by Turhan
I was glad to be back home in Manhattan, but I didn’t have a chance yet, to talk with Enya, Kylar’s girlfriend. Vulhanna was in my apartment with me and a couple of her peers had projected three dimensional images of themselves into my living room.
While they continued to talk I became distracted. I had walked into my bathroom and was looking at my bathtub and thinking I just need to sit in there and soak for a couple of hours with a glass of red wine, but that daydream didn’t last very long, my cell phone rang, I didn’t pick it up, it was Enya and she was trying to video chat with me. “Is that someone we should be concerned about?” Vulhanna called out.
I walked back into my living room. “No, why do you think that it might be?”
“We have to be cautious, that’s all.”
She turned back to her conversation with the other Templars, but something was off about the way she had asked that question.
I interrupted them. “Is she in any danger?”
“Who?” Vulhanna asked.
“Kylar’s girlfriend, are you not telling me something?”
“We have to finish talking.” She looked back at the other Templars and they nodded in agreement. After a few more minutes they ended their discussion and the other two dematerialized from view. “Are you trying to avoid my question about Enya?”
“It isn’t safe for you here,” Vulhanna was looking out of my third floor apartment window, “and we don’t want you to go back to Sarturas yet, we may have more questions for you later, is there somewhere else you can stay for a while?”
“There is, I can stay at . . . ”
My mind drifted away from our conversation. I had Kylar’s key to the side door into his garage, it was still in my drawer, he had given it to me when we were in a relationship and I couldn’t make myself give it up. Last year I even snuck into his home when he and Enya had gone on a weekend trip, that was so wrong of me, but that’s when I found out that he had started drinking Courvoisier, and I read his journal about Enya always being away on location, I was ashamed of myself for sneaking around his . . . .
“Sin-dy . . . Sin-dy!”
“Oh, sorry Vulhanna, yes there is somewhere else I can stay−”
“Just make sure it isn’t somewhere that anyone can think of.”
I lied, “It’ll be a total secret, no one’ll know where I am.”
“I’ll be your connection to the Third Millennial Templars here on Earth for the next thirty six hours, use my cell phone number if you need anything, and don’t go anywhere or talk to anyone else, you’ll jeopardize the operation and your life, is that understood?”
“Well, what about Eny−” Vulhanna also dematerialized and left my question hanging. Something was up, and I was mad that she avoided answering me, and yeah, sure, I was just going to do nothing.
***
I could tell Enya wasn’t at home, Kylar’s car wasn’t in the drive and the other love of his life that I sometimes found myself ridiculously getting a little jealous of, like he loved it more than anything, his Triumph Café Racer wasn’t in the garage either, what the heck!?
There was something else weird too, the lock on the door from the garage to the house was busted. “Hello!” Pushing it open I couldn’t believe my eyes, everything was ransacked. I spent the next forty five minutes looking for clues, this wasn’t a burglary, all of Enya’s jewelry was still on the dresser.
Then it dawned on me, the Triumph, and the car was gone. Enya was back from her trip to Chicago that Kylar had told me about, because the script for Thornhill Square was stamped ‘Final Draft’ with yesterday’s date on it and was sitting alongside her jewelry. I started thinking maybe she was kidnapped? Where could they have taken her?
I had to go back home, it wasn’t safe for me here either, at least I’d be in my own environment. My other problem was that it always took me about six hours for my Alter-Witch powers to regenerate after coming back to Earth, it was like my ‘Achilles Heel’ and in the meantime I’d be vulnerable.
***
I stood in my doorway and in the time I had been to Kylar’s house and back, my apartment was torn apart too. Everything was trashed, this was personal, someone wanted to leave me a warning and their message came through viciously. My bedroom wall had the word ‘Sin-ner’ painted in red with a dagger in the middle and it was still dripping, like blood, whoever did this must have left minutes before.
