Car trunks are extraordinarily uncomfortable.  There is no padding and a minimum of insulation.  Riding in one is also not recommended because the suspension is designed with the passengers up front in mind.  None of this had been terribly important to me until two jack-ass bastards in white shirts and ties had jumped me and thrown me into their own car trunk.  It only took about two miles for me to ascertain all the things wrong with riding in the "boot", but I stayed where I was.  I wanted to see where these morons were taking me.

Usually, I don't ride in the trunks of four-door sedans.  Usually, I go places in my truck.  If the magic is particularly strong I take my roan gelding, Big Dog.  He's slower, but he gets me there every time.  I hoped he had enough fodder to last till I got back.  There was no one to let him out to graze.

The longer I bumped along in the back of this crappy car, the madder I got.  This didn't make any damn sense!  Who kidnaps a wizard in a car, for crying out loud!  I could have blown the electrical system to kingdom come before we had gotten half a mile.

But I didn't.  I stayed quiet and still.  There was no way these two rocket surgeons had thought this plan up. 

And who wears a tie to a kidnapping?!  These jokers were dressed like they were going to church.

Thirty minutes later the bouncing finally stopped.  The first thing I was going to do when I got back to my place, I was going to check the rear shocks on my truck.  This shouldn't happen to dog shit, much less the stuff I usually hauled.

Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum got out after the car was parked.  I heard doors slam and receding footsteps so I figured I was alone.

That was good; I had some anger to work out of my system before I started dealing with these idiots.  These worthless bastards had locked me, a wizard in good standing with the Guild, in the trunk of their crappy sedan.  Then they had the audacity to walk off like I was going to sit here cowering in fear like a five-year-old.  I was going to mess their shit up.

I sent my will questing down into the ground below the car.  I didn't expect to find any crystal or metal deposits this close to a developed area, but it was worth a shot.  The echoes of power from the nearest vein put it miles away, too far for me to use right now.  But the car was sitting on asphalt, which had been poured over rebar.  It was some of the crappiest steel ever forged by the hand of man, but I could still feel some power in its crystalline structure.  I really could have used the energy from anywhere, the earth under the asphalt, the storm gathering overhead, but the energy from crystals was easiest for me to work with, and anything with a regular, rigid structure would do.

The rebar under the asphalt wouldn't have made a sturdy coat rack, but there was more than enough energy, mixed with my own simmering anger.  The tingling in my limbs that always seemed to accompany using magic grew stronger as I shaped the power into something I could use. 

I flung the spell with a whisper and the lid of the trunk exploded outward.  I tried to keep all the pieces smaller than my head; I didn't want to wreck anybody else's car just because I was pissed off at these guys.

Painfully, I climbed out of the trunk.  Knowing there was a good chance I would still need to kick someone's ass before I went home, I also started stretching.  Trunk rides are not conducive to loose muscles.

Liberated, stretched, and still slightly pissed, I looked around the parking lot.

"I'm too young to feel this bad," I consoled myself.

It wasn't hard to figure out where I was.  They had grabbed me near my shop outside of Louisville, and I knew we hadn't gotten on the highway.  There were only a limited number of little towns within half an hour of the city, and there was no way they had actually taken me back toward downtown.

Also, the fluorescent-lit sign reading "CHRIST VICTORIOUS INDEPENDENT BAPTIST CHURCH" gave the mystery away.  These morons had been dressed for church because that's exactly where they'd been headed.  Unless something else was going on in a tiny Pentecostal church on Wednesday night at six o'clock.

There was no one in the parking lot, and I could hear the organist pounding out the chorus to Onward Christian Soldier through the open windows and into the warm June night.  I guess they couldn't afford air conditioning.  I figured they were all inside, so I walked toward the front door.  I would have used the back, but in churches, those usually open up behind the pulpit; I wasn't quite ready to take the stage just yet.

Ten yards from the door I saw the guys who had jumped me heading back toward their car.  Well, can't have that, I thought.  They'd see the lid to their trunk scattered all over the parking lot and that would be the end of my little surprise. 

I reached out to the evening breeze to draw the energy for a windscreen.  The air magic was light and diffused, which is why I used it instead of pulling from the earth.  The screen of energy I built around me didn't make me invisible, just indistinct.  The problem was it did the same thing to my intended victims.  Luckily I had other senses to rely on.  I stepped into the shadows between two cars and prepared my reception.

I sent my power back into the asphalt of the parking lot.  It was stone and tar, ripped from the bosom of the earth and laid to rest under the harsh sky to wither until its power trickled away.  It's no wonder there are so many auto accidents; roads and parking lots are angry little buggers.

