That rubbed me the wrong way. I had nothing to prove to him, but hearing him make light of my relationship with Boyd burned me up inside. “You really think this is funny, huh?” I can do better than that. “Just because I don’t have feelings for you, doesn’t mean you have be a jerk.”
His laughter braked hard; his smile melted.
Too far. “I didn’t mean it like—”
He waved me of. “Don’t come at me with that. You didn’t have to take it there, Rebekah. Look at you – afraid to tell your boyfriend that a cop shot at you after he turned into a werewolf. Or that you got arrested and a real life Leprechaun bailed you out.” I wasn’t expecting it, but his tone had softened, almost if he pitied me, giving me that I-just-want-you-to-be-happy sound. “You’re living a lie, Rebekah. Sure, it feels good now, but you love him don’t you?”
Those words disarmed me and weighed on me at the same time. I found myself staring at the mud-caked floor of the bus. When I realized that he’d stopped talking and that he expected an answer, I looked up at him, mouth open, not sure where to start. “I-I do love him.” That was the hammer to me, a wakeup call reminding me that I wasn’t being fair to Boyd. More importantly, or equally as important, I should say, was that my words were a knife to Lyle.
Still, he didn’t show it. No sag of the eyes or slump of the shoulders, not even a twisting of the lips. He kept right on being Lyle, glaring at me with those gray eyes that didn’t seem to be so ominous right now. I looked away before he caught me off guard. The golden hair, the firm features, and the – What is wrong with me? I snapped out of it, giving my head a swift shake to cast the thoughts away, hoping to the nether that he hadn’t noticed.
“You wouldn’t ever use your power on me would you?” I asked him.
“To decant you?”
“Well…not exactly, but I suppose. I mean, you know, to read my mind or whatever it is that you do.” I wriggled my fingers like spiders to make my point before pushing my hair behind my ear.
For a while, longer than I’d hope, he thought about it, to the point where I told him that he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to. That was my way of skirting away from the betrayal if he answered yes.
Bobbing his head from one side to the other, Lyle appeared to be weighing his options. To my surprise, he said, “Yes.”
“Yes?” I blurted out, not sure why I’d been shocked when I knew the answer before I even asked. “What do you mean ‘yes’? Have you ever done it before? How could you do that to a friend?” He didn’t have time to answer. “That’s crossing the line, and you know it.”
Lyle was laughing.
“I’m being serious,” I said.
“You asked me a yes-or-no question,” he replied, still chuckling. “I answered in kind. So yes, I would decant you.” He saw my face flare up. “But only if it meant I had to save your life or something like that.”
That settled me down a bit, but I couldn’t let him think his nobility had given him the edge. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to do it even then.”
That warranted an even harder laugh from him. He grabbed the top of my head and shook it a little. “You think I want to know what’s going on up there in that ole’ bat cave?”
I knocked his hand away, the pain from my wound immediately flaring up my side. “You couldn’t handle what goes on in this cave.”
“It can’t be that bad. Only if your memories don’t run their mouths as much as you do.”
That earned him a backhand in the stomach. He covered his gut and laughed even more. I just stared at him, asking him the questions that I knew he’d never answer – the whole “Are you quite finished?” or the “You’re really getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?” Along with his chuckles, I let out a few grunted laughs myself.
After the episode died down and Lyle was able to look at me with a straight face again, he tried to sound serious. The question came out casual. “Think you’re going to be alright at your apartment all by yourself?”
“I don’t think I’m safe anywhere,” I shrugged. There weren’t many places I could hide from a Master Summoner, unless I chose to abandon summoning altogether.
“You could always hang tight at my place…just until this blows over.”
“It’s not going to just blow over,” I said. “If Castella is after me, then she’s not going to let this just blow over.” Lyle didn’t have much of a response to that. For my sake he was searching for one. I gave him a reprieve by deflecting. “It’s not only that. I don’t feel comfortable around your roommate.”
Lyle scratched the side of his face. “There aren’t a whole lot of people who feel comfortable around Carter.”
