by T. E. Joshua
Then the light flickered on. He stood tall, his grayish-black hair falling to his shoulders. The color of his eyes matched my father’s and of my own—the reddish-brown color that is only within the Naiche bloodline.
“Forgive me, nephew, I left my back door unlocked when I fell asleep. It’s nearly sunrise. I had forgotten that the Covenant warriors hunt well into the night.”
“Yeah, it’s same old story. Nothing has changed,” Alope said.
He glared at Alope and scratched his goatee. “I know you.”
Alope eased back with caution. “How do you know us?”
“You’re one of Inca’s daughters.”
She then stepped away from me and slowly approached him.
“Yes, I am. You know my father?”
Uncle Eis snickered a bit. “Of course I know that old fart. We used to fight together before my brother rose to power.”
Then we heard more footsteps coming from the rear. James whispered something. They came through the back door. Liyah walked in first and saw us standing before my uncle. Then Aaron entered, followed by James.
“Father,” James said.
“Yes junior, it’s me.”
Then James and Aaron rushed past me to hug their father, tackling the older man down to the couch and kissing his cheeks. They hadn’t seen him since last year when they visited him for a few days. I wished father and I had the same feelings for each other. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t envious of their unexpected reunion. That, I guessed, ruled out my theory about James’s hostility toward his father.
All three of them stood up and remained relatively close.
“My boys, I’ve missed you dearly,” he cried.
“Dad, I’m glad to see you,” Aaron said. Even though they were killers, it was times like these that I forgot we were still sons and daughters. Then I wondered—if I had been born to a normal family with the life of a regular teenager, what would that have been like? Perhaps I’d never know.
“Well, not to be rude, but why have you come to Blackfalls? And at this time of the night, can only mean that you’re in some sort of trouble?” Uncle Eis asked.
His sons glared at each other. No one wanted to answer him. So I took the lead.
“You can say that, trouble wouldn’t be far off. Father sent us to kill an Awakened Reborn.”
There was a brief moment of silence as my uncle soaked in the reality of my words. He took two steps toward me and said, “An Awakened Reborn?”
“Yes.”
He scratched his goatee and wandered away. He walked into the den, which was furnished with a golden couch and a midsize coffee table. He had a worried expression on his face, almost like he didn’t want to believe me.
“So the day has finally come,” he muttered.
“What day is that?” I asked as I marched over to him.
Uncle Eis smirked. He knew something was up. I couldn’t read his facial expressions, but it was as if he had anticipated our late-night arrival.
“Father, I know we haven’t seen you in some time, but what day were you talking about?” Aaron asked.
“I can’t say, son.”
I sighed and began to pace back and forth. The night got darker, and my legs were sore from running through the woods with my weakened strength.
“But what happened tonight? Did my older brother send your clan to behead an Awakened Reborn?”
Then another wave of silence came. I looked downward, ashamed of my defeat. She was just an innocent girl, someone I would normally laugh at before a beheading. But her faith was enormous, more so than any other Reborn I had faced.
“Well …” he said without hesitation.
“We weren’t there. Only Bodaway was with her,” James said sternly, still sour about not being able to assist me earlier tonight.
“The Reborn was a young girl?”
“Yes, she was. Maybe our age,” I said.
“It seems to me that you have gone against one of the most powerful Awakened Reborns on earth and yet she is just a young girl,” he said gruesomely. She’s one of the strongest on earth? Perhaps we had our work cut out for us.
I zeroed in on his words of shock.
“I don’t understand. She didn’t do anything. She didn’t fight back, and yet I felt so utterly powerless against her.”
“That’s why they are called ‘Awakened Reborns.’ Their faith is what is unbeatable. In the Covenant, the dark spirits give the Naiche warriors paranormal energy that no other human being can obtain unless they devote their lives to the Great Spirit, Lucian. The covenant that the Reborns possess with their God far surpasses the Covenant with the Great Spirit. Even one of the strongest Naiche warriors, like you, an elite, can’t touch an Awakened Reborn, because their powers are solely based upon the Reborn God. The Spirit of the believers lives within the bodies of the Reborns.”
