Dire Symbols

by W A Rowland

  “Should I slap her? That’s supposed to help snap people out of panic, right?” he asked Lily.

  “You do that, Liam Douglas, and I swear I will make your nuts shrivel and fall off!” Lily said angrily.

  “Woah! Hold up! Don’t do anything. I was just asking. I don’t know how to handle this kind of thing! I was a going to be a lawyer! They’re not the cuddliest bunch!” Liam backpedaled defensively.

  “Comfort the woman ya dolt!” Lily berated him.

  Liam quickly walked around the counter to the crying, hyperventilating, panicking young woman and, as gently as he could, put a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “I’m sure Bast is fine. She’s the best, remember? No werewolf is gonna take her down. Or Thea for that matter. They’re just fine. We’re going to find them and everyone is going to be fine. Ok?” he said softly as Cindy made and broke eye contact over and over again.

  She was still panicked, but less so now. Suddenly, without warning, the woman lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Liam’s skinny body, pushing her face into his shoulder. Liam, to his credit, didn’t jump back or yelp, he just stood there, stock still as the woman cried on his shoulder.

  “Is this good? What do I do?!” Liam asked Lily, his own panic rising a bit.

  “Just relax, this is good. She’s comfortable enough with you to use you as emotional support. Don’t slap anyone and you should be fine,” Lily said, with a touch of warning in her voice.

  “You’re going to hold that over my head now, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yup. For as long as I want,” she answered.

  Cindy stirred and sat back up, not making full eye contact with Liam. “I’m sorry, I…” she started stumbling over her word again. Liam wished he could help her with saying what she wanted to say, but there was just no… Liam suddenly got an idea.

  “Cindy, this may seem odd, but can I come visit your core stone?” he asked suddenly.

  “What?” she responded.

  “What?” Lily echoed.

  “Well, it seemed like you were able to express yourself better when we talked there, I just thought…”

  “Yes,” Cindy said, cutting him off. And looking a bit excited now. “That… yes… please…” she started saying excitedly.

  Liam swallowed and asked out loud, “Lily, can we do that?”

  “I guess, you may want to sit down first. I don’t know what your body will do when you leave it,” Lily said.

  “My guide says we can do it, but we need to sit down,” Liam said gesturing towards the couches across the common room.

  Cindy closed her mouth quickly, then jumped up and practically ran to them, dragging Liam behind her. Once settled on the couch, Liam spoke to Lily again.

  “Ok, what now?” he asked.

  “Just maintain contact, like we did before,” she said.

  A half second later, Liam felt the same rushing sensation and suddenly he was looking at the inside of the large square room again. But this time, instead of oppressive darkness and cracked walls, the room was brightly lit by the shimmering portal inset into the one directly in front of him. He saw swirling red patterns dancing along white walls now, forming and reforming into symbols and geometric shapes. Liam gawked at the drastic changes since his last visit. It made him wonder what his own core looked like on the inside.

  He was so caught up in the changes; he missed the biggest change of all. In the room with him was Cindy, but not the young, childlike version from the night before. This Cindy was older, closer to his age. Her thick dark hair was up in an elaborate bun with silver and green jewels running through it. Her caramel skin was offset by a brilliant emerald green dress and bright red lipstick. She looked like a woman who’d just come from a ball and was about to head home to some million-dollar mansion.

  “Cindy?” Liam questioned.

  “Different, right?” she said as she stepped up next to him and took his arm. “I wanted to look nice since I don’t get many visitors here.” Suddenly, there were several plush couches and a coffee table with a silver tea set on it.

  “Actually. I don’t get any visitors here,” she said sadly as she sat, pulling him down next to her, and poured a cup of tea. She smiled at Liam, every bit the picture of a refined debutant as she handed him a silver tea cup. “Until now. Cheers.” She said, then sipped her own tea and relaxed back into her cushion with a contended sigh. “I love chamomile. So soothing.”

