by Dan Kemp
A few paces ahead, a crimson-ragged man crashed through a window, hitting the ground hard and moaning. A few bullets followed him, hitting the next building over. Skye crouched under the window and offered her hand. "Let's go." She helped him up, and they went on.
When she returned to the raptor pen, the sounds of battle had quieted somewhat. They were not alone here, though.
The man was tall, well-built, wearing leather and creeping his way toward the stairs. Even with his back turned to her, he struck a somewhat intimidating figure. She counted at least two guns on his person. Skye crept up behind him, revolver leveled, then pressed it against his neck. He tensed up, raising his hands. "Ah, slowly," she said to him. "Good. Now turn around."
***
Everything had gone so wrong.
After her encounter with Dorian Black, that contemptible man, she had slipped away into the woods. Observing the scene from there, it was clear the brief battle had been lost. This confused Skye, and that made her angry. She had figured the man to be soft, if perhaps charismatic and skilled at organization, but soft nonetheless. Why else would he hide behind fifteen foot walls? And yet here he was; not only was he unafraid to leave the safety of Black Creek, he had easily destroyed them. Easily overpowered her. And he truly never had seemed afraid. If anything, he seemed amused by her. This made her most angry of all.
She had traveled on foot for the entire day, finally finding a functional car around sunset. It had been left abandoned at a trailhead and she managed to hotwire it with ease, a skill she had learned on the road, before she joined the Church. It felt like an awfully long time ago.
The blast of cool air from the vents was pure relief, and she enjoyed it a moment longer than she intended to before shutting it off.
The moon was just rising into the sky overhead when she arrived back at the Church. She was surprised to find her master in his usual place.
"Skye? What are you doing here?"
"You haven't left yet?" she responded.
He shook his head. "No, not for a few days yet. But I didn't expect to see you again. What happened?"
Skye recounted the events as she remembered them, every detail including her apprentice's betrayal and her encounter with Dorian Black. Then she told of how she planned to strike back at him, how they could cripple their power supply. He listened attentively as she spoke, then nodded a few times when she was done. "I will need to confer with my superiors," he said after a moment. "Please wait here."
She wanted to say no, to insist that she be the one to speak with them, but she didn't. Skye found that she was very tired, and so she simply sat down and waited.
He returned a short while later, a green-eyed Robe in tow. The two men were speaking quietly as they entered, then her master addressed her.
"Skye, tell him everything." She did. When she finished, the Robe glanced at her master and smiled.
"Very good," he said. "You’re authorized to lead the attack. We’ll proceed with your plan, as well as something more, for good measure. May James be with you."
"And with you," she said.
James
The world was changing.
Of course, in all the many millions of years James had walked the earth, it had always been changing. But aside from those handful of cataclysmic extinctions and other events he had seen, change had always come slowly.
Now the world progressed at dizzying speed. It seemed as if one day humans were living in caves and small tribes, and on the next they gathered by the thousands in cities as smaller towns spread across the countryside. Far gone were the days when tiny villages survived thanks only to the gifts he left them. Collectively they had progressed further than he could ever have conceived.
This alarming sense of change was only worsened by James's new lifestyle. Gone too were the days when he could settle in a place for years at a time, forced only to move on after several decades. Now he was almost constantly on the move, much as he had been in his earliest days, but now with the ever-present sense that something dark and terrible was following him.
In his path he left only tragedy and death. Whole cities burned to the ground. Terrible storms and massive waves from the sea leveled towns. James just kept running, unharmed as ever, but his adversary remained unseen. What at first seemed only coincidence, soon became clear evidence that he was not truly alone on this now-crowded planet after all. Someone else like him must be out there, and whoever they were, they were set on destroying him.
It was around this time that James first crossed the ocean, his final desperate attempt at escape. He booked passage on an impressive wooden ship which carried him across the violent waves. The journey was long and nauseating, but with every passing day he felt that evil presence fading further into the deepest reaches of his mind.
So James arrived in this new world feeling liberated. This land was much the same as the one he had left, and though its civilization was newer, it seemed to progress at an even faster pace. He spent months, then years, in hesitant isolation there, fearing for the day when he would be found once again. Yet the years went on without incident, and so James slowly slipped with relief back into the life he had lost.
Though this new land felt truly no different than the old, being there offered him distance. Distance from all the happy times, and his pride at the things he had accomplished, but also distance from the pain and suffering, the wrongs he had done. And so, despite everything within him which told him not to, he met a woman.
