Felix stood near the door with one of Brian's earliest recruits. Initially, the plan was to screen every potential newcomer, every attendee to this first wide meeting. Until now, Brian had found his followers by simply going to bars and talking, convincing people one by one, and letting word spread on its own. He didn't really have an eye for mass-marketing or new communication—which was right where Felix fit in.

  Of course, Brian's method did hold one advantage. He could trust all his recruits like a family. He knew each of them by name, knew their relatives, worked with them. They'd been through hell and back multiple times, between the battles in Tacoma and Lakewood, and the smaller fights in the Olympic forest—picking off newly awakened pilgrims and burying the bodies deep in the forest. They were a tight-knit group, and though Felix wouldn't call them elite in any sense, they were certainly committed.

  These newcomers? Felix couldn't hope to screen them. He'd severely underestimated just how fast his first forays into social media would spread. Though he'd kept it quiet, word had spread like wildfire: the guy whom Cinza had named on TV as her enemy was going to hold a speech in New London, Washington. Felix had chosen the place as a joke, but with the sheer number of vehicles pouring into the tiny village, he was starting to worry about not having enough space simply for the cars. Already, every road was packed to the brim, bumper to bumper, with tighter parallel parking than Felix had ever seen in his life.

  Yet, not a single argument to be heard. While he saw plenty of angry expressions, it remained remarkably quiet. They had a specific target for their outrage, one and all. They'd come because they heard the call—and every single one wore the same determined gaze.

  "Any chance of a weapon?" he murmured.

  Brian's man shook his head. "Like I can tell? And even if they ain't got guns, there's no way we can check this many for magic. The stones don't work that fast."

  Felix sighed. "So we're taking a risk."

  "We're always takin' a risk, man. That's what we signed up for."

  He nodded. "You're right. I'm still getting used to this, sorry."

  "Glad you're off the fence," said the guy, clapping Felix on the back.

  Felix hurried out and circled around the rear of the building, dodging away from the crowd filtering into the huge barn. They'd originally planned to just use one of the houses, offered by a friend of one of Brian's followers, but as soon as the first cars began to trundle in, packed to the brim, Felix quickly changed his plans.

  They'd just finished the makeshift stage as the crowd grew to triple-digits. Felix ordered the doors and windows of the barn thrown wide open. Thankfully, it was an unusually warm morning for November. As he walked around back, Felix pulled out his phone and ordered up a cheap public address system and a portable projector. If this was the first meeting, with the bare minimum of outreach effort he'd done…

  Felix tried not to think about it too much. One step at a time. Land the first meeting. Sell the story. Spread the word.

  As he checked the wires, he saw an interesting update: Hailey Winscombe had been issued an international warrant for her arrest and extradition back to the United States. Presently, she was still in London, though no one was quite sure where. More importantly for Felix, neither Cornelius Malton nor Brian Hendricks were named in the story. A quieter story mentioned that Brian was sought for questioning, and Malton was hiding behind lawyers, but those were more passive. They didn't catch social media attention like the immediacy of Hailey's warrant.

  To the eyes of the public, that might as well be a signed notice of guilt. We can use it.

  Brian walked out of the forest just as Felix reached the rear of the barn. He was covered in pine needles, and his clothes were as shabby as they'd ever been. When he saw the gathering crowd, he winced. "How?"

  Felix shrugged. "Your name carries a lot of weight now, thanks to Cinza. That, and all these people are here for you to tell them how to deal with this crisis."

  "I'm not a leader."

  "You are," said Felix firmly. "You lead your followers in more than one battle, and you came back alive. They listen to you. It's time to put that to use."

  Brian nodded. Felix led him to the rear doors of the barn, where two more of his followers stood as guards. They weren't exactly expecting violence to break out, but given the speech and the overwhelming public support for Cinza, Felix and the rest of Brian's companions were going to take every practical precaution.

  Not to mention we're practically behind enemy lines… Every single damn tree in the Olympic Forest feels like it might be hiding one of them. I swear I've seen greycloaks out in the forest before…

  As Brian and Felix walked up onto the stage, the noise of the crowd slowly faded away. The doors were still thrown wide, and a faint breeze in the air sent a chill through the room, but the entire assembly waited for them to speak. With Brian hesitating, Felix stepped forward to the edge of the wooden platform. They had no microphone, no amplification whatsoever—but since the only noises were the faint chirps of birds in the distance and the rattle of the wind against the windows, Felix had no trouble making himself heard.

  "Welcome, everybody," he called out. The noise of the crowd faded completely, and the few distracted faces swivelled around to meet his eyes, a sea of curious eyes waiting for his words. I haven't been in front of a crowd like this in years… "My name is Felix. I want to thank you all for coming out today, especially on a Sunday morning. I know it was short notice, and I'm really astounded by just how many of you were able to make it. I'm hoping nobody got lost on the backroads out here," he added with a grin.

