by Rain Oxford
“But silver stops shifters from healing.”
“Not with these ingredients. I know how shifter healing works.”
“If he dies from this, we’ll destroy you,” Henry warned.
I expected Rory to come to her father’s defense, but she said nothing.
Ascelin took off Darwin’s hoodie and t-shirt, and motioned with his hand at Darwin’s wrists. Red, glowing ropes appeared out of the fabric, wrapped around his wrists and shoulders, and strapped him to the chair.
Ascelin slathered the gray paste on Darwin’s wounds. Smoke actually rose from the contact and I could smell his skin burning. He screamed even louder, like he was being tortured. I needed to throw up and desperately wanted fresh air, but I couldn’t stand to leave Darwin alone.
Rita tried to take Ahz outside, but he whined and held on tighter to Deimos. “I guess Deimos is babysitting,” Rory said. “Deimos, go with him.”
The dog stood and led Ahz out. Ahz didn’t protest. Phobos trailed out after them, clearly not wanting to be around Darwin. Rory didn’t look happy herself, so she disappeared through the back door. Logan stayed, although his expression was more bored than anything.
* * *
It took ten long, miserable minutes before Darwin stopped screaming. He was reduced to tears and strained begging. He saw us standing there, doing nothing to help him. It had to have been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. Even harder than trying to shoot myself when I found my parents dead and my best friend covered in their blood.
All shifters were accustomed to some pain; their shift was usually painful. This, however, was torture. My friend was being tortured and it was my fault for taking him into the shadow pass. I knew Henry was feeling responsible as well.
He soon passed out again and Ascelin started wrapping his wounds with white gauze. “This needs to be washed off precisely at midnight. There are also a few side effects of this drastic treatment. You need to make sure he takes certain precautions. These are very important. First, don’t let him go out in sunlight.”
“Like with vampires?” Henry asked.
“Yes. It’ll kill him. Next, don’t let him touch water. Not even to drink or bathe in. And lastly don’t ever feed him after midnight.”
“He’s not a fucking gremlin!” I growled. “This is not the time for jokes!”
Ascelin smirked. “I just saved your friend’s life; you should be relieved and grateful. Even my brother couldn’t have saved him.”
“He’s in severe pain.”
“No, the pain would have subsided by now. But there really are side effects. For one, he’s going to feel pain in his chest when someone opens the shadow pass near him or when he’s close to someone born on another world. It’ll be like your ghost mark, except it’ll be a ‘foreigner’ detector.”
“I was born here, but my mother was from another world.”
“He’ll be fine around you. It won’t be crippling pain, either, just an annoying soreness. Also, potions, poisons, and venoms might have a decreased effectiveness on him, but that includes healing potions.”
“That could be a good thing, though,” I said. “Is he immune to the mahorela venom?”
“No. If he gets bit again, the effects will happen faster, in fact. However, if you plan on taking any innocent person into the shadow pass, I can teach you a spell that will protect them from the mahorela.”
“We thought hiding him with a blanket would be enough.”
“Like I said, you are idiots. The mahorela don’t just bite the innocent, either. If they get desperate enough, they’ll bite anyone they find. You have to stay absolutely silent in there.”
We had known that, too, and failed to comply.
“The last side effect likely to develop is that he will be immune to the effects of silver.”
* * *
We had some time to kill before midnight and another problem to address, so we told Ascelin about Veronica, what she did to the school, and that we were having trouble getting to the school safely because of her.
“I think I can help with this one,” Logan said. He left through the back room.
“Where did your daughter go?”
“Back to her bar. There’s an underground tunnel leading to it so that she can go between there and here without risking sunburn.”
“Most vampires sleep through the day,” I said, curious but not wanting to be rude.
“She used to, but she has been having trouble sleeping lately.”
Logan returned a few minutes later with five red silk pouches that were stuffed and tied with gold string. “These will shield you from magical detection and hide your scent pretty well. Rory couldn’t smell my emotions or that I’m half demon when we met.”
“I smelled what you are,” Henry said.
“I wasn’t wearing it then. Rory dislikes it, so I take it off at White Hills.”
“Thank you. We appreciate your help. Both of you.”
Henry carried Darwin to a bed and breakfast, where we got a room. It was actually a large colonial house where the individual rooms had been converted to accommodate outsiders. The owner was a sweet old lady with a welcoming smile, who was very concerned when she saw the state of our car.
“It looks like you had a heck of a time getting here, pardon my French. I do hope no one was injured.”
“Not from that incident,” Henry agreed. “I’m not sure how we’re going to explain it to the rental company, though.”
“That’s what insurance is for,” Rita said.
“Remind me never to go into insurance.”
* * *
Darwin didn’t wake, so Henry carried him into the bathroom and laid him in the tub. I cut off the bandages and washed his wounds with a cloth at midnight. This woke him. He was confused, but not in pain. His wounds were mostly healed and the discoloration was gone entirely.
“What happened?”
“Ascelin healed you… and possibly cured you of silver’s effect.”
