by Su Williams
“You made an offer the other day,” his voice gave a little tremor, and his eyes darted away.
My mind scattered in search of what offer I had made, and if that offer was verbal or purely mental. I blinked. “What offer was that?”
“Practice.” His eyes twinged, embarrassed.
My mind raced with confusion, and my heart with fear. I remembered the fire in those eyes, and my mental thought that I would give him anything; all of me. “Nick, I…”
“I understand if you’ve change your mind.”
“I’m just not…” I stepped back as a shudder launched up my arm, and there was no doubt, he felt it, too. The twinge in his eye changed to worry as he pulled me against him again.
“Emi, I’m sorry.” His voice mirrored the agony in his heart. “I’ve put you through so much already. I don’t have any right to ask you for anything more. I just thought maybe it could help me and Sabre, give us new ammunition…”
“Wait.” I separated myself from him, but he caught my hand. “What are you talking about?” I was beginning to realize what I thought and what he was really asking were two vastly different things, and, he wasn’t in my head as much as I thought. Maybe he was trying to protect me from some of the nightmares of his past.
“Trying a weave from a distance.”
I jerked my hand away from his, hoped I’d gotten it away from him fast enough. “Oh! Yeah.” I laughed in a desperate attempt to erase the hurt look in his eyes. “Absolutely. Of course I’ll do it.”
It worked. Complete and utter confusion replaced the wounded weary pain in his eyes, then his head cocked to one side. A foxy smile curled his lips. “What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing.” Now, it was my turn to flush with embarrassment, and I sighed in resignation. “Come on,” I said as I turned to the couch, and purposefully avoided his touch. “You’ll find out eventually anyway. Let’s just make that the goal.” I flopped on the couch and discovered he hadn’t followed, so I patted the cushion next to me and smiled self-consciously. “Well? Are we gonna try this Vulcan mind meld thing or not?” Finally, he joined me on the couch.
“Here, just put your hands like this.” He placed his hands, palms up, in his lap. It felt strange not to touch, physical contact had become so habitual between us, and it felt strange without it. I complied and his hands hovered a foot above mine. “Em, you don’t have to do this.”
“Just do it.” Or just kill me now.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered in an attempt to relax me.
I complied, and concentrated on relaxing each muscle, calming each nerve, and reluctantly focusing on the object of the exercise. It was still and quiet for several long moments and I felt utterly alone inside my head. My breath caught when I suddenly felt a delicate nudge, and the sensation withdrew.
Sorry, I thought.
Hush. I’m concentrating.
I wanted to peek to see if his face was all screwed up with concentration, but decided I’d better focus, even as excruciating as this was about to become. The nudge returned and remained, as though familiarizing itself with the sensation. Again, with reluctance I pushed the answer he was looking for to the forefront of my memories. I felt his thoughts wrap around it, caress it, contemplate.
His loud, boisterous laugh ripped away any pretense of calm.
“Glad you’re amused,” I said icily, as he continued to laugh.
He was suddenly there, face to face with me, his fingers raked through my hair and he held my face between his palms. He studied my face, and then gently kissed my lips, my nose, my forehead.
“Emi, I would—gladly, take all of you. But never, ever before you asked me.” I opened my mouth to protest but his fingers stopped me. “Someday,” his voice was barely audible, “weeks, months, years. However long it takes your heart to heal. Someday—but not before.” He scanned my face and that fleeting flash of pain shot through his eyes and vanished. He stroked my face. “May I try something?”
“As you wish,” I whispered and caught his gentle smile of understanding.
He scooted closer to me, his eyes never leaving mine. He cupped my face in his hand and moistened his lips, leaned closer. “Close your eyes.” The warm wisps of his breath caressed my face and I complied. His lips, tenderly brushed mine. I sighed as my heart jolted in my chest.
“Emari Jewel.” This time the words didn’t sting, they bathed my heart with healing. “Open your eyes, my love.” His lips brushed mine with each word.
