Stormbound...Epilogue

Once El Diablito disappeared, I recovered Diego and sheathed him. He was not particularly happy with me for leaving him stuck in the back of the troll for the Little Devil to pick up, but he didn’t resist being put away.

Next, I knelt down next to Ravyn, who was rather a mess. Her hair was as frazzled as one might expect after being hit with a major lightning bolt. She was breathing, but they were the short, ragged breaths of someone in pain. She was also moving a little bit, her scorched face a twisted mask of pain. Nothing major looked broken, but she was obviously feeling a great deal of pain.

Through gritted teeth, she gasped out, “Rusty...?”

I leaned down closer to her mouth. “Yes?”

She reached up with one hand and grabbed my jacket by the collar, yanking me even closer and grunted, “Take me to Betsy.”

“Betsy?”

“The Phoenix.”

“Oh..OK.”

I scooped her up easily, pretending not to notice her whimper as I did. As I was walking over to the prideful bird, I noticed how intently it was staring at me, eyes ablaze. I put Ravyn down next to the one wing that looked undamaged.

Immediately, the bird shifted in its own place on the ground until it covered Ravyn with its wing and was fussing at her with its beak.

I shook my head as I walked away, what an improbable name for a fantastical bird.“I’m gonna go check on...Naomi.”

I jogged over to where she lay on the sidewalk. I knelt down next to her as well, looking for any sign of life, not quite sure if I saw her breathing or not. I moved around to the other side, since she was lying on her side, facing the other direction. One glance at her face told me that if she was alive, it wouldn’t be for long.

I touched her shoulder gently, called out her name. “Naomi?”

There was no response from the shell of her body, but my touch did bring a rush of faint memories, fraught with emotion. They weren’t fully formed and complete memories like those that I had taken from Dr. Geek, but they were more...ghostly...perhaps left over from the passing of her Spirit, since I could tell that had already departed once I touched her.

Realizing my time was growing short, I touched her forehead with my other hand and actually strove to gather as many of her memories, as ghostly and incomplete as they were, making sure to keep them together as I stored them away to perhaps someday use them to help Alexa understand who her mother was and how she lived her life.

After gathering as much as I could, I closed her eyes with one hand and stood up. One thing from those memories stood out...there was something I needed to go get from the house.

I moved into the broken home, moving quickly and easily from room to room, helped by Naomi’s faded memories of the way the house used to be. The trolls had not been gentle in their forced entry. I made my way to the back room that she had been staying with Alexa and over to the night stand that was still in one piece.

I pulled open the second drawer down and saw it-- the small, mother of pearl and silver jewelry box that Naomi had used to keep her few pieces of good jewelry and her most precious belongings, things she had meant to pass on to her daughter when she was old enough.

I grabbed a nearby diaper bag, stuffed the box and a couple of small toys from the crib where Alexa had slept as well as the small, elaborate blanket that had been a hand made gift from Naomi’s mother. Lastly, I grabbed the framed photo of Naomi holding the newborn Alexa in her arms, smiling tiredly for the camera, a photo that had been taken shortly after she had delivered the child--I winced at that memory (of childbirth)--boy, was I glad I never had to experience that!!!

Shaking myself out of the reverie I had found myself in, I moved back out into the storm and started over towards where I had left Ravyn and the Phoenix.

I was brought up short when I saw Ravyn standing over Naomi’s body. She was still looking more than a little worse for the wear, still frazzled and scorched, but she was standing nonetheless.

“Ravyn, are you OK?”

Her withering look told me that she was actually closer to normal than I would have thought possible. “Where’s the baby?” She was looking at the diaper bag draped over my shoulder, a perfect fit with my ‘Terminator’ outfit and sheathed blades...

“I took her to safety before I came back for you.”

“Look, I’ve got no patience for games, you already owe me a new outfit, a makeover, and about a week at the spa of my choice, doofus. Who did you take the baby to?”

“Uh...the Professor’s place.”

“Oh, for Goddess’ sake. Leave it to a zombie to take a newborn child to the one person we both know who would have about a zero percent chance of actually taking care of the child!”

“Hey now! I was in a bit of a hurry, you know. His was the first place that came to mind. I told him to get her to the Frau or to Cerrydwen.”

“Yeah, well we’ll see if he’s got the sense enough to actually do that and not get lost in one of those dusty books of his! Sheesh, men!”

“Where’s the Phoenix?” I was looking around for the hard to miss bird, “And how are you up and around so quickly anyway?”

“I sent Betsy back to get healed up after she used her tears to help heal me of my wounds. She’ll be just fine in a few days. Unfortunately for you, Rusty, her tears can’t restore my outfit, fix this frizz in my hair or your bank account either, for that matter. I am NOT a cheap date, I’ll have you know.”

“Well, if you were, you would have been my first...” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” I replied, a bit more audibly. “We should go find the Professor before he panics too badly. I highly doubt he’ll have anything other than Diet Pepsi for Alexa to suckle on, and that can’t be good.”

“Yes. This time you’re driving, but you better not even think of taking me to that Dark Place of yours on the way. Do you hear me, mister?”

“Yes, dear.”

Stormbound...Finale

(Merry Christmas and happy Hannukah to those who celebrate those holidays!)

The creature toppled backwards, its arms outstretched and rigid, the gently wriggling child in its left claw slipping out and beginning her own fall down the steep slope of the levee embankment...

The distance between us seemed too vast, the trajectory of the fall far too uncertain, but nevertheless, I launched into motion, trying to intercept the child before she hit the ground...

A moment of hope seemed to flower as a bright, fiery form swooped in from high above, it’s own talons extended as it descended like a meteor towards the falling child, only to be thwarted by a burst of crackling lightning from the robed figure that blasted the Phoenix from it’s course and sent it fluttering and trailing smoke to the ground...

Ravyn’s inarticulate scream of pain and rage was accompanied by a blast of fire so powerful that it blinded me as I tried to follow the trajectory of the falling child...That flash was exceeded only by the responding blast of lightning that cut off Ravyn’s voice in mid-cry...

Once my eyes locked onto the form of the small, swaddled child again, I realized that there was no way I would be able to reach her before she hit the pavement below...unless I found another way...

In one smooth motion, I sheathed Herlinda and began gathering every shadow I could from the surrounding area. Still running at a breakneck speed, I wove the tendrils of darkness into a small portal just large enough for me to dive through and transport myself to the open air where I would be able to intercept the falling baby before she hit...

I hung, ever so briefly in mid air, the momentum from my initial leap carrying me forward, arms outstretched...

The baby plopped ever-so-gently into my hands, a reception so spectacular and perfect that it would have surely made the hi-lite reel of any sports show in the nation, had there been a camera around to record the event...

After bringing her in close, I gathered more darkness to myself and created another portal just large enough for the two of us to slip through...

I tucked and rolled as we landed on the floor of the Professor’s den, crashing into a tall, overloaded bookshelf that rained its contents onto my back. Luckily, I was positioned to shield her fragile form from the falling books...

As I sat there momentarily, I had the briefest of chances to look at the face and into the eyes of my daughter. Despite all that had just happened, the terrible winds, the scary trolls, the lashing rain, the strange journeys, her face lit into a smile as I looked down at her, marvelling at her dark caramel complexion, her strands of wet, curly black hair, and her enormous, absorbing brown eyes...eyes that seemed simultaneously full of love, strength and curiosity...

The Professor stormed into his den, cursing, baseball bat in his meaty grip, “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’re going to regret this...”

I turned to look at him, baby Alexa still in my arms, books scattered about us. His face turned ashen as he realized who I was and that I was carrying a baby...

Before he could fully recover and articulate words, I was up and moving towards him. “Jim, I need to take Alexa here and get her to Cerrydwen or the Frau immediately. Ravyn’s in terrible danger and I need to get back to her.”

The bat fell from his limp fingers, clattering to the floor as I stepped up to him with the wet, squirming child. “But..but...but I don’t know what to do with one of these...”

He took her into his arms even as he protested, her wetness immediately staining onto his T-shirt...

“I know...but if I don’t get back down there, Ravyn is going to die. Can you get Alexa to safety? I need to know...”

He nodded, seeing my resolve, sensing the urgency with which I was speaking...

I drew Herlinda as I stepped past him, gathered what shadows were around and stepped through the portal into the fray again...

Arriving back at the scene of the fight, I was met by a blast of wind and water that forced me to shift my posture to regain my balance, Herlinda was in my right hand this time. I was standing next to the crushed car that had served as my soft landing, next to the smouldering, dissolving body of the troll I had slain...

The robed figure was no longer up on the levee, which was where I was looking at first. Instead, it was standing close to where Ravyn had been fighting the dragon-like creatures, of which only charred husks remained. It was standing, staff in one hand, Diego in the other over the battered, apparently unconscious form of Ravyn, Diego’s blade poised by her throat. The fallen Phoenix lay just beyond them, charred and battered itself, but still struggling to rise and protect her mistress. The robed figure, however, was paying the giant fallen bird no attention, it was turned to face in my direction, like it knew I would be coming back...

The storm seemed to go silent as we faced each other, not twenty paces apart...

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Rusty, Rusty,” a familiar voice tsked, “Have you forgotten an old friend so quickly?” The wind somehow chose this moment to catch the hood of the robe, revealing the crazed eyes and face of the man I knew only as El Diablito. He let loose that familiar, hated cackle as his face became visible.

“Why are you doing this? What is that child to you?”

“That child of yours is everything, Rusty. Whoever controls her, controls so much more than you can possibly imagine!”

“Drake must have put you up to this! Why do you still work with that bastard? Don’t you know it’s over yet? He’s finished, the Omega Project is done, damn you!”

