by Jamie Davis
“I know you don’t like to use human facilities, Anya. Do you want me to come along?” Dean asked.
“No,” she replied. “There is a doctor there who knows us and knows of our differences. He trained in Elk City with one of your doctors. He will watch out for us.”
She motioned to one of the other dryad women who went and started a beat up old Chevy Suburban parked under the trees nearby. Dean and Jo helped the women package their patients and arrange them in the back of the SUV as best they could. Two other women climbed in with the driver and then the vehicle left.
“At least the demons didn’t get all of them,” Dean said as the makeshift ambulance pulled away down the long dirt lane. “That has to be one small blessing in all of this.”
“But what were those creatures doing here in the first place,” Albion said. “I haven’t heard any reports of other attacks nearby and our valley is sheltered and off the normal travel routes around the state.”
Jaz, Dean, and Jo all shared a look and the elder werelion picked up on it.
“That is what has been chasing you?” he asked, pointing to the burnt carcass nearby. “Why didn’t you warn us?” He sounded angry.
Dean spluttered in an attempt to come up with an answer. The fact was he was blaming himself a bit for this, too. Jaz stepped in and spoke.
“I’m not sure they came here for us,” the hunter said. “If that were the case, why come here and attack the dryads when we were just a few minutes away? It doesn’t make sense. No one knew we were coming here. It couldn’t have been us that brought them.”
“Well, if you didn’t bring them here, what did?” Albion asked. He was frustrated and it showed in the way he flicked his still-manifested talons against each other, making a clicking sound.
“I think it may be this,” another voice said, entering the conversation. It was Anya. She approached them carrying a bundle she had retrieved from the cabin. Dean wondered what it was. What could have drawn the demons to attack the dryads here?
“About two months past, the Eldara Ashley Moore came and visited us. She told Enric and me that she had bought the cabin in the woods and would be staying there for a time. She also gave us this bundle and asked us to keep it safe and hidden, telling no one we had received it. We were honored to receive the gift of trust from an Eldara and we owed her a life-debt anyway.” Anya glanced down at the long, thin bundle she carried. It was about three feet long and a few inches across. It was wrapped in white cloth and tied up with rough twine.
“Eldara Ashley told us that if she disappeared and did not return to claim it in one moon’s passage, that we were to take precautions to protect the cabin. Also, we were only to give this to one known to us as Ashley’s friend, relative or companion.” Anya held the bundle out to Dean and bowed her head slightly. “Paramedic Dean Flynn, we know that you are companion of the Eldara Sister. I believe she meant this for you if she did not return in the allotted time.”
Dean took the bundle. It felt lighter than he expected based on how Anya was carrying it. As his hands touched the cloth, and he ran his fingers along the length of the bundle he thought he knew what it was. At least, he knew what if felt like. He pulled at the knots holding the fabric wrapping on the object and pulled the covering away, revealing a shining silver sword blade. It felt unusually lightweight, considering how big it was and that it was made of metal.
There was a gasp from everyone around him when he held it up so all could see it. Even Jaz seemed surprised by what she was seeing. Albion looked like he was about to bow down before it and Dean both. Only Jo seemed unsurprised by the arrival of the shining sword in their midst. Why had Ashley left some sword behind in the care of the dryads and told them to give it to him when the time came? He filed that away in the list of questions he had for his girlfriend when they reunited.
Dean didn’t believe it was a real sword. While it was shiny, it had very little heft to it. He thought it might be plastic painted to look like metal with some sort of glossy covering. He went to wave it and take a few practice strokes in the air, but Jaz came forward and laid a hand on his arm.
“Don’t do that, Dean. You act like you have no idea what you’re holding,” she cautioned.
“It feels like a really well made plastic replica of a sword,” Dean responded. “You hold it, but it has no weight at all.” Jaz stepped back from him and she had a look of, something, fear or horror in her eyes. “What? I thought you liked swords.”