“Whoa. Did you…? Did you smack me with a newspaper like a bad dog?”
“It was a magazine.”
“Remind me to pee in your room.”
Chapter 15
This vision was different than the previous ones in that I was in my childhood home. Like in my other visions, there was fire that didn’t actually burn anything and shadows of kids and teenagers on the walls. My boots squished grotesquely on the carpet, but I refused to look down because I knew I would see blood. My mother’s blood.
“I want to help you, I just need to know how,” I called. The silhouettes of children stopped moving, as if they could hear me.
“Free us! Please!” a boy begged. It sounded like he was several rooms away.
“How do I help you?” I asked.
“Stop her.” This voice came from right behind me. I turned and saw a boy not much older than Ahz. He was thin with blue eyes and shaggy, dirty, matted blond hair. His clothes were dirty and torn.
“How?” If he had an answer, I didn’t hear it, because I felt an overwhelming presence push me away.
* * *
Wednesday, November 30
Darwin made a full recovery overnight and was back to his annoyingly smart self. We were too relieved to curb his frustrating behavior. Rita was surprisingly resilient to his rudeness, probably because of her son’s problems. When we asked how he was feeling, he said there was a twinge in his chest, but it was more irritating than painful. We figured it was caused by Rita’s presence.
“Now’s about time for shit to hit the ventilator,” Darwin said over breakfast. He had three plates piled with food to recuperate his energy.
We were in the dining room of the B&B, so we had to keep our voices down. Fortunately, all three guests currently there were paranormals. It was a buffet-style breakfast, but it was small. I found out the leftover food went to the local schools every morning. People were also welcome to come in off the street and eat if they were having a hard time.
It was nothing like living in a big city.
Rita tried to get Ahz to eat some toast. He had a cup of broccoli and corn, but wasn’t interested in the toast. “You’ve had this before, honey. It just looks different because it’s whole grain. You like toast.”
Darwin tapped the table loudly with the butt of his fork, startling Ahz and making him look at Darwin. Darwin slowly took a piece of the toast, ate it, and opened his mouth to show Ahz that it was gone. Without a second of hesitation, Ahz picked up his own toast and ate it.
Rita gaped. “How did you do that? I’ve done that a dozen times and it never works!”
“He’s seen you eat meat, so he doesn’t trust that it’s safe to eat just because you eat it. However, he’s seen me refuse meat.”
“He doesn’t trust me?”
“He clearly loves you, but trust is a complicated matter when it comes to people with his type of intelligence. He doesn’t see himself as a person, but he wants to.”
“Is he like you?” I asked.
“I’m intelligent enough to know that I’m a person and even though I don’t think the way you do, I can pretend. I pretend because otherwise, I would be excluded, and that’s ultimately not what I want. Sure, I spend my free time locked away, doing experiments, snooping, or hacking, but there is a part of me that needs social interaction. My paranormal and human sides both need companionship. It’s also imperative that I know how to blend in and interact with people in order to get their secrets and relay the information I want to. Being around people requires constant acting on my part. It’s like I’m from another world, trying very hard to blend in.”
“That’s what Ahz feels?” Rita asked.
“In some ways. I’m a moron to him, though, but I’m fortunate that way. Asgard is so intelligent that he is trapped in a world of his own— a mental one. He could know all that is and will be. He could control everyone and everything. He could destroy us all. However, his brain is still developing. His intelligence encompasses the future, but his brain isn’t ready to handle it.”
“I don’t get it. Are you talking about visions of the future?”
He rolled his eyes. “A human learns in a linear stream. When you were a baby, you learned to crawl, you learned to stand up, you learned to walk, and then you learned to run. Using that as an analogy, he was born knowing how to run, but his body couldn’t yet. He knows everything he will ever know, everything that will ever happen, and everything that he will ever learn. He has for years, if not his entire life.”
“How?” Rita asked.
“His magic. He already knows everything he will ever learn. His brain is still that of a mortal child’s though. Can you imagine how hard that is for him to process?”
“I imagine he would be completely deranged,” I said.
“But,” he held up his finger, “he’s smarter than that. He has created this mental world for himself where he can push away everything until he needs it. Why should he know how to repel a massive boulder before one tries to crush him?”
“So he doesn’t see himself as a person?” Rita asked.
“It’s hard to say. He’s self-aware enough to know that he’s one of us, but we’re like a completely different species to him. He can observe our actions and even learn our speech, but our nature and instincts are so foreign to him that it’s hard for him to interact with us. We are the same in body, but he’s a completely different creature mentally, and it’s the fault of his magic.”
“But he can talk.”
“He can, but it’s like us using binary code or speaking in barks and squeaks. You can learn a dog’s different barks, but that doesn’t mean he can understand you if you bark back.”
“So he’ll never get better?” Rita asked.
“I didn’t say that. The brain of a child is amazingly adaptive. As it matures, he will learn to structure his own mind. He will never be like us, but he could decide to be a part of our world. He will probably create what looks to us like a split personality, where he can be so brilliant that he can’t deal with us, to basically what I do. That’s if he wants to at all. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a damn pain in the arse, but I can handle being around people for a short time. He’s not there yet.”
