Dawn of Revelation

by A N Sandra

  “Everything’s better with you,” Elania told Rory. Barden was in the garden with Ursu, Greeja was fixing a wonderful meal for later, and Rory’s presence inflamed her with need. She flung herself at him and was rewarded by the way he kissed her. “Nothing… nothing… nothing is like a kiss from you…”

  His lips branded her face and neck, she ran her hands over him lightly the way he relished. Somehow they were both naked even though they had both been fully clothed when they came in the room. Taking off their clothes when they were alone was second nature to them. They took off their clothes without realizing they were doing it. One of their favorite jokes was that one day they might absentmindedly strip themselves in front of guests.

  “Ahhhhh!” There was a shriek from outside the bedroom. Rory and Elania almost didn’t heed it, entangled in each other as they were. Rory pulled away from her, and Elania was devastated as he threw his garments on with amazing speed, leaving her trailing after him, struggling into her own clothes as she went.

  “Uhhh,” Elania couldn’t process the visual mess in front of her. The room where she cooked and ate with her husband, son, and servant was filled with people she didn’t know, and in the middle of them Greeja was a mangled bunch of pieces. “What—”

  She didn’t know whether to advance on them in rage or flee in terror. Even wild beasts did not do to prey what these people had done to Greeja. But the intruders considered Greeja prey, sucking blood from the pieces of her body spread among them, with slurping sounds. Traces of her blood were everywhere on the murderers, in their hair, on their clothes, on the floor. Although one of them was licking blood from the stone floor like an animal.

  Rory knew what to do; he pulled a gleaming sword from thin air and made straight for their leader, whose throat he cut, felling him instantly. The rest of the group moved so quickly that Elania was not sure how many there actually were. Surrounding Rory, they tried to fall on him like a pack of wolves, the way they must have fallen on Greeja. Rory’s sword flashed as he moved about in a circle. The predators stepped back, but they were clearly waiting for him to pick one of them out, hoping for him to choose a victim that would allow them a chance at him.

  One of them broke ranks to try to attack Elania as she hovered behind them. Elania heard her own scream pierce the air and she tripped over her feet as she turned to run. A hand gripped her shoulder but Rory’s sword sliced down into the young woman attacking Elania, leaving her trapped under the weight of a dead, bleeding body. She struggled to free herself, trying to watch Rory, and watching to keep herself from succumbing if another person tried to attack her.

  Rory fought his way out from under the people, some of them managing to cut him, but none of them injuring him severely, while he picked them off as he could. Soon there were only two left, and they ran as Rory advanced on them, but Rory kept up his pursuit, slashing them down before they reached the entryway of the immense stone dwelling.

  Elania began to cry and shake, something she had never done in Rory’s presence, even when giving birth to Barden. Her loving servant, the only fully human companion she had had for years, was dead. Not just dead, decimated in a way that Elania could not understand. She sobbed, gasping for breath as she hovered at the grotesque scene of Greeja’s death.

  “What should I do?” Elania trembled as Rory stood next to her, bringing her the sense of wellbeing that he always did, but the horror of what had just happened didn’t completely abate.

  “I’m going to get Barden and Ursu and secure this house.” Rory’s face was absolutely charged with fury. “I had secured it already, as well as I needed to. I knew these things were happening, I had no idea they were so close. You can’t leave… did you leave at all?”

  “I sent Greeja for the mushrooms that you like, the ones with the—”

  “Someone followed her here, they waited for a weak moment…”

  “Why…” Elania had a hard time putting thoughts together. “Why would anyone do this?”

  “To take on a physical body to be with you required me to drink blood,” Rory told Elania. He didn’t sound like himself as he talked, but he never lied, so Elania knew he must have been telling the truth. “Every time I take a physical form I drink someone’s blood until they die.”

