The world shifted. Brian felt air whipping at his cheeks and hair. It was how he imagined a wind tunnel must feel, being surrounded by rushing wind trying to unbalance him. He tried to steady himself, and found his foot falling much more forward than he'd expected. His momentum vanished in an instant. Brian let his eyes slide open.

  They'd travelled all the way back to the old RV park outside the town, some ten minutes by foot from the place he'd seen Jackson burn the two men and an easy half hour from where they'd stood only moments earlier.

  "What did you do to me?" he asked, ripping his arm away from Jackson's grasp and stumbling backward.

  "I brought you here to see, like I said. Nothing more."

  Jackson pointed at the nearest mobile home. It looked as though it had been abandoned decades earlier. There were cheap plastic chairs set out front, and a few cardboard boxes of empty beer bottles scattered around the exterior. The RV itself was dark, as dark as the night sky above them, but the side door stood slightly ajar. As the wind stirred past them, it swung wide and clacked against the wall with a foreboding echo.

  Brian wasn't one to scare easily. He'd been a landlord for many years now, in cities that far outstripped tiny Rallsburg, dealing with any number of strange or disturbed tenants. He'd had knives drawn on him, hurled himself between domestic fights, and evicted the worst of humanity more than once. With the relatively light sheriff's presence in Rallsburg, he'd grown to rely on himself and himself alone to keep his properties in line. The college kids he usually rented to these days weren't so bad, but a few of his other residents featured the worst and weirdest the Northwest had to offer.

  Not one of those many encounters approached the level of unease he felt staring at the shadows just inside the door. His skin was crawling as he walked forward and tapped on the door lightly.

  "Anyone home?"

  "There's no one well enough to answer you in there," Jackson replied, so calmly that Brian shivered.

  He noticed that his companion seemed fatigued from their journey here. Jackson was leaning heavily against the wall, and made no moves to follow Brian into the RV. Dreading what he would find inside, Brian pushed the door open gently and took a step into the interior. It was still too dark to see anything. He felt around for the light switch near the door and flicked it on.

  He wished he hadn't.

  "There exists a certain trading ground, a neutral territory where magic users can trade information and materials," Jackson started, his even tone completely at odds with the horrors contained within. Brian was barely paying attention, his eyes fixed on the bisected young man seated before him. "It stands within a pocket, for lack of a better term. An area larger on the inside than the outside, a rift in space."

  Brian finally tore his gaze away from the man—or more precisely, the lower half of the man, for the torso and head were nowhere to be found—and overcame his disgust enough to view the rest of the room. The pool of blood seeping out lead him to spot the second young man, who Brian guessed to be an RSU student based on his age and what remained of his clothing.

  He began murmuring a prayer, feeling tenfold more religious today than he had in his entire life. The second man was covered in burns, his clothing scorched and in tatters from the flames. The skin was blackened, and some parts simply seemed to melt away from the body into puddles of flesh.

  "Such a space can't exist without someone to maintain it, and the woman who does so keeps a tight lid on the secrets of creating it. Even I have no idea how she pulls it off. Since it remains the only truly secure location to trade something as volatile as magic, she can take a high tax from her customers," Jackson continued, stepping into the RV, seemingly unconcerned with the flies angrily buzzing about the room.

  Brian felt his throat constrict and only narrowly avoided letting his gag reflex take over entirely. He realized that this man, burned away as the other two he'd witnessed earlier that evening, had to be the work of his newfound companion who now leaned casually against the countertop in the small makeshift kitchen.

  "Why?" Brian asked, but Jackson kept speaking as if he hadn't heard.

  "Not everyone wanted to pay such a tax. As is inevitable in our society, competition arose. Those other marketplaces were privy to listening ears, or interfering third parties. The special nature of a wholly controllable space and the advantages it brings; these men wanted to create their own." He looked coldly at the pair of legs in the chair covered in blood, and for the first time Brian thought he saw true hatred flash through Jackson's eyes. "They failed."

  "So they screwed up, but it only hurt themselves. Right?" Brian's voice quivered, for he already knew what had to come next.

  "Their greed, their ambition, their recklessness. It puts others at risk. Consider what they could have done, if they'd not been so far out of town, or lost control later than this. Innocents are always at risk when man plays with fire." Jackson shook his head in disgust. "I'm sorry, Brian. Look behind the chair." He stepped back outside, leaving Brian alone with the decaying corpses and the flies buzzing around the small room.

  Brian turned and crept toward the chair. His heart was pounding, a steady thump he could feel in his skull. The stench of burned flesh was overwhelming, but curiosity and fear drove him forward. He had to know. He set a hand on the shoulder of the chair to steady himself, and craned his neck forward to see the space behind.

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  It was a little girl. About Natalie's age, if he had to guess. Not just any girl, he realized, recognizing her clothes. Jenny Wilson. She'd been to his house many times. Natalie went to school with her, and they'd been close friends. He'd helped her with her homework. They'd all gone to the movies together once. Brian had let her parents watch over Natalie a few nights when he had to deal with business he couldn't avoid. She'd been family.

  Tears streamed down Brian's cheeks. He imagined Natalie coming in to see her friend like this. Jenny's face was half carved away, in a perfect clean circle that would put a surgeon to shame. Her arm and shoulder were completely gone, vanished from the world entirely, with blood still dripping out. Brian could see chiseled-down bones poking out from her torn pink jacket, peeking through the hewn sinew. It was the same jacket Natalie had begged him for days to get, so they could match.

