Rochie knocked before he thought about anything else.
A man came to the door. He looked disheveled with his graying hair messed, and his face laced with dirt. His tan colored simple clothing sat ragged over his chest. He also smelled of drink. He reeked of drunk. He smelled of filth. He looked as bad as the house.
Kenar felt anguish from the man almost instantly. He felt his pain. He felt his loss.
“What in the heavens do you want?” he even slurred his speech. He was drunk all right. He was nearly unconscious because of it.
Kenar felt surprised that he hadn’t passed out yet. He will soon. He has been drinking all day. It is his ritual. He has been doing it for years now since his wife’s sudden break down. He read him clearly. The alcohol helped. It dropped every block any human could ever manage to achieve against him.
His wife’s name is Georgia. She was a simple woman. She broke apart after that day a few years back, and with it, this man’s life changed forever. She couldn’t handle what she saw. She couldn’t handle what happened to their son.
Their son became the black wolf. He felt stunned with this revelation, but at the same time, he didn’t. It actually made complete sense. They loved him. She gave birth to him. They raised him. He was in all sense of the word their son. He was their own child at that. He watched as the woman’s memories flashed again.
He saw their son attacked by the pack of wolves, and then watched as he turned. He felt her stunned heart breaking, as she couldn’t believe it. She didn’t understand it, and right after he turned, he saw nothing else. Seeing this, he blinked.
“My name is Rochie; I am with the king’s court.” He just shook his head. Seeing the man’s face, smelling his drink soaked breaths, he knew this was now hopeless. No drunkard was going to tell them what they needed to know. Any fool knew this. He just hoped that Kenar would know it too.
Of course, he didn’t. He got so much just by being this close to the man. In a few more moments, he felt sure that he would have what he needed.
“Well good for you.” The man took another swig from the jar in his right hand. Half of the drink went down his chin. Surprisingly, very little of it actually looked like it went down his throat.
It made Rochie shake his head again.
Kenar concentrated back on to the man’s thoughts.
He saw a soft-spoken woman with golden brown hair. He saw a young man. He looked like he was in his late teens, early twenties. He had jet-black hair. He had brown eyes. He had a calm demeanor. He had a smooth voice. He saw his face as clear as day.
That is him. That is the boy.
He now saw the man as he argued with his son. He heard their words. He heard everything they shouted at each other.
“I do not want to be a farmer father. There is so much more that I want to be.” The boy sounded older than what his father thought he was. He felt this thought odd, but crossed it off as a father not wishing to see his only son mature. Nothing else would have fit the emotion.
“If you wish to be a father one day, Kalima, then you must know how to care for your family. Without the skills, you will suffer with them.” The father made sense.
The boy would not be persuaded otherwise. He was set in his ways. “I do not want that life. I feel so much more than that. I feel a calling. I feel something calling me from the trees.”
He tried to focus on this, but then the memory turned. Their fight ended and flashed to something that felt like fear. The man was now afraid for his family’s life.
“Keep her with you.”
The boy could see the wolves moving across the fields. He could smell them on the wind. He knew they were coming.
How could he do that?
Before anything could answer him, the memory flashed again. He saw himself running down the road, the same road they rode down to come to the house. He was with other people from the village. He ran with them to the house, and there they stopped.
There he, Kenar, gasped within his own mind.
He saw a large and massive black wolf standing at the front door. He looked powerful as he stood on his hind legs. His wolf’s head flushed out with a mane. His doglike body turned with human looking arms and hands. His massive snout roared with a deep gurgling trumpeted sound.
He has only seen one such animal as this, and that made him gasp again.
He is a Blood Walker. No other animal can transform into such a beast. He must be one of them but whom. He thought back. He focused on his own thoughts and memories, but seeing the boy’s face against all of those he remembered, none matched him. He didn’t know who he was, so he looked back into the man’s mind.
It flashed back to the massive black beast. He watched three silver tipped arrows fly into the animal’s body. He heard its pain. He saw its blood drip from the wounds. Seeing this, he gasped with astonishment again.
The silver should have killed him, but it did not. He should be dead, but he still stands. He thought back to his original thoughts. Of course, a Blood Walker is not allergic to silver. It would not kill him only weaken him and that is why he did not die as the other wolves do. There is no doubt about it. He is a Blood Walker for absolute truth.
He looked back, saw the animal turn and watched as it fled across the fields. He watched it fly to the trees, using all four limbs to run. With it gone, the man went to the house, found his wife lying on the floor alive. After this, his life, her life, their life together would never be the same again.
At first, he thought the wolf took his son from him, but his wife told him something else. She told him what she saw. It devastated both of them, but they kept it quiet from the others in the village. They told them that the beast killed their son. They could not let his memory fade to something like fear. They gave him what they could. He admired them for this, and with feeling it, he realized something else about it too. They loved him, and he loved them too. He almost couldn’t grasp onto this thought at once. It seemed too difficult to comprehend it. It meant that the boy was not only different, but he was completely unique. Walkers do not love humans like this—not since that night by the river—not since the war started.
