The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [123]
The young people were speaking over the music, their voices echoing around the amphitheater. Travis froze in the act of reaching into a trash can as the young woman whose voice he had first heard rang out again.
“So he tells me, ‘The Brights are coming, they'll take you away from me, we've got to go.' And he grabs my hand, and we run like crazy, and I swear my heart is going to explode.”
For emphasis she pounded the front of her puffy down vest, and the others who watched her raptly let out appreciative gasps. She was pretty, despite being too thin, and despite the bad dye job on her green hair and the thick black lines around her eyes, which gave her pale face a sickly cast.
“Finally, we get to his car, and he floors it, and we get out of there. Only then I look back out the window, and for a second I swear I can see them in the light. The Brights.”
“So did they get you, Jessie?” a young man asked, awe on his pimply face, his speech slurred by the multiple rings jutting out of his lower lip.
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “I know it's hard for you, Todd, but try thinking. If they got me, would I be here talking to you now?”
The young man tugged on his lip rings; it was going to take him a while to puzzle that one out.
The young woman—Jessie—looked up, her dark eyes glinting. “Hey, up there—grungy old man rooting around in the trash can. I know you're listening to us.”
Travis pulled his hand out of the trash can and stood up. “It's sort of hard not to.” His own heart was thumping. Had she just been telling a story to impress her friends? Or had she really seen something? Something that came in light. . . .
It can't be, Travis. She's just making it up. You should go meet Jay and Marty. They'll be waiting for you.
He set down his bag of cans and started down the steps of the amphitheater.
“Cool,” the young woman said, hopping down off a bench. “A new toy to play with.”
She sauntered toward him, cheap black boots scuffing against stone, hands on her hips. She barely came to his shoulder, and she was bony as a bird, but there was a sensuousness to her, a fact she was clearly well aware of. The others watched her with a mixture of adoration and anticipation.
“You should get out of here,” she said. “I can do magic.”
“Like what.”
Like this. Her lips didn't move, but her voice sounded—distant but clear—in his mind.
Travis raised an eyebrow. So she was a witch. Not a very powerful one, given the faintness of her voice in his mind, but a witch all the same. That was interesting.
He knew there was magic on Earth, though it was a shadow of the power that resided on Eldh. Marji, the West Colfax psychic who had helped them last fall, and who had died for her kindness, had certainly possessed true power of vision. And even before she came to Eldh, Grace had used the Touch without knowing it to heal people at Denver Memorial Hospital. All the same, to encounter a young witch here struck Travis as odd. She belonged on that world, not on this one.
Maybe the worlds really are getting closer, just like Brother Cy said.
Travis crossed his arms. “Nice trick. Now tell me about the Brights.”
She glared at him, clearly disappointed her little spell hadn't gotten more of a reaction out of him, then fidgeted with the ankh symbol that hung around her throat.
“The Brights take them for Him.”
“For who?”
“Don't you know anything? For the One-Eyed Dude, who else?”
He shivered, and her purple lips coiled in a smile. That had gotten a reaction out of him. She reminded Travis of the witch Kyrene, who had tried to use him for her own ends not long after he first journeyed to Eldh. Only Kyrene was the one who had been used in the end. All the same, Travis knew he had better be careful.
“You're right,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I don't know anything