Hostbound

The sign above me flashed, illuminating a neon green clover leaf despite the fact that the restaurant it advertised probably served more chicken fingers and shrimp scampi than anything Irish. That was fine by me. I doubted I’d be able to eat more than a few bites anyway.

The green glow reflected off the window below it, coloring the people sitting inside a sickly green. I was standing close enough to hear the electric buzz as the neon steadily turned on and off, and the combined effect turned the restaurant scene into something unnerving enough to match my own anxiety about going inside.

The door beneath the clover loomed and I was stalling. A low restlessness that was not my own creeped over me, urging me to square up and face whatever it was that was making me so nervous and, if necessary, burn it to ashes. The source of those urges seemed more excited about the prospect than was probably necessary, and I broke into a sweat that had nothing to do with the Fayetteville summer.

I hadn’t been a Host long enough to get used to foreign emotions intruding on my own, and the fact that so many people were hounding me for my Guest made the whole situation that much worse.

I looked back at the door to the restaurant. One such person had invited me to brunch and was waiting inside. I sighed, letting the spirit’s confidence fill in the gaps of my own, and walked in.

“Mr. Reed,” the soldier started, standing up beside the booth he’d been sitting in, “thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me today.” I smiled in response and cast a nervous glance toward my father sitting at the table behind him. His look back my way was both reassuring and pleading. “Sure. I appreciate the opportunity,” I lied. My father had called in some favors just to set up this meeting, apparently; I just wish he’d asked me first.

My interviewer sat down after I did. He was clean-shaven with a lantern jaw so wide his face was almost rectangular, and his eyes were so white and blue they screamed to have a little red thrown in just to complete the patriotism. His form shimmered just a bit from the motion, his edges blurring like a TV image going out of focus: the sign of a possessing spirit.

So he was a mage, like me.

Science hadn’t quite determined what the shimmering that mages saw when they looked at each other was. The prevailing theory was that being possessed by a spirit gave the Host the ability to see, if only faintly, the presence of other spirits. But the shimmer wasn’t always there, and if you looked for it, you’d never see it. It was a flicker, like deja vu, and afterwards you weren’t sure if you’d really seen anything at all.

I wondered what he could do to the little restaurant around us if he managed to get truly angry. I didn’t know where people who could throw around magic normally met, but my imagination had a spectrum between fantasy castle and secret underground bunker that did not include nice little corner restaurants like this one. A dozen tables filled the room neatly, giving just enough room between them for waiters to walk around while still managing to not feel cramped. The curtains kept the place dimmer than the sunny afternoon outside, people chatted loudly just a couple of feet apart but still kept their privacy, and the collection of landscapes and modern art scattered around the walls managed to give a nice background to a good meal without being distracting.

Generic Americana cuisine. If this food were personified as a person, it would have been the man sitting across the table from me. “So tell me a little about yourself, Joe. Do you mind if I call you Joe?” I shook my head. “I only know what your father has told me, and I prefer to hear things from the horse’s mouth, as it were.” I bit back a groan. The small talk these guys always made when they were trying to schmooze me was getting old, and it was always the same stuff, too. What are my hobbies? Do I have a girlfriend? Do I play any sports? Make sure to sneak a few interview-type questions in to make it feel like they were considering me as much as I was considering them.

Right. I could tell them I collected human faces and put them on dolls in my basement and they’d still hire me. So I went through the questions like I’d studied for them, which I guess I kind of had. Most of the friends I still kept in touch with I had made in college, so my hobby these days was playing video games with them to stay connected. I didn’t have a girlfriend, a vestigial protocol from when I didn’t have time for anything but studying to get into med school. I wrestled in high school and kept it up casually since to stay in shape. It was like these people had a small-talk manual or something. Hell, they probably did. The soldier - he had introduced himself as a colonel, a solid step up from the major who had bought me brunch last week - took a sip of his coffee and put on his business face. Here it comes. “Joe, I’d like to talk about your gift.” That was a funny word for it, and not the one I would have used. Some of that must have come out in my expression, because his face took on a conciliatory half-frown. “I know this isn’t the path you would have chosen. God knows I’ve had to make some decisions based on my own circumstances that I wouldn’t have otherwise, given the choice.” His star-spangled eyes softened with something like sympathy, and he held out his hand to show a small blue flame dancing in the center of his palm. A pyrokineticist, then; not a lot of peaceful routes to take for a person who could make fire with his mind. He could do it easily, too, no pause to focus, no slow build up from a small spark, just a blink and there was fire. It was carefully controlled to the size of a baseball. He didn’t even let it crackle. This man had probably spent a lifetime perfecting his use and control of flame, and while it wasn’t a power I envied, something about that sense of purpose and fulfilment tugged at me.

