Cathleen almost tripped as the sweet feminine voice behind her pointed out her mistake. “You should be more careful,” Shektee observed from her position next to the door.
Cathleen spun around ready to fire at whoever was talking, only to find herself frozen in terror. Shektee had anticipated her reaction and had shifted to her combat form. The hard bone plates covered with spikes truly made her look like a horror come to life. The pistol would hurt, but it wouldn’t do any real damage. The woman’s magical abilities were the unknown that Shektee had to be worried about.
“My mistress will not allow me to hurt you or yours for now, but if she doesn’t get what she wants that will change. You can hide behind your warding spell but it won’t protect everyone. You should think about that before you upset my mistress,” Shektee suggested before leaving. Cathleen stood very still, trying to calm herself and think about what she could do.
The sound of a gunshot broke Cathleen’s trance. It was faint but she knew immediately who was shooting. Cathleen didn’t hesitate; she rushed the door, pulling it open with the strength granted her by maternal fear. Carla was in trouble and she’d left her alone. She raced across the store and out onto the sidewalk. As she ran back toward her shop, she saw something come rushing out and cross the street. It looked like a girl but she hadn’t been able to get a close look at her. She’d thought about taking a shot at her, but by the time she brought up the pistol the girl was gone down the alley.
Cathleen forgot about the girl as she pulled the door open to her shop and raced inside. “Carla!”
“I’m okay, Mom. She’s gone,” Carla responded in a slightly shaky voice. Carla was sitting behind the counter and holding her arm where Mystique’s spike was still sticking out of it. Cathleen crossed the shop and rounded the counter to see for herself that Carla was safe. Cathleen’s eyes widened as she spotted the spike and blood trickling down her daughter’s arm. When Carla looked up at her mother, Cathleen didn’t see the rebellious teen—she saw a scared little girl.
Cathleen quickly went back and bolted the front door, before collecting Carla and taking her into their living area in back. Cathleen thought about going to the hospital but that would put them out in the open where the demon could easily get them. Whoever this Mystique was, she was too dangerous for them to make another mistake. Cathleen was going to have to be very careful in how she dealt with Mystique.
Carla told her mother what had happened while Cathleen removed the spike and dressed the wound. Carla’s confidence returned with the presence of her mother. “Mom, she could’ve killed me if she wanted to.”
“Don’t worry, dear. I won’t let her hurt you again,” Cathleen told her daughter with more confidence than she felt. Carla leaned into her mother for comfort and support. They were in danger and she could tell that her mother was scared.
***
Carla answered the phone expecting it to be one of her friends. When she heard Mystique’s voice, she yelled to her mother. Carla should have hung up when her mother picked up the other phone but she wanted to know what was going on.
“Cathleen, are you calm enough to talk with me?” Mystique asked.
“Yes. What do you want?” Cathleen replied, trying not to sound nervous.
“I want to know how you warded your shop and any other spells you may know.”
“Why? Can’t your demon teach you all the magic you want?” Cathleen replied, trying to find out how much Mystique wanted the spells.
“Only if I wanted to sacrifice a lot of people to her. Personally I prefer to only kill the people who deserve it. I would like to meet you face-to-face. There’s a diner a few blocks from you. Archie’s Place; do you know it?”
“Yes, I know where it is, but what makes you think I’ll meet you?” Cathleen replied, refusing to be pushed around.
“I am going to wait fifteen minutes and then I will allow my demon to feast on everyone in the diner,” Mystique replied in a cold, heartless voice.
“Fine. I’ll be there. You don’t have to hurt anybody.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Mystique said, trying to make her voice sound softer before she broke the connection.
“Were you serious?” Shektee asked Mystique, unable to tell if she was really willing to allow her to feed on all those people.
“The old guy gets whatever he wants, right? What would he be willing to do to everyone on this planet to get what she knows? Sooner or later he’s going to read your mind and find out about her, and then he is going to tell you to do whatever it takes to get the information. You may be acting nice and civil now, but when he gives you those orders we both know you will do a lot worse,” Mystique explained as much to see if her reasoning sounded as logical out loud as it did in her head.
“Very clever of you to see that far ahead; the only flaw in your logic is that he probably already knows and is waiting to see how successful we are. Either way, you are right; he will do whatever is necessary to get the information, including sending others,” Shektee replied.
“How would he get the others across the barrier?”
“Easy. I would convince someone to summon whatever he chooses to send. I would not be able to use magic on the person, but there are many ways to convince humans to do what you want. Normally none of my kind would assist in the summoning of another, but I would do as I was told. He could also put them on a ship leaving jump space and have them brought here by the ship,” Shektee explained as she checked the clock mounted above the counter. Mystique sat back to think, signaling an end to the discussion, which was fine with Shektee. The less they thought about the ancient, the better.
***
“Carla, I want you to wait five minutes after I leave then go out the back way. I want you to take this and get as far away from here as possible. She’s probably going to have someone watching, so you have to move fast and always assume you’re being followed,” Cathleen instructed her daughter as she emptied her safe of all the money and valuables she’d collected over the years.
“I’m not going anywhere, not while you’re still in danger,” Carla stated adamantly.
