Emergence

by Jaliza A. Burwell

  That something new within me responded with a purring rumble deep within. It rose and rose, filling me up and wanting to spill out, wanting to reach out to him. My skin warmed, but then I shook myself out of the haze he put me in.

  Nope.

  I can’t.

  So not happening.

  I used all my willpower to not back away, to force away all the emotions he drew out of me. He was one hot and scary mother trucker for sure. I used just a little bit of my own energy, giving him a little pinch to back off. After taking a moment to show me he could do whatever the hell he wanted, he reined his energy back in. Though he was still defensive, his eyes roamed over me again as if I had done something interesting.

  “Relax.” I held up my hands to placate him, and all the while my eyes attacked him. Something about him pulled at me and frankly, it scared the shit out of me even as my curiosity grew. I’d been all about me for so long that I wanted to explore these new feelings, and at the same time, I wanted to run really far away from them. “I’m a hopper. The mages found an unknown portal. No one knew it came to your, um, lovely bathroom.”

  With the lovely view.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “The mages?”

  I nodded.

  “Marsi,” he growled, running a large hand through his black hair.

  “Ah, the mousy little girl. No wonder she kept hiding from me.”

  I remembered spotting her a couple of times. She kept moving around, trying to stay hidden. She stood out all the more because of it, and I ended up asking another mage about her. She came off as shy and innocent. I always took notice of the innocent. Just a habit of awareness I had. I needed to always know who posed as a risk and who would be more of a hindrance. Marsi would be a hindrance.

  This shifter would be a risk.

  “Well, I’ll go back and promise to have the mages dismantle the portal pronto. I’ll even keep this a secret.” I grinned. “Otherwise, they might start selling tickets to come through.”

  My eyes once again traveled across the hard ridges of his pectoral muscles, down the valleys of his abs, and through the thin trail of dark hair that disappeared into the towel wrapped around his narrow waist. I would so buy a ticket even though I was getting a free show already.

  “Bye-bye, gorgeous,” I said and hopped into the gate to let it bring me back to the mages.

  Mage Thomas was twisting some papers in his hands when I hopped back out. He nearly charged at me, questions all over his face.

  “Nyssa! Where does it go?” he asked. Was that hope in his eyes? Maybe he wanted to see the handsome shifter too. Who was I to judge?

  I shrugged. “Private property.”

  “Oh.” His expression fell. For a man who was scared about what was on the other side, he sure looked disappointed.

  “Yup. I caught the attention of the mousy little girl whose eyes were wide with fear. She was waiting for me to drop the other shoe, not even aware that I was tossing the shoe over the fence and far away from here. “You know the rules, the gate needs to be dismantled, unless the owner of the private property gives permission.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you,” I replied with a purr, unable to keep back the smirk or the enthusiasm. Mage Thomas frowned in response, but I just sauntered away from the gate, needing the distance from it. I was tempted to go through it again. Instead, I stepped back and watched the mages do their magic and take the gate apart.

  “I can see why you made the gate,” I told the teenage girl when she came closer. She blushed furiously and made a run back into the mages’ lair, probably to bury her head under her pillow. I would die of embarrassment too if someone knew I made a gate because I was turning into a huge pervert. But I was already a pretty open pervert, so I guess maybe I wouldn’t have run away as if the world were falling apart.

  The mages did their magic, and the gate crumbled down. The moment it was gone, a tether within me snapped, and I no longer felt the connection to it. I grunted at the slight sting and knew it was truly gone now.

  I sighed, collected my fee, and walked away with a fatter wallet. Gate-hopping was good business, especially when I found nothing but duds, like today, and only wasted a few minutes of my precious time. I thought about the art show on Saturday. I could get a couple new pieces for my collection and still have plenty left over for my obsession with hot chocolate.

  Once settled into my little car, I picked up my cell phone and called my part-time manager-slash-bestie.

  “Done already?” she asked when she picked up.

  “Hi to you too, Baby-cakes,” I said with a smile. “Yeah, all done. Just a naughty little perverted mage.”

  “Oh, where did it go to?” Cecil asked.

  As my witchy best friend and part-time manager, Cecil scheduled my appointments for me when she had the time. She enjoyed the extra money, making a whopping forty percent off the commissions. About five years ago, once I could handle going outside and not tearing into someone for looking at me, I became a gate-hopper. Cecil took on the roll as my personal assistant and since then she' managed to pay off her debts, buy a new car, and not have any more trouble paying her mortgage. We had the perfect relationship. I was never double booked because of her amazing scheduling skills, and she didn’t have to worry about her next meal. I would have given her a higher cut, but she refused. Hell, I would give her all the money. I owed her my damn life, and she kept me sane on a daily basis, not that I would admit to having such a strong weakness.

  “A man’s bathroom. I promised said man I would keep his identity a secret, and so I cannot tell you.”

  “You know said man?”

  “Not even his name,” I replied truthfully. “But he was yummy.”

  She laughed, and I heard something rustling. “Well, it’s good you finished up. We have gates popping up like crazy, and everyone’s too scared to check them out. No one wants to realize they aren’t strong enough to go through and end up losing a limb. I can send you over to another site right now.”

