I stared at him, unable to speak. He was right, so I finally nodded.
“That is three times the amount of work necessary for a Maker. All a Maker needs to do is look at his target, and think, I want him to burn.” Shiva smiled darkly, reminding me very subtly that he did not think like us mortals. “And. He. Shall. Burn.” I shivered at the thought. He was right. I had no idea how to use my powers, and now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Especially not if it put me on the god roster for a war. That much power… No wonder Makers had been hunted.
I sighed. “Even if I master my Beast, you just said that this isn’t ever going to go away. This war. I will be sucked into it whether I want it or not. So, what’s the point?”
Shiva shrugged, holding up two palms horizontal, the other two resting on his knees. “Burden of the Beast.” The room was silent for a time. I wasn’t sure how long. “But perhaps you’ve unknowingly been given the tools to latch your chariot to a different beast.”
I looked up sharply, frowning. “What?”
“I sense more than two beasts inside you. They are raging against each other. Rattling the cages. Knocking screws loose. Perhaps you’ve noticed…” he smirked, reading my mind.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. As have my friends.”
“This is why my Ganesha gave you his belt. That I could find you. Help you transform your obstacle.” He enunciated the two words, and I remembered something.
Ganesh was the Lord of Obstacles, and he had applauded Rufus cursing me. And had set things into play so that I received his belt. Nothing to do with Baba Yaga. But so I could meet his dear-old-dad, the Lord of Transformation.
I’d had enough. My brain felt like it was sizzling. I just couldn’t do this anymore. I had fought, bled, and died to keep my city safe. Only to realize that none of it mattered. Who really cared at this point? I had no idea what the hell was going on. No idea how to save my friends.
Or the kids.
In my depression, one of his statements suddenly replayed in my ears, and I looked up at the god, frowning. “What is the third beast?” I asked softly. His face morphed into an approving grin. “You said you sensed more than two beasts inside of me…” My Maker power, my affinity to the Horsemen, and… Then it hit me. I remembered Rufus’ idle comment right after he had cursed me. “A wizard…” I answered my own question. Shiva nodded, but I soon let out a frustrated sigh. It didn’t matter. “That beast is practically dead. In fact, I don’t even know why it’s still hanging around, taking up space, becoming a nuisance to my other Beasts.” I grouched.
He smiled at me, showing teeth. “Because a small part of you didn’t want it to die.”
I stared back. “Well, of course not. Being a wizard was my life. But the universe has never really cared too much about what I wanted. Why start now?” I complained.
“Because whether you understand it or not, you are a Maker. And part of you wanted something so badly that the Beast could not take it from you, and was instead forced to revive it, nurture it, keep it alive. Even if only barely…”
“The Beast did this for me?” I whispered, stunned.
Shiva nodded, and a small part of me suddenly loved the Beast for that one act. “He wasn’t happy about it, but he did it,” Shiva said.
“Wait…” I said, a thought briefly skittering across my brain pan. I replayed our conversation again. How a Maker’s power worked. How it practically had no limits. “No way…” I glanced up at Shiva, who was nodding with a deep, expectant smile. “I can bring it back to life. Re-Make it…” I whispered. “I’m a necro-wizard.”
Chapter 41
Shiva dashed my temporary moment of joy.
“If only you knew someone with the ability to teach you how to Make it so.”
I flinched. “Ichabod!”
But Shiva was shaking his head already, grimacing, as if anticipating my response ahead of time. Which was probably accurate.
“Sure. The one who chose not to tell you about your Beast in the first place. Even after you brought it up to him. Even knowing the consequences. He’s trustworthy. And I’m sure he would love to teach you.” He leaned closer, face devoid of emotion now. “Everything he knows. In a single night.” He straightened the snake on his neck absently with one of his hands. “Before the curse rips your Maker power away entirely.” And I felt myself growing angry at the reminder of Ichabod’s betrayal. Shiva was right. Ichabod had lied. Even if only a lie of omission, he had never warned me. Never told me about his Beast. Or agreed when I told him of my Beast.