“Why don’t you kick him out? It’s not like he’s paying you rent.” I sat back in the seat, gently turning my phone over and over in my lap. “The guy’s a slob. His name’s not even on the lease.”
“Slob’s not the word for it. There ain’t no way I’m brining it up to him though. As far as I’m concerned, he can stay as long as he wants.”
“As long as he’s there, I’ll be going back to my own place.” I pressed the Home key on the phone a few times making the backlight flash on. “Marcus said he was going to send a Druid healer by to stitch me up anyway. With as much pain as I’m in, I’d be willing to try anything.”
“Stitch you up?” Lyle looked me up and down. “What do you think Boyd’s going to say when he sees you all nice and clean with no holes? If you recall, he did see you in the hospital.”
“I’m still going to wear the bandages…at least around him,” I muttered.
“What about the pain?”
I waved at the air. “He’ll have no idea. I’m pretty good at faking.” There was an empty pause between the two of us, and then Lyle’s mouth fell open.
“You can not keep dragging this guy along like this,” he said. “Either quit or commit.”
“I know, I know. Look, can we talk about something else, other than my boyfriend?”
“Sure,” he shrugged, leaning back in the seat like I was. “Keep in mind that lies and Yahtzee have a lot in common.”
I rolled my eyes, not willing to acknowledge how right he was. I wasn’t dragging Boyd along, as Lyle had accused me. I did love Boyd – always had, even before he and I became a pair.
He and I used to study chemistry together on campus. Long nights with nothing but compounds and caffeine, well that was enough for us to end up making a few covalent bonds of our own.
Boyd failed the class and couldn’t afford to take it again with out-of-state tuition being equal to the national deficit, so he dropped out and got a real job downtown waiting tables. When that didn’t work out, as putting an ambitious person in an entry level position rarely does, he started working double shifts at UPS, figuring that at least UPS didn’t make empty promises about promotions like his previous job had done.
The bus came to a hissing stop at Kensington Park on Avent Ferry Road. I said my goodbyes to Lyle with a thanks and a hug – one that refreshed my memory about the pain in my side.
After taking my time descending the stairs on the bus, I struggled through the parking lot to get to my apartment. I guess all the walking and shifting around was catching up to me.
Digging into my pants pocket, I found my keys, fumbling through them until I found the door key. That was when I noticed on the stairs next to my apartment door sat a woman, only a year or two older than I was. In her hand, she held a small clay pot.
Chapter
SEVEN
I hadn’t ever seen the woman on the stairs before, so it startled me a bit to see her perched near my apartment door. She could have been waiting for someone else, but she hadn’t taken her eyes off me the moment she’d spotted me.
It didn’t help that it was so cold. Then to see her outside wearing a pink tank top and navy shorts that only hoped to one day reach her knees, I’ll admit, I was thrown off a bit. Endless lines of tattoos lined her body, spiraling down to her legs, to he
r shoeless feet, and then back up again to her bare shoulders. Her fiery red hair flitted in the breeze, and no matter what, she wouldn’t stop staring at me.
“How’s it going?” I said, clearing the dead air between us as I came closer to her.
A fake smile made its way to her face, and that was when I realized that her full lips were so pink that she appeared to be wearing lip-gloss. “You Rebekah?” The corners of her mouth drew back towards her ears when she said my name. – a more genuine grin than the previous.
“Marcus send you?” I could play this verbal chess match if I had to.
“Depends,” she said, slowly spinning the flowerpot in her hands between her knees. “Are you…Rebekah?” She let the “k” click.
Who was she? Had Castella sent her here to finish the job? Or was she the Druid sent by Marcus? I wasn’t exactly sure which way to lean, so I figured I’d move a pawn instead of a rook. “I know of a Rebekah. Haven’t seen her for a while,” – which was true since the last time I’d looked into a mirror was when I’d put on makeup just before going to the Pour House last night. Then I remembered a hard truth. I hadn’t had a chance to clean the makeup off since the shooting. I probably look a waterboarded mime.
