by Dianna Hardy
A woman, who looked around the same age as herself, stepped into the moonlight. Highly attractive, she stood tall and her hair was so black, it glinted blue under the dim rays. She didn't seem to be going anywhere; much like Amy, she sort of just lurked. As she got a little closer, Pueblo's demon blood grew cold inside her.
Interesting.
Wondering whether she should make herself known to her, she was suddenly thrown meters in the air when Elena's building exploded. Heat from the fireball washed over her, but never made it past her shield, for which she was grateful. Her luck ran out when she hit the floor, landing shoulder-first. A scream ripped out of her, and she heard footsteps thudding towards her.
The woman with the amazing hair was leaning over her with concern etched in her face.
Hmmm, my shield must be down. And why is she not on fire?
The woman's eyes, a piercing blue, the colour of tropical oceans, were even more amazing than her hair.
“Are you all right?” she called out.
“I don't know … my arm...”
“Your shoulder looks wrong. I think you might have dislocated it.”
“What the hell happened?”
“The building...”
“Oh, my God … Elena...”
“You know Elena?”
“We have to go see if she...” She left her words stranded in the air, mid-flow, as Elena walked out of the inferno. Only...
“Oh. My. God.”
The woman beside her sucked in her breath and she felt her stiffen.
Amy struggled to her feet, with her help. “Tell me I'm not seeing this.”
“If you're seeing a naked woman, who sort of looks like Elena, with grey skin that's … broken or something … and glowing green eyes, then you're seeing what I'm seeing.”
“Shit. What's she carrying?”
The woman squinted. “I think … Holy Mother, it's Karl! It's Karl!” And without any warning she sprinted towards them.
“Wait!” she called, as she ran after her, trying not to pass out from the burning pain in her shoulder. When she caught up with her, she and Elena were both staring at each other. Elena – if this was Elena – had Karl cradled in her arms. Apparently, she was super-strong now, and Amy could only assume it was Elena's own magic that had protected her and Karl from the blast. One of her hands clutched a small book.
Elena turned and looked straight at Amy. “He's dead,” she stated in a voice so hollow, it made her shudder. “I killed him.”
“No,” said the other woman, firmly. “I know you, Elena, and I know Karl. You did not kill him.”
“I did kill him, Mary. I sucked the life right out of him. I can feel him inside me – his glow.” And then she suddenly stared – really stared – at Mary. “Did you dream this? Is that why you're here? Did you know this was going to happen?” Her voice was low and deadly, crackling like the fire behind her.
“No! Of course not. I dreamt about a fire tonight, and I dreamt about this building, and when the dream woke me up, I was worried about you – I had to come see if you were okay...” Tears danced in Mary's eyes. “God … Karl...”
Elena ignored them and leaned towards her instead. “What are you?”
Mary shook her head. “What?”
Sirens sounded in the background.
“Elena...” Amy tried to speak as softly as she could. “Can we think about Karl? Fire engines are coming – there'll be an ambulance. Will you let them look after him?”
She tightened her hold on him, her eyes flashing.
“I know you don't want to let him go. But if he's truly dead, he deserves to be at peace, and if there's the tiniest chance he's still alive, a hospital will be the best place for him.”
Elena hesitated.
“He's human, Elena.”
Those seemed to be the magic words. She lay him down with a gentleness that looked out of place with her new demeanour.
Mary took off her coat and covered his naked form as best she could.
Elena shrank back.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“No one can see me like this,” she whispered. “Look at me.”
Sure enough, Amy didn't know how any of them would explain Elena's appearance. “Where are you going to go?”
She stepped forwards one last time, and thrust the book she was holding, towards Amy. With her good arm, she reached out and took it.
“What's this?”
“The greatest lie of all,” she spat out, bitterly, hatred etched in every word. “The real reason Karl is dead. I'm going to kill them all.”
Elena became one with the shadows, and disappeared.
The fire engines and ambulance pulled up.
“You need to get that shoulder fixed,” said Mary.
“What are we going to tell them?” asked Amy, staring at all the uniforms.
“Let me do the talking.”
“Gladly.”
“And then I'm going to need a stiff drink.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Please do.”
“I'm Amy, by the way. I'm a witch.”
“I'm Mary,” she smiled. “And I don't know what I am.”
Two and a half hours, and two shots of Tequila later, the two women sat in Mary's living room in silence, having just read Katherine's diary.
It was Mary who spoke first, voicing what they were both thinking. “We have to help her. We have to bring her back from … whatever she's becoming.”
“Do you think we can?”
“I refuse to think we can't. This is Elena. She's the exact opposite of evil – we can't do nothing.”
“What do you think she's going to do?”
“Sounded like she was planning a killing spree to me. I think she's gonna find a way into Shanka territory, and try to exterminate them all.”
Amy wrinkled her nose in a half-grimace. “I think you're right, apart from the planning bit. Elena may just be the most powerful witch to ever walk the Earth, whether she knows it or not. I don't think there's any planning, I think she's just going to go in there and let all hell break loose.”
“Because she's got nothing to lose.”