Cathleen let out an exasperated sigh. She’d heard that tone from her daughter before and knew what it meant. Her daughter wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how hard she tried to convince her. “At least hide until I get back.”
Carla hugged her mother before going to hide in the linen closet. She had her pistol for protection. Anyone or anything opening the closet door was going to get shot. Cathleen leaned the kitchen broom up against the door in the hope that if anyone looked, they’d assume nobody was inside.
Cathleen said a simple prayer as she locked the door to her shop and headed for the diner.
***
Mystique had sent Shektee to stand guard outside after ten minutes. She was fairly confident that Cathleen would show up. She was sitting in a booth near the back of the diner facing the front door. When Cathleen entered and looked around, she didn’t seem to notice Mystique. Mystique had to motion for Cathleen to get her attention. Cathleen cautiously made her way back to the booth. She stopped to take a long look at Mystique before sitting down opposite her. Cathleen was a little surprised to find that Mystique was barely older than Carla.
“All right, I’m here. Now what?” Cathleen asked, trying to hide how nervous she was.
“Now you explain to me how you put the ward up around your store. How you learned how to use the language of power. And last, you teach me everything you know about the language,” Mystique told her calmly.
“If I choose to answer your questions and do as you ask, what happens when I’m done?”
“I go about my business and you go about yours and we never have to meet again,” Mystique answered in a matter-of-fact tone.
“How do I know you’ll leave us alone?” Cathleen asked, feeling a little more confident.
Before Mystique could answer, someone fired a pistol outside the front of the restaurant. It was a single shot
from a small-caliber pistol. A few patrons ducked, while most turned to look. From their booth at the back, Mystique and Cathleen couldn’t see anything.
Mystique noticed Shektee and Carla entering the diner. Concern and fear flashed through Cathleen as she saw Carla being guided toward their table by a tall blond woman. She stood up to meet the two. Cathleen didn’t know the woman following Carla, but she could sense that whatever it was, it was not human.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I just got so worried. I thought I could help,” Carla told her mother as tears collected in her eyes.
“She shot me,” Shektee stated as she tossed Carla’s pistol on the table. Cathleen pulled her daughter close as Shektee hooked a finger through the hole in her jacket to show where she had been shot.
“That was very foolish of you,” Mystique said to Carla as she slid the pistol off the table and into her lap. Shektee moved around the table to sit next to Mystique. Mystique motioned for Cathleen and Carla to sit down. Cathleen resigned herself to the fact that now Mystique was fully in charge so she did as instructed. Carla followed her mother’s lead and sat down across from Shektee without saying anything.
“Is anyone else coming?” Mystique asked calmly.
“No. Carla was supposed to stay home. I’d no idea she was going to come. This is between us; Carla doesn’t have to be here,” Cathleen replied, hoping to get permission to send Carla away.
“She seems to think differently, so I think it’s best that she stay. I believe it will be good for her to know how dangerous life can be.” Mystique hadn’t intended it as a threat, but Cathleen took it as one.
“Most of what I know I learned from my mother. She was also a seer and she tried to teach me about magic and spirits,” Cathleen started to explain.
“Is she the one who taught you the chant you were using when we first met?” Shektee asked.
“Yes.”
“There was no magic in those words; we are only interested in the true language of power.”
“I only know a little bit. I learned it when I was Carla’s age from an old book I found in an abandoned house. It caught my attention because it was handwritten with drawings of creatures and symbols. It was mostly about demons and the veil. The last section was on foretelling the future and reading people. It helped me make sense of what my mother had taught me.” Cathleen stopped her explanation as their waitress came over to take their order.
Mystique and Shektee ordered tea while Cathleen and Carla asked for coffee. Once the waitress left, Mystique asked Cathleen if she still had the book. When Cathleen said that she did, Mystique asked to borrow it for a while.
“I’ll return it once I’ve learned what it has to teach me,” Mystique said, pleased to have such an easy solution.
“I don’t see that I have any choice. I’ll go get the book and bring it right back,” Cathleen conceded.
“Carla can stay with us until you return.” Mystique stated as Cathleen motioned for Carla to join her.
Cathleen looked over at Mystique. “I’m not leaving her here with you.”
“I think we’ve been very generous and patient in our dealings. You held my companions at gunpoint, your daughter shot at me, and she shot my friend here. We, on the other hand, have inflicted only minor injuries in self-defense. You’ve been treating me like a villain just because I have a powerful extra-dimensional companion. If you didn’t want our attention, you shouldn’t have advertised the fact you have knowledge of true magic. Now that you have our attention, you are acting like the victim,” Mystique explained calmly as Shektee stood up.
“What are you talking about? I never asked for any of this,” Cathleen protested.
“The ward you cast is the only magical field visible in this entire city. Of course it’s going to attract the attention of any magically sensitive person or creature. So, if you really don’t want the attention, shut the ward off. Your best defense is to hide in the crowed and not draw attention to yourself.” Mystique might have gone on, but their waitress arrived with the drinks.
“We don’t want any trouble in here; if you two are going to start something, please take it outside,” the waitress instructed.