I added my will and indignation to the resentment simmering in the lot.  I convinced the stones that a little petty revenge would help to ease their pains.  The rocks were receptive to my persuasion, to say the least.  Halfway between my hiding spot and their car, I let the stones slip my restraining will just a little.

"Son of a bitch!" one of the kidnappers screamed when the parking lot tried to eat him.  That didn't sound very Christian to me, but I was willing to allow him one or two little slips tonight.  The other one screamed like a girl and wet himself.  I wasn't sure how Christian that was, but it certainly wasn't very manly.  Both of these occurrences did a little to soothe my still-smoldering anger.  The organ was still pounding through another hymn, and it seemed no one had heard my two little heroes.  I rearranged the screen around me to diffuse sounds instead of light and extended it to surround my captors as I walked toward them.

I hadn't let the parking lot actually eat them, although it might have if I had let it.  But neither of them looked especially relaxed, locked hip-deep in the holes that had suddenly opened under them.  From the looks on their faces, the holes might not have been quite spacious enough for comfort.

Since I had dropped the sight screen, they could both see me clearly as I paced toward them.  "Which of you is Tweedle-dee?" I asked. 

I don't know if they were struck dumb by my sudden appearance, or if they were genuinely that ignorant of classic literature, but neither one of them seemed to get it.

"Let's try again.  Why did you throw me into your crappy car and bring me to your tent revival?"

Still no answers, but I saw the shrewd little light go on in both of their pea-sized brains.  They knew what I wanted to know, and they thought that they weren't going to tell me.

"You really are an utterly stupid pair aren't you?"  It was a rhetorical question.  I knew they had fewer IQ points between them than my mother had sober testicles.

I stalked around them in what I hoped was a menacing fashion as I considered my available methods of persuasion.  Mind magic was right out.  First, it was illegal, and second I didn't know how to do any of it.  I could try some illusions, but illusions had to be subtle or the belief the viewer invested just fell apart.  These guys didn't look like they got subtle, and I wasn't very interested in trying anyway.  That left either trying to make nice, or intimidation.  Nice was no more in reach than subtle at the moment.

I had stopped pacing while I thought, so I moved back to where both my little victims could see me easily.  Evidently my menacing pacing had been convincing because they both tried to scramble away despite being buried to the hips in parking lot.

I squatted down just inside the area they would have been able to reach if they could have formed coherent thoughts at that point.  I'm only about 5'9", so we were right about eye level.

"Here's the deal, gentlemen," I said calmly.  "I want to know what's going on in your little backwoods church, and who's in charge.  If you tell me, I'll let you go, as long as you go somewhere that isn't here.  Decide not to tell me, and I'll do unpleasant things to you until you do tell me, or until your boss comes to see what all the screaming is about."

At the last phrase I let all of the anger I was bottling up come out on my face.  I added a little crazy smile that I'd been working on at home.

"Please don't send us to Hell, Mr. Wizard!  We'll tell you everything we know!" choked the pants-wetter. 

"Shut up!" yelled the other one.  "He can't send us to Hell.  The Reverend said we were protected.  He can't even touch us!"

I'm not sure if I was amused or offended by being called ‘Mr. Wizard', but I suddenly developed a deep and powerful yearning to prove to my oh-so-faithful captive how wrong he was.

My anger was still smoldering down in my gut, and I let it flow up into my right hand as I stood and stepped over to Mr. Faithful.  I had the air for fuel and the heat of my anger.  With a snap of my fingers, I sent a spark of will and collected the little ball of fire into my palm.  It hovered there like a little pet, swirling blue and red flames lighting the circle around us a little more. 

I grabbed the idiot's hair on the back of his head.  With more pleasure than a good man should, I jerked his head back so he looked into my eyes as I leaned over him.  My lips peeled back from my teeth as I brought my little ball of destruction up next to his face.

"Please don’t cooperate," I whispered in his ear.  "I really want to hurt you.  I'm not a nice man, and I'd have fun making you tell me what I wanna know."

"And I may not be able to damn your soul to Hell, but I've got a pretty good idea of where you're going anyway.  All I've got to do is punch your ticket and you're on the express elevator all the way down."

He was sweating and shaking like a drunk on a three-day dry spell, trying to get away from me and the fire and the ground around his waist all at the same time.

"Now," I said with another jerk to his hair, "what's going on in the church?  Who's the Reverend?  Why did you grab me on the way home?"

"Reverend Clay is the preacher here.  He told us to go find a wizard for the service tonight.  We asked around and got your name.  Everyone said Lucas Sharp was the local wizard," this from the pants-wetter.  He stared at the ball of fire the whole time like it was a hypnotist's watch.

