Divine Knight

by Michelle L. Levigne

  She turned the focus of her thoughts and energies to helping Dawn and Stanzer and their fellow exiles. That was the purpose of her existence, after all--to protect the innocent and defenseless, to dumfound and confound the arrogant and powerful and cruel, and to nourish the magical and rare and unique.

  * * * *

  Ethan dreamed five nights in a row of Angela and Divine's Emporium. He couldn't be sure if she was the same magical lady of his previous dreams, and the shop was the same house. Something had changed. He saw her and the house from a distance, and a haze of light acted as a barrier, keeping him from stepping out of the darkness and crossing the street, or climbing the hill from the forest and approaching the house. When he let himself think about his dreams, he suspected that if he could push the wrought iron gate open and step into the light that surrounded the house, he would have answers. All the answers he could ever want.

  Each night, he woke from his dreams feeling cold and dusty inside, and more tired than he had felt when he went to sleep. Each night, the distance between him and Divine's Emporium lengthened, until on the last night he had only a glimpse of movement through the windows, and could only assume that was Angela, moving about safe within the walls of her house, where there was light and music and warmth.

  The sixth night, he didn't dream of Divine's Emporium at all. He woke rested, yet with an ache inside. After almost an entire day of infrequently gnawing on the question of what could be wrong, he realized that he had not dreamed at all.

  That was a good thing, wasn't it?

  He busied himself investigating the second batch of leads the Von Helados had given him, and then following up on more they sent him just after he returned from his trip to Neighborlee. It worried Ethan that these new clues were all inside the empty circle that surrounded the town, creating a new, smaller circle of empty space. He felt like he had while watching his first motion picture, knowing what danger lay around the corner for the hapless heroine, listening to the other people in the audience calling out warnings, and knowing it was useless.

  For a moment, he gnawed on the oddness of that memory. Film audiences were too sophisticated to do that, so why did he distinctly remember that happening? And why was the heroine tied to the railroad tracks in his memory? Nobody did that to heroines in movies nowadays. Mostly because heroines knew how to kick the snot out of villains who resorted to such tactics. A villain who would use a Taser or other technology to get the drop on the heroine wouldn't resort to killing her with a train. Besides, trains had too much safety gear to let something like that happen.

  What was he doing, gnawing on a memory like that, nit-picking the rationale of movie plots? Ethan worried that something was definitely wrong with him, that he let himself get sidetracked with such illogical concerns. Maybe when that book thief Tasered him, it had scrambled the wrong circuits and he was still recovering? Could he get brain damage from a Taser?

  He had to get back to work. What was he thinking about? Oh yeah--the smaller circle of emptiness, with Neighborlee almost dead center. Ethan picked up the phone twice to call Stanzer and give him warning, but didn't. As long as that empty circle, thirty miles in diameter, lay around Neighborlee, the town and Divine's Emporium and Angela were safe. Maybe something was keeping the Von Helados from getting any closer to her. Then again, the new batch of clues certainly seemed to indicate they were getting closer, as if they were wearing down the barrier or whoever blocked them.

  Neither theory made any sense. He snarled at himself for getting off track again, and refocused on the task at hand.

  A search engine he set up gleaned any mention from the Internet and law enforcement sources about unusual activity around the town. Just in case. He also did some reverse investigation of the Von Helados, to try to keep track of their actions. He wouldn't put it past them to have him do the preliminary work of proving this Annabelle they sought wasn't anywhere else in the country, and then they would swoop in and snatch up Angela and brainwash her and drag her off to whatever mausoleum of a dark, dreary mansion they lived in.

  Just because Angela looked something like Annabelle--if there had ever been a real Annabelle--that didn't mean he would allow the Von Helados to take her. Just in that brief, strange, unbalancing encounter, Ethan had learned enough about Angela to know she belonged in Divine's Emporium as if she and the house had grown together from that spot, like two intertwined trees.