“Does it hurt him?”
“Oh, yes. I suspect it’s utterly agonizing, but he’s probably never known life without pain. Was there a point in his childhood where he suddenly changed?”
She nodded with shame. “He was perfectly normal until he was four. Over a matter of months, he stopped talking or communicating and didn’t want to do anything but draw.”
“That must have been when he came into his magic.”
“My people don’t develop magic until they’re at least five. I thought I somehow caused him to be this way. I thought I wasn’t taking care of him well enough.”
“But wizards are normally born with magic and it develops as they use it,” Darwin said. “There are two ways you can look at it. I wouldn’t give up who I am, but I sure as hell don’t want to be any more intelligent. It’s painful, lonely, and exhausting. For him, it’s probably a thousand times worse. It’s a curse, but it will get better.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Accept that he’s not a normal kid and follow your instincts. Be supportive without being pushy. He has to figure out how to live in the world, and as his brain catches up with his mind, he’ll develop that ability. Don’t coddle him and try to protect him from the rest of the world.”
“And you might want to make sure he cleans his room, or he could turn out a complete slob,” I advised.
“My mother likes cleaning my room! If I did it, it would break her heart! My parents have more money than they know what to do with. Do you really think my mother would be cleaning my room if she didn’t enjoy it?”
“Speaking of your mother, we’re about five hours from your home turf. You should call your parents and let them know.”
He nodded and left the table to talk to them in peace.
“Did John take advantage of you and ruin your life?” Henry asked.
While I thought it was an odd question, Rita snorted. “Ruin my life? Have you seen my son? John was a bastard, but I’ve never regretted being with him for a second. Ahz is a beautiful, perfect, innocent life that resulted from it. Besides… if anything, I used John.”
“How so?”
“I had just arrived here on this strange world where I didn’t know the language and had no money. I was used to surviving in the barren desert. I ended up arrested and questioned, but no one could figure out what language I spoke. I later learned that they had been threatening to send me ‘back to Israel.’ Anyway, I was pretty good at escaping from bad places. I got out and tried to blend in with people. It required a lot of stealing.”
“Where were you?”
“In Washington. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but I can tell you that it’s as opposite from my world as you can get. I figured out what a library was pretty quickly and found a map. That’s when I discovered the entire world wasn’t Washington and decided to head to the desert. I needed to learn enough of the language to get by first, though.”
“How long were you here before you met John?”
“About a year. I was getting pretty good at the language, but I couldn’t get a decent job. When I saw John, I knew exactly what he was.”
“A wizard?”
“A man with power. He was cruel and corrupt with a taste for blood, but I had lived with worse men on my own world. I was tired of sleeping on boxes in the alley and stealing food out of the garbage. I seduced him. I was after him for his money and power. He wasn’t interested in me until he discovered what I could do. I learned that he could control minds, but he couldn’t read mine because my thoughts are in Common. I have to consciously translate. He could still control me, but he also provided me a warm, safe place to stay and food to eat.”
“He didn’t hurt you or abuse you?” Henry asked.
She
shook her head. “After a few months of coming and going, he came right out and said he wanted me to bear him children. I agreed as long as he swore never to separate my children from me.”
“You knew he was a monster and you still agreed to give him children?”
She shook her head. “I was raised by priests because they thought I was a boy. They tried to kill me when they learned I was a girl, and I wouldn’t have been the first child they killed. Compared to them, John wasn’t a monster.”
“He killed his own daughter,” I argued.
She frowned. “He must have changed.”
I couldn’t imagine John not being willing to kill his own children.
“Everyone has issues, and John had many of them, but he also had a good side. His natural instincts were to nurture and protect. Somewhere in his past, he had been pushed too far, too many times. I should have seen it sooner. I had so much anger and mistrust that I pushed him away more the nicer he was to me.”
“You said you used him.”
She nodded. “I did, but I didn’t expect him to be nice to me. I wanted money and security. He wanted a child. It should have been simple.”
“Did you know he had others?”
She nodded again. “He said he wanted a child with me because of my abilities. He took me to New Mexico because I wanted to live in the desert, got us a nice house, and helped me learn English. Although he often left to carry out his evil plots, he never told me about them. I took a lot of my frustrations out on him, yet he never lashed out. Maybe it was all a trick, but it was worth it in the end.”
“How long was he with you?”
“We were together for two years. We had a tough time conceiving and a couple of miscarriages. Then he left. He figured I couldn’t have a child with a human or wizard. I thought it was because I couldn’t have a child without the gods’ blessing.”
“Then how did Ahz come about?”
“Even though he was gone, he continued to pay for my schooling so that I could get enough money to live from a part-time job. I graduated and went to work at a clinic. I thought my only option was to move on. It was lonely. On Syndrial, Voska didn’t live long alone. We lost people all the time, so we knew better than to grow attached, but we stuck together to survive as long as we could.”