"What does the good Mr. Clay want a wizard for?"

The guy whose face I was preparing to melt off swallowed and then whispered.  "He thinks magic is the Devil's gift.  He wants to make an example of a wizard to show the church that you aren't that powerful."

"And how am I supposed to be an example?  This isn't Salem, I don't float, and I weigh more than a duck.  How is he going to prove that I'm powerless?"

"They were going to ‘question' you; there's a big water trough on the stage for that part.  He's got rocks piled up out back too.  I think he's planning to have the church stone you."

I let go of his hair and stepped back out of reach.  The fireball flared and died without my will to keep it stable.  Stoning would be a nasty death, and a lot more brutal than I had given this church credit for.  Either the preacher was a full-on nut-job or a hardcore fanatic.  Both options would be bad for local magic users, and I couldn't let this bastard pervert this little church into his own death cult.  I had grown up in a similar church and both ‘Reverend Clay' and I would be damned before I let him ruin this one any further.

With a gesture I opened the ground clamped around the pair's hips. 

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Go away," I said.  "Anywhere away from here.  Find a real shepherd to follow."

They crawled out of their respective holes and scrambled toward their car.  I guess it was a mark of how scared they were that they didn't even blink at the state of the rear end.  Pants-wetter got into the driver's seat and they laid down rubber leaving the parking lot.

Well, now I had a better idea of what was going on.  Some crazy religionist had set himself up in a little home-grown church.  He was evidently preaching hate and judgment against the gifted.  I must have been his first abductee because I refused to believe that someone in our community had gone missing without my hearing anything about it.  Also, the whole operation seemed totally clueless about actually kidnapping and killing a wizard.  If this wasn't the first time, then the victims before me must not have been really gifted, just people in the wrong place hung up like straw men.  Lastly, most of the congregation must be mostly innocent.  In situations like this, most of the people might shout and scream during the sermons and rallies, but very few were actually willing to get blood on their hands.  They might think that we were all demons and sons of Satan himself, but that wouldn't pull the trigger for most of these people, or light the pyre as the case might be.

I thought about my responsibilities.  I was a wizard of the Guild.  I had a right and responsibility to respond to threats to the Guild and the gifted in whatever way I deemed necessary.  The Guild lawyers might even get me off if I ended up killing someone, as long as it was in self-defense.

Conscience and sense of purpose assuaged, I moved toward the doors of the church.  I wouldn't kill anyone unless it was absolutely my last resort, but this "Reverend" Clay was going to regret coming into my territory until the day he finally went to meet his Maker.

The glass doors were well-oiled and hardly made a sound as I slipped into the foyer of the little church.  The hymn was over, and evidently, the illustrious Mr. Clay himself was taking the stage to preach. 

I slid quietly into the back pew like a good Baptist and studied the man whose day I was going to ruin.  He was tall, at least 6' 1'', with a face suited to serious declarations.  He looked like a Southern Marcus Aurelius might have looked.  Not thin, but not fat; I could probably carry him out on my shoulder if it came down to cases.  A man accustomed to having his way with the world.  His gray, patrician hair didn't move an inch as he climbed the three steps to the pulpit.

"Welcome again, brothers and sisters, to the Lord's house."  His voice carried the illusion one step further.  It was rich, and not deep enough to sound menacing.  He must have been from somewhere in Georgia by the way the vowels rolled off of his tongue.

"Tonight we have gathered because of a grave threat to our faith.  There are those among us, living in our very neighborhoods, working with us in our places of business, who have consorted with our great Enemy.  They have taken his gifts and usurped the Lord's rightful place in this world.  I am speaking about the Gifted of course; if what they have can truly be called a gift, and not a re-compensation for their very souls.  I call it the worst sort of abomination."

He ranted on for another ten minutes, quoting scripture about not suffering a witch to live, and shouting denunciations of wizard orgies under the full moon.  I wish I had gotten the letter about those, no one ever invited me.  It was good stuff from one point of view, designed to shock the crowd and dehumanize magic-users.  It was all crap of course.  Even the scripture was mostly misquoted and misused.

He talked about how abominations like me would lead children astray and then sacrifice them under the dark of the moon to fuel our Satanic rituals.

Finally, he wound down.  "Brother Thomas and Brother Samuel have secured a specimen for us tonight.  Through great personal danger, they have brought a wizard here, tonight, for us to question and perhaps save his poor soul from Satan's mighty grip."

He looked expectantly at the door behind me, actually glancing at my face for a moment before a puzzled expression twisted his features.

"Brother Michael, Brother John, would you take a few men and see what's keeping our visitor?"

