Page 52 of Outfoxed

Mother Nature enjoyed killing the unwary.

Wednesday, May 6, 2043.

Owasso, Oklahoma.

The Alley.

The sun rose, chasing the storm away with its first light. In reality, the foul weather moved on as it always did, albeit a little earlier than I expected. With only a few tattered clouds for company, I began my search. As I had in Tulsa, I focused on finding fresh wood, although few trees still stood in the area.

The few that defied Mother Nature awed me, from a straggly sapling fighting for its life to a single, ancient bald cypress proudly surveying its home. I approached the tree, wondering how it had survived so many tornados. Had they somehow missed?

Or, for some unfathomable reason, had the storms been controlled to preserve it?

What sort of monster killed so many people but saved a single, old tree?

I checked to make sure I hadn’t been followed, saw no signs of life anywhere, and shifted back to human. The transformation went better than I expected, lacking the hot taste of blood in my mouth or the pain I associated with pushing my luck. As I didn’t want to number among the countless dead rotting away to nothing in Owasso, I would walk back to Tulsa despite my shift having gone well.

Forcing my focus back to my work, I began the tedious process of sorting through the debris in search of history my magic could latch onto and bring back to temporary life.

Determined to find something, I checked every scrap of wood I could get my hands on, struggling to coax my magic into cooperating with me.

A long freshly fallen stick, slightly curved and likely suitable to be used as another practice katana, caught my attention. When I picked it up, a sense of weight about it thrilled me.

Only something with history had such a weight, and I could only hope it could tell me more about the Alley’s struggle for survival—and who might want us all dead.

Bracing for what I hoped was a glimpse into the past, I closed my eyes.

Monday, May 4, 2043.

The South.

A choir sang, and their music became lethal magic, forming as an electric charge in the air, sparks flying between their shadowy forms. The brief flashes did little to illuminate the room. While a light hung from the ceiling, it failed to expose the circle of singers.

No, mages.

Music mages worked in the South, the only quadrant where a song could lead to death or create a miracle. Often congregating in Florida, safe from the fluctuating boundary in Georgia, the music mages had a reputation of limiting their powers to softening their hurricanes and otherwise making Florida a little easier to live in.

They lived longer that way.

Wise music mages avoided Georgia, they gave New Orleans a wide berth, and stuck to Miami or Orlando, where they were prized for their versatility and ability to dampen storms.

I pitied the South, where most viewed music with open suspicion, only licensed singers could work entertainment venues, and only if they could prove, without a shadow of a doubt, they weren’t a music mage and were willing to pay hefty insurance premiums just in case they developed the ability to weave magic through their songs.

When I took the time to think Tulsa’s situation through, things made a lot of sense to me; why couldn’t a music mage fuck around with the Alley’s weather? Unlike most other magic types, they could combine their power, assuming enough of them were willing to work together. According to my magic, a whole lot of murderous bastards thought it a good idea to sing a song of death and destruction.

It annoyed me that my magic couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give me the damned address so I could storm to the South and start bashing heads together.

I bet I could talk Peace into helping out.

Peace hated murderers.

If Peace wanted to help out killing off a bunch of murderous assholes, I’d be happy to make a trip to the South, assuming my damned magic would get its ass in gear and provide me with a few more clues.

Well, in a way, it had. Wherever the mages were, it likely wasn’t in Georgia.

Unlike the other boundary lines, which remained somewhat stable, something about Georgia made the boundary dance around worse than a kid on a sugar high, creating a zone of pure chaos. Sometimes, the boundary hung out around Atlanta, sometimes it headed to Savannah, sometimes it cut all the way down to Valdosta, where it worried the residents of Florida, who enjoyed general stability.

For whatever reason, the boundary stabilized in Alabama, although sometimes it shifted north into Tennessee, which became a veritable war zone of boundary lines as it butted up against the Alley and the East.