  He imagined his daughter in this same position, ripped apart by ungodly forces, and he felt rage. Pure, unbridled rage that exploded up through him like a firework, blinding his eyes with fury and pain and disgust.

  He heard a cough.

  Brian's head snapped around to the corner of the room, where a young man was just coming round. Brian didn't recognize the face. His legs were bent out of shape, but relatively intact. Compared to the rest of the room, he might as well have been in perfect health.

  "Is what he said true?" Brian growled.

  "We lost control of it," the guy answered weakly. "It would have gotten us all if I hadn't stopped it in time."

  "How did you stop it?"

  "I… oh God. I killed Alex. I had to, would have killed me," he added with another wheezing cough.

  "And Jenny?"

  "She just wanted to see some magic. Alex said it'd go okay… fuck this hurts. Can you help, please? Get me to a doctor, man. Please."

  "I…" Brian started. He glanced around, his eyes once again finding Jenny. Her remaining eye was wide in terror, her mouth slightly open. Brian took a few steps toward her. His heart ached at the sight, and begged him to help, even as his brain tried to convince him there was nothing to be done. Brian's emotions won out in the end, and he picked up Jenny's little hand, holding it tight.

  "She's dead, man. Help me," came another pleading call from behind him. Brian looked at him with disgust. He was fine, he wasn't even bleeding. Jenny needed his attention far more, even if she could no longer hear or see anything ever again.

  "Hey, I'm talking to you. Come on. Get me up."

  Brian ignored him. Should he lift Jenny up and carry her out? Could he take her to the sheriff and bring justice to these murderous boys? Would her parents want to see her in this condition?

  Her parents.

  Brian imagined another man coming to him with his daughter's corpse in his arms. Would he collapse in grief? Attack the poor messenger? It was all too painful to even consider.

  "God dammit, help me up or I'll burn you too."

  Too. Brian looked up at the word. The young man had a small flame dancing above his fingertips, even as he struggled to move to a better position. The scorched body between them suddenly took on new, terrifying meaning.

  Brian had apparently hesitated too long. The fire in the man's hand exploded into a ball. Waves of heat washed through the room. Brian recoiled from the intensity. He dove behind the chair for cover, nearly landing on poor Jenny. The fire wasn't as strong as he expected. It barely singed the upholstery, but it was still a bright light on the other side of the room. He dared to peek around the corner.

  "Get me to a hospital or your ass is… oh fuck!"

  Brian watched, sweat trickling down his neck and his eyes squinting through the intense light. The fireball seemed to be growing out of proportion, igniting everything around it. The man's hand was bubbling in a way that human skin never should. Layers were peeling away. The fire crawled backward, rolling through him. His cries shifted into earsplitting screams.

  Brian ducked behind the chair again, hiding his eyes until the light finally dimmed away to nothing, and the sound had faded away into simply the quiet hiss of steam.

  "Do you see, Brian?" Jackson spoke up, appearing behind the burned young man with his hand raised and palm upward. Tiny bolts of electricity danced between his fingers. "This happens every time people are given powers they can't control. He has this ability now, and nothing can take it away. Ever."

  Jackson began murmuring, his hands dancing about in a circle, and the electricity danced faster, forming a large shape in midair. Features began to emerge, the electricity taking a rough humanoid form, though without a face or anything resembling a head. It advanced on the young man, and Brian could feel the crackling energy and scent of ozone from across the room.

  He felt disgusted, with the young man and with himself. Brian didn't even know the man's name and he'd just let Jackson kill him. Was this sort of cruel acceptance to be his future?

  On the other hand, Brian didn't want to know his name. He'd seen what this man had done, and he could think of no better fate than to be killed by the same unholy force they thought they could control.

  Without another word, he turned and walked away, his world suddenly much more vast and frightening than it had been only a few hours before.

----------------------------------------

  "She tried to get away," Jackson said quietly as he emerged. "The girl—"

  "Jenny," Brian snapped.

  Jackson raised a hand in apology. "Jenny. She was invited along by her cousin, and what child doesn't want to hang out with the cool older kids? So she went along, and when everything started to fall apart, she tried to run and hide. You can see from the way she's turned away, hiding behind the chair. It didn't save her."

  Brian's fists were clenched tight, knuckles pale white. "Stop talking."

  "This is getting out of control, and we need to stop it."

  "So do it," he growled.

  "I can't," Jackson replied.

  Brian gestured back into the RV with a strained, bitter laugh. "Send your devils at them all."

  "I can only control them from nearby. Most of the people we'd need to… dispose of are all in Rallsburg."

  "So go ahead. I'm not stopping you."

  Jackson shook his head. "I'm powerful, Brian, but there are two I can call my equal. They expelled me from the town, so to speak. I cannot enter Rallsburg. Which is why I need you."

  Brian saw the offer coming. Saw the deal the devil was about to offer him. The road to hell was laid out before him, black and burning with fire, and—God help him—he was about to accept wholeheartedly.

  He thought again of Jenny, still lying just inside, her face wracked with terror.

  Her eyes would haunt him until his final breath.

  For Natalie. To keep her safe.

  "What do you need?"

  Jackson smiled sadly, and Brian knew then and there he was forever damned.