My only other choice was to stay at a hotel, so I grabbed a bag and threw a couple of things I found that hadn’t been destroyed, into it, then slowing down to take one last look I pulled the door shut, but it didn’t, something was jammed underneath. It was the ring.
Leaning down to pick it up, everything started to make sense. This was Ophelexa’s Cobra ring. My last experience with it, was when she was wearing the damn thing and had it up against my throat back in Sedah Hall at Sector One, she would have murdered me if it wasn’t for Qirvana intervening.
So that’s why Kylar’s house and my apartment have been searched, she was looking for clues to find me, now what? I thought of one of other thing. Ophelexa may have taken Enya to the theater in Greenwich Village where she works most of the time when she’s not traveling, I had to get there and fast, she wouldn’t waste any time snuffing out Kylar’s girlfriend if she didn’t have any more need for her.
***
The sign on the door read ‘Stage Hand’s Only!’ Enya had brought me to her studio when we had our girl’s-night-out and we played adult dress up with all the hooker costumes until we fell asleep, well, passed out from drinking too much wine would be more truthful.
The door was unlocked, the alarm was off and so were all the lights. I still couldn’t fully transform into anything yet, but, yes, it worked! Owl eyes are incredible at seeing in the dark. Something in my blood was happening too, but it wasn’t any of my doing. Every corpuscle moving through my veins became hypersensitive and my nerve endings felt like they were on fire.
Qirvana, that’s what it is, our blood was mixed when we became blood sister’s. My senses had become a hundred times more perceptive and they were picking up something evil, it was Ophelexa, she was watching me. I could feel her every twitch.
“Where’s Enya, Ophelexa?” I had to let her know she wasn’t invisible to me. “Let her go, she doesn’t know anything.”
Ophelexa had flown to the top of the rafters, but didn’t say a word. Maybe she was waiting to see if I had a weapon.
“Sarine is going to be really disappointed in you,” I was trying to get into her head so she could let Enya go. “Xenakaz is on his way to capture her right now and all you can do is hang around in some musty rafters half a world away from her, what kind of friend is that.”
“You don’t have to worry about Enya, ‘Sin-ner’ she no longer needs you or Kylar.”
My heart sank, “What have you done with her, bitch!”
I needed to alter-witch, now. Ophelexa was coming down from the rafters and I was going to be a splat on the floor if I didn’t regain my powers immediately. Suddenly the stage lights came on, Enya? No, they were on a timer and had distracted Ophelexa long enough for me to become a Viper, finally, I was back to being my sweet little Alter-Witch self, this wasn’t going to be as one sided as Ophelexa hoped.
“Why are you here with me?” I slithered under the stage. “Everything you worked for until now, and the death of your ugly sister is going to be wasted, yeah, that’s a good idea, just stay here while every girl in Sarturas is released, bitch!”
The whole stage floor began to shake, she guessed where I was and started tearing it up. I transformed into the smallest creature I could think of, a bee humming bird, and flew up above her and watched while she destroyed half the theater looking for me.
I wanted to know if Kylar’s girlfriend was still alive. “I’ll reveal myself if you tell me what you’ve done with Enya,” I flew to the far end of the theater. “Here I am!” I stood there, transformed back to my human self.
Ophel
exa was staring at me and started to laugh. “You silly little fool, did you ever hear of the term ‘Keep your friends close, but your enemy’s closer’? Darling Sin-dy.”
“Stop right there, bitch!” I didn’t believe it, she actually listened. “I have something of yours that I know Sarine gave you, what is this for?” I held up her Cobra ring. “Is it your medal of honor, for being the nastiest bitch in Hell?”
“I’m going to torture you and all your friends, forever! Let me have that, now!”
“Na-ah,” I moved away from her and into the foyer. “I swear I’ll fly out of here and drop it into the Hudson, now tell me where Enya−”
“You stupid little simpleton, I just gave you a clue, are you really that dumb?”