“My guess is when you attacked her; the Spirit of the Reborns intervened and weakened your body. The dark spirits must have kneeled before Him and trembled in fear, therefore keeping you powerless until you distanced yourself from the girl.”
I sat down, not looking at my clan, and nodded my head in agreement. This Awakened Reborn was more powerful than I had expected. As long as she knew I was coming, she couldn’t be killed by my hand. There must be another solution, I knew, a way around the Reborn’s Spirit—a way to outsmart the entity.
“Maybe we have to kill her from a distance, with an energy wave or using one of our three elements—fire, water, wind,” Aaron suggested.
“That could work,” I said, trying to keep an optimistic attitude.
Then Uncle Eis yawned, raising his hands high in the air, and said, “We can discuss the issue tomorrow when we are more awake. You kids need to get some shut-eye.”
“Yeah, where do we sleep?” I asked.
“The girls can sleep in the spare bedroom down the hallway from mine. You three can sleep in the guest room around the kitchen. I laid out three mattresses for you boys.”
“Okay. Thanks, Father,” James said. Aaron, James, and their father hugged.
“Well, ya’ll have a good night, young warriors,” Uncle Eis said as he began to walk back upstairs. He was gone before we noticed. Everyone said good night to him. As he vanished, we all glared at each other with nothing to say. But a plan was on my mind, a plan to approach the situation from a different angle. Using our elements to burn her to death, to drown her in a ball of water, or to rip the skin from her body was a plausible solution.
“We need to take the time to plan our next move. In the meantime, we need to lie low and survey the town of Blackfalls—find out where she likes to go, where she hangs out, who her friends are, and, most importantly, if there are other Awakened Reborns in the area. That is our goal for the next few days.”
“How many more days do we have left?” Aaron asked. He seemed worried. Maybe he felt we couldn’t handle the hunt. The explanation that Uncle Eis had given us destroyed any hope of beheading her. I wasn’t going to give up.
“Twenty-eight more days or so until we’re supposed to return with the head of the girl,” Liyah said.
“We can’t get close to her—we might trigger some of her light energy like she did with Bodaway tonight,” Alope said.
“Since I am the only elite here, I will stay close to her.”
“How? She knows what you look like,” James mentioned.
“I have to change my look—everything. She can’t recognize me. If she does then it’s all over. She’ll know that I was her nightmare. But we need to get some sleep. We can talk about this tomorrow.”
Then we said good night to each other. The girls went their way and we went ours.
Our room was a decent size. The walls were brick, as if Uncle Eis had added on an extra room after he brought the place.
Then I shut my eyes, assuming James was falling asleep as well. He made no noise; nor did Aaron. I didn’t realize how tired I was until my mind slipped away into utter dar
kness. In that moment, before the sun had completely revealed itself over the horizon of the trees, the face of the Awakened Reborn girl reappeared in my mind.
4
The Name of Tristan
WHEN I WAS A BOY, my father told me an ancient story. I remember his words vividly and could retell the tale down to the minor details. It was the tale of the Awakened Reborns, the legend.
“I tell you this much, Bodaway—these Reborns are not to be underestimated. A Reborn is an ordinary human being who has confessed a man-god as their savior, but to go beyond that normality of just living a simple existence is a rarity. Believers with such power make a mockery of our finest warriors. There are only a few dozen in this entire world who have ascended to that point in their faith, most of whom existed soon after the death of their leader. Currently, there is one famous Awakened Reborn named Reece. His name is feared by even the strongest of the Naiche people, even me. I am the only warrior who has fought him. I failed, my son. But you will not. You are the Promised Child of the Covenant, the element of fire, the number nine warrior, and the one given to me by the Great Spirit to defeat these faith monsters.”
