B. Larson - Shifting

“It was you then,” said the Preacher. He had arrived and stood at my side. I glanced at him and his eyes were dark and unforgiving.

“You survived the basement as well! You are indeed blessed, Reverend,” said Wilton, but she didn’t seem pleased.

The Preacher talked to me, but kept his gaze on Wilton. “Gannon, you put Mr. Nelson on guard in front of that door, and he didn’t survive the task did he?”

Wilton’s eyes flicked from him to me, and then down to Holly, who now stood with us, grim-faced.

“You can’t refuse this gift, it is everything that I’ve worked for and much more!” she said pleading with us. “Don’t you understand, without harnessing this new force of nature, as man has always done, we will be only mundane . We will be slaves to whoever wields the power of the shifting. I’m offering you a chance to do more than survive another week, I’m offering you a chance to rebuild.”

“We cannot tolerate abominations of the flesh such as this artifact produces,” said the Preacher in a tone of absolute certainty. “Warped magic tools yes, but not warped individuals. I have drawn the line. This line must not be crossed.”

“You! You! ” she cried out with wild frustration. “Who are you to draw the line between science and morality? I offer you so much for so little.”

“What do you want in return?” asked Gannon. “Our service?”

“Your help, yes,” she said. “That’s all, just your aid, your working hearts and minds.”

Gannon shook his head. “I’ve already declined to enter the service of one Hag today, I’m not going to serve a second.”

“Abominations, eh? What of you, boy? You are no mundane! Show them, I demand that you show them! What do have hidden in that pocket?”

I opened my mouth, closed it again.

The Preacher turned to me. “She has a point, Gannon. It has come time to show us.”

I hesitated. Things had suddenly reversed. I felt everyone’s eyes on me. The claws in my glove clutched into a ball. I stood there for a moment, dumbfounded.

The Preacher grabbed my wrist and before I could react, ripped my hand into the open. The scaly claw of a velociraptor splayed itself in the cool air.

“Gannon too, has been touched by these unnatural forces,” he said to the others. “Look what your perfect prism has done to the best among us, just by his touching of it. Such a force can’t be wielded by us, not if we are to remain human.”

Monika grabbed my shoulder. She looked up at me with worried dark eyes. “Let’s just go, Gannon. I’ll go with you,” she said.

I looked around at them, into their faces. They didn’t know what to do. I had been their champion, but I was not a mundane , as she called us. I had been one of the enemy all along. And Wilton, was she feeling the same way that I was? Did she see us all as her friends, turned upon her after all her work to save us?

“Come with me, Gannon,” said Wilton. “We will form a leper colony and wait for the rest of them to fall sick. For mark me, all of them will.”

Monika buried her face against my chest. Of all of them, she was the only one not looking at my hand.

I looked at everyone. The Captain was there, sitting on a beam that had fallen from the ceiling. He and the Preacher seemed the most passive. The rest of them were staring at the horror that terminated my left wrist.

“Give him a moment,” said Mrs. Hatchell. “He knows what must be done.”

The Preacher glanced at her, and then slid his eyes back to me. He knew it as well, I could tell, but for a few seconds I could not think of what it was. Then, slowly, I had it.

I jerked my hand from the Preacher’s grasp. The sudden motion made people jump back. I had become a feral animal. I was going to split up the last survivors if I left, and already, despite their love for me, they feared me.

It was more than I could bear.

Accordingly, I held out the claw, and I raised my sword, which still glowed with the magic sharpness the Hag had given me, and I chopped it off in one horrible, but clean, stroke.

I must have blacked out for a moment. When I opened my eyes again, confused and numbed, I was on the floor. The Preacher, Vance and Monika lifted me up and propped me against a relatively undamaged wall. The cold bricks felt good against my hot cheek.

“Tie it off, quickly now,” Wilton was saying, and even through the haze of pain and shock, I appreciated the professional concern in her voice. She was still part human, and I knew from having been part monster, that she was neither all evil nor all good.

The Preacher touched my face and gently guided my chin so I could see his face. “Gannon,” he said, “that was well done. I had not thought you would perform the necessary task yourself. I had thought my axe would have to pass judgment upon your twisted hand. I’m impressed and glad you could do it alone.”

I became vaguely aware that Monika was crying. Others were wrapping up my stump in some gauze and tape.

“Fine,” said Wilton, disgusted with the lot of us. “Just fine, if you’ve been asked to join two witches and refused, well I’ve been judged by the lot of you three times now, and that’s the end of it for me. I’m going off on my own, again, and I’ll not come back. If any of you should want my protection, you can come join me at my lab. Otherwise, you can all rot.”

So saying, she lifted up the lantern from the table and began to hobble out into the parking lot.

The Preacher was in front of her, blocking her way in an instant. His axe had appeared in his hand, and it was upraised.

I tried to struggle to my feet, sliding up against the wall of bricks, using them to steady me. It didn’t work, I felt sick and sagged down again. I thought about vomiting, but held it back.

She glared at the Preacher. “You’re no priest, you are a murderer!”

“I am no murderer.”

“You are a slave to that axe then,” she said, “It rules your mind.”

“The axe is only the executioner, I am the judge.”

The lantern flared up, showing its true brilliance. The prism inside burned brightly again. Perhaps it sensed a new master.

The Preacher’s axe flashed downwards. Several of us screamed. I hobbled forward. The lantern flashed intensely and blinded us all with a silent blast of light. It was like standing in the wake of a thousand dazzling flashbulbs, each of a different shining hue. My retina showed huge purple blotches.

I heard a crash and a tinkling sound. When my eyes could function again, I saw the brass lantern had been shorn apart. The prism inside had fallen and shattered into a spray of sparkling jewel-like shards.

Wilton fell to her knees, sobbing. I thought she was more filled with grief than I had been for my lost hand.

Everyone stepped quietly out to form a circle around her. She groped in the rubble, as if not believing the prism wasn’t there, that wasn’t still whole. She found a purplish shard, for each piece had a color, it seemed, and she held it up, shaking it at us.

“Fools! What great idiots you all are!” she sobbed, “you are like cavemen, striking down what you don’t understand. Trapped on a deserted island with a single radio, you would all gather to smash it in some primitive rite. Even you, John Thomas. I just didn’t believe anyone could be so stupid.”

“Beatrice,” said the Preacher gently, “you must leave us now. In fact, you should be slain for murder. Your body is too riddled with twisted flesh for you ever to survive an exorcism of the sort Gannon has.”

“The Hag would have killed you all if I had not been down in the basement covering your backs,” she retorted.

“Yes, and this is the only reason the axe has not yet taken your head,” replied the Preacher evenly. “But you wanted more than just to save us, Beatrice, you wanted to take the Hag’s place and rule us.”