Showdown at the OK Corral...Part 1

I emerged from the Shadow in the small stone circle at the community house that Ravyn ran in the suburbs of Chicago. It was a dark night, so the transition had been exceptionally easy.

I was carrying the duffle bag that I had taken from that house in Jordan. It was still packed full, although the contents had been adjusted somewhat since I had left Jordan for the Merlin’s place in that other world with Zenni Al Farhan in my arms. I was returning alone, well, at least as far as any observer could tell anyway.

I made my way from the circle to the back door that I knew would be unlocked-- Ravyn wasn’t too worried about unwanted intruders-- plus this was a center of a lot of activity in any event.

I found Ravyn in the library that she had first brought me into more than 6 months ago. It was a comforting sight to see her relaxing on one of those enormous sofas reading a book. It was a rare thing to find her taking time for herself anymore.

There were a couple of other students in the room when I entered, but they quickly decided to seek their answers elsewhere when I entered the room. I moved to a sofa across from where she was stretched out and set the duffle bag down and took a seat.

Like a cat woken from a nap, she stretched and yawned as she put the book down and sat up, looking at me without speaking. Her eyes drank in all of the details of my appearance, like she could deduce where I had been and what I had been doing from the dust and dirt on my clothes.

We sat in silence for a few moments, before I finally spoke. “You look well rested. I take it the spa was good?”

She smiled, that kind of cat-that-caught-the-canary-grin, but as quick as it came, it disappeared behind a sterner look. “It was good. I finally feel like a human being again.”

“Glad to hear that.”

The pleasantries were over that quick. She turned all business. “It’s almost time for the Conclave, where have you been all of this time?”

I sighed. “Well, that’s a long story.”

“I’m ready to listen.”

I gave her a brief summary of the events that had taken place, starting with my meeting with the spirit of Alexa’s mother at Yggsdrasil and ending with the events of my last post. She sat silently through the story, her jaw tightening at various points when describing what had happened to Mrs. Al Farhan while in the custody of Daniel Bernstein.

When I finished, she stated, “I don’t know how I will be able to work with that man again. I can’t believe he had been so cruel to that woman.”

“He’s still here?”

She looked away in disgust. “Yes, he’s pretty much healed up from the physical wounds. I don’t think he has regained any of his memories that you took from him though. He has the mental maturity of a teen-ager, but the body of a middle aged man. He’s been helping out with some janitorial work and has been raiding the library here every night, taking book after book to read.”

“I can take him elsewhere if you would like.”

“We’ll see, Rusty. I hate what he did to that woman, but I know that we can’t let him go in good conscience. Who knows what Drake will do to him if he finds him. I doubt that Drake will believe that his memories are completely gone. I’m not even sure I believe it either.”

It was my turn to look away for a moment. But I looked back at her when she finished. “Speaking of Drake, I need a favor.”

Her eyes became suddenly fiery, flashing in anger. “What about him? What kind of favor?”

“I’m going to reach out to Drake. I need to make a deal with him.”

“What?!?!?! Have you gone insane????”

“I know. It sounds crazy, but it has to be done. I need to do it for Alexa’s sake.”

“How can you even think of dealing with that man again? Hasn’t he screwed with you and your family enough? How can you trust him to follow through on any agreement? And how can you expect any meeting not to be a trap?”

I leaned forward, patted the duffle bag at my feet. “I don’t trust that...man...at all. But I finally have some things that he wants, needs even, more than he wants to fuck with me and my family. I finally have some leverage and I intend to use it.”

“What was in those containers? Are you going to tell him about this Zenni woman as well? By the way, where is she?”

I smiled, sat back a little bit. I had left out the details as to what was in those containers. “Well, I can’t tell you everything just yet. But I can tell you that Mrs. Al Farhan is safe, she will not be part of any deal with Drake.”

“You’re damn right she won’t be!” Her anger was up again. As fast it rose, however, it cooled down again. “So what exactly is this favor you want from me?”

It was right as that question came out that the other entity with me chose that moment to grow restless. The duffle bag gave off a puff of thick dust as it shifted inside. A muffled squeak from inside accompanied the movement, causing Ravyn to just about jump out of her skin.

“What did you bring with you in there?” Her bare feet had been pulled back from the now rustling bag, up onto the sofa with the rest of her, but her right hand was extended in a familiar gesture that I knew meant that she was ready to ‘throw fire’.

I held out my hand. “Wait a minute. It’s nothing bad. I brought someone for you to meet.”

“You have someone in that bag?”

“Yes, his name is Bobinaximantheral, Bob for short.” I was reaching down slowly to loose the clasp on the bag. “He’s a little impatient, he’s a youngling among his kind, and was very curious to meet you.”

I opened the bag and a bright light spilled forth as ‘Bob’ leaped out into the air, spinning and circling happily as he squeaked in joy at being let loose from that dark, nasty bag.

Ravyn’s shriek of surprise turned into a cry of joy. “Rusty, you remembered!”

The Orb known as ‘Bob’ continued to circle around her head. It was obvious that he enjoyed her as much as she would enjoy being around him.

“Like I was saying, his name is Bob. He’s young for his kind, I think he’s only a thousand of our years old, and he’s been very eager to meet the ‘Fire Lady’ I had been telling him about while I was at the Merlin’s. He would like to know if he can stay with you for a while and experience our world...which I knew you’d be more than willing to accommodate.”

If she was hearing anything I was saying, I couldn’t be sure. She was entranced with him. She reached out one hand into the air. Bob slowed down and floated near it. He seemed to get slightly brighter as he approached her fingers, almost like he was a pet, sniffing to see if she was ‘ok’.

When he touched her, she didn’t flinch. Her eyes were transfixed on the softly glowing orb that was actually a living being. “He’s so warm to the touch!”

Soft cooing sounds were coming from the pair as they examined each other. I couldn’t tell if it was her or him.

Bob floated downward along her arm. I could see goose pimples raise on her arm is he came down and floated in front of her eyes. She reached out with both hands, gingerly touching him on opposite sides. They seemed to be communicating on a number of levels.

After a few moments she nodded and pulled her hands away, he bobbed in the air and zipped up towards the ceiling rafters of the library.

I watched him settle up in the shadows above, dimming as he did so to the approximate brightness of a candle, he was probably recharging a bit after the excitement. I was just about to close the duffle bag back up when Ravyn bounded off of her sofa and wrapped me in one of her trademark bear hugs.

“Thank you.” She whispered, sounding like she was choking up a bit. “You have just made me very happy!”

As she let me go and settled back onto the sofa, I closed up the bag to keep anything else from spilling out. “I’m glad to hear that. Now, about that favor I need from you...”

I had to duck a flung cushion....

Decisions, Decisions...

We sat there for a few moments in silence.

“What if I were to take you back to your family in Iraq? Those thugs won’t be after you anymore and Dr. Bernstein will no longer have any interest in you, that I can guarantee.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, streaked down her dirt-smeared cheeks. She looked down at the ground, sobbing, before she gained the strength to speak again. “I...I...I wish that were possible. But those evil men killed my husband and the members of his family that we were staying with after the war.”

I wanted to reach out and offer some form of human comfort, but something stopped me. Instead, I asked, “What about other family members, perhaps any adult children, cousins, your side of the family?”

