Blessed

by Michael, David

  “Don’t be so sure of yourself, minion. Just because we’re old, doesn’t mean we’re stupid.” The younger of the two spouted combatively.

  “Good. That makes me feel better about having to kill you both.”

  He let the darkness snake its way out of his body in what he knew had to be a terrifying display of something that most humans would never see in their lifetimes. Neither of the women batted an eye. He had hoped that it would put them on the defensive so that he could gauge what kind of power he’d be up against. Instead, both women stood stalk still in the middle of the road, hands clasped in front of them.

  “Well thanks for making it easy on me then!” He rushed forward and lashed at them both, a single shot aimed at each of their heads.

  A moment later, he was sailing backwards through the air with molten lava running through his veins. He let out a scream that shook the mountains in the distance before he landed on his back on the cold asphalt. He looked around through blurred eyes in an attempt to see what had hit him. Nothing green stood out in the darkness. At least not in any direction he could see from his back.

  He phased for a split second and was back on his feet with the speed of thought and turned once again to face the two old women. This time, the older one spoke, “You’d be wise to listen to her next time.”

  The green bubble that surrounded the women had come out of nowhere and the single tentacle in the younger woman’s hand seemed to extend from a chop stick shaped hair pin that she had pulled from the bun at the back of her head.

  “Ahh.” He let a menacing grin creep across his face. “Borrowed magic I see! My last encounter with your ancestors must have really taken a toll on the gene pool!”

  Again, neither woman reacted to his jibes. They both stood in the relative safety of their shield with that accursed whip at the ready. His blood was cooling now from the last blow and he touched his fingers to his side where the blow had landed. Still warm, but quickly healing. If he was going to take on the last Druid with a direct connection to the natural power that the women before him had borrowing, he was going to need to leave them alone for the time being. He couldn’t afford to expend the energy on them. Even if their trinkets were only filled with the second-hand power of their ancestors.

  “Well ladies, I’d love to continue our little dance but, you see, my boss gets really upset when things don’t go according to plan. And I’m sorry to say, but neither of you are part of the plan. I bid you adieu. Perhaps we can continue this another time.” He bowed to both of them and phased out for several seconds, pushing himself north as fast as he could in case they had any other tricks up their sleeves.

  He phased back to his physical form and dropped onto his motorcycle simultaneously. He couldn’t afford to travel all the way to Salt Lake in his natural form. Sadly.

  So he rode on. The sky to the east lightening rapidly and it was the dawn of the day that would mark the end of his servitude.

  He’s close, Ardra.

  “I know. I can feel him now, too.”

  She took a deep breath to steady herself and fight down the rising panic that was swelling up in her chest. She let spiked balls that she had been flinging around the room evaporate into the air and return to their natural state.

  “So what do we do now? Sit here and wait for him to show up?”

  No. There’s a place nearby that will add to your power and provide a lot more protection. We should head there. That’s probably where he’ll go searching for you anyway.

  “You’re the boss.” She said to the dog. She took a few more deep breaths to calm herself as best she could and headed up to the kitchen to grab her keys and jacket off of the counter.

  She let Kaiser into the front seat before taking her place behind the wheel and asking. “Where am I heading, captain?”

  You’re gonna love this part! He thought with a thump of his tail. He paused for dramatic effect and held her gaze until she raised an eyebrow in response. Temple Square.

  She laughed out loud and shrugged her shoulders as she put the car in reverse. “Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  As he dropped into the valley, the first thing he noticed was the bright green glow at the northeast end. That was where he needed to be for sure.

  Using the temple as a beacon and slowing his pace to account for the traffic, he continued north on Interstate 15, his blood beginning to hum at the promise of the battle to come.

  He settled into the flow of traffic, letting his mind drop the practice drills that he had been running through for the last couple of hours. It was his blood’s turn to lead the way and its battle cry was hard to ignore.

  Ardra parked her car along the curb and went around to the passenger side to pump the parking meter full of change.

  Kaiser, who had climbed out of the driver’s side, followed close on her heels.

  No time! No time! Kaiser urged as he ran past her, heading for the entrance to the temple grounds.

