Brother Mine...Part 3

“What the…?” Before I could complete that question I felt a surge of dark energy fueled by long-repressed rage and an aching hunger that threw me off balance. His offer triggered an unexpected resurgence from the residual consciousness of Ma Grendel and many of her less savory victims.

“Yeeessss…You are beginning to remember who and what you are, Master.” The creature leaned forward, bringing its cloaked head closer to loom over me, its own red eyes burning bright.

My vision blurred as I tried to regain my balance and strike at this thing with Excalibur. The sword became heavy and unwieldy though, straining my ability to keep it aloft, even with both hands grasping the hilt. Either the burden became too heavy, or the control over my hands became too weak, but the blade fell to the floor with a loud clang, dull and lifeless, no longer the glowing blade of vibrant energy that it had been not five minutes before.

“Take full control, Master. You are far too great to be ruled over by the weak spirit of a mere human. Rise up, restore yourself to your full glory!”

The creature inched ever closer as it wove the spell that seemed to be weakening my command over the darkness within my own body. I fell back against the still open door, trying every trick of Will that I had learned over the last year to regain even a modicum of control over the roiling forces of darkness and chaos that were striving with each other to take over my body.

Residual bits of Ma Grendel’s consciousness that I had sequestered far apart from each other began to coalesce back into a larger, more powerful and more willful entity as yet other remnants of other creatures began to reform themselves in order to strive for control over the newly available prize of my body.

I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the growing flames at the center of the Bane’s shadow enshrouded face, but no matter how bright those eyes became, nothing else of his face became visible.

I just barely noticed the thumping impact of my rear end hitting the ground. I had lost almost all control over the body that I was in.

The internal battle inside was now almost over, I felt Ma Grendel’s presence growing as she reabsorbed her many victims and took their power for herself. While still a mere shadow of what she had been when I had first battled her, I could tell that enough of her consciousness and her powers remained that she felt reborn, that she could regain all that was lost to her if she could only gain control over this body and sit on that foul throne.

Realizing that I could not now win against both the Bane and Ma Grendel’s resurgent shadow, I abandoned the fight over my body except for two areas. I focused instead on bringing my left hand up towards my chest. Slowly, in fits and starts, I was able to reach up and grab hold of the ring that dangled from the chain at my neck. Using the last ounce of strength I possessed, I did something I could never have before imagined doing.

“Drake,” I whispered, “I release you. Please help.”

I felt a cold, distant laugh. His voice was harsh. “So, Bones, you can’t handle a Bane? Why am I not surprised?”

I could only respond Spiritually, I no longer had control over any aspect of my body. “Drake, I can’t fight them both! I can’t let her loose again, not with this Bane helping her!”

His Spirit poured forth from the ring, overwhelming what little consciousness I still maintained as I felt myself being pushed into the ring he had just vacated.

“Now, my boy, you will experience what it is to feel completely helpless while someone else does what you are no longer capable of doing.”

Everything became dark and silent.

***

Oh, that was so painful. Bones has such a sappy writing style. Please don’t expect me to adapt to his style, I would rather present things in a more factual format. I don’t ‘feel’ things the way that poor sap did, so deal with it.

I must say though, I am very much enjoying this body of his. If he only realized how powerful he truly was, I would never have been given this opportunity to experience it.

So, you are probably wondering what happened on that ship?

Well, I will provide some details as to that soon. But I have a few more errands to run before I enlighten you folks. I have a few debts to repay.

Opening Gambit...Postscript

I slammed the phone down. “That bastard has something up his sleeve.”

Ravyn nodded. “I’m very interested in what Zenny discovered about him just by touching that front door.” She glanced over to where Zenny had been standing moments ago and did a double take as she realized that Zenny wasn’t there any more. “Hey, where did she go?”

I looked around as well. “Zenny? Where are you?”

No response.

Ravyn shook her head and turned in a circle, looking about the empty room. “She can’t have gone very far.”

I nodded over toward the farthest door in the room, shifting my vision partially into Shadowland. “What’s that over there? I think she’s in there.”

My boots scuffed the cement floor as I walked, stiff-legged to the door, Ravyn close behind.
I pushed the door in, revealing a small back office that I hadn’t seen in my last visit to this shop.

Inside the cramped office, Zenny was kneeling on the floor and rocking back and forth in a rhythmic manner. Her bare hands were clasped together. Her eyes were clenched as tightly as her hands while her lips were moving in sync with her body. Zenny’s gloves lay stacked on the floor next to her. The office itself was lacking in any major furniture, but there was a blizzard of paper scattered about.

Ravyn slipped around me as I stopped at the doorway. She knelt down next to Zenny without actually touching her. “Zenny, what’s going on?”
No response. She continued to sway, her eyes remained closed, and her lips continued to move silently as if deep in meditation or prayer.