My eyes fluttered open to find Nick sitting almost at the other end of the couch, that Cheshire cat grin on his face.
“You did it. Oh my gosh, that was amazing.” I was thrilled I was able to help him increase his arsenal against the Wraith.
He chuckled and rose from the couch. Clutching my hand, he towed me with him back to the windows—back to reality—back to crazy, manic monsters stealing my dog and trying to mess up my head. We stood in each other’s arms and stared out into the night.
“But does that count? If I really am—what you think I am?” He said it didn’t work so great trying to do a distance weave with someone who was already a Weaver.
“Counts for more than it would with Sabre. We’re not entirely sure what the difference is between pre-Caphar and Caphar, what the mechanism is that makes them different, but a pre-Caphar is more human than Weaver,” he explained.
In silent vigil, I contemplated the Wraith, the creature out there somewhere in the darkness that waited to terrorize me some more—waited to kill not only me but Nick and Sabre, as well. I revisited my interaction with him at the tracks. One sound, and I will become your worst nightmare and no angel will save you.
“Rico wasn’t alone when he attacked me,” I said quietly. Nick waited in silence, his arms careful around me. “He said, ‘One sound, and I will become your worst nightmare and no angel will save you.’ Rico wouldn’t have known anything about my nightmares or that I thought you were my angel.” Still, Nick remained aloof. “He had to have some connection to those memories. After everything you’ve told me, everything you’ve shown me…a Wraith made him do it, influenced him, somehow.” I waited. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he whispered. His voice was colored with embarrassment, or perhaps still reluctance.
“How long have you known?”
“I’ve wondered, from the beginning, because I knew they’d been watching you. When you first recalled that memory, I was sure.”
“But if a Wraith made Rico attack me, why did you and Sabre punish him?”
Nick sighed. “Rico has a past with violence. He was raised with it and he learned it well. It was already in him to be violent. The thoughts of rape already existed in his mind. He’s done it before, to at least one other girl. He’d have done it again on his own, the Wraith only made it happen sooner.”
“If Rico was raised in violence then so was Jesse. And that woman?” Nick had to tell me now. This wasn’t just Jesse’s story anymore.
“His mother.”
“Who did that to her?” I felt like I was grilling Nick, but I needed to know.
“His father.”
“Did she—die?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know this. My poor Jesse. What had he witnessed as a child?
“Yes. As the boys watched on helplessly. And then they suffered at his hands. Rico more so than Jesse. Where one learned violence, the other learned compassion. Wraith feed on the things of violence.”
“Why do they want me? I just want to be left alone. I didn’t do anything to them, anything to attract their attention.” Nick was quiet. Too quiet. For too long. A silent debate warred behind his eyes. “And besides that, why were you around? Just by chance?” Of that, I was exceedingly skeptical.
“Emari…” he began, but as if his body wasn’t already hard with stress, he abruptly went rigid and immobile.
“What?” I breathed.
“Thought I saw something.”
I followed his gaze into th
e darkness, and saw nothing but the sparkling of the snow, and the black of the night. He turned to face me and grasped my arms. “Listen to me very carefully. I’m going to go out there…”
“NO!” I tried to squirm out of his grip, to no avail…what was I but a mere mortal?
“I’m going to go out there and get this guy before he can get anywhere near you.”
“And what about you? What if he gets too near you?” I protested.
“I’ll be fine. Sabre will be here soon.”
“Then wait for Sabre.”
“I won’t let you be a sitting duck in here, Em. I don’t know how close is too close with this one. I can’t take any chances that he can strip you through the walls.”
“Strip me?”
He winced and that was enough of an explanation. He dislocated my hands from his shirt with ease, and pinned them together. Futilely, I resisted his pull as he led me to the security pad by the kitchen door. His fingers quickly roamed the key pad to disarm it. “Rearm the system the instant I’m out the door, understand?”