Michael and John stood up and I decided that they were the roughest looking church-goers that I had ever laid eyes on.  Michael had on a leather vest that looked more like a breastplate, and John's shaved head was covered by a network of tattoos.  They would have looked more at home in a biker bar or a skinhead rally.

They walked out gathering up the four next toughest-looking guys as they went.  I muttered a spell as the door closed behind them, locking them out.

Evidently, they didn't hear the door lock because there was no immediate banging to get back in. 

Clay stood behind the pulpit with an expression that tried to be calm and assured.  The sweat breaking out on his forehead though didn't help his image much. 

I hadn't thought about how I would actually confront this man.  To me, he was an idiot and a hate monger, but to these people, he was a leader and shepherd.  I needed to break his power in front of his congregation. 

"Preacher!" I said, raising my hand.  "Preacher, how do you know when you meet a wizard?  I would hate to meet someone at the store and not be sure whether or not they were a real person."

"That's an excellent question son.  And if you'd call me Doctor, I'd take it as a kindness.  Wizards look a great deal like other people.  It can be difficult to tell Satan's children apart from the rest of us.  But you should know that wizards cannot hold the Holy Bible, nor can they stand the sound of Scripture.  And you can see the fires of Hell burning forever behind their eyes.  When they try to cast their wicked spells upon you, the fire flares up and lights their whole face."  He sounded so sure of himself, but pretentious morons often do.

I picked up a Bible from the back of the pew in front of me, "So a mage couldn't do this, right?"

"That's right, son.  The Devil's children can't touch the Word of God."

I stepped out into the aisle and strolled toward the stage.  "And wizards can't quote scripture.  'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil'"

"Excellent, that's exactly right."

I called to the electricity running through the wires in the building.  It jumped from the light fixtures in the ceiling down to the hand that I had raised above my head.  It crackled around my hand as I advanced on the suddenly frightened little man on the stage.

"Do you see the fires of Hell burning in my eyes, 'Doctor'?"

"Wh-Who are you?" he stammered.

"I'm the man you had your thugs assault, kidnap, and throw into the back of that shitty sedan.  I'm the man you were going to have your 'followers' stone after your service.  I'm the wizard that YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE PISSED OFF."  I shouted the last right into his face. 

That was when the biker brigade broke back in through the glass doors and started shooting at me.

I dove to the side and backward when I heard the first shot.  The bullet splintered the steps leading up the stage below where I had been standing.  I slid around and sent the ball of electricity in my hand winging toward the gunman.  Now that I was facing the right way, I could see that he seemed to be the only one armed with more than a knife or knuckle-duster.

The gunner was down, his pistol gone.  The spark I had thrown at him wasn't fatal, but it would hurt like the world's biggest taser.  He was still writhing on the foyer floor so I discounted him for the moment.

Clay was cowering behind the organ, and most of the congregation was on the floor as well.  The rest of God's bikers were headed toward me, trying to look tough.

I thought about how I wanted to handle these guys.  Technically I could kill them, just flame them all, and walk away.  The cops would find the gun, and I would plead self-defense.  I didn't want to do that though.  The congregation still probably thought I was Hell-spawn, and I didn't want to kill anyone I didn't have to.  I could tase them like I had the gunslinger, but that would be too quick.  I wanted these people to leave impressed with what a wizard could do.  Which was good, because I could pull off impressive.

I pulled energy out of the air and wrapped it into my muscles.  The extra force would make me hit harder and move faster, but would also protect me from impacts and strain of doing so.  It was a spell I had perfected about two years ago; sadly, I had gotten more use out of it than I ever expected.  I also whispered a spell that would increase my reactions and perception speed.  It made the world slow to three-quarter speed and pushed my heart rate and blood pressure way up.  I wouldn't be able to keep this up for long.

The thugs were almost on me, so I stepped forward to meet them.  Bullies and gang-bangers don't usually expect their victims to attack back.

The lead guy had pulled a chain out from underneath his "suit" jacket.  He swung it like he'd used it in more than one fight, but so had I.  One more spell was all I could probably manage right now, but I whispered it out anyway.  The weapon whipped up into the air like a snake as the magic took hold. And just like a snake, the free end whipped toward the biker's face. The part he had wrapped around his hand proceeded to try and squeeze that hand off.  Evidently, this was not a man who took care of his tools, and they resented it.

That left four biker deacons to deal with.  They all stumbled a little when the guy was attacked by his own weapon, but they were too close to stop.  That wasn't going to save them either; neither hesitation nor audacity would win this fight for them.