  Making the resolution, and being conscious of his decision, gave him more peace than he had known in a long time. He felt a touch of amusement to realize that he hadn't even noticed he didn't have peace until then. He wasn't quite ready to give up the hard-won stability of his life and the logic and reason that guided his steps. Yet at the same time, he liked this sense that stepping out in faith, against logic, had given him this faint feeling of something slipping back into place in his mind and heart, and soul. If he even had a soul.

  The night after he made that conscious choice, he dreamed again of standing a few steps away from the porch of Divine's Emporium at night. Angela stood on the porch, in the same blue dress he had seen her in that day he burned the sketch, but she was surrounded by streamers of light in multiple colors, like gossamer scarves stirred by a swirling wind. She held out her hand, beckoning to him to come up, into the light. Something pushed him and he stumbled forward, his legs stiff-locked with fear and cold. A deep-seated fury churned inside him, eating away at him with icy flames. Angela caught hold of his hand and managed to pull him close enough to the porch that his foot banged against the bottom step.

  She spoke, but he couldn't hear her voice. He knew she was begging him to step up, that she could only hold his hand and pull, but she couldn't bring him up onto the porch unless he took the first step. He wanted to take that step. His legs stayed stiff. All he could do was tighten his grip on her hand, until he thought he would crush the fragile bones. But she didn't cry out in pain, didn't react except to smile and pull harder and keep begging him, silently, to step up.

  Something grabbed him, pulling him backwards. Pulling Angela off the porch with him. He tried to let go of her hand. He couldn't move his fingers. She screamed, and the sound shattered the throbbing silence and threatened to turn his bones to dust. Still he couldn't move, couldn't let go of her. He vanished entirely into the darkness.

  A faint glow surrounded Angela's hand as it was pulled into darkness with him. Ethan watched, horrified, as that glow turned to a pale, gray, writhing luminescence like rotting stumps in a swamp. Her soft, slim hand shriveled and turned to bones, and the shriveling traveled up her arm. Angela struggled, holding onto the porch railing with one hand, not even able to scream now, and the terror in her eyes slashed at his soul.

  With a roar of fury and a feeling of blood gushing up from deep inside him, choking him, Ethan opened his hand. He felt as if his bones were shattering to dust, but he managed to let go of her. She fell back against the wall of Divine's, cradling her shriveled, gray arm, and wept as he tumbled backwards, into the darkness.

  He woke with a shout, rolled out of his bed and struck his head against the nightstand. He huddled on the floor, gasping for breath, welcoming the feeling of hot blood streaming down his sweating face and the pain that told him this was no dream.

  That settled it. He was never going near Neighborlee, Ohio, or Divine's Emporium, ever again. Not if there was a chance he could be part of killing Angela.

  * * * *

  Angela found great satisfaction in helping the five children who showed up in Neighborlee after weeks of anticipation and stealthy travel. Not just because they belonged with Dawn and Stanzer, but when she heard all the details of what Wolcott had done in his quest to control four members of the Hunt, she wanted him humiliated as well as frustrated and defeated. She busied herself settling the five fugitives--Cinden, Sereena, Rob, and Dale, and their new recruit, Obie, Wolcott's grandson--and she was pleased when Cinden saw Maurice the moment she stepped into Divine's Emporium.

  It was only
a matter of days after their arrival that Wolcott's men came into Neighborlee. That confirmed Dawn and Cinden's fear. Wolcott had known about Dawn and Stanzer all along, but had only held back because he couldn't yet twist records to falsify authority over them, and couldn't intimidate people into giving him what he wanted.

  Angela felt the first uneasy ripples of reaction to the invasion in the foundation of the town, and couldn't at first discern the source. Did it come from the enemy underground that Maurice referred to as Big Ugly, or did the energy simply react to the presence of enemies coming within the magical atmosphere that had built up around the town over the decades? She said nothing about either the sensation or her questions, and waited for the watching friends set up around town to report that strangers asking the wrong kinds of questions--looking for five children who were newcomers--were moving all over the town, seemingly everywhere.

