by Mark Eller
And then he decided that it was time to see Doctor Gunther. He started down the street, ignoring people who tried to stop him, not wanting to hear empty sympathy. He made it halfway to Gunther's home when the fight started.
A man, his back to Aaron, stood beside a low wheeled wagon and screamed invective while Cathy cowered before him.
Suddenly feeling grimmer than the death that was his constant friend, Aaron stopped and narrowed his eyes while new anger roiled through him. Some small part of his mind separated out and formed a new thought.
Not Cathy. Not the Cathy who had spent two unaided years raising her siblings, had stood up to everyone and feared no one, had faced death and suffered injury battling Beech in defense of Aaron. Nobody had the right to make her afraid.
Feeling even colder and harder and more empty, Aaron's eyes narrowed even more, and he released a low growl. This was wrong. Cathy might be an inconstant bitch, but she had tried to kill Beech in Aaron's defense, had stood her ground. He owed her.
The man raised his hand, struck Cathy down, and Aaron started walking towards them with slow, deliberate steps.
"Damn you! Give me money. I owe people."
Cathy shook her head. "Gambling debts," she whispered as Aaron drew nearer. Her hand fumbled at her bodice.
"Never you mind why I owe it. Give it to me now." Scowling, the man reached down and tore her bodice open. Coins spilled free when her breasts were partially bared. Drawing nearer, Aaron looked at the soft swell of her milk white breasts and saw purple and yellow finger sized splotches marring their upper swell.
Taking one more step forward, Aaron reached out, grabbed the man, and spun him around.
The man was young, stood inches taller and broader than Aaron, and wore a sneer. Brian Haig, the milk wagon driver.
"Mister Haig, you're fired," Aaron said simply.
"Do you think I care?" Haig turned his head and spat, missing Cathy's face by less than an inch. "She makes ten times the pittance you pay me."
Nodding, Aaron half smiled, though he still felt empty inside. "If you touch her again you will die."
"Mister Turner." Cathy pulled herself to her feet. "Please don't interfere. He's my husband. It's his right."
"I'll not let him strike you again."
"Hear, hear." Mistress Golard called out from the gathering audience. Every eye looked disapproving.
"Fuck you, Turner. You're just pissed because you never got to screw her yourself."
"I am pissed," Aaron admitted. Unbelieving gasps sounded around him. "I'm pissed because Cathy married herself to low-life scum who beats up on his wife because that's the only way he can make himself a man."
Haig bent, twisted, and threw a swing.
After swaying his head to the side to avoid the clumsy blow, Aaron throat punched the man, then leaped forward and broke Haig's eardrums by slamming his cupped palms simultaneously across both of Haig's ears. Stumbling backwards, Haig called out hoarsely and pulled a bronze knife so Aaron broke his elbow with a quick grab and twist and then shattered his kneecap with a snap kick.
"Gawds," Perk muttered from nearby. "I ain't sparring with you no more."
Aaron looked down on the crying wreck. He had destroyed a man and felt nothing. Nothing at all.
"Cathy," he said emotionlessly, "you can leave him or not. Just know that you are safe. If he hurts you again, I will kill him. If I'm not here to do it, someone else will." Turning on his heel, he pushed his way through the stunned crowd.
* * *
"No," Doc Gunther said. "It's a dangerous operation. Anything could happen. I might kill you, or worse, I could cripple you for life."
"You have a Talent Stone," Aaron pointed out.
"Yes, but I don't know if I have steady enough hands. One slip of the knife would be disaster."
Aaron studied the man. Gunther looked nervous, but he looked interested, too. Something inside the man wanted to do the operation but lacked confidence. "Somebody will do it if I throw enough money at them. You're the only doctor I know with the Talent and a Stone. I want you."
"But I don't--"
Aaron held up a hand. "I want you."
Sighing, the doctor gave in. "Let me get a bottle of whiskey. You're going to need it."
Aaron finished the entire bottle before he took off his shirt and lay belly down on the operating table. He flinched when Gunther cinched the first strap over his arm. When the third strap was added Aaron glared because it did not feel right.
