Kaia picked up the flashlight from the ground. It had gone out at some point as she’d cried for everything and nothing all at once. She shook it, flicked the switch, but it didn’t respond. She looked around the clearing, and even in the drizzle that was slowly becoming heavier, she could see well enough to know which direction to go back through the forest so she could pick up the path.
She had almost reached the edge of the clearing when her necklace began to pulse brightly, so much so that it momentarily blinded her. Then there was a noise and she gasped, whirling to face it. There was a strange crackling sound, then, and she heard a growl. A wild or stray dog? A wolf? Did they have wolves in Illinois? A cougar, maybe? It was a nasty sound and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck go up.
“Stay away!” she said, hating the tremor in her voice. Whipping the mace out of her pocket, she pointed it outwards. “I mean it, I’m armed!”
Kaia was shaking all over. She heard another sound, this time from her left, and turned toward it. Then another from behind her as she backed into the clearing. The rainfall increased, and her hair started plastering itself to her skull and cheeks. She quickly whipped it to the back of her neck, brandishing the flashlight though she had no idea what she was even up against. Not that a dead flashlight would help in any case.
The sounds of predators carried through the rain and Kaia froze, hearing teeth gnash and the unmistakable clawing of the ground. Another growl, closer this time and then a loud hiss and she felt something on her back and screamed as her necklace burst forth with such a bright light it blinded her. She felt like she was being trampled but couldn’t find purchase in the slippery grass and dead leaves beneath her.
“Stay down!” she heard a man yell and she flattened herself to the ground in the same instant she recognized the voice.
“Bijan!” she cried.
More flashes of light now, almost like fireworks. She heard grunting, cries of pain, but kept her eyes squeezed shut, shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. Words she couldn’t understand, clicking and more flashes of light, the clearing lighting up so bright it felt like daytime on the backs of her eyelids. Tears she didn’t think she still had leaked out of her eyes as fear gripped her from the inside out.
She was going to die. But then, suddenly, she wasn’t. Carefully she opened her eyes. There wasn’t a sound except ragged breathing from not very far away. There was no light and the rain was pouring down heavily now, soaking her jeans and the long-sleeved shirt she’d put on. Kaia whipped her cellphone out of her back pocket and desperately turned it on, moving to a flashlight application on the desktop and tapping it even as the rain pounded down upon its screen.
Panting like she’d just run through the entirety of the forest surrounding her, Kaia continued to shake, slowly getting to her knees and then to her feet as she shone the phone light around her in a circle. Her intake of breath when she saw him was so sharp and fast it made her cough. He was there. And he was hurt.
Chapter Eleven
“Bijan!” he heard her cry.
“No,” he ground out, wincing against the unbelievable pain from his shoulder. “Stay away!” If only he had allowed his body more rest on Shinzar, if only he weren’t so exhausted, the blow from the sycophant would not have taken him down this hard.
She didn’t listen and he groaned when she fell to her knees next to him, barely touching his arm and vest with her fingertips. Even with the feather-lightness of it he could tell how hard she was trembling. “Bijan, we’ve got to get you to a hospital,” she said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear her.
“No,” he shook his head, gritting his teeth. He couldn’t be taken to the hospital or the truth of who he was...or at least, who he wasn’t...would be known. “Take me--” He groaned loudly, throwing his head back as blood ran down his arm. “Take me to...your home.”
“But--”
“Now!” he yelled, and when she flinched he could neither blame her nor steady his mind enough to apologize.
Kaia came around to his good arm and helped him stand. “It’s a long way back, Bijan, we’ve got to stem this blood flow if you’re going to make it.”
Their eyes met and even in the dim light he could see the crystal green of hers. He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting to keep his heartbeat steady and his breathing even. “Tourniquet.” When he opened his eyes, it was to find her stripping her shirt off and he gasped. “What are you--?”
“Tourniquet,” she replied, rolling the wet garment up and sliding it through under he armpit of his injured shoulder. “This is going to hurt.”
“It already does!” he spat, and then very nearly howled when she tied it off and yanked it hard to make it as tight as possible. He cursed in his native Shinzarn. And because there was no English translation, she heard it.
“What did you say?” she asked, staring at him like he’d grown a second head.
“Nothing,” he said, “now let’s move before more come.”
“More what? What were those things?”
“Ones sent to kill you,” he replied as they stumbled as fast as they could to the edge of the clearing.
“Kill me?” she asked. “But why?”
Bijan just shook his head and used his good arm to drag her into the woods. They had to get to her car, where he could rest rather than exert himself, and then back to the privacy of her home where he could heal his body. And it had to be soon, or he would bleed out.
They found the path quickly, and began running along it. Bijan guided, keeping as tight of a hold on Kaia’s hand as he could, every step causing him to grunt in pain. But he had to get her out of there, away from the clearing, away from these woods where it had all started so very many of her years ago.
He wasn’t used to water that fell from the sky the way it did here. He simply wasn’t prepared for how cold it would make him feel, or how heavily it would weigh down his clothing, or how it would get into his eyes. Because while he could see much, much better in the darkness than a human, he couldn’t keep the rain out of his eyes long enough to see very much of anything.
