Ascension (Powered)

by Zachary Stone

“As long as I'm with you, I don't care where we get married,” she said.

  I again started to cry. My love for Cathy was overwhelming me.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” she said.

  “Sure,” I responded.

  She gave me a tour of the house. Much of it I’d already seen. However, when she led me down to the basement I found something fascinating.

  “Here is the cold fusion generator that provides electrical power for our home,” she said.

  I’d been interested in the field of alternative energy for some time. Quite often, I’d read about how cold fusion technology was entering the energy market. The technology provided many advantages that made it an ideal source of energy: it was clean, consumed little fuel, and produced huge amounts of power.

  The generator was cylindrical and small – about the size of a football. It had a few glass ports where I could see a bluish glow. It was mounted in an oven sized box with large windows. On the top of the box I could see dials and controls. A cord ran from the box to a breaker on the wall.

  “Does it need any fuel?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “It uses nickel and hydrogen, but not much. It only needs about five grams of nickel a year.”

  “What’s its rated power output?” I asked.

  “It can produce about a hundred kilowatts, or ten times what we need to power this house,” she said.

  “Cool,” I answered.

  We walked towards a corner of the basement, and I saw a large metal door.

  “There was a reason I took you down here,” Cathy said. “There’s something Meg wants me to give you.”

  Cathy pressed her hand against a sensor on the door, and I could hear it unlock.

  “Come in,” she said.

  I walked into the chamber, and I saw that it was a vault. Leaning up against the wall and on shelves were staffs, swords, wands, and all sorts of ancient objects.

  “Almost everything in this room is ordinary,” she said. “Most of them have no magical abilities, but a few do.”

  Cathy reached down to a chest on the floor, opened it, and pulled out a large piece of cloth. Unfolding the fabric, I saw that it contained a dagger.

  “According to my grandmother, this blade is the only object known to have belonged to a griffin,” she said. “It’s thousands of years old.”

  She handed it to me and I marveled at the intricate engravings on the handle.

  “My grandmother wants me to give it to you as an engagement present,” she said.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “And it’s magical?”

  “Yes,” she said. “As far as we can tell, it’s only composed of steel, but it seems to be able to cut through anything. It somehow has an edge that splits apart objects at the molecular level.”

  “This is an amazing present,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Don't thank me, thank my grandmother,” she said.

  I wrapped the dagger again in the cloth and put it in my belt. We left the vault and the door shut behind us.

  As we walked up the basement steps I saw Lizzie open the door above us.

  “Get up here quick,” she said.

  Cathy and I rushed to follow her into the living room. Once there, we saw Ruby sitting on the sofa with a cell phone on a cushion beside her and tears in her eyes.

  “Loving Arms maternity home has been burned to the ground,” she said.

  “No, no. It's can't be,” Cathy said. “What do you mean it’s been burned to the ground?”

  Meg and Lizzie walked up to Cathy and urged her to sit down.

  “Don't touch me!” she blurted out. “Tell me what has happened!”

  “I'm sorry, Cathy, but I was just told that the queen burned it down in the middle of the night and captured several of the residents,” Ruby said. “At least five bodies have been found, so far.”

  “No!” Cathy shouted. “She wouldn't attack a maternity home. This just can't be!”

  “I'm sorry honey, but it's true,” Ruby said.

  In an instant, Cathy morphed into her vampire form.

  “That monster,” she said. “I'm going to kill her myself!”

  I tried to put my arm around her, but she turned and hissed at me.

  “We’re going back to Savannah, now,” she said.

  “I'm sorry, but we’re not ready yet,” Ruby said. “We all need more time to get ready.”

  “I'm ready and Eli's ready,” Cathy said. “We can't let the queen kill again.”

  “Alright,” Ruby said. “But we’ll have to stop by Macon.”

  Chapter 14

  The ride to Macon seemed to take ages. Cathy and I rode with Ruby in the back seat of her red sports car. Despite my attempts to talk to her, Cathy remained silent and despondent as she stared out of the window. I deeply felt for her loss – the queen's act was mercilessly brutal.

  Our vehicle led the caravan, but Ruby did much more than just drive. She spent a lot of time on the phone with Meg who had stayed behind. Although Meg had no desire to fight any more after spilling so much blood in her long life, she had plenty of advice to give her daughter about the current conflict, and how to deal with the queen and her followers.

