A Song of Forgiveness

by Lillian I Wolfe

  What? I sent back.

  My phone rang and I answered Gavin’s call with, “Why Nygard?”

  “You know why. We can go out to one of the canyons and try to teach him to stay close,” Gavin answered. “We need to train him to defend you without full-on attacking a yiaiwa, don’t we?”

  “I guess,” I grumbled. “What time?”

  We settled on meeting around noon at Gavin’s then heading out from there. I wasn’t as enthusiastic about the plan and not sure about taking my fur buddy into the desert. He would walk with a harness, but he wasn’t overjoyed with doing it.

  With all these thoughts buzzing in my mind, I decided it was a good time to call my mom. I dialed her number as the phone rang, and rang... and rang. Alaska was the same time zone, right? It wasn’t that late, so where was Mom? I left a message and headed upstairs to my computer.

  I had an email from the group Elly had sent my information to for consideration. The secretary for the group, a person called AlienSeeker, wrote that they had a few standard questions before they could consider membership. I read through them, not seeing anything too outrageous in them. Had I ever seen an alien? Where and when if so? Did I have any special skills or talents? Why did I feel I should be part of the group? Had I ever had any paranormal experiences? And a couple more along those lines. I answered them honestly, but not too specifically. I hesitated on alien; would I consider a yiaiwa an alien? Finally decided that was a yes response and gave just one example of the one on my rooftop.

  Fingers crossed, I sent the email back at the same time my cell rang. My heart leaped at the unexpected ring, but it was Mom returning my call. She’d been out playing Bingo at the local church, she said and had just gotten home. Bingo? Really? Since when did she go in for that kind of thing? I thought I heard a man’s voice in the background and I began to suspect there was more than Bingo involved. Well, why not? She and Dad had been divorced for a decade or so now.

  She asked about the video she’d seen and I went through the simplest explanation I could. “It was just a couple of hecklers, Mom. They got out of hand and made a scene. But I’m fine. A couple of little cuts is all. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Well, it looked pretty rowdy to me. I hope this doesn’t happen often.”

  “It doesn’t. So, how are you? What’s new in your life?”

  She babbled on about her work and what was happening in the town she lived in but failed to mention the mystery man in the background. Guess it didn’t concern me any more than my mentioning anything blowing up in my life concerned her. As I ended the call, a mild depression struck. Sometimes mothers and daughters become friends as the younger ages, but not so with my mom and me. We were practically strangers when it came to the important events in our lives. Ditto for Dad.

  Nygard’s low voice meowed his dissatisfaction half the way out to the canyon and Gavin had a hard time keeping a straight face.

  “That cat has the oddest meow I’ve ever heard.”

  “True enough,” I said. “It rasps a bit and it’s a low tone, but he’s got a good solid sound there.” I reached my fingers through the front of his carrier and scratched his head. He would have been happier if I had let him sit in my lap, but I was reluctant to risk him trying to climb over me and onto Gavin while he was driving. Even though I didn’t take him for rides often, he’d been enough to know the car went interesting and sometimes scary places.

  Once we’d bounced across the dirt road that caused a vibrato meow, Gavin pulled off to one side and shut the engine off. This area of the desert was just as desolate as the other one we’d used, but it was marginally closer to the city. He’s chosen a spot well off the main road since we were going to be attempting to blow things up. Strictly speaking, shooting firearms wasn’t allowed in the county except in designated areas and this definitely wasn’t designated.

  I set Ny’s carrier on the ground and gave him a few minutes to stare at the open land. After I felt he was comfortable with the surroundings, I opened the door and slipped a leash onto his harness. I wasn’t about to turn him loose in this big kitty box. He wandered out and walked around me, then chose a direction and started that way, straining against the lead when I wouldn’t move with him. His ears flicked back and he turned to glare at me.

  “Not yet,” I told him. In response, he sat on the dirt, blinking his eyes. “So, what’s the next step, Gavin?”

