Son of Tesla

SON OF TESLA: Chapter 8

JEM RAISED HIS HEAD over the sofa back.

The explosion had rocked the universe. The room tilted. Jem's ears were ringing. Ashley still screaming, a muted backdrop.

In front of the kitchen door, a man in a black cloak picked himself off the floor and scrabbled for a strange metal object in front of him. His fingers were blue like rotted flesh.

Just before his fingers closed over it, the metal object spun across the floor like it'd been kicked.

The cloaked figure raised an arm in defense, which instantly crumpled to his body from an invisible blow. He teetered sideways, then rose several inches off the floor and slammed back down. Never cried out, never made a sound.

A leg shot out from under the cloak and something heavy hit the floor, making a beige-shaded table lamp skitter on the polished oak surface of the end table. The lamp's bulb began to pulse, as if a breaker was about to blow.

The cloaked figure rolled, grabbed the gleaming metal object on the floor, and blindly fired out a sizzling blast before coming up into a crouch.

Jem couldn't see the bolt flying from the rifle, just the blinding blue flash as it discharged. But he saw it stop, as if it had run into an invisible wall right in the middle of the room. An ethereal cry of pain came from nowhere. Something shimmered, right between the armchair and the end table holding the beige lamp. In the shimmer, Jem caught a glimpse of an outline. Off-balance. Flailing arm. The strobing lamp flew off the table and hit the floor with a dent in its shade. The end table rocked, but valiantly held its legs.

Rrap. Another blast. The cloaked man was approaching in a crouch, rifle at the ready. Under his hood, Jem saw only dark shadows.

Ashley's screams had turned to whimpers. Rachel moaned, the upper half of her body perched awkwardly on the sofa, lower half splayed across the carpet. Something red in the fabric. Blood. Distantly, car alarms wailed their indignation from neighboring driveways.

Rrap. The invisible shape cried out again.

Jem's mind was a fog. Everything was happening too fast. He was still kneeling beside his sister, the tips of his eyes watching the scene unfold over the overstuffed sofa back. The ringing in his ears had intensified, and as a result every other sound had a dampened, underwater quality.

In front of him, something scurried across the carpet. It was more of a sense of motion than anything he could see. A ghostly handprint pushed down into the carpet fibers. Black cloak swept the rifle right and left, head cocked, listening.

Rrap. With a flash of blue, a dinner-plate-sized portion of carpet smoldered.

Jem ducked back behind the sofa and crawled to the edge in the extreme angle formed by the sofa-back and the wall to peek out the crack there. He caught the trailing edge of shimmering black fabric from an ant's-eye view.

His head was clearing. He had to get Ashley, get his mom, get out of here. The man in the cloak was obviously lethal. Jem didn't know what the cloaked man was shooting at, but it seemed to be fighting back. Or it had. Right now they were in a stalemate. Cat and mouse. And that didn't offer a whole lot of distractions for Jem to get his family out of the house.

Decision: Get them to fight again.

Question: How?

Question: Who would be more of a threat when the fighting was over?

Jem quickly made a choice: Black cloak had walked straight into their house and shot at his mom. Sorry, buddy. That was a mistake.

Jem skittered on hands and knees to the open edge of the couch and spied the lamp on the floor, shade askew. About four feet away. Its bulb was slowly blinking like a firefly. The overhead lights had begun to do the same, pulsing on the same slow frequency as the lamp. The flat-screen television hanging on the wall over the fireplace blared to life, blasting an old Western at full volume.