  Elania felt her stomach plummet, even from the low place it had been in. There was no way she understood this… she was misunderstanding…

  “Every time I have taken blood I have taken it from someone who did not deserve to draw breath. I can see into this realm from my own with no one able to see me. That is how I came to know you. I could see you on your adventures through the forest, alone, charming. Your love of nature amplifying your beauty. I saw other people too. The man whose blood I first drank to be with you, so you could see me and love me—he was vile. He mated with his own daughters. They hated him, and that made him love it more. I drank his blood, and hid and watched his oldest daughter find him and she rejoiced to see him dead and drained of life substance. I brought us together and gave her family a gift.”

  Elania stood helpless. Helpless to understand how her life had come to this point. Greeja was not just dead, her body was ruined, and Elania’s husband, the being she most revered, was a murderer. As she took in the situation she calmed down greatly. She put her hand on Rory’s arm and let the vibrations that brought her serenity calm her even in this scenario. It didn’t matter how many people Rory murdered. It didn’t even matter if they were good. If Rory didn’t want them to live, they should not live.

  “I would never judge you—” Elania began to say, but Rory, always thinking of her first, led her to the basin of fresh water in the part of the house they prepared food in and began to wash her tenderly. The simple care restored her and her breathing slowed, her shakiness abated.

  “I can’t explain all of this… I’m certain Ursu is protecting Barden… in my realm the animals like Ursu are fierce fighters, they are a great help in the eternal war. But I must say this when Barden is not here to overhear me. Randon and Valon and I have had to drink blood to the death of a mortal every time we took on human form. We always chose those who made the earth a worse place. But we were seen. We did it too often. When our war began again we had to leave our physical forms behind and take them up again frequently when we came back to our earthly families. Our enemies saw us and have tried to imitate us. They don’t love when they take on physical form, they destroy, with knowledge from outside this realm. We are ruining the world—”

  “That isn’t your fault—”

  “But, yes, it is. It is all of our faults. We took refuge in a realm we did not belong in by breaking rules that cannot be broken without consequence.” Rory bent to kiss Elania on her lovely white nose. “I must bring Barden and Ursu inside. Can you…” he gestured toward the horrible pieces of Greeja.

  Drawing strength from Rory, Elania knew that she could clean up Greeja before Barden saw her. There was not much left of her. There were many lovely baskets in the kitchen, Greeja and Elania made them more for creative expression rather than function. Elania chose the most beautiful umber colored basket, it was very large, with precious stones woven into it, and gathered the pieces of Greeja without shuddering and put them into the basket reverently. Greeja had never understood parts of Elania’s life. She had been a companion without being the sort of friend that Elania found in the wives of Rory’s friends, but Greeja had served Elania’s family with willing grace. Elania prayed every death blessing she knew over the pieces as she wiped up Greeja’s blood from the floor. Then she tenderly placed the red stained cloths on top of Greeja’s remains and found a lovely silken length of cloth to place over the macabre mess before placing the lid on the basket.

  “Goodbye,” Elania said, putting the basket out the back door, hoping that Rory would know what to do with it before Barden discovered its contents with his curious ways. Greeja had no family that would want her remains. Her mother was deceased, and her father had never been interested in her at all
. She never had a chance to have her own family. Being with Rory had brought countless surreal moments into Elania’s short life, but what had happened to Greeja had been so horrific and unexpected that Elania could not process it. She tried to tell herself, “Greeja got torn apart by people who sucked her blood, it could happen to anyone.” But of course, it couldn’t. “What happened to Greeja was a complete fluke. No one could ever expect it to happen again.” But Rory was out gathering Ursu and Barden because he did think it could happen again. Rory sucked blood for what that was worth. Could it be that the lips that caused explosions of pleasure in her body drank human blood?

  Could it happen again? Would it?

  CHAPTER 2

  June 6th, Blythe, CA

  Bud Henderson stopped the rock crusher the second he saw the bone fragments. He leaned forward and realized that even though the rock face before him shouldn’t contain artifacts of any kind, it inexplicably did. Pieces of bone and other things, that were not rock, were right in front of him. With a queasy stomach Bud walked to the rock face. Looking closely, Bud could see lots of things protruding from the rock that were clearly out of place. Damn. One hour after lunch with four more hours of work left in the day counting the hour of overtime he had intended to squeeze out of Macdonald Road Materials, his day was hijacked.

