War of the Druids by Dennis Riggs (no david read aloud txt) 📖

energy ball, splitting it in half just outside the door, causing one half to go left and the other half to go right.

Dustin knew he succeeded when he heard one person grunt and the other say, "Fuck." He then walked through the door with a ball of energy in each hand. Peeking around the door-frame he saw Jason down on one knee, clutching his chest: Jamal was sprawled out on his right.

"What the hell was that," Jason asked, slowly rising to his feet, rubbing his chest where the energy ball hit him, burning a hole in his shirt.

"Just a little something I picked up for an occasion like this. You're both lucky I knew who it was." He walked over and knelt down next to Jamal, who is out cold. "Get over here and give me a hand with him. It looks like he took that blast to the face."

 

As Dustin closed the door to his apartment, one of the men sitting in a car across the street pressed stop on the video camera aimed at Dustin's place. The cameraman picked up his cell phone and dialed a number. When the other side picked up he said, "It's time....Yes, sir, I understand." He hung up the phone, signaled the driver, and they drove away unaware of Ashleigh standing in the shadows watching them.

 

Around noon of the same day, Dustin walked into his workshop to find his friend Mason Acker, hard at work on Dustin's latest project; an anti-gravity platform. His latest completed project was a self-sustaining generator, which he successfully patented and leased to R&P, Inc. for mass production and installation in private homes and businesses. One of Dustin's generators provides power for the entire apartment building he resides him, feeding excess power into the city grid. As thanks for the generator, Dustin got to live rent-free.

"Hey, Dustin," Mason said without looking up from his Vaio laptop.

"How's it coming along?" Dustin looked at the screen where mason was configuring the software to run the drive engine.

"It's not. Something is wrong with the program for the capacitors. If they're not misfiring, then the timing's way off. Hell, we fried three of them this morning."

"Let me see." Dustin looked over Mason's work, spotting the problem right away. "Maybe they're getting too much power before they can discharge."

"I'll bet you're right. I'll reconfigure the program."

"Alright. Where's Dan?"

"He's in back trying to fix those capacitors."

"Well, good luck."

"Thanks, I'll need it."

After Dustin passed through the rear door, leading to the workshop, he saw Dan sitting at his workbench with a soldering iron in his hand.

"I heard you fried some capacitors," Dustin said humorously.

Dan just grunted and went back to work, so Dustin decided to get lunch for everyone.

 

Sitting in the window seat of Ol' Timers, a fifties-style diner occupying a spot in a small shopping strip, Ashleigh was pleasantly surprised to see Dustin walk in. He passed through, she noticed, without even looking around. When he stepped up to the counter she decided to initiate contact.

She slid out of her booth and walked up behind him. She raised her hand, index finger extended, to the base of his skull and released a tiny jolt of electricity. Next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor unable to move a muscle or feel anything. Everything went black as she lost consciousness.

When she came to, she felt a sensation form in her fingers and toes which then spread through her limbs into her torso. The numb sensation turned into what felt like millions of needles stabbing her with each movement. An agonizing experience when felt throughout the whole body at the same time. She just lay there, motionless, wondering what happened. Dustin. She zapped him, and then blacked out.

When the needles finally subsided, she cracked her eyes and saw Dustin squatting over her, looking half amused and half annoyed, talking to the manager of the diner. She was surprised to see that the manager's aura was shining a solid green down to just below his ribs. Of all the years she'd been coming here, she never suspected that he was gifted.

"Great, Dustin. This is just fucking great," the manager, Jonathon Crawford, said. He was looking none too happy about what just happened in his diner. This is the second time you've done this. First, your buddy Jason; now her. What am I supposed to tell my customers?"

"Don't worry about this one, Johnny. She's a tough one," Dustin said as he brushed a lock of hair off Ashleigh's face.

"So you know her?"

"Yeah. I met her a week ago. She was being chased by some losers."

"And I'll bet you just had to play the hero, didn't you?

Before Dustin could answer, Ashleigh groaned and put her hand to the side of her head. She looked at Dustin and asked, "What the hell did you do to me?"

"Nothing you didn't deserve," he said in mock frustration, but the look in his eyes was apologetic. "After hanging around with Jason and Jamal for all this time, I've learned to keep my guard up."

"I take it they always do what I just did?"

"Something like that," Dustin said with a smirk.

Ashleigh got up, using Dustin for support. With a sidelong glance at the manager, whose aura was once again multicolored, she gave herself a once-over and started dragging Dustin towards the exit.

"Just have my order delivered to the shop, Johnny," Dustin called over his shoulder as Ashleigh was dragging him out the door.

They didn't get past the curb when Dustin was hit with an energy blast and sent flying over two cars, crashing into the side of the third.

"Shit!" Ashleigh cried out, catching the edge of the blast with her shoulder, and getting knocked to the ground. "Dustin, are you okay?" She jumped up and ran to where Dustin landed. He wasn't there. She shot up as she heard another blast and took off towards the back of the diner.

