Hawk stopped. “This is it. It’s not locked.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Hold on. I…” He didn’t know exactly what to say. “I don’t want you to judge me.”

Spike grabbed his hands and looked up at him. “If I judged, do you think I’d hang out with you?” And with that, he turned the knob and walked onto the twenty-first floor of the unfinished building, leaving Hawk parsing the meaning of his words.

“What the hell?” exclaimed Spike.

Where the other levels had been cemented husks, this one was nearly finished. The beams of their lights revealed a floor of intricate mosaic, the design of which instantly captured Spike’s attention.

“They’re naked,” he said. “Shit! They’re fucking.”

“He had it copied from a place called Pompeii,” said Hawk.

“The volcano place,” said Spike.

“You know it?”

“History was my favorite subject in school. What is this place?”

“It was going to be a house.”

“A twenty-one-story house?”

“He was rich.”

Spike walked to the center of the floor, where there was a king-size mattress and a pile of blankets. Next to the mattress was an empty bag of chips and a soda can. He shined his light into Hawk’s eyes and made him blink.

“Hey!”

“You knew this guy?”

“He was a client.”

“Was?”

“He died. The spin got him.”

“Oh…” Spike scanned his light around, then toward the only wall that was missing. The gaping section framed the urban jungle of the BAT like an open mouth. He walked to the edge and looked out into the cold, naked night and the sparkling city.

“Don’t get too close,” warned Hawk. His heart jumped at the boy’s utter fearlessness.

“Fuck, man. This view is incredible.”

“I know.”

“So, you like, hang out here? Is it like your hideout?”

“Kind of. For a while. This is the last time I’m coming here. I wanted you to see it.”

They sat on the edge of the mattress and stared out upon the skyscrapers, their various shifting colors, their jagged spires reaching as if in a competition of greatness. At their center, the Crystal Tower surpassed the heavy clouds and vanished, lighting the vapor that engulfed it with a golden sheen. A polar wind brushed their faces.

“I could look at it forever,” Spike said.

“Yeah.”

“What happened to him, the guy?”

Hawk shook his head. He wanted to say something to put the chaos all right that had been such a voracious part of his secret life for the last two years. He squinted and brought the mass of the city into one blurry star, and when he thought he would not cry, he said, “He jumped.”

“Oh…”

Hawk shrugged. “He got stuck on his spin. He lost all his money.”

“Were you…”

“No, I wasn’t here. Something came up. I stopped coming for a while.”

“The nightmares?” asked Spike, though he didn’t need the answer.

Hawk nodded. “He was kind to me. I… I decided to stop by one day. One of the spinners told me everything. He must have gotten a running start, cause he made it all the way to the square.”

Spike nodded gravely, then shook his head in sad remembrance of a man he never knew. “I’m sorry,” said the boy. “You liked him?”

Hawk shrugged.

“You did stuff with him?”

Hawk nodded.

“Like, what stuff?”

“Like, everything.”

“Everything…” the boy whispered.

Hawk squeezed his eyes shut and remembered the man and his sad, lonely kindness. He was tired of death. His father died before he was born. His mother. His uncle haunted him through his notebooks. Life was already too short for the love he had to spend.

“I can’t come back here, and I don’t ever want to come back here.” Hawk got up, grasped Spike’s hand, and launched him to his feet. “We’re gonna find the Maji. The guy at the fire in front of my building, remember him? You know he’s the same guy who killed the hunter at the Cage.”

“Dude, are you serious? Shit. I was such a dick to him.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“He told me how to find the Maji. It’s gonna be announced on Country FM 101 on November fourteenth. So, we got to be ready. We’ll need to listen to it all day until we hear it.”

“A fucking country music station?”

“Yes.”

“That’s really not cool.” Spike shook his floppy dreads gravely.

“It could be worse, like opera.”

“What do we do now?”

Hawk let the boy stew in a pregnant silence. He’d grown a lot in the last few months. The natural athlete in him was undeniable.

“Chant,” Hawk said at last.

“Chant? What? No. Are you serious?” He had that raspy stretch in his throat he got when he was excited.

“I want to see you chant,” said Hawk. He set his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Listen. Andreas knows we’re in this city. He might be here already.”

“Have you been chanting?” Spike asked.

“I shouldn’t have, but I figured something out. If you chant and then get far away from wherever you did it, and you don’t sleep for a long time. Like twenty-four hours, the hunters can’t actually find you.”

“If you don’t sleep, you can’t dream!”

“Yeah, and for the next few nights after that you can get some good sleep. It must fuck up their radar. The catch is, you can’t ever go back to the place where you chanted, because they’ll be waiting for you.”

“And you’re never coming back here.” Spike looked around the dark floor.

“Never,” said Hawk.

“You won’t laugh at me?” said Spike.

“Why would I laugh?”

“It’s just… It’s special, okay, and it makes me feel…”

“Dude, whatever it is, whatever you do… this is for you. It’s your magic.”

The boy’s eyes sparkled. “Okay, let’s do it.” Spike took a fighter’s stance and drew a circle in the air with his arms, bringing his hands together at his chest.

“What are you doing?” Hawk asked.

“Collecting my power.”

“You read too many comic books. Let me see.”

Spike jerked his hands, but nothing happened. “I don’t know,” he said. “When I dream, I feel like it’s right there, like I’m gonna explode.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get it. My uncle’s notebook says there’s the Will and the Veil. It’s the Veil that the hunters can use to find you, so you can never pull from it when you’re at home.”