I stepped into the room. I reached deep inside the captured memories from Ma Grendel, looking for words in her native tongue. I spoke to her in Arabic. “Do you need help?” I reached out to touch her.

Ravyn stopped me from interrupting her. “No, Rusty. I think she needs to do this. There is powerful magick taking place right now. If we break her trance, there’s no telling what may happen.”

I stood back up and retreated. I let slip the connections between my body and Spirit form and slipped spiritually into the Shadowland. There I saw Ravyn’s fiery red form now focused back on the kneeling form of Zenny.

My attention was immediately drawn to Zenny’s form. Normally, Zenny’s Spirit form ranged from soft, dark violet to deep blue. Right at the moment, however, her colors had shifted to vibrant, pulsating hues of orange and yellow. The glow was strongest at her clasped hands, as if she were trying to contain something very powerful within them.

Using a portion of my essence, I stretched out a tendril towards her hands, getting as close as I could without actually touching her. It was quite difficult to do, because there are unseen fields of resistance between different individual Spirit forms. The resistance can be overcome through force of Will but it is exceptionally hard to push very close to another form without actually completely overpowering that resistance.

The closer I got though, the more I sensed something desperately wrong. I felt an overpowering sense of evil emanating from that source between her hands. I could also tell that she was trying desperately to shield us from the pain that she was so clearly experiencing.

That was enough for me. I snapped back into my body and dropped to my knees in front of her and took her still clasped hands in mine.

“Rusty, what are you doing? What’s wrong?” Ravyn’s voice was cracking with concern.

“She’s got a hold of something. Whatever it is, it isn’t good.” Her fingers were clenched tight. Gently at first, I began to pry her fingers away from whatever it was that she was holding.

Zenny gasped in pain as both her rhythm and her grasp was broken. Her left hand loosed and went limp as I managed to reach inside and grab the object. She collapsed into Ravyn’s arms, her chest heaving, tears running down her face. Her choking sobs were loud at first, but were quickly soothed by a deliberately calm Ravyn.

I opened my own palm and looked at what had caused all of this fuss. It seemed innocuous enough—the small metal head of what looked to be a stethoscope. But turning it over in my palm, the back side of it showed something far more sinister. A small symbol was engraved on the backside. It was symbol that even I recognized. It was a swastika.

“What is it, Rusty?”

Even without slipping into the Shadowland, I could feel the power of the thing. Deep inside of my being, the dark whispers of entities slain and consumed long ago by Ma Grendel awakened once again. Their voices ate at my consciousness, calling out in glee at the discovery of this evil tool.

“Feed us!”

“Let us take them!”

“We hunger!”

I closed my hand around the object and tamped the whispers back down into the bowels of my soul. The realization at what I had in my hands had shaken me to my very core. “It’s something from the Nazi’s. I think it was used by El Diablito in the concentration camps for something, but I can’t open myself to it just yet. It is stirring up things inside me that I can’t risk letting loose right now.”

Zenny had stopped sobbing now and seemed to be resting Ravyn’s arms.

“We need to get back to the Coop and find out what she has seen, both from this damn thing and from the door.”

Ravyn nodded. “Let’s get back there quickly.”

I shoved the stethoscope head into my pocket and reached down to pick up Zenny. “We’re taking the express road back, babe. Don’t forget her gloves.”

I stood up and waited for Ravyn to collect her gloves and join me. I called the Shadow as soon as she was ready. This time, Zombie Air provided direct, door-to-door service right back to Ravyn’s study.

Conclave...Part 8

Staring down at the two archaic, cuneiform-inscribed, sealed bronze urns, I rubbed my hands together in a nervous fashion and started speaking again.

“It was only when Mrs. Al Farhan presented herself and claimed a connection with Drake and his past that Daniel began to piece together the fact that the two great mysteries he had been struggling with were intimately connected. Mrs. Al Farhan had hoped to earn her freedom by revealing her connection with Drake. Instead, she descended into a Hell that rivaled anything done at Abu Ghraib either by Saddam and his twisted sons, or by the misguided American soldiers who made that name famous again.

“It’s painful for me to recall all of the details of how he got her talk about all she had learned, so I will just summarize it without adding in any of those gruesome details.

“These two bronze urns contain the dessicated remains of Drake’s parents. The one on the left, the one inscribed with great dragon Tiamat on it contains his mother’s remains, while the one on the right contains the body of the human avatar Dracaar, that his father used at the time of Drake’s birth.”

“Wait a minute!” That was Ravyn. “Didn’t you just say that his father was some sort of same type of being as Ma Grendel was? What is this avatar crap? Was the man human or not?”

“I’m not real sure I understand the concept yet myself, but from my understanding through Daniel and Mrs. Al Farhan is that the body in this urn, is or at least was, mostly human. It seems that this type of beings can take human form when they choose to, but for the time that they do so, they take on the mantle of mortal existence and may be killed. From my memories of Ma Grendel, this death is not in any way permanent, she has been slain or died a number of times over the eons.