  Ardra was still in awe of the Astral side of the temple she had never seen before all of this started. Now that Chaos was so close, the gigantic green bubble that now surrounded the temple had familiar green tentacles waving and snapping maliciously in the air. The other passersby seemed not to notice. She felt the power inside of her surge at the recognition of the threat. She picked up her pace to catch up to the dog that was now approaching the reflection pool just outside the gates.

  As she approached, the tentacles seemed to calm and the gates swung open before her. She wondered to herself where the security guys were as she walked between the massive walls. Normally, if someone so much as sneezed too close to those gates, they were swarmed by men in black and escorted off of the property unless they promptly supplied a temple recommend. The grounds immediately surrounding the temple were very closely protected. There was a more public area to the west of the building that had a visitor center and the Tabernacle.

  There wasn’t a single black suit in sight. Or any other kind of suit for that matter. The grounds were more desolate than she had ever seen them.

  As soon as she crossed the threshold, every hair on her body stood straight up and she spun on her heels to face the direction that she had just come from. The man she had been looking for in the black suit had suddenly appeared on the east side of the reflection pool leaning against the wall of the Joseph Smith Memorial building.

  The massive green limbs branching off of that side of the bubble were snapping and sparking and straining to reach him and all at once the pieces fell into place.

  At last, the thing that had left a trail of destruction across the country in his search for her was standing a few hundred feet away looking like he had just stepped out of a department store catalogue. If it weren’t for the black tendrils that had begun snaking out from all over his body and the reaction of the bubble around the temple, she would never have guessed who he was.

  Kaiser was standing barely inside of the shield barking and snarling in his direction. She was almost afraid of the dog herself. She didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that hostility, that’s for sure.

  She braced herself as best she could for what was to come and released the energy that was thrashing around inside of her. Green spikes shot out of her body and the dense shell that she had practiced formed at the base of them—effectively turning her into a walking sea urchin. She drew in the energy from the supercharged air around her and created a tornado of the tiny, razor sharp crystals she had perfected around herself. Then came the spiked projectiles that she had thought up with the help of Kaiser.

  She was now armed to the teeth and shielded about as much as one could possibly be from any kind of onslaught, and still, the few passersby that happened to wander by paid her no mind. It was as if she wasn’t even there.

  She prayed this would be over soon.

  It was obvious that he wasn’t going to step foot within reach of the temple’s shield, so she was going to have to go outside of it. She reached out and placed her
hand within the green energy that created the protective coating around the grounds. The familiar warmth filled her and the defenses that she had put in place glowed brighter with the influx. Her confidence level shot a little higher and she found that she was almost excited for what was about to go down.

  She took a step forward and saw him smile. Kaiser let out a warning bark and danced in place next to her.

  Chaos stood up from his position against the building across the plaza and motioned for her to join him.

  “He must have somewhere to be.” She said to Kaiser. “Let’s make him wait.”

  He let out a bark of approval and sat down on his haunches. She dropped her hand to her side and ran it over the soft fur on top of his head. The picture in her mind of herself at that moment made her smile; A girl and her dog, surrounded by a swirling green tornado of razor sharp particles, her body covered in a dark green shell and two fist sized sea mines floating over her shoulder a few inches behind her head.

  A sound that was very much like the shriek of metal being mutilated suddenly filled the air. She instinctively threw her hands up to cover her ears as she spun around in a circle to see what could have possibly made such a wretched sound. She caught a glimpse of Chaos’ face before she turned away and even he appeared to be intrigued. Kaiser let out a howl and lie down on the ground looking miserable.

  The tornado that was swirling around her didn’t hold a candle to the one that had just appeared behind her. Large enough to encompass most of the courtyard, it swirled around maliciously causing her to will one of the sea mines into her hand so that she could throw it if needed. At that moment, the air suddenly grew still and the smoke that had comprised the vortex began to dissipate. There was no way that she could have prepared herself for what she saw after it cleared.

  Her brain struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. Her best friend, her grandmothers and her bishop were all standing behind her, each with their own little green surprise: Her best friend had a spinning top in her palm, her mom’s mother was projecting a shield from the broach she had worn for as long as Ardra could remember, her dad’s mom had a whip hanging from her hair pin and Bishop Stauffer had a wolf sitting at his side.

  All of them had a soft green glow surrounding them and all of them were poised and ready for battle.

  She stood there dumb struck as the group of people she was closest to approached her with big smiles on their faces.

  “No time to explain.” Piper said. “Let’s take care