"Make it tighter," he demanded drunkenly.
Grimacing, Gunther tightened all the straps. Before long Aaron was fastened to the table with four straps on each of his limbs. Being careful, Gunther placed blocks around Aaron to keep him from shifting, and then strapped him down from his waist to the middle of his back. The last strap went across his head.
When Aaron was finally immobile, Doc Gunther picked up his scalpel and carefully cut into the oft healed scar on Aaron's upper back. He cut deep into the old wound.
Even drunk, Aaron had to moan. He gasped, tried to rip free from his restraints, but could not move.
"I see it," Doc said. "At least I see something. In fact, I see several somethings."
"Take them all out," Aaron hissed. His back burned. It flamed the way Sarah and Ernest had burned in the flames. He gritted his teeth and did not scream because this pain was nothing compared to what hid inside his heart. "Leave the wires if you must but take out the transmitter and the explosive."
"Be glad to do that if I knew what you were talking about. I'll just jerk out everything I see that I ain't ever seen inside a body before."
Aaron knew the man was being careful. Part of him appreciated Gunther's professionalism as he dug and carved the flesh around Aaron's spine. Another part of him begged the man to hurry. Unfortunately, Gunther did not listen to Aaron's silent pleas.
"An awful lot of tiny wires here," Doc observed calmly. "Do I need to disconnect them carefully or can I just cut them away."
"Cut the damn things." Aaron's jaw hurt. He heard his teeth grind. "They won't be used again."
"You know, this Talent Stone is wonderful. Normally I would have blood all over everything. Why, this here operation of yours is doing me good, Mister Turner. It's teaching me that I can do more than I ever knew." The doctor's voice hummed with contentment. "Hey, did you know that I can look right inside your organs."
"Always glad to help. Now hurry up. This hurts like hell."
"Please, Mister Turner. Watch your language. Hmmm. How about if I do this?"
The lights went out.
* * *
Aaron woke to a serious amount of discomfort. If he were anywhere else he would have said he hurt like hell, but this was a doctor's surgery. According to the tens of dozens of doctors who had cut on him in the past, he never suffered pain, only discomfort.
Humming contentedly, Doc Gunther stood beside the operating table while he removed blocks and unfastened straps. When he saw Aaron's open eyes, he winked. "Guess what? You survived. I hope these are what you wanted pulled out of you because I won't do any more than I already have."
Shifting uncomfortably, Aaron accepted two items that Doc picked up off a side table and passed over. One was a blood smeared piece of electronic equipment. The other was a small lump with the impression of his spine in it. C4. Still sitting on the side table was a ball of twisted up and blood coated wires.
"Is that it?" Gunther asked.
"Yeah."
"Good. I'll leave you here then. I have to see to the boy you destroyed earlier today."
Aaron was too drunk and too hurt to leave the office so he slept on the operating table that night. The next morning Kit came, took him home, and laid him on the bed.
One day later, despite his wound, Aaron pulled himself from the bed and stiffly walked down to the smithy. Once there, he collected the steel shot Jorrin had made for him and took it home. Kit watched while he pried open shot shells and poured out buckshot. His back spat fir
e into his brain.
"What are you doing?"
"Experimenting. Beech's shield stands up to a hell of a lot, but it does eventually fail. I thought I might make it fail sooner if I tried something unusual."
"Watch your language around me," Kit commanded. "I am your wife."
With a bit of creative packing Aaron discovered that he could fit fourteen pellets in each shell, on average. He worried while he loaded because most of the pellets were slightly tear shaped, which meant that their flight pattern would be erratic. Well, no matter. He would just stand close to Beech when he shot him.
The steel knives had made more pellets than he thought they would, but he only made thirty shells, figuring thirty would be more than enough. If he could not kill Haarod Beech with that many shots, he would not be able to kill him at all. Hell, if he managed to get off more than three or four shots he would be lucky. After all, he did not have even a tenth of the speed Sarah had owned.
Well, they would either do the job, or they would not. He had nothing else to attack Beech with but anger and hate.
"You're bleeding again," Kit said. "We need to change the bandages."
