The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister - Landon Wark (bill gates best books TXT) 📗

do that too, all right," Jonah muttered as she said her greetings into the phone, slumping back into his seat.

"Wh—slow down, Lianne!" Aegera nudged the truck forward and just as quickly pushed down on the brake. "What happened?"

The vehicle jostled again and Jonah reached over and pulled the phone off of Aegera's shoulder, studied it for a moment and then toggled the speaker function. A panicky voice, already mid-sentence came through the cheap, tinny speaker.

"—help. The police broke into our session."

"What? How?!" Amid the flurry of half formed words that followed, Aegera managed to break in. "Where's Tom, Lianne?"

"Got taken," the woman replied. "Everyone did. I—"

The phone trilled and an eerie silence followed. Jonah examined the tiny screen and noticed the connectivity icon was missing. A glance around at the other cars revealed the other drivers turning their devices over and one passenger to the rear right was whacking theirs. A chill played down his spine.

"They killed the cell network," he said bleakly.

"Shit!" Had the car been moving at that point he had no doubt that Aegera would have slammed on the brake. Her eyes darted over the dash as her condensed breath formed ice crystals on the upper windshield.

"What the hell is happening?" he asked, partly knowing the answer.

"The meeting place is a little more than half a mile from here," Aegera said.

"Well, we're not getting there anytime soon," Jonah replied. "We're not going to be able to—"

"Can you get us there?" she asked, her eyes staring at the car in front of them with homicidal intent.

"What?"

"Can you get us there with the teleportation thing?"

"I—"

"They're our responsibility, Jonah. And they need help."

"We can't just jump in there blind, Sandy," Jonah said. "The best thing we can do is—"

"I'm not going to lose anyone else, Jonah. Not like we did back at the house."

Jonah hung his head as the bleak, metallic despair that had filled him at the sight of the burning wood and blistering window glass returned.

"You want a better world? You want anything to be possible? You say that it can happen in our time. Well, this is it, Jonah. It's not going to happen if we keep letting people push us out, make us run."

Jonah clenched his fists. As much as the fear clung to him, as much as the realization of exactly what the violence that loomed before him meant, he was angry. He was sick of being pushed out, of being right but having to give ground anyway. But... The understanding of his own mortality beat him back into his seat.

Maybe we have to be more than mortal.

"Then send me," Aegera said, sensing his indecision. "I'll go."

He hung his head further. Looking at the thoroughfare suddenly become filled with a type of mundane desolation around him. He looked at the blissfully annoyed drivers and their bored passengers.

"I can't send just you. The person speaking the procedure has to go. It's everyone else that's optional," he said.

She stared at him and he let out a shuddering sigh.

"Okay." Jonah opened the door of the truck and placed his foot on the icy road. The word was so small to convey such a monumental shift. "But I think you've been reading too many books."

"Haven't had time for that in months," she replied with a self-satisfied smile.

Jonah threw off the tarp from the rear of the truck and fumbled around with the tubing inside, reading the notes he had attached to each one before tossing them aside. His brain churned through a number of factors before selecting the four that had performed best and handing two to Aegera.

"They're made of beryllium so they're brittle," he said with a quiver in his voice, focusing on the tubes to keep his chest-tightening anxiety at bay. "They're not weapons. They're so we don't get shot. Effective range is about twenty-five meters. Maybe a quarter of the length of a football field. Anything more and you'll have to rely on the shooter being a bad shot."

"So, like a stormtrooper?"

"Whatever." He stepped into the bed of the truck and extended a hand to her. "We'll be able to transport further the higher up we are."

"Is that the official nomenclature we're using? Transporting? It's a little Trekky. Sorry, I'm just trying to cut the tension."

"You wanna name it, go right ahead."

"Little too nervous right now." Aegera exhaled heavily. "It's going to work."

"We don't even know what we're getting into."

"Okay! Let's just go before we talk ourselves out of it!"

"Where's your meeting place?" Jonah's heart beat quickly as the traffic broke up a little and the cars behind them honked madly as the two of them crawled on top of their vehicle.

"I... See where this street intersects with the first side street? About five blocks North and two West. Maybe you can put us on one of the roofs. We can get a lay of the land that way."

Jonah shook his head. "One miscalculation would put us in midair over the street and unless you can get through the levitation procedure in the four seconds it'd take you to hit the ground..."

"Shit."

"Yeah, this is a lousy idea."

Jonah started speaking through the procedure. His brain performed the calculations involved in putting them in a spot not too close to where Aegera had said lest they get caught up in some riot already in progress. He placed his hands over his ears in an attempt to drown out the distracting honks of the vehicles around them.

"What about walls?" he heard Aegera say as he approached the end and the air around them began to tingle against his skin. "We don't want to jump into anything sol—"

Jonah's eyes were blinded by the flash of white light and he felt the expected but sudden jolt