Eye of the Tempest (Jane True)

by Nicole Peeler

  The man who had been speaking had a “listening” face, after which he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.” Then he looked at the man standing next to Anyan and said, “Confirm the kill.”

  The man raised his rifle to his chest, sighting down on where the barghest lay, undefended. He was aiming his massive rifle at Anyan’s head. Taking a deep breath, but otherwise giving no outward indication, I sprang my trap.

  Luckily for me, no one thinks I’m anything special. I’m a halfling, and everyone assumes—quite incorrectly, as with most racist stereotypes—that halflings are exactly what the name implies: half as good, half as strong, and half as necessary.

  So while at least two of the men had their laser sites trained on me, they hadn’t incapacitated me in any way. I was but a small woman, and only a little chit of a halfling.

  Praise be to the god who invented underestimation, I thought, as I began to gather my power to me.

  Running on adrenaline and instinct, I fell almost instantaneously into the cocoon of magic I’d felt the other time Anyan had been hurt in front of me. It had been only weeks before, in Pittsburgh, that Phaedra had nixed Anyan’s ambush by hurling him into a wall. He’d landed in a sickening heap, causing me to go all primeval and reach with my power. The only thing that had stopped me was Blondie’s intervention and her warning that I should never, ever heed that siren’s song to pull.

  What I saw in my magical trance back then was just like what I saw now. Water, water everywhere, and all of it full of power. Water connected everything: hydrogen and oxygen atoms, tiny strings of pearls hung like billions of bead curtains across my vision. It was like being in the Matrix’s computer code, only instead of numbers there was water. And if you switched your perspective, it became obvious that just as the water droplets went up and down, they also went horizontally.

  Connecting each and everyone of us, I thought, as I went down deeper into my power, until I was my power…

  And then I searched out the strings of beads connecting me to my attackers. Finding them, I reached, again…

  And then, seeing no other alternative, I did exactly what I’d been told not to do. I pulled.

  Focused on the man who was going to shoot out Anyan’s brains, I only saw what I did to him. Despite the circumstances, and never regretting my actions, what I saw—what I did—still haunts me.

  Apparently, people remember their first kill.

  He was just setting his eye to his site when he jerked hard. Thankfully, he didn’t have his finger on the trigger at that moment, or he may well have shot Anyan. Instead, his arm holding his assault rifle dropped uselessly to his side as he spasmed. I saw, in my peripheral vision, similar movements from his fellow attackers.

  My assault lasted only seconds, but it felt like hours.

  I called to the water in all the men’s bodies, and it responded to me with the alacrity of a squadron of eager retrievers. I watched, cold, as the man upon whom my eyes were pinned began to shrivel, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop when he fell to his knees, and I didn’t stop when he fell to the ground.

  I didn’t stop even when I saw that the fingers protruding from his leather half-gloves were desiccated like those of a long-dead mummy.

  True guilt about my actions would never set in—I knew what I did was right. Those men made their choice when they took money to murder strangers, and—somewhere between the Alfar Compound and the Healer’s mansion—I’d become hard enough by what I’d seen of evil to understand that fact. But visions of the bodies would still appear to me in random nightmares. At that moment, however, all I felt was power… The men’s lives came to me through their body’s water, and I tasted what it was to take another person’s life by stealing, quite literally, their essence….

  The water in me answered the water in them, and I felt my magic’s channels open wide, inviting, receiving, until I was as full as I’ve ever been of elemental force.

  Still, I couldn’t stop.

  Full to bursting with magic, I kept soaking up more. It was like I’d opened up some internal pair of floodgates. I’d never felt so full, so strong… until it began to burn. Pain suddenly seared through my system hotter than a thousand suns.

  Screaming, I fell to my own knees as the power stretched me to my limits. Just when I thought I’d pass out from the pain, the tide of my power turned. Just as all that elemental force had rushed into my open channels, it now all rushed out. I felt myself emptying, and suddenly I knew that what I’d hoped would save Anyan’s life would probably end my own.