  Before we had left the mountain home, Lizzie had managed to extract the SIM card from my broken cell phone and place it into a new unit. With Cathy not in the mood to talk, I took a moment to call my mother – my human mother. I hadn’t spoken with her since days before I was bitten, and I felt like I needed to make contact. Shutting my eyes and taking a breath to try and clear my mind, I dialed her number. She picked up immediately.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi Mom, it's me,” I said.

  “Eli! How have you been?” she asked. “I was hoping to hear from you.”

  “I've been doing alright,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “I'm about the same as usual. I've just been busy at the factory. They offered us overtime and I've been trying to take advantage of it,” she said.

  “I hope you’re not working too hard,” I said.

  “I'm tired, but I'll be fine,” she said.

  “Are you checking your blood sugar regularly?” I asked, hoping that she’d been properly managing her diabetes.

  “Yes, I have,” she said. “Thanks for asking, it’s under control. So where are you?”

  “I'm actually with . . . some friends. Actually, I'm with my fiancée,” I said.

  “Fiancée? You’re engaged? Who’s the girl?” she asked. “I hope it's not Candace. That girl has used you so badly.”

  “No, her name is Cathy. She’s everything I've ever wanted in a woman,” I said. “She’s a dream come true, and I feel like . . . I finally feel happy.”

  “Oh, Eli, I'm so glad to hear that,” she said. “When can I meet her?”

  “I hope you can meet her soon,” I said. “I know you’ll like her.”

  “I'm sure I will,” she said.

  “I just want you to know that I love you, Mom,” I said. “I know that sometimes I may have taken you for granted, but you have always been there for me. I want you to know that I appreciate you very much. You have always been a great mom.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay, son?”

  “Yes, I'm fine,” I said. “Please just promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” she said.

  “Well, I need to go,” I said.

  “Please call me again, soon,” she said. “And bring Cathy over as soon as you can – I’ll fix a nice dinner for her.”

  “I’m sure you will. I’ll call soon --. I love you,” I said.

  “I love you too, Eli,” she said.

  “Goodbye, Mom,”

  Cathy looked at me and leaned her head on my shoulder. I took her hand in mine and held it.

  “I'm sorry for being so quiet,” she said. “I just . . . I'm in shock. My girls . . . I was just there a week ago.”

  She began to sob. I held her in my arms as she continued to cry.

>   “Just let it out,” I said. “Don't keep it all inside.”

  As she cried she held my leg and I could feel her nails dig into my skin.

  “How could she do it?” she asked. “Those were innocent women.”

  “I don't know,” I said. “But we’re going to make sure she never hurts anyone else.”

  Cathy looked up at me and I looked into her brown, beautiful eyes.

  “Eli, you mean so much to me. We've only known each other a short time, but I love you with all my heart.”

  “I love you too,” I said.

  We held each other as we neared Macon. Ruby pulled over at a gas station on the outskirts of town. There were a number of vehicles parked there, and Ruby got out of the car, and went over to talk to someone sitting in one of the cars. After a few minutes she came back.

  “We’re heading back to Savannah now,” she said. “Bobby has recruited a good team here” As we pulled out of the gas station, the cars that had been parked followed us and we made our way to the Interstate.

  I’d heard all of Ruby’s conversations with Meg, so I knew the plan was to setup a temporary outpost and prepare for our assault. We’d have to try and find a way to defeat the witch – who was now in control of Candace's body – without destroying her host. Then we’d have to take on the queen herself which wouldn’t be at all easy. She’d surely have some surprises in store for us.

  A couple of hours later, our caravan arrived at an old, dilapidated building at the end of a dead end street in a run-down part of Savannah. It looked like at one time it had been an office building, but it didn’t look like it had been used for years. There were weeds growing all around it, and stains on the walls, and some of the dirty window panes were smashed out. We and everyone who followed parked our cars behind the building and quickly went inside.

  The interior of the building was dirty and dusty and I could smell rat droppings and mildew. It wasn’t a nice place to be, but we needed a place to meet in secret as we prepared to defeat the queen. Our only hope was that the witch was not strong enough to sense our presence.

  Bobby and several of our new allies from Macon helped us clean out a large conference room. We gathered chairs from all the different offices to make sure everyone had a place to sit before the meeting began. I sat at the back of the room beside Cathy, and looking around I counted forty-seven vampires sitting and talking. We finally had a small army to fight the queen with.

  Before long, a door behind us opened and Ruby entered the room and walked to the front looking confident and determined. The discussion subsided and all eyes were on her as she prepared to address us.

  “Hello everyone, I apologize for the state of our present accommodations, but we felt it was for the best that we try to keep a low profile,” she said. “I want to thank all of you for coming here today, and your dedication and perseverance. I especially want to thank our brothers and sisters from Macon who have decided to join us. They didn’t have to come – this wasn’t their fight. However, they’ve decided to risk their lives in order to help us.”