  “But how? Yesterday, you were a young girl and today…”

  “Some would say I’m still a young girl. I’m only nineteen after all,” Cindy said with a playful grin. This was most definitely not any version of Cindy that he’d encountered before. Where the physical Cindy was either too loud or too soft, this one had a smooth, cultured voice. Where physical Cindy always looked ready to bolt, this one was comfortable and confident. Liam was having a hard time rectifying the two beings. Even the younger version of Cindy he’d talked to the night before had been drastically different from this one. Liam eyed her as he responded to the jibe.

  “Not what I mean,” Liam said, looking at her, and getting a bit lost in the green of her eyes.

  “What you see is whatever form my soul decides to take,” she said and then suddenly, she was a little girl again, in her sun dress, swinging her feet off of the edge of the couch. “See,” she said, giggling. Then the former Cindy was back just as suddenly as she had left. “You’re familiar, of course, with self-image, right?” she asked.

  “I suppose,” Liam answered.

  “Well, that’s all it is. What you see in here is how I choose to see myself in this moment. Same as you.”

  This caused Liam pause as he looked down at himself, and found that he very nearly resembled himself in real life, if a bit more muscular and less disheveled. He was also wearing a silk suit that he definitely had not been wearing moments before. “That’s freaky,” he said while examining his shoes, which were also different.

  “I know right!” Cindy said, laughing. She had a melodic laugh. Not the forced, panicked thing that she had in the physical world. This was a full laugh, from her soul. Liam found that he very much enjoyed her laugh here.

  “So, why the little girl yesterday then?” Liam asked.

  “That’s how I usually see myself with Reggie. He’s kind of like an older brother in a lot of ways. Protective, helpful, kind. He’s taken care of me for a long time, and I can’t help but see him that way. You could say, I’m able to be my most vulnerable with him. So, that translates as a little girl,” she explained.

  Liam thought on it for a minute, then nodded. It did make sense he supposed, but what did that mean for him? Was this how Cindy saw herself around him? “Where is Reggie? And Lily for that matter?” Liam asked suddenly, looking around but not seeing the big man or his diminutive counterpart.

  “I imagine they’re pretending to give us a bit of privacy. Though I don’t believe for a minute that they’re not listening in,” Cindy said grinning and winking. She had a gorgeous smile, and Liam felt himself melt a bit, then jumped when his body shifted to that of a teen boy. He quickly reverted, but not before Cindy let out a belly laugh.

  “Not used to pretty girls smiling at you?” she teased as he turned red.

  Liam recovered as best as he could and stood up, intently looking around everywhere but at Cindy. “This is all still so incredible. I mean, this is your soul? It’s beautiful,” he said, desperately trying to change the subject.

  “Why, Liam, you’re going to make me blush,” she replied giggling. “But I agree. The effect is indeed much different than how I appear outside. Sadly, there’s not much I can do about it,” she said solemnly.

  “Why is that?” Liam asked, curious. “I mean, here, you’re well spoken, confident, and calm. You say exactly what you want to say, why doesn’t it get to the outside?” He looked over at her.

  “In here, you hear the exact meaning
of my soul. No biology to get in the way. In here, there’s no filter or hormones or bioelectrical signals to mess it all up. This is me talking, straight from my soul to yours. It’s honestly a very intimate affair,” she said coyly.

  “Two days ago, if you’d asked if you could ‘visit’ my core, I would have teleported to Niagara Falls and jumped off out of embarrassment,” she said, with a soft chuckle. “But, you saved my life yesterday, Liam. You did it and didn’t ask for anything in return. If I can’t trust you with the thoughts of my soul, then I’m doomed to be stuck with communicating through the broken vessel that is my physical body forever. So here I am, taking a chance, and honestly hoping that I don’t regret it,” she finished. Taking another sip of her tea before also standing.

  “I had no idea,” Liam replied, floored at her frankness.