“I didn’t ask if you know of a Rebekah,” she said. “I asked if—”
“I know what you asked. And until you tell me who you are and who sent you, you won’t be getting any more information from me.” As a paranormal, we had to be suspicious. Everyone of us had an angle, even me, sad to admit. Some angles didn’t matter, like mine. Of course you might disagree. But all I did was learn more about the five elements to become better at my bindings. I hoped that one day Umara would promote me to paranormal investigator, but I was probably years from that. Right now, I was just learning, getting my bones and working part-time to make ends meet.
Other paranormals and their angels were like tire irons, prying themselves into people until they cracked open.
The woman on the stairs looked me over, squinting out of the corner of her eye. “How do you know Marcus?”
Subtle, but a move in the right direction, I thought. My suspicions were starting to fade a tad about her being one of Castella’s people. But I wasn’t taking any chances. If she wanted to take me down, there wasn’t much I could do, since I didn’t’ have a soul in my empty obelisk. Fortunately and unfortunately there weren’t any freshly dead bodies lying around in the parking lot.
“Marcus knows a friend of mine,” I said, miles away from divulging Umara’s name.
“This friend…would Marcus approve or disapprove?”
This lady wasn’t taking any chances either. I pursed my lips, rubbing my thumb and forefinger on the edge of the keys in plain view for her to see. Just because I didn’t have a soul didn’t mean that she had to know that I didn’t. And if she had been given any tip that I was a summoner, then she also knew that things could get pretty dicey if she acted out of the norm. The best part about a gun was that people knew its power, bullets or none.
“Who does Marcus ever approve of?” I shrugged. I made sure that my tone was friendly, but not jovial.
“Me,” she said, tongue in cheek, waiting to see if I would strike or stay my ground.
That was a hint – her way of letting me know that she meant no harm.
“Good,” I said. “Then I’m Rebekah, the one he sent you to find.”
Just then her entire personality changed. “Great! Cuz’ I’m Stephanie, Stephanie McPherson, the Druid healer. Can we go inside though? It’s getting kinda’ cold out here.”
Getting cold? I’d hardly call the upper thirties kinda’ cold. And how had she gone from mysterious to annoying in just one breath? “Sure. I believe I left the heat on from last night.” I hoped that I did. My thermostat had been going in and out lately, which only happened when it mattered most. “Why aren’t you wearing a coat, and some pants? It’s freezing out here.”
I pushed the key in and opened the door. Stephanie followed me inside. “The air and the breeze,” she said. “I couldn’t pass up the power from the earth breathing. I don’t care how cold it is.”
I tossed my keys on the counter where they clamored to a stop. “True.”
Druids drew their power from the earth, the power which traveled through the intricate tattoos that laced her body, looking more like crop circles converted to ink than some BA who wanted to go all Goth and rogue. There was nothing like the breeze to a Druid. It was like a glass of wine filled to the brim and running over when it came to the wind’s power dispersion. Water was the same.
Any Druid with the sense of a crane would have been out of her head not to slurp it up the first chance she got. Like summoners though, Druids had to be touching the earth or the water or the wind if they wanted to absorb its power. Clothing was a hindrance.
I gave my apartment a glance-around since I hadn’t had time to check for monsters under my bed. With Castella hunting me, anything was possible. I could see that Stephanie was doing the same, observing the thirty-two inch television in the living room or the circular dinner table that only had two chairs opposite each other or the cream plaid sofa lined with blue and burgundy – a retro from the 70’s.
“You have a lovely place,” she said.
I slid my coat off, biting back the pain in my side. “You don’t have to lie.”
“Who said I was?”
Either she’s lying or she’s dirt poor. “Oh…well, thanks.” I sat down at one of the chairs at the dining room table. “So how does this work?”
She set the plant on the table. Its green leaves bounced as it settled. “It’d be better if we were outside in the grass where I could, like, get some more power if I needed it, ya’ know? But I don’t want your neighbors freakin’ out. It’s no biggy. I brought the potato plant just in case. A lotta’ energy if I need be. Let me have a look at ya’.” She beckoned me with one hand before wiping her nose with the back of the other.