He threw his head back in peals of hysterical laughter before replying. “No Rusty, the Project has only now truly begun. It has been even more wildly successful than we had hoped it would be. You continue to show us new possibilities every day...and that child of yours will change this and many other worlds forever, Rusty. But such change needs to be carefully managed. Are you and your friends,” he motioned towards Ravyn with the butt of his staff, Diego was already poised above her chest, “ready to manage the situation? No, I didn’t think so.”

Motioning towards Ravyn’s form with my free hand, “Let her go, you’re not going to get the child, now or ever.”

“Why shouldn’t I just kill her now? I’ve defeated her, her powers are rightfully mine to take.”

“No. Touch her again, and you will be destroyed. That much I promise. No power under your command, or that you can ever acquire by harming her, will stop me from killing you right here, right now and consuming your soul and all of your memories.” The tenor of my voice had changed with this last. I don’t remember even thinking of adding that last phrase, but something deep and dark inside me had risen to take control. It, whatever it was, continued to speak through my mouth. “Your very existence will be erased, Little Devil, and I will be the stronger for it.”

His face went ashen, he stepped back, suddenly unsure of what he was facing.

Dark energies seeped from my body, causing me to grow in size. The raging hurricane itself seemed to retreat before the...thing...that I had become. “Put the blade down and flee while you still can.”

His jaw worked up and down, like he was trying to say something, but nothing came out.

They were suddenly coming closer to me, but I couldn’t sense any movement of my legs. Ir was as if I was being Willed forward, or they were being drawn to me.

He dropped the blade as he tried to move backwards. As he did so, the Phoenix lifted it’s massive head and snapped at him, catching the staff and the hand holding it in its beak. With a horrible snapping sound, the staff and his forearm were shattered simultaneously. He screamed in pain as he held up the spurting stump of his forearm. The crazed look overcame his pain and his fear of me, and with a word of command he vanished, except for the remnants of his staff and the pieces of his arm that hung from the beak of the battered, but now satisfied Phoenix...

Stormbound...Part 3

It wasn’t easy, but I gathered my wits, lowered my shoulders into the stiffening wind and caught up with Ravyn.

When I caught up to her, I noticed that she was staring in the distance as she walked, fixated on a figure standing high up on what I later learned was one of New Orlean’s many levees. The street we were travelling on was coming to a quick end at what at first appeared to be huge, grassy wall that was topped with a fence of some sort. The hill/wall stood taller than all of the houses and shops nearby, and seemed to stretch across the horizon. Standing squarely at the top of the damn thing was a robed figure that appeared to be human. We were too far away to get a good look at face, or even tell if the figure was male or female, in part because the loose robe and cloak of the figure were flapping in the winds. The figure stood firmly rooted to the earth though, with it’s feet planted slightly wider than it’s shoulders. It’s arms were reaching up into the sky, each hand grasping one end of what appeared to be a staff of some sort.

“Who the fuck is that?”

Ravyn was succinct in her reply, “Trouble. Look above it!”

I looked where she was pointing in the sky far above the figure. “Oh shit! Are those things obeying that person?”

“Maybe. But whatever is going on here is not natural, and we’ve got to stop it.”

“Damn right we do.”

Just as I said that, we reached the corner. We had been watching the figure above us, who also hadn’t seemed to notice us yet. But as we hit the corner, I glanced to the right, towards where we needed to go to get to Alexa, what I saw stopped me in my tracks. “Ravyn...Look, they’ve taken her!”

Just down the street, three very large figures that I can only describe as ogres or trolls of some sort were emerging from the wreckage of a house. One of the bastards held a tightly swaddled baby in one oversized, clawed hand and a large wooden club in the other. The second of the beasts was holding back a screaming, distraught young woman whose cries were lost in the storm. The third towering beast brought down it’s own massive club down on the woman as I yelled, “NO!” and bolted into action, drawing both Witchbane Blades and hurtling myself in their direction.

Ravyn’s loud curses were followed by a blazing bolt of fire that launched from her hand and blasted into the troll that had struck down the young woman. The thing was lifted off it’s massive feet by the blast and landed in the street, screaming as it burned.

The trolls were now aware of the threat we posed, and reacted accordingly. The troll holding the child tossed its club to the second troll and began loping in great strides towards the levee wall and the figure above. The second troll turned to block my way, waving its new weapon in a menacing manner.

I was half expecting Ravyn to blast this lummox out of my way as well, so I wasn’t as prepared for its first swing as I should have been. If only the Tigers could get a hitter like this thug. He took a perfect masher’s swing, two-handed, good footwork, great concentration, and tremendous bat speed. The uppercut swing caught me solidly under my right arm, lifting me clear off the ground and sending me flying. I heard a number of loud cracks, wasn’t sure if they were from me or the club, or both. Luckily, I landed on a nice soft car to cushion my landing, accompanied of course by lots more cracking and crunching sounds. This time I was relatively sure that most of the damage was to the car, and not me.

From my new face-up vantage point, I noticed why Ravyn wasn’t as quick on the draw as I had hoped, she was surrounded by the blazing red glow of her shields fending off the lightning bolt blasts from a pair of small, dragon-like creatures.

From my particular vantage point, I could also see that the first troll was about halfway up the embankment, heading straight towards the wild robed figure we had seen before. Just as I was starting to wonder if the second troll was going to follow the first, a looming shadow told me everything I needed to know.

I rolled to the left, falling off the hood and windshield of the poor car, just as the thing’s now battered club smashed it further. Luckily, I landed on my feet and had just enough sense to slash out with the blade in my right hand, Diego’s blade. I felt Diego guide my hand slightly, dipping the blade just enough to nick the rough, green hide of the beasts hand as it was trying to pull the club from the deep impression he had created in the car’s hood.

Even with a small wound like that, the beast leaped back, roaring. It also abandoned the club.

Seeing my opening, I jumped onto the hood of the car and launched myself into the creature’s chest, leading with both blades.

The blades sank into the thick flesh at the base of his neck like they were cutting through butter. The impact of my leaping thrust and the power of the blades coursing through the beast forced it backwards as it collapsed in a heap on the pavement.

I yanked the blades from the smouldering beast’s body and spun to see the first troll not ten feet from the cackling robed figure. In one smooth motion (especially considering I had never even thought of trying this before), I cocked my right arm back, whispered, “Don’t fail me now Diego!” and heaved the blade with all of the power I could muster.

Diego sailed through the air, turned end over tip a couple of times and planted himself squarely in the small of the back of first troll right before it got to even ground. The beast screamed, stiffened, loosened its grip on the child in it’s one claw and started a slow motion fall backwards...

“NOOOO!!!!....”

Stormbound...Solstice Interlude

(Happy Yule to one and all.)

We stood there watching the sprites or elementals playing in the eddies and blasts of the wind, when something above caught my eye again. If I had been capable of gasping, I would have. “Was that really a dragon up there?”

Ravyn looked over at me, smiled. “Amazing isn’t it? If we stand and watch long enough with the right kind of eyes, we would see dragons and giants, all kinds of creatures that most humans dismiss as mere children’s fantasies.” She looked back into the almost joyous chaos of the playful smaller spirits and sighed. “It really is too bad that we as a species have largely turned our backs on supernatural world that used to be so important to our existence.”

“How so?”

“Some very smart people think that the ability to see spirits and ‘fantastical’ creatures has always been limited to a rather select minority of the human population. But in my research, I have found just the opposite, that very few people DON’T have the innate ability to interact with the supernatural world in some way. It is however a skill that must be encouraged and developed as we ourselves develop and grow from children into adulthood. That is why most of the stories of faeries and unicorns, dragons and giants, and even magick are seen as children’s stories. Most children can easily glimpse into the magickal world all around us, but they don’t have the software to interpret what they are seeing. When most adults at first humor them with their stories about invisible friends, or at first encourage them to believe in such beings as the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, those same adults then discount such fantasies and teach their children through their actions and words to see and interact only with ‘reality’.

“So that innate ability that most of us are born with just withers away from disuse and disbelief, and our world is all the poorer for it.”

“So why is it so easy for me to see them now? And why in such numbers?”

Ravyn’s hand clenched at her sides as she began to speak again. “It’s quite simple really-we as a species have done everything we can to push back both the natural and the supernatural worlds as far as possible. Our machines, our cities, our pollution has driven most of these creatures from their own environment, pushing them back further and further. When a major natural disturbance like this storm comes along, the sheer power and majesty of it brings many of them from hiding. Many are probably also taking this chance to return the favor we have done to them by destroying some of our environment.”

I looked over to see her face, now streaked with tears, harden as she continued. “Someday, there will come a breaking point, where we will have pushed things too far and destroyed too much of their world for many of these beings to survive, or there will be a rebellion of such a magnitude that our world may well change forever.”

“Wow, maybe those are some of the things that Alexa may be able to prevent, if she really is as much of a Catalyst as your friend thinks.”

“Let’s hope so, Rusty, let’s hope so.”

With that said, she stepped out into the intersection, in the direction we had been told her house was in. I took a moment to marvel again at the sheer number of playful spirits that were using this strange place to have a game of tag. I did notice how even these creatures though avoided the fiery shield that shrouded Ravyn. They rushed around and past her in amazingly tight circles and loops, but they avoided that shield....which seemed a little more intense than I had remembered it being before our conversation....

Stormbound...Part 2

I stepped out into the screaming wind and lashing rain first, hoping to provide some small cover for Ravyn. But even at my size and density, I was immediately pushed backwards until I began to exert my will and pushed back out into the chaos of the storm.

I would have thought that Ravyn would have had an even tougher time, but she took a moment to compose herself in the doorway before she was enveloped in a shimmering, red haze that extended outwards from her body about a foot in each direction. Once this shield of sorts was up, she stepped out into the storm with no apparent difficulty.