  The fact that she couldn't discern immediately the source of the imbalance and disturbance in the town worried her, and showed her just how much she had let the events of the last few weeks affect her. Several times, she caught herself walking up the stairs to the second floor landing, to stare at the spot in the wallpaper where she thought she caught glimpses of the stone gates of the hidden garden. One time, angry with herself, she brushed her fingertips over a section of the wallpaper where she thought the latch of the silver gate should be. Angela gasped and froze, feeling the cool of the silver, the muted tingle of sleeping magic, seeping up through the paper.

  "One way or another," she whispered, "this must come to an end."

  She sent her consciousness deeper into the walls and foundation of the house, drawing on the seepage of magic from all the dimensional slits and doorways. When she went to bed that night, she called the winkies to her and asked to borrow their energy. They settled all over her and her bed, so her room glowed in a rich, deep purple luminescence that lulled her to sleep and helped her control her dreaming. All that night, she visited her acquaintances and allies, warning them of the battle she sensed coming. It comforted her and helped her find her balance again, to discuss what those on the other side would do to guard their doorway if anything happened to her, and the watchtower that was Divine's Emporium was compromised.

  Lanie had already drafted her friends in her Star Trek club to watch for strangers poking their noses where they didn't belong in town, strangers asking questions about the five teens who were staying with Dawn and Stayn. She'd told them to take note of where the strangers went, who they talked to, and what they learned.

  It gave Angela great satisfaction to know that the statement still held true: Neighborlee took care of its own. By the time Wolcott's men arrived to ask their questions, most of the residents of the town were either aware of the refugee status of the five children, or they simply knew that the strangers had invaded to cause trouble.

  Angela didn't quite approve of the games the seven members of the Hunt played with Wolcott's spies, the risks they ran leading them on a wild goose chase to the quarries. Despite their other-worldly origins and their talents, they were still children--even Stayn, to some extent. But she admired their bravado and their mature realization that the sooner they faced down their enemy and forced his hand, the safer they would be. Even though it made her uneasy to be away from Divine's Emporium at nightfall, she knew she had to be there to support Dawn and Stanzer and their allies.

  Chapter Eight

  Wolcott accepted the proposal the Hunt made to him--healing in exchange for leaving them entirely alone. Angela didn't believe for a moment that he would live up to the agreement once he got what he wanted. Just the fact that Cinden, with her too-soon awakened powers, could heal him of decades of damage from living in an alien world, would make her too valuable a commodity to let her roam freely. If he didn't want her for himself, Wolcott would want to control her powers on principle alone, and to sell her healing gift to the highest bidder, while at the same time preserving her to hand over to Gahlmorag. The other members of the Hunt who had escaped Wolcott's mansion had also had their family gifts forced awake, maturing too quickly, in one way or another. It was too soon to tell if they had been damaged in any way by the acceleration. Wolcott would want to keep an eye on them, at the very least.

  Besides, there was one detail that no one mentioned but was very obvious--the Hunt wanted to settle here in Neighborlee, where Dawn and Stanzer had prepared a home for them, a headquarters. They had to deal with Wolcott in a permanent fashion, so that he wouldn't come back to the town, let alone spy on them or try to control them from a distance. They wouldn't be safe, and the secrets of the town wouldn't be safe, unless he was dealt with once and for all.

  "Basically, we're depending on him being the liar and cheat and selfish brute he's proven himself to be all along," Stanzer said, when Maurice brought up what Angela had been thinking all this time, since Cinden made her proposal to Wolcott's men. "He's already forfeited the help and protection of the Hounds. When he breaks his vow, when he acts against us, especially Cinden after she expends so much of her gift helping him... Well, we're hoping for a lot of fireworks, to put it mildly."

  "Hey, I've seen your big puppy dogs in action," Maurice remarked, his voice and expression sour, but mischief in his eyes. "You hope this bozo steps in the doodoo up to his neck and really fries himself good."

  "Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it." Stanzer's smile faded quickly.