  “We had no choice,” I heard a female vampire on the front row say. “The actions of your queen jeopardize all vampires. It’s our duty to stand with you.”

  “I notice your queen isn’t here – does she approve of your actions?” Ruby asked her.

  “Our queen is not taking sides in this matter, but she specifically gave us permission to assist – if we desired to do so,” she said.

  The vampire looked tough as nails. She had short, black hair and a piercing in her lip. On her arm was a tattoo of a snake.

  “Do you know her?” I whispered to Cathy.

  “That's Melody,” Cathy said. “I don't know her well, but I know she has a reputation for being trustworthy.”

  Ruby started to draw on the bare wall behind her with a black marker.

  “We are approximately here,” she said. “On the south side of the city. Our most up-to-date intelligence tells us that the queen is hiding out in the north-west side of town, here.”

  She went on to describe the mansion the queen was residing in and the fortifications she’d made to the structure. Apparently, Ruby still had a few friends in town that had scouted out the building.

  “Under the house there’s a large basement that has been heavily modified. It's basically been turned into a bunker,” she said. “The queen has been expecting us to attack her eventually, so she’s tried to make her location as secure as possible.”

  Ruby drew a diagram of the house and the bunker beneath. The battle wouldn’t be easy. We’d have to fight our way onto the property, into the house, and then down to the basement. Then we’d have to find a way into the bunker.

  Cathy seemed fidgety and eventually tugged my arm and motioned for me to follow her. We left the conference room and walked towards the cobweb filled lobby.

  “We already know everything she’s telling them,” she said. “I need to go to the maternity home, or what's left of it.”

  “They might be waiting for us,” I said. “It may not be safe.”

  “We can look from a distance,” she said. “If we see any sign of them we can leave.”

  I walked back into the conference room and whispered to Lizzie that Cathy and I were going out for a short while.

  “Tell Ruby that we’ll be back soon,” I said.

  Walking back into the lobby I saw Cathy was already at the door.

  “Let's hurry,” she said.

  Stepping outside night had fallen. Intentionally preventing my night vision from turning on, I looked at Cathy's face. The glow of a distant streetlight fell upon her in such a way that her face looked hauntingly beautiful. It took my breath away and I stood and looked at her.

  “Are we going to go or not?” she asked.

  I suddenly snapped out of the trance, powered up, and lifted Cathy in my arms. Running at high speed, I carried her towards the remains of the maternity home. We stopped about a half mile away on the roof of a furniture store and looked towards it. With our vampire vision we could see everything – it had been burned to the ground. Cathy gasped at the sight of the devastation.

  A frail looking woman with short, white hair was walking around the ruins. We watched as she sat on a bench and sank her head into her hands.

  “That's Mrs. Birdie,” Cathy said. “She’s been volunteering at the home for the past thirty years. I have to go talk to her.”

  “I'm not sure it's safe,” I said.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said.

  I followed her to the ruins of the house and we slowly walked up to the old woman.

  “Mrs. Birdie, it's me, Cathy,” she called out to the old woman who looked up from where she sat, squinting in the darkness.

  “Cathy, is that really you?” she asked.

  “Yes, it's me,” Cathy said.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said, rising to her feet. Cathy hurried towards her and they hugged.

  “I was worried you may have been here when the fire happened,” said Mrs. Birdie.

  “No, I wasn’t,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “I'm doing . . . to be honest, I'm not okay,” she said. “I don't know . . .”

  The old woman began to cry and Cathy put her arm around her shoulder. Cathy led her to the bench where they sat down together. After a few moments of weeping, Mrs. Birdie wiped her face with a handkerchief and after she’d composed herself somewhat, Cathy asked about the fire and for specifics on who had died, who had survived, and who was missing.

  It turned out that eight residents – pregnant girls – were missing. They had found the bodies of seven others. Three residents had escaped along with four volunteers. Two of the residents that escaped had severe burns. The old lady recited a number of names of the victims. They were all people Cathy knew – she seemed heartbroken as learned the grim news.

  I stood back from the women as they talked for some time and surveyed the burned out building that was still smoldering in places. I
couldn’t conceive of the cruelty that would unleash such devastation on helpless victims.

  “After few minutes talking with Cathy, Mrs. Birdie stood up.

  “Do you have a way home?” Cathy asked.

  “Yes, my car is right over there.”

  We walked the woman back to her car and watched as she drove away.