At my amazed look, she flashed a bright smile and gave me a mischievous wink before remarking, “You didn’t think I was going to walk out into this mess and get sopping wet like some dumb zombie, did you?”

As we stood there, me as wet as fish-not that I cared, mind you-her shield crackled and flared as the winds whirled around. I reach my hand tentatively towards her shield. “What exactly are you doing with this thing?”

She shook her head and waved my hand away. “Don’t touch it, you doofus! This is what I call my Fire Shield. It absorbs the energy of the winds and the rain and converts it into a very effective defensive shield, if anything other than a small amount of regulated air tries to get through, it will flare up rather impressively. But I need to concentrate in order to regulate this thing, so don’t stumble into me, I might burn you pretty badly.”

“OK, so I guess I don’t need to worry about you then!”

“Of course not. Remember, I’m here to keep you out of trouble, not to be rescued by you! So, let’s get moving, you remember the address don’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s this way.”

I pushed away from the side of the house and lowered my head and shoulders to start bulling my way through the storm to get to the home where I hoped to find Alexa and her mother. It was only a little annoying to look to my right and see Ravyn strolling down the street as if she were walking along a nice serene beach. Every now and again I caught a glimpse of her smirk as she glanced over at me struggling to get through.

We crossed through one intersection, making a detour out into the middle of the street to avoid a downed power line that writhed and sparked like a very angry electrical snake. Once past that though, we returned to the sidewalk, trying not to be too conspicuous, not that too many folks would be looking out their windows in this mess.

I turned to say something to Ravyn, when I noticed too late to warn her about a large piece of debris. It crashed into her from behind, a large chunk of a traffic sign, causing a brilliant flash of energy and a very audible popping sound. Ravyn was knocked forward by the impact, falling to her hands and knees, but was otherwise unharmed as the sign disintegrated in the explosion.

When she got up, the smirk was gone, and there was an almost defiant look in her eyes, daring me to make to joke. I found it better to concentrate on pushing through the storm. After that, she moved a bit more warily, casting glances in various directions.

At the next intersection, I stopped, steadying myself with a hand on the traffic light pole. I couldn’t quite place it at the moment, but I could feel the presence of other...entities...besides Ravyn and myself.

A flash of movement above and to the left caught my eye, but was gone before I could focus on it. Ravyn came up beside me, silent. “I feel something else here.”

She nodded. “Try looking in other light spectrums.”

Catching her meaning, I concentrated for a moment and focused my eyes to look for magickal energies. A whole new element of the storm became visible. I could see dozens, maybe hundreds, of whirling, swirling forms darting about in the air, more like faeries in their form than anything else I could think of. These figures were chasing each other in swarms, swarms that seemed to almost coincide with the winds of the storm!

“What are these things?”

“Elementals, faeries, imps, djinn. There are almost as many names for them as there are languages.”

“Are they the cause of these kinds of storms?”

“Oh heavens, no. But they are attracted to major storms like these, and they can cause a lot of damage with their play. They are the quintessential free spirits.”

Stormbound...Part 1

As we absorbed the information that T’tubah had given us, some large object crashed into the front of the house. It was loud enough that we were startled out of the mini reverie that had overtaken us. It also brought us back to the reality that we were gonna have to make our way out of this small house and into the teeth of a massive hurricane.

Ravyn recovered quickly, smirking as she said, “Well, she’s not getting any safer as we stand here waiting for you to collect your wits, you old rust bucket.” She looked to T’tubah a bit more kindly. “Are you going to be OK in here, or should we take you somewhere safer?”

The older woman cackled as she replied, “Child, don’t you worry none about me, you’ll have enough worries finding that baby girl and her mother and getting them to safety before things get really bad in this town. I’ll leave once the winds die down. I have some people in Atlanta that will be getting a visit from Great Auntie.”

Curious, I asked, “How will you get to Atlanta? The roads will be a mess, if your car even survives this mess, and there won’t be any mass transit for a while.”

There was a knowing twinkle in her eye as she answered, “The portal you came through works both ways, boy.” She shuddered a bit as she thought of something before continuing. “My way isn’t as flashy as some, but it gets me where I need to go when I have to use it. Now, you’ll be wanting to leave soon, you two aren’t the only horses in this race.”

Ravyn gave her an earnest hug, reaching up and around with both arms in an attempt to encompass the larger woman, who returned the hug just as earnestly.

Feeling a little uncomfortable, I reached out a tentative hand as they separated. “Thank you, Ma’am, for welcoming us into your home and giving us this infor...”

She had grasped my hand and yanked me into her embrace, surprising me with the strength of her grip and her ability to pull me off balance so easily. Her arms easily engulfed my shoulders as she brought her mouth close to my left ear. “You watch out now, boy, this baby is more important than anything else, don’t let the Little Devil use your own Demons to distract you from that.”

She pushed me back from her embrace, but held me with one firm grip on my left arm, looking square into my eyes. I could see the reflection of my flaming orbs in her eyes as her milky white gaze seemed to pierce through all of my armor. Her voice had that distant, tinny quality about it again as she spoke one last time:

“Stricken by Faith and Terror, the Daughter of Death has come!
To War turns the Old Guard, proclaiming loudly the false Victory.
Whilst Wind tears and Waters roar, the Daughter of Death has come!
Tho’ Fire and Shadow may strive, Hope or Peace has no guarantee.”

Her eyes returned to normal, but before either or Ravyn or I could comment, she shambled toward the front of the house, calling out, “This way, your time grows short.”

Prophecy...?

“First of all,” Ravyn started, “I want to know why you are riding out this storm in you house!”

The big womans shoulders rocked with amusement as she boomed out her answer, “BECAUSE YOU WERE COMING TO SEE ME, OF COURSE!”

I interjected, “But how did you know we were coming here, I mean...”

The withering looks from both women stopped me in my tracks.

Ravyn just shook her head in amusement before replying to the larger woman. “I should have known you would have been told of our arrival.”

As the storm howled outside, Ravyn gave her a brief synopsis of who we were looking for and why we needed to find her quickly, without providing any incriminating details, except for the mother’s name.

When the tale concluded, T’tubah looked from Ravyn to me and back again before speaking. “So, you mean to go searching for this woman and her baby in this storm, do you? The Spirits have spoken to me about this storm for a long time now, telling me that there is more to this storm than the hand of Mother Nature at work. I think this task will be harder by far than you realize.

“I do however, know of this woman who you are looking for, she was from this neighborhood and recently returned. She did give birth a few months back. She’s been looking for work. She lives about three blocks down the street and around the corner, she’s staying with her mother, from what I’ve heard. That baby, Alexa, was brought to me for a blessing only last month...”

As she was speaking, the large woman shuddered and went quiet, both Ravyn and I looked at each other, and then back to her, with Ravyn moving quicker than I to steady the woman on her feet. The wind was howling, things were crashing against the house on a regular basis, but it became still and quiet inside the house. She straightened back up and looked over at me, her eyes glazing over with a whitish film. A voice came echoing from her mouth, a voice that was at the same time familiar, but distinctly...different...

“Amidst Despair and Discord, the Daughter of Death has come!
From Darkness she was born, Descendant of Slaves now seeming free.
Conceived from Greed and Deceit, the Daughter of Death has come!
Through her Dance and her Deeds, Empires fall and the Mighty flee.”

T’tubah shuddered again, and would have fallen had Ravyn not already been holding her as she came out of the trance that had taken her. The crushing sounds of the torrents outside of the house resumed almost immediately, the spell now broken.

“What the Hell was that?” I asked.

Ravyn shot me another look, but guided the now exhausted looking woman to one of her sturdy kitchen stools. After she sat for a minute and gathered herself, T’tubah herself answered.

“The Spirits sometimes speak through me, asking me to be their conduit. They come and go as they please.”

“I can see they also don’t take much time to find ways of speaking plainly.”

More withering looks, this time from both women.

T’tubah spoke up again, “When the child was brought to me for that blessing, a similar event happened, one of my more powerful Spirits came forth and conducted the ceremony. That was the first time that had ever happened. It was then that I felt this child was going to be very important. Hers will be a life filled with turmoil and conflict, that great forces would battle over her. She will be a Catalyst, an agent of change, if she survives long enough. If you truly seek this child out, you must know all of this, and more...that humanity only sees such Spirits as hers born once every fifty to a hundred generations. She will be the first female Catalyst in a very, very long time.”

“What do you mean by a ‘Catalyst’? Who were some of these others before her?”

Ravyn spoke up, her voice sounding small againt the raging storm outside, but still very clear. “She means that this child of yours could be like some of the other great figures who have shaped human history, like Siddhartha, Mohammad or even Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Whoah...are you serious?”

T’tubah nodded. “This world is in dire need for such a person, but there will be powerful forces who will not easily suffer her to live to fulfill that promise. That, my children, is why I was waiting for you, for someone, to come to her aid.”

Into the Storm

On her signal, I threw the red stone to the floor of my home and watched in amazement and more than a little concern as we were engulfed by two gigantic blasts of red and orange flame.

I felt the wrenching twist of being moved suddenly from one place to another. As we arrived at our new location, the flames that had been licking at my clothing were snuffed out by an even stronger force of nature, the wind and rain of Hurricane Katrina.

You see, given her method of rapid transit from place to place, Ravyn USUALLY has the courtesy to use outdoor venues for her comings and goings. Apparently the domiciles of her (Un)Dead friends don’t receive such courtesy...but I digress. We arrived in the backyard of a modest looking, narrow, two story home that was enclosed by a high wooden fence (for the moment anyway) and was marked by a trio of large rocks that formed a sizable triangle in which we arrived.

The winds were howling fiercely, knocking Ravyn to her knees before I could catch her, and drenching us with water before the all of the smoke even had a chance to clear from our slightly smouldering clothing. “Damn, you must go through a lot of clothes travelling this way.” I had to shout over the wind for her to hear me.