I nodded, though I would still have been clutching his clothes if I hadn’t been restrained. “Please, Nick. You don’t have to do this.”
He held my hands easily with one of his own and stroked my face with the other. “Emi. It will be okay. I promise. I won’t let him hurt you.”
“I don’t care about me.” He can kill me for all I care.
His mouth curved into a small smile, he released my hands and kissed me as if I would never see him again. The passion left me dizzy, the adrenalin left me numb. I pressed into him, encouraged by the warmth and security of his arms. “Please,” I whined, but his kiss silenced me. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, their saltiness seeped between our lips. I can’t lose anyone else.
“Hush, Em.” His lips sizzled on my cheek. His hand slid behind my head, the other around my waist and he pulled me into him. I felt the familiar tug of him in my mind, a reminder of another kiss we shared. This time, no longer fear, but passion and desire reigned my emotions. Only heat. Intense, unquenchable fire. My heart raced from the fever of his body against me and I melted into him. My mind grew hazy from the blaze and I surrendered myself to the all-consuming flames.
Slowly, the inferno died, and I reluctantly opened my eyes. Nick’s eyes glowed raven-wing black from the other side of the glass in the door, the hint of a triumphant smile curled the corners of his mouth. He pressed his fingers to the window as if to touch my hand. I pressed my fingertips to his. The intensity renewed and shot up my arm to my chest. With a gasp, I closed my eyes and bathed in the warmth. He was gone when the fire died away and I reopened my eyes. A shimmering specter took his place and drifted away like the wind toward the north side of the house. I rearmed the system and stared out the kitchen window for any sign of movement.
Eons passed with no sign of anything, not any activity, not a sound save the quiet creaking and popping of my old house. It’s funny how you become so accustomed to these sounds that you don’t even notice them, until they are every sound you can hear.
I worried how bad the danger out there really was, wondered about why he hadn’t just phased out the door, rather than disarming it. Or maybe he had and I was too consumed in the weave to know.
Memories of my dad drifted peacefully into my mind. Emari Jewel? The sound of his voice was so near to my heart I could almost hear him with my physical ears. I miss you, Daddy. I stifled a pathetic whine. Maybe someday this ache would diminish. This longing to see his face and hear his voice one last time would subside. I lived with the constant regret of never getting the chance to say goodbye to him and my mother. What I wouldn’t give for that one last moment with them; that one last moment to tell them how much I loved and adored them.
My father’s presence had always been such a reassurance for me throughout my life. His absence from my life was so painfully substantial, yet at this moment I felt his spirit all around me, as though he were in the room beside me. Maybe God answered the desperate pleas of my heart and sent him to comfort me. I closed my eyes and drank in his spirit, breathed it into my lungs. Ethereal molecules raced through my bloodstream, fueled my soul with joy. I felt the embodiment of his arms around me, the warm, gentle safety of his embrace. The rigid anguish that kept me frost-bound, thawed; my lacerated heart began to miraculously knit together. A flood of tranquility drenched my soul, a diluvial immersion, deep, cleansing, safe. The sorrow that had vanquished my heart for months, and constricted it in a vice of darkness, simply released. All pressure, all pain disintegrated. Relief. Unshackled from torment. Absolved from grief. I stood in the quiet settling of my home, and savored the sweetness of deliverance.
“Emari, my Jewel.”
My eyes flew open and I whirled around to behold a sight I was sure I would never see again on this side of heaven. There before me stood the real and cogent figure of the man who meant more to me than anything in the world.
“Daddy?”
Chapter 24 Hero
I flew into his arms, laughing and crying at once. “Daddy! I’ve missed you so much.” My hands fluttered over him, his face, his chest, his arms, to verify the reality of him. He chortled happily as I took his hand and dragged him to the couch. I sat there in awe, stared into his face as I memorized again each detail and line that time had slowly begun to erase from my memory. In placid silence he scanned my face and drank in my delight to see him. A gentle smile graced his mouth, his blue eyes soft and happy. I held tightly to his hand as if I would never let him go again, and caressed the hard tendons stretched across his knuckles and the softness of the wrinkles on the back of his spotted hand. I remembered the age and sunspots from his years of work in the cotton fields as a child, the blue veins that ran under his skin, and the simple gold band that had adorned his ring finger for nearly thirty-five years, an emblem of the love he shared with my mother.