Thinking about Beech, Aaron sat still while she tended to him. When she finished he took a bloody rag from her hand and swiped it across the top of half a dozen shells. Those would be the ones he used first. He would attack with his blood and hate, as well as with powder and steel.
By late that evening the shells were loaded and crimped.
Aaron wanted to leave for the hunt immediately the next morning, but good sense told him to wait until he felt better. He was weak, and his system was brittle. It would not do for him to get sick and die before he had a chance to kill Beech. Besides, as feeble as he felt now, he was probably incapable of doing anything fatal to the man.
He did, however, try to transport. Picturing the Manor, he built the images in his mind. The dining room seemed as clear as when he had last stood in it a month earlier. The image was there, but the internal feeling would not come. He almost felt it. He reached, but it was--gone.
Aaron wasn't surprised. His was not a strong Talent. A few components inside the transmitter had given him a boost. Now that it was gone, he had nothing to draw on. His unsupported Talent could not do what he wanted.
Time to experiment.
He picked up a box sitting by his side. Brown paper wrapping bearing Cathy's name peeled away beneath his fingers. After pulling away the inside newspapers, he drew forth a lead wrapped object. The lead tape peeled away for two inches before it tore, showing the smallest hint of a crack through the wrapping.
Already, Aaron felt power tickling his Talent. He dug at the tape until he pried up a corner, and then he slowly pulled until its last inch separated from the wrapping.
His Talent palpitated. Power leaked from the revealed cracks in the wrapping, seeped into his body.
"Can you feel anything?" Kit asked anxiously.
Surprised, Aaron jerked his head up. The sensations going through him were so intense that hairs stood up on his arms. Looking at her arms he saw that her hair was curled and tangled. She showed no signs of feeling the Talent Stone at all.
"Yeah," he said, whispering softly. He breathed in deep and released a shaky sigh when another surge of power ran through him. This probing, this infusing, was better than sex. His skin tingled. His breathing grew rapid and ragged.
Removing the box cover, he quickly lifted the metal object inside. A sensual kiss raced through him.
"Use your Talent to seal it to you," Kit said pointlessly because Aaron's Talent was in full flare. He felt it reaching and caressing.
He turned his eyes to Kit and saw her leaning closer to observe his Talent Stone. "I never asked. Why are your Talent Stones shaped like a horseshoe?"
Gently caressing its curved shape, Aaron pulled the magnet to his lips and kissed it.
"Ready?"
She nodded yes.
* * *
When they transported into the Manor dining room Aaron found that it held crying children and a half naked woman. Miss Hurbage glared, hastily pulled her blouse shut, and fastened it.
"You could warn a person," she scolded while Autumn cried in protest at the interruption of her meal. "Really, Mistress Turner, if you are going to sneak around the place with your Mister you should let me know so I can maintain some dignity."
After opening her shirt to bare her breasts, Kit grabbed Autumn for nursing. As always Autumn reacted greedily. Of all Kit's children, she was the most demanding. "Sorry, Miss Hurbage. It won't happen again. Mister Turner wanted to see his children, and we were not sure if they were awake."
Aaron glanced questioningly at Kit before he lifted Bret and Chet and cradled them in his arms. "They've grown bigger."
Looking down, he saw babies, but they were not his children. They were not Ernest. He had seen Ernest every day. Ernest had smiled at him moments before he threw up over Aaron's hand the first time Aaron had tried to rock him. Ernest's eyes had lit up at the sight of Aaron. These two had eyes only for their mother. Aaron supposed he had loved them at one time. Probably, some part of him loved them still in some distant and abstract way. Another part of him hoped that when this was over his gentler emotions might come back into play. It would be nice to feel warm and emotional once more.
The babies started crying.
"Give me another one," Kit said. "Mama is so full she hurts." Aaron handed her Chet, or maybe he was Bret. One of them. The baby quit crying as soon as Kit set him to her free breast. The one Aaron held screamed protest at being left out. Frowning, Miss Hurbage leaped to her feet and grabbed him from Aaron.