He told me this story eight or nine times since my childhood. Should I have been upset when he gave me the assignment to hunt down the Awakened Reborn in Blackfalls? Probably not. I had known this day would come—which is why I decided to take on Natalie myself. If anyone could do it, then it would be me and me alone. Father said I could, and though that didn’t mean that I wanted to do it, I didn’t want to disappoint him.
“Bodaway!” Alope called out to me. I rushed out of the house to find all of them scheming, discussing a plan. There, in the front yard of the house of Eis Lakota, we pondered, all with one goal in mind: to kill the Awakened Reborn girl. Aaron began to sharpen his blade, Liyah and Alope exchanged ideas of following her around town, and James, of course, volunteered to assist me on the beheading. For a few hours, we discussed ways of carrying out a sneak attack, this time in daylight. It was unusual and prohibited to kill in broad daylight. The shedding of blood must happen after nightfall, lest we were seen.
Perhaps this Natalie girl wasn’t as big of a threat as she had been portrayed. She certainly didn’t seem to be a faith warrior.
“Yes, she is only human. There hasn’t been a Reborn whom we haven’t been able to kill. Even though she defeated me last night, I think I’ll be able to do it this time around.”
“But how?” James asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. We need to study her ways—follow her around on errands, find out how much she really believes in her god to protect her from monsters like us. We are to be feared, not fearful.”
“Apparently you fear her. If you didn’t then she wouldn’t have been able to put you on the floor without competition,” Aaron said, trying to lead me to anger. It worked.
“Shut up,” I uttered, flickering the lighter on and off.
Time went on, and I realized James there beside me would probably have been sufficient for the kill. He could have frozen her to death with the element of water, as long as there was a pool of water nearby for him to manipulate. I, on the other hand, could burn her alive, but then again, we needed her head unharmed. Keeping the heads of the dead was considered an honor. To most, they were trophies. The head of Natalie Schultz would have ensured that my name, Bodaway, the element of fire and the Promised Child, would be one to be feared among the Reborn churches and to be respected by my people.
We had decided to wander the town of Blackfalls to search for the Reborn girl and to become more aware of our surroundings.
“We could do it, you know,” James said.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Kill her together. It wouldn’t be hard. One of us could attack in the open, and the other could sneak attack from a blind spot—preferably you, since your faster and stronger than me.”
“That’s only because I was born and blessed to be an elite by the Spirit Whispers.”
“Yeah, but Bodaway, I need this,” James said sternly.
“Need what?”
“You know—the repetition of killing an Awakened Reborn. Maybe it’s a way of ascending into an Awakened Warrior.”
He was obsessed with ascending. Did he want more power than I had? No, that wasn’t it. He loved our way of life. Power didn’t mean much to him; the culture did. “Why ascension? It only gives you more power, more than you’ll ever need in this life. You’ll lose yourself; become a true monster of havoc.”
“I mean, yeah, you’re probably right. Ascension is only a dream. Not one warrior has ascended before. Not even Naiche or your father, and he’s the strongest of us all,” James said, flipping his hair behind his jacket. He began to wipe his twin blades, just in case we couldn’t use our powers against her.
“Yeah, I don’t plan on it. I just want to get this job over with, the sooner the better,” I said quietly as the others walked toward us. I didn’t want them to hear me rant.
“So are we all taking one or both vehicles?” Alope asked me. She seemed eager to go hunting again.
“First of all, we need to evaluate the town more closely. Keep a low profile. No one is killing today. We don’t want this small college town to get suspicious of our presence. As far as we are concerned, we are just passing through as visitors,” I said firmly.
“I found out this morning that Natalie is a student at the local university,” Liyah said.
“A college student, this could work in our advantage,” I said.
“How?” Alope asked, looking at me.
“Pose as a student. Get to know her. Anything could work.”
“We can worry about that later. Let’s check out this town, starting with the downtown area,” James said.