They came at me all at once, which might have worked if they had been more of a team and less of a mob.  My experience didn't help them either.  The guy with the knuckle duster tried to keep my attention with little jabs-and-roundhouse crap.  I dodged a little, but two Bowies and a butterfly knife were waiting for me to get distracted.  Couldn't have that.

I grabbed the guy with the bigger bowie knife.  He was so surprised that he almost dropped it; I don't think anyone had ever actually gotten in his face while he was holding the freaking thing.  After I squeezed his wrists like a vice, he did drop it.  I kicked it off the stage and gave him just a little extra for good measure.  When I heard tendons pop and a scream, I jerked him off balance.  He stumbled into Knuckle-duster and I ducked and side-stepped behind Butterfly who was sneaking up behind me. 

As the Knuckles and Bowie collided, I put Butterfly on the ground with a shot to the kidney.  I didn't hold much back, so he would probably wake up tomorrow pissing blood.  Butterfly was down for the count, and Bowie was knife-less, which left Knuckles and Pimples, the other guy with a knife. 

Pimples finally focused on me instead of his friends and lunged.  I let him extend but then swayed to my right as the knife came toward me.  I grabbed his wrist in my right hand.   Then I jerked his arm across my body, making sure to keep the knife clear of my guts.  My left hand went to his shoulder.  He got a little push forward using his own momentum.  Then I twisted the whole arm up and around.  When he was on the floor, screaming about his dislocated shoulder, I kicked him for good measure and focused back on the other two.

Bowie was out cold on the floor, and Knuckles was finally untangling himself.  He looked at me, and his buddies on the ground.  Slowly, and non-threateningly, he took the duster off and dropped it on the stage.

All told, maybe two minutes of fighting.

I let all the energy out of my arms and legs and released the spell that sped me up.  My blood pressure started to come back down after the strain of holding so much magic active.  My heart rate stayed up though as my body burned through all the adrenaline from the fight.  I had used a lot of magic and energy tonight; it was starting to wear on me.

Finally, I looked out at the congregation.  They were sitting very still, like rabbits trying to hide from a wolf.  Some stared in disbelief; but I saw relief, and maybe approval, in some eyes.  Some were angry, but they looked at Clay as much as me.  No one seemed to care much about the thugs on the floor.

"My name is Lucas Sharp," I said, loudly enough to be heard in the back of the room.  "I am a mage in good standing with the Guild of Magic in this city.  I have dealt with a threat to the magical community with the force and diplomacy that I felt was appropriate.  If any of you dispute my interpretation of this threat or my actions in reducing it, you may call upon the local Guild chapter.  Who is able to speak for this assembly?"

An old man stood up to the left of the stage.  He must have been seventy years old, with a lifetime of work on his face and hands.

"I can speak for our church."

"As a member of the Guild, I can dispense low and middle justice in situations where such seems necessary.  Will you and your brothers and sisters abide by my decisions?"

"We've wronged you son.  If you think punishment is just, then we accept your authority."  This was spoken in a slow but powerful drawl.  Not a single person disputed his words, which I found impressive in such a small church.  His character must have been literally unassailable.

"You and yours have done nothing to me, sir.  But this trash on the floor around me is a different matter.  Does anyone here claim kinship or loyalty to any of these men?"

No one spoke.  No one stood.  I had been right; they were outside recruits.

"Violent men will find violence.  I am no exception.  If you cast them out of this church, and this town, I will have no more issue with you or them.  God can judge them as He sees fit and in His own time."

A murmur of assent from the congregation.

"Do you agree to my terms in regard to these men?" I asked formally.

"We do," said the old man.

"As for the 'Reverend' Clay, he will be taken to the local Guild chapter for questioning.  We will deliver him to the police afterward."

I didn't need their approval, but I appreciated the nods I saw from the crowd.

"Is there anything I can do for the church or its members before I leave you?"  I was tired, but I wanted to make sure there was no lingering resentment when I left.

The elder looked slowly around the room, seeing if anyone would ask for my services.  "I think you've done all we need tonight, son."

"Then may you go with your God," I said.  Stepping over to Clay, I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to his feet.  The spineless toad had been quivering behind the organ the whole time.

"Walk asshole," I muttered to him.  One hand on his neck, I marched him out to the parking lot.

I realized that I was looking for my truck and swore like a dockside whore.  I jerked the preacher around.  "Where's your car?!" I shouted, with a little shake for emphasis.

He pointed to a Cadillac near the building.  Typical.  "Keys!" I demanded.  He meekly handed them over.  I unlocked the car with his little remote thing.

It also had a convenient little button to pop the trunk.

"See how you like this," I said as I threw him in and walked toward the driver's side door.

At least the ride home would be a lot more comfortable.