Rounding the first corner, she tripped over someone lying unconscious. She hit the ground, and thanked her lucky stars for being aligned just right, because as she hit the ground a green fireball flew over her head, missing her by inches. She scrambled to her feet and hid behind a stack of pallets. She peeked through a space in the slats and saw a girl who looked to be nineteen years old, walking toward her preparing to throw another green fireball. Ashleigh, her aura full, focused her energy between her hands until it was a highly concentrated ball the size of a baseball. When she stepped out and let it go, it was a beam that hit the girl in the chest right where the heart is. The girl dropped to the ground.

Ashleigh walked over to the dead girl, knelt down and raised her slightly to get a look at the back of the girl’s neck. What she saw was no surprise; a blue star on an inverted black triangle. Shaking her head, she started off for the rear of the diner again. When she rounded the corner she saw six people on the ground. She went to each and saw that they all had the same symbol as the first girl. She stood up after checking the last person to look around for Dustin when a muffled explosion drew her attention to a small copse of trees just as....

 

....Dustin was blown into the clearing. He used his momentum to rotate his body so he could land on his feet. When he came to a sliding stop he sent a big blast of energy into the copse, causing trees to either explode or get uprooted completely. He looked to his right, saw Ashleigh, and turned to go to her when the ground around him was bombarded with energy balls. He turned his head and saw five people hovering over the copse of trees.

"Dustin!"

He looked back and saw Ashleigh surrounded by ten more people; six of them were male and four were female, each with an aura at least to their waist, but none with a full one. He glanced back to the group hovering over the trees but they were just watching him with an energy ball in each of their hands. It was almost as if they were daring him to take a step towards Ashleigh.

Dustin decided to accept that challenge. Raising his hands chest-high, he formed an orb and started cramming as much energy in it as he could. As soon as he formed the orb, the group over the trees unleashed their arsenal on Dustin. He waited until the last possible moment, when the energy balls were just a few feet away. Dustin then vanished only to reappear in front of Ashleigh, drop his energy ball, take hold of Ashleigh, and disappear again half a second before the orb shattered on the ground, releasing the massive amount of contained energy which vaporized everything in a forty-foot radius.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3

 

Dustin and Ashleigh reappeared in front of Dustin’s workshop. Immediately, Ashleigh fell to her hands and knees, losing her luch all over the concrete. Dustin reached down to hold her hair back.

“What the hell was that,” Ashleigh asked when she was done vomiting. “My head is spinning like crazy.”

“I just teleported us back to my shop,” Dustin told her. “Who were those people back there? Why did they attack us?”

Ashleigh tried to stand up, but as disoriented as she was, she went straight back down. She laid back on the ground and covered her eyes with her arm, moaning piteously.

Realizing she must be a little more shaken up from the teleportation than he thought, Dustin gave a resigned sigh and sat down next to her. “Don’t worry, you’ll feel better in a couple of minutes. You’re just not used to teleporting. I was the same way the first time I did it.”

After a minute, Ashleigh sat up, still a little woozy. Dustin stood up and helped Ashleigh to her feet, then practically carried her into his shop.

“What’s wrong?” Mason jumped up from his chair as Dustin and Ashleigh hobbled through the door. “Is she ok? Who is she? What did you do this time, Dustin?”

Instead of answering his questions, Dustin grabbed the sandwich out of Mason’s hand, ignoreing his cry of protest, and gave it to Ashleigh. “Here, eat this. It should help.”

“Thanks,” Ashleigh said when her head stopped spinning. She looked up at Mason. “Sorry for scarfing your BLT.”

Mason just looked at her for a second, then shrugged and pointed to a sign behind her on the wall. It said: ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. But if it is broken, then we have what you need.” When Ashleigh turned back from teading the sign, Mason was just sitting back down at his desk and started typing.

“Not very talkative, is he?”

“No,” Dustin said. “He’s a little reclusive when he first meets someone.”

“I see. So,” Ashleigh said, standing up and sticking her thumbs in the hip pockets of her jeans. “Where do we go from here?”

“I’d say we step into my office and you tell me what the fuck is going on.”

They round a corner and climb a stairwell. Ashleigh didn’t know what to expect Dustin’s office to look like, but what she saw was beyond her comprehension. The walls were lined with blueprints for odd machines, complex mathematical equations and security monitors. On a workbench were wires, circuit boards, and various other electrical equipment. She peeked in a notebook and was baffled by the weird language contained inside.

“Does that look familiar?” Dustin pulled an office chair from his computer desk and moved it next to a small sofa.

Ashleigh flipped a couple more pages before closing the notebook and sitting on the sofa. “No, should it?”

Dustin chuckled. “You’ll never know what that says unless I tell you. I made up that language.” He sat in the chair.

“Who are you, really? You make up your own languages, you have all this stuff all over the walls. What are you doing in this