Her likely smartass reply was lost to the winds as I helped her back to her feet and grabbed her backpack from her so that she could walk in the gale force winds. She pointed to the back of the house, and started staggering that way.

I had a much easier time dealing with the winds, so I shielded her as best as I could. We made it to the back wall of the house, which was marked by a couple of boarded up windows, another larger boarded up area that was likely a sliding glass door normally, and a solid-looking door that was covered by another contraption that looked like it belonged more in a prison than on a home, a sort of screen door made of reinforced wrought iron bars.

The semi-shelter of the back wall offered some measure of protection from the driving winds, allowing me to yell into her ear, “Do you want me to force open one of these doors?”

She shook her head and used one of her hands to indicate that we settle here for a moment, and yelled back, “SHE’LL...BE...HERE...IN...A BIT...BE...PATIENT!”

True to her word, a few minutes later, the wooden door was opened from the inside and then the iron gate contraption was flung outward, allowing us to scurry inside before we had even had a chance to see our rescuer.

As I scrambled inside the door, a booming voice called out, “YOU RAISED IN A BARN, BOY? CLOSE THE GATE AND THE DOOR BEHIND YOU!”

I reached back out and grabbed the gate, clanging it shut quickly. I then leaned into the door to get it shut again, all before I saw the person behind the voice.

I turned to see Ravyn embracing a taller, very robust woman of African descent with short cropped, greying hair and a weathered looking face. She engulfed the smaller Ravyn in a matronly hug.

Even with the doors now closed, the sounds of wind, water and debris crashing around outside was deafening.

The woman looked up from Ravyn and actually looked at me for the first time. Her eyes narrowed a bit at first as she studied me in the dim light of her lantern lit kitchen, “And just what have you dragged in from the storm, my little Ravyn?”

The soggy, bedraggled Ravyn responded, “This is Agent Rusty Bones, he’s the one I was telling you about last week.”

“Ah yes. Now tell me, what brings you down to see me in this mess?”

The Fyre Storm

“A Voudoun Priestess? Are you sure we can trust her?”

Ravyn gave me a withering look, “She’s a long time friend and a fellow Caster. Don’t let your experience with Papa Locks, Drake or any of his other flunkies poison your impression of Casters. Voudoun is not evil, no more than your use of the Shadow is evil.”

“I know that bastard Papa Locks was evil, and the thing inside me that gives me the ability to use the Shadow in the way that I do is evil. I’m not so sure I’m not heading down that path myself...”

Her face lost all hint of jocularity as she turned to face me, reaching up to grab each of my shoulders. She pulled me down to her level before speaking. “You listen to me, Rusty Bones. You are not evil, unless you allow yourself to become evil. All of us have the capacity for great Good and great Evil within, we all carry the seeds of our own destruction, our own vices, we are all human. But it is not the basest of our impulses that define who you are inside, it is the things you do-- your actions, your words, and the heart and soul behind those things that are the true measure of your Humanity. It is the assistance that you give others when you could easily turn away from them, the needed words of encouragement or even of rebuke that you give to a person in need of them that define who you truly are.”

“Then what do you call what I did to Daniel then?”

“Unfortunate, a bit misguided, well OK, maybe a lot misguided, but as far as I can tell, you’ve done what you did to him for understandable reasons. It is certainly not the way I would have approached the problem, nor is it the way I would’ve wanted you to approach it either, but what’s done is done and we need to make sure that we save that baby girl and her mother from Drake and his minions so that the...sacrifices...of that man aren’t in vain.”

I pulled away and tried to step around her, “So are you saying that the ends justifies the means?”

Ravyn wasn’t having any of my evasiveness. “Don’t start putting words in my mouth, bub. I didn’t say any such thing as ‘the ends justify the means.’” Her eyes were flashing orange and red now. “What I DID say was that what you have already done to get this information is already done, and if you want to make those actions, terrible as they were, in any way honorable and worthy, we are going to have to move our asses and save that child and her mother, if we can. So that means you are going to have stop wringing those cold, dead hands of yours about what you’ve done to that man and trust me when I tell you I know a friend and an ally in that area that we need to get to as soon as possible.”

With those last words practically erupting from her mouth, she reached down and grabbed her backpack. She slung it into place in one easy motion before reaching into a pocket of her jeans and pulling out two small red stones.

She handed one over to me, asking, “Do you need anything before we get moving?”

I took the offered stone in one palm. I looked myself over real quick, both blades were in place. I saw my collapsible baton sitting next to my computer, so I grabbed it and clicked it into my familiar wrist sheath. I looked back over at her. “I guess I’m ready.”

“Good. Get over here. When you see me drop this stone, you need to do the same thing with yours, I’ll need the extra energy to bring you along.”

“OK.”

She glanced around one last time at my less than neat domicile, muttering something about being dead not helping my domestic skills and said in a louder voice, “OK, I’ll do my best not to burn this sty down as we go. Ready?”

The Gathering Storm

“Hey lemme see that thing, I’m getting some flashes of memory just watching you thumb through it.”

Ravyn looked up from the little address book, gave me a stern look with one eye arched in challenge, “All right, but don’t you try anything funny. You’ll really see me get mad if you go anywhere without me!”

I held up my hands in mock surrender. “Hey OK, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“Perhaps you are coming to your senses, about time!” She tossed the book over to me, and pretended to look back to her backpack in the doorway, but I could see how tense she remained. She was watching me like...well, a raven!

“Besides,” I added, “I don’t think any woman in her right mind would come along with me anydamnwhere, especially with a young baby. Having you along could help ease her mind about me.”

“Look bub, I’m not coming along to be anyone’s babysitter. I’m coming because I have no doubt you’re going to step into a situation that is far bigger than you realize. If that poor woman and her baby are going to have any chance in this, someone with some sense needs to keep you out of trouble!”

As soon as the book was in my hand, a rush of memories flooded to the front of my mind. Without really looking at the book or its pages, I let my fingers do the walking. They stopped at ‘J’. I looked down and saw a scribbled notation that was much easier to decipher since I could now ‘remember’ writing it, it read:
“Alexa Jackson, born 05/03/2005, Charity Hospital, New Orleans, 7lbs 6 oz.
Naomi cell, (504) 555-3376--looking for $$ for bills--$5,000?”

Excited, I looked up, “Ravyn, I found a note about when the baby was born, and a cell phone number for the mother. We might be in luck after all.”

She came over to see for herself and commented, “Looks like she was in need of some money as well, didn’t you say these guys were paying her money for this?”

“Yeah, but that all kind of stopped when we took down their organization. Daniel said that all of the other women who were impregnated either miscarried or aborted the babies once the funds stopped. Only this woman, Naomi Jackson, carried hers to term. Shit, this is weird, I can hear her voice, and even remember her face, from his memories of dealing with her. He stayed in contact with her even after we stranded him in Canada.”

“Well, that should help us to recognize her when we go down there to get her. Do any of your stolen memories have an actual address? I doubt that she is still at the hospital after nearly four months.”

“No, I’m not coming up with anything other than some PO Box that he remembered sending some checks to help her out. But we could try calling this number.”

“If the phones are still working, you mean, the edge of the hurricane is hitting the area right now.”

That jolted me back to the immediacy of the problem, although there was still something niggling at the back of my mind, like some half-formed memory trying to surface, but not quite making it yet. “Hey, wait! It’s a cell phone according to the note, I’ll bet the Bureau can track the location of that phone, if it is on!”

I rushed past Ravyn, the book still open to that page in my hand. I went back into my media room and sat down at the computer monitor that was still on. I signed onto the Bureau remote network and clicked on the icon that opened the tracking system for cellphones. It was a relatively new program, so I had to fumble around with it for a few minutes.

Ravyn was standing behind me, watching over my shoulder. “You see, this is why I don’t carry one of those things. I couldn’t stand the thought of knowing that the government could track my location by clicking on a program like that.”

“Well, it’s not exactly open for just anyone to rummage through you know...”

She patted my shoulder, “Oh, yeah, they just let their zombie agents have it on their home computers. I’m real comforted. No thanks!”

“Hey now, I do happen to have a pretty high level clearance. Zulu made sure of that.”

“Oh yeah, I could see how he might be able to swing that. Still, I’d rather not be so...traceable.”

I couldn’t resist a jab of my own, “Yeah, I can see how important stealth is to someone who flies around on a giant flaming bird and who comes and goes with the bang and flash of a bomb going off.”

I was rewarded for my humor by a slap upside the head...which, I was almost satisfied to note, hurt her more than it did me.

As she was nursing her bruised fingers, I punched the number into the program, hit the Search button.

In a matter of thirty seconds, a map of New Orleans appeared on the screen with a blinking cursor in the heart of the city noting the location of the phone. A note flashed at the top of the screen, showing the date of the last request for this number...if I had had any hairs on the back of my neck, they would have been standing up...the logon ID on the last search done for this number, just done earlier today showed ‘DKampmann’-Drake.

“Fuck me, Drake knows where she is as well.”

“How does he still access to this system, wasn’t he kicked out of the Bureau?”

I could hear the worry in her voice as she asked that. “I don’t know, perhaps they forgot to suspend his access when they booted him out of the Bureau.”

“Now I am REALLY glad I don’t own one of those damn things!”

“Yeah, but now we really have to get moving. Damn, I’ve never been to New Orleans, so I can’t really use the Shadow to get there.”

“I know a place we can go, it’s actually fairly close to the blinking dot too. We have an ally down there, I’m sure she’ll welcome us, she’s a fellow Caster, a Voudoun Priestess named T’tubah.”

Soup Interrupted

That had been the plan anyway.

Pretty much as soon as I settled down to my meditation and started trying to piece the puzzle of another man’s memories back together, I was interrupted by what sounded like an explosion in the next room.

