The Root

by Na'amen Tilahun

  Matthias nodded. “I’ll pick you up Friday afternoon for next weekend’s training.”

  Erik returned the nod and opened the door.

  Who’s the new boyfriend, Erik?

  At least you’re eighteen now, right?

  Do you call him Daddy when he’s inside of you?

  You like them older, huh?

  He had expected his reimmersion in this world to bring his anger surging to the front and he was ready to control himself. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel any anger. Instead a calm enveloped him because, unlike everything else this weekend, this he knew how to deal with. He knew what they tried, the things they would say to get a reaction from him. Any reaction. It was helped by the fact that what they were yelling was absolutely ridiculous. There were barely five years between Matthias and himself, if that.

  One man tried to block his path up the walk.

  By instinct, Erik stepped forward and hooked his foot around the man’s ankle. Knocking shoulders with the man, he tripped him off to the side into the crowd of paparazzi. It was simple and smooth and he knew the man wouldn’t be injured. They crowded closer and he steadily made his way to his door.

  He could feel the crowd around him, not who they were or what they were doing but the mass of them, the force that held them all together, himself in the center, their attention focused on him. He could feel the edges of the crowd, the way it petered out as some paparazzi gave up and left. He cut through the crowd, reading the weak men and women, those less rooted to the spot, and knocking them into their compatriots, careful not to actually hurt them.

  Careful to make it look like an accident.

  Suddenly two other presences impeded on his awareness; they were warps in the weave of the mob, not smoothly cutting through like himself but disrupting the flow, causing snarls and tangles. He came closer to his normal awareness as they reached him. He could still see the currents and waves of the crowd but not nearly as clearly. Erik recognized the warps as his parents as they moved in and took positions on either side of him. The three of them made their way through the remainder of the mob. The flashes of light were still there, and the yelling voices, but for the first time Erik had his parents bracketing him as he went through it.

  They pushed through the last few people and Erik enjoyed the feeling of unity while it lasted. As soon as they were alone he would be on guard again, but for now, surrounded by enemies, they were on the same side. He didn’t have to worry.

  ROBERT

  He didn’t know what to say to his son. He never knew.

  They’d opened the door and pushed their way to Erik, who was patiently making his way through the crowd. They came up on either side of him. Erik looked over to Robert in surprise as he took his son’s arm. Erik almost pulled away but paused, his gaze lingering on Robert, and instead of shaking him off as he half expected, his child merely nodded and allowed them to guide him the rest of the way into the house.

  The voices formed a wall of noise and Robert did his best to let it blur so he couldn’t hear the individual questions they were yelling. When the door closed behind them, the wish became blessed truth and he could no longer hear snippets of people talking about his son having sex and . . . he shuddered . . . other things.

  “Erik. I need to talk with you.” Robert knew it was not the best or most appropriate time, but now it felt as if the apology had been welling up in him for the past eighteen months or longer. Even yesterday he would have said he didn’t feel guilty over his actions, he had only been protecting his family, but now he saw it for the lie it was: he had not been worried about Erik, only himself, how it would make him look.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” he blurted out.

  “What?” Erik was looking at him, wide-eyed and suddenly young. He looked like he was ten again, not eighteen and grown.

  “I—”

  “No.” Suddenly the child was gone from Erik’s face and it was hard as granite, not an ounce of forgiveness in his expression. “Not right now.”

  Erik walked away from the door, putting distance between himself and Robert. He leaned against the counter and tried to gather himself. “Maybe not ever.”

  Robert felt anger roll through his body but he refused to bow to it, refused to let it make him yell. He’d lost too much because of his anger. The hardest thing he’d done in years was to not snap back, not start another fight.

  Instead he stayed silent and looked at Dayida.

  She was breathing hard, wheezing through her clenched teeth, eyes closed, fingers curled against the door as if they wanted to claw through the wood.

  “Yida.” He reached for her wrist. She pulled away right away and turned to face him, eyes flaring open and trapping him in their anger.

  “Don’t. Touch me.”

  “I just want to—”

  “Not right now.” She turned and began to stalk to her studio without a word for either of them. As she moved past Erik, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. She tried to tug out of the hold at first and then went completely still.

  Erik looked less exhausted all of a sudden. Ignoring the byplay, Robert approached his son.

  “Erik, I really need to talk to you, even if you don’t want to hear it. I need to let you know how I feel.”

  Erik turned to look at him and it was a stranger’s face.

  When had that happened? When had his child become a stranger to him? When he’d let his anger and jealousy drive him? Or even before then? Erik had always looked more like his mother, brown skin only a shade lighter than her own chestnut hue, the dark curls of his hair when it wasn’t shaved as he’d recently started to do, dark eyes and long thick eyelashes that had him mistaken for a girl as a child. There were only two things that Robert could directly pinpoint as having come from him in Erik’s face. The slightly crooked Cupid’s bow of his lips were twins of Robert’s own and the way his ears were jug handles. He smiled at these things.