  “Of course, you didn’t. It would be strange if you did. I know I don’t seem it, Liam, but I’m not nearly as fragile as people want to believe. Technically speaking, I’m one of the strongest demis in the world currently, after Bast and a few others,” she explained, walking over to him.

  “You see, everything that I do in the physical world, is seen through a lens of fear and paranoia. They don’t exist here, because fear, at its base, is a physical reaction. No physical body, no reaction. It’s the same with most emotions: fear, lust, want, comfort. They’re all based somehow in the physical. Those are what most demis feed off of. The auras of mortal’s reactions. Essentially, trading emotional energy from the physical world for energy from the astral. But I don’t feed off of auras that way, and if my guess is correct, neither do you,” she said, eyeing him meticulously and she stepped in close, then speaking softly, intimately.

  “I know that Bast probably told you my guide is Courage. And she’s correct, but courage isn’t a physical reaction. It’s a choice, something you decide in your soul that overrides the physical. Bast knows this, but what she doesn’t know is that I only ever fed off of one aura in my whole life. One courageous soul was enough energy to give me more power than most demis ever dream of. That’s the difference between us and the others, Liam,” she said putting a hand on his chest over his heart.

  “While a demi gets amazing power from absorbing auras, it’s finite. An exchange of energy, that’s all. But if you’re what I think you are, then you only not have the power to change the fate of yourself, but also everyone else around you. Maybe even the whole world. It already happened once in the forest,” Cindy said, now very close to Liam, looking up into his eyes.

  “The guardian set you on a very particular path, and that path is both finite and infinite. I’ll help you however I can, but in the end, it’s going to be your own soul that needs to get you through. Your own courage. Your…. Potential,” she said smiling, and intonating the last word that told him she’d made an educated guess as to Lily’s paradigm. She was so close now that Liam felt like he could smell her perfume, even though she wasn’t technically wearing any. Nonetheless, he could swear he smelled cinnamon and vanilla as she stood in front of him. Slowly, Cindy leaned forward and kissed his cheek softly before backing away. “That is for saving my life,” she said then stepped back with a knowing smile. Liam looked down: Teenage Liam again.

  “You really don’t know much about women, do you?” she said with that glorious bright smile. “We’re going to have to work on that. Can’t have my only friend changing into a teenager every time I say thank you.”

  Liam had just managed to right himself from his own spinning emotions when she spoke again.

  “Now we need to look to the others though,” she said spinning suddenly, and changing into a black business suit, her hair in a dark ponytail. The look suited this version of Cindy, who would have passed as the CEO of some multinational corporation easily, despite her apparent young age. She took a few steps away from Liam before she started to speak again.

  “In the physical world, I couldn’t communicate well enough to tell you exactly what it is that I saw. The images are… disturbing, but here, I can show you,” she said, putting her arms out in front of her, like she was framing a picture.

  A white field appeared on the wall in front of her, and an image came into view. Liam couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing until it started moving. The vision played out in front of them. Cindy, running down a dark corridor, something ghostly white and menacing following her. It was huge, but he couldn’t make out any details. Julian maybe? No, this was even bigger than Julian. Liam got a cold chill running up his spine as he watched. The feeling of being hunted, permeating the memory so strongly it bled out into everywhere around it. The visions continued as Cindy rounded a corner, coming face to face with the hunter. A spiked, clawed hand lashed out and then… nothing.

  “That is what I keep seeing. A probable event with potentially world-changing repercussions. In this case, my death, judging by the ending,” she said, turning back to Liam with a sad expression.

  “Ok, so how do we stop it? I mean, you said probable event,” Liam asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s the torture of knowing what will probably happen. There really aren’t any specifics. Without prior knowledge or information of the location or people involved, it gets very hard to enact any kind of plan,” she said stepping back towards the couches.

  Liam followed. “So we just have to keep a close eye on you then,” he said, trying to give her a reassuring smile, but was failing miserably. Her earlier familiarity was still throwing him off.

