The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister Landon Wark (free e books to read .txt) 📖

never find that trust that you need. We’re supposed to go out into the world and spread the word, slowly, in case you can’t do it quickly. Be your... apostles?”

Paul's head pricked up.

“Is that true?” Jenny asked.

Jonah looked from her to Ezra to Sandy and then back again, his eyes heavy with judgment and lack of sleep. He felt the connection between his mouth and his brain begin to dwindle as his mind desperately sifted through things to say. “I don't want that.”

A great silence gripped the room and if he listened carefully he could hear the sound of something fracturing, straining to hold together.

Clay was the first to speak. "If that's what's going to happen, then fine. I'll shill for reality anyday, but I need to know what's going on around here."

"No," Paul interrupted. "No way. We shouldn't be giving people power they're not prepared to handle!"

Jenny's face saddened a little as he said it.

"I'm with preacher boy," Ezra said.

"That's what I'm trying to do!" Jonah shouted.

Sandy Jenkins shook her gummed up head and tried to inhale a breath that would provide some sort of clarity.

"All of you, shut up!"

Jonah's scowled, unused to the ultimatum.

The edges of Sandy's vision dimmed as she spoke. Her heart had not stopped racing since the Sheriff's deputies had pounded on the door. Blood squirted through the veins in her ears, dulling the sounds of the others talking.

She was angry, that much was certain, but she was unsure exactly at whom she was mad. She was mad at the Sheriff for pounding on their door, but she couldn't do too much about that. But she could control the ungratefulness of Clayton, and she could control (or try to) Jonah's attempts to put the responsibility solely on her shoulders while he hid away in his shack in the woods.

Jonah and the others furrowed their brows as her face reddened and she swayed a little on her feet.

"You assholes—" she motioned towards where Ezra and Clay sat without looking over, because she felt like if she did she might fall over. "Are going to shut up and show some gratitude."

Both of them looked like they had more to say, but kept quiet.

"And you—" She motioned to where Jonah stood, his back to the door. "Are going to..." Her words escaped her for a moment, flittering into the darkness at the edges of her vision. A droplet of sweat rolled down into that same darkness. "Get out of that shack and..."

She swallowed. Her head seemed to turn despite her conscious effort to keep it still. Her breathing quickened as she realized that it was the room that was moving and not her head. Her heart thundered in her ears as the floor seemed to tilt up towards her.

"Jesus!"

The word dissolved into the sound of rushing water as the floor loomed ahead.

Jonah McAllister stared at the wall of the bad cliche hospital.

Rocking his shoe on the floor in front of him until it squeaked in complaint he bit on the edge of his tongue until it hurt in a desperate bid to stay awake. The fatigue blunted his anger and he wanted to hold onto it for at least a little longer.

And still he was melancholic that he felt the anger was necessary.

He stood up for the fifth time in thirty minutes and walked along the dark empty hallway to the vending machine, taking a few spare quarters out of his pocket, hopping them around in his palm before putting them back.

For all their talk about not having to worry about money, Sandy had not gotten any goddamn health insurance and he was from too much of a socialist paradise to have even thought about it.

He shook his head, thinking about how all of his high talk about saving the world had almost come to nothing.

Hearing a noise down the hall he spun around thinking that it might be Clayton and Carmen back from their 'errand'. A lone janitor or maintenance staffer closed a stairway door and wandered down the hall in the opposite direction.

He resumed his vigil on the seat and took in what he could of the buzzing of the intercom overhead.

He didn't want to be angry with them. It was as simple a thought as it was true.

He didn't want any of the baggage that had come with bringing in more people, but he couldn't go back. He couldn't go back to that moment of standing before the blasted out wall with the plastic and insulation floating like snow around him, feeling the horrid loneliness flowing in along with the frigid wind. He couldn't do it on his own.

He looked up as an older couple passed down the adjoining hallway a few meters down, the woman dressed in a hospital gown and robe and the man aiding her steps.

Maybe in some alternate universe he had never spoken the words that had blown out that wall and he had managed to limp along without that feeling. Maybe there was some all powerful tyrant Jonah that had decided that had allowed that abandonment to slowly worm its way into his skull until it had become comfortable. He gave a muted snort at the absurdity of the thought all while feeling a tremor run up the ridge of his spine.

He couldn't do it alone, but at the same time he couldn't deal with the others. He couldn't handle the guilt if someone was consumed by the results of his own carelessness. Maybe Paul and Ezra were right. Miracles for the worthy only. For everyone else...

Jonah got up for the sixth time in half an hour and paced out the journey to the vending machine one last time, feeling the weight of his fate of having to stare into the hole of the blasted