Free Fade by Kailin Gow Page B

I reach out, take hold of the gun, and twist it back towards the man. It hardly feels like I’m doing anything, but the gun turns easily, and a second later, I’m holding it. I guess the sensible thing would be to use it, but I don’t. I throw it, as hard and as far as I can, so that it sails out over the nearest field and lands somewhere in that golden spread of wheat.
    The man turns to me then, and I should be afraid. I know I should. Just from the short section I saw of the fight with Jack, I know that this man knows far more than I do about hurting people. He’s bigger than me, almost certainly stronger than me, and he clearly has no compunction when it comes to hurting people. Yet I’m not as scared as I should be. At that moment, in fact, I’m not scared at all. I’m just angry.
    If either of us looks scared, it’s the man in the black clothes. It’s like he can see something about me that I can’t, and what he can see terrifies him. He moves forward anyway, swinging a hasty punch at me. I bat it aside easily. My hand snakes out in the moment afterward, fastening around the man’s throat. For a second, he looks absolutely frantic, but then it’s too late.
    Heat pours up through my hand, and light flares from it, pure and white. It’s so bright that it ought to be blinding, yet I find that I can look straight through it with no problems. I almost wish I couldn’t. The man’s features are a mask of agony as the light burns through him. He doesn’t scream, but I can see that he wants to, as this flame flashes its way down his body as quick as a forest fire so that it seems he’s burning from the inside out.
    The whole process takes maybe a couple of seconds, but in that time I’m able to see every detail of it. Not that I want to. This is the kind of thing that I know will haunt me. The kind of thing that will show up in my dreams even after I’ve thought I’ve forgotten it. Yet even as I think that, I also find a small part of me thinking that it’s a good thing. That the man in front of me deserves it if anyone does.
    And then it’s done. The light is finished, leaving me holding nothing more than a blackened husk that used to be a man. A few flakes drop from it in the breeze as I let go. I turn away. Grayson is a little way away, fighting with another man just like the first. I’m not sure where he’s come from, but I don’t have time to think about it anyway. For all that Grayson is fit and strong, he doesn’t have any special training when it comes to fighting, and he’s getting hurt. Even as I watch, the man he’s fighting hits him hard with a series of punches. I can’t allow that. I won’t allow that.
    I walk over, and they stop. They just stop, and turn, and stare at me. I can’t work out what they’re staring at for a moment, until I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in the windshield of the sedan. My eyes… they’re glowing. Glowing like miniature suns, with that same eerie white light that consumed a man just seconds ago. I guess I should be frightened by that, but again, I’m not. It’s like one of those moments you get in dreams, when you know exactly what is going to happen next, without ever knowing how you know it. Only I’m not in a dream, and what I’m about to do ought to terrify me.
    It certainly seems to terrify Grayson as I walk forward. He steps back, out of my path, looking as though he simply doesn’t know me. He must know that I would never hurt him, yet he still steps back. The man he was fighting, meanwhile, seems rooted to the spot. He obviously wants to turn and run, but it’s like he’s simply too scared. Even when I reach out to grab his throat, he doesn’t fight.
    Not that it would have done him much good if he had, I think, and I can’t help noticing the small twinge of satisfaction that comes with that. I wrap my fingers around his neck, and the light flares out from me to engulf him, consuming him as fully as it consumed his partner. He dies