I was up in an instant, reaching for the Witchbane Blades and moving to the door, ready to face whoever had dared to intrude into my home.

There was nothing I could have done to prepare for what I faced (or rather who I faced) when I threw door open.

An enraged Ravyn was standing on the other side of that door, eyes ablaze, hands on hips, hair all askew, and tendrils of smoke curling off every surface...she was literally smokin’ hot! A rather haphazardly packed backpack was laying on the ground behind her, apparently she was going on a trip as well...

As soon as she saw me lower my guard with the blades, she was in my face, sputtering mad.

“Just who do you think you are, Mister?”

She advanced, pushing me back from the doorway.

“And what right do you THINK you have to come to my home and drop off a barely conscious man with a busted jaw and the memories of a pimple faced teenager and just disappear like that?”

Her smoking finger was waving right under my nose.

“And what in Goddess’ Good Green Earth do you think you are doing dropping off THAT man in particular?...”

Her questions, her glare and her fury pushed me further back into the meditation room. She kept advancing as she threw out more questions that she apparently wasn’t going to wait for an answer to...

“And just who do you think you are that you can drop by like that, and not even stay to say hello to your own daughter?”

I was now backed up to the far wall, with nowhere else to retreat to...

“You better not be thinking of going off on another one of your half-cocked adventures without telling anyone again! Well if you are going to stand there mute, like a damn zombie, I’m going have to cook the answers out of you!”

“Hold on Ravyn, I can’t answer any of these questions if you don’t give me a chance to speak!”

“Well, your lips are flapping, so apparently the Cat has let go of your tongue, don’t stop now!”

“OK, OK. First of all, I’m sorry to drop by like that with Daniel.”

“Daniel? Since when are you on a first name basis with...that man or any of his accomplices?”

“Shit, I didn’t even know his first name until I took his memories from him...”

“You TOOK his memories? How did you do that?”

“Darling, are you going to give me a chance to...”

“Don’t you ‘darling’ me! Just stick to the facts! Tell me what the Hades you’ve been up to, don’t leave anything out, and don’t stop until I tell you to!”

So, pinned up against the back wall of my own meditation room, I told her the whole story of how I got the call from Daniel and what he told me, all of the way up to my abduction, the mind rape, and the need to find out more information about the daughter I just learned I had. The tale lasted a good twenty minutes, but good to her word, she didn’t back down until she was satisfied.

As soon as I got to the part about dropping Daniel off at her home and rushing off to find out more information about the looming hurricane and New Orleans, she backed away and started pacing.

“So you were going to try and piece together this man’s...Daniel’s...memories and race off to New Orleans to rescue this child and her mother from the stupid hurricane? Do you even know her address?”

“Well, I was hoping I would find it in his memories, at least I was before you barged in here.”

“Did you even search him for maybe an address book like this?” She had reached into her back pocket and pulled out a small, black leather address book.

I was stunned. I never did check him for anything in his pockets. “Son of a ...”

“What is it about being a zombie, did you forget everything about being a cop?”

“No...I was just caught up in...”

“You were just caught up by your new found magickal abilities. Just like a newbie. You discover a cool new ability and suddenly forget that you can do things conventionally. You have a lot to learn, Rusty.”

“So let me see that book, maybe the mother’s full name and address will be in there...”

“Not so fast, buster. Don’t you get any ideas about finding that address and disappearing into those shadows of yours. If WE find the address, WE will go and see if we can’t find this alleged daughter of yours and get her and her mother to safety, if they need it.”

Memory Soup...Part 1

As soon as I saw that Ravyn had things under control with Dr. Geek-- and that she wasn’t gonna toss his befuddled ass out into the street-- I slipped into a dark closet and back through the Shadow to my home. I would have to deal with how much trouble I was in with Ravyn later.

I didn’t give much thought to asking for any more help from Ravyn at the moment. This was something I had to do alone.

I knew my daughter’s name was Alexa, and that she had been born in May in New Orleans. I also knew that her mother was a former exotic dancer in Vegas who was originally from New Orleans. Her first name (Naomi) and her face (very exotic and rather beautiful) appeared in his thoughts prominently, but her last name didn’t. For being a scientist, Daniel Bernstein’s thoughts were pretty fractured and chaotic. (The more I worked with his memories, the harder time I had referring to him by my nickname for him. I had never known his first name before.)

So, if I was going to actually locate my daughter and her mother, I was going to have to mine through this chaotic jumble of another man’s memories to come up with as many clues as possible.

That is one significant problem with discovering that I had new powers and abilities on the fly. I had no idea on how to sort through and make sense of all of those fragmented thoughts and memories, and I wasn’t sure how time I might actually have to figure it out. What I wouldn’t give for a Google function for my own mind!

When I got home, though, I went straight to the small TV I keep in the place and turned it on to see how damned close that storm was and to see how big it was. The news reports were not very encouraging. They were looping constant images of that monster of swirling clouds making a bee-line for New Orleans. At that time, she was a Category Three hurricane and was looking to get worse. The predicted landfall was expected to be in the next two days...not much time indeed.

Next I moved over to my new computer, a shiny, new, top-of-the-line Apple iMac, and did some quick research on New Orleans and how prepared the place miught be for the Hell that was descending upon it...not very damned encouraging either.

I sat back for a moment and tried to skim through the morass of memory fragments to see if anything would surface easily...but no luck. I was going to have to do this shit the hard way, as usual.

I got up from the computer, leaving it running and still connected to the web. I left the TV on as well and walked back into the recesses of my new home, to the place I had set up to my new place for meditation and contemplation, the Dark Room.

I closed the specially modified door behind me, cutting off all noise and light from the rest of the house. This place was as close as I could make it to be like the Shadow World, dark and silent.

I laid down on the mat in the middle of the floor, and drew my Will deep inside. It was time to sift through this Memory Soup and find out everything I could before I left for the Big Easy.

Confessions-Finale...The Rape of Dr. Geek

I stood over the prone form of Dr. Geek. I didn’t know at the time, but he had not been as broken as I had assumed. He had purposely made the choice to push my buttons, to make me lash out at him. Subconsciously, he had hoped that I would kill him, but quickly.

So how the Hell do I know this now? Well, this is where I must confess my sins. I raped him.

I really don’t know any other way to describe what I did to him, other than...rape.

As a cop, I would not have classified what I did as rape, since the crime I perpetrated on him didn’t involve any sexual intercourse. Sex is not something that is physically possible for me. But I raped him in ways that are far more intimate, far more damaging than any physical act ever could be.

OK, I know this is sounding more than a little weird, so let me give you a little background, which draws upon some of the other stuff I have been posting about previously.

One of the most interesting things that I learned from the Merlin was that not all Worlds are created equally, and each World has a different, and often unique effect on the magickal talents of strangers who visit it.

One of the reasons I felt so comfortable in this bizarre world of Shadow was that I felt a flowing energy here, a sense of power, that dwarfed anything I had ever felt back on the ol’ Earth. When I was in this place for any period of time, I found myself rejuvenated and energized to such an extent that I didn’t need to do that stupid flush and gush of the fluids in my veins anymore. A brief visit here and I was good for several days.

I also found that my ability to manipulate and work with the substance of Shadow was greatly enhanced in this place. So, when I looked down at his unconscious form, I remembered the time that the shadowy remnants of Ma Grendel inside me had healed my own injuries, repairing broken bones and fixing scars. I thought that maybe I could try doing the same thing for Dr. Geek, repair the broken jaw and get him conscious again so I could continue the questioning.

So I knelt down and put my hand against the badly swollen part of chin where I had broken the jawbone when I hit him. I gathered some strings of energy and extended them by force of will into his body, looking to repair, at least superficially, the damage my fist had done.

Instead of heading for the shattered bone in the jaw, my tendrils of Shadow reached toward his brain. I began to get images in my own mind of memories that could only be his...especially the ones of what seemed to be a caricature of my face with glowing red eyes and a twisted grin as he watched me strike him....

I recoiled instantly, drawing my power from him as I realized what was happening. I was able to see some of his memories, even get snatches of his thoughts as the blow was coming towards him....

I sat back, rocked to my very core at what I had just discovered. Then I began to realize the possibilities that such a power gave me in getting this damned interrogation over! If I could directly access his memories, I would get the best possible information with little chance of him tricking me in any way...

So that was how I justified the mindfuck...after all there supposedly was a child of mine in danger...and he was laying there unconscious...well, like I said, that was how I justified my actions at the time. Nevermind the fact that I was still pissed at him for making me go through all of this shit in the first damn place.

I put my hand back down on his head, although this time I avoided the broken jaw, and went straight for the temple. I was tentative, probing carefully, at first. My mind was flooded with fractals of his memories, at first in a chaotic, rushing jumble that made no sense. As I became more adept at identifying and digesting the memory fragments, I began to piece together a far more complete picture of this genetic project he had been explaining. Indeed, I began to get a much more complete picture of his whole relationship to Drake and the Omega Prjoect as a whole.

The deeper I dug, the more resistance I began to feel from his consciousness. That is when the rape truly began.

He tried to resist, God help him, but Dr. Geek was no match for my Will at this point, not in this place, at this time and in his condition. Using a fraction of my Will I subdued his weaker, damaged will and forced that conscious part of him into a deep corner within his own mind. Using more brute force than I would now, I ripped whole sections of memories from his mind, not realizing entirely how much damage I was doing at that moment.

Once I found and took all of the information on my newborn daughter from him, and where he believed she was located, I understood how much danger she was in and knew that I had to finish this quickly. But once I had started this brutal process, I found I was unable to stop from reaching in and snatching nearly all of his memories from adulthood.

Once I got down to his high school years, I stopped, began pulling back. It was only as I was pulling back that I realized that the previously full compartments of his memory that I had been rumaging through were now empty...by taking them in the way that I had, I had been erasing them from his mind, or at least shattering them into unrecognizable bits.

