Rebirth

by D. C. Alexander

Edward led the other two guys, two in robes and one with a suit on, and introduced us to Leeam. “Leeam,, this is Rose, she is the one who apparently has some abilities. This is Oliver.” He kind of waved at the guy not in a robe.

  That was a little shitty. I thought about apparently sinking his ass, but I decided to play nice, if they could help us it was all good. I wondered if Leeam was an Irish name, it was the same as the guy at the bar.

  “We’re pleased to meet you. Can y’all tell us anything about this stuff?”

  Leeam said “Let’s see what the stuff is, can you give us a demonstration?” he glanced at his watch and seemed a little impatient.

  I raised up a little hill up under me so I was looking more eye to eye with him. “How’s that?” Oliver backed up and pulled out his phone.

  Leeam said “That’s wonderful! What you could do with practice, I wonder? Can you show me how you do that?” gushing like a little girl. Damn, he wasn’t going to teach us anything.

  “So, I get that Leeam, you’re a druid, right? Is this other guy a druid too?”

  “No, Oliver keeps records, he’s a paranormal researcher. We let him know if we have anything unusual so he can document it.”

  “So you guys just came to see the circus. Do you have anyone who can do things like this?”

  Frigging dead end. That was a huge disappointment.

  “We have stories, er, legends, and we have seen strange things, but to my knowledge we don’t actually have anyone who has these abilities. What else can you do?”

  Mags was pissed, she was about to show them what she could do, she was looking around no doubt to find some fire.

  “Naw, that’s it, I can move dirt a little in the right circumstances.” I glared at Mags hoping she would pick up on it. I didn’t want to star in a freak show.

  Ina said “She’s a hea” and Mags, bless her heart, shoved her.

  “Rose NOT a heathen!” Mags insisted like it was an ongoing argument. Ina staggered and caught herself

  “I wasn’t...Yes, ok.” I guess she got the program. She backed away from the belligerent Mags and hushed.

  Oliver put his phone back in his pocket and smiled “I think we can help you. I’ll ride with you if you don’t mind, I’ll need some information from you, and I’ll take you to people who can tell you what you want to know. Why don’t you get your luggage, you’ll want to stay with us for a few days if you can arrange that on your schedule.”

  “We don’t have a car. Or luggage or a schedule, really, we just hangin’ out.”

  “I don’t understand, I assumed you were tourists?”

  “Yeah, we are. We’re just walking, seeing the countryside and ain’t carrying a lot of stuff.”

  “That…could work. You’ll come with me, then. I’ll get your training started, and after we get there, we’ll find out how long you’ll need, you can make arrangements to stay for a while.”

  My bullshit meter had pegged out a little while back.

  “They ain’t room for all of us in that little car y’all drivin’. If Ina’s willing, she can take me and Mags wherever we need to go.” I heard the hood come out in my speech…yeah. This guy just wasn’t right.

  “I’ll get a car to come pick up Edward and Leeam, won’t take but a minute, there’s plenty of room.” Oliver pulled his phone back out to make the call. I guess he already decided what was going to happen.

  “Wait a minute there, just hold up.” I thought fast as I could, I needed to short this shit out. This guy was not at all normal or regular. I didn’t know what he was, but something wasn’t right.

  “We gotta notify people if we move. If we go wandering around you gonna have a bunch of special forces and shit up yo ass in about two seconds.

  That seemed to get his attention.

  “What do you mean? What special forces are you talking about?”

  “Well damn, my big mouth. You can’t tell anybody if I let you in on this, ok? I’m sure it will be alright but it’s kinda delicate. Mags, you think this will be ok?”

  Mags was totally lost, but she trusted me. I think she felt there was something off too.

  “Yes.”

  Oliver said “Ok, yes, I’ll keep it quiet. What is it?” He was getting a little forceful and tired of it all.

  “A submarine dropped us off the coast. They got tracking things on us. They’re watching to make sure we’re ok. Sorry, Ina, I couldn’t tell you before.”

  I think Ina was thrilled. I could explain later if I had to, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to bust her bubble. She was involved with big stuff now.