“And I get it. You spent your life thinking you would be healing people, and now fate’s slapped you in the face and told you no. That you’re only ever going to be good at hurting them. Or blowing things up,” he added pointedly; he had probably seen the video. “But what I’m offering you - and I’m sure plenty of others have been offering the same - is a chance to fulfill your dream in spite of it all. In the Army, you’d be using your powers to help people. Take back control of your life. Do good.”

He gestured at the restaurant around us. “Places like this wouldn’t exist if there weren’t people to protect them. I’ve been to places where safety was uncertain, where people didn’t know if or when a group of armed militia were going to ride through and murder their loved ones and burn down their livelihoods. Those people don’t get the chance to pursue their dreams, to make something great out of their lives. They live in fear, surviving on the basic necessities from one day to the next. Those people need doctors, yes, but I guarantee you if they had to choose between someone who could give them flu medicine and someone with the kind of power you have to protect them, they’d choose you every time. What I’m offering you is the chance to protect people like that. I know it’s hard to set aside a dream you’ve been set on your whole life. But it takes courage to look at that dream in a new way. If what you really want is to help people, to save lives, then this is how you can do it.” He sat back and nodded, the sympathy mixed now with that dad look that said tough love, and he let the fire in his hand go out.

My own dad nodded along to his words. He made anyone near him look small, even the colonel; my father was large and ever-present, his bear-like form forever squeezed into a collared button-down. I had decided, growing up, that they must not make collared button-downs in his size. I had always pitied the stalwart buttons desperately straining against the bulk of his chest.

It made me wonder where all that bulk had gotten lost when he had me. A couple inches under six feet with a slight frame and a face that was all angles, I struck a figure that a casual observer would be hard pressed to identify as related to the broad man my father was. Even our eyes were different, his large and green and bright where mine were dark and narrow at the ends.

His eyes were gentle, at least, even when he disagreed with me, nodding along to a recruitment pitch he probably knew I was planning to blow off. I had to admit, it was a good speech. I wondered how long the soldier had rehearsed it. Like my dad, he might even believe it. “Colonel,” I replied, after a considerate pause, “can I ask what I would be doing in the Army?” My dad winced. “Well, the Army is a nebulous thing, but with your skills, you would probably be supporting our troops in the field.” “What does that mean?” I kept my tone innocent. Innocuous. “It means you would use your powers to keep your fellow soldiers safe.” “How?” The colonel paused. “By eliminating threats that endanger their lives,” he said, carefully. “What kind of threats?” My dad slammed his hand on the table, less a violent act and more the simple frustration of a man too big to do anything without making a lot of noise. I started, and the feeling of being a teenager getting caught with cigarettes welled up inside me. He knew what I was doing. “The same threats this country has always faced, Joe,” my father answered in the colonel’s stead. “The people who want to destroy it. Sometimes that’s how you have to help people: by making sure the people who want to hurt them can’t.” The clever retort I’d had for the colonel fizzled in the face of my father’s narrowed eyes, all gentleness now suppressed. The feelings behind it weren’t any less true - that I refuse to take a life under the assumption that it would save somebody else - but sometimes logic and feelings and everything else just kind of fail when confronted by family. The colonel looked back and forth between us, suddenly aware that the exchange didn’t really involve him. His outline shimmered again. The fire in his hand was gone but I could feel a growing heat radiating from his body; he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, despite the air conditioning vent blowing just above his head. He soldiered on anyway.