“What are you blabbering about? Try making sense, I don’t have all day, for the last time where is Eny−”
I couldn’t believe my eyes, it couldn’t be, I was stunned.
Ophelexa transformed into Kylar’s girlfriend. “Feast your eyes you dumb little human, Alter-Witch, Sceleris. I. AM. ENYA.”
“You? You’re . . . ”
Ophelexa started to fake an orgasm using Kylar’s voice, “Oh yes! I love you Enya.”
“Why . . . why would you do that?”
“Sleeping with the enemy has its rewards you fool,” Ophelexa began advancing toward me. “We have been looking for his sisters for a long time. James W. Silverblood, his father, became a traitor and we knew his children, your precious Kylar and his sisters were capable of magik that could destroy our plans if we let them live.”
I had to get away, to warn Kylar, what could I do to stop her? It was too late, she had backed me up into the Presidential Loge. “Here!” I tossed the Cobra ring in her direction, it felt like everything was happening in slow motion and as she reached out to catch it I lunged at her with the dagger she had stabbed my apartment wall with, it was still embedded in her neck as I leapt down toward the seats in the main auditorium and she had come crashing down alongside of me. We both lay there, winded, but we were both still alive, I didn’t have time to continue fighting. Kylar needed me and I wasn’t going to hang around with his girlfriend exchanging witty repartee any longer.
As I got up and tried to leave, Ophelexa grabbed at my arm. “This isn’t the end, you still don’t know everything−”
“I’ll see you in Hell,” Snatching my arm away I said. “You can tell me all about it there.” I grabbed the dagger and she winced as I twisted it. “That was for strangling me, bitch.” I looked at her with venom in my eyes, then pulling the knife out I brought it down but stopped millimeters from her eye.
I so wanted to end her life there and then, but without her talking to Sarine, to convince her to go to Sector One, where we could trap them both and set the girls free, I just couldn’t do it.
She was crumpled up in a heap on the theater floor, down but far from dead. I knew our paths would cross again, and soon. As I headed out bruised and shocked that all this time, she had been Kylar’s girlfriend, I was wondering what she could have meant by her words “You still don’t know everything,” but that was meant for another time.
For now the only thing on my mind was to get back to everyone and tell them I had talked to the Templars, then I’d have to tell Kylar who Enya really is, it would mess him up him in so many ways, but he had to know.
Chapter 17
Sin-dy and Mr. Parfitt’s Privates
“Kylar, where are you? Kylar,” It wasn’t working. I couldn’t communicate with him from the surface of the Earth and even though I had left Ophelexa wounded back at the Greenwich Village theater, it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to get back to Sarturas before me, I wanted to tell Kylar who she really was before she did.
My only point of entry back to Sarturas, in Hell, is through Granfer’s Barton, an ancient hamlet in Shepton Mallet, England. The Templars discovered a portal there and had shown me how to use it.
As the story goes, Owen Parfitt’s mysterious disappearance was apparently preceded by the Devil digging a virtual tunnel to Parfitt’s home town. Then he dragged him kicking and swearing back to Hell. According to his sister Susannah, it was because of his “Profligate life.” The mystery is still unsolved to this day but there is a virtual tunnel nearby and I’ve been using it to get to Sarturas for several months.
***
Finally over Shepton Mallet I made my way to the Well’s Road abandoned Protestant chapel and landed in its now defunct graveyard, but instead of being greeted by twenty seven, eighteenth century gravestones, I was instead welcomed by thirteen people dressed in gothic hooded black robes walking around barefoot, chanting a black magik spell.
This was the last thing I needed, they were circling inside a group of rocks that they had assembled to look something like the configuration at Stonehenge, which itself is only about an hour or so by car from the chapel. As the chanting became more intense, the ground inside the area surrounded by the robes began to shift and stir. I felt like screaming at them to leave because I needed to stand right inside that circle and spin a vortex that sucks me down.