  Ol’ Oliver didn’t know what to believe, or whether to shit or go blind. While he was thinking I tried to think of the next thing, I wanted to get rid of this jerk. But what if he really had access to training?

  I reached to my ear and touched it, necklace knew what I was doing and suddenly there was an ear bud sort of thing on my ear. Damn that was cool.

  “Oliver? Who do you work for?” Yeah, I was paranoid. I grew up in the hood. Recently, some witches put a hoodoo on me. And other shit happened.

  “I don’t know what you mean. You said you wanted training, I know people who can train you, teach you what you want to know.” Oliver and Edward were standing there quietly, watching, Edward with his mouth open like he was seeing a new Oliver.

  That was impressive; he had somebody he could call to come get us? They would drop everything and just drive wherever he wanted in the middle of the day to pick up some nutsy strangers. He didn’t want Ina to take us wherever he had in mind. This just didn’t feel or sound right.

  “No. We ain’t gonna go anywhere. I mean, I love loadin’ up with strangers and all that shit, but …Naw. It was nice meetin’ y’all. If you got somebody kin train us, you have them get up with Ina if she’s willin’. We’ll check back with Ina and maybe set up a meet.”

  Ina said “Yes, I’ll do that if it’s what you want, Rose.”

  Oliver said “This is a little out of bounds. I need to speak to someone and see what they want me to do.”

  “You go ahead and speak to them, I appreciate the trouble you goin’ to, don’t get me wrong. We just gonna be careful.”

  Oliver walked off a little ways to make his call.

  Edward said “I’ve never seen Oliver so pushy. I’ve known him for a little over a year; mostly he just hangs out at the ceremonies and takes notes. I wasn’t aware he worked for anyone. I thought he was doing it on his own hook. I apologize. Maybe he just got carried away.”

  Ina said ‘You come on a submarine? That does explain why you were walking, but isn’t that illegal or something?”

  Edward chimed in “Why a submarine? Why not fly in?”

  “Come on man, airplanes show on radar.” I could hear Mission: Impossible music playing in the back of my head. I kinda hated lying to them, I’d fix it soon as I could, but it was fun.

  Oliver came back over, finished with his phone, “Ok, I got a handle on this. My people are contacting your people. You’ll get clearance to move in a minute.”

  “Your people aren’t going to find anyone. What happened to you keeping it to quiet? I have to say you aren’t very trustworthy. Tell you what, you can leave.” I turned to Leeam and Edward, “Guys, thanks for trying, we are gonna keep on keepin on. Y’all stay safe now.”

  And the last bit, “Ina, we appreciate all you’ve done for us. I got your number. I’ll call you sometimes if I can. We are headed out now, y’all stay safe.”

  I waved to Mags to come on and we headed out. I just wanted to get out of sight, find a tree and head back home before someone got some way to track us. Damn it, there were fingerprints all over Ina’s house.

  I swung back, meaning to get Ina to wipe up any fingerprints we had left, and ran smack into Oliver who had come up behind us.

  The collision knocked him down on his ass. I was staggered but I guess a little shorter was better for balance. Plus I had Eire working with me, I was solid.

  “Dammit ma
n, stalker much?” I walked to Ina, got her to go a little off with me away from Ed and Liam, “Ina, would you take care to wipe off anything we touched inside before they think to get fingerprints? I don’t want a bunch of assholes tracking us down and giving us trouble.”

  “Consider it done. And you be sure and call me, let me know you made it where you’re going.”

  “I will. Now we gotta try to lose this jerk, seems like he is hard to discourage. You take care of yourself, bye!”

  I cut loose and ran. Not as fast as I could, but a normal fast run. Mags fell in with me. We’d have to talk later, I could tell she didn’t know what was going on; I didn’t know either, but this felt like it could go bad if we weren’t careful.

  Oliver fell in behind us. He must be a jogger, he held up good for the first few hundred yards. When I couldn’t hear him anymore, I turned and jogged backwards so I could see what he was doing. He had stopped and was talking and gasping into his phone.

  We left the road and ran through the fields. Trees were nonexistent. The fields grew crops or looked like grass. Damn, we needed a tree! The countryside was rolling, there were little roads all over the place that just ran into other little roads…didn’t really go anywhere. It was more trouble than it was worth avoiding them. I ran on whatever there was, road or field.

