The Fyre Storm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“OK.”

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