Her name was Emeline. James had worked for the last several years as the apprentice of her father, a physician in Boston. He was a rough man who only rarely showed any kindness to anyone other than his patients, but he had always been impressed with James's skills and often inquired whether he had been trained elsewhere. James always insisted he had not, but that the compliment was appreciated. The two men were never friends, but over time it became clear he viewed James like a son, and a potential suitor for his daughter.
The idea made him nervous, but James was never completely averse to it. After enough cajoling he finally agreed to meet her. She was a beautiful young woman, and kind. Shy, as the customs of the time dictated she ought to be, but she opened up in his presence. They warmed to each other very quickly. James laughed at her jokes and stories about her father. She listened with awe to his stories of life overseas, modified slightly to suit the invented backstory he had told the locals. Many nights they would walk along the harbor, watching the men load and unload the ships under the sunset.
Her father approved of their budding romance, affording James days off from his training to spend more time with her. Within a year, the two were wed, and James was happy again. Before long he was practicing as a physician himself. Though this was something he had already done in another land, he still felt that he knew nothing. Just how much the human understanding of biology and physiology had changed astounded him. As he studied and practiced, he never found anything which could explain the unnatural powers he possessed.
It was easy for him to almost forget he had those powers, at times. It had been years since he had used any of them. Unless he were to be gravely injured, to reveal his near-instant healing, no one would be any the wiser. At least for now. The impending questions about his lack of aging were, as ever, on his mind.
These were religious times, and the prevailing philosophies of the day left no room for unnaturals like himself. There were those who claimed dark powers and practiced outside of those cultural norms, but James was skeptical they could help him anyway. In all his days, he had never encountered another like himself, and whoever had been hunting him for a time, if anyone had been at all, they seemed to be long gone. So, hesitant to expose himself, he never sought them out.
He loved Emeline, and their brief life together was blissful. She couldn’t bear children, and though she cried and apologized to him on the day they learned this, James for his part was relieved. Over the years of their early marriage, he dreaded more and more
the inevitable day when he would have to leave her. More than anything, he felt guilt, knowing that she would be hurt. So, after considering the idea for months, he decided to tell her.
It was a summer evening, and the two of them had just finished eating dinner. They sat together on the porch of their small riverside home as the sun sank beneath the trees ahead of them. The air was filled with the distant chirping of crickets, the pleasant babble of the stream, and the creaking of their chairs as they rocked. Emeline had her eyes closed, but he could tell by her breathing that she was still awake.
"Emeline," he said.
"Yes?" she replied, not opening her eyes.
Where to start? Not at the beginning, that would simply take too long. Better to show her, he thought. There was a whittling knife on the table next to him. He grabbed it.
"There's something I need to tell you. Something you need to know about me."
She opened her eyes now, looking over at him with a smile. "What?"
"I'm different from everyone else." That was all he managed to say, and it conveyed nothing at all of what he wanted to.
"What do you mean?"
He raised his arm and drove the knife into his flesh without hesitation. Emeline screamed as he dragged the blade down the length of his forearm. Blood fell to the ground in spurts.
"Emeline," he said calmly. "I need you to watch." She kept screaming, but her cries grew fainter and then stopped as the bleeding did. She watched silently as the skin of his forearm knitted itself back together.
"What is the meaning of this?" she asked.
James did his best to explain. He left out a great deal, but to tell his story took well into the night. She listened quietly and when he was done, she hugged him and went to bed. James sat for a while on the porch looking up at the moon. It was one thing that had not changed in all his years, and he found it comforting.
When the moon had crossed the center of the sky overhead, he finally got up and went inside. His wife was not in their bedroom.
"Emeline?" he called, going from room to room, but she was nowhere to be found. In the kitchen, a cold breeze blew through an open window. He peered through, seeing nothing but the silhouettes of the dark forest. He shuttered the window and went back outside.
The night was no longer quiet. He could hear the dull, incoherent babble of a crowd of men. It was distant, but approaching quickly. Within minutes an orange glow came into view, then the mob itself. A dozen men with torches, axes, and knives. At the head of the group was Emeline's father, still in his work clothing. Behind him, Emeline. Their shouts had now become clear.
"Death to the witch!"
They saw him standing on the porch. There was nowhere to go but back into the house, or through them. He stared as they approached, then stopped a few paces away from him. His chest ached with the understanding of what had happened.
"I don't want to hurt you," James said. "Though you have all hurt me."
"Get him!" They surged around him, and though he could have easily killed them all, James just stood there while they battered him with their fists and clubs. A small blade found its way into his chest and he let out a cry. They only laughed as ropes slipped around his wrists and ankles, and they carried him away.