  He shrugged. “Do I look like a cat trainer? Try walking him around and letting him see the land and get comfortable. Then I guess you tell him what you want him to do and then try to get him to do it.”

  ‘Sure,” I murmured. This was really going to work. As I walked toward him, he got back to his feet and began to lead the way. Generally, when I’d had success with him, it was by letting him choose the direction we’d go. If I pushed it, he was likely to drop down and roll onto his back, refusing to move.

  After a little bit of watching him sniff at the brush, whiskers twitching, and eyes darting across the open sand, I started talking to him. Explain what I want, the man had said.

  “Okay, Nygard. Here’s what I want you to do, okay? When I say, ‘to me’, I want you to jump onto my shoulder.” As I spoke I gestured to my left shoulder. I repeated it a couple of times and although he listened and looked at me with a sort of attentive look, I was pretty sure the words meant nothing to him.

  Kneeling close to him, I said, “Let’s try it. To me.” As I spoke, I tapped my left shoulder, then reached to pick him up and place him on my shoulder. Luckily, he tended to go limp when I lifted him, so it was easy to position him, but when I let go he dug in a claw and clung.

  “Eek, no claws, baby. Pull your claws.” That, at least, he understood and withdrew the claw, settling unevenly on my shoulder. “Good boy. You’re doing good.” I patted the ground and he jumped down, almost getting tangled in the leash.

  This was going to take some time and I decided a little padding on my shoulder would be a good thing. I pulled my jacket on, then tried again, repeating the whole talk and show thing. After five more times of doing this, Nygard got the idea that “to me” meant jump to me and made the jump right on cue. He still seemed a little uncertain on my shoulder although, after the kitchen incident, he certainly knew how to wrap around my neck.

  “Great,” Gavin said after he watched the most recent successful attempt. “Now let’s see if he will do it while you’re standing up.”

  I got to my feet, letting the leash lie on the ground with a good bit of distance between me and the cat. Nygard watched me intently. “To me,” I said and didn’t tap my shoulder to see if he got the voice command. He blinked as if waiting for the hand signal, so I repeated the verbal command with the tap. Then he leaped, his body stretching out like a long-haired panther and landed on my shoulder with a solid grip. I was grateful for the jacket as I felt the tug of his claws grabbing it, then he flipped his body across my shoulders just as he’d done in the kitchen. I rewarded him with a salmon jerky treat and grinned at Gavin.

  “Not bad, huh?”

  “Pretty darn good,” he said with a big grin. “Smart kitty. Now let’s try your blast with you holding a knife. Let’s give Nygard a rest and see how it works with just your power.”

  I nodded, then knelt so Ny could jump down and I put him back in the carrier while I practiced this part. Although I was proud of his performance, I had some concerns about his spirit form doing that if we were in the transitional cemetery.

  “You know, I don’t know if this will work on the other plane. When Nygard arrived there, he was about ten times his normal size, nearly the size of a panther. He may have weight there and he might not, but none of this may work there.”

  He paused to consider this, then resumed pulling a dagger out of its sheath. It was about eight inches long without the handle, making it close to eleven total.

  “Bit bigger than a butcher knife,” I said.

  “Heavier, but about the same length. It’s good steel and might gi
ve better results. So far as Nygard, I guess we won’t know if he can help the same way on the next level until you try. Let’s give this a go.”

  I took the blade and hefted it in my hand, slashing back and forth with it to get the feel of it. It was heavier and felt comfortable in my hand. I took a deep breath in preparation.

  Gavin pointed to a dead bush and said, “Try that one. See if you can chop it down.”

  Focusing on the bush and seeing it as a yiaiwa, I gathered my anger and fear together and pointed the hand with the knife toward it. I shoved my emotions into a ball of white and pushed it through the knife toward the bush, slashing back and forth like it was a machete until the energy chewed the bush to the ground.

  Gavin watched with his arms crossed as the pieces flew around in small bits. “Wow. I guess that works. You may not need Nygard’s energy with it.”