  “Great,” I said and prepared myself for a longer day than usual. But the extra money was so worth it.

  I wasn’t rich, but I wasn’t poor either. I made just enough to live comfortably, pay Cecil, and buy the things I needed and sometimes wanted. If I got low on money, I just did a couple more gigs. When I wasn’t working, I was off exploring, traveling, causing trouble here and there—the usual.

  “Head on over to Calman Ave. A gate opened up on a rooftop.”

  “Calman Ave? Isn’t that by your house?”

  “No. I’ll send the address. Just put it in your GPS.”

  I glared at said GPS, hating the thing. In fact, I hated most technology. Hell, I hated my phone, but Cecil made me buy it, going on about satellites and tracking and scheduling. Everything she said flew over my head. I just knew it was supposed to make my life easier. It didn’t.

  “Stop glaring at the GPS,” Cecil said, amusement clear in her voice. She knew me too well.

  “I hate it. It makes me go in circles.”

  She laughed. “Probably because you like to think you know better.”

  “I do know better.”

  “Right,” she drawled out the word, her sarcasm going up a few notches. “I’ll send you the location. All you have to do is click on the address, and the directions show up on your phone. Use that.”

  I sighed. “Fine.”

  “Fine.” She laughed. “Don’t sound so forlorn. Your life isn’t ending.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Just do the job. I’ve had about ten calls today. I don’t know what is going on out there, but be careful. I’m getting some bad vibes, but I can’t explain it yet.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  We hung up, and I swung the car around, heading to Calman Avenue, which turned out to be a residential strip acting as a melting pot for every kind of being possible. Gates weren’t rare, but they weren’t frequent either. To have ten cal
ls in one day, something was definitely up. Maybe it was time I did some overtime.

  Chapter Two

  I remember a woman’s hand. Long slender fingers. Pale skin. I remember her hand cupping my face, her warmth settling into my cheek. A promise of support. Of always being there. Of never leaving me.

  —Nyssa’s Journal

  By the time I finished saving the planet from goblins, I was dragging my tired and slightly abused body back to my little house in South Teragona. Teragona was the place to be for the last hundred years, and South Teragona was one of the richer areas. My place was surrounded by upper class residences but not by the top echelon of them. Those were in the neighborhood next to mine.

  After doing the mage’s gate, I had done two others. The first one turned out to be pretty innocent. It brought me to a little meadow and was actually beautiful. I didn’t find anything or anyone dangerous. I thought it was a random one. Random gates weren’t made by anyone but were created through the instability of energy in the air, kind of like cancer. Sometimes they formed because a magic user with just an ounce of magic but no training tried to cast magic, and fucked it up, disrupting the energy of the area. When doing magic, closed circles needed to be created, but people liked their shortcuts. Other times, it really was just random, a moment of instability, and then bam—a gate. Research was being done to study the how and why, but no one had any concrete reasons for their formations.

  The clients, an old necromancer couple, had decided to leave the gate open and do a little of their own exploring. They probably only kept the gate because it led to what was now their own personal garden, a place for them to go to and relax once in a while. I already planned to sneak back in every now and again.

  The second gate wasn’t as simple. Not even five minutes after stepping through, some wannabe badasses had decided to attack. I kicked the shit out of the goblins, shoved them through the gate, and had them arrested. They had been trying to gain access to a restricted area but hadn’t thought it all the way through. Like how suspicious a gate forming was. No one ever said goblins were smart. They took their time to put their plan into action, and by then it was too late, I was already through the gate, making them regret thinking about breaking into a high security area.

  Afterward, I only had to lick a couple of wounds from the mischievous creatures before going to sleep. As I tended to the cuts and bruises, I heard the notifications on my phone telling me that Cecil was already lining up more jobs for tomorrow. Apparently, the vampires were knocking at my door again. At least I had time in the morning before I needed to go to them.

  I barely hit the bed, and I was out.

  ~ * ~

  Someone was stalking me. I could hear them. Taste them. Scent them. But never see them. They followed me, always there, a shadow in my peripheral vision. I ran. And ran. And never stopped.

  ~ * ~

  The nightmare woke me up before the alarm did. I stayed in bed with my eyes closed until the incessant beeping finally started. It took my strong will to open my eyes and turn the annoying alarm off. Each beep felt like an icepick through my eye.

  Moaning, I rolled over and curled around one of my body pillows. I was exhausted, my body sore, though the bruises and cuts were gone. My gifts were few, but one of them was the ability to heal as quickly as a handful of other beings. I would probably know all that I was capable of doing, if I knew what I was exactly. I could tick off what I knew about myself on one hand.

  One: My body was sturdy. Very sturdy.

  Two: My senses were better than a human’s but only just barely.

  Three: My sensitivity to energy was top notch. I didn’t know anyone else who could top me.

  And four... nope, that was it. I had three solid facts about myself, and yet they told me nothing about who I was and where I came from. My gifts were a blessing but also a curse because once in a while, when things were too quiet, I began to question who I really was. I knew shit about myself, and it scared me. All I knew for sure was that six years ago, Cecil dragged me out of the Woodlands, knowing jack-shit about the civilized part of Terra Firma.