She looked back up at me, shoulders still wracked with sobs. “I have no children. I have never been able to have any. No, I have no one else left in Iraq. Because of my ties to the former regime, I have enemies who will be glad to make an example of me. My parents died in the Iran/Iraq war. I was an only child, so I have no brothers or sisters. The only living relative I have...is your mortal enemy.”

“Damn, I was afraid of that.”

My choices were not very good. I could take her back to Ravyn’s farm, but there were a great number of problems with that. First, she would come face to face with Daniel again and there was no way of telling what would happen with that! Second, she still had some reasons to hold tight to her loyalty to Drake, so that could be like inviting the fox into the chicken coop. Finally, how happy would Ravyn be with another injured foundling dropped off at her doorstep?

So, taking her to Ravyn’s was pretty much out of the question. I certainly couldn’t leave her here in this place and I couldn’t kill her, it’s just not in my nature to do so.

I ran through all of the other options I could come up with on short notice...

The Professor was taking care of Alexa, so I couldn’t take her there...

The Frau and Cerrydwen were helping the Professor, so they were out...

Everyone else I knew in the ORC’s would be in danger if I left her with them, given Drake’s talent at finding out things you didn’t want him to know...

I couldn’t turn her over to the government, they would see her past involvement in the Baath party and her service in the Mukhbarat as potential threats and probably send her off to Gitmo...

I certainly couldn’t turn her over Drake, even if I could locate him, after using her Talent on me, she knew too many secrets that I didn’t want him to know, and I certainly wasn’t going to turn over this money or these artifacts him either...

She needed to have a chance to heal up, to recover from her wounds and her losses while also being beyond the reach of Drake.

So, after looking at and discarding all of these other options, I decided that it was time to take her on a visit to a place I had been taken when I needed a chance to heal...to the Merlin, if he would take her...

Further Discoveries...

“Knowing what you must about know about Drake, why have you helped him in his search?”

She hesitated before answering, but she did not look away. “That is not an easy answer to give. When you get to ‘know’ people in the way that I do when I use my Talent, you learn that nearly everyone is more complex than they seem. When I first met Drake Kampmann, I knew him only as a wealthy foreign scientist who was looking into the same field that I wanted to go into, the ancient past, into the very origins of human society. It wasn’t until I touched him though, that I got that first glance into incredible complexities of a person who was ALIVE at that time. I couldn’t believe my own senses and thought that I must have been dreaming when I received the first images of his youth and the incredible drive that had kept him...alive, in some way until the present.”

As she spoke, she seemed to come alive herself in a way that neither I, nor Daniel, had seen since he had first ravaged her. I wanted to ask more questions, to get the answers I truly wanted, but I felt it was more important to let her keep talking...

“It wasn’t until the second time I touched him that I discovered that he was actually a direct ancestor of mine. He was probably the first person I had ever touched that could sense what was happening when I touched him, but he was definitely the first to have the ability to shield things from me that he didn’t want me to know, at least after the first time anyway.”

I couldn’t restrain myself at that point. “But surely, you must have seen the evil that he has done throughout his...existence?”

She sighed. “When you have the ability to know the deepest, darkest secrets of everyone around you for all of your life, and you get to relive them every time you touch someone, you come to know that we all carry the seeds of both our own destruction and our redemption within. Yes, I could see much of the evil he had made within this world, but I could also see that there is goodness in there as well.

“When I touched you, Mr. Bones, I sense that you contain within you the seed of a great Evil, the remnants of a being so ancient and so powerful that I fear that one day your humanity will no longer be able to hold it back. But I can also feel that for now, you have found ways of coping with and containing that Evil.”

It was my turn to look away for a moment, to collect my own thoughts. She had learned so much in one momentary touch!

“The man you call Drake is your enemy, he started the process to create what you have become, but it is you who have taken that beginning and become so much more than even he could have imagined. But that man is my ancestor, my patron, the one who taught me that there are other people in the world who have strange talents like I do, people who use those skills for good and bad. He was the first person who I felt safe with all of the secrets I had been keeping. You see, there are many taboos in this part of the world against people with powers like I possess. People with unexplainable powers get stoned to death here, if they are discovered.

“Drake taught me that I could use my powers in small, secret ways to further my career. It was he who convinced me to use my abilities to become an archaelogist and an agent within the Mukhbarat.”

“Why would you serve in that agency, as an agent of Saddam Hussein’s government?”

“It’s simple, really. As an agent I could keep other archaelogists from selling away Iraq’s heritage to the highest bidder, but I could also control which secrets I actually revealed to the other, more enforcement minded agents. I could get information from suspects with no harm being done to them, and I could protect the secrets of those who truly needed and deserved protection because I had such a reputation for finding the truth.”

“You know, you really aren’t making my decision any easier.”

“In the faith of my people, Shaitan, there are no choices, but the will of Allah.”

“Well, if there is an Allah, then he has left you in the hands of a pissed off dead man with an axe to grind with your damn ancestor...”

“Hopefully, that is better than being in the hands of living rapist who had an axe to grind with my damn ancestor.”

M.A.D--Mutually Assured Discovery

The Shadow engulfed us and took me to that familiar place, the plateau that I had taken Daniel to within the World of Shadow.

It was not a comforting place to take Mrs. Al Farhan to, but I didn’t want to comfort her just yet. We had some...issues...to work out first.

You see, one of the secrets that I had learned from Daniel, though by no means the most explosive or the most important, was that Mrs. Al Farhan was a direct descendant of Drake’s. She had discovered this strange fact by accidentally touching his skin with her bare fingers back when she had worked with him on that archaelogical dig in southern Iraq.

Ever since that time, she and Drake had become as close as Drake allowed anyone to be with him. She had assisted him in searching for those items he had so desperately wanted from the ancient and buried ruins near Ur, while he did everything he could to assist and protect her with his extensive contacts within Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Of course, this relationship was the very reason that Daniel did the vile things he had done to her, and was the reason that he had her seized again by the band of thugs I had just disposed of. She was to be his last bargaining chip in the event that the negotiations between Drake and him broke down...until I screwed that up for him.

I had been careful in picking her up so as to not present her an opportunity to touch my skin with her fingertips, since I knew that was how she accessed her own Talent. This plan had worked fine up to this point, but fell apart as I tried to put her down in a way so as to not cause further harm to her damaged body.

As I knelt to put her down, the duffle bag shifted awkwardly, forcing me to catch myself from falling on her. This provided her an opportunity to reach out with one small hand and touch the leather like skin of my face.

Her Talent was powerful, irresistible. For the briefest of moments, I felt the sheer terror of having my most private self being laid bare...just as Daniel had felt when he realized what I had been doing to him. But unlike Daniel, I had the power and the Will to close off that portal, although not before she was able to gain significant insight into who, and what, I was.

Realizing that I had cut off her access to that knowledge, she took her fingers from my face, keeping her eyes locked on mine. I finished setting her down before placing the bag down and then settling to a seated position right in front of her.

We sat there in silence for many minutes, each assessing the other. Having only spoken a few sentences between us, we already knew more about each other than most married couples learned in a lifetime.

It was an awkward way to begin a conversation.