That bastard. He definitely wouldn’t help me. And realizing his lie, I didn’t want his help…
I wanted his head.
I applied my anger to the problem at hand. “Okay, if I can’t go to Ichabod, that leaves only… my Beast.” I shot a look at Shiva to find him nodding, leaning forward intently. “But to do that, I need to establish dominance, like you said. Master my Beast. Then steal his knowledge.”
“Yes…” he drummed two of his palms on his lap. “But you will need to acquire more power. The curse has taken too much already. You’re close, but not close enough. Even with the Beast’s knowledge, you need more power. In this state, you would burn yourself out, or die trying.”
“I never thought I’d ask anyone this, but how do I get more power?”
Shiva smiled. “I’ve already told you. Mastery over your beasts. Domination. Beasts crave it.” He held out one of his hands, showing off the cottage. “Why do you think I brought you here? Home, sweet home,” he said with a deeper meaning in his tone.
I frowned at the cottage. It was rather mediocre, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He folded his head into the palms of two hands, a universal sign of frustration. Right. Mind reader. But I was more concerned that he might have poked his Third Eye out. “Are you saying there is a jar of power on one of those shelves that I can borrow?”
He groaned. “Not my home, Master Temple.” His choice of enunciation was odd to my ears, and I thought it was due to his head buried in his palms. “There is a reason your family carries the appellation, you know. Well, other than sheer arrogance,” he added. I blinked again, hearing the cadence of his words, putting them together. Then I added them to the context of our conversation up to this point.
“I need to master my home…” I said flatly, not understanding the significance.
“Look out the damned window,” he cursed, pointing one of his hands.
I did, and flinched. I hadn’t actually looked out the window yet, only at the window. I had been too enamored by the freaking god hovering before me in a traditional yoga position.
Chateau Falco unfolded in perfect clarity. The mansion. The Grounds. The tree. Or Gateway, as the sprites had called it. Even the white lizard-men, looking like tiny ants. I didn’t see anything unusual. Anything different. Well, other than the fact that Shiva had told me we were on Mt. Kailash, his traditional home, but I instead found myself now staring at my home. I had learned to take certain things in stride over the years. Then my eyes locked onto the tree, remembering what the sprites had said. They had made the tree to keep the Fae out of my life. Temporarily. Which meant… the tree had juice.
And seeing it from this angle, it looked like one giant, metallic lightning rod. “A power source,” I whispered.
“Close enough,” Shiva muttered in resignation at my dim brain.
But I was too distracted to care about his frustration. “But it’s keeping the Fae at bay.”
Shiva grunted. “In case I didn’t say this earlier, when a god finds a Maker he wants for his own, he takes them, breaks them, and then sends them back to their home to destroy everything they once loved. Family. Friends. Everything. That’s what lies behind door number two…”
I nodded absently. I had a decision to make. If I chose to remain a Maker, I could kill that last wizard seed inside of me, and deny my Horseman mantle. Then I would only have to worry about sharing headspace with the Beast my entire life.
If I survived that, I got to look forward to a god making me into his personal chess piece for a future war.
Or, I could do what we had discussed. Temporarily master my Beast, tap into the Gateway – unleashing the Fae – and use that added power to restore my wizard’s power. The curse would then drop, killing my Maker’s power. My Beast. And I would owe Rufus a beer.
Either way, I still had to confront the Beast Master and save the kids. Ashley. The chimera.
But option two guaranteed that the Fae would join the fight. Then I thought about Tory and her gift. I shrugged. It was only a matter of time before the Fae came to town anyway. They were already stressing the boundary. Might as well do it on my own terms. Because I realized that I needed – not wanted – Tory during that fight. It was the only chance we had against keeping the Beast Master’s shifters at bay. But this way, if I could time it right, I would have multiple power sources to pull from in the fight. Or at least strengthen one of them significantly.
My wizard’s gift. That old, tried-and-true companion of mine.