  She smiled sardonically. “Liam, have you met me in the real world? Chances are that I’ll teleport in my sleep or something and end up in a yeti cave or some other horrible place. Uncontrolled teleports can do that,” she said giving an involuntary shudder, obviously reliving some past experience.

  Liam grimaced and then had a thought. “Can you teleport other people?” he asked.

  She gave him an arched eyebrow for a minute before replying. “Yes. But, I have to be touching them and I can choose to leave them behind if I want to. Usually, the limit is a group of two to three at most. Why?” she said curiously.

  “Well, if you’re scared of teleporting in your sleep, why don’t you stay in my room? We can tie my foot to yours, and if you teleport, it would take me with you, right? At least you wouldn’t be alone then,” he said proud of himself for what he considered a well thought-out solution to the problem.

  Inside, he felt Lily face-palm.

  “Why, Liam, not even going to buy me dinner first?” Cindy said in a faux salacious tone.

  “Wait… I didn’t…. I mean…” Liam stuttered, realizing too late that he’d just asked Cindy to sleep with him, in a very literal fashion, and that the solution was actually not very well thought-out.

  Cindy laughed her full laugh again and gave him a genuine smile this time. “I know, Liam. I’m joking with you. And I appreciate the thought, as well as the willingness to risk your life,” she said giving him a nod of her head. “And in the spirit it was given, it is a decent idea.”

  “I just figured I could help with whatever you ended up fighting. I didn’t mean that we should—” he said defensively trailing off, and knowing that he was a bright red color.

  Cindy let out another laugh. “So you don’t think I’m worth taking to bed then?” she teased, obviously amused at his expense.

  “What? No, I mean you’re a very pretty… I mean beautiful girl. Err… woman,” Liam stumbled through his thoughts as he tried desperately to dig himself out of the hole he was in.

  “Just digging yourself deeper, dummy,” Lily pointed out, breaking their perceived privacy, which only made Liam more self-conscious.

  Cindy apparently also heard Lily as she laughed even harder at Liam’s failed attempts to rectify his blunder. Eventually, she put up a hand, stopping his blathered apologies.

  “I appreciate the effort to defend my honor, Liam, though not necessary. I assure you that other thing will not be an issue. Because when I said you’d be risking your life earli
er, I wasn’t talking about the fight. I was talking about sleeping in the same bed as physical world Cindy,” she said sardonically.

  “What?” he asked, wishing for the umpteenth time in the last few minutes that he’d just kept his big mouth shut.

  “I’d hate to ruin the surprise,” Cindy replied mischievously.

  “Surprise?” Liam gulped.

  “You’ll see,” she answered with a devilish grin.

  Suddenly, Liam found himself back in his body. Physical Cindy sitting next to him sat up abruptly with a gasp, looked at him with suspicious eyes, then teleported away.

  “What in the world did I just do?” Liam said out loud as Lily laughed uproariously.

  UNIONS AND REUNIONS

  Liam kept the news on, in the event it happened to clue him into where he could start looking for the others. What had been their mass exodus to escape was more and more looking like a search and rescue mission now. Cindy kept her distance, for the most part, throughout the morning and Liam only caught glimpses of her jumping in and out of the kitchen as he tried to plan out his next move.

  On one hand, he now knew who he was up against: the Blacks and Julian. On the other, he now had Cindy to look out for and friends in harm’s way that he wanted to help.

  All of this was wrapped up in the fact that he had absolutely no idea where anyone was in order to go do anything. So Liam sat in the bunker, thinking back over the last few days. It seemed like an eternity ago that he had woken up, and his only concern was avoiding his ex and trying for a promotion.

  Now, he was dealing with beings from long gone ages, and powers beyond human comprehension. But really, though, he still didn’t understand that whole time conversation that Joshua had thrown out there yesterday. Was that really yesterday? He grimaced, what day was it even?

  “And that’s all for your noon news update. Have a wonderful weekend!” the announcer said in that familiar, always-too-happy tone they had.