She broke the silence first. “You are sworn to kill him.”

It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “Yes.”

“Yet, you saved me from those animals. Why did you come for me?”

“Once I learned those crimes were still taking place, I couldn’t let them continue. This is the place, right here on this very rock, where Daniel Bernstein paid for those and many other crimes.”

She looked away for a moment, surveyed the small barren plateau, and picked up one of the expended glowsticks. She looked back me, tears flowing down her now wet cheeks. “Thank you.”

We sat in silence for a few more moments while she wiped her face dry with one sleeve of her tattered robe. She then took a moment to remove her hijab, which surprised me. Her hair was unkempt and dirty from what looked like at least a week without washing. She ran her fingers through her long, dark hair, seeking in vain to smooth the tangles.

When she gave up on making her hair presentable she looked at the equally dirty and tattered hijab and sighed, setting it aside. She looked back at me with a strength and a resolution that I found surprising and asked, “So, what will you do with me now?”

...To The Other Side

As the last of the cold-blooded killers collapsed into a gurgling heap, I wiped both Herlinda and Diego down on his desert camouflaged jacket. They weren’t truly clean, but I would have time for that later.

I sheathed the blades before searching out for the one survivor among the mercenary band. Luckily, the one Mrs. Al Farhan called Andrew was one of the first I had encountered in the fray, I had been able to pummel him into unconsciousness before I got too caught up in battle to be particular about who died.

It worked out well, since I now had a prisoner to question as to the whereabouts of the things I had come for.

I picked him up by the front of his uniform with one hand and half carried, half dragged him to the kitchen area. I propped him up into an armchair and splashed water on across his bruised face. With the third pan full of cold water, he came sputtering to.

“Who are you...?” He managed to spit out a semi-coherent question.

I was not in a very charitable mood, so I quickly set the ground rules. “It is not your place to be asking the questions here, boy. I ask, you answer. If I am satisfied with your answers, you will live. Is that clear?”

He wasn’t restrained physically from acting in any way, but his eyes showed that he understood that I didn’t consider him a threat. He nodded.

“Good. Then let’s begin.”

After a few moments of polite conversation, I had all of the information I needed from him.

I left him sittng in that chair still as I calmly gathered up the items I needed from the various rooms where they were kept. I found the briefcase full of bundles of cash, in the form of $100 bills and high denomination euro notes that the group was using for their operating capital in the leaders room. I recovered the two sealed, bowling ball sized cannisters from the room Andrew stayed in, placing them in the heavy duty duffle bag that he had used to lug them around. Finally, I used the keys that Andrew had to unlock the room that they had kept Mrs. Al Farhan in.

She looked out miserably from the corner where she had been curled up in as the door opened. She blinked at the sudden light from the outer room.

“Can you walk?” This time I spoke to her in English, a language that I knew that she was fluent in from Daniel’s memories.

She shook her head, then futilely tried to pull her hijab back over her unkempt hair, a small attempt at modesty despite her wretched condition. “No.”

“Then I will carry you. I will be back in a moment.”

I turned to return to the kitchen, only to face Andrew staring at me down the length of a fully loaded automatic rifle. “I don’t know what kind of monster you are, but you will not hurt her!”

I looked from him, back into the cell, and back to him. “I think your chivalry is a little late, boy. I did not come here to harm this woman, but to save her from the likes of your comrades. Put down the gun and leave this place alive, while you still can.”

He stared me down for almost a minute. I could see him sweating as he gauged whether or not he thought the gun would even harm me and whether or not he could finally help the woman he had watched his comrades ravage, time and again. His face was anguished, the guilt of a thousand ‘should haves’ washing over it in visible waves as each memory flashed through his mind.

Finally, he backed away slowly, still pointing the gun in my direction.

As he backed up, I walked over to the kitchen table where the duffle bag and briefcase waited. The barrel of the rifle followed me, but remained as silent as we did.

I snapped the briefcase open and pulled out stack of euros that was probably worth about $10,000 and tossed it at his feet before putting the rest of the money into the duffle back with the cannisters. His eyes stayed on me as I said, “Take that and go home. You’ve done all you can here. I will take her to safety. Dr. Bernstein will no longer require your services.”

He looked down at the money on the floor and paled as he noted the blood pooled up nearby from one of his former comrades. He shook his head and swallowed hard. “No. I will not take that money. I will not leave her in your hands either. How do I know you won’t harm her?”

I was losing my patience with the boy. I zipped the duffle bag closed and hoisted it onto my shoulder. “You can stay if you like, but I’m leaving and I’m taking her with me.”

He made a move to step between me and the cell door, holding the gun like a club than a firearm, like he thought it might be more useful that way. He didn’t say anything as I walked right up to him.

“I admire your bravery boy, however misguided it might be. You are only alive right now because she asked me not to kill you. If you don’t get out my way, you will have wasted the grace that she has granted you, despite your inability to keep her safe from your comrades. Trying to stop me from helping her is not going to be your redemption. You will only find that through a lifetime of service to those in true need.”

He still hesitated, his face torn with grief and despair.

Looking deep into his eyes, I made one last appeal. “You have a good soul, boy, and a unique talent to bring solace and comfort to those who are suffering. This path of the soldier, the warrior, is not for you. Stand aside, and you will have the chance to develop that talent and help many others. The choice is yours, die now, a participant and a witness to rape, torture and blackmail. Or live and have a chance to give succor and to heal.”

His shoulders slumped, the gun clattered to the floor.

“Good choice.” I pushed past him and moved to the bruised and battered woman he had failed to protect until now. I bent over and gently scooped her frail form into my arms. I looked back as I began to gather the shadow about us, I could see the poor kid sobbing in the doorway.

Maybe he would use this second life to become something better. Maybe.

Breaking through...

After hours of replaying this and other reprehensible memory sequences from his time in Iraq, I was able to unravel enough clues to crack open that damnable wall.

Pushing in the last of the nearly invisible keys, the steel wall melted away like a stick of butter in a searing hot pan. Despite all of the time and energy I had spent trying to get to the secrets behind this wall, I was completely unprepared for the mother-lode of information I was about to receive. It also took me a while to get my mind around the enormity of the secrets that he had been keeping not only from Drake, but also from himself....but before I discuss these, I needed to take care of some ‘bidness’...

The other mindblowing revelation was that Daniel had been running a sting operation of sorts on Drake, having hired a band of mercenary thugs in Iraq (westernized contractor types) who were even now (at least as recent as a week before I snatched these memories from him) holding Mrs. Al Farhan, and Drake’s precious artifacts as well, hostage in an attempt to extort money from Drake.

At first, I couldn’t actually believe that he had pulled this off against Drake, but the more I analyzed the now complete set of memories from this...weasel...the more I came to the conclusion that I had been giving him way too much fucking credit for being under Drake’s sway.

Daniel Bernstein had his own agenda in all of this...and he was more than willing to let Drake take the fall for being the main ‘bad guy’ and play at being an innocent scientist caught up in the swirl of something larger than himself.

Once things snapped into place, I found myself flying back to my body at a breakneck speed through the Spirit World.

As I settled into my body, I was already galvanized for action.