He blinked.
He now saw the man kneeling by a bed—her bed, and felt his tears strolling down his face. He saw his wife, Georgia, lying there and he knew that she was gone. Her mind vanished. She lost her wits. She lost her very reason to think.
Knowing everything, and understanding only some of it, he opened his eyes.
With the sun now behind the village, he saw Rochie now standing there to his right. His aura was now sparkling around him like the sun itself.
“I have come here to ask you if you know of a b…” Rochie started, but Kenar cut him off.
“Thank you for your time.” He turned to his friend and pulled him back to the horse.
Rochie felt more confused than ever. “What now?” He pulled his right arm from Kenar’s and slapped it to his side. In fact, he was also feeling angry for this too. “I thought we were coming here to find out about this boy?” He looked back to the house, and saw that the drunkard had already closed the door. Seeing this, he now knew it was hopeless. He would never answer it again now that he knew who they were. Now, everything felt more pointless than ever.
Kenar could only laugh with everything now flying around inside his head. He didn’t mean too, so he stopped it as quickly as it started. He also tried to explain, “I read the man’s thoughts, and now I know everything he knows. We do not need to speak another word to him.”
Rochie accepted this. In a big way, he was thankful for it too. With the way the man was acting, it was pointless to try asking him anything anyway. Now, he didn’t have to try.
Again, Kenar laughed with this.
Rochie shook his head. “Will you get out of my head for a minute, and concentrate on why we came here?” He puffed out for good measure too. He hated him at times like this.
Kenar agreed so he nodded, and likewise closed his mind to his frie
nd’s thoughts. With them gone, he could think again himself.
“So what did you learn?” Rochie decided to get back to the matter at hand.
Again, he could only agree. “The boy is not here.” He turned to the horse. A tannish yellow color surrounded the animal and with its aura shining, he now saw it as clearly as anyone else who had eyes. He loved it. He now didn’t need help to climb back onto it, which he then did.
“Would you please tell me what in the heavens is going on?” Rochie felt perturbed with such an answer. It told him nothing.
Kenar couldn’t have agreed more. “I have no idea really.”
“That is a lot of help.” Rochie huffed with a heavy sigh, and joined Kenar back on the horse. “So do you know where we are going now?” He took the reins and held them firmly in both of his hands. He felt ready. Ready for what, he now had no idea.
Kenar honestly didn’t know. “We head north. When the boy changed, the villagers ran him off. They last saw him heading north, so we go in the same direction.”
Rochie couldn’t argue. He just kicked the horse and they rode off, and headed north.
Kenar kept his mind fixed onto the boy. He kept his thoughts on to this Kalima that he saw in the memory. He couldn’t sense the boy, but he hoped others would. This was all he had left.
10
Sharlia headed north along the coast of the west end of the island. She traveled fast, keeping to the night. She fed very little. She was hungry, but since the war had started, food had come hard to come by. Without the offerings of the old days, she couldn’t bring herself to attack the humans at will. She kept to animals even though they weren’t the same as human blood, they did keep her alive. Besides, humans have become the masters of this world now. She didn’t want to pick a fight knowing full well that that fight might result in her own death.
As night fell again, she finally arrived in the north to an area called the Highlands. It was such a rugged place. It looked barren. It looked unlivable. She couldn’t believe that Devish had chosen this place to make his stand. This is not like him to do this, come to place like this. He had to be up to something. Why else would he come here and trap himself like this. She knew him all too well. He had always been impulsive yes, but he was also cunning. He saw things that very few of them ever could, so he had his reasons for it. As for right now, she really didn’t care. She had only one thing on her thoughts and that was what she wanted to know.
Coming to this awful place, she finally came to them—to others like her, to her own kind. She knew where they were. Others had also gathered here as they rallied to Devish’s banner, even if she didn’t. She never forgave him for what he started and why. Of course, all of them knew of his reasons, but now with everything lost and with them loosing, they no longer had the choice. He was the only Blood Walker left. He commanded their thoughts. He commanded their allegiance. She just didn’t have to like it.
“Who is there?” A Moonwalker asked, as he stepped around a very large tree. His small stature did not convey his ultimate strength. Wolves never did. She could smell his strength. She could have smelled his overpowering musty scent for miles.
“I am the lady Sharlia of the old Sharlia clan.” She smelled all of them along the tree line. Her gift of smell served her well enough, as it always did. It was her one true gift. Like all Walkers, she possessed a specialty and this was hers. She stepped to the other side of the tree, and watched him and four others join him in front of her. She didn’t recognize any of them, and smelled them to know why. They are all new Walkers. Devish has been busy. He must have made dozens of them over all of this time. This bothered her some. In the old days, a Walker was made as a gift of service to those that stood side by side with the Elders of the families. Why now, with everything happening, would so many humans turn against their species? She would never understand humans, and now, she knew that she never would.