  Nobody laughed.

  Felix nodded. "I'm here, you're here, everybody's here because we need to figure out what to do about this… problem, that's cropped up right in our backyard."

  "Witches!" shouted a voice from the sea of faces. Felix couldn't tell who it was, they'd spoken so fast, but a general reaction from the rear of the barn gave him an idea of where to look as he replied.

  "Not a bad word for it, but let's remember everyone—we aren't here to hunt down our neighbors without proof. We're civilized." Before anyone could ask, Felix dug into his pocket and pulled out the little stone. Immediately, he could feel it pull on his soul, just as it had when Brian first gave it to him. It sickened him—that such a little, totally normal object could have such a destructive power imbued into it. "We have a way."

  The crowd seemed interested, so Felix kept talking. "These stones were given to us by the man who saw all this coming. He knew magic was out in the world, and he saw the danger. They can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, if someone is one of the awakened." He played up his disgust at the final word, building the drama of the moment.

  "We're in the middle of a war we didn't even know was happening," Felix continued. "They have their weapons, and we have ours. They're trying to replace us, and they've already shown just how little stock they put in our lives. Some of you were at Lakewood!" he cried, not sure in the slightest if his statement was true—apart from Brian himself, Felix had no idea who actually went to Lakewood. It didn't matter. All that mattered was the rhetoric. "You witnessed what these monsters are willing to do! There's no such thing as an innocent bystander to them. We have to fight back!"

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  A few murmurs of agreement, but Felix wasn't winning the crowd over quite yet. He needed something better, something stronger. For whatever writing skills the academic world had given him, Felix was never particularly great at holding a mob together, getting them into his point of view. He could work wonders on the page with his keyboard, but actual oratory? He was practically sweating bullets underneath his thick coat, and it definitely wasn't from heat.

  Lucky for him, he wasn't the main act. Felix was just the opener, and the real deal was stepping in.

  Brian put a hand on his shoulder, steadying him. Felix hadn't even realized he was starting to shake, and just Brian's firm grip was enough to calm him. Felix stepped aside, letting Brian take the center of the stage. As soon as he did, the entire hall seemed to sharpen. They didn't recognize him, of course—nobody knew what Brian looked like. Despite the heavy press attention he'd suddenly received, the man never saw a single published photograph, or even a description. Somehow, even in the age of social media, Felix had never seen a single picture of Brian Hendricks across the whole internet.

  Despite his anonymity, Brian still commanded their attention. The moment he stepped up, Felix could feel it—the man exuded an air of grim portents. The scent of ashes from his burned home seemed to perpetually linger on him. Somehow, just by looking on his ominous expression, they knew it was momentous. Brian held the crowd in his palms, every single ear begging for his every word.

  "They destroyed my home," Brian said firmly, and though he didn't raise his voice, Felix had no doubt even those packed into the door frame would hear him clearly. "They murdered. They burned. They desecrated bodies and mutilated children. They are monsters."

  He took a deep breath, as though he were dying of thirst and the air itself was an oasis in the desert. "They took my daughter from me."

  The words hung in the air. Felix had never heard Brian mention his daughter. He'd seen the name on the old lists, as a 'presumed-deceased', but never dared to ask the man about her fate. He was a reporter, but there were some topics too painful to broach. From the way Brian spoke, Felix assumed the worst. She would've turned thirteen this summer, too… Damn.

  Brian paused, while the air in the room seemed to sharpen. Finally, as the tension in the barn rose to a fever pitch, he spoke again to ease them once more. "We will stop them."

  He waited. Nobody seemed quite sure what to do next—Felix among them. Was that it? Was he going to say anything else? How would they react? It wasn't exactly the sort of speech to applaud. Nothing about this meeting was about applause, yet the crowd needed some way to react. They needed to know how to move forward from this.

  We need to make this into a rally. Give them a slogan or something. But… shit, I should've come up with something.

  A cautious voice broke the silence—a woman near the back, clear voice ringing across the packed barn. "I saw one of them." The crowd turned in place, necks strained to see the new contributor to the cause. "A guy who could make things explode. He tried to rob a bank in Tacoma. But nobody ever got charged."

  Brian nodded. "The government has shown they aren't willing to take care of the problem."

  "What do we do?" she asked. "It's like there's more of them every day."

  "There are," said Brian.

  "But we don't know they're all dangerous," cut in a skeptical-looking man, far across the barn from the first woman. "What if some of them are just trying to live normal lives, like you and me?"