From Daniel’s memories, I knew that his team of hired thugs and killers was currently hiding out in a small, unmapped village in the deserts of Jordan, not far from the Iraqi border. The last thing Daniel knew, they had recently returned from southern Iraq with Mrs. Al Farhan as a captive again, she was intended to be Daniel’s last bargaining chip with Drake.

This was going to end, and end now.

I gathered my weapons and summoned the Shadow, slipping easily into that world where my powers over darkness and my senses were the strongest. Once there, I called forth everything I could of Mrs. Al Farhan’s aura from what little senstitivity Daniel had. Luckily, it was just enough.

I slipped from the world of Shadow into the dark room where she was kept. She lay in fetal position, whimpering in a corner, her clothes torn. Even though the room was dark, I could see her clearly. As soon as I appeared and turned towards her, I could hear the crying stop.

In between ragged gasps for breath, she whispered her question in Arabic, “Shaitan? Have you come to avenge me?”

Seeing that she had clearly been ravaged even further by these mercenaries, I gave her a one word answer in that same language (a language, mind you, that I did not remember either speaking or understanding until then-more on that in future posts), “Yes.”

A sharp intake of her breath preceded her reply, “Good. Then I can die.”

“No. Thou shall not perish this evening, that fate falls to these others for their crimes.” Sorry, but that was the literal translation, it turns out that my knowledge of that language was rather archaic.

I turned from where she now was sitting up and moved towards the door. Before I could get any further, her whispered cry halted me in my tracks. “Shaitan?”

I turned my head back towards her, saw her flinch as she saw my fiery eyes again. I must have looked very much like the crazed killer I would soon become. “Aye?”

“There is a young man out there, his name is Andrew, he is the tall, red headed one with the sweet face. Please,...spare him. He is the only one who has been...kind to me, and he is good at heart.”

“If he is wise and lucky...he will live, but I make no promises.”

In the darkness of that room, I was able to expand my senses and get a feel for the rest of the building. It was night, but I could feel that all ten of the men in the fortified house were awake and active. Good. I wanted them to know what was coming. I did feel that one of the men seemed to be more than a little different than the rest. A kinder, gentler soul among a gathering of tainted, darker souls that would not normally be found outside of a prison. I marked where that one was.

Drawing the Shadow about me, I stepped from the cell into the midst of some very startled men.

“What the fu..!”

“Who the Hell are...!”

“Sonovabit...”

The shouts all ended in brief screams or gurgled grunts. I was quick, efficient and absolutely ruthless. It was over in a matter of moments...

Unclean Memories

I have meditated on this post for several days now. I have wrestled with issues great and small in deciding how to proceed from where I last left off.

There is no good way to describe the events that transpired with Zenni Al Farhan at the hands of Daniel Bernstein. Even knowing the reasons that Daniel used to convince himself that he was justified in taking the actions he took, I cannot comprehend how a man can do the things that he did.

I have always hated rapists more than just about any other kind of criminal. As a cop, I have confronted more than my share of such criminals, always taking great pleasure from arresting those scumbags and putting them behind bars. Usually after making sure they have a few more bumps and bruises than I found them with.

Having these memories in my head made me feel unclean, made me feel like a participant in his crime. Worse yet, I had to replay them more than once to learn the clues to solving the puzzle he had created inside his own head. The information he learned from Zenni Al Farhan, and the objects he recovered using that information were so dangerous to his own survival that he had to create a maze within his own memories to shield those secrets from accidental disclosure.

So, in order to discover the key to unlocking what those secrets might be, I had to relive this experience more than once in order to move forward.

I will conclude this short post by saying that Mrs. Al Farhan did survive that night, but Daniel’s actions that night left her broken and disabled to such an extent that he felt that she was no longer a danger of revealing her secrets to anyone else.

I vowed to exact some measure of vengeance on Daniel, on those who eventually helped him to perpetrate those crimes against Mrs. Al Farhan, and of course, ultimately on Drake, who, in the end, is the root the cause of so much evil in this world.

I also vowed to see if Mrs. Al Farhan still lived and to see if there was any aid that I could bring to help her heal from these wounds.

The Temptation of Dr. Geek

Her name had been Zenni Al Farhan. She was a quiet, slight woman with haunted eyes and fine features. She was an expert in antiquities, famous for being able to spot truly ancient artifacts from even the most artful fakes with a simple touch of her fingers. Her secret, of course, was that she was an especially talented Caster who could gain information from people and objects that she touched with her bare fingers. Her talent was as much a curse as a blessing however, since everything (and everyone) she touched with her fingers would flood her mind with images and emotions. Because of this, she wore gloves almost all of the time.

As an agent of the Mukhbarat, she had used her talents to keep a tight rein on other members of the Ministry of Culture from selling off Iraq’s rich cultural heritage on the black market for easy cash. As a truly talented and trusted academic expert, she had had more freedom to travel to foreign conferences than many of her colleagues.

With the American invasion, her status as an agent of the secret police brought her under the scrutiny of the Americans. She had turned herself in in the hopes of clearing her name and resuming her post in the academic ranks as soon as possible.

When she was brought before Daniel that first time, they had recognized each other from their brief encounter years before. Possibly hoping to use this past connection to secure her release, Zenni had asked him for a private meeting, if he could arrange it.

Curious, and more than a little attracted to the diminutive woman, Daniel had her delivered to an interrogation room late one evening and then dismissed the guards to wait outside of the sealed room.

At first she had looked frightened, but when she saw the guards depart and Daniel remain with her, she became visibly relieved. “Dr. Bernstein, I want to thank you for this meeting. I was so afraid when they came for me this late at night.” As she spoke, she shivered and pulled her shawl closer over her disheveled hair.

“My pleasure, Mrs. Al Farhan. I am most curious as what you think I might be able to do for you.” It was disgusting, reliving these memories of his, because I could ‘feel’ his desire for this woman, I could tell that this could only end badly. Daniel’s memories had already revealed him to be a man of little self-control.

Unfortunately, the woman was apparently blind to his lust, or too desperate to care. “Dr. Bernstein, I was wondering if you could perhaps use your influence here to have me released from this place. I have very important work to attend to.”

“Well, ah...Zenni...I am afraid you may have overestimated my position here, I am not an officer in the military. My role here is more an observational role.”

She stood up, clasped her gloved hands together in a sort prayerful gesture and moved closer to him. “Please, Dr. Bernstein, you must listen and see if there is a way you can help me, as well as your associate, Dr. Kampmann.”

That name cooled his lusts like a bucket of water dousing a small campfire, although the embers still glowed underneath. “What did you say about Drake Kampmann?”

She moved even closer, closer than most Americans would be comfortable with in normal conversations. Her eyes were intense, even hopeful. “If you help me to leave this place, it will also help Dr. Kampmann.”

“How exactly will my helping you also help Dr. Kampmann?” His curiosity was overtaking his physical lusts.

She stepped back, looked down briefly before looking up into his eyes again. “I have found some things he has been looking for. Things that have been lost for a very, very long time.”

Now he was really curious. He stepped forward, touched her lightly on each shoulder, ignoring her instinctive flinch at the touch of a man who was not a relative. “Tell me, Mrs. Al Farhan, what are these things that he was looking for? And how did you come about them in this...place?”

