A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe

by Jon Chaisson

  *

  We’re all here for you, Karinna, he said from within. All of us.

  Poe stood away from Caren and the two Mendaihu, staring up at the overcast sky and trying to calm his own nerves. His head throbbed and his eyes ached, like he hadn’t slept in days. He felt his entire being, body and soul, being stretched into something he was not familiar with. His mind raced between thoughts of Caren and Denni, and of the controlled anger that welled up within him…and of the repressed anger of everyone around him. It was all he could do to keep himself centered, to keep himself from reacting to the emotional and spiritual overload. As always, he focused on his partner to keep himself anchored down. She didn’t always notice it, but he silently thanked her every time.

  He dropped his eyes to her. “You okay, kid?” he asked.

  She walked up to him and laid a hand on his arm. “Better. You?”

  He let out a long breath. “Truthfully? I don’t know.”

  She hummed in agreement and smiled awkwardly at him. “I, uh…I heard you calling.”

  He flushed and looked away. “Huh…didn’t expect that to work.” All at once, the anger ebbed, and he felt the tension in his back loosen. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palms to mask his frown. The anger had vanished, dropped and forgotten. Only empty frustration remained. He’d wanted to say more, to tell her what had happened and where he’d gone with Kai, but he couldn’t find words. There were no words for what he’d experienced.

  He looked over at Ashan and Kai, half hoping for some sort of explanation. Normal human logic told him that the stress of the case was getting to him. His emotions, however, told him he was going through something so complex and rare that even Kai couldn’t completely explain it while in that elsewhere. The best she could do was to show him the chaotic energy of the city, and the unconditional love of a Mendaihu. They looked at him now, she with that love, and Ashan with protection. He gave them a reassuring nod; they took it as a sign to leave the two of them alone for a bit to gather themselves. Kai must have seen the exhaustion in his face, for she gave him a quick smile and tugged her brother away a good distance.

  Caren squeezed his arm. “Alec,” she said. “I’m sorry I freaked on you back there.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he said. “I would have acted the same.”

  She held a hand to her face to hide a blush. She wanted to embrace him, but shied away instead. He didn’t mind, he understood their bond. “Thank you,” she said, touching his arm.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “We have to find Denni,” she said, not missing a beat.

  “Denni’s fine,” he countered.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “True,” he said. “But think of it this way: if she were in trouble, she would have contacted you by now.”

  She let herself mull that over. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Can’t blame me for worrying, though.”

  “No, I see your point,” he said. “If Denni truly is the One, I’d want to have her close until I had the situation under control.” He gestured at Kai and Ashan, who were waiting politely farther down the block, leaning up against a concrete storefront and carrying on a separate conversation. “If you want, we can all head over to Ormand Park School and pick her up.”

  She took his arm, relieved by the suggestion. “That sounds like a wonderful idea,” she said, and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s not keep them waiting.”

  --chk chk chk-chk—

  “Ah hell.” Poe fished his comm out of his jacket pocket, only to find it wasn’t his that had gone off.

  “Guess I’m the famous one around here,” she said mockingly and winked at him. She turned away and answered her own comm, covering her right ear to cut off the street noise. Her expression darkened quickly as soon as she heard the voice on the other end. Distractedly she waved Poe over. “You’ve certainly gone one hell of a grand sense of timing, edha. Right. I’ve got my partner right here. What?” She frowned at him, shaking her head and shrugging. “Hang on, let me connect him.” She covered her comm and leaned in. “It’s Kindeiya Shalei,” she said. “He wants to speak to the both of us.”

  Poe fished out his comm again and pressed the appropriate code to slip into conference mode. “Okay, Kindeiya,” Caren continued. “You have our attention.”

  “Excellent,” he said. His immaculately smooth voice was still there, but all the joy had gone out of it some time ago, replaced by exhaustion. “Edha Poe, emha Johnson, I commend the both of you on your patience, as well as embracing your enlightenment as well as you have. You have no doubt just realized why I could not speak to you until now. And I call you at this time because there is precious little of it left. You must go to the Moulding Warehouse by four this afternoon, as it is the safest place for all of you at this time. It is six hours away, but after yesterday we can all imagine what can happen within those six hours. Thus, it is imperative that you listen to what I have to say.

  “I am sure you’ve come to the conclusion that I am a Prophet of the One. It is not a title I want to go around flaunting, for obvious reasons. The reason, emha Johnson, that I did not tell you I knew who you were, was because we had to know for sure that your sister Denni was who we expected her to be. Seeing the future is both a matter of fate and of perspective, my dear child. If we really wanted her to be the One of All Sacred, by all means she could have embodied the One but not been the One. But that, of course, did not happen, and because of this, your presence at the Waterfront is imperative.”