“It’s all right. I’ll be right back,” Cathleen replied, giving Carla a quick pat on the shoulder. Cathleen then quickly headed for the exit. Once outside, Cathleen started running. She hadn’t run in a long time, but fear of what Mystique and her companion would do to Carla gave her all the inspiration she needed.
Carla sat quietly, hoping that Mystique and Shektee would forget about her. But Shektee was not about to forget her. “So, after she gives you the book, can I have them?”
“No. I told her if she gave me the information, we’d leave them alone. Plus, judging by the way Carla just reacted, you got a good taste of her fear,” Mystique replied, deciding to treat Shektee’s question as serious.
“You can go feed while I read through the book if you want. I figure you had to use a bit of energy healing after Carla shot you.”
“You can’t do that. You can’t just send her off to kill some innocent person,” Carla blurted out in protest.
“The word is people, and yes I can. She wouldn’t have to feed if you hadn’t shot her, so their deaths are on you as much as on me. And as for innocent, no truly innocent person will be harmed, but then again how many innocent people do you know?” Mystique replied, deciding to give the girl a lesson in how life can be unfair. Carla sat back, a shocked expression on her face.
“How can you be so callous? Don’t you care at all?”
“Nope.”
“Then why are you sparing me and Mom? Is it some honor code?” Carla asked, without thinking.
“Simple. A friend of mine wouldn’t like it if I killed you,” Mystique replied truthfully.
Carla stopped herself before she asked another question. It was obvious that Mystique was psychotic and there was no reasoning with her. Instead, she took a sip of her coffee and prayed that her mother hurried. Carla hadn’t really believed that anyone could be so heartless that they couldn’t be reasoned with. Now she did and it scared her, and Shektee drank in her fear.
***
Cathleen took a little over twenty minutes to retrieve the book and bring it back to the diner. She was relieved to see Carla sitting in the same spot and sipping her coffee. Mystique and her companion were also sitting and patiently waiting. Both had noticed her arrival and Mystique said something that made Carla snap her head around to look at her mother. Cathleen could see the relief in her daughter’s expression as she moved up to the table and sat down. She placed an old hardcover book on the table and slid it across to Mystique.
“Thank you. I will return it as soon as I am done with it,” Mystique told Cathleen in a polite tone.
“We can go?” Cathleen asked, not sure if Mystique had changed her mind.
“Yes. You have nothing to fear from either of us. We’ll not harm you in any way,” Mystique stated as she met Cathleen’s stare.
Cathleen stood up and motioned for Carla to leave ahead of her. But before Carla could get fully to her feet, Mystique had one last thing to tell her. “Carla, my companion does not kill those she feeds on unless they are killers and she feeds on the emotional and life energy of her prey, which they will recover over time.”
Cathleen gave Mystique a questioning look, but didn’t wait for an answer. As soon as Carla was on her feet, her mother was pushing her toward the door. Carla was focused more on trying to make sense of Mystique’s last comment than she was of walk. Cathleen was not willing to wait while her daughter slowly made her way to the exit. Shektee chuckled at the woman as she almost carried her daughter to the door.
Mystique hadn’t bothered to watch Cathleen and Carla leave. She was more interested in the book. She picked it up and flipped through it, stopping a few times to look at the various drawings. It was a standard nine-by-seven diary-style book. The person that’d written in the book had in most places ignored the lines. A lot of the
writing was hard to understand because of the writer’s terrible penmanship. The writer had also used different-colored inks with red, blue, and black being the most common.
“This is going to be a pain trying to figure out. Whoever wrote it needed a class in penmanship,” Mystique commented as she handed the book to Shektee.
Shektee took the book and felt a strange sensation run through her body. She’d felt this sensation once before and knew instantly what was happening. All Mystique saw was Shektee taking the book from her hand, and then she was gone. A soft popping sound and a rush of air as it filled the space where Shektee had been sitting a second ago were all that marked her disappearance. Mystique cautiously looked around, but other than a few surprised looks everything seemed normal. There was no sign of Shektee or the book. Mystique wasn’t sure what’d happened, but she had a feeling it was the ancient.
Mystique dropped a twenty on the table to cover their drinks and headed for the front door. She felt exposed in the diner and wanted to get to someplace safe so she could think. All of her plans had just disappeared with Shektee and now she had to come up with new ones.
***
Shektee appeared in a grass-covered field. The sky was a dark blue with a red sun shining high above the field. Her master was standing a few yards away, holding a large rifle. Numerous animal carcasses littered the ground around him. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and took aim at Shektee. She knew better than to move; instead, she simply waited, not knowing if the bullet would kill or simply wound her. The ancient spirit stood aiming for a few seconds to see if Shektee would succumb to her instincts and try to dodge out of the way. When it was obvious that she was not going to move, he lowered the rifle.
“Bring it to me,” he instructed.
Shektee walked forward, careful to avoid the carcasses. She stopped a little more than arms reach from the ancient and with both hands held out the book. The ancient slung his rifle over his shoulder and took the book. He slowly turned each page, studying and memorizing every word, diagram, and mark. Shektee stood perfectly still awaiting his instructions.
Mystique's Journey Page 22