“Your father’s right, Joe. There are people who want to hurt this country, and we have to stop them. Right now, other people are doing exactly that so that we can have the opportunity to sit in peace and have this conversation, and they don’t have the kind of power you do. They’re fighting with their grit and will alone. Don’t you think you owe it to them to use what you’ve been given - what those brave men and women would give anything to have on their side - to help them?” “Thank you for brunch, Colonel,” I answered, standing up quietly. “I’ll consider your offer.” I turned and left before I managed to hurt my dad any further. ----- It would be a long walk back to my parents’ house from the cafe, but I could use the air, and I could always call a rideshare if the Fayetteville heat became too much. Give myself some time to think about what had upset me about the whole affair. The knee-jerk answer was that it felt like my dad was siding with strangers over me, but that wasn’t really it. My father had been career military right up until he had to choose between his family and a tour in the Middle East, and then he became middle management at a construction company. But he wore his loyalty like a badge of honor - sometimes literally, when he put the now-ill-fitting uniform back on - and so it wasn’t a question of siding with me or a stranger. He just didn’t understand my resistance to the solution he offered when I couldn’t think of any alternatives.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Why couldn’t these people just leave me alone? Okay, yes, I did accidentally blow up a parking lot, but surely the military could do everything I could do with my magic by remote from a desk a thousand miles away. Instead, they saw the parking lot incident as a demonstration of potential, which I guess it kind of was. It was just potential for something I really, really didn’t want. The confusion and guilt and hopelessness quickly gave way to helpless anger. In a way, I was thankful; anger was more manageable, and so I changed course and started towards DeMarco’s. DeMarco’s Guns and Ammo was an unusual hangout for someone like myself who hated guns, but it offered more than a place to shoot off a few rounds. The store sat on a full acre and a half of land with a wide open shooting range tucked away on the outskirts of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Again, not usually an appeal for me, but Derik DeMarco, proprietor, made it a point to let Hosts practice their powers in their own section of the range. As long as they could be practiced safely, that is. I’d seen a kineticist thrown out a week or two ago after he kept trying to take people’s guns apart while they were shooting. Mostly, it just threw off their aim. But for me, it was a place where I could work out some anger. And since working out anger for me meant firing beams of star-hot light out of my body, a safe place for it was essential. Grass had a tendency to combust if I used my magic even close to it, which made the dirt range a plus. I nodded to Derik as I walked in. He nodded back, a little hesitantly, and his eyes flicked briefly to the gun rack beside him.

“Morning, Derik,” I said.

“Joe,” he responded cautiously. Derik was a slight, greasy man who believed camo was God’s gift to the world of fashion, and his fingers tapped rapidly on the counter as we spoke. “How’s it going?”

I sighed. “Had to turn down another Army recruiter this morning. I just wish they’d leave me alone, you know?”

“Yeah,” he said, his cigarette-marred voice demonstrating neither sympathy nor understanding. “Your usual spot?”

I nodded. “Please.” He buzzed the door to the range and I made my way through the shelves of ammunition and hunting gear toward the back of the store.

The range was divided into stalls by faded green plywood, and even on a late Wednesday morning there were at least a dozen people there, all dressed in camo jackets and ball caps under their ear muffs like a haphazard uniform. Their guns themselves were the only real distinguishing features between them, some firing pistols, some rifles, and all very, very loud. I winced as I adjusted my ear protection. I hated the sound of guns, just like I hated everything else about them, and I hated the fact that these people were choosing to play with destruction like it was a toy when I was stuck with it like some cancerous lump.

I made my way past the conventional stalls and into the Host section. It was empty, apart from Max, the electric elementalist who could just about make the hairs stand up on your neck from ten feet away.

His own hair was perpetually at attention, of course, and it gave him a mad scientist sort of feel - a look he did little to discourage.

Poor Max. He was obsessed with the idea of shooting lightning bolts from his fingertips, but his Guest just wasn’t strong enough. He thought that, if he trained enough, he’d get there. I’d told him that wasn’t how it worked, but he would just give a look of grim determination and turn back to the practice targets his powers would never reach.

I waved at him and walked on.

My usual stall was at the far end of the range, and not just because I liked my privacy; after the first time I accidentally set my neighbor’s targets on fire, I decided a little self-imposed isolation would be in everyone’s best interest.

I sat down on the little bench opposite the opening to the range. It was a good place to meditate, and it gave me a great view of the scorch marks on the plywood Derik had given up on painting over. I closed my eyes and began the uphill battle toward centering myself.

As I did, a presence made itself known in my mind.

She was a warmth when she first arrived, hot chocolate on a cold day, but soon grew into an uncomfortable flame before manifesting as a radiant entity, within but apart from me. The heat was less jarring to me than the cordoning off of her sanctum from my mind: part of me was hers now, and though I had not lost anything for her arrival, her addition to my self still felt alien. She was a neighbor, infinitely close but forever inaccessible.