  Angela ached for him, seeing the weariness that shadowed his eyes and drew lines around his mouth. In effect, he was responsible for six minors, though Dawn was about to graduate from high school and would soon be a legal adult. Stanzer had to keep them safe, guide them in growing into their roles in the Hunt as well as figure out what they would do to save their world whenever they managed to go home. The pressure on him had to be incredible. She wasn't quite sure what to do to help him, other than to offer a sounding board and guidance in the basics, like clothes and housing and arranging for legal guardianship for the younger ones.

  Angela was doubly alert. She hadn't needed to be told by Lanie's friends, who stood sentinel duty at the major roads into town, when Wolcott's big black limousine and his bodyguards in their cars crossed the border into Neighborlee. She felt that shiver in the very air and ground, reacting in revulsion to the presence of one who had been born with gifts and had broken his sacred vows for the sake of power.

  The sickness in Wolcott's body sent a stinging sensation through the air in varying waves, like ripples spreading out from a stone thrown into a still, shallow pond. The body reflected the soul. This soul was so diseased that nothing Cinden could do as a healer, or Serena as a visionary and mind-healer, could ever repair that damage. Because it had been done by choice, self-inflicted, and proudly embraced.

  Angela stood at a distance in the park, where Cinden and the other members of the Hunt had set their meeting, and she watched as Wolcott's car was parked and the old, sick traitor climbed out and into a wheelchair, to be pushed up onto the stage of the natural amphitheater. Angela felt the shock waves go down into the ground. She caught her breath as she felt the stirring of the cold, hungry, sleeping awareness underneath Neighborlee. She felt the dimensional walls shudder, felt the pressing of the enemy's strength and sentience, testing the barriers that kept it from entirely manifesting into this particular dimension.

  Winkies gathered around her, thickening the air, responding to her call. They covered her in a cloak, loaning her their strength, and she dug her bare feet into the grass, sending roots of awareness and power into the soil to reinforce that protective barrier. She flung her hands into the air and sent power into the dome that shielded her town and the parklands surrounding it.

  "What was that?" Lanie whispered, wheeling up behind Angela.

  "What was what?" Angela opened her eyes and sputtered a breathless laugh when she couldn't see for a moment, her vision clouded by pink and yellow and violet winkies.

  "Like a big old bell rang, just once. A bell about the size of
the whole town. I can still feel it, buzzing in my bones." She pointed at the ground. "It's not waking up again, is it?"

  "No. Thank goodness."

  "Yeah, one master villain at a time to deal with, please." Lanie turned to study the shimmering of power that covered Cinden as she crossed the amphitheater stage and Wolcott's man helped him get out of the chair to lie on his back before her. "Too bad we're the good guys."

  "Who says?" Maurice quipped, flying up to join them. He snapped off a salute and came in for a landing on Lanie's shoulder. "Why's it bad to be the good guys?"

  "Now's the perfect opportunity for Cinden to off the creepazoid, while he's totally helpless." She glanced at them and snorted. "Did you ever watch that really corny Flash Gordon movie that came out in like the eighties, with Max Von Sydow and Timothy Dalton?"

  "Is that a hint to watch it, or a warning?"

  "I think I know what scene you're referring to," Angela said, grateful for Lanie's insertion of humor into the tension of the moment.

  "There's this scene where Dale, Flash's erstwhile girlfriend--" Lanie stuck her tongue out at Maurice when he snorted and muttered, "Erstwhile!" "She's up against Ming's daughter, whatever her name is. Space bimbo, all in leather. Anyway, she explains why Earth people can't do some nasty, vengeful thing that, when you really think about it, is totally logical and would save everybody a lot of trouble in the end. And she finishes up with, 'And that's why we're better than you are,' or something like that."

  She sighed and slumped in her wheelchair. "And that's a good thing, I guess, because I would not want to be the one to tell a kid Cinden's age she needs to kill the nasty old codger while he's under her hands. Although, as a healer, she certainly has to know how to break the Human body to be able to fix it."

  "Did you know the geezer actually tried to marry her, when they were kids back on the home planet?" Maurice offered.