  The smile seemed to confuse Erik and he sighed and some of the stiffness left his cheeks.

  “I need to talk to Mama.”

  “Erik.” Robert opened his mouth to ask again.

  “Robert, I get it. You’re sorry and you want to talk. Honestly, I don’t want to talk with you tonight, but we can try soon. Just not now.” Erik looked uncomfortable as he said it but Robert ignored the tone and smiled.

  “OK, son. Soon.” He rested his hand on Erik’s shoulder on his way out. It was tense and hard as a rock.

  Robert had a few faults he would admit to, a number that he wouldn’t, and some that had been attributed to him that he was actually innocent of. Spying was usually one of the latter, but the interaction between Yida and Erik was too odd for him to ignore.

  He stayed around the corner to listen.

  “I finally figured it out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He peeked around the corner. Erik still stood near the door, not looking at Yida even though his body pointed in that direction.

  “Don’t try it, mama. You know I always wondered why you kept Robert around.”

  “Don’t talk about your father that way.”

  Erik didn’t even reply. Just looked at her.

  “It’s not the only reason, or at least wasn’t when we first got together. I didn’t even realize his use until after we were married.”

  Robert had no idea what they were talking about.

  “Who knows you’re actually awake?”

  “Matthias. No one else.”

  “Why?”

  Erik moved and Robert ducked his head back around the corner.

  “I saw my parents die. Watched the power eat my mother alive and drive my father mad.”

  “Grandma’s not dead.”

  There was silence. Then, “How did you do that?”

  “Drain the force out of you? I didn’t know I could but I saw Matthias and Elliot do something similar. When I felt the force under your skin I decided to try.”

  “Has Matthias traced yo
ur bloodline?”

  “He tried.” There was a long pause. “The Organization thinks it might come from Dad’s side.”

  “What!”

  The shock in Yida’s voice was loud and ugly, but Robert froze for a different reason. It was the first time Erik had called him Dad in years.

  “They think Robert is a Blooded who never woke up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a berserker.”

  The gasp from Yida was loud as hell and the worry in her voice made Robert’s heart beat louder.

  “I . . . assumed you would be of Ogun’s line but that makes sense. I never understood why I could use your father the way I did.”

  Erik made a disapproving sound. Robert didn’t know what they were talking about, but it involved him and he wanted to know.

  “Mama, it’s not right to use Robert in that way.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you ever think of how it would affect him? Maybe, maybe—” Erik’s voice broke and there was a beat of silence before he went on. “It has to stop.”

  “Well, now that you’re here I won’t have to use him anymore.”

  Robert dared to peek around the corner again. Erik was standing in front of his mother, close but not touching. They were looking into each other’s faces and Robert read something in Yida’s face that he had not seen in a long time. Fear.

  “You have to learn control. I can’t just drain off your power every time it fills you. What if I’m out? Or it’s an emergency? Or I’m gone one day.”

  Yida moved around him and toward the door.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Robert could try to silently scurry down the hall and hide quiet as a mouse or he could actually ask the questions that were now boiling up inside of him. He stepped out from around the corner and found himself only inches from Yida, who stopped in her tracks.

  “What’s going on? I think I deserve an explanation.”

  Yida’s eyes were wide and her hand hovered near her mouth.

  Erik watched them both from farther in the kitchen, his eyes dark as he nodded behind her.

  DAYIDA

  The explanation took a while. Erik left early on, and there were a lot of things she had to repeat more than once and other things she didn’t have the answers for, since they involved his family history, not her own.

  “Another secret you’ve kept from me.” He shook his head.

  “We can spend time going back and forth on who kept what from who or we can actually talk to each other.” She looked away from him. “Lord knows we haven’t talked in years.”

  Robert took a deep breath and rested his head in his hands.

  “So at some point in the past my ancestor was a god?”

  “Well, a being that was believed to be one of those things, for sure. She could have been a reborn but it’s basically the same thing.”

  “So why don’t I have any power?”

  “Sometimes it skips whole generations, sometimes every one with the least blood connection ends up powered. It might have something to do with personality and environment, but we don’t really know.”

  “But how does your history work at all?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Different beliefs existed at different times in history. It doesn’t make any sense that all these things happened at the same time.”

  She sighed. “The world is very old and in the beginning the old ones lived in harmony among humans and the other living things on the planet. Then they went to war. The details are lost but we know most of them survived.

  “That’s when the Tower of Babel fell. That is when the people of the world were split into many peoples and languages. That’s when the old ones traveled, established themselves among the different people, formed different aspects, different personalities, and mingled with their people.

  “Then the second war came when many of their children turned on them. That war destroyed the world.”

  “Destroyed it?” His voice was muffled by his hands but she could detect a wild note of panic in it.