I had just raped the man of over thirty years of his memories.

Of course I hadn’t really had time to digest and comprehend all of those memories at the moment, just the ones relating to my daughter and some of his conversations with Drake were all I really assimilated at that point. It was only later that I would come to understand all that I had taken from him...his lovers, his children, the passing of his parents, his research...all gone from his memory and now part of mine.

After the deed was done, I stood up. Looking down again at his prone form, I began to feel a strange kinship with this former foe...a sense of sympathy for the choices he had made in his adult life that had driven him to his ill-fated encounter with me on this night.

Yes, I must go to rescue my daughter from the grinding poverty she was now in and from the storm that was bearing down on the place where she was born, Hurricane Katrina was heading right for New Orleans, but I could take a moment to save what I could of this poor soul.

I reached down and picked up his limp form as easily as if he were a child. I gathered the Shadow about us and stepped from the World of Shadow to a place where I could take him for help.

Ravyn was less than pleased at being brought another refugee, especially someone she had considered an enemy, but when she saw the anguished look on my face as I carried him into the house, she took to issuing the orders to her students to take care of things...

Confessions...Part 4

As a former cop who has done his fair share of interrogations, I have seen plenty of broken men. Despite all of the bravado that most men carry around with them, every man has a breaking point, a point at which the pain, the humiliation, the stress, the anger, or the fear they are feeling reduces them to a state of hopelessness that leaves them completely open and vulnerable. It is not a pretty sight.

I had Dr. Geek pegged all too well. He didn’t last more than an hour after the final glimmer from his last glowstick. He was curled up in a fetal position sobbing uncontrollably when I appeared next to him, pulling a small flashlight from my pocket and shining on it his pale, sweaty face.

“Get up.”

It took a moment for him to come out of that place of abject terror that his mind had retreated to. His eyes blinked reflexively as the light hit his eyes. “R..r...ru..rusty?”

“You know who it is. Get up on your feet.”

He scrambled clumsily to his knees at first, then haltingly to his feet. “Please help m...m...me.”

“This is your one chance to help yourself. I really don’t give a shit about what happens to you Dr. Bernstein, but you can earn a way back to the world you are familiar with, and a chance at life again.”

His eyes grew wide, sensing a glimmer of hope, a vital feature of this kind of questioning.

“However, if you fail to give me truthful answers to the questions I have, I will leave you here to die.”

The hope in eyes dimmed, just a little. Good, that was important too, that the hope was there, but in doubt.

“So, tell me, did you really take sperm from my body and use it to impregnate a woman?”

He looked away from the light in his eyes, briefly, glancing down at his feet, before looking back into the light, “Yes.”

“Did you create more than one using my sperm?”

“Yes, but only one woman carried the child to term. The others either miscarried or aborted once the funding dried up.”

“Why did you do this in the first place, wasn’t my Spirit and my dead fucking body enough for you bastards?”

He visibly winced at my tone, looked away briefly again, then haltingly answered. “It wasn’t my idea. Drake was convinced that you carried certain genetic traits that could be enhanced and developed, that certain of your genetic markers were on the verge of reaching the next level in human development, he believed...believes...that humanity is on the cusp of becoming a new species, and he wanted to see if he had identified those genes that would make that transition happen sooner. Since your markers were so clear, it was relatively easy to make a few alterations in the sperm we pulled from you to see if we could trigger the change....”

“That is some seriously sick logic. Did you do this to any of the other officers in the Omega Project?”

“It was tried, but the others before you didn’t have the best possible candidates for alteration, one other child survived to birth, but died shortly afterwards. The changes proved fatal.”

“How did you find women who agreed to this shit?”

“It wasn’t hard. Offer enough money to most people and they will do what you want them to. We advertised on certain websites and in certain newspapers, offering to do free genetic testing for certain hereditary diseases in women of childbearing age, and then used that to recruit potential mothers who had the right markers themselves. Then we merely had to offer to pay all of their living expenses and to pay a healthy stipend. We had more candidates than we could ever possibly use.”

“Why not do the same thing for male candidates? You’d get plenty of sperm donors, especially if you paid for it!”

“Oh, we did some testing on random male donors as well, but the program was becoming very expensive, so we had to select our subjects carefully. We had narrowed down the traits we needed to tweak to a few dozen possibilities, and you just happened to have more of them in the right places than any other subject we tested. You had the four sets of markers we wanted to test more than any others, and they matched up perfectly with four of our female subjects. That’s when the decision to...uh...obtain...the ...uh...necessary supply of sperm--”

“You son of a bitch!” I raised my arm as I was about to strike him, but something in the way he stood there, resigned to being hit, that stopped me, for the moment anyway. “You had me fucking killed for my goddamn sperm!?”

“Well, Drake made that decision. But, yes, part of the reason you were killed when you were was to harvest your sperm and begin the rather tedious process of preparing the sperm for implantation in each of the selected fem...”

I couldn’t hold back any more. The word ‘harvest’ being associated with my death and the extraction of my sperm was just too damned much. I struck him hard with my fist on the side of his face. He collapsed like a sack of potatoes at my feet. I cursed as I realized that I could have easily killed his ass. I put the flashlight down and rolled him onto his back, wiping away the blood seeping from inside his mouth and the quite possibly broken jaw. He was out cold, but he was still alive.

But, I was going to have to revive him in order to continue the questioning, I still needed to learn where this child was, and what danger she was supposedly in.

I did resolve though, for the thousandth time, to kill the bastard Drake...

Confessions...Part 3

In addition to our primal fear of the Dark, there is another fear of ours that is as ancient as our species, the fear of being alone.

You see, humans are social creatures. While there have always been plenty of people that others would consider ‘anti-social’, even those people usually feel more comfortable with other like-minded people with them. Even chronic loners or ‘lone-wolf’ types who prefer to spend large chunks of their time by themselves can grow nervous and scared when isolation and loneliness is thrust upon them rather than being a state of their own choosing. That is why the threat of solitary confinement, or the ‘hole’ as it is often called, is one of the most valuable tools that prison adminstrators have to keep control of the most volatile prisoners.

Extremely rare is the man who can withstand strict solitary confinement with no human contact whatsoever for more than a few days without breaking down in some fashion.

We are hardwired as a species to seek out other humans, to communicate with each other through speech and body language, to feel the loving touch of other humans we care about, to find our place within the larger group with which we interact. This hardwiring begins when we are just infants, we fuss and cry until a familiar face comes to bestow coos and smiles, stroking of the cheek, and often a warm bottle or breast to quench our thirst and our hunger.

As a cop, I found that many of my ‘customers’ that I dealt with, especially the most violent and desperate criminals, had been in some way cut off from the social fabric that the rest of us have built up. Either they had been abused as children by uncaring parents, who themselves may have been cast-off from society, or they had lost crucial jobs or suffered the loss of someone extremely close to them who mght even have kept them from committing the crimes that I was arresting them for.

The group dynamic is so strong that weak men can feel strong and powerful in the midst of a like-minded group, while a tremendously strong, independent man will often back down from a confrontation if he is alone and without a support network. This is why our culture reveres the solitary hero who does win a conflict with groups of small-minded villains. Almost all boys imagine themselves as being one of those solitary hero-types, while the reality is likely to be that they will grow up to become one of those followers in that group that gets defeated in all of those action movies.

Another thing I learned as a cop was that when you are interrogating a prisoner, it is often useful to use these primal fears that are inherent to almost all people to your best advantage. Indeed, if you wanted to get fast results, it was often necessry to compound the effects of one such fear by adding in others in measured doses. It was rare to find anyone who could resist such pressure for long. And when you found someone who could ignore such pressures, you had found yourself a real fucking sociopath, and likely as not, a serious suspect for any unsolved murders in the vicinity.

I knew Dr. Geek was not a sociopath. He was more or less a normal guy, your average Joe Blow scientist who was swept up in the potentialities of the research that Drake was willing to organize and fund. He was fascinated with-- and lacked any real understanding of the spirituality of-- the magick that the others like Papa Locks and El Diablito possessed. I am also sure he had no fucking clue about Drake’s true nature. But I was relatively sure that he did have some key knowledge about projects that Drake had started, perhaps without even involving the others in the group. Drake was sure to have secrets that he shared with each of his team members, making sure that each knew of projects and plans that the others didn’t. It was a perfect strategy to keep control of things, making sure that each team member felt he was special and in possession of knowledge that the others didn’t have access to.

I needed to find out what Dr. Geek knew about, and I needed to make sure that he was fully aware that his fate rested solely in my hands. I couldn’t take any chances that he would be willing to hold back even the smallest little detail of the secret stuff that Drake had entrusted him to do, and I needed to do it quickly.

That is why I dragged his ass to this place and compounded the various primal fears that most men carry deep inside--fear of the Dark, fear of being alone, and the real big one, the fear of Death. That is also why I created the story about the shadow creatures below and the flying things above that reacted to sound. I didn’t want him to have any possible outlets for his fears, he needed to believe that there was no possibility of escape, and there could be no outlet of emotional energy by screaming and throwing a tantrum. The glowsticks, with their limited light and their even more limited durations, served as a timing device that set into place a defined period of time in his mind where he had some small measure of security and safety. But the fact that he only had three of them to last him for an unknown duration of time was my way of forcing him to wrap his mind around the finality of his situation.

It was a cruel, evil torture inflicted upon a man who had no power to escape. It was also a very effective way of breaking down all of his resistance and his willpower within a few short hours.

Unfortunately for the small part of me that was still human and had sympathy for a fellow human in distress, it was also torture to watch a grown man come to the realizations that I needed him to come to and break down as they dawned upon him. It is not a pleasant sight to see such pain, such distress, such fear, come to fruition within such a short, concentrated time.