  On the night I’d found my love Jason’s body in the Old Sow, I was totally untrained and ignorant of my true magical inheritance. So I’d unwittingly used my magic—all of my magic—to pull him from the giant whirlpool off the coast of Rockabill. I’d almost died that night, so I knew that draining a supe of all of his magic killed him as effectively as draining him entirely of blood.

  “Anyan,” I whispered, reaching out my hand toward the barghest. I was prostrate on my stomach, the gravel digging into my belly. Feeling my heart flutter, I figured I was done for. Everything seemed a bit hazy, however, and I now reckon that the only reason I wasn’t panicked was that my brain wasn’t entirely cognizant of what was happening. Instead I was quite calm; I just wanted to know Anyan was alive before I went.

  Which is why I was so very, very pissed when someone had the audacity to roll me over like I was a side of beef. To be fair, Blondie looked almost as miffed as me when she finally settled me on my back.

  “I told you not to go there, babydoll,” she mumbled, as her tattooed hands stroked down my face.

  I wanted to protest, to tell her to see to Anyan before attending to me. But unconsciousness swamped me in darkness, and then I felt nothing.

  The planet was dead all around. Nothing grew, nothing lived—except me, my siblings, and, somewhere out in the darkness, our cousins. I huddled with my brothers and sisters against the Earth, cradled by Water. So young, we were afraid to venture out of the sanctuary created by our parents. We were small, then. Unaware of our power and innocent in our play.

  [Everything is so young, I marveled, remembering for just a moment that I was Jane True and that these images (memories?) couldn’t be my own. But that moment faded, along with my humanity.]

  Soon, however, we stretched our limbs and discovered they were long and strong. We flexed our power, realizing our potential. But born of Water and Earth—born of love—my siblings and I used that knowledge only for play—play that one day took us outside the safety of our nest. Unharmed, we looked at one another and felt joy.

  [I thought I had two eyes, murmured she who had been Jane.]

  Ever more confident, we strayed further afield, boiling the seas with the energy of our games. Our bodies grew along with our curiosity and soon we were almost too large to return to our sanctuary. To sleep, we had to press together in a tangle of limbs [Too many limbs, I thought, even if I wasn’t sure who I was anymore]. And yet there was such comfort in those touches, knowing my siblings were always there, that I would never be alone.

  Until the day our cousin, Fire’s offspring, decided that he would like to play.

  Born of ambition and rage, Fire’s children were not curious or playful or kind. But they were strong. And the one that came to us that day was the oldest, the most powerful, of Fire’s dangerous brood. At first it joined us in our games, and no one noticed when something changed. Until my sister’s limbs [So many limbs] were floating past me, unattached, and the ocean ran red with blood.

  I survived only because of my parents’ intervention. Seizing upon Fire’s child, they pulled him apart until even Fire itself couldn’t rekindle him.

  Returning to my cold nest, I huddled in the darkness, alone.

  [So alone…]

  There was a war, then, between my parents and Fire. Air, as usual, remained neutral and I stayed hidden, at my parents’ behest. The planet was nearly riven in two before Air interceded. A truce was made, in which Fire agreed tha
t he would make no more children as powerful as the one who had killed my siblings. But he forced my parents to agree to the same.

  Which meant I would be alone, forever.

  That said, my parents, Air, and Fire could still create offspring, and they did. Creatures of less magnitude than my generation, but still powerful. Often too powerful. I watched as scenarios similar to the slaughter of my own family happened time and time again, until only the most wicked, the most powerful, or the most intelligent survived.

  Time passed like water rushing over a fall, and eventually I noticed my parents were weary. Air had long since laid itself down to rest, tired of life and loss. Soon Fire joined Air, its passion turned cold and pointless. My parents held out longer, their love sustaining them. Yet, eventually, even they took to sleep.

  I grieved the loss of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, but I marveled at the glory of the world they had created. Their bodies merged to form a planet very different from the one I had known, and their power combined generated something so beautiful I wept to see: life.