She pulled away from his grasp, turned her back to him. Her voice came out in halting, soft tones, just barely above a whisper. “Years ago, even before we had met at that conference, I served as a translator and as a guide to foreign dignitaries when they came to visit our historical sites. On one such occasion, I was assigned to work with Dr. Kampmann on an archaelogical dig near the ancient city of Ur. He and I worked together for many weeks. He came to know of my special talent to discover the truth of things and people by touching them with my hands. During our time together, we came to know each other very well, and after he had to leave without finding what he had been looking for, I promised to continue looking for it.”

Daniel couldn’t contain his excitement and determination to know more. He grabbed her by the shoulders again and turned her back around to face him. “Tell me, what was he looking for in this God-forsaken country?”

She looked away from his face, even as he held her in his suddenly harsh grasp. Her voice came out in a raspy, choking whisper. “Home. He was looking for his home.”

“What?” His disappointment ran deep. “What are you talking about, woman? Drake Kampmann is not from Iraq. He’s an American, born in New York to immigrant parents!”

She was frightened at his sudden coldness, his doubt. “You don’t know him as well as you think, Dr. Bernstein. Dr. Kampmann has many, many secrets. But these are not mine to tell, if he has not shared them with you. But you must believe me when I tell you this, I have found what he was looking for. I have some very, very important items that I recovered from the site, items that he must have returned to him. But I have not told anyone else where they are, I must be freed so that I can recover them and return that which is rightfully his.”

Now, Daniel’s lusts were ignited on multiple levels. He knew he must have her, and he must know more about Drake’s secrets.

He released her from his grip and backed away. “Yes. I can see that I must find a way to help you then.” He turned away from her and reached into an interior pocket of his white lab coat, pulling out a sealed needle where she could not see his hand. He slipped the cover off of the needle nose and squirted a small fraction of the liquid out to clear any air bubbles from the mixture.

Hiding the hand that held the needle, he turned back around and approached her in a more comforting manner. “Let me talk to the commander, then, and see if there is some accomodation I can make for you.”

As he finished speaking, he brought the needle down and behind her before she could react. With a swift jab of the needle, it pierced her clothing and sank into the softer flesh of her bottom. He held her close, preventing her from jerking away as he injected her with one of his ‘special drugs’.

Her struggles quickly ended as she slumped into his arms, soft and pliant to his will, but fully conscious.

He pulled the needle out and discarded it on the floor as he lifted her now totally limp weight and placed her on the long wooden bench along the far wall.

“I am sorry, my dear Zenni, but you are going to have to provide more answers to my questions. You should know that your voluntary muscles below your neck will be beyond your control for several hours now. You can still speak, but you will be unable to escape until I apply the antidote to this drug, or it wears off in the morning.”

“D...D...Dr....B...Bernstein, w...w...why are you doing this? P...p...please do not do anything you or I will regret later.”

“Well, I for one, will not regret this one bit. You may not either, if you cooperate and answer my questions fully. You may even enjoy the encore.”

She understood his meaning. “I...I...I am a married woman, please don’t do this.”

“Cooperate with me fully and you may have some new tricks to take home to your husband.” With that, Daniel began to slake both of his lusts...the purely physical, and the lust he didn’t even realize that he had before, to gain a measure of power over Drake...

Enigmatic Engrams

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t bust through the steel wall that Daniel had built around the secrets that he had kept even from Drake. It was there in my head now, that much was maddeningly obvious, but I couldn’t find the key I needed to unlock this last line of defense he had raised against some Caster barging into his head and stealing his secrets...yeah, sort of like I did to him.

The harder I tried to just force my way through by sheer force of Will, the louder the voices deep inside clamored to be let loose.

I decided to end that course of action. It was tempting to rush back to my body and head for Ravyn’s farm where I could grab the knucklehead by the shoulders again and see if I could force the key out of his body, but somehow I knew that would be useless. The poor bastard was wiped pretty clean in my search. I sincerely doubted the answer lay within him any more.

That meant the answer had to be here somewhere.

The more I worked around that barrier, the more images I began to get of what I could only describe as ‘current events’...mostly images of soldiers in dusty, tan Middle Eastern villages, tanks and trucks and other military vehicles moving.

Strange, Daniel had never been a soldier, but he certainly had a lot of engram fragments relating to the military, especially in Iraq. Many of the images and memories had the feel of someone who had watched the events from afar, like on a television, but more than a few had a sense of...reality...about them that might have meant that they were personal memories of experienced events.

I began to focus on those fragments, the ones that evoked real memories and some pieces of a very strange puzzle began to fall into place.

It must have taken hours of being wrapped up in another man’s memories, but the fragments were gradually pieced back together into a set of cohesive memories that now made more sense. Ironically enough, it was one of my own memories that helped make it all possible.

In the six months or so before I had been killed, Daniel had been absent from the NecroLab. His absence had been notable because he was the primary guy who usually ran a rather large battery of medical tests on each of the program participants. He would then give us our assigned prescription of pills and supplements that was to prepare our bodies for the rigors of the program. But during this time that he was gone, one of his underlings had taken over. Whenever any of us had asked where Dr. Geek was, we were told that he had been sent on assignment by the Bureau to Iraq. Why he was sent to Iraq, no one would tell us, but we all assumed that it was to help wounded soldiers, since Daniel was seen as an expert in restoring connections between badly damaged nerves and fixing shattered bodies.

But seeing things from Daniel’s perspective, I gained a whole new set of insights into the depths of evil that Drake had sunk down to.

It turns out that Daniel was indeed over in Iraq and he was using his unique skills in ‘support’ of the war effort, but in a far ghastlier way than I had ever expected. Drake had offered Daniel’s expertise on the workings of the human body and its various strengths and frailties to the administration to assist in the ‘rendering’ of captive Iraqis. He had spent his time there torturing hundreds of Iraqis. Granted, many of the victims of his torture sessions had been officials in the Baath Party, Iraqi military officers, or agents from the Mukhbarat (the Iraqi secret police), but more than a few had turned out to be innocent victims.

Those memories were horrible enough, but to actually feel how much pleasure he had taken in administering doses of excruciating but precisely measured pain to other human beings made me sick. I certainly felt a Hell of a lot less sorry about what I had done to him.

Things became really interesting, though, when I discovered the shards of a particular memory that Daniel had tried very hard to forget. As I pieced it back together, I began to get a glimpse of just what might be behind that steel wall he had tried so hard to build in his own mind.

This engram was about an extracurricular torture session he had engineered to take place on a particular prisoner, an agent in the Mukhbarat who had also been assigned to the Ministry of Culture, someone whom he had met years before at an academic conference after being introduced by Drake.

Memory Soup...Part 2

With Naomi fading away, I was left feeling more than a little empty. We had built a small, tenuous, but tangible emotional connection that for a moment had transcended each of our deaths.

Seeing her in her full, natural beauty also triggered a rushing flood of faded memories and half thoughts from that part of Daniel that I had absorbed. Those thoughts ranged from the barely suprressed lust the Daniel had felt for the girl, to fleeting reminders of something that had been planning to get for her right before I had snatched him in Windsor...