I needed to get back to that. Back to my roots. This Maker business was too much. It had cost me too much. Had changed me. For the worse. I made my decision, not even hesitating. “I need to break the Fae out to become a wizard, so that I don’t become a god or beast’s bitch.”
Shiva nodded, tapping a finger on his knee.
“What about those guys? I don’t think they’re going to approve of me plugging into their sacred tree.” I said, pointing at the lizard-men. “No, wait. I think I know the answer. Dominate them.” I rolled my eyes.
He nodded back, not catching my sarcasm. “If you time it right, you can dominate the Elders, too,” he agreed. “Whatever you do, just don’t feed them.” I shot him a sharp look at the comment, but was more interested in their name. Elders. “No one may know about your power play.” He leaned forward, face serious. “No one.” I nodded back, swallowing. “To them, you’re the same now as you were before we met.”
I nodded. “What happens on Mt. Kailash, stays on Mt. Kailash.”
That earned a chuckle. “Enemies are closer than you may realize…”
I frowned at his cryptic warning, but nodded. “I’m used to pissing people off.”
He grunted, unsure whether I had taken him seriously or not. “There will be temporary…” he quested for the right word, “ripples. A result of holding all three powers simultaneously. One growing at an alarming rate, one dying, and one… on the bench. You must—”
“Establish dominance,” I interrupted, grinning at his choice of words for my potential Horseman power. “I get it.”
He smiled back. “Maximum effort.”
I laughed. “Okay, Deadpool. Like father, like son,” I murmured, mind going a million miles an hour. Planning. Calculating. Scheming. “I still have to find a way to take out the Beast Master,” I murmured to myself, not expecting a response.
“To fight a Beast Master, you must first become a Beast Master. Transform. But you still have your Home, Master Temple. After all, what are we without our Homes?” He said, repeating his odd advice. I nodded absently. “But do not despair. It’s in your blood. You’ve already taken the first step.” I glanced over my shoulder, about to ask him to speak plainly.
But I was all alone in the cottage. He had even taken the rad tiger fur. “Wait, how do I get back?” I shouted.
“Through the looking-glass…” his voice whispered. I turned to the window with a frown.
With no other ideas, I approached the window, and stared through the glass again.
And gasped.
Chapter 42
I saw my friends. Standing in my office at Chateau Falco. Over my body.
Well, wasn’t this familiar?
Charon, the Boatman to the Underworld, had shown me something similar in my not-too-distant past. But this felt different. Less final. More as if I was watching a dream given flesh as opposed to literally dying.
Astral projection, I remembered Shiva telling me. He had astral projected me to his home on Mt. Kailash, the place where he, his wife, and two sons called home.
The Hindu Gods. Well, a handful of them.
Heh, handful.
“What was that?” Othello shouted, snapping me back to the view through the looking-glass. “What was that sound? It sounded like screaming.” It seemed like almost no time had passed since I had fallen unconscious after healing Van from Gunnar’s attack. Which was good.
Mallory stared dumbstruck, eyes flicking from Van Helsing on the couch to me on the floor. His mouth opened and closed wordlessly several times.
The Huntress chimed in. “What is happening to him?”
Mallory turned to her, face pale. “I have no bloody idea…”
Othello stared up at him through tear-filled eyes. “You can’t possibly believe that he’s… look, he’s not crazy. No matter what you saw, you didn’t need to test him like that,” she argued.
Mallory sighed in defeat. “What about the glass?”
“I’m sure… look, he’s a Maker. None of us truly knows what that means!” she defended.
“Ye didn’t see him at the window. Something’s wrong. Ye didn’t see him downstairs in the basement. He was talking to himself. Or the cat.” And all three of them suddenly looked right at me in my window. I flinched instinctively. Then Mallory pointed at the melted heap that had been her laptop, but he didn’t comment, just turned back to her with a condemning grimace.
She sighed, hanging her head to her chest in defeat. “Okay. I’ll admit, something is off. But let’s just call Gunnar. He’s the only one who can get through to him. Nate just needs help.”