  After an eternity we spotted a tree, out in a field, with a fence around it. Looked like the fence was more a marker than anything else, it wasn’t going to keep anyone out. There were rags on the tree, must be another fairy tree. We headed toward it. A small black car pulled up and parked off the road near the tree. I hadn’t seen a big American-style SUV since we got here, everybody drove little cars.

  I wondered why nobody was getting out. We’d been running for less than a half hour I would guess. Twenty minutes since I last saw Oliver. Wonder if he had time to get someone to head us off? No, no way they could zero in on the one tree….ok, if they had any idea we were looking for a tree that would do it. So this might be Oliver’s pals.

  Sure enough, they saw us. Two people got out of the back dressed in everyday clothes. I half expected uniforms. I might have screwed up with that submarine shit.

  They stood by the car and waited on us. I thought about going elsewhere. I didn’t know what direction to go, and we could deal with any trouble here as well as elsewhere.

  Mags seemed to be willing to follow me, so I ran right up to the fence around the tree. The fellows from the car met us at the fence. I ignored them. Maybe they weren’t even there for us. Fat chance.

  “Hullo, and good evening! Great day for a jog in the countryside, innit?” Mr. Cordial and friendly sang out as we ran up.

  They were both a little bigger than average, short hair, white, had on city shoes – not tennis shoes or boots. Button down shirts with long sleeves and slacks. Clean, they worked in an office.

  “Hey, yeah, it’s nice out here.” I put my foot on the bottom rail of the fence to climb over.

  “You can’t climb that. The tree is protected.”

  I kept on climbing. He could babble at me while I got out of here. We were gone soon as I could get a hand on the tree. A hammer from God hit me in the back. The motherfocka shot me. I didn’t hear the shot. I hit the fence hard. The impact knocked my breath out of me and took all my strength and left me the slightest bit conscious. I lost my grip on the top rail and fell straight down, my chin hit the top rail and slammed my teeth together on the side of my tongue and gouged it good.

  Mags was right beside me, I saw her as I fell, she was turning toward me in slow motion.I needed to fix the bullet hole. If it was the same as the hole in my hand the exit would be large enough to kill me if I wasnt quick. I hit the ground, necklace screamed in my head, looking for the problem and fixing me up. It assured me in a spate of images it could deal with this, it was fire and wind, expressed as electricity. He shot me with lightening! My brain kicked in, he shot me with a taser! My muscles jittered and head just not right, hard to think, eyes quivering, hard to breathe.

  I landed on my feet and fell on down and landed on my back. The impact drove any air left in me right on out. I immediately started choking on the blood in my mouth running down my throat.

  My eyes were open, I saw the wires suddenly in Mags back when they tasered her. She did the same lifeless flop and her arm hit me in the nose when she landed and felt like it broke it.

  “I got this one, go, go go!” One man grabbed me by both arms and dragged me toward the car. My head was hanging and hitting the ground, it kinked my neck to the point it felt like it was breaking.

  Eire was right there, I asked for strength and healing. There was nothing broke, the electricity had caused my muscles to spasm and used up all my energy at once, leaving them empty and flaccid. Eire filled them right back up, I stanched the bleeding in my tongue and picked my head up a little so my neck wouldn’t break off.

  I let the man drag me on to the car. It was dragging my pants down and I felt the stuff getting in my ass crack, I would have rug burns but for eire. I heard the other one with Mags, they were efficient and fast.

  He turned my wrists loose to get a better grip when he got me to the car. He stepped beside me, I grabbed his ankles, just above his shoes, and bent his ankles. That will make someone fall down, they can’t help it; they will try to step back, but since you got their feet they can’t. He fell on back with a wordless grunt, I wrapped my arms around his waist and threw him partway in the open car door and slammed the door on him. I held back a little at the last second, I didn’t want to cut his legs off.

  Mags was up in the middle of the other one with him laying on his back on the ground, she was slapping his face back and forth so fast and hard it sounded like pistol shots, just Bam Bam Bam. She might break his neck, this wasn’t no patty cake, I think she was all into Eire powering her up and she was a little pissed. He was reaching up with his arms like he would block her or catch her arms or something, he couldn’t even interfere with her, she ignored his grabbing.