“That is a heavenly blade, Dean,” Jaz said. “Every Eldara has one, even the Eldara Sisters. It is the manifestation of their divine power and mission here on earth. No mortal should even be able to touch it. Yet here you are swinging it around like a fool.” She tilted her head to one side, giving him a quizzical look. “What are you?”
“I’m human, just like you, Jaz,” Dean said. He looked at the blade again, trying to decide what to do with it. He touched the blade end with his thumb and, before he knew it, had cut himself rather badly across three of the fingers on his left hand. The blade was so sharp that it didn’t hurt immediately, which was why he had managed to cut himself so deeply before he noticed. Drawing the hand away as if touching a hot pan on the stovetop, he clenched his fingers into a fist to stop the bleeding. As he watched, the little bit of blood on the blade, smoked to ash and fell away, leaving no evidence of it behind.
“See, I’m bleeding. I told you, I’m human,” Dean snapped, a bit of anger at his stupidity coloring his voice. “Anyway, you’re also partly right. It’s a real sword of some sort. That blade is razor sharp.” His hand was starting to throb and he held his clenched fist close to his chest while holding the sword away at arms-length. Someone needed to wrap that blade up again before someone else got hurt messing with it.
Anya came in and picked up the cloth in which the sword had been wrapped. Without touching any part of it directly, the dryad took the sword from him and wrapped it back up again. Her daughter Zora came over and helped tie the bundle of cloth-covered sword closed.
Dean watched the blade get put away and when his fingers separated from it, he felt like he was losing part of himself. It was strange, but it was like the blade had connected to something deep inside of him and now that it was taken away, he noticed a hole inside that he had never noticed before. This was not a new void, but one that had always been there, unknown, until his contact with the sword had filled it. It was strange and it made him feel a little queasy.
“Dean?” Jaz asked. She was looking at him with growing concern. “Are you all right? You just turned pale as a ghost.”
“I think it’s just the pain in my hand,” Dean lied. “It will be better soon. I just need to dress the wound and wrap it up.” He looked down at his hand where he clutched it to his chest. There was no longer any blood dripping from his clenched fist so he had gotten the bleeding to stop. It would probably start up again as soon as he opened up his hand. He still had a few of the gauze dressings in his pockets. He pulled them out and opened his hand. They’d do the job for now. He was probably going to need stitches. The cuts had been deep.
He looked down at his hand and searched for the wounds amidst the crusted and dried blood on the inside of his hand. He remembered cutting his fingers and still felt the pain, sort of. Come to think of it, he realized he was feeling the memory of the pain. As soon as he thought about it, he realized that the pain was gone. His hand ached from clenching it so tightly for so long to stop the bleeding, but that was it.
He examined the inside of his fingers between the two joints, looking for the cuts from the blade. They weren’t there. Instead there were lines of thin, white scar tissue there where the cuts had been. It was like he had cut himself weeks ago and the wound had healed perfectly. The dried blood was there to prove he had done it, but not just minutes before. He didn’t want the others to see, so after wiggling his fingers a little, he pressed the small stack of gauze squares against his fingers and closed his hand again.
“It
’ll be all right,” Dean announced to the others watching him. “I got the bleeding to stop and I’ll finish bandaging it up when we get back to the cabin.” He held out his free hand and took the sword bundle back from Anya, taking care to grip the package by the hilt end of the sword and not the blade.
He looked around and his gaze stopped on Joanna. She was looking at him with a grin on her face. She held a finger to her lips and pursed them in a shushing gesture. She knew he had healed, he was sure of it, but how did she know? He wanted to go over and ask the teen Wiccan, but could not right that moment, here in front of everyone.
“Dean we need to get these women and children situated somewhere,” Jaz said. “They can’t stay in there and we cannot bring them back to the cabin, either. There’s not a lot of room and that is where the next attack will likely take place if there is one.”