“But the importance of these urns is that each of them contains not only the physical remains of his parents, but also the Spirit of each.”

The Professor leaned forward, pointing to the urns. “So, you’re saying that at least one of these urns contains the Spirit of a god-like critter...and you brought them to my house?”

All eyes were on the two ancient urns. The room suddenly seemed slightly darker, by the shivers of the others, it also appeared to be colder.

“Well, uh, yes. That is why Drake is so desperate to have them back. The last thing he wants is for either of these Spirits to get loose. That is what he had been looking for when he first met Mrs. Al Farhan, and why he wanted them back from Daniel. You see, Daniel didn’t put much stock in ‘spirits’ being trapped in bronze urns. He was after the genetic material in the physical remains themselves.

“Knowing from his questioning of Mrs. Al Farhan that Drake fathered hundreds of children over the milennia, and having recovered a sample of Drake’s hair from Mrs. Al Farhan that she had received as a keepsake, Daniel was desperate to prove his new theory that the common ancestor of most Casters alive today was Drake himself--but even with the hair sample, his sample set was incomplete--he needed to test the remains of Drake’s parents to be sure.”

Conclave...Part 6

“It was only when Daniel was sent to Iraq that the answers he was seeking about both Drake and that mysterious common ancestor of most Casters literally fell into his hands.”

“That Iraqi woman, Mrs. Al Farhan?” That was the Frau.

I nodded. “He had no idea that two great mysteries he was trying to puzzle out were actually related, literally. But once Mrs. Al Farhan came under his control, and once she offered up her knowledge of Drake in an attempt to gain her freedom, Daniel couldn’t resist...taking it from her in some very unpleasnat ways.”

Cerrydwen’s eyes narrowed as she broke into the narrative. “You mean he raped that poor woman in just about every way that can be done.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, he raped her...brutally raped her...in a number of ways, all of which are now resting in my memories. Once he learned that she had the Talent that she did, and that she had the chance to use the Talent on Drake, his greed to know more and more became unquenchable.”

Ravyn piped in now. “That’s still no excuse for what he did to her!”

I held up my hands. “True. Trust me, I am offering up no excuses for that wretched excuse of a man. But, because of what he did, I have a much fuller understanding of Drake’s history and just how great this challenge is going to be. I have pieced together a good portion of his history now between Mrs. Al Farhan, Daniel’s memories, Ma Grendel’s memories and Drake’s own statements to me over time. It makes for a Hell of story, one I’m not sure I entirely believe, but one that I need to tell you all so that you can see what exactly it is that we are facing. I will also then tie it in to what Daniel then learned of the genetic question he had been pursuing.

“Drake was born between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago in the ancient city-state of Ur, one of the first great cities to rise in Mesopotamia, the place we now know of as Iraq. His mother was a powerful society woman who was also a secret priestess of Tiamat, the great She-Dragon of middle eastern mythology. Her Order was actually forbidden by the ruling powers in the city, since Tiamat was seen as a powerful evil force and as representing primal chaos.

“His mother, however, was in no real danger due to her membership in that Order because she was the mistress of one of the most powerful men in the city, the King’s most trusted general and advisor- a man who went by the name of Dracaar. This would have made Drake a very powerful man in his own right, except that things are even stranger than that. It turns out that his father was no mere human. His father was a being of the same ilk as Ma Grendel...one of a number of such beings who have taken on human guises over the years and even mated with humans.”

The Frau furrowed her brow, parsed her lips and spoke up. “A creature of Ma Grendel’s strength would have been seen pretty much as a god at that time.”

“Indeed. From those memories of hers that I still have, Ma Grendel herself has been worshipped in many societies as a powerful goddess and feared in even more as a demoness. Those memories also show that her exploits have become the basis for a number of myths and legends. We even continue to refer to her even now by a name that one of her children acquired through the legend of Beowulf.”

It was the Professor’s turn to scratch his head and chime in. “So, you’re saying that Drake’s father was a god-like creature similar in power to that of this Ma Grendel you fought in New York. Wouldn’t that make Drake a demi-god of sorts? That might explain why he appears to be almost unkillable.”

“Yes and no. When Mrs. Al Farhan touched Drake, she absorbed much of this early history from him, but she also learned that his apparent immortality is something that he acquired only when he learned how to utilize the Talent that he actually had. You see, his father actually considered Drake a failure because he didn’t seem to have any of the magickal talents that most children of such unions had. He sent the young Drake away from Ur to serve in the army as a foot soldier since he didn’t have the apparent talent to become anything more useful.

“But it was in the course of that life as a soldier that Drake discovered his Talent. He had a unique ability to control his body, even down to a cellular level. Utilizing that Talent to its fullest extent however, came with a terrible price...”