  The door thing didn’t work out on mine. He got his legs mostly out of the way. It hit him in the knee and missed the rest of him.

  He grunted and rolled away from me so he could get up, then he turned and crouched down, he had the little taser pistol back out. The original wires had pulled out of my back when he drug me, I saw another little coil of wires on it about the time he fired it at me.

  Everything was moving pretty slow. I could see the pair of stickers coming at me, I couldn’t move fast enough they would miss. Necklace informed me it was all fine, it would take care of the electricity. It felt a little shamed it/we was/were taken by surprise before.

  The probes hit me, the shock was sort of on my skin. It felt like getting shot with a toy arrow without the little sucker thing on the end, just a little sharp impact. The shock was sucked up by necklace, it never got under my outmost layer of skin. Much better!

  I reached out with my index finger and touched him on the nose. He backed up and throwed up his arms and raised his foot, but I was moving fast, damn near as fast as ol’ Chen used to move.

  When I touched his nose necklace turned loose of the stored electricity and it popped him, his eyes opened wide as they would go and bugged out. He fell down jerking, and I thought that was poetic; he was a jerk.

  Mags might have beat her guy to death. He was limp and just flopped when she hit him.

  “Mags! Don’t kill him!” And I thought, why the hell not? They attacked us viciously.

  “Don’t you move! Either of you. I will shoot the first one that moves so much as a finger.” Oh shit, I forgot the driver!

  We stopped moving.

  “Ok, where do we go from here? Y’all willing to kill us? Who the hell are you people, and what do you want?”

  “We just want to talk with you.”

  “I can give you some tips on meetin’ people. A lot of people don’t know this. Most times it ain’t considered polite to shoot somebody in the fuckin’ back with a taser.
And have goons try to kidnap them in a strange car. Just sayin’, I know different people do things different ways. So I was kinda sayin’ hello back when I zapped your buddy. In case that’s how y’all like to do things here.”

  “We were only”

  I interrupted him, “Yeah, I know, you wanted to meet women. Hey, you ‘bout as well shoot me then, I ain’t lettin’ you kidnappin’ motha fuckas get me tied up and shit, we all know what happens when you get some women someplace private with a bunch of vicious bastards.”

  I turned around and he didn’t shoot me, I was talking with Eire and had me as tough as I could get me. Tongue was still sore, I needed to fix it, but it was way down on the list at the moment. He wore a uniform and stood at the other side of the car with a pistol pointed at us over the top.

  Another car came over the hill headed our way, guess he had reinforcements coming.

  The one I had zapped moved and groaned, he tried to sit up.

  The one with the pistol said “Zeke! Are you able to get up?”

  Zeke mumbled, and moving a little better, got to his knees.

  I said “I tell you what. You put that pistol down. We gone leave. You put it down and I won’t fuck you up. You don’t put it down I ain’t responsible.” I had Eire on standby, the man was on mixed dirt and gravel and we could sink him. Maybe before he could shoot me. If he didn’t get me in the head I figured I could heal it.

  Looking at the pistol, I saw it was an automatic. Had he even jacked the slid to load it? I couldn’t remember hearing it, I could have easy missed it, but maybe the gun wasn’t ready to shoot.

  Zeke was getting up, there was no more time. Mags’ guy was still out and she was sitting on him.

  I sunk the guy with the pistol out of sight in the earth. His arms had been on top of the car, they pointed straight up and the gun fired twice. I kept on going with him. I couldn’t see him after he got below the car so I guesstimated it, there were no more shots so I guess it was good enough. Zeke was struggling to his feet.

  “Zeke baby, I wonder if you got more surprises, some guns or something you want to pull out and acquaint us with? Do I need to pull your arms and legs off so you’ll stop doin’ all this shit? You know you about to aggravate me. You won’t like it if you aggravate me.” Ha! I loved that, it was pretty good. I looked over to see if Mags was getting into my clever banter, I guess it was the language barrier, she didn’t look like she appreciated it. She looked like she wanted to pull arms and legs off for real.