Then suddenly the center of the circle erupted and a blue light radiated out of its opening, a mist developed too, so at first I couldn’t see a damn thing. As it began to clear, the chanters stopped walking and turned to face the light. A few seconds later, and out of the mist a man stepped forward, the first words out of his mouth were. “Bring me a Lager!”
He appeared to be a pirate!? A purple bandana on his head, ringlets of beads hanging from his black hair and with a silver hoop in his left ear, he stood there with hands on his hips grinning like a Cheshire cat. By this time the robed chanters had dropped their garbs and were also dressed like they belonged on a ship as buccaneers.
They began to celebrate like they had found a long lost ship-mate. “Owen Parfitt, you scallywag!” Someone hugged him and put the lager he had requested into his hands. “Give me some space you scum of the seven seas,” he jokingly commanded.
As he took a huge gulp of the lager, his eyes met mine. I had been standing between two old and gnarled Crab Apple trees and instantly the mood went from celebration to deadly serious, every pirate followed his lead in pulling the swords and curved knives from their belts and scabbards.
“Step out and show yourself if you dare,” Owen challenged. “If its death ya seek, I have a cutlass with yer name on it.”
“I’m not looking for trouble,” I stepped out from behind the trees. “I already have my share of it, but I need you to step aside so I can leave you to your merrymaking.”
“Well don’t expect me to say, shiver me timbers lassie,” He joked once again, as everyone around him howled with laughter.
“Listen, I see you guys have some catching up to do but−”
“Don’t be such a kill-Joy, by the way beautiful maiden, what can we call you?”
Not wanting to show any fear, but with my hand clasping the knife in my belt that I had impaled Ophelexa with, I made my way into the middle of the group. “I’m Sin-dy−”
Owen interrupted, “Any relation to−”
“No, never had the pleasure,” I anticipated his referral to the infamous pirate, “and if you’re quite finished I have something of importance to get back to, could you please all stand back?” I started pushing some of them away but that just made them laugh at me more.
“So, Sin-dy, what’s your story? Why don’t you stay awhile and have a drop of rum with us?”
He signaled one of the crew, a female, and she brought some tin cups with an earthenware jug and the rest of them proceeded to bring a few wood benches and logs to sit on. This was nuts, I needed to get back to Sarturas as fast as possible but instead I had an invite to exchange pleasantries with a crew of swashbucklers.
“You know, maybe I can get a raincheck on this?” I looked around, they were puzzled and had no idea what I was talking about. “Um, perhaps some other time?” They weren’t buying it, maybe if I kept it short and to the point.
“Oh, call me Owen, and sit down, maybe I’ll tell you my story first.”
I didn’t have any time to think about it, someone pushed a log behind me and another pirate pushed my shoulders down to make me sit.
Owen started to talk about his checkered past, stopping along the way several times to ask if I needed a refresher or something to eat. I didn’t think it mattered much whether I was listening or not, and I really wasn’t. I had my own thoughts that were swimming around my head, it just seemed as though everyone around me was just catching up on old times, except for what he said next, it was something that piqued my interest
“And then!” Owen slapped his friend on the back and they both laughed so hard they fell to their knees while the rest of the gang laughed uproariously along with them. After catching their breath, a complete silence fell upon the crew. His blue eyes twinkling with mischief, he quietly continued, “And then, I put my hand out and the tiny little triangle with the three horns was gone, ya shoulda seen the look on the old Diabhal’s face, it was the first time ever anybody won a bet against him, and he had to let me go!”
The crew began to cheer and holler and whistle, their captain had outwitted the Devil for the first time in all of Hell’s history and he had won his freedom. I wanted to know more about the triangle, something was niggling me about its significance, but there was no way I was going to get Owen to make sense right now, he and his buddies were totally tanked and a couple of them had passed out, right where I needed to make my way down to Sarturas.
I must have been exhausted and fell asleep too. When I eventually woke up the rest of the crew were still sleeping off their earlier celebration of their captain’s return. Maybe I could wake him up and talk to him.