  “Every culture has a flood in its mythology or a different story of the world’s death and rebirth. Things are lost, things are reborn, things change, and the world renews every time. Some believe the first world was destroyed after the faithful children of the old ones rose up and banished their siblings from the world. Many bloodlines were lost in the chaos. Those that survived kept the memory of the old ones alive, many of them awakening to the power and becoming Blooded themselves.

  “And every so often there are those that are . . . more than awakened. The Reborn. They are . . . different. They usually appear in threes, sevens, or thirteens—mystically significant numbers. They’re not the actual old ones but are the source of most of the earth mythologies—the stories they tell, the things they do.”

  There was more, much more, but she could see the fine tremors running through Robert’s hands and when he lifted his head, his eyes were wide and watery.

  “What did Erik mean that you were using me?”

  She sighed again. He was trying to change the subject but she doubted it would have a happier outcome. “I don’t . . . like that I’m awake. I don’t want to be, so I’ve been bleeding off my energy so that it doesn’t become so much that I have to use it or anyone notices. I mostly do it through our fights, dissipating it through your body.”

  He looked at her silently, his brow wrinkled, probably thinking back on their long history of screaming matches. Then he laughed. “Is that all? Considering everything else that seems like a small thing. I can’t even really blame you, can I? Not like I didn’t give you plenty of reasons to fight with me.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t my family tell me?”

  “It depends. Some families don’t reveal it to those who don’t awaken to try and save time and drama. I’ve known since I was a child.”

  “How old are people when they . . . wake up?”

  “Usually teens to thirties, though there have been Blooded who woke up as early as five and as late as eighty-seven. It’s one of the reasons we think it has to do with personality and environment. Some simply have to grow into it, others never will.”

  “So Erik is what?”

  “Our son.”

  He nodded. “No, I mean is he in danger?”

  She softened at the actual affection in his voice. She didn’t want to worry him further, but he had been lied to enough.

  “Yes. Even if he chooses not to fight the Angelics, he’ll still be in danger from them.”

  “So is that what this Organization does? Keep the world safe?”

  “Helping to keep it safe, yes. The war against our siblings and their descendants is long and slow but continues on to this day. But it’s possible Erik will choose not to join the fight. Some Blooded do try to stay out of it, choose to stay in the civilian world and find a job that they can use their abilities to augment in some way.”

  “How likely is that?”

  She shrugged in response. She hadn’t actually talked to Erik about it, but she doubted he would turn away from this. Even as a child his priorities had always been going after those he viewed as bullies, and this was the most animated she’d seen him since Daniel.

  “Is that why you’re so afraid of . . . being awake yourself?”

  Yida pulled away and stood.

  “You don’t know anything, Robert. You always look at power and ignore the cost of it and that cost is often too high. You lose people, you lose places, you lose memories.”

  Robert had gone quiet, staring at her face. She stood from the table and paced the kitchen. The whole thing was done in simple black, white, and chrome—Robert’s pseudo-intellectual design plan. She leaned against the cool chrome double oven.

  “I watched my mom become someone else. After my father went mad and died, she gave into the power inside her, always in full-blood. I watched her become something more powerful but less human.”

  “I’ve always lik
ed your mother.”

  “Yes, I know. She has a lovely mask, but she’s not the woman who raised me anymore. She became harder, like she became a conduit and nothing more.”

  “You’re scared of change.”

  She snorted but didn’t pull away as he came to stand behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders.

  “I’m scared of being changed, not change. There’s a big difference.”

  “But every change is in reaction to something. No change happens without something to start it.”

  She laughed. “You make it sound simple, Robert, but it isn’t.”

  He was silent for a time.

  “I should go to bed. I have a lot to think about.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to go paint.”

  They walked away from one another and the silence that filled the house was the same, but now full of uncomfortable truths rather than lifelong secrets.

  MATTHIASS

  He had not been back to San Francisco in five years. The old boarding hotel he’d once known now long gone. He was staying in the new high-rise in the Mission that had replaced it and was half empty. His powers made sneaking in and out of one of the penthouses a piece of cake.

  The walls were an inoffensive light khaki brown, every appliance top of the line three years ago. A large sleeping bag in red so faded it was pink formed a makeshift bed in the corner of the living room.

  He had spent the last few days after dropping Erik off at home reacquainting himself with the city of his birth.

  And doing research on Erik’s father.

  He had not been in San Francisco for so long and much had changed in the last sixty-two months, but the Mormons still kept awesome records. Many of his contacts were no longer in the city itself, having moved to various surrounding cities. Mostly Oakland.

  Esta Noche, the iconic gay Latin bar that had been his underage watering hole was also gone, so he’d had to find another place. Luckily there were still some dark bars mixed in among the hipster preferences for organic, white, and expensive. He’d already hit one up tonight and a shot of whiskey and the still-sore feeling of his lips from an epic make-out had relaxed him.