That is as close to a description of his ordeal as you are going to get in this space. I found no pleasure in his pain, and I don’t imagine that any of you would either.

My next post will detail our conversation after his ordeal, or at least as much of it as I will be able to reveal at this time...

Confessions...Part 2

Our fear of the Dark is something that is so ancient, so primal, that it is an almost universal fear among humans. It must harken back to the days when our ancestors lived in caves or in small, rudimentary structures and gathered around the fire at night to keep the nocturnal predators, be they beast or other men, at bay.

Because of the way our eyes work, we feel particularly vulnerable in the dark. Our other senses heighten when we are in darkness, particularly our hearing and our sense of touch. Have you ever felt how sensitive your skin gets at night, when you are absolutely sure that feathery light touch is that of a spider crawling up your leg?

The blind find themselves living in a world of darkness all of the time, which is why the sighted often just shudder when they contemplate what would happen if they were to lose their vision.

Even as a child though, I was fascinated with the Dark. As a young man, I would often turn off all of the lights in my room and even cover up the slits beneath my door or around the window shades in order to make my room as pitch black as possible. I would then try to navigate through my room in that darkness, testing my balance and my memory of where things were.

As early as 5 years old, I would unplug the nightlights my parents would leave on at night, because having even a little light like that made it harder for me to fall asleep. That stuck with me all the through until my marriage. One of the great differences between my ex-wife and I was that she needed to have lights on at night, and often would leave the TV going all through the night, while I preferred to have it dark and silent. Eventually, the only compromise that could be made was for me to work the night shift often as I could trade for it from other officers. That way she could have the TV going and lights on while she drifted off into her fitfull sleep, and I could come home in the morning, and tape the shades shut like I did when I was a boy, and make the room as dark as possible while she was working in the house and the kids were at school.

Of course, when we went our separate ways, and I was a bachelor again, I was able to work whatever shift I liked, but I was so used to working the night shift at that point, and I had come to love the strange people you encounter as a cop at three or four in the morning, that I kept those hours for the most part.

My love of the dark even followed me into (un)death, especially in those early days when I was just trying out my newly animated body. I was able to pass as a normal person much easier in the dark of night.

But with the addition of aspects of Ma Grendel’s essence, my love for the Dark has now reached even deeper levels, making it all too predictable that I would feel most comfortable in near total darkness.

Despite my love for this place that I taken Dr. Bernstein to, I was very familiar with that primal fear that most people still harbored for the Dark, and figured to use that to its fullest effect on poor Dr. Geek.

It didn’t take all that long for him to find the wrapped glowsticks as the first one began to wane. I was curious to see if he would let the Darkness come now that he thought he was all alone.

I didn’t have to wait long. He had the second glowstick unwrapped and activated before it truly got dark enough for me to enjoy it again. Oh well, at least this would be over all that much sooner....

Confessions...Part 1

Looking back on how things have developed, it must be more than mere coincidence that I eneded up telling about the torture of Dr. Geek at this time of year.

We both ended up suffering more in our own damn minds than in any other way.

I apologize for the delay in these last few postings, but the self reflection needed to compose these posts, especially right around Samhain, has been beyond my ability to overcome. I think, however, that I have now turned a corner on that problem, and anticipate moving the story along nicely in the coming weeks.

So, back to our happy tale where I had left poor Dr. Geek to deal with some serious alone time and the illusion that there were critters out there ready to make a snack of him.

Of course, there was no real danger, since this particular Realm of Shadow was devoid of inhabitants. That was why I liked it so much, I didn’t have to worry about dealing with any stray beasties. This was a place of solitude, contemplation, of serenity...at least to monster like me.

In contemplating the use of this place for this particular interrogation, I had to consider my target. Dr. Bernstein was a very social person. In my recollections of him in his laboratory, he rarely worked alone. He was usually with at least one or two underlings and he was almost always chatting them up about some damn thing or another.

He was also a person who was completely devoid of any magickal abilities of his own, but was in awe of anyone who did possess those skills. He both loved and feared the very idea of magick.

Since this place was at the nexus of so many other worlds, it would have been foolish to try and hold anyone here who had even the least bit of magickal talent.

But that wasn’t a problem with Bernstein.

As I settled into my observational spot not too far away, I could see the poor bastard pull himself into a fetal position, cradling the meager light of the glowstick in his hands. He hadn’t even bothered to gather the other two glowsticks up yet. I noticed his shoulders shaking in what appeared to be wracking sobs. I almost felt sorry for him right there, but then I remembered how long I had been trapped in that damn Chakra, with no one to talk to, no way to know what the Hell was really going on. He had only been suffering for a few minutes, my torment lasted over a year. He could wait a little longer....

Torture

I am approaching this entry with more than a little trepidation, and not necessarily because of the plight of poor Dr. Geek. Actually, that bastard is getting off fairly light-you see he was really in no danger of becoming a meat snack for any critters here, I made those things up...but more on that poor sap in a little bit...

The real reason I have been having a hard time preparing this post is the date that is rapidly approaching. October 31. Halloween. Happy Death Day to me!

Yeah, this Halloween, or Samhain as I refer to it now, will be the second anniversary of my untimely death...it will be two years from the night where I was assassinated by some killers who were hired by Drake to make my body (and Spirit) the next subject of his fucked up experiment that he called the Omega Project.

Even though it is the second anniversary of my death, it is actually going to be first time that I have been aware of it as such. It took Drake, Papa Locks, El Diablito and Dr. Geek over a year to make me fully operational. I was, for the most part, trapped inside that stupid Chakra device that they had created to contain and channel my Spirit in ways they had hoped would make me the amenable little robot of doom that they had intended to create. Instead, the bastards got something far worse...they created a monster with the heart and soul of a man.

I am not sure what I am going to do just yet to mark this sort of special occasion, or if I am going to slip away into the Shadow to let it pass.

I am not supposed to feel any damn emotions...but shit, this has gotten hard...

Fuck, those damn voices are whispering to me again...I will have to continue with the story on Tuesday if I am able. I need to go...

Fulfilling Wishes...One Nightmare at a Time

By the time Dr. Geek was able to breathe semi-normally again, I had already opened a gateway into a world of darkness and shadow that was my haven of sorts from the world of the Living. This place was alien and forlorn, a world without inhabitants (for the most part). It was also a place that I could take someone to and know that I would be free to do with them as I pleased.

For poor Dr. Geek, this was his Guantanamo Bay, his Abu Ghraib, his own personal ‘renditioning’.

You see, I had discovered this place in my time with the Merlin. He had taught me how the various layers of the ‘onion-verse’ were interconnected by special tranisitional places that fit the traditional descriptions of the various ‘elemental planes’. The planes most commonly speculated to exist were Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. The most commonly visited planes were those of Spirit, as I myself had already experienced with John Red Bear’s assistance. But I had remembered that Papa Locks had seemed to use some sort of Shadow Magick to be able to travel from place to place quickly, so under the Merlin’s tutelage, and using my now innate mastery of shadow, I had discovered how to open portals into this gloriously desolate world. Even the Voices deep inside enjoyed my forays into this place, it was one of the few places where I could find peace from their incessant whispering.

As the portal leading from the only world Dr. Geek had known closed, he began to struggle feebly in my arms. We arrived at my chosen destination with a slight lurch. I dumped his coughing ass onto the rocky surface that would be his home for the next few hours at least.

I could see him regain the sense to try and look around. I had some sympathy for him, knowing that his mere human eyes would have great difficulty in seeing anything in this environment, so reached into my coat pocket and pulled out an unwrapped glowstick. I gave the thing a good shake, causing it to start glowing in a fluorescent lime green light that barely illuminated our figures.

His eyes latched onto this meager source of light immediately. I held out the stick for him to take, which he did, gingerly.

Using this feeble light, he scrambled to his feet and traced out the limits of the plateau on which we now stood. He looked more than a little shocked as he realized that the whole platform on which we were standing was about 15’ in diameter.

His hair blew in the breeze as he stood near the southern edge, which caused him to back up immediately. He turned to face me, almost kneeling in his attempt to keep a low center of gravity. “Rusty, wh..wh..where are we?”

I chuckled. “Dr. Bernstein, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Suffice it to say you’re definitely not in Kansas.”

He looked at me with a new realization. “You’ve learned to travel as Papa Locks did! You’ve learned to ShadowPort!”

“So is that what he called it? Did you ever go with him on his trips?”

“Uh, no. I never trusted that man, he gave me the creeps.” He seeemed to shudder at that thought. “Why are we still here, aren’t you going to take me back to the US? You know, you didn’t have to hit me, I would’ve gone with you willingly!”

“Would you now? Perhaps you think a little too kindly of me, Doctor. I haven’t yet decided if I will be taking you back to safety.”

“What...why not?”

“Well, first of all, you had a major hand in a lot of evil shit, and I’m not sure I believe your little story about this supposed child of mine. So I brought you here. I’m going to leave you in a few moments, because I want you to take some time and gather your thoughts. When I return, I am going to ask you some questions, Doctor, and you are going to answer them, honestly and completely. If I feel that you are holding anything back, or are lying to me, I’ll leave your ass here for a little bit longer.

“But before I go, I want you to understand a few things. First, that light you are holding will last about an hour before it peters out. When it does, you will find yourself sitting here in the dark again. You’ve seen how small this plateau is, but it is also very high up. You won’t be able to climb down from here, but even if you did, the creatures lurking in the darkness below would make quick work of you. As long as you remain up here, you will be safe from them.
“Second, I would keep quiet if I were you. You see, there are other creatures in this place that fly. Those creatures hunt by sound. There aren’t very many of them in this place, but they always come to investigate loud noises. There isn’t much fresh meat in this world, so you are a rather tasty looking meat snack. Those creatures, though, are allergic to light of any kind. So I will give you two more of these glowsticks. Don’t use them up too soon though, because they only last an hour!