Starting to loosen up a bit, I raised my shirt, exposing a white bandage that had crimsoned and dried. Blue and bruised skin surrounded the wound.
“This is gonna’ hurt a little.” Stephanie squatted down and prodded at the sore like she was poking a Thanksgiving turkey for its doneness.
Teeth clenched and eyes closed, I said, “That’s not so bad.”
Stephanie looked up at me before taking a quick few breaths like she was about to scale a wall.
That’s when I felt it – the pain she had warned me about, a shooting pain that clawed up my sides and scraped down deep past my knees. Everything in me wanted to spring backwards, to scramble away, kicking and failing. But I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t allow it, seeming to know that if I moved an inch – no, a millimeter – that every bit of my insides would spill onto the carpet.
Stephanie had, without warning – without a true warning – sunk her arm, wrist-deep, into the wound, twisting and turning her hand until my flesh ripped and tore vertically and sideways like a dam about to break. I wanted to scream, but my voice was caught in my throat, every muscle in my body tense and tight.
She dug deeper. “Almost got it.”
What! At that thought my body loosened. My already squinted eyes dimmed, the shock of the agony rolling me towards unconsciousness. Numbness leaked through my limbs and traced through my fingers. Only, the unconsciousness never came.
A loud whack struck the side of my face so hard that it stretched the muscles in my neck from the force. The shrill of pain from her hand in my side reawakened until finally the scream that I was holding in screeched from the deepest part of me.
“Good, good,” she grunted, twisting her hand in me. “Screaming’s good. Keep screaming.”
It almost seemed facetious for her to command me to do the very thing that my body could not resist. I yelled and screamed and cried and cursed, demanding her head on a platter if I survived.
“Got it!” Stephanie gleamed at me with a victorious laugh.
With her hand still in the wou
nd, I felt a few small tugs, and then came the sensation of drinking a cup of hot chocolate, warm and smooth and soothing. Every ounce of me heated up as the tattoos on Stephanie’s body came alive with a bright blue visual hum that faded in and out while the warm hot cocoa sensation flowed through me.
Slowly, gradually, like removing a hot prong from a fire, she drew her hand out of my side, the sinew and tissue squishing together as they reformed. With her free hand, she touched the soil inside the flowerpot, drawing power from the potato. Minute blue lights traced through her tattoos as the green leaves above the soil withered into a late autumn brown. Soon after, they crinkled and died.
Stephanie’s hand was fully out of me now, covered in my blood and a few small chunks of guts that had come loose from all her tugging. “There ya’ go. All better.”
“All better?” was what I wanted to say with the utmost aggression. But it came out as a revelation. The pain had left me, almost completely. I did a twist to either side to see if I could feel even the slightest pull, or perhaps a suture that she’d sewn inside. Nothing. She’d only used Empyrean to stitch me up.
“Yup,” she said, rising from her squat, looking herself over where my blood and squirted out on her. “Don’t worry about that little hole.” She pointed to a tiny circle that had not healed, but leaked a thin trickle of red. “It’ll heal. I didn’t want to patch it like I did the rest of ya’.”
I looked over my once broken body. Even the blue and black bruises had gone away. “Why not?”
“Messes with the body’s memory system. Allota’ Druids’ll just heal ya’ right up and be on their way, not knowing when to stop. Most of them probably don’t know how or when to stop. But that screws people up pretty bad. Starts slow at first. Anemia. Hemophilia. The body forgets how to clot. Then it gets into some really nasty stuff. It’s how zombies come to be, the body deteriorating instead of replenishing.”
I laughed, until I realized that she wasn’t kidding.
“We have got to do something with all this blood,” Stephanie said, glancing around. “I’ll have my team come over and scrub the place. Won’t take but a day or two.”
Seize the Soul: Confessions of a Summoner Book 1 Page 5