Andrew, the Alpha male of his small little pack, knew who she was. “Lady Sharlia of the Sharlia clan, I bid you welcome. Welcome to the great Walker Horde.” He smiled hard. His arrogance flowed through him like water over a flooded plain. He just sounded like he soaked in it.
In other words, she was not amused. “I am here for the Wanderer. You can tell your lord Devish that I have only come here because I have learned that he holds her here.” She felt the need to get serious, so she let her eyes flow to their vampire’s red color. She even showed him her fangs. Even with the war, even with their almost extinction at the hands of the humans, Nightwalkers still outranked a Moonwalker in their hierarchy. Showing him that she was one would only make this happen faster. At least she hoped so. So much had changed, so much had happened, she couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. As far as she knew it, Devish could have even changed this too.
He laughed, and it made her think she was right about the latter thought, but when he stopped and his face grew serious again, she felt that she was wrong. She felt other’s emotions almost like they were her own. It was a part of her gifts of empathy. She used it well when it suited her the most.
“Lord Devish is expecting you my lady.” He looked back to his pack and then back to her again. “There is no need to show your teeth to us. We know who you are.”
The others even bowed their heads towards her.
“I see.” She was about to ask him how he knew that she was coming, but then stopped herself before she did. Of course, he knows I am coming. He has probably already read every thought I have ever had. She let her eyes go back to their normal brown color when she realized this. Her fangs likewise slid back up. “Good. You will lead me to him then.” She let relief flow through her too. She didn’t know what to expect with this. Since learning that Devish had the Seer of Golan in his company, she tried to follow him over the world. She tried to keep herself calm as she tried to figure out how to approach him with what she needed from the Wanderer. After everything happened, she hated him more than she ever did. The worse part about this was that she knew that he knew that too.
The Alpha wolf led her back through the trees. He led her to a smallish looking castle hanging just over a small bluff near the sea. The place looked warn. The sounds of the ocean’s waves blasted against the shore. Insects roared their offbeat calls all around her. The place looked nothing like the old homes of the Walkers. It looked rundown. It looked unkempt. It looked downright weird.
He led her past a dozen other Walkers through the front door. From the main foyer, they turned left. He took her to a small room just by a wooden set of stairs that led up to the second floor. Inside the room sat a single old looking wooden chair.
Devish was even waiting for her just standing behind it. “Ah, my dear Lady Sharlia, I am so pleased to see you well. It has been far too long since we last saw each other.” H moved towards her but stopped just in front of it. His face beamed. He oozed charm. He also felt good. He meant what he just said. He did miss her.
She hated him even more. “I have come to see the woman. I need to speak to the Wanderer, the Seer of Golan.” She got right to the point. She was in no mood to play his games. She didn’t have the time or the patience for his fun. Besides, with his gift of reading her thoughts, he already knew everything anyway, so what was the point.
He truly laughed hard with hearing this. He couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to. When he finished, his eyes sparkled even more than they already did.
“I see that you have not changed in the smallest amount, my dear lady Sharlia. You are as brash as always. You are as strong as I always knew you to be.” He did like this about her. It was why he wanted her to join him in the first place. She was such a better leader than he ever was. He could do it. He just truly didn’t like it. He was much better at pleasing himself anyway.
She just shook her head. “I figured why bother, since you will have already read my thoughts anyway. Why waste our time?” She stared him down.
“You are also very gracious as well.” His smile only grew larger as he stare
d into her beautiful brown eyes, which sparkled alongside her beautiful brown skin. She was very beautiful for someone who was made. “Very well then, as you do not wish to waste our precious time, I will begin.” He took three steps to her and stopped right in front of her. The long purple robe he wore dangled just over his shoes. He placed his arms in front of the robe, and folded them there. “You may not see her.” Blunt for blunts sake was called for, so if she wanted to play this game, he would play it with her. And also, how he loved to play games.
She heard the mocking sound in his voice. “Then she is really here?” She of course had only heard of this, but now, she knew it. It made her calm down even more. “Why do you keep her with you if you will not allow another Elder to speak with her? I am still an Elder, am I not?”
He loved the sounds of her voice. She sounded very regal when she wanted to be. “The old ways are over my dear Sharlia. All of the old rules and obligations have ended. The families no longer exist, save one.” He bowed his head as he spoke, but lifted his eyes again when he finished it. His mind flashed with utter joy with this. He always wanted to put her in her place for thinking that she was something more than what she was. To him, she was nothing more but made Walker. She was once human. It polluted her with a foul stench that being a Nightwalker now didn’t correct. She should have never been an Elder. She should have known her place.
She heard this in his voice without needing to see his thoughts. No one would have missed such mockery. “I understand that the old ways have ended Lord Devish. I also understand that things have not gone well. Things are much worse for you.” She smiled slyly as she too put her hands in front of her and locked them in place.
Seeing her, hearing her, he could only grin. “I have given the Walker world something it had longed for to have back. I have given us freedom again. Freedom to hunt at will. The freedom to drink to our heart’s content. The free…”
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