Dean looked at her, not knowing what to do. She was right about them not staying there until the interior of the dryad’s cabin had been cleaned up. He looked to Albion with an arched eyebrow, forwarding the question to him. The elder shapeshifter glanced about the clearing and nodded to his son.
“Arlo, go home and tell your mother what has happened here, then go to the rest of the valley council and tell them the same,” he said. “Tell them we need to provide shelter for the dryads and also need the strongest of the area to begin patrolling the valley. If there are more of these demons around, we must find them and stop them before they attack anyone else.”
The boy nodded and ran off at a trot for the forest’s edge. He was gone from sight in seconds. Dean wondered aloud about what the other Unusuals of the valley could do if the demons returned again.
“Between Arlo, his mother, and I, we can handle a large portion of this side of the valley,” Albion began. “There is a small pack of werewolves that live at the far end of the valley. They don’t mix with us often but this is an emergency. They’ll do what needs to be done. Then there’s Old Barney. He’s a werebear. He’s more than a match for one, or even two of these things. We’ll keep this valley safe. It’s our home, after all.”
“We need to go back to our cabin and regroup, too,” Jaz announced. “Dean and Jo, come on. We’ve got some planning to do. That sword’s presence here gives me an idea of how we can find our missing Eldara, or at least find out what happened while she was here.”
Dean didn’t want to leave the dryads alone in the woods after their ordeal, but when he looked around, Anya had already organized them into small groups and they were salvaging things from their cabin. They had assembled a few sacks of clothing and were spreading a cloth on the ground to prepare some food. It appeared they didn’t need his help right now after all.
Jo and Jaz were already waiting for him at the edge of the clearing. He nodded to Albion. “Come get us if you need anything from us, or if you learn anything new.”
The other man nodded and Dean joined the two women at the other side of the clearing. Together they headed back down the trail. He had questions for his two companions about this heavenly blade and what they knew about it. Then they had to plan. It was time to do more than just react to everything that was happening. It was time for them to intervene on their own behalf.
17
The walk back to the cabin was a quiet one. Jaz led them with Jo following her. Dean brought up the rear. He held the bundled up sword in one hand while he clutched the unneeded gauze in his left hand. He was looking forward to getting back to the cabin. He knew he needed to clean up that hand and look at it carefully, but still did not know how it healed so quickly. The amount of blood was proof of the severity of the wound. So what had happened back there?
Everyone seemed shocked he could touch the sword. It was a bit like King Arthur removing the sword from the stone. Was he the chosen one in some fashion? Dean was still marveling at the sword, too. He could still picture the silvery, reflective surface, the light weight, and the razor’s edge. He also could picture the blood burning off the blade, turning to ash and flaking away, leaving the blade unblemished. If nothing else, seeing that with his own eyes had assured him that the sword was magical in some way.
Jaz had said she had a plan to find Ashley by utilizing the sword. He wondered what it could be. He was still pretty new to the world of Unusuals and knew there were many things that he didn’t know. Jaz had been raised in and around the lore of that world, even if it was as an adversary to those he considered friends. She must know a lot more about what can be done with an artifact like the heavenly blade.
He was still contemplating the true nature of the sword when they arrived back at their cabin. There seemed to be no signs of intrusion but Jaz didn’t take any chances. She stopped them at the edge of the woods and observed the cabin for a few minutes from a hidden location. Then she had them stay behind her while they approached the front door. The hunter had her sword out in one hand and a pistol in the other. They stepped up on the porch and checked the door. Still locked. Dean retrieved the key, unlocked it, and they went inside. Jaz did a quick sweep of the small building and when she was finished with the upstairs loft bedroom, she nodded.
“It’s clear,” she announced. She holstered her pistol and sheathed her sword, and then removed the sheathed blade from across her back, propping it against a chair before she sat down.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Jaz,” Dean said. “Why do you use a pistol when your sword is needed to kill the demons?”
