When I hear Ann’s voice this time … it is loud and clear next to me, deep and thunderous; she would make a Marine Drill Sergeant proud. “Leave, V! You are not welcome, and you are outnumbered!”
Lune is the first to attack. He jumps with precision and would take down, if not kill, any man … but instead of tackling his enemy, he flies into the wall with a low thump that shakes the whole cabin. Shortsighted by his anger, and need to protect, he made an almost fatal mistake … hitting the corner of Christopher’s closet. I am sure he must have broken some ribs. Now, he lies on the ground whimpering.
Christopher is the first to react, screaming, “NO!” He rushes at an invisible entity that I imagine is hovering over Lune’s broken body. I understand, from Christopher's stories that he doesn’t have the ability to see the creatures the way Ann does … he told me that James had trained him to understand where they were from their voices, and then Lune trained him further by allowing him to look through the dog's eyes. Watching the attack through Lune's eyes, and then watching the failure and consequential pain must have erased any remaining rational thought. I know that he will be just as effective as Lune had been against this intangible danger; but that doesn’t stop Christopher from trying to protect his dog.
Ann stiffens next to me, and when I look at her, I notice she’s moved aside giving room for someone else to enter the room. Everything happens so quickly, Artemis turns toward what I can only imagine is Cassandra, and responds as if she is being spoken to. Then just as quickly, Artemis turns and jumps over Christopher’s back. I watch as her teeth clamp down on something at about the neck level on a standing man. She scrambles her front paws up around her muzzle, bears down with her back feet, and then starts thrashing her head back and forth … tearing at whatever is between her jaws. I am completely stunned by the sight of the pure white wolf pup playing a deadly game of tug of war five feet off the ground, seeming to be floating in midair.
Christopher stands, and with a wild expression, focuses on Artemis’s unseen victim. Ann, who has been standing next to me with a look of horror, watches Artemis’s attack with seer’s eyes. The carnage must have broken through her shock as she covers her ears and starts screaming.
“Christopher! Stop, please …” Ann is pleading with Christopher; her screams dissolving into sobs.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can just make out a misty, electric fog: like the black smoke of an oil fire at night, when suddenly highlighted by lightening. When I turn to focus on Christopher and Artemis, the sickeningly oily energy disappears, but I know what it is … they are killing V.
The kid’s face is contorted with a mixture of angst and murderous rage. His eyes, which were shining with a brilliant, iridescent color just a couple weeks ago, have changed to a muddy dark blue. They are rimmed with red, swollen from crying, and look painful, only adding to his crazed expression. His jaw starts flexing, and the veins in his neck and arms stand out against his skin, straining with the effort of attacking V. Somewhere in his face and body language, I find exactly what was scaring Ann when we were in the other room. This is the animal that I sensed, as I watched him interact with the wolf pack. This is what the wolves saw, what brought apprehensive respect from even the alpha … he can be one of the most powerful, and possibly dangerous, creatures to walk the earth. His indifference is palpable, the complete lack of sympathy in his eyes … I know he is capable of compassion; but he simply no longer cares. Christopher’s power, if used with no consideration or empathy, has devastating potential. The fear pitted in my stomach tells me exactly what Ann is wailing about … she isn’t begging for V’s sake, she is mourning the loss of Christopher, and dreading the impending birth of a monster.
There is no stopping the attack; but in the midst of Christopher’s concentration and Artemis’s assault, they are getting much too close to Lune’s injured form. Even though I know I could be included in the massacre if I ventured too close, I have to try and get to Lune, so that I can tend to his wounds. Moving as cautiously as possible, I creep behind Christopher, and crouching, I look into Lune’s half-open eyes. He exhales with a low growl that turns into a whine … I need to move him into the other room, and out of the line of fire. He lets out a loud yelp and nips when I pick him up; but he is in no mood to fight with me over moving him, so he lays his head against my chest. I listen carefully over the ruckus in the room, and can’t hear Lune having any breathing problems … no shortness of breath, or difficulty inhaling. I am deeply relieved by the fact that he doesn't seem to be showing symptoms of a punctured lung.