Amy nodded.
“Any result from that location spell?”
Amy glanced at the map on the dining table, looking for that magical red marker that would indicate where Elena was. “Nope. But I don't even know if this spell would work on a Shanka – they're not like other demons – they become shadow.”
“Elena's half-human.”
Amy sighed. “I hope she's still half-human.”
“She is,” insisted Mary.
Amy stared at her new, accidental ally. Over the last couple of hours, she had discovered next to nothing about Mary – not that she had divulged anything of herself either – but she trusted the woman. It was obvious she cared about Elena … and Karl. But she couldn't ignore the fact that the demon blood she'd drunk, which now seemed to form part of her DNA, whether she wanted it to or not, didn't like Mary one bit. Her blood grew cold and hummed in her ears whenever she got too close. She had no idea why that was. But her human self, told her Mary was safe, and since she'd known her human self longer than she'd known Pueblo, and all the craziness that came with him, she listened to her human self.
Speaking of Pueblo, her new blood heated up a couple of notches, suddenly roaring inside her, and she found herself turning towards the front door.
“Oh, no,” she muttered.
“What?” asked Mary.
There was a heavy, insistent pounding on the door.
Mary jumped up.
“No, Mary, I know who it is. I'll get it.” Ignoring Mary's quizzical look, she rushed to the door and flung it open.
Just as expected, Pueblo filled the doorway, a look of fury painting his features.
Irritatingly, she realised she actually felt a little scared, and pushed the feeling away with a huff. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“You're h
urt.”
“My shoulder got dislocated; paramedics fixed it.”
His frown deepened.
“Okay, maybe they wanted to take me to hospital, and I may have mentally persuaded them to fix me as best as they could on the spot, but there are serious things happening here – I don't have time to go to hospital.”
“Did they fix it right?”
“It's fiiiiiine, Jeeeez!”
“Here.” He placed his hand on her tender shoulder. It instantly warmed under his touch. Energy coursed into it, weaving through every sinew and tendon. A sigh of relief escaped her as she felt every last trace of pain evaporate.
“You can heal people?”
“No. Only you.”
“Blood bond?”
He nodded.
She had no reply to that. She was grateful; she just kind of wished she wasn't tied to him.
A cough sounded behind her.
“Oh.” Amy stepped to the side. “Pueblo, this is Mary; Mary, meet Pueblo.”
“Hi,” she smiled.
“What is that?” Shock reigned the demon's face, his eyes wide with … not exactly fear, and not exactly awe...
“Hey,” came the contentious reply, “I'm the human that lives here.”
“Human?”
“Yes, human.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
He continued to stare at her … which irked Amy, somewhat.
She stepped back into his line of vision. “Look, Elena's Hulked out on us, and probably gone on a Shanka killing spree. We need to get her back to her sane self. Think you can help?”
“I will help. The Dessec are the Gatekeepers of chaos; we manage it, trying to make sure it never grows to large proportions. We never want to be in the position where we have to undo time to fix an event that chaos caused.”
The women stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Okaaay,” said Amy. “Pueblo, you're going to need clothes. You can't walk around in this dimension looking like that.”
“Can you magic him some clothes?” chipped in Mary.
“Yes, I suppose I can...”
“Okay, great. We have an army of three. Pueblo, come in.”
The demon entered, and Amy shut the door behind him. “So, we need a plan.”
“Elena is bound by blood to the Shanka tribe,” began Pueblo.
She crossed her arms to hide her exasperation. What was it with demons and blood?
“She will be drawn to them. We will follow her.”
“I hate to burst your bubble,” said Amy, “but we have two problems: one, we can't find her anywhere; two, she's had Shanka blood in her all her life – I don't believe she's ever been drawn to them before.”
“That's true,” said Mary. “I've known her for almost a year and, as I understand from what I've learned tonight, it's only in the last few days that the Shanka's been around … and it was the demon that sought her out, wasn't it?”
“That's what Etienne said – speaking of whom, I may need to cloak this flat. He's good at finding me.”
“Do what you have to, Amy.”
Amy nodded her thanks. Since reading Katherine's diary and discovering Etienne was Elena's grandfather of all things, she needed time to figure things out – time away from Etienne. Her heart ached at his part in all this. If only he wasn't like a father to her...
“It makes no sense that Elena would not have discovered the Shanka earlier in her life. Her blood would have demanded it. Unless...”
“Unless what, Pueblo?”
“The only thing more powerful than a blood bond, is a soul bond. A blood bond needs physical form to be created; a soul bond, does not. A bond between souls is ancient – older than the planet.”
“Are you saying, that Elena would not have been affected by her demon blood, if she was already bonded to a … soulmate?”
“Yes, soulmate. But there are not many bonded souls left in the world nowadays.”
“Karl,” said Mary. “Karl's her soulmate, I'd swear my own life on it. Those two … you should have seen them together...”
“Then we must find this Karl – he will bring her back from the Shanka's shadows.”
Mary bit her lip and let her tears fall for the first time that Amy had seen that night. “We can't,” she whispered. “Karl's dead.”