  The planet now teemed with life, life that I witnessed evolve from mere sparks to plants to animals and, finally, to humans. I saw the gleam of intelligence in their eyes, and I watched them love, live, and lose, and I felt my own loneliness driven home to me. [So lonely… so lonely.]

  Soon enough, there was no place for me. Humans had spread across the globe, driving me from Territory to Territory. My size and power disrupted the planet, creating chaos.

  Tsunami, I was called. Earthquake. Volcano. Charybdis. Chaos. Kali. Ragnarok. Apocalypse.

  [Never meant to hurt. Just so alone…]

  Wherever I went, Earth was shattered, or tidal waves rose from the depths. The Air grew furious and even Fire raged. As a creature of that first, misbegotten generation, I had become something too powerful.

  I did not belong anywhere, anymore.

  And so I, too, laid myself down to rest. To sleep. And as oblivion drifted over me, I set my protections…

  Only to wake, gasping. A hand, holding mine, clutched my fingers tightly and I [Jane True! I remembered] turned to see the elated face of my father staring at me through eyes red with sleep deprivation. Tears streamed down his face and into his beard as he watched me as if afraid I’d disappear.

  “Jane?” he asked, as I wondered when the hell he’d had time to grow a beard.

  I tried to speak, but my voice wouldn’t work. Instead, much to my consternation, I made a noise that sounded a bit like the braying of a donkey.

  “Has our patient finally decided to join the land of the living?” came a cool voice from somewhere far below, just loud enough to hear. My father responded with an inarticulate shout of happiness. Nonplussed, my brain and my vision both a bit muzzy, I eventually managed to raise my head on a neck loose as a noodle. I looked around, blinking dazedly at a room lit only by the glow of a full moon shining through a skylight. Eventually, after my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I realized that I was in Anyan’s loft bedroom, and in Anyan’s bed.

  How does my dad know Anyan? I thought. Followed quickly by, Oh dear gods, Anyan, as I suddenly recalled my very last memory.

  But before I could say anything, I nearly fainted as an unglamoured goblin walked up the stairs to Anyan’s loft, setting a green-scaled, black-clawed hand on my father’s shoulder, his yolk-yellow eyes peering at me with an admittedly eggy combination of happiness and relief.

  I wasn’t surprised by the goblin—after all, they’re the healers of the supernatural world. What I was surprised by was the fact that instead of freaking out as the nearly seven-foot-tall unglamoured goblin stood behind him, my dad merely squeezed my hand again as he reached up his other hand to clutch, in a clear gesture of gratitude, at the goblin’s wickedly clawed mitt resting on his shoulder.

  “She’s awake. She’s finally awake,” my dad sobbed, as I let my alarmingly heavy head flop back onto my pillow. I also got a glimpse of Anyan’s naughty headboard and winced that my dad had seen it.

  It’s like the Wizard of Oz, only in reverse, I thought. Dorothy’s woken up to find that everything has gotten even weirder. Replete with dirty headboards.

  The goblin and my father beamed at me, and I wondered where to start.

  I think I missed quite a bit while I was out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My father held the water to my lips while I drank, cradling my head in his hands. The goblin had given me a quick physical, removed all my various tubes—which I was more than surprised to see—and then left to grant us some privacy. I definitely needed his scaly-green presence here (and my father’s acceptance of his presence) explained, but I had more pressing matters to which to attend. As soon as I could speak, I asked the question I’d been dreading.

  “Anyan?” I queried, my voice beseeching.

  “He’s fine,” my dad responded, smiling soothingly. “He’s been here as much as he could, but he’s also been busy with… other things.”

  Unbelievable relief spread through me, even as my forehead rumpled, knowing that “other things” could not be good. But before I could ask, my dad shook his head.

  “Don’t worry yourself, Jane. Not yet at least. You’re awake. That’s all that matters. I was so scared…”

  At that admonition, my father’s voice broke. So I nearly broke at the expression on his face, still so handsome, if a tad sad and careworn after all these years.