"Ridiculous!" She stalked out of the room, a monarch defending her charge. "I'll feed this one in private."
An infant cradled gently in each arm, Kit settled into the vacated chair.
"How does it feel?"
Aaron considered. "Settled. I know it's there, but I only know it in the way I know Jorrin is working. Sometimes I can hear him, but I don't really notice that I do until the hammering stops. I think this Talent Stone could be that way."
He held up the silver tipped red horseshoe magnet and looked at it wonderingly. "I think it worked different when it tuned to me than it did for you. The pathways it used were already burned into me by the magnetism in the transmitter."
"Maybe," Kit said. "Probably."
Aaron turned the magnet in his hands, studying it. "Do you remember when we went to Jefferson? I had a magnet on me then, too. It was a little magnet that was supposed to go on the side of an ice chest. I think that magnet is why I was able to transfer so much more weight than I had ever carried before. It was stronger than the magnetism in the transmitter." He thought of Eric and the Gargoyle and the deaths they had caused. "Maybe it would have been best if I had never had it on me."
"We've been over that one before," Kit said.
"Yes, we have." Those deaths still weighed on him. They weighed heavy.
His hands stilled, and he frowned at the magnet they held. The sensations it had given him had been strange. Intense. He had experienced nothing like it from the refrigerator magnet, but he had started carrying that magnet on the Jefferson side. Had that made a difference? Were the physical laws between the two worlds that dissimilar?
Still cradling the children, Kit's eyes momentarily unfocused. Looking up from his brown study, Aaron waited expectantly, anxious and scared and hopeful. She turned her head and nodded toward the west. "About two hundred miles that way."
So they knew in what direction Beech lay, but Aaron was not ready to go after him yet. He still had healing to do.
Seven days passed slowly. Each day he asked Kit the question, and each day Kit reached into the wells of her Talent and drew forth an answer. Beech had moved further away. By the end of the week Kit guessed he was between three hundred and sixty to four hundred twenty miles from them. Then again, she admitted to Aaron, she had never been good at gauging distances.
One week la
ter the doctor pulled the stitches and told Aaron to take care. Since Aaron refused to lie to the man he only smiled, said he would take care of something, and transferred back to the Manor. Kit waited.
"Now?"
Aaron nodded. "I'm going alone right now. I'll take you when I get closer."
"Agreed," Kit said, "but not yet. You might not return, and you made me a promise. I still want that baby to remember Sarah by."
Aaron did his mechanical duty. His finish was not too soon for either of them. Spent, he lay on top of her, looked into her dead eyes, and knew they reflected what was in his own. This would never happen again. They were husband and wife, but without Sarah, they were nothing.
Rising from the bed, Aaron dressed and went into the front room. Once there, he picked up an eight inch steel knife from a side table, shoved it into a sheath, and slid the sheath beneath his belt. He grabbed his shooter's vest from the back of a chair and put it on before grabbing loaded shells from two bowls that were also on the side table. In one pocket of the vest he put thirty of his homemade steel shot shells. In the other pocket he put two dozen ounce and an eighth, number eight shells. A sling allowed him to carry his Winchester Model 12 shotgun over his shoulder.
Fully dressed in her riding gear, Kit entered the room and smiled fearfully when she saw him. "Just remember, Beech is a Talent Master with dozens of Talents, and all of them are strong. You only have two abilities so he is more powerful than you will ever be."
Aaron scowled because he did not want to hear this. He did not want to think. He only wanted to do. He wanted to rip and tear and fill the aching hollow inside him with the fulfillment of his duty and the reality of his revenge.
"Aaron," Kit demanded. "Listen to me."
Flicker
After tranporting as far west as he could remember ever being, Aaron found himself standing far from the start of the pass. Behind was the outline of Last Chance, his home. A bitter home. A home of awful memories and betrayed love. A home of heartache and pain and a reminder of the things he had brought into this world.
He was responsible. He had helped create Haarod Beech, had helped equipped him. Because of Aaron, Beech was able to use Sarah's sword to pull men and women to his cause. With it Beech had murdered far more people than Eric and the Gargoyle had ever dreamed of killing.