“Like, don’t shit where you eat,” said Spike with a grin.

“Exactly like that.”

“So, show me something,” Spike taunted.

“It’s not easy for me either. There’s one thing. Turn off your light.”

Spike complied, and they were plunged into darkness. The ambient light from the BAT outlined their forms.

In the darkness, he closed his eyes.

“Watcha doing?” whispered Spike.

“Shhh. Focus is paramount.”

“Sorry, Mr. Big Words.”

He focused his breathing. He imagined the earth flat and barren, lifeless and parched. The world before, and the world that will be again, came the voice from nowhere. He spun in a circle to find it, but there was only a vast plane. Yes, this was how it was. This was the place. He knelt, placing his hand flat on the ground, he felt the heat beneath the soil. He had the realization that his body was transparent, like glass, and he was empty. He could see through his fingers to the dirt. He was barefoot, and he could see through his feet the same. The sky above was full of stars, and when he put his hand up before his eyes, the contours of his unsubstantial form were crystals that distorted the heavens. The heat started to rise: first through his feet, his shins to his knees, up his legs, to his navel, to his chest, into his arms, and into the very tip of the index finger of his right hand where it burned—where it exploded.

“Ahhhh!” he yelled and opened his eyes. Above his finger, a single flame danced in the air, casting them in the circle of its reddish glow.

“Holy shit!” yelled Spike. “Holy fucking shit!”

Hawk shook his hand, and the flame jumped out of his reach, vanishing into the dark.

“Hawk. Dude, you fucking made fire out of your fucking hand. How the fuck did you do that?”

The room spun like a merry-go-round, and then he was tipping and falling onto the softness of the mattress. Spike was next to him, his small hand on his forehead.

“You’re on fire.”

He was gasping for air, trying to catch his breath. “If I use my Will and not the Veil… it makes me so tired.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just a minute.” He felt the sickness leaving his body. His heart slowed. His breathing returned to normal, and he sat up.

“That was insane. You’re gonna be a star at campouts and birthday parties,” the boy taunted.

“Fine. Show me what you got, Spikey.”

Spike got quiet. He sat on the end of the mattress and grabbed his knees. “I promised Nine I wouldn’t.”

Hawk put an arm around him. “That’s fine. You don’t have to. Let’s get out of this dark shithole. Go get some noodles.”

Hawk took one last look around, making a private oath that he was done with this place, and when he was gone, he would forget.

“There’s a second stairwell on the other side of the floor.”

“Hold on,” said Spike. “I’m gonna do it.”

“What about Nine?”

“It’s not his choice. Besides, I want to know what it’s like. Show me how to pull from the Veil.”

“I’m not an expert. Just, you know when it’s there. You can feel it.”

“I think I can feel it. Is it here?” asked the boy.

“Yes, it is.”

Above them, in the darkness, an iridescent thread floated across the room.

“I see it,” said Spike. “What the hell?” He turned to Hawk and took his shoulders in a vice grip that belied his tender age. “So, what do you do?”

“I have a problem. I’m unpredictable,” said Hawk.

“Just try. Please. You show me, then I show you.”

“Okay.” He closed his eyes and was again that crystalline form on the empty waste. He closed his crystal eyes and saw the waving texture of the lights drifting above the desert floor. Carefully, timidly, he stretched out his arm and disturbed them as he might a pool of the clearest water. He clenched his hand on a green thread.

His eyes jerked open. His fist was engulfed in flame; it seared with heat, but did not burn.

“Hawk!” came the call from afar, the soft and husky voice of Spike. “Hawk! Stop!”

He opened his fist, and the fire vanished into the thin air, leaving behind the scent of charred fabric.

“Your jacket’s on fire!”

“Fuck!”

The end of his sleeve was smoking. He pulled it off and threw it on the ground, stomping on it as sparks spread across the floor, sucked out by the flue of the open wall into the night.

“That was fucking rad!” exclaimed the boy. “Do you feel that?”

“It’s the ripple. The hunters might feel it. We need to get out of here.”

“My turn first. If they want me dead for this, I wanna know what it feels like. Don’t laugh.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Spike took off his jacket and pulled off his shirt. “Just in case,” he said.

In the light from the BAT, his bandages contrasted against his skin.

“I feel so tired,” he whispered. “They came for me last night. They want to kill me. They wanted to kill everyone I love. And I want to hurt them.”

He took a fighting stance, crouched, and ready to leap. “There it is. I feel it, Hawk. It’s coming.” He reached up his hand in the darkness.

Hawk felt the vibration start in the back of his neck. When the ripple touched the walls, the building started to shake. Then came the thunderclap.

Spike turned to him, and where his soft brown eyes had been, there were orbs of flashing lightning. The white light rose in the center and engulfed him. It washed out the dark room until there was no place for shadow, and it washed out the city, and there was nothing but the whiteness that threatened to erase him.

For the longest time, he was alone in that whiteness. And then at some point he could not recall exactly, there was the presence of Spike, his tingle of laughter, his brown form an insubstantial shadow in the blinding bright.

Spike came to him.

I’m afraid.

Hawk opened his arms, and the boy laid his head on his chest, and listened to his heart, and knew his secrets.

I love you.

As if whispered from a dream.