And so he stumbled and fell. Kaia barely avoided landing on top of him, stopping at the last minute and teetering precariously forward over his injured shoulder before righting herself. “Bijan!” she said, dropping next to him. “Come on!”
“I...” He was too cold in this wet sky water. This substance he knew and drank at home, but had never had to worry about coming from anywhere other than underground. Back on Shinzar, the water just was, not supplied from the heavens. “I can’t,” he gasped.
“Bijan, you’re the only one who knows what the hell is going on,” she said fiercely, grabbing his hand with both of hers and shaking it hard. “You can’t leave me, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what these things are that’re after me! I don’t know why my necklace glows!” Tears flowed from her eyes, though how he could tell them from the rain, he wasn’t quite sure. “I don’t understand what’s happening and I need you!”
He blinked into the downpour, pulling his hand away and cupping her face. He stroked along her jawbone and felt his chest tighten again, just like it had the last time he’d left her. Then he moved his hand down to the quartz at her neck. “It came back to you,” he sputtered, rain splashing onto his lips and into his mouth. “I tried to take it, but it came back to you.”
“My necklace?” she asked, and he nodded.
He closed his eyes and saw Kana’s face before him. “You will keep my daughter safe.” He felt strength return to his limbs. Kana had trusted him with his daughter’s life. And he wasn’t about to let his mentor, a man he still loved so much it hurt every single day, down.
“Come,” he ground out, forcing himself to his feet and clasping her hand.
She flashed him a smile and they ran.
* * *
He was quiet for the entire hour and twenty minutes it took for her to drive them back to Iowa City. She kept stealing glances at him whenever a car came
at them, using their headlights to look at his chest and see that he was still breathing. His right shoulder was the injured one, and he had it pinched between his body and the car door, slumped into it and gritting his teeth.
Every now and then he’d hiss or make some other guttural sound but with the deluge and the fact that it was only a two-lane road, she had little choice but to pay the majority of her attention to the drive. Her heart hammered against her ribcage, breath coming in quick little gasps. She had no idea what was happening, and was scared to death. Even in the darkness she could tell Bijan was paler than she remembered.
His hair, long and wavy, was plastered to his skin and there were scrapes and cuts along his left arm. Depressing the accelerator even more, she knew it was reckless to drive so fast in this kind of rain because the risk of hydroplaning was very, very real. But all she could think about was getting him home.
* * *
He was barely conscious when the car’s engine stopped. He heard Kaia get out of the driver’s side and couldn’t manage anything more than a grunt when she opened his door and he fell against her. She was speaking but he couldn’t make sense of the words, and it occurred to him somewhere in the back of his mind that the translation spell must have been broken as he fought to remain conscious during the drive.
Bijan tried helping Kaia get him to his feet, but he sagged heavily against her small frame. He wasn’t really aware of much other than he was being moved and jostled, and fell a couple of times only to be hauled back to his feet and pulled further along.
At last he smelled something familiar, and knew instinctively it was the inside of Kaia’s house. He felt her lower him into a chair but then she turned the light on and the sound it tore from him as pain darted through his eyes and into his brain would have made embarrassed him in a better situation. He slammed his head down onto the table, trying in vain to bring his wounded arm up with the other one to shield his eyes, but it was no use. They were starting to burn and it caused a painful whine to escape his lips.
* * *
She thought she was going to jump out of her skin. It had sounded like the howl of a wounded animal, but she knew it had come from Bijan. “What? What is it?” she asked frantically, running up behind him. When he tried to get his arms to cover his face, it reminded her of the fact that he had worn sunglasses. She turned to look up at the light hanging from the ceiling. The light she had just flicked on using the switch by the back door.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed and ran back to the door. Slamming her hand against the switch, she pushed it down with her palm. In that instant, the sounds he was making ceased. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, going back to touch a hand to his good shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Bijan, it’s the light, isn’t it? It hurts your eyes.”
He mumbled something she couldn’t quite hear. “What do I need to do?” she asked. “Tell me how to help you.” He lifted his head and said something again, but it wasn’t in English. It was...
“That language!” she whispered fiercely. “That’s the language I keep hearing. You speak it!”
Bijan looked at her for a moment before lifting his left hand into the air between them and moving it slowly down while still speaking words that had somehow become familiar to her.
“I simply need to lie down,” he said, and she started from hearing it in English all of a sudden.
“O-Okay,” she nodded, taking a look at his shoulder. “The blood seems to have stopped. But...you want...couch? Bed? What?”
“Bed,” he whispered.
“It’s upstairs,” she warned.
He nodded, grimacing. “I remember.”
Somehow Kaia managed to push, pull and drag him up the steps. She got him to the guest room where a combination of her strength draining and his own sluggish movements caused him to fall into the twin bed with a loud thump. She pulled his feet out straight and removed the strange ankle-high black boots he wore, then went to his head.
“Do, uh...what do you need? Towels? Wet washcloth?”