“Finally, don’t think that anyone will be able to find you here. I have chosen this place very carefully. You will be alone with your thoughts and the creatures of this place, until I return for you. So think long and hard, Doctor, about the information you give me about this child and any other damn projects you neglected to keep notes about. If I don’t get the complete story from you when I come back, I will leave you here to die.”

He was looking more and more shocked as my speech went on, he looked to be on the verge of tears as he blurted out, “Why are you doing this, Rusty? I...I...I’ll tell you the truth now! Don’t do this to me! I can’t die in this place!”

“Why? I’ll leave it to you to figure that out, Doctor. Here.” I held out the two still wrapped glowsticks for him to take.

He was still in shock and disbelief at this point, so he just looked from my hand to my face and back to my hand again, but didn’t reach for them.

“Fine” I said as I dropped the two glowsticks to the plateau surface and gathered the nearest Shadows around myself and transported myself to another nearby plateau, far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to see or hear me, but where I could keep an easy eye on him.

Time to sit back and enjoy the show...

More Than He Bargained For...

“OK...What kind of help are you looking for?”

He paused...”Well, I like Canada and all, but I really don’t like the cold enough to want to make a new life here. But worse than that is now that the Director has found me again, he’s going to demand I join with him again. If I don’t, I won’t be safe for long, even here. I will give you more information on him and his various pet projects, ones we didn’t keep records of, if you can find a way to get me out of here and make me disappear so that He can’t find me again.”

I smiled to myself and said, “All you had to do was ask, Dr. Bernstein. I think I can help you out sooner than you might think. Where are you right now?”

He hesitated for a moment, “Well, this is a pay phone near the Casino in Windsor, but obviously I don’t expect you be able to help me out this second. In fact, I was planning on meeting with the Director’s representative. I think I can stall him for a couple of days if I need to. So if you can arrange for someone to meet me at the Tunnel or the Bridge to Detroit and get me into some sort of protective custody in the next day or so...”

“Don’t worry Doctor, I shall be in contact with you very soon. By the way, are you on riverfront side of the Casino, or the land side?”

“Riverside actually, I can see the skyline of Detroit right from the phone here. So, should I come back to this phone at any time? I would really appreciate it if you can arrange something fairly soon!”

“Yes, I am sure you would. Let me contact you here at this number again in an hour.”

“Really? Wow, Rusty that would be great! I’ll be here then!”

“Good” I hung up on him. I thought to myself, ‘Ask and you shall receive, Dr. Geek.’

I put the phone down and hurried to take care of a few errands. It was going to be a busy night...

***

I sat deep within the shadows between the dumpster and the nearby building. I reached for my cell phone, flicked it open and selected the second to last number called, the one that Dr. Geek would be looking to answer in the next couple of minutes.

The area just beyond the shadow where I crouched was busy wtih people enjoying the warm August evening air. They paid no attention to the dumpster, if anything the smell wafting from it must have been fairly bad, because folks seemed to drift closer to the other side of the sidewalk as they passed by.

I activated the button that would call the number. The pay phone about twenty feet away began to ring. One figure from the bustling crowd edged toward the the ringing phone, looking around as he did so, as if to spot anyone who might be watching for him. After three rings, he moved to pick up the handset.

“Hello?” It was Dr. Geek.

I hung up when I knew it was him. Instead I sprung from the shadow in which I had been crouching and pushed my way through the startled couple who were passing my spot, oblivious to my presence previously. I could see that the good doctor was still trying to talk into the phone as I came up behind him.

“Damn,” he muttered as he hung the handset back up and started to turn around. “Wha....”

He never finished that thought before my carefully aimed punch to the solar plexis knocked all of the wind out of him. He doubled over in excruciating pain.

I heard voices behind me start to yell as they realized that a fellow patron was being assaulted right out in the open. This sort of thing didn’t happen all that much on this side of the Detroit River. “Hey, what are you doing?”... “Did you see that?”... “Is he hurting that man?”... were typical of the reactions.

Instead of enlightening those folks to the kind of man this ‘doctor’ really was, I quickly scooped the stunned man over my shoulder and bounded from the sidewalk towards the shadowy areas of the trees of the riverfront park that Windsor was famous for.

By the time any local Windsor cops could respond to the gasps and cries for help from the stunned crowd, I had found a nice patch of darkness and opened a rift between worlds to step through with my cargo.

He wanted to ‘disappear’, so I figured I would make that happen much sooner than he might have realized was possible. Perhaps he would regret his request, but I’ll let you good folks be the judge of that...

Paging Dr. Geek, You Have a Call...

It was 8:45 before I called the number. I didn’t want to risk not getting through, but I wanted to make his ass wait a little bit, too...a little gamesmanship.

The phone rang three times before it was answered.

He spoke first. “Hello, who’s calling please?” He was trying to sound nonchalant, but there was strain in his voice...he was a little too eager and it showed.

“You know who this is.”

His voice perked up a little bit. I could hear noises in the background, traffic noises. “Rusty, I’m so glad you’ve called. I was beginning to worry that you hadn’t gotten my message.”

“What do you want, Bernstein? I thought I was done with you when we left you in Canada to start a new life.”

“Yes, well, I am still in Canada, but there are some things I need to discuss with you. Such as your new baby daughter. And how you can save her life, of course there is a price to the information I have.”

“Before this goes any further Bernstein, you’ve got some convincing to do before I can believe that I have any newborn child out there. In case you haven’t noticed, asshole, I’m not exactly equipped for THAT job anymore.”

He hesitated for just a moment, like he was trying to gather his thoughts before he spoke again. He stuttered a bit as he began. “Well...um..Let me begin by saying that not all of our experiments with you and other test subjects...”

“You mean my fellow officers, don’t you Doctor?”

“Yes...of course. Like I was saying, not all of our experiments on you and the other officers were recorded in our notes. Director Kampmann had me conduct some off-record tests and to take samples of each officer’s...DNA...through blood and semen samples taken during the preparation of your bodies for your...uh...current assignments.”

“How did you get any semen from me, Dr. Geek, I had been fixed for over ten years before I died?”

“Well...you know that a vasectomy only prevents semen from escaping the body during intercourse, your body still produced plenty of fertile sperm, it just didn’t have an avenue of escape...until I....uh...”

“Until you cut me up like a prime hog in a butcher shop, asshole.”

“Yes. I could certainly see how you think of it in those terms.”

“OK, so say you did recover some fertile sperm from my carcass, how the Hell does that translate into my having a child now?”

He hesitated again. Cleared his throat, and spoke again, “Yes, well, those samples of semen and blood were used in some off-site experiments in cloning, gene therapy research, and in genetic modification. Eventually, some of those sperm samples were implanted via in vitro fertilization. One such sample of yours was implanted shortly before we located you in Las Vegas. That sample took and has been carried to full term, resulting in a baby girl who is your genetic offspring. You are her biological father.”

“You sick, sick bastard. Why should I give a fuck about this child, whoever the Hell she really is?”

“Well, first of all, because I know you are not the heartless monster you like to portray yourself as. Now that you know you have a child, I know that you will do the right thing. She is in grave danger right now, and you are probably the only one who can truly save her.”

“Alright asshole, I’ll play along for the moment, what danger is she in?”

“She is in danger in a number of ways. Physically, she is in a very precarious position that could very easily prove fatal if you don’t act quickly and decisively. If she survives the immediate danger though, she’s in peril from the Director. He will stop at nothing at locating her and using her against you.”

“How is it that you know where this baby is and Drake doesn’t?”

“Well, as I mentioned, the mother was impregnated shortly before I encountered you in Las Vegas, and after that, I was, shall we say, indisposed for a period of time. Before I had a chance to get in contact with the Director again, the organization was significantly degraded. I have been granted asylum and a new identity here in Canada, but just yesterday the Director made contact with me. He has set up a meeting for me with one of his representatives in three hours here. He expects me to provide him with the details of certain...projects...that may remain open, including your daughter.”

“Shit. So why did you contact me? Why not just give him the child and the goods on your other cursed projects?”

“Because I don’t particularly want to resume my former employment and I think you can help me avoid that. So, is saving an innocent young girls life, your daughters life, worth helping me, an old adversary?”

A Cryptic Message

So, where were we?

Ah yes, I was just about to arrange for a trip to go see Ravyn and visit my daughter there when I received a very cryptic e-mail, reproduced here in its strange entirety:

“RB-

Another experiment involving you has come to fruition, something not revealed by the data you captured previously.

Congratulations on your new baby girl.

If you wish to know the whereabouts of your daughter, contact me by phone at (519) 555-6859 between 8 and 9 PM tonight. If you don’t follow through, she will either be dead soon, or fall into HIS hands, and I don’t think you want that to happen.

If you help me, I will help you.

-DB”

Now, my very first reaction to reading this e-mail was to get ready to delete the damn thing. My new baby girl? How the fuck was that even possible? It had been nearly two years since I had died, and besides that, I had been snipped many years before my death....so the possibility of having fathered a child anytime in the last year was pretty much out of the damn question.

But before I deleted it, I sat down and thought about things for a moment. Something about the number seemed familiar to me? What was that?

Well, as someone who had grown up in Michigan near the border with Ontario, Canada, I recognized that the area code was an Ontario code.

But who would be leaving a message like that from Canada...and how would they know anything about what had happened to me? And who used the initials of ‘DB’?

Then it came to me...Dr. Geek, his true last name was Bernstein, and the last I had seen of him, we had left his ass outside of Vancouver, Canada in one of those transport rooms that Drake had placed all over the place.

But why would he help me, and what possible help could I give him?

Damn, only one way to find out...