  I didn’t understand touch, how to interact with others, or how to not go with my instincts to tear everyone apart. Most of my earliest memories were only fragments, impressions of who I used to be, and once in a while, nightmares plagued my sleep to remind me about how broken my memories really were. I knew there were people who existed in my distant past, but I didn’t know who they were or what happened to them. I could have family out there, missing me, wondering what happened to me, and yet here I was, in some city, oblivious to their existence.

  My more solid memories were those of me with an adult body in the Woodlands, and if I tried to push further back, my memory became hazy. I just couldn’t remember anything after I became an “adult.”

  For the longest time, the only thing I knew how to do was how to survive in the most brutal environment around—the Woodlands. Cecil had to teach me how to survive in the kindest environment around—a city. I still preferred the viciousness of the Woodlands. I knew what to do to a being coming at me with teeth bared more than I did with a motherly woman giving me a kind, warm smile.

  Giving up on the idea of more sleep, I shuffled into the shower, trying to shake off the rest of the nightmare. After making myself squeaky clean, I shambled into the kitchen where I made myself some hot chocolate. Some people were obsessed with coffee or tea, but hot chocolate was my vice. I had only made it halfway through my warm toasty cup of chocolaty goodness when someone knocked on my door. I glanced through the window and then grinned as I swung open the door.

  “Darling, my favorite shifter in the whole wide world.”

  Slade looked me over, his eyes traveling slowly down my body and then back up. “Clothes,” he growled, his voice gruff, letting me know he liked what he saw.

  I looked down and then chuckled. I stood in front of him completely naked, my light skin pronouncing the few scars I did have, including the one on my abdomen. It was six inches long and dark against my skin, starting at my belly button and traveling left, reaching for my ribcage.

  I took pride in my lean body. I stood at five-eight with muscles honed to perfection for fighting and surviving. Apparently, Slade was also appreciative of my body with the way his icy blue eyes traveled over my skin, pausing on my breasts and on the space between my legs.

  “Oh, right. I forgot how virgin your eyes are.”

  Slade snorted, finally meeting my eyes, as I grabbed a robe I kept nearby just for such an occasion. If he was the kind to roll his eyes, he would have at my words. I put on the silvery robe, the silk petting my skin.

  He cleared his throat, and I smiled playfully at him. “Why are clothes an issue with you?” he scowled.

  “Issue? I’m a fashionista.”

  Slade came in and closed the door behind him. “When you remember to put something on.”

  I waved away his comment. Was that frustration I heard? It didn’t really matter, because he was right. I sucked at remembering to wear clothes, especially when I was tired. With my past, clothes weren’t exactly a priority. Living was. Most beings in the Woodlands didn’t care about clothing, and I guess the habit just stuck. I’d answered the door on numerous occasions, naked as the day I was born. Deliverymen loved dropping off packages at my door. If my neighbors were expecting a package, they knew I most likely ended up with it.

  I just smiled at Slade’s response and took a sip of the hot chocolate that I had set down before answering the door. “Want some?” I held the cup up towards him.

  He winced. “No. I’m surprised you’re not fat with the amount of that shit you drink.”

  “Never put fat in a sentence when talking about a woman. It’ll get you killed.” I nodded to my blades, which were currently resting on a side table, in easy reach. He knew I’d be fast enough to grab them and gut him if I wanted. There was a high chance that I wouldn’t succeed, because it was him, but if he were anyone else, they’
d be dead.

  Slade’s response was to lift an eyebrow. He was badassery wrapped up in a human cloak. Poke at him enough times and he turned into the biggest, baddest wolf around. Quite literally. “Ready?”

  “In a minute.” I chugged the rest of my drink and went into the kitchen to rinse it out in the sink. I then walked into my living room, where I had a massive map of the city pinned up with a bunch of colored pins as markers.

  The map itself was colored with different territories. The two largest territories were the shifters and the vampires, with the shifters taking up a good chunk of the northeast of the map and the vampires taking over the southwest. Smaller territories were colored to show where the mages and witches were. And even smaller territories to show where the necromancers, fae, and humans claimed plots of land. The leftover spots were neutral territory until some being or group came around and called it theirs. It turned the city into a very disjointed puzzle piece. The color-coded pins represented the total gates that were cleared, the ones I had cleared personally, the unchecked ones, and the new ones that had popped up over the past few days, marked with red pins. There were a lot of red pins.

  “Have you been busy lately?” he asked, watching as I added three new red pins for gates that I knew had popped up as I worked yesterday. Cecil wasn’t lying when she said gates were materializing like crazy. I felt each one of them as they came into existence within the range of my senses, forming a tether to me.

  My map was becoming very crowded with pins. Of course, Cecil said I could download some program or app on my phone, that could keep track of them for me, but I won that debate. No way was I using some fancy pants program. No phone should have that much power within it.

  I turned to Slade and drank him in as he took notice of the new locations of the pins.