We entered the town of Blackfalls. There wasn’t much to look at. The buildings were unoccupied and the people kept to themselves, which was unusual for a middle southwestern town. It was like a ghost town with uninteresting people to gaze upon.
“What are we doing here again?” Aaron asked.
“You know, checking out the scenery, asking questions about the Schultz family. Nothing too deep.”
James parked the truck behind a restaurant. Today, we all wore simple attire, jeans and a T-shirt, trying not to attract any attention to ourselves. We separated. Beforehand we separated, James tapped my right shoulder. That was a sign to talk in private. So I followed him.
“So now that the others are out of the way, what do you need to talk to me about?” I asked in hopes that it wouldn’t be anything too devastating. James took one last look around to make sure that the others weren’t nearby. I glanced back as well; they were some distance away.
“Look, I have been picking up some strange energy signals ever since we arrived in Blackfalls,” he uttered cautiously.
“Did you recognize any of them?”
“Not necessarily, but one of them felt similar to Lyonell’s energy. It was massive, like yours, maybe even bigger. The others haven’t sensed it yet. Lyonell and his clan could be tracking us to make sure the job is done,” he explained. He seemed worried, enough to take me aside and talk in private. “Maybe your father doesn’t trust us.”
“Probably so,” I said, adding as I glanced around, “If you’ve sensed him, then the Wolf clan might be passing through or near Blackfalls on another hunt. Lyonell wouldn’t interfere with our hunt unless he was instructed to by our father. But then again, Lyonell is more of a rogue.”
Then I heard Alope calling my name from behind. She was smiling.
James uttered very quickly into my ear, “Please don’t tell the others. I don’t want them to worry.”
“I won’t. I just hope that you’re wrong.” Hopefully the strange energy signals were from scattered nomadic warriors roaming the plains of Oklahoma in search of another Reborn. They’d most likely be lower level warriors—nothing compared to us.
“Bodaway! Eis!” Alope called out. Of course, he didn’t li
ke his Native name, named after his father. The name of James came from a nickname given to him by his mother, who had died some years back. We still didn’t know how. Her body had been found in a creek. We believed an Awakened Reborn had killed her. I understood why James really needed to assist me: he believed he could get even with his mother’s death.
“Don’t call me Eis, Alope,” he thrashed back.
“Sorry, James, but guys, we spotted her.”
So soon? We had just arrived in downtown Blackfalls. It had only been five minutes or so. Alope pointed into a small store called Baker’s Bookstore. It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place with a couple of green carts of books sitting outside with a sign reading 50 Percent Off.
“She’s in the bookstore?” James asked Alope.
“Yes, we just saw her go inside the bookstore.”
“But, you haven’t seen her before. Only I have,” I argued.
“That girl carries the same distinction of the one described as the Awakened Reborn. She has the symbols on her jacket, and the coloring of her eyes was different—one blue and one green.”
“You got close enough to see her?”
“No, Liyah did.”
Then the front door opened. A bell rang as Liyah walked out of Baker’s Bookstore with her hands in her pockets. She paced her steps from across the street and nodded her head. “It’s her. Natalie is inside,” she said loudly, but yet trying to speak at a normal tone.
I ordered for them to hide behind a green dumpster. Liyah ran over to us. “It was her,” she said. “The eyes of blue and green, the symbols on her jacket, and of course the scent—the kind only carried by those faithful monsters.”
To be sure, I asked, “What did she smell like?”
“It was definitely sweet and a bit spicy, almost like a scented candle. I’m positive that was her. Trust me, Bodaway. I don’t lie and am almost never wrong.”
I peeked out from behind the green dumpster, which was across the street in an alleyway. Through the tinted glass I saw the Awakened Reborn holding a book and leaning against the wall. Her mouth moved as if she were reading to a crowd. I recognized her dirty blonde hair dangling down pass her shoulders. Her scent still lingered out in the streets—the aroma of her god.