“Damn, Lune … you meathead, what did you do to yourself.” He whines again as I carefully shift him around in my arms, so that I can support his ribcage.
When Lune cried out, Artemis lost focus and V finally succeeded at throwing her off. I move out from under Christopher with Lune in hand, and run for the door, barely missing Artemis as she flew back onto the bed. Turning to look back, just as I pass through the doorway, I see that the effort of mentally keeping a hold on V is becoming too much for Christopher to handle.
Quickly carrying, Lune to one of the dogs’ pillows, as gently as possible, I lay him down. He lies on his side, and doesn’t try to sit up to take the weight off his ribs … again, a good sign that if he did break his ribs, he didn't damage his lungs. Just as I start to run my hands over his flank, I hear Christopher roar, “NO!”
I have been wondering how he could have possibly found the energy to fight after being bedridden for the past two weeks … I guess strength can come from profound places when you’re tentatively holding onto that much rage. Pushing myself back from Lune, now that he is safe; I need to help Christopher and Ann. Looking up, I realize that Ann is standing over Lune and me; her head is shifting between our injured friend on the floor, and our young friend that is shouting in the bedroom. She is obviously torn, so I tell her to stay with Lune.
Re-entering the room, first thing to catch my eye is Artemis scrambling on the bed, trying to find the footing needed to lunge at V again. In shifting my eyes toward Christopher, my peripheral vision fleetingly sees the black mist again, V … just as he starts passing through the glass, and out of the window. Christopher is on his knees, with his hands balled up and pressed against his thighs. Head hung low, and shaking with exhaustion, he is muttering, “no, no, no” through gritted teeth. He's refusing to believe that V has gotten away.
Chapter 19
Obsession
*Echidna*
“Oh the rage … heavenly, enchanted fury, and in such abundance … this tastes so much more inviting than the terror I usually seek. Cassandra brought me to the most wonderful being … I thought the girl was going to be fun, but the boy inside that cabin … is a feast.”
Looking down at my feet, I have to smile at the asinine, little snakes that come out of their dens, just so they can slither through my toes. “You know me, don’t you? I don’t have time to play … perhaps, another time. Right now, I need to absorb the beautiful turmoil that Cassandra’s presence unleashed on the humans in there. Good thing I was blocking the true fate of her little protégé, allowing Cassandra to unknowingly spread lies. Naughty, naughty little witch.
“I don’t recognize the other entity, the ethereal male … but that’s all right; I can sense that he’s an infant of chaos, just like me. Too bad the boy is going to kill him … I was hoping to save that pleasure for myself.”
My heart starts to beat faster as I watch the unknown entity slip through a window on the side of the little dwelling. Whispering to the trees and my slithering companions … or perhaps, to no one in particular, “He didn’t kill you? … Then the pleasure really will be mine.”
The rush of stalking prey once more, is addictive. I follow the spiteful creature through the trees … he is trying to put distance between himself and the boy. Pitiful! I am a little disappointed that he is mortally injured … a powerful old spirit like him, might have been fun to hunt … if he was at full strength. Now, all he does
is spew smog, and shift shape between an owl, a coyote, and a man … the control over his body must have been lost along with the meat around his spine. I’ve never known of a human that could cause that kind of physical damage to one of us … the boy is becoming more alluring by the second.
I am starting to become concerned that he will die, before I can feed. I need the strength he is squandering. It would be considered merciful to relieve him of his struggle … I'm not a fan of mercy, but I decide to kill him nonetheless … slowly, eventually.
As I step out from behind a tree and place myself in front of him, I can feel his fear pulsing harder, and the haze bleeding from his wounds turns into a gushing wave of glowing, ash-colored pollutants. “Oh … don’t waste it!”
Placing my hand on his cheek, I let my body camouflage itself into what he most desires. He has an interesting vision of beauty … my hands darken in color, and I can feel the bones of my skull reconstruct into a long face with high cheekbones and large, sunken eyes. Thick, long, silken hair unfolds down my back, and when I look down, I am barely covered by a flowing, brightly colored cloth. The fabric reshapes into garments, and every bit of clothing is cinched and held in place by intricate gold clasps. He smiles as gold armbands, shaped like snakes, entwine themselves around my biceps.