  Her free hand balled into a fist again. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Denni will already be there by the time you arrive,” he said. “Edha Poe: to you, I wish Love, Peace and Light. I understand your confusion…torn between light and shadow. But if choose your path wisely, that won’t matter at all.”

  Poe opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it.

  Kindeiya continued without missing a beat. “I say this now: Denni will be at the warehouse in six hours, whether it is from your doing or not. All I ask is that the both of you are there as well, to continue to protect her.”

  “Like hell I’m going to bring her there!” Caren growled at him. “If you think I’m going to put her in any kind of danger…”

  “Remember five years ago, edha Johnson.”

  Poe winced as the color drained from Caren’s face. She winced and shut her eyes. “What about five years ago, Kindeiya?” she said in a barely contained monotone.

  “You were working with emha Kennedy at the time, yes? She could tell you, I’m sure she remembers that day. You were at headquarters in Branden Hill at the time, pushing paper at the exact moment that your sister Denni was in school in Pullock Street Heights.

  “And at that exact moment, Karinna…”

  “Kindeiya, damn you —”

  “…at that moment, a man stood in the center of an abandoned apartment on Grieves Street. This man was attempting to Lightwalk, to search for the One of All Sacred. It had been approximately twenty years since the Eighth embodiment, and this man was anxious to meet the next.”

  Caren let out a whimper. “Please…don’t do this.”

  “He was nuhm’ndah, Karinna. One of the best soulsensers of the time, and born a pure Shenaihu. The division of the Shenaihu and the Mendaihu are not the same as clan divisions, my sehnadha; the soul sees the self, but not the name we give it. He was one of the nuhm’ndah. They were…and still are, to some extent…an extremist Shenaihu sect. The Shenaihu themselves do not recognize them politically, although they can’t help but acknowledge them as brethren in spirit.”

  She trembled. “Please…don’t —”

  “You must hear this to understand, Karinna,” he pleaded. “This is what I could not tell you earlier. The nuhm’ndah are extremists. Their plan is to annihilate any and all Mendaihu. Other Mendaihu and Sh
enaihu know this…yet the Shenaihu have brought them back, time and again. And for this nuhm’ndah to have the ability to find the One without any help…

  “On that day, at that moment, the man had just entered Light, to find the sleeping spirit of the One of All Sacred…”

  “Damn you, that’s enough!” she cried. Poe felt a ripple of pain surge from Caren’s direction.

  “…somewhere up in the Pullock Street Heights sector, waiting to awaken.”

  “Kindeiya…please…” she sobbed.

  Ashan placed a hand on Caren’s shoulder. She made a movement as if to jerk his hand away, then belatedly accepted it. She desperately needed his soulhealing touch just then. After a second, Ashan moved closer until he was embracing her, his arms over hers, his head resting against the back of hers. So engrossed was Poe in watching this healing process that he almost hadn’t noticed Kai enshrouding him as well.

  “…and he had found her,” Meade said.

  “…Denni,” she said, her voice raw.

  “Yes, my dearest child. This man had found Denysia, and had begun planning his next moves. As Shenaihu, he was bound, at that time, to destroy the One. At that time, they had planned to keep the One from returning in each generation. I can only guess what would have happened to her, had he succeeded.” He stopped momentarily, and the silence was overwhelming. “But now…? Now they plan to corrupt her.”

  “How…” Poe began, startled by his own voice in the eerie quiet of the phone line. “How did Caren’s parents know? How could they know?”

  “By their bond, edha,” he answered. “The bond of parent to child, of Mendaihu to Mendaihu. Of Mendaihu to the One of All Sacred. They sensed something, my friend. It could have been his dark spirit…it could have been the probability of her death…we may never know. The bond surpassed anything they had known before, and it scared them. But within moments they had surrounded and attacked him.”

  Caren’s sobs carried quietly over the line. Poe felt another stab of pain with each whimper he heard. He tried blocking out Kindeiya’s voice, blocking out everything around him by squeezing his eyes shut, which only made him sense it all that much more. He let in a short breath, exhaled it, and opened them again. Kai still held him in her arms, cradling him, touching him, loving him.

  “Aram and Celine Johnson saved your lives,” Kindeiya said soothingly. “Their previously untapped Mendaihu abilities had been pushed to the limit in order to protect their daughters.”

  I remember. Caren’s inner voice carried through all four of them. Poe clutched at his jacket, his heart surging with pure emotion.

  Denni…Caren called out. I remember now…!