It was disturbing, because it was very clear that Daniel had every intention of ‘doing right by her and the baby’ before I grabbed him, but the completion of that thought escaped me for the moment.

I sat back, looking up into the leaves of the Tree, seeing them flutter gently in the soft breeze, the sounds of it washing over me without forming any intelligent words-thus the Tree was not interested in talking at the moment.

Something was there in the recesses of Daniels’ memories, something that he had been trying to hide from me, even as I was stripping the memories of his own children from his brain. Something that he had kept secret even from...Drake.

Oh shit. Daniel had been playng his own game with fate...something about his work for Drake was not on the complete up and up. I could almost see the walls of the defenses he had tried to build, had been building for all of the years he had worked with and for Drake.

I became lost in puzzling this all out. I began a sort of mental housekeeping that was not at all easy. Trapped in my already cluttered head were memories fragments from Ma Grendel and her various and sundry incarnations and, including even more fragments from her many hundreds of victims and events that spanned thousands of years. Mixed in with those were my own memories, although in the melding with Ma Grendel, some of those have become scrambled and less reliable than they once were. Now, I was trying to assimilate the entire set of adult memories of a very intelligent, introverted man who invested an enormous amount of time learning-the more I scanned through these things, the more impressed I became with his drive to learn everything he could about the human body and how it functioned.

Trying to separate and sort these...engrams-to borrow a term I had found in Daniels’ memory, was proving to be quite a challenge. But it was a challenge that was becoming increasingly necessary if I was ever to have a chance of maintaining my own sense of Self. And now, there was an even more important incentive...to find out what secret (or secrets) was so powerful, so dangerous, that Daniel was willing to risk Drake’s wrath to keep it. Drake was not someone who tolerated such duplicity.

As I searched for clues as to what that secret might be, I kept running up against a rather recent engram of an e-mail message that Daniel had received from Drake the night before he had contacted me:

“Daniel,

I am glad to hear that you are well. I have been looking forward to our upcoming meeting VERY much. We have a great deal to discuss, you and I. My people will be there for you the day after next. I have a very generous offer for you--return those things that you have taken from me, and the Jackson woman is yours to do with as you please, although the baby is non-negotiable-she is mine. I’ll even let you keep the money that you have stolen from me over years. Yes, I know about the money, but I am willing to overlook even that much money-the items you have taken from are far more valuable to me than mere money. Return them to me, and you shall have your respite from my agents!

-Drake”

Everry time that engram came up, it played as fresh and clear as a movie in my head, but it ended in the hard, steely gray wall of the defeneses that the man had set up inside himself.

What the Hell could this scared little man have taken from Drake and then hid so well that Drake wouldn’t be able to find it himself? What the Hell would Drake value more than money? And speaking of money, how much dough had this man stolen from Drake and where was it?

I immediately set to work trying to puzzle those answers out of the tangled mess of mixed engrams in my head...

Of Dollars and Sense...

Fashionable outift for an active woman: $250

Haircut, shampoo, perm with manicure and massage at a normal person's rate: $500

Having the good sense NOT to follow a pissed off Zombie into a hurricane of Biblical proportions just to prove a point: Priceless...

:::Ducking and running:::

Conclave...Interlude-Part 3

“I can assure you, that your...our...daughter, will have a chance to grow up, to be herself, whoever that may be. If she is as uniquely gifted as has been hinted at by T’Tubah with her proclamations and her strange stanzas, then she will have an opportunity to grow into those gifts.”

“Are you going to be there for her, are you going to raise her?”

I looked down at that question for a moment. I looked back up at her before answering. “To be honest, I don’t think I will be that father figure in her life. She will know that I am her father, and I will make sure that she knows who you are and what happened to you when she is ready for that, but I can’t tell you I will be there for her every day and every night like a real father should be. But the people who I am working with, they are good people. We will be having a meeting soon to figure who how Alexa will be raised and by whom.”

“You’re going to have a MEETING to figure out how to raise my baby?”

I drew back from the force of her question. “It’s not as impersonal as it sounds. I think I have a good idea who will be the primary caregivers already, but Alexa’s in very grave danger. The man who hired Dr. Bernstein and devised the experiment that brought us together wants to get her very badly. He will do unspeakable things to get his way, we need to devise a plan that will allow Alexa the space to actually be herself. I don’t even want to think about what would happen to her if Drake got ahold of her.”

She calmed down considerably with that. “I see. Well, I have learned quite a lot about you by listening to this Tree of yours. I’m pretty sure I can trust you to do right by my baby girl.”

She broke down in tears, drawing her arms around her own shoulders and hunching over, her shoulders heaved with the sobs that had been held in for too long.

I got up and moved over to her, not sure what to say. I sat next to her and wrapped my arms around her small shoulders, drawing her gently into a soothing hug. Her head nestled into my neck. It was the first time I had felt human contact, real human contact since I had died. My tears mixed with hers.

After a while, we each regain our composure. She disentangled herself and slowly stood up, turning to face me as she did so.

I couldn’t believe how small she was, barely five feet tall. She was small boned, but solid with muscle from her dancing days.

She looked me in the eyes, bent over slightly and kissed me on the forehead. As she drew back, she said, “Rusty, I can’t stay much longer right now, but know that I am going to be watching over you and little Alexa. You do right be her, you hear me? You need to be there when she needs you, or you’re going to hear from me right quick. If I can, I will come back to see you once in a while. But do me one favor, will you?”

“What’s that?”

“When she’s ready, I want to you to teach her to come see me here in this place of yours, where she can be safe so i can hug her and see how she’s doing. Will you do that for me, for us?”

I placed my right hand over my heart. “I promise. As soon as she’s ready, I will bring her here to meet her mama.”

The look in her eyes, as she teared up again was all of the thank you I would ever need. She stepped back and looked up into the leaves of the Tree before fading away, moving forward in her Journey...

Conclave...Interlude-Part 2

“Yeah, I guess I am.” I wasn’t sure if I should extend my hand and formally introduce myself, the situation was rather awkward.

She was looking me up and down, her experienced eyes taking my measure in ways I could only guess at. “Well, it’s a good thing they didn’t show your picture, you wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

“Excuse me?” How could I respond to that? “Why not?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, you’re not disgusting to look at, but I would have chosen someone taller, darker, and more handsome, if I been given the choice.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I let the silence stretch for a bit. I had some flashes of memory fragments from Daniel’s stolen memories, but I was still curious. “So, do you mind telling me why you worked with these guys in the first place?”

It was her turn to look uncomfortable now. She shifted in her seat a bit, cast a searching glance on the ground by her feet, and then looked up, pensive. “Well, that’s kind of a long story. At first, the money was an attraction. You see, I was dancing in Vegas...not at some trashy club mind you, but as part of a good show. The money was good for that, but I wanted to make more out my life than to dance, especially in that place. I wanted to go back to school, to become a doctor, like my mama wanted me to in the first place, but I needed to save up some money first, so that’s why I was dancing.