My mother.
My brain ached with confusion. My mother. I felt a peculiar pull inside my head. My mind reeled with a montage of images and sounds, memories of my parents, like home video clips spliced and randomly put back together. Sentences began in one conversation and ended in another. I closed my eyes and shook my head, tried to salvage some congruency.
“I don’t understand. Where have you been? I thought…” My mind churned, thoughts roiling, and I couldn’t remember what I was saying. I couldn’t remember why my dad’s presence in my home would cause such chaos. He was here all the time. What was the big deal?
We sat on the couch, knee to knee, our fingers interlaced, and we talked; about the house, the remodel, a few repairs that needed done. He asked me about my new car, my urban orange CX9. I traded in my previous car because too many people apparently couldn’t see it very well. After my third not-my-fault accident, I decided it was time to get something bigger and brighter so people could actually see me when I was coming. You had to admit, orange wasn’t a common color, hard to miss, but not quite as repulsive as ‘Hello Yellow’ or ‘Screamin’ Green.’ Mom would have loved it.
Mom.
I crushed my brows together and closed my eyes as I tried to reconcile the maelstrom of images that bombarded my mind. Mom. Where’s Mom?
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Em.”
What was I suppose to say? Nothing made sense to me, how was he supposed to figure it out? I pulled my hand from his and cradled my head in my palms. My brain was pounding. I was tired, confused. I struggled to remember whatever it was I’d forgotten.
Oh yeah! Mom.
But, what about Mom?
Why did this whole situation feel so abhorrently wrong? If I could just get a grip on it. Find that elusive snag that unraveled the whole mess.
“Nothing. I…” I never had problems talking to my Dad. What was wrong now? I rummaged through my mind and saw a flash of obsidian blue.
Nick?
In a cascade of memories, I remembered the truth. I leapt from the couch and away from my father. “Who are you?” I
demanded.
“Emari, honey. What are you talking about? I’m your dad,” the image said sweetly, exactly as my father would have. His eyes overshadowed with tragic wounds.
“No. You are not. My father is dead.”
“Is that what they told you?” he said with an air of nonchalance. “It’s actually a little more complicated than that.”
“What? Are you going to give me some Witness Protection Program bullshit?” I would never have spoken this way to my father but this was not my father. “How did you get into my house? Did you phase through a wall or something?”
“I’m not in your house,” he said as his voice changed timbre and his body glistened and dimmed before my eyes. “I’m in your head.” The specter of my father vanished under a deluge of wicked laughter.
The echoes of his morbid glee rippled through me and abandoned me to tremble in rage and sorrow. My knees folded beneath me and I crumbled on the couch.
“Daddy,” my throat constricted around the word, and it hissed from my mouth like a deflating balloon. I drew my knees to my chest and clutched them to me until my knuckles turned white, and my breaths grew shallow from compression. “Why?” The hoarse scream rasped through my throat. “Why would you do that? Why would you make me believe he was back and then tear him away from me?” Only silence met me. The torment of the lone survivor of a cataclysmic wreck returned; I was barely hanging on, clinging to life and wondering why I bothered. Crushed. I bled hope and faith. The flames incinerated all that was me.
But…
There was more to me than my parents. I had life. I had hope. I had love. I had Nick. I had choice. I could stand. I could choose, and I chose to survive. Survive the grief.
If only I survived the night.
I wandered the house, peered out into the darkness from every window. Where was Nick? Was he okay? Should I call? What if I called and it gave away his location to the Wraith? If the Wraith had managed to get at me through the walls, did that mean he was more adept in person?
