by K J Carr
I was afraid this might mean that Achilah would be back, but I didn’t want to say anything. I would discuss it with the Tennins later, but Kaitie didn’t need to know. I have been waiting for that other shoe to drop for a while now and perhaps this year, it would finally come down with a bang.
Chapter 4
Kaitie and I stepped out of the diner, stopping at the top of the steps. Torry broke off from the guys and crossed the parking lot towards us.
“Kaitie, I think it is time we get going.” He stopped in front of us, shoving his hands into his back pockets.
Kaitie looked at him confused and then startled. “Darn! Is it three already?”
He nodded.
“Sorry, Nica. I have to go. My oncologist appointment.” She leaned into me and kissed my cheek. I grabbed her arm.
“On a Sunday?” I didn’t know they had doctor’s appointments on the weekends, let alone a Sunday.
She nodded. “He made this special for me because he had to cancel mine earlier in the week. He is flat out this coming week. He thought it was important enough for us to meet now, as opposed to four weeks out when he would have an opening.”
Okay, that made sense.
“Good luck. Good portents. Good health.” I mumbled, mostly just for her, pulling her in for a tight hug.
“Thank you, but I feel wonderful.” She grinned at me and then whirled around towards Torry, skipping down the steps. Torry waved at me.
“Happy Birthday, again, Nica.” The two moved off towards Kaitie’s car.
I watched them leave, raising my hand in a half wave as they left the lot. I then looked across towards the other three. Making my way slowly towards them, I studied their faces. They almost looked guilty, but I couldn’t figure out why.
I stopped in front of them. “Boys.”
They stood still for a minute, before Malak did a full body shake. I could almost see his wings rustle. He handed me another gift. “From Enoch.”
This one wasn’t wrapped. It didn’t need to be. It was a fighting staff. My very own staff. I exhaled in awe.
The dark, reddish wood was carved with a number of runes along the length of it. I took it reverently, feeling the smooth wood in my hand.
“What type of wood…?”
“Kamagong. Philippine Ironwood.” Of course, Ridwan would answer. Weapons were his thing.
The grain patterns were fascinating, not quite like any other type of wood I had seen. It was so beautiful.
“The wood is one of the hardest woods that exists. Not indestructible, but it will even stand up to most steel weapons for a time. You fight well with a staff, so he thought it should be your first weapon to own.” He continued, and then paused. “Well, your first true fighting weapon.”
“I will show you how to hide it in the Void so that you will be able to retrieve it when you need to.” Inias took up. “This way, it will always be accessible. We will practice retrieving and putting it away later this week.”
“I need to go.” Malak softly said. “Enoch wanted me to make sure you got this, but I have to be somewhere now.” He lowered his head to look at me. I didn’t want to look away from the staff, but I looked up into his eyes.
“Tell Enoch thank you, Malak.” I smiled a little shyly at him. “Thank you for bringing it to me.”
“You are welcome, Nica.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he just leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Happy Birthday.”
He walked away a few steps before turning around. “I can’t believe it has been five years already!” He smirked at me.
“Has felt like foreveh!” I chuckled, twirling the staff in a slow figure eight in front of me.
He laughed, turning again. Within five steps, he had disappeared. I sighed.
“I wish I could teleport quite that easily.” I set one end of the staff down on the ground and leaned on it slightly.
“We are working on it, Nica. You are doing really well – much better than others at this point in time.” Inias replied.
“But today, you still have to open our presents.” Ridwan grinned. He pulled a long box from behind him.
I slowly turned to face him, looking him in the eyes. “I am going to guess some sort of weapon as well, coming from you, Thing Two.” My words were slow and measured.
He just grinned. Even without watching him, I could feel Inias’s figurative eye roll at us.
I dropped my eyes to the box he held out. It couldn’t be too heavy, since he had held it on the palms of his outstretched arms for a few minutes. The box was a long, narrow rectangle made of some light-colored wood. The clasp was facing me, so instead of taking the box, I just undid the clasp, pulling the top open.
Inside was a sword. A gorgeous one that darkly shone in the sunlight. The blade was about two feet long, the hilt a smooth oak, covered with bands of steel.
“It’s a Classic Hoplite sword. Typically, it’s a short sword used for thrusting.” Ridwan expounded.
“Our hope is that no one will get close enough for you to have to use it, but if they do, you will have a good weapon to use, besides the dagger you got from Malak and your staff.” Inias continued calmly.
“We will practice with it before you can take final possession of it, but it will be yours to call when needed.” Ridwan finished.
My breaths came out short and fast. I was beginning to get a little dizzy. They never gave me weapons before and here I now had three. What were they trying to say? My eyes widened, and I looked up at Ridwan, terrified.
Inias glanced at him and then took my arm, moving me towards the nearby bench. He sat me down, sitting next to me, and then pushed my upper body down so that my head would fall between my knees.
“Breathe, Nica. Deep breaths. Inhale to the count of four, hold for four, exhale for four. Repeat.” His voice was calm and steady.