“What stands before us?” Her voice was thunder and ice, power held coolly in check by perpetual calm. It came from within my mind. I heard her voice as if through the clearest earbuds, if those earbuds had melted just a couple inches into my head - my alien neighbor knocking to ask for a cup of sugar.

“Just practice targets, Sovereignty. No conquests today.” I couldn’t feel the same hatred for Sovereignty that I did for the people in the range and their guns. There was no difference between the spirit that possessed me and the powers she granted me: I could feel it, every time she spoke, every time I used those powers. Sovereignty was destruction. That was a difference I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate if she hadn’t possessed me.

Not that I planned on thanking her for it. “Practice is key to honing your inner strength, Joseph. I approve.” “Trying to focus here, Sovereignty,” I replied in a half-whisper, eyes still closed. I was pretty sure I could speak to her with just my thoughts if I focused them, but that was a level of creepy I had not yet come around to accepting. “Apologies, my Host. But remember, as you center yourself and prepare to use the gifts I have granted you, we two become closer. It is difficult not to take a direct interest in your actions when that happens.” I didn’t know where Sovereignty went when she wasn’t taking a “direct interest” in what I was doing. I wasn’t even sure where was the right question. I certainly never felt her leave; her presence just diminished, like she left the phone on speaker and walked away. “Well, when you put it like that,” I whispered back, now thoroughly creeped out. I focused harder, picturing clouds rushing through the front of my head and out the back, taking all of my thoughts along for the ride and out of my way. Sovereignty had taught me how to do that. “Good,” she said, as soon as I had found my focus. “Now open your eyes, and maintain your center. Cast off all you don’t need. There is only the inner and the outer.” Despite having only been with Sovereignty for a little over a month now, I was starting to take her meditation stuff to heart. Everything was sharper when I was focused, like the important details were highlighted and everything else dimmed. Fifty feet ahead of me, the score markers of the paper target seemed to glow. “Breathe in. Gather yourself. Feel the energy coursing through you, then feel it in your hand. Mold it. It is of you.” I did so. The power Sovereignty had given me - whether I had accepted it or not - was a warmth, a heat that was both burning and comforting all at once, and it gathered like a sun behind my palm. “Now release. Let your first strike be the mightiest you’ve ever struck, overtaken only by your next strike.” She had said this before, and later, I always thought of it like how coaches tell kids to give a hundred and ten percent. It doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, but in the moment, it’s what you need to hear. I struck. A ray of white starlight two inches wide blasted out from my hand, tearing through the air with a crack audible even over the guns people were firing down range. It struck the paper target in the shoulder, incinerating a patch almost a foot across and setting the rest ablaze. Other people were probably reacting to it, but I was too focused to notice. “Again. Never expect your enemies to fall to your first strike. Continue your onslaught until those who stand against you are ash, and then turn to your next conquest.” Somewhere in the back of my mind, those words sounded really ominous and, honestly, terrifying; nothing good probably ever came from a voice in someone’s head telling them about conquest. But like the rest of my thoughts, those were washed away in the clouds. I had only the range, the heat, and the targets. My second strike reduced what little was left of the first target to ash. I didn’t notice where I hit it, exactly, but it didn’t seem to matter. Then Derik took manual control of my targets, because instead of the automated replacement, I got a full two dozen paper targets arranged at five different ranges and heights. I continued striking. Blast after blast fired from my hand, each one coming more easily than the last. Sovereignty was giving me guidance, but really, I didn’t care about honing my skills at blowing stuff up. She might have thought she was chiseling me into a glorious warrior of fiery starlight, but to me, the whole experience was just a really awesome way to burn myself through my issues. Nothing helps get you past anger and grief and guilt better than bursts of controlled exertion. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Sovereignty boomed, “Enough,” with the force to fill my head and break my tunnel vision. I blinked and looked up. Judging by the scorch marks on the wall at the far side of the range, I had probably missed half the shots I took, a poor showing against unmoving paper targets that couldn’t fight back. But I was covered in a satisfying sheen of sweat and I was too exhausted to feel any complex emotions about my father or my future, and that was good enough for me. I looked around, smiling sheepishly at the half-dozen or so people who had stopped what they were doing to watch what probably looked like a very intense, very hot light show. “Joseph,” Sovereignty started, drawing my name out as she did, “anger is a tool like everything else. But the first conquest must always be over the self. I will help how I can.” She paused. “Perhaps you should speak with your father. I feel you may have issues that need to be worked out.”