Her words hurt me as I listened. The last one to defend me, was now crumbling.
“I don’t buy it. He seems perfectly sane,” the Huntress argued.
“As if yer opinion’s worth a damn,” Mallory growled scathingly. “Ye told us what happened with Gunnar in that alley…”
“That was in the heat of the moment, Old One,” she warned darkly. “I’m sure you’ve been caught up with bloodlust a time or two. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve read about—”
“Continue speaking, and die, Lassie,” he growled.
Othello threw her hands up in frustration. Then she leaned over me, laying her head on my chest for a few seconds. She gasped. “He’s not breathing!” Then, without waiting for a response, she began chest compressions. Then she pinched my nose, breathing into my mouth as her tears fell onto my cheeks. I subconsciously lifted my hand to my cheeks as if I could feel her tears…
And the arm through the glass lifted slightly from the ground.
This scared the living shit out of everyone. But not Othello.
She suddenly jerked her head up to stare straight at me again, as if seeing through my window. I froze in shock for half a second, and then waved back at her frantically. She only frowned, and then resumed her chest compressions.
“What the hell was that? He’s not even breathing. How did his arm move?” the Huntress demanded, gripping Mallory’s arm as he stared down at my now motionless body.
He seemed to snap out of it, abruptly lifting a boot to shove Othello clear. Then a bolt of lightning appeared in his hand, and he pressed it to my chest.
In the cottage, I immediately gasped in pain, fingers splaying out as lightning shot forth from my fingertips, hammering into the shelves, the chair, the table. The lightning ceased abruptly, and I saw Mallory had withdrawn his lightning spear from my chest in Chateau Falco.
I was panting. I’d had enough of this astral projection shit. What good was it if I still felt the pain from my actual body? I was supposed to be healing, relaxing, meditating…
But Dr. Othello and Dr. Mallory had apparently studied under the tutelage of Dr. Victor Frankenstein.
She hammered my chest twice, did a few more compressions, and then began breathing into my mouth again.
In the cottage, my fingertips subconsciously rose to my mouth. I felt a… faint
tingle on my lips. Then a metaphysical fist slammed into my chest, and I grunted in pain. I tensed my stomach in anticipation of another blow, wondering if Shiva had come back to evict me with his Four Fists of Justice.
But I was still alone. Wait…
I glanced up in time to see Othello pulling her fists away from my chest where she had escalated to pounding me rather than pressing with her palms. Mallory shoved her aside again, reaching out to poke me with his cattle prod. “No, no, no. This is not going to feel good…” I began panting as I saw the spear touch my chest in the office.
And lightning shot out of my eyes, burning Shiva’s cottage to ashes as a scream was torn from my chest, seeming to shatter my own eardrums. And I was yanked out of his house, his realm, his world.
Back into my office.
I lurched up, screaming.
Lightning filled the air. I instinctively grasped the tip – just the tip – of Mallory’s lightning spear, and crushed it in my fist. A puff of crackling sparks danced throughout the room, and I heard a shattering sound like broken glass as the spear disintegrated under my touch. The lightning in the room ceased, and I realized I hadn’t been the only one screaming.
The Huntress stood on top of my desk, hair standing straight up at the static charge in the room, as she aimed an arrow at me with her fancy new bow.
The one Van had bought her.
Othello was perched on Van’s chest, clutching her knees in terror, cheeks stained with tears, eyes bloodshot, and panting loudly as she rocked back and forth, her hair also sticking straight up.
“That… that feels nice,” Van murmured, cracking one eye open to see Othello rocking back and forth on his lap.
Her face turned beet-red and she jumped behind the couch, putting it between her and me.
Van frowned, spotted me, and then his eyebrows furrowed. “That’s new…” He turned to Mallory, flinched at a few errant crackles of electricity still in the air before they evaporated to nothing. His frown stretched in deep thought.
Beast Master: A Novel in The Nate Temple Supernatural Thriller Series (The Temple Chronicles Book 5) Page 23