  With great misgivings Bud began to sift through what was quite clearly petrified leather and bone mixed with rock on the screen of the rock crusher. Sparkling bits of platinum caught his eye also. Jewelry. Damn, damn, damn. Platinum wasn’t even native to the part of NorCal that Bud resided in. He wouldn’t accept that this was an archeological find. It was sent from the devil to confuse his life.

  What God he believed in was a mystery to Bud, but he was positive about the existence of a devil. His mother was an overzealous Baptist after all. Without knowing what exactly he was looking for, Bud took off his work gloves and raked his fingers through pieces of rock and bone and jewelry lying on the screen of the rock crusher in angst.

  “Jesus Christ!” Donovan, Bud’s right hand man approached and looked down at the shards of human bone and sparkling rare metal on the screen over Bud’s shoulder.

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Bud warned Donovan, as he did several times a day. Bud’s mother was a militant Baptist, his wife was a devout Catholic. He knew better than to dabble in profanity. His creature comforts depended on a certain level of pious respect, always had.

  “What’re we gonna do?” Donovan wanted to know. Most of the time Donovan didn’t see why he wasn’t the boss, since he had worked at the quarry two years longer than Bud. But when real trouble presented itself, Donovan had never offered a single solution in all the years Bud had known him.

  With great human restraint, Bud did not clunk Donovan on top of his dirty hard hat until he shut up. Bud found it easy to be patient with most people, but Donovan had worn on him the wrong way over the years, like a sweater that gives a person a rash at the neck instead of getting broken in. Restraining his base instincts, Bud continued to turn pieces of platinum over as the sun hit them. He wished the knowledge of what to do would pop into his head, but the situation was complicated.

  Seven years before, half a mile away in the same quarry, Bud and his crew had uncovered an ancient streambed. The quarry owner, “Hump” Macdonald, had contacted the state archeological commission. After a year of staying clear of the site, millions of dollars of lost income for the company, not to mention Bud and his own crew losing a huge amount of personal income for that time, two archeologists from Berkeley had turned up in a Subaru Bratt. They walked over to the site, heavily protected by caution tape and a cyclone fence, and declared without spending four minutes there, that it was contaminated and not worth pursuing. They then proceeded to rifle through the exposed area, looting what they perceived to be of value, including what Bud thought might be two dinosaur eggs, and casually tossing these things in the back of the Subaru before warning everyone that the area was protected and anyone working there would face felony charges. The caution tape had faded, and local teens broke through the fence and sifted through the streambed in the dark sometimes, but Macdonald Road Materials was unable to renew the permit to use the area again. It might as well be on Mars for all the good it was to Hump and his men. This find would be bigger than the previous one. It was unexplainable, and the whole quarry might even be permanently closed.

  “Let me think,” Bud finally said to Donovan who looked at him with worry for the future.

  There was much to think about. “Hump” was now retired to Hawaii with his very beautiful third wife, Roxie. At that very moment Hump was probably drinking a pink drink with an umbrella while Roxie splashed in gently breaking ocean waves for his enjoyment. Hump’s son, Randy was undoubtedly in a heated meeting with someone trying to explain why deliveries weren’t going perfectly. Randy wouldn’t shut down the whole construction site for another group of jerks who would treat the quarry workers as if they were characters from Chicken Little, running around declaring that artifacts were falling from the rock face. Randy would appreciate being kept in the dark over just such an event if Bud had the stomach for that kind of secret keeping, which he did not. Bud didn’t want to annoy Randy more than he had to, and he didn’t want to be without work for several months or even permanently, waiting for another set of morons to come and shut down part of the quarry they had no intention of excavating.

  Pulling in his breath with a fierce hiss, Bud stepped up to Donovan and looked him square in his hazel eyes, the lids creased with dust.

  “Don’t say anything about this to anybody.” Bud channeled his inner Tony Soprano as he looked at Donovan.