“Two reasons, really,” she said. “The pistol can’t stop the demons permanently but it still injures them for a time. A series of well-placed headshots on any demon will scramble their brains. Sure, they’ll regenerate enough to keep coming in a minute or so, but that gives you options to do other things like run away, or run in close and finish the job with an enchanted or blessed blade like mine. The other side of it is if you are close enough to a demon to use your sword, they are close enough to reach you, too. All things being even, I’d rather slow them down with a few, well-placed bullets, then banish them back to hell with a sweep of my blade. That’s the better option every time.”
She got up and crossed to the two large pelican cases they had carried in from the SUV the night before. Dialing in the combination lock on one, she opened it and pulled out a small zippered pouch. She closed the lid before Dean could see the other contents. Walking back to her seat, she unzipped the pouch and pulled out a rag, a can of some sort and some assorted tools, laying them on the side table next to her. He realized she was cleaning her pistol after firing it that morning.
Dean walked over to the kitchen area and turned on the water in the sink, letting it run while he unclenched his left hand. He half expected to see the wound had returned, that he had imagined it healing. When he opened his hand though, aside from the dried blood and a thin silvery scar, there was no evidence it had ever happened. He started washing the blood off in the sink and wondered what he should do.
“Here, Dean, let me help with that,” Jaz said. “You can’t bandage that hand on your own.”
“It’s okay,” Jo said from across the room. “It’s already healed.”
“What?” Jaz hurried over to Dean and looked into the sink where he was washing his bloody hand. “That’s impossible. I saw you cut it. I saw the blood. It was a deep wound.” She looked at him again as she took a step backwards. “Dean, you have not been honest with me. With either of us,” she said gesturing to Jo. “Are you some sort of shifter? That would explain the regeneration, though not the fact that you can touch a heavenly blade.”
“I’m as human as you, Jaz. I assure you,” Dean said. He was pretty sure he was telling the truth, though he was beginning to think he didn’t know the truth.
“Well, no human heals that fast, Dean. So come clean. What are you? If you aren’t going to tell us your powers and abilities, how can we be a team on this quest? I need to know so we can maximize our chances for success.”
“I’m not lying to you,” Dean said. He was starting to get a
ngry with her. Why wouldn’t she believe him? “Look Jaz, not everyone in the world is out to get you or is your enemy. I’m the same guy I was when you met up with me yesterday. I eat regular food. I sleep in a bed. I walk in the sunshine. I’m as human as you are. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Because you are hiding something. You are jeopardizing this mission, and this mission is all I’ve got left,” she said. Dean could tell that she was getting angry with him, which just angered him more.
“Oh, you think you’ve got a monopoly on this mission’s importance? You, the big hunter girl.” Dean was shouting at this point. “I’ve got every bit as much tied up in this mission as you do. Don’t try and take this whole thing over for your own agenda.”
The hunter stepped towards him poking him in the chest. “If you insist on lying to me, I can’t trust you. If I can’t trust you then this partnership is over, period. Tell me the truth about what you are so we can get on with things.”
He brushed her hand away. “Don’t touch me. I didn’t give you permission to touch me. And I’m not sure you’re the right person for this mission in the first place. You are all ‘kill first, ask questions later’ and that is not the way I run things.”
“Run things?” Jaz shouted at him. “You are not running things here. This is a mission of honor to the whole clan, or what’s left of it. I’ll not have some half-breed monster of some sort messing that up.”
“Half-breed monster!” Dean shouted. He stepped up until he was inches from her face, staring down into her blazing blue eyes. “You trigger-happy whack-job, I told you I’m human. You don’t get to label me like that….”
“Mom. Dad. Stop it. You can’t fight right now. Not when Aunt Ashley is still in danger. Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
They stopped as Jo’s voice reached them. She was standing up, fists clenched, tears rolling down her cheeks. Dean wasn’t sure why she was crying and why did she call them that. Was she mocking them?