  Astonished, we walked over to the whittled down bush, and I shook my head. “This is crazy. It seems to direct and amplify my blast. But I have to tell you, this takes a lot of energy. I feel drained.” I took a deep breath and loosened my shoulders.

  “It’s new to you. With a little practice, you’ll gain more endurance and probably control the energy better. Plus you were expending a fair amount while you were training Nygard.”

  “You’re right. The big question is how much time do we have?”

  He glanced at the ground, shuffling his boots in the dirt, then gazed at me. “Don’t know. But I hope it’s enough.”

  “Did Orielle get off all right?” I knew she’d caught an early plane to wherever she was going.

  “Yeah, made her connection in San Francisco and should be landing...” He paused to look at his watch. “...in about two hours. I’m hoping she can put some of the pieces together with enough information for us to know our next step. It won’t be enough to just fight these demons. We need to seal them out again.”

  That was a sobering thought.

  After a break where I gobbled down an energy bar and a cold coffee, I tried the knife-casting technique a few more times with Gavin recording the blasts. I had pretty good control and it appeared the knife movements in my hand influenced the way the energy flowed. If I waved it, it was a slicing motion, spinning it in my hand created a whirling motion, and thrusting it like a sword made a straight line burst. Once I’d launched it, I couldn’t alter the direction of the blast with either my hand or my knife, so it wasn’t as if it had a control of it, but whatever I was doing with the knife at pre-launch and launch appeared to be the pattern it took.

  “I don’t understand what the knife is doing,” I said to Gavin after the sixth toss, baffled by the way this worked. “Is it controlling the light or guiding it in some way.”

  He held up his phone on the playback of the last one and I stepped closer to see it. Standing behind me, Gavin brought his arm around me so the screen was about eye level and a few inches from my nose. He leaned in, his head almost on my shoulder, his breath warming my cheek and ear, as he pressed the play button. A musky scent from his cologne mixed with sweat teased at my senses, awakening a desire that I fought to control.

  “Watch what you’re doing here.”

  I focused on the image, seeing my hand swirling the knife a few seconds before I cast the blast. The blue-white light shot forward, spinning like a multi-bladed fan as it flew toward the target. I’d continued to swirl the blade, moving it as if to shift the flow although the energy stayed true to the course. Toward the end, I’d stopped moving the blade and dropped my hand down. Pure energy in a whirlpool of speed shredded apart the hapless sage bush moments after a rabbit, stretching out in rapid hops, had skittered away.

  “Yeah, I see that it has no effect once I’ve released the power. But the motion continues. Why?”

  The playback ended and he lowered his arm but didn’t step away. “I’m not sure. Two possibilities come to mind. One, the blade lends power to the blast, which is indicated by the blue tone it as it picks up something from the steel. The pre-movement gives an impetus to the cast that causes the movement that’s enhanced by the focus you can get with the blade. In short, it enhances the cast and centers your energy into it.”

  “So it’s a focal point that gives it a boost,” I said, thinking I got the gist of what he’d said. “What’s the second possibility?”

  “Magic.”

  Wanting to see if he was serious, I turned my head toward him, suddenly realizing how close his head was as I nearly hit his nose. “Oops. So, magic? Really?”

  “You have any other explanations?” His eyebrows lifted in question, widening his eyes, deep pools of shaded blues that seemed to blend into a whirlpool. I blinked. He was too damn close.

  I stepped back from him, bumping his arm that was halfway around me. “I don’t know. This—this is all beyond me.”

  He stepped away then, trailing his hand along my waist as he moved back. He glanced at his phone. “Science, magic. They’re similar. How they work is understood by those who know how to use it. For those of us who happen onto it, it’s all magic and unfathomable. All I know is that I have a talent for it and I can cast spells once I learn them. How to create them? I haven’t a clue.”

  The only thing I understood was that I had been unwillingly yanked into a war between good and evil and handed weapons, one by one, that might or might not give me an edge against effing demons. My allies might be growing, but would it be enough?

  Gavin read my bewildered expression and forced a small smile. “We’re all in this whether we like it or not, chica. Let’s try a cast with the cat and the knife.”