“Just leave me alone.”
Now that made her mad. “What do you mean, leave you alone? The least I can do is help!”
“No, I must...you can’t do anything,” he breathed, centering his head on the pillow. “I simply have to rest, and will be fine.”
“Well, I’m not leaving this room until I know you are fine,” she replied hotly.
He managed to roll his eyes, and that just about made her want to beat his other shoulder into a pulp. “Stubborn male, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Kaia,” he said softly, reaching his left hand out to her. “Listen to me, please.”
She looked at his shadow on the bed, because in the darkness she couldn’t see his features. But she felt his fingertips against her forearm and took his offered hand. Something within her felt like it was melting as the warmth of his hand encompassed hers.
“Bijan, I’m scared,” she finally said, seating herself on the edge of the mattress.
“I know,” he said soothingly, squeezing her hand. “But you must trust me. I need thirty of your minutes and then I will be able to explain.”
“Of...my minutes?”
“Yes. Please?”
Well, she thought, he did save her life out there from whatever had come after her in the clearing. The least she could do was give him half an hour.
“All right,” she conceded, squeezing his hand in return. “But so help me God if you’re dead when I come back in here thirty minutes from now, I will kill you.”
He made a non-committal sound, releasing her hand. She waited a few more seconds, then rose and walked across the small room to the door. “Thirty minutes,” she said. “No more.”
“No more,” she heard him reply.
She walked out into the hall, closing the door behind her. The small snick it made echoed in the silence of her home. She leaned back against the door, then sank quickly down until she was sitting on the hardwood floor of the hallway. Tipping her head back, she closed her eyes and let exhaustion wash over her.
Chapter Twelve
As his consciousness surfaced, Bijan could feel her presence against the door as surely as he felt his own blood coursing through his veins. Kaia was as tangible to him as his own body, even when not right there where he could touch her. He blanched at the thought, because on Shinzar, he knew what that meant. But that was not his purpose here in Kaia’s life, not here and not now. And probably not ever.
The last time he’d seen her on Shinzar she’d been only three delicate years of age. Now thanks to the force of Time against both his dimension and hers, she was still younger than he by a long shot. But she was an adult in this world. He would have had to wait many, many years on Shinzar to watch her grow to the eighty years of age required to be thought of as an adult there.
Squaring his jaw, Bijan forced away the tiny spark of fear his thoughts wanted to grab hold of. He had promised to explain it to her, and he had no idea how she would react. He didn’t have all the answers, so telling her what he knew had to suffice. Yet if he couldn’t answer all the questions she was bound to have, how successful would he be in asking the one question he’d never dreamed he’d have to?
Closing his eyes for a moment, he fought against the exhaustion that desperately tried to take over each and every cell of his body. It was time for truths, and Bijan was no coward. If that were really the case, however, then why did the very idea of conveying Kaia’s origins to her make him feel colder than he had in Earth’s rain?
He rose from the bed, bare feet noting the area rug beneath them. He crossed to the bedroom door, took the handle and once again became overwhelmed by her, by the scent of her he caught through the wood. Swallowing hard, he opened the door.
* * *
Kaia jolted awake, jumping to her feet as the feeling of falling woke her from the dreamless doze she’d been in. She whirled, eyes wide, mind racing, and very nearly forgot to breathe. There was Bijan standing before her, whole and
healed without a trace of the far-too-dark maroon blood that had been flowing from his arm. There was no gash, there wasn’t even a bruise, and her mind stuttered over those facts even as she involuntarily reached out to touch where once the wound had been.
She felt him flinch when her fingertips met his skin. “How?” she managed to whisper, unable to get her thoughts into enough order for a more complete sentence.
She looked up and found herself mesmerized by his eyes as he answered. “I told you I only needed thirty of your minutes.”
“To do what?” she squeaked. “Heal yourself?”
He smiled and nodded. “Yes.”
Kaia’s mind seemed to be floating away from her, as though she was trying to grasp the string of a helium balloon as it drifted just out of reach. “But how?”
She felt his hand on her elbow, as he turned her and walked her slowly to the steps. “Let’s sit,” he said, “so I can tell you how.”
She nodded, still feeling so detached that she wasn’t quite sure how it was they were getting down the steps because her feet didn’t even feel like they were moving. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, she found herself sitting on the living room couch with him in an armchair on the other side of the oak coffee table that had been made by her grandfather.
“Kaia, you must listen to me,” he began, and she fought to focus her attention on his face, to focus her mind on his words. “Are you ready to hear the truths I have to tell you?”
Suddenly everything seemed real again; solid. She felt the sofa on the backs of her legs, her butt, her entire back. She noticed her quartz was glowing steadily, but not so brightly as to be blinding. She could feel Bijan there with her as though he was standing directly in front of her, holding her tightly.
“I need to know,” she finally acquiesced, a feeling of peace flowing through her. “I need to understand what these nightmares are, why they came back. I need to know what this is,” she continued, clasping the necklace gently in her fist. “What are those things that came after me, and why?”
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