“I saw an ad in the paper that this couple, a Dr. Daniel Bernstein and his wife, Amelia, were looking for a surrogate mother. I really don’t know why I responded to the ad, exc ept maybe that I was looking for a way to get myself out of dancing, since you can’t do that while pregnant. When I met with them, they seemed like such a nice couple. Amelia told me that she was barren, that she had no eggs of her own to fertilize, but they really wanted to have a baby of their own. They were willing to pay me a monthly salary and pay for all of the expenses of my pregnancy just to have a baby for them. I had my doubts, even then, but I was really looking for a way to get out of the grind of performing and for a chance to do some studying. My mama had 8 children herself, so I knew I could do it.

“So, I agreed to have a baby for them, and signed a whole bunch of papers. They began paying my expenses for the first two trimesters in advance, once they verified that I was pregnant after the procedure. I should have seen that there was some funny business going on, but once I was pregnant, all I really cared about was making sure that the baby, Alexa, was healthy and safe.

“Sometime in March of 2005, I think, things changed. The third trimester was approaching, and I hadn’t received any new payments. I tried to contact Mrs. Bernstein, but the number they had given me was disconnected. I was getting concerned on one hand, but I was also thinking that I might have a chance to keep the baby that was growing inside me. I was forming a deep attachment with her.

“After a couple of weeks of trying every way I could think of, including sending letters that ended up getting returned, I came to the conclusion that I was on my own, so I returned to back home to stay with my mama in New Orleans. She helped me get settled and to look at going back to school. I also began planning to have Alexa and keep her, since the Bernsteins had disappeared. What i didn’t have any way of knowing, however, was how expensive it was going to be to have a baby, especially since Alexa came a little premature. That’s when I began trying to get a hold of Dr. Bernstein again, after she was born. There was no way I could give up my baby girl, and I didn’t want to face any legal problems later on. But when I did find him, not very long ago, he seemed very different, like he was hiding from someone.”

“Yes, well, there is certainly a whole lot more to THAT story,” I interjected. “I doubt you’d want to hear it all, but you should know some of it. First, Daniel Bernstein was never married to a woman called Amelia. That woman who claimed to be his wife was one of his researchers. You and I were part of a very strange genetic experiment, Bernstein and his bosses felt that certain of our genes matched up really well and could bring about a child who could be a step closer to some sort of superhuman race they were trying to create.”

She sat in silence as she digested this for a moment before responding. “So, it was a trick all along. I knew something was fishy going on, but I didn’t think it was this bad.” Outrage flashed across her face as she was speaking, but then she quickly composed herself again. “It’s too late for me to do anything about, but I do want to know this-what are you going to do with my...our child?”

Conclave...Interlude-Part 1

In the intervening two weeks between the rescue of Alexa and and the convening of the Conclave, Ravyn’s wardrobe grew in an almost direct proportion to the dwindling of my bank account. The true shock to the ol’ account however, was when the bill for her three day stay at a rather exclusive spa resort on the western shore of Lake Michigan was delivered by special courier. One look at that evil document sent me packing for the Spirit World and a visit to the one place that was truly mine, Yggsdrasil’s clearing.

Even though I have now learned how to reach that clearing using the Shadow, I preferred to journey there in Spirit form. You see, when I travelled there in Spirit only, I was able to truly enjoy the experience of smelling, touching and tasting that I no longer can in my physical body. I was also able to project myself as my younger self, with a healthy, vibrant body.

I arrived at the clearing, immediately comforted by the sight and gently swaying sounds of the giant, black tree. A mild breeze pushed through the black and white leaves, creating soothing sighs that often led to the Tree speaking to me, when it chose to.

As I was making my way through a tangle of the roots however, I saw a small, slender figure sitting with its back to me. A female form, perhaps a teenager, judging by the size of her body. At first I thought it might be Herlinda, since she and Diego were often here, but the girl’s hair was darker and curlier than Herlina’s and her skin was darker.

I carefully circled around so that she would have some warning that I was coming, and we could both get a better look at each other before we spoke. I wasn’t exactly looking for company at the moment, but encounters with other people in this place in particular, usually proved to be very important.

As her face came into my view, I noticed that her eyes were closer, she was also swaying slowly in time with the Tree, like she was the one listening to it speak. I was beginning to get a little jealous!

The closer I got to her, the more familiar her face seemed. Finally, it dawned on me... “Naomi?”

Her eyes opened. She looked directly at me; I was transfixed by the intensity of her gaze. “It took you long enough to get here. I thought you’d never come. Luckily for you, this Tree thinks highly of you.”

“How did you find this place?”

She smiled. “When I saw you chasing after the brute that took my baby Alexa, a voice whispered in my ear, ‘Come to me, I will help you.’ So I followed where the voice told me to go, flowing up and out of my body. I saw you catch Alexa and disappear. It almost broke my heart when it looked like she was going to die, too! But after you were gone, the voice kept speaking to me in its whisper, ‘Come with me and I will show you where Alexa is.’ So I kept going. Before long, I passed above the storm and found myself in this...place. The Tree of yours was calling me. He said you would come.”

I sat down across from her, finding a comfortable spot in a large tangle of roots. “That’s amazing, I didn’t know it had the ability to do that.”

The sighing sounds of the Tree resolved themselves into discernible words for the first time at that, at least for me. “As you grow in strength, I, too, grow deeper roots.”

She shifted in her seat, looked briefly back up into the leaves as the Tree spoke, apparently to both of us, then looked back at me. “So you are my baby’s daddy.”

Conclave...Part 2

The explosion of voices, hugs, smiles and questions erupted as we arrived in the room. With so many people talking all at once, so many questions and expressions of concern (mostly at Ravyn and severely frazzled appearance), and with everyone rushing to get their words in, it was a little surprising that Jim followed us down shortly, indicating for everyone to quiet their voices a bit, since the baby was now soundly asleep.

Luckily for me, Ravyn was more than willing to do most of the talking, answering question after question about what had happened in New Orleans and how we found the baby. Her answers we much more patient and much clearer than mine would have been, and certainly contained less objectionable language than I would have used.

Even knowing all of the people in the room as well I had come to know them over the last 6 months or so (except for my children and ex-wife, of course), it made me feel uncomfortable to be the center of so much attention.

After Jim had quieted things down a bit, Ravyn was able to get an even better handle on the many questions that everyone was throwing at her. She soon had everyone’s rapt attention, even mine, as she told the story from her perspective. I was appreciative that she most of the torturing incident out, as she described it:

“Rusty here showed up at my doorstep with that bumbling fool of a doctor that we had last left near Vancouver. Something had affected the poor man’s memory, but it wasn’t him I was concerned with as I saw how Rusty looked when he dropped him off with hardly a word of explanation. Of course, you all know, I just can’t allow this dunce of a zombie of ours to go off on some half-cocked adventure without someone to look after him. So, I got myself put together and followed him...”

After a good twenty minutes of telling the story, interrupted only by taking small sips from a tall glass of iced tea made by the Frau, Ravyn had told the tale of our adventure and had answered most of the questions that the listeners had.

When Ravyn finished, Jim summed things up nicely, “OK, so now we have to come up with a plan to raise this child in as safe an environment as we can manage. We also need to figure out what exactly Drake was trying to do with this genetic experiment of his and whether he has any more these little ‘projects’ in operation and if we need to intervene in those as well. Finally, we need to find out where Drake is and whether we need to move to neutralize him once and for all.”