  “Daddy,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry…”

  At that, he laughed, if hoarsely. “Honey, please don’t apologize. I can hardly blame you for being attacked.”

  “Attacked…” I frowned. I was still under the influence of the dreams, and it seemed like everything else was very far away. Especially what had happened in Anyan’s driveway.

  I killed a man. I remembered, but without emotion. Then I also remembered that was inaccurate.

  I’d killed quite a few men.

  And yet I couldn’t muster any guilt about that fact. All I could think of was Anyan lying there, bleeding, and, weirdly enough, about the “doctors” Jarl had employed to staff his torture clinics.

  Like the men who attacked us in the glade, those men were “just doing a job,” too.

  They’d chosen to do evil for a paycheck, or because they enjoyed it, or both.

  Comeuppance is a bitch.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  My father frowned. “No one is sure. All we know is that you were attacked. And you saved yourself and you saved Anyan.”

  I couldn’t help but feel a prickle of pride at those words. Yes, I wished I’d never had to do what I did. But when the time was right, I’d womanned up and saved myself and Anyan.

  “Your friend with the tattoos”—and here my dad made a series of bizarre sounds that I chalked up as my brain having a bit of a postcoma lapse—“was able to bring Anyan right back with her healing skills. But you were another matter.”

  Blondie’s still here? I wondered. Do I have some questions for her. Like what the hell she was doing following us in the first place. And, speaking of questions, my dad just said “healing skills.”

  “Um, Dad?” I asked. “How much do you know?”

  His smile was small, but firm. “I now know that your mother was a selkie. That she was magic. And I know that you’re as much her daughter as mine. That you’ve got powers, too.”

  I blinked back tears at the resolve in his voice. The resolve and the forgiveness.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you, Dad. About Mom. About me.”

  “Pshaw,” he replied, shaking his head. “I always knew how very special your mother was, and how very special you are. You have both been my greatest gifts. Now I just have more accurate words to describe why you’re so special.”

  And with those words the tears wouldn’t be stopped, and he sat patiently while I cried.

  “Still, I should have told you…” I said, as soon as the worst of my weeping had ceased.

  “Yes, you should have. But I should
also have asked. I knew about your mother’s swimming, and about yours. I knew there was always something… different about both of you. But I couldn’t begin to fathom… I’ve never been superstitious, or religious, so I had no idea what the answer could have been. I think I was frightened,” he finally admitted.

  “Frightened?” I asked, my voice small.

  “Frightened that what made you different was what made your mother leave. And that if I asked too much, or called attention to too much, you would leave, too.”

  I rubbed my hand over my eyes, wiping away my tears. The thing was, my dad was actually right. My mom had left because she was different, and she would have taken me if she’d had the chance. I think she must have loved him, and me, in her own way. But her way of loving hadn’t been the human way. And now she was dead.

  “Dad, I have to tell you about Mom—”

  “Shh, honey. I know everything.”

  “You know? That she’s—”

  “That she’s gone. Yes.”

  I blinked at him. I couldn’t believe we were even having this conversation, and part of me wished that I’d been the one to tell my dad about my supernatural life. But I wasn’t sorry I’d missed out on telling him about my mother. I was still dealing with my own feelings, and was in no position to help him understand what had happened.

  “Oh, Daddy, I’m so sorry…” I managed to choke out, eventually.

  “Shh, baby girl,” he said, gathering me up in his arms for a fierce hug before he positioned me so he could look into my eyes as he talked.

  “I had a lot of time to think about everything while you were out. And I’m okay. Your mother left us a lifetime ago, and I should have let her go a long time back. Almost losing you helped me see that. I loved her, and she gave me you. But you’re what’s important, and my being there for you.”

  “You always were, Dad,” I said, hating the guilt I saw in his eyes.

  “No, I wasn’t. We should have left Rockabill after Jason died. You deserved a fresh start. And I didn’t give that to you.”