“How?”
“She said she killed him.”
He looked surprised. “One does not kill their soulmate easily.”
Amy sighed at the hopelessness of the situation. “You know that Elena's a thirteenth generation witch, and that she's half Shanka. What you don't know – what none of us knew – was that Elena was a virgin. Until tonight.”
Pueblo's face turned grim. “So, she did kill him. When he took her virginity, her succubus energy would have become fully accessible to her, and as a newling, she would have been hungry – she sucked his life right out of him.”
“But she didn't mean to,” Mary interjected, angrily, her tears streaking her face. “She had no idea what she was until she read this diary just a few hours ago. Her mother always told her that if she gave up her virginity, she would lose all her powers and the right to her lineage – that was her mother's, if I might add, poor attempt to protect her from her inner-succubus.”
“Mary, she didn't tell her the truth, because Elena simply knowing it would have sent an energetic alert, rippling through dimensions, straight to the Shanka, that she existed.”
“But if she'd known … if she'd just known before she slept with Karl, she wouldn't have slept with him, and he wouldn't be dead right now.”
Amy placed a hand, softly, on the woman's arm. “I suspect that's why this book was left for Elena to find – she just clearly didn't find it in time.”
Mary shook her head. “Her mother should have told her. Instead, Elena was led to believe all she was giving up was her magic, when in actual fact, whoever she lost her virginity to would be giving up his life!”
“Mary, calm down.”
“I told her to go for it. At the shop, earlier today. She told me they'd started seeing each other, that she had something special planned for tonight. I was so happy for them both, and I teased her and told her it was about fucking time, and I told her to go for it. God, I told her not to come in tomorrow, that I would open up … I told her...” She broke down.
Amy kept her hand on her arm and squeezed in reassurance. She wondered if she should hug her, but felt what she really needed was space. “You didn't do this Mary. You didn't know, and none of this is your fault.”
“I never thought I'd be the reason behind one of my dreams,” she whispered.
“What?”
“It doesn't matter...”
Pueblo's voice broke through the dense air. “We're wasting time.”
“Have a heart,” Amy snapped at him.
“No,” Mary sighed, “Amy, he's right. I'm done now. I'm fine. Thanks.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. “So … where were we? Oh yes – the only hope we have of saving Elena, is dead.”
They all looked at each other.
“What now?”
~*~
His footsteps made no sound as he made his way down the long corridors towards the morgue. It was five in the morning, and no one was around this section right now. There had been two deaths from that explosion in Wimbledon: one was a sixty-two year old man, that lived alone in the basement flat, and the other had been Karl Warden. They'd been pronounced dead on site, and brought in around 1 a.m. But humans, as wonderful and genuinely caring as they could be, had always struggled to look beyond the end of their noses. They loved the world black and white – it was so much easier to handle that way.
Voices sounded far off down to the right. He stopped and waited, making himself temporarily invisible until the two nurses had passed.
Unlike others of his kind, he loved hospitals. Loved them. Nowhere else in the world, could you find such a mix of real emotions. Noth
ing's hidden, nothing at all. Love, grief, fear, anger – it was all real, bold and in your face. At hospitals, people became their real selves with no masks to hide behind. It was a great shame that it always took such a life changing event for those moments of honesty to become manifest in the human world.
He continued on his way, taking a right turn, then another left, until he finally reached the morgue. The security box on the wall by the steel door flashed its red light in a silent command, a little arrow pointing downwards towards the slot where the identity card should go. He ignored it and walked through the locked door instead.
He knew exactly where to look – the boy's blood sang to him. Draw number 72. He pulled it open, revealing the covered body, then pulled the sheet off him.
Karl Warden looked dead … to the human eye.
He leaned down and placed his ear to Karl's chest, and waited. One minute passed … two minutes, then three...
There. There it was, the heartbeat he was waiting for. It would only ever beat about once every five minutes from now on, each beat holding all of human life within it.
“I hope you're ready for this, son, 'cause you don't really have much of a choice,” he muttered. He placed his hand on Karl's chest, over his heart. The golden light that came from his hand was strong and sure; the light that came from Karl's chest was weak. “Not for long...”
He allowed the light to glow, surrounding them both in an aura of what could only be termed, holiness. A sense of bliss, peace and powerful ecstasy showered over him. It wasn't often he got to do this – it wasn't often his bloodline sang in someone's DNA so strongly – it didn't suck. Lost in the moment, he gave in to the pressure between his shoulder blades and down his spine, and his wings erupted – great, white feathers reaching out for metres either side of him, almost touching the ceiling. He smiled and stretched like a cat, unfurling them to their full extent, and thanking God that this particular morgue was especially roomy.
A small groan sounded from the metal table.
His smile widened. “Wakey-wakey, rise and shine, my boy – welcome to your new life!”
Chapter Ten
When awareness finally stirred within him, the first thing Karl felt was warmth – beautiful, wonderful warmth, flooding his being. Maybe I've swallowed the sun, he thought, then laughed at himself. Funny how you think strange things when you're on the brink of death...
