon I had.

“Shit!” I gasped, abandoning my efforts to move, then glanced over at my grandpa. “Sorry.” He didn’t approve of vulgarity, but he only smiled kindly and continued wiping away the fresh beads of perspiration on my forehead.

“Under the circumstances, you’re forgiven. I should have counseled you against trying to move.” He lifted a cup of water to my lips and I drank several sips, knowing better than to chug the whole thing like I wanted.

“How bad is it?” I asked after a moment. My head felt fuzzy, but whether that was from injury or the medication flowing into me through a tube in my arm, I wasn’t sure.

“You have minor fractures in your left arm, leg, and foot. You also have two broken ribs, but nothing that needed to be reset. You have a minor concussion and several lacerations all over your body that required the removal of debris and a total of sixteen stitches. You were lucky.” I wanted to snort with laughter, but it hurt too damn much.

A new thought broke its way through my foggy consciousness and I almost tried to sit upright again, but stopped myself at the last instant.

“Bill,” I whispered hoarsely. “What about Bill? He was closer to the blast than I was. Is he ok?” My grandpa looked at me gravely and I prepared myself for the worst.

“He’s in surgery,” he said softly. “Has been for several hours. We’re not sure of the exact severity of his injuries, but there was major internal trauma, as well multiple compound fractures. I met his wife in the waiting room. Lovely woman. Asked about you and wanted to be notified when you woke up.”

That was Pam, Bill’s wife and mother of their two kids. She was wonderful; caring, compassionate, and a terrific cook. She always made Bill pack extra when he brought his lunch, just so he had enough to share with me. I’d been over at their house several times since joining the S.C.C. and she was a genuine jewel of a person. She didn’t deserve this.

I tried to swallow down the ball of grief that threatened to burst forth, succeeded only a little bit, and gritted my teeth as a choked sob escaped my lips. Gramps didn’t say anything. He just wiped away the tears as they came with that lavender scented cloth.

After a few minutes, I’d composed myself enough to ask what happened. He looked at me curiously.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” he said. “What do you remember?”

I closed my eyes and thought back. Even that hurt. Haltingly, I started recalling what happened at Hawkins’ office. When I got the part about seeing him with the crystals implanted in his body, I opened my eyes to see Gramps, his face pale and dread in his eyes.

“What? What does this mean?” I asked.

“It means your suspect, this Hawkins character, has gained access to powers he was never meant to have,” Gramps said. “He has neither the discipline nor the knowledge needed to control the crystals in his body, and they are slowly tearing him apart. My guess is that they have already begun on his sanity.”

“But why? We use crystals all the time. They don’t do that to us.”

“Because we use them correctly. We utilize the energy of a crystal, but at the same time they utilize our energy as well. Think about it, when you do a spell involving a crystal as a power source, how do you feel after wards?” I thought about it for a second before answering.

“Fine, maybe a little drained, but nothing too drastic. I’m not half as weak as if I’d tried the spell without the crystal.”

“Exactly. That’s because crystals are living things, and so require a certain amount of life energy, to grow and sustain themselves. They can’t produce it themselves, so they absorb it from a practitioner, in exchange for donating the power stored inside for the witch’s working.” My eyes grew wide in alarm.

“And with Hawkins having multiple crystals directly on his skin…”

“They are soaking up his life energy like a sponge and allowing him access to their own stores,” Gramps finished gravely. “When those stores are exhausted, they will also draw from his life force to replenish it.”

“And it won’t stop until he’s just a dried-out husk or removes the crystals himself.” Gramps nodded.

“But until then, he will have more power than any other currently living witch on the planet. And while the Book of Shadows he stole from that poor girl, Nichole Barret, may have assisted him in learning how to manipulate that power, he won’t have the fine touch and skill needed to produce any major complicated workings, such as reality manipulation or time reversal.”

“But he has more than enough to make things go BOOM,” I mused. The words Hawkins spoke before leaving my broken body came floating back and my eyes grew wide with terror.

“Gramps, you have to get me out of here,” I pleaded.

“My Dear…” he began, but I cut him off.

“Now! You have to get me out of here now. Hawking isn’t finished. He’s hellbent on taking out the magic users in Atlanta. Thinks it’ll give him a corner on the magical market. Wait. He said he was going to do it tonight. What’s tonight? Tonight’s something, isn’t it?”

“Imbolc. Tonight, is the festival of Imbolc,” my grandpa said with dread in his voice.

Shit. The Festival of Imbolc was a celebration of life returning to the world after a winter of darkness and slumber. Hawkins must have read about it in Nichole’s Book of Shadows. There’d be celebrations all over the world, mostly in secret, as witches came