I can feel his fear fading as he begins to believe in my appearance, perceiving a familiar and comforting figure. His voice wavers slightly as he finally speaks, “You came back to me … I’ve been lonely without you, for all these years. You understand that I had to forfeit your life. I had to take your heart … you understand, don’t you? I had to … so the gods would allow me to live forever.”
Ahhh, they always make it so easy to find out what they hold most dear … I love egoists. He doesn’t want this woman, or the wealth … he is most afraid of the solitude in death, and only interested in saving his own skin. Pressing myself against him, I whisper in his ear, “Nothing lives forever. In the end, you will pray for me to kill you.”
After letting that fact sink in, and bringing his panic to the point of collapse … I feed on every drop of the gut-wrenching terror found in the forced acceptance of his own lonely demise. Wringing out the last bits of life has always been my favorite part … looking into his eyes, I can see the emptiness starting to spread and I know it is time to start the pain. “Did you know our kind can be kept alive, paralyzed, but alive, with the use of a particular toxin? Even this close to death, you can be kept in a completely conscious form of stasis … of course, only our kind can administer it while we are in the mist. Lucky for us, the humans haven’t figured how to pass through the barrier yet. Oh, but we have to be careful … too much and you’ll depart this life in the most painful manner you can imagine.”
He isn’t interested in my very informative lecture … that hurts my feelings. But I begin to feel better as shock spreads across his death mask of a face. His eyes grow wide, accentuating their dullness, as soon as he tries to focus on the giant scorpion’s tail growing out from under the cloth of my brightly colored wrap. Now, he wants death … I can see the silent prayers forming on his lips, begging for the ultimate release from my games. But he isn’t ready yet … he isn’t begging me. He is hanging onto his beliefs in his ineffective gods. Idiotic! “Shhh … you’ll enjoy this. No, wait … I should say, I’m going to enjoy this.”
As I force the spear of my tail through his chest, he screams in a way that I haven’t heard for centuries. Poison administered, I can play with him for as long as I want. But what I really want right now is to see the boy … that beautiful, delicious boy.
Looking down at my playmate, I explain, “You are going to stay right here and think about what becomes of us when we fade into nothingness … and you’re going to learn how to cherish the idea that you are my plaything, until I decide to let you go. For the rest of your pathetic existence, I am your god. Hmmm … death doesn’t seem so scary now, does it?”
I pat his cheek and give him a breathtaking smile, before I leave to go back to the cabin … and my boy.
Taking my time getting back … I savor the dying entity’s stolen force flowing through my muscles. I don’t really need to keep him alive; I've taken what I require, and he doesn't have much more to give. Humming momentarily, with my outlook greatly improved, I have to smile at how magnificent it feels to drive him toward insanity. If I don’t return he will eventually fade into nothing … what a perfect way for him to end, centuries of being paralyzed, frightened, and alone; with no one to answer his prayers. He thought of himself as a god … now, he sees himself for what he truly is: an insignificant joke.
Stretching my arms up and arching my back, I feel as lithe as a cat … with little more than the picture in my mind, I transform into a cougar. The clicking and crunching of my bones, reminds me how out of practice I’ve become. How could I let myself go like this? I’ll have to thank Cassandra’s charge, that sweet little girl, for luring me out of my cave … before; I had become one with the walls.
Thinking of the young one distorts my smile into a smirk … she is a clever little one. In hopes of finding the source of Cassandra’s terrible anguish, I retraced her steps, before deciding to follow her to this place. I found great amusement in the girl-child’s trick … I can see now why Cassandra took her on as a pupil. Yes, she is indeed alive … and is still much, much too strong for me to challenge. Going ahead with my plans to sniff out Cassandra’s angst seemed to be the better option. But, I made sure to keep Cassandra's torment as fresh as possible, by not allowing her to see the survival of her student. I thought, perhaps, I could regain my strength, and strike the first blow against the young one … by killing her cherished teacher.