Katherine was looking almost as uncomfortable as I felt, but she spoke up as soon as Jim was through. “Well,...uh...I suppose I could raise the baby...uh I mean, Alexa. She could become part of the family.”

Cerrydwen emerged from the dark corner in which she had slipped into after the initial excitement and put an end to that possibility. “No. Drake knows where you are, and it will be too hard and too dangerous for you to try to disappear. He has too many sources inside the government and too many allies that we don’t know about. Alexa is going to have to disappear for awhile. Whoever takes her for now will have to be a strong enough Caster to either escape with her from Drake or his allies if they are found or to fend them off until we can send help.”

I had to interject. “Wait a minute, Alexa is my daughter. I think I should be the one making the decisions about who cares for her.”

Ravyn stepped in at this. “Yes dear, she is your daughter, and I’m sure you want her to survive her childhood. Kathy, I’m sorry, but I agree with Cerry. You’re not strong enough as a Caster yet to fend off anyone that Drake will be sending for the child on your own, and we can’t raise her at my place, I’m way to visible and well known to Drake to risk it.”

Jim cleared his throat, and took this chance to add his own thoughts. “I agree with both Cerry and Ravyn. Indeed, I think it is best if we don’t finalize anything at this point. Katherine, Jasmine, Kenny? I don’t thnk you three should be here when the final decision is made on where Alexa will be and who she will be staying with, in the event that Drake or one of his people finds you and tries to coerce the information from you in one way or another. Therefore, I would propose that adjourn on this matter for the moment, finish catching up with events to date, and then set a time and date for a true Conclave of ORC’s we are certain we can trust with this matter. I would really like to bring T’Tubah up from Atlanta and some others in as well. In the meantime, we can let poor Ravyn here get cleaned up and I can do some additional research. Until the Conclave, I would like to ask Cerrydwen and the Frau to stay with me to help care for Alexa. Rusty, I would like you to look into how Drake still has access to that tracking software you used on Naomi’s cell phone. Any questions?”

None were raised.

The meeting quickly devolved into a more informal session of old time friends and family catching up.

I was able to get some time with Jasmine and Kenny to see how they were doing, and even spent a few tension filled moments with Katherine, who seemed to be fairly happy studying under Ravyn with Jasmine.

Eventually, Alexa’s cries broke up the session with the Frau toddling up the stairs behind Jim to go tend to her needs. We did set the date for the Conclave for a week from that night, with the location to be given out closer to that time by Jim.

Conclave...Part 1

Ravyn and I emerged from the Shadow into the Professor’s study in a slightly less hurried fashion than my last arrival. I was not at all surpised to see that Jim had found the time to reorder the bookshelves I had so unceremoniously disordered when I had brought Alexa to him.

I was surprised, however to see Jim sitting in his favorite chair in that room, holding Alexa cradled in one arm while supporting a bottle with his other hand. It was an eery scene, knowing that Jim had never been married or had children. Even more surpising, the baby was swaddled in a clean, dry blanket and seemed to be wearing a different outfit than she had on when I had dropped her off, not more than an hour before.

Ravyn must have been as surprised as I was at this turn of events, she was standing next to me, mouth agape, for once in all of the time I had known her, caught speechless for a moment.

Jim looked up from Alexa’s face a moment after our arrival, a smugly satisfied grin spreading across his face. “What, has Katrina got your tongues?”

I was actually the first one to respond, “How did you get all of this done in the time since I left her with you?”

Ravyn quickly piped in her own question, “Where did you learn to take care of a baby?”

“Hmmph, not all of my reading is in dusty old literature or musty textbooks.”

“But where did you get the clean clothes, the bottle and the formula?” I asked.

He smirked at that question, “Let’s just say that I have many untapped resources at my disposal. Now, do you mind? I just got her settled down here, she should be a asleep soon. You guys can go downstairs and get yourselves cleaned up. I’ll be along as soon as I can put her to bed.”

Ravyn c ouldn’t contain herself at this, “You have a bed for her? You better not be thinking of putting her down in an adult bed!”

Jim nodded at the hall behind us, “You can see for yourselves, I have a small travel crib set up in the guest room right behind you. You can inspect it to see if it meets with your lofty standards, m’Lady.”

We looked at each other in amazement, shook our heads and tromped out of the room. As we passed by the open door, we each took a moment to marvel at the shiny new portable crib that appeared to be assembled perfectly, complete with frilly pink and white bedding. We shuffled down the stairs and into Jim’s bookshelf lined living room. We were greeted by even more surprises as we entered the dining room...we were engulfed by our gathered friends and family...Cerrydwen, the Frau, Herne and Moira, Katherine (my ex-wife), Jasmine (my daughter), and Kenny (my son)...

(Narrative to be continued with the next post--due Sunday)


Author’s Note:

I would like to take a moment here to reflect on the fact that this post marks the one year anniversary of this blog.

This whole project began as a rough attempt at writing a journal from the standpoint of an undead agent who was more than a little upset at discovering that magick was real and that he was trapped by the very choices he had made, and the associations he had kept.

I had no idea that Rusty would grow into the character he has become and no idea that the stories he would get caught up in would be as interesting or as unpredictable as they have turned out to be.

As a writer, I have tried to come up with ideas in advance of where the story would go, or how the characters would develop. In almost every instance though, the storylines and the characters that drive them have taken me in very unexpected directions.

This past year has really whipped by me as I have tried to keep up with the events in Rusty’s never dull (un)life.

My initial goal for this project was to make it this far, to blog for a year and see if I could maintain not only my own interest, but the interest of other readers as well, and hopefully come up with enough material to fill a decent sized novel. 153,000 words later (not counting comments from readers or myself), I have the genesis for at least three books so far... and I know that I have only began to touch on the potential of this character and the world he inhabits.

I am reasonably sure at this point that the first book, Omega Rising, will be finished by the end of August and available before the year is out through an online publisher I have worked with before that will allow me to keep the story exactly as I envision it to be...all while I continue to post Rusty’s ongoing adventures here in this space on approximately the same schedule as I have kept over the past year--8-12 posts a month.

Thanks again for all the support!

-Doug

Fits and Starts--Author's Note for the New Year

Happy New Year to everyone!

Sorry about the slowdown around the holiday season, it's been a very busy time, with no real vacation time taken, and none coming anytime soon.

Following through on a resolution, I am also spending some time working on the first book that I hope to finish by summer.

So all of this means that the posts will come in fits and starts, as opportunities allow and as storylines push their way through my consciousness.

The new chapter in Rusty's (un)life, as a somewhat reluctant, but proud (Un)Dead daddy will begin on Friday, January 6...a fitting date as it is the one year anniversary of the start of the blog.

Thanks for all of your support and comments over the past year. You have all helped me through some tough times and help keep the story moving at critical times.

A special thanks goes forth to my most loyal readers:

Fire for her...well fire and for being the inspiration for one of the best supporting characters ever!
Jahn for being the perfect model for the Professor and his insightful commentary away from the blog.
Mom for being the Frau...
Pat--for being a great editor (you can tell the posts she edits first, they have lots fewer errors, and for being a great wife and mother!

Thanks again for reading, I know I've said it before, but your support is truly appreciated!

Doug

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.”