The hole in his chest was already healing, but the pain he felt inside was getting worse. His wife, his mentor, his friends. It meant nothing. No one could ever accept who he was. They carried him into town, where wood had already been piled high in the town square. Others, mostly women and children, stood watching as he was tied to the pyre. It was Emeline who put the torch to the pile, and she did it without hesitation. He couldn’t bear to look at her when she did.
The flames grew, searing his legs and then his chest, and his arms. His flesh blistered and boiled, and James cried out in horrible agony. But, of course, he didn’t die. The roar in the back of his head grew louder and louder as every cell of his body raced to repair itself.
He couldn’t hear the townsfolk over his own screaming, but he could see the confusion on their faces. He should be dead by now, they were sure.
And then suddenly he wasn't the only one on fire. A building ahead of him exploded, sending burning shards of wood flying in all directions. Now their screams were louder than his own, and the growing chaos snapped him out of his fugue. His bindings had long since burned away, so he simply walked forward out of the fire. As he did, his skin was already healing. Around him, everyone was dying. He could only watch as the last of them fell, silent and still, to the ground.
Several of the buildings around the square still burned, and the night sky had an orange glow. The roar in James's head would not quiet. He pushed it back and it grew louder again, loud enough that he doubled over in pain, head in his hands. And then it went silent.
There was a man in front of him. He was tall, muscular, and his hair was short and black. He looked at James with a smirk that conveyed anger more than amusement.
"Hello, father," the man said. "I've been looking for you for a very long time."
His blood went cold, but James could feel the truth of what he'd said. This was the man who had hunted him.
"What do you want?" James asked.
"To kill you."
"Feel free to try,” James said.
That was all they said. The other man burst forward in a rage, lightning crackling from his fingers. Bolts hit the ground around James and he leapt away, sending a volley of flames back at his attacker. The two men traded blows all through the night, sometimes with the elements and sometimes with mere fists. When their bodies were so damaged they could no longer fight, they summoned wild animals to fight on their behalf. By morning, the two men each lay broken. And as James healed, so did he. The two defeated men eventually left each other.
And so it went for some time. James ran, never lingering long in one place or another before moving on. He fled back across the sea and back to America again, but always the man was not far behind. And so James was never again afforded a life of peace and comfort. He was ever on the move, ever fearful of who else might be hurt by their struggle, for James never resented what the mob had done to him. They simply feared what they could not understand. His desire for companionship was no less strong, though he feared he would never attain it again. He lived a solitary, nomadic life, never daring to make a friend or love another woman.
Until, of course, in a little town in Virginia, he met her. And it ended in tragedy, as it always had and always would.
***
The trout danced through the wake beneath him. James crouched on a slick rock next to the river, its foam splashing at his feet. His right hand was poised with a spear at the ready. The moment came, and he stabbed. James hit his target, and the fish was stuck on the end of his spear.
Still got it.
His footprints had tread a path through the underbrush. James scratched at his overgrown and tangled beard as he followed the path, his trout hanging loosely in his hand. The walk was short, through the forest and over a hill before ending at the mouth of a cave. Inside the cave it was cool. The first part of the cave was a dark tunnel, but soon he rounded a curve and the cave opened up before him.
High above, there was an opening in the rock which let the sun shine down into this large, round room. While the tunnel's floor was dirt and stone, inside the cave grass and flowers grew underfoot. A tall, bushy oak tree rose up in the middle of the room, just where the sunlight rained down. On one wall a small waterfall fell, the water trickling out from some spring within the earth and splashing down the rocks before running across the room in a stream.
Near where he entered, a fire burned. He took a stick and stoked the logs then set about cleaning his fish. When he finished, James stuck a spit through the meat and suspended it over the flame. The smoke from the fire billowed and twirled upward and out into the open air. James knelt near the stream, running his hands through the cold water to remove the slime.
When he felt a soft hand on his should
er, he smiled.
"Back so soon?" Hope asked.
"Only caught a fish. Doesn't take long."
"I saw. Thank you."
"I'll go further out tomorrow. Get some more supplies. Just couldn't do it today."
"I understand," she said. She sat down on a rock next to him, her feet in the stream. They were quiet for a time, James leaning his head on her thigh.
"I'm tired," he said. He was, in many more ways than one.
Hope put her arm around him, and he nuzzled closer to her.
"There's so much to do,” James said, his voice strained.
"And what if it isn't your job to do it at all?"