  Still reluctant to involve my cat, I nonetheless freed him from his carrier, still holding his leash, and stepped back a few feet. I called him and patted my shoulder. He gazed at me, blue eyes intent with curiosity, then he shifted his view to the desert area again. His whiskers twitched and his ears shifted forward as he listened. I worried that he might bolt off chasing a quail or other small creature and I tightened my grip on the leash.

  I repeated my verbal command. Never expect cooperation from a feline. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what to do more than whether he wanted to do it.

  “Nygard, to me,” I said for the third time. He meowed at his name, then decided to cooperate. Running a couple of steps, he made that graceful leap, landing solidly and wrapping himself around my neck. His purr rumbled in my ear as he waited for whatever was to come.

  Lifting my knife in my right hand, I pointed it toward the newly designated target, another scraggly-looking desert sage about two hundred yards away. Instead of prepping, I drew a quick breath, spun the knife in my hand, and shoved it forward, almost lunging. I felt Nygard dig claws into my jacket as pressure on my shoulder without penetration of my skin. The blast shot out resembling a three-foot whirlpool of unbridled energy. It skewed a little off the intended path, caught the edge of the shrub, and plowed into the dirt behind it creating a dust funnel.

  “Well, that could be useful to blind your enemy, I suppose,” Gavin said in a deadpan tone.

  “So, I was a little off. I figured I don’t have a lot of time in a fight and I need to get used to getting it launched quickly. I still winged the target.” Besides, my targets weren’t likely to stand and wait for me to blast them.

  “You’re right on both counts.” He walked toward me as he tucked his phone into his back pocket. “Let’s call it a day. I didn’t see much difference in that with the cat. Did you notice anything?”

  Shaking my head, I kneeled and urged Nygard off my shoulder. “Not really. I don’t think he was helping.”

  “Well, no, it didn’t seem like it.”

  “I mean, I don’t think he’d connected to me. Now that I’m getting used to it, I can feel a surge of energy when he and I merge our energy streams. I think he didn’t see a reason to do it, so he didn’t.”

  I scratched the cat’s ears, gave him another treat, and started to put him back in his carrier. Resisting, he shoved his paws in front of him, push
ing against each side. His head swiveled to the side, staring at the desert, and the potential prey in it.

  After a brief battle with the stubborn feline, I insisted he go in, backing him into it, then holding him long enough to unclip the leash. “Behave,” I growled at him and he answered with an annoyed, rasping mrrow. Familiar or not, the furry guy had a mind of his own.

  The drive back to town was mostly silent as I turned my thoughts to the other problems in my life. I wasn’t sure what I could do to help Roger since he was stuck in a part of the cemetery I wasn’t prepared to enter. If he hadn’t committed suicide, wouldn’t the detectives have suspected murder? Oh, wait, they did consider it, didn’t they? That was why they questioned Ferris and me. But they concluded suicide. Should I contact Moss and ask him to look into it more? Did I want to do that? Still annoyed that he’d divulged part of my secret to the Incline deputy, I wanted to steer clear of him and not owe him any favors.

  But that more generous part of me nagged that as annoying as Roger had been, he didn’t deserve the fate he was getting. Then again, my more vengeful side reasoned that I didn’t actually know Roger was trapped there. It might just be my conscience doing a number on me. So, I put him on the back burner. I would not feel guilty about not doing his service.

  Something else bothered me though—the stray thought I’d had about Roger possibly knowing where I lived. I thought back to the break-in I’d assumed was Gayle Trumbull or someone working for her looking for information about me. Nothing was taken and that had been my working theory.

  Now, I reconsidered. Could it have been Roger? It made sense. He had an obsessing crush on me and maybe had looked up my address or followed me home. Then, if he watched the house or knew when I was at work, he could have broken in and tip-toed through my belongings and computer files. Shit! I hadn’t checked my underwear drawer and probably wouldn’t notice if anything like panties or bra was missing. Even after the fact, that was an unsettling thought.