I followed his instructions, my head clearing after a few deep breaths. Still, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to raise my head. I wrapped my arms around my knees and turned my head to rest on them, keeping my eyes closed. Inias gently rubbed my back, which was a little strange but nice. Inias so didn’t do the touchy-feely stuff. I must have looked bad.
I felt Ridwan come up on my other side, sitting as well. His fingers tangled in my curls, because of course, I had somehow lost my tie again. It seemed to slip out of my curls on its own. He smoothed them back away from my face.
I knew that I couldn’t stay here like this. For one, I wasn’t a scared bimbo, that waited for someone else to take care of all the horrible things in the world that happened to me. I have always been independent and somewhat strong.
For another, my life now depended on me being able to deal with the weird and unusual. My life was weird and unusual.
Besides, now that I had stopped hyperventilating, I realized I was just embarrassed about my girly moment.
I sat up, feeling their hands drop away from me. That was a little disheartening; their hands had felt wonderful, safe and warm.
Okay, no playing with the trainers, I reminded myself. I looked around.
“So, what did you do with the sword?” Curious, I faced Ridwan.
“We stored it in the Void.” Inias’s deep voice came from behind me and whispered over my skin, causing me to shiver. Nope. Not going there.
I sat back so I could see both of them. “Like the dagger?”
Ridwan nodded.
“We will work on retrieving from and pushing them to the Void tomorrow.” Inias added.
I realized I was missing something. “My staff!” I looked around frantically.
“Shhhhh. Here it is.” Ridwan pulled it from around his far side. It had been leaning up against the bench.
I took it and lovingly stroked the hard wood and the carvings.
“You can keep this with you now until you learn how to store it, if you want to. You have earned your proficiency in fighting with it and we would rather you kept some type of weapon with you, since your powers are unreliable.”
Achilah is coming, Nica. T’Koran answered me first. He must have gotten out of the diner somehow.
He is? I flinched, and my heart started racing.
“Achilah’s getting his daemons organized for something big.” Inias unknowingly stated. Sometimes I wished he could hear T’Koran. “We are not sure for what, but we suspect that it is to come after you. Your name keeps coming up in the whispers we do hear. We cannot understand anything else that is being said, except your name is repeated often.”
Ridwan frowned, leaning forward. “We are not sure why he wants you so much. We have never seen such a concerted effort for one Transitioner. But then, we have never had a Transitioner quite like you.”
So not helping me to calm down. But then another thought popped into my head. “Why now? Why did he wait five years?”
Ridwan nervously pushed a hand through his dark hair, pulling strands out of his tie, that he still had. Lucky him.
T’Koran tapped my leg and I looked down. He had a tie in his hand and a big grin on his little daemon face.
Thanks, TK. I grinned back at him, taking the hair tie and proceeding to try to pull my hair back into a braid.
Ridwan sighed and took the tie from me, turning me to face Inias. He smoothed my hair gently, using his fingers like a comb until it was acting somewhat reasonably. Once it was the way he wanted it, he started to French braid my hair. He had done this before and he actually was good at it. Finishing, he wrapped the hair tie around the end to keep the braid from unraveling, tucking the end up to hide it. I leaned back against him, because I could.
Inias ignored this, staring out across the parking lot. “We think that when he possessed Marcus, well, that took a lot of energy. And then you viciously pushed him out, making it so that he didn’t even have time to harvest some of your brother’s energy. It didn’t help that he had created another cage for you, either. He probably needed time to recover.”
“I also feel that he didn’t understand how you got out of his Void cages. We don’t understand quite how you got out of those. So, he probably has been researching a way to lock you up better.” Ridwan’s breath puffed out against the back of my neck as he spoke.
I shuddered. I figured that had a lot to do with El and what little she had told me about what I was. I would try to have a more in-depth conversation with her tonight. El always pulled me into the Void on my birthday, as well as any time she was lonely.
“Wait.” My mind finally grasped on one point. “Why does he want to contain me? What is in it for him to keep me? Isn’t he killing the other Transitioners?” I sat up, pulling away from Ridwan.
Inias stared at the ground. “We are not sure. He may be killing them, but we are not one hundred percent certain of this. He could be caging them and using them for something else. There is just so much we do not know about Achilah.”
“So….” I thought out loud. “The reason why he waited these five years could be because he had others and he just took this time to do whatever it is he planned on doing with them? Like, perhaps, change them into super-daemons or something?”
Inias grimaced, but it was Ridwan who answered, his face serious. “Yes, that could be true.”
“So why would he still want me?”
“You are perhaps the ultimate Transitioner. You got out of a Void cage. You transported before you had become Tennin. You were able to push him out of your brother — something, we should remind you, that no one else has been able to do. Or it could be all of those above.” Ridwan shrugged.
“On the one hand, yea me.” My voice was soft. “On the other, I am so screwed!”
“Indeed.” Inias squinted, looking at me sideways. “So my gift to you….” He stopped, still not looking at me directly.
I waited. Inias sometimes was a drama queen. I never quite understood it, since he was so factual most of the time.