  “I want to work as much as you,” Donovan said innocently, as if he didn’t always choose gossip over work.

  “I have six kids, no one wants to work as much as me,” Bud replied drily.

  “Whose fault is that, that you couldn’t get fixed after three?” Donovan rejoined. “Everyone else does.”

  Bud walked away reflecting that most men who worked in the quarry did have three kids. Bud’s own wife, Danica, was a devoted Catholic and was quite upset when Bud did get fixed after her sixth pregnancy. Still, Bud loved each of his kids more than his own life. Donovan might only have three kids, but they weren’t as attractive as Bud’s six, and judging by the trouble they got in they weren’t as smart either. Donovan Jr. had recently been suspended from school for harassing a cow in Agriculture class. At least Twilight, Bud’s favorite child, had been caught hacking the district computer system to give everyone more snow days when she got suspended.

  Bud took off the flannel shirt he wore even in extreme heat to protect himself from dust in the quarry. The black t-shirt he wore under his flannel shirt read:

  I’M THE BOSS,

  APPLESAUCE

  Like most of his t-shirts it had been designed and manufactured by his youngest child, Twilight, who had a quirky sense of humor.

  At age twelve, Twilight had asked Bud if she could use the chicken coop behind the back yard. Bud’s grandmother, Mabel, had raised prize Bantys there.

  “Sure, you can raise chickens, honey,” Bud had told her delightedly. He loved fresh eggs.

  “I hate chickens.” Twilight had tipped her head and looked at Bud as if he were an alien species she would defer dissecting just yet. “I have a different plan.”

  And she had. Twilight had been saving all her birthday and babysitting money to start a screen printing business. With equipment purchased off the internet, Twilight had started a business selling ,t-shirts with strange, yet pithy quotes. Her older brother Michael, who had been bribed to graduate from the sixth grade with the promise of being able to name his sister if he did, had been delighted to wear t-shirts for advertisement. He had known his mother had wanted to name the baby Sarah, and he hated the name Sarah. The movie Twilight had been popular with the girls in his class at that time, and Michael was sure any girl would want to be named after it. It evidently neve
r occurred to Michael to name his youngest sister after the female lead in the movie, he just insisted on naming her after the movie itself.

  Twilight was usually Bud’s favorite child for three reasons; she was his last child, she looked just like his lovely plump blonde wife, only much more slender with deep brown hair, and she made enough money with her business that she never asked for anything. The three reasons were enough for Bud to favor her over her five siblings that he loved more than his own life anyway.

  Trying to think what to do, Bud headed toward the quarry office, a small trailer parked in the corner of the quarry, to close out the end of the day. The work involved in finishing a business day wasn’t bad, but he knew he should somehow give Randy a heads up that there was another problem with the past rearing its head at an inopportune time. It was the right thing to do. He didn’t want to make Randy compliant if Randy didn’t want to alert anyone to the findings. He just wanted Randy to know why they had finished three hours early today even though there was a large backorder of crushed rock that should have been delivered. He decided he would meet Randy for a beer later. With the reflexes of a teenager Bud texted Randy to meet for a beer in a few hours.

  One by one the employees of Macdonald Road Materials drove away from the quarry, their trucks sending brief comet trails of dust behind them on the gravel driveway, while Bud stayed in his seat. Putting his gloves back on, Bud walked back to what he had already seen and began to closely inspect the fragments of bone that were protruding from the rock wall in front of the rock crusher. He looked, then stepped back, then looked again. Bud had worked for Macdonald Building Materials almost since high school graduation. He was an excellent geologist, even though a recent college graduate would probably consider him an amateur simply because he didn’t have a degree. Bud would never have gotten a degree in geology anyway. Even though Bud intended to work for Macdonald Road Materials until he retired, and he was very good at it, working in the quarry was something that had happened to him, not what he would have chosen. Bud was a student of history and ancient myths, and an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy. Bud was not a garden-variety redneck, even though his neck was permanently tanned the color of a leather saddle.