  "They chose this," said Brian. He took a step forward, toward the edge of the platform. "No one was born into this power. It did not even exist two years ago. Every single awakened chose their path, and they will face the consequences."

  "What's to stop more of them showing up?"

  "We must be thorough," said Brian. He was starting to build up some momentum, to Felix's relief. "We must be vigilant. Magic is passed from one person to the next. We will find every single piece of the evil book that grants their power, and we will burn them all, so that no more awakened can be born."

  "And then?" asked the first woman to speak.

  "We hunt down the rest," said Brian coldly.

  This got a real reaction. The crowd burst into murmurs. Felix estimated a near-perfect split between those who approved of Brian's call to action, and the rest still on the fence. To his surprise, not a single face seemed truly reluctant, merely cautious, but he supposed that was to be expected from a meeting like this.

  "Kill them?" asked an older man in the front row.

  Brian nodded. "I'm not happy about it. I'm sure you aren't either. But if they can spread their knowledge, we aren't safe. We must root it out, like weeds from the good crops, so the rest of the world survives."

  "What about you?" shouted someone Felix couldn't see. "You use their magic, don't you? What about the rock monsters?"

  Another burst of murmurs, and many more negative this time from Felix's guess. He opened his mouth to counter, but Brian held up his hands for silence—and he got it. Not even a whisper pierced the quiet once Brian had raised his arms.

  "It's a fair question," he replied. "I am not awakened. If you doubt me, you're welcome to use a stone to test me. These stones, and the tool I use to control the golems, were given to me by one of those who first discovered magic. Of the three, only one foresaw the danger. His name was Jackson, and he knew where this would lead. He told me the world was at stake… and he was right."

  Brian cleared his throat, raising his voice to a thunderous pitch that startled the whole crowd. A few birds in the rafters flew away, fearful of the sudden danger in his harsh, deep voice. "They burned Rallsburg to the ground. Hundreds were murdered by their wicked power. Jackson tried to stop them. He tried to save the whole town, but they killed us in the streets by the dozens. People were electrocuted, burned alive, buried in their own homes. You've seen the videos."

  "But you can control it," someone pointed out. "Why can't they?"

  "Because they are monsters," Brian shouted. "I'm still human. I'm one of you. They aren't. They've given up their humanity, and they admit it. You saw the interview, didn't you? She called us 'humans'." Brian shook his head. "She made a mistake, revealing what they really think of us. We're dirt to them. We're nothing to them. They want us to just get out of the way and die off."

  Brian started pacing from one end of the platform to the other. "They attacked us in Rallsburg. They fought us in Tacoma. They killed civilians in their homes in Lakewood. This is only the beginning. Every time they spread a little bit further. We can't let this go any further."

  Someone shouted out another question, but Brian was really building up in his speech, and the lone voice was lost in the rumble of agreement rolling through the crowd. "They're gathering their forces. They're building alliances. The government's on their side, but the public hasn't made up its mind yet. Nobody's opposed them in the open. It's time that changed."

  Brian paused, right in the middle of the platform. Silence fell over the crowd. Felix gasped. He couldn't have planned a better pregnant pause if he wrote the script himself. As far as he knew, Brian was improvising the whole speech, yet it flowed like he'd practiced it for weeks.

  "I made a mistake," he said quietly, and he could speak quietly, because the crowd was hanging onto every word with bated breath. The low voice carried a gravitas Felix couldn't hope to match. "I stayed in the shadows, because I was afraid for my own life. I'd lost Jackson, and I'd lost my daughter. I feared I wouldn't survive every night. I was a coward… but no more!"

  The last two words echoed through the barn, a resounding cry that sent shivers down Felix's spine. "Their leaders have shown themselves. It's time I did the same. I'm here with you today, and I'm telling you no more."

  Brian began to stomp his foot with every new sentence, punctuating them with hard clunks against the wood. "No more will they burn down our homes. No more will they murder innocents in the streets. No more will they corrupt our children, infiltrate our world, destroy our way of living."

  A final, resounding thump of wood. "No more."

  At the final utterance, the crowd roared its approval. It wasn't a cheer, exactly, but it was a positive result all the same. Even Felix, jaded as he was, felt like leaping to his feet and doing something. Except Brian hadn't given them something to do. They needed a follow-up. Felix took a step forward—but once again, Brian was ahead of him.

  ...Who is this guy?

  Brian kept speaking, even while the crowd roared its blessing on every sentence. "We will hunt them in the cities. We will hunt them in the forests. We will track down every last awakened there is, and we won't let a single one escape justice. They think they can just replace humanity, but they've forgotten where they came from. We won't go easy. We'll fight. We'll win. And you, every single one of you, will be our victory."