He handed me a bracelet. The main stone was clear with swirling colors inside it. I touched it gently and could feel the power moving through it. My eyes widened. It was a piece of the Void. I knew because El had been showing me how to make these, and I had been giving them to Kaitie and Marcus over the years, hoping to protect them from the daemons.
I didn’t look at either man, as I put out my hand. Inias dropped it slowly onto my palm. El had told me not to mention what I was doing. Mine were not as obvious – I tried to pull only one color into the ones I created, so they didn’t look so much like the Void. I had created blue ones with a touch of pink. Or orange ones with a swirl of green or pink. Not like this one, which showed all sorts of colors still seeming to move within the stone itself.
“What is it?” I wondered if this one would work like mine would. And how they knew how to work the Void.
“It is a protection stone. We have found these stones have power to protect against the daemons.” Inias’s voice was soft. “Please put it on and wear it always.”
Interesting. On a number of points. I wondered where they had found them, as well as how the Void stones repelled the daemons. I would have to remember to ask El about that.
I could feel the Void beat softly in it. For some reason, I didn’t think it was as strong as the ones I made, even though it was prettier.
“What about TK?” I didn’t want to repel my daemon friend.
Ridwan sat up and glanced at Inias, his face startled.
“We are not sure how it would impact him.” Inias admitted, finally looking at me, his head lowered but turned towards me.
This one will not influence me much, Nica. T’Koran seemed adamant. It is not as strong as the ones you make. In fact, I really don’t think it would protect you against Achilah. He shrugged.
Well, that answered that question. I smiled slightly, albeit without humor.
“TK said that he didn’t think it would impact him directly.” I knew enough to leave off the rest of his statement, but then decided to twist the truth a little. “It is probably based on intent to harm. He has no intent to harm me so it has no need to protect me from him.”
With that, I slipped the bracelet over my wrist.
Inias watched me intently, but nodded slowly to this statement. I don’t think I fooled him, but I knew he didn’t know much about the Void either.
“Perhaps that is true.” Ridwan stood up, stretching out his back. He raised his arms over his head to further the stretch, his shirt rising up a little to show a tan band of skin above his jeans.
I looked. Hey, I may be sixty-five, but I am not dead. And his skin was tan and smooth and…. Darn, I really needed to get laid! Hanging out with these beautiful male Tennin was so tempting! But as the saying goes, you don’t shit where you eat. I exhaled loudly and then slapped his bare belly hard.
“Hey!” He bent over, protecting those hard abs. I swear my hand probably hurt more than his stomach did. I jumped up from the seat and moved towards the car.
“I am exhausted, boys. It is a ‘me-time’ sort of night tonight.” I beeped my car, not looking to see if they were following behind. “Please hide the sword and dagger. I am keeping my staff with me for now.” I lovingly placed it in the car to ride shotgun, before walking around to the driver’s side.
Before sliding in, I looked at them over the top. They had stayed over near the bench, Inias still sitting with his forearms on his knees; Ridwan was standing in front of it, the wind ruffling his dark hair. Gorgeous, but untouchable.
“I will see you tomorrow, late. I have work, so that will cut into the time I can spend training, even if Achilah is now stepping up the ante.” I slid into the car and peeled out of the parking lot, slowing down only once I was on the actual road. I liked to test my car; I just didn’t like speeding tickets.
Chapter 5
I was ready for my down-time.
I had big plans for this evening. A nice scented bubble bath, an everything-but-anchovies pizza, a great comedy queued
up on Netflix, and new sweatshirt material PJ’s. Except… I found I was too wired to sit in a tub for any length of time, the pizza just didn’t seem like what I was craving tonight, and the comedy was good, but not great.
The only thing I enjoyed were the PJs.
I sat curled up on my couch, the TV off, candles lit around the room, sipping a large mug of tea. T’Koran was in a ball on the other end, snoring. I wasn’t sure what he did all day, but he seemed tired by the time night came most days.
I, on the other hand, was over-tired. My brain is going one hundred miles a minute, even as I fought to keep my eyes open. Still, I knew that El would pull me into the Void tonight, which would be tiring.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked El. I liked my visits with her. It just was that I never quite got the answers I felt she could give me. I mean, if you were to look up the word vague in the dictionary, her picture would be there. Despite that, she did teach me some useful stuff, like how to shape the Void or find people in it.
El was El. I couldn’t really describe her. She appeared to be energy in a humanoid form. Sometimes she looked like a mature teenager, living in a room that changed based on her moods. Others, there was just a general shape to her and she embraced the Void.
There are times she was the same height as me, while others where she felt massive. I couldn’t really tell because my senses often get mixed up there. I could, at times, taste colors….and once I even smelled them. And seeing odors is sort of weird.
Over the five years I have been visiting El in the Void, though, she helped me to feel comfortable there – well, as comfortable as one can get where gravity has little meaning. It reminded me of my vertigo, which had gotten better the more I had moved around in that space.
El said that the two are connected – my vertigo and the Void, even though she wouldn’t tell me why or how. Inias’s healing wasn’t what had helped my vertigo, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Come.”
I jumped. El had never commanded me into the Void while I was awake. I looked around, sitting up straight.