Hmmm, but then, I felt the power of the boy. I don’t want to torture him … I don’t want him to suffer in any way … I simply want to possess him. He will be my companion, so that I will never have to be alone again. I only have to help him cross the veil … and then we can leave this world behind us, forever. All that I need to do … is force him to leave his physical body behind.
*Michael*
Christopher doesn’t respond to my hand on his shoulder, or my attempts to lift him off the floor and onto his feet. He is awake though; and I’ll take conscious, stubborn and angry, over bedridden and disintegrating. Maybe, eventually, Ann or I can lure him out to eat some actual food, and work on regaining his strength.
I decide to leave Christopher alone with his regrets, and look after Lune. I call Artemis down off the bed, and to my side. Apparently, my voice breaks her trance away from the window where V escaped, because she leaps off the bed and races for the front door. I listen to her slam her front paws against the heavy wooden door, demanding to be let out so she can chase down her lost prey. Whining, in her excitement to be set free, she begins pacing back and forth with an annoyingly, loud click, click of her claws on the wood floor.
I step out of the bedroom and shake my head at her, “Nope … you’re staying inside now; Lune needs us. Anyway, I doubt V is going to survive for long with his injuries.”
She continues to pace stubbornly as I turn to join Ann and Lune. “Michael, he seems to be okay … the color of his gums is still healthy, so I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have any internal bleeding. I don’t know, because he’s so tender, but I don’t think he has broken anything either. I’m just not sure though … do you know any good vets, who can be trusted?”
I watch her lightly press her hands down Lune’s side with the loving touch of a nurse. Her diagnostic is as good as anything I would do, and she is right … we need a vet. I am pretty confident from my initial examination that he doesn’t have internal damage to his chest cavity, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have fractures or something more serious that we missed. I dig through my pocket searching for my cell phone; pulling it out, I dial in the number for my wolf biologist, Jim Harding.
After hanging up I relay the plan to Ann, “We can take Lune down to Jim’s lab, he has an X-ray machine that they
use for examinations, and research. He said no one sticks around after closing … if we can wait about an hour, he’ll meet us there.”
Lune is holding up like a champ, and soon Artemis gives up on going out and decides to lie down next to him. I didn’t realize that the day is almost over, until I notice the sun has already set. We hadn’t eaten all day … and even with all the excitement, my stomach starts complaining about being hungry. I decide to reheat some the stroganoff from the night before last, and see if Ann would like to eat as well. She politely refuses at first, but after the smell of the food reaches her, I can hear her stomach growling. Grudgingly she comes over and sits with me at the table. Smiling, I open two bottles of beer, hand her a fork and slide the bowl between us. We don’t speak; there is no need for words. I’m pretty sure that the day we just shared, gives us the right to call each other friends; and we just happen to be the type of friends that can appreciate silence.
After finishing the last bite of food and taking a long draw off her bottle, Ann breaks the stillness by asking if she could go with me to take Lune to the biologist.
“Shouldn’t one of us stay here with Christopher?” Not that I don’t want her with me … I really do want to be alone with her, and away from this circus; but I think someone should probably stay.
“I was thinking about that … Cassandra is in talking with Christopher, and has been for the last forty-five minutes; plus any threats from V can be handled by Artemis. The only real problem that I can think of would be if Christopher tried to leave … and in that case, by myself, I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to. At least with you, I might be able to help in some way … and to tell the truth, I think it might be good to give Christopher some time alone with Cassandra.” She finishes her beer in one gulp and then walks over to the couch to put on her coat.
Leaving my bottle, still full, on the table, I grab my jacket and gently pick up Lune. Ann leads the way, opening the front door and then the truck door, so that I don’t have to juggle Lune. With the dog set between us in the front seat, we drive in silence to the lab. We are going to be about a half-hour late, but none of us seems to care. Lune is resting peacefully with his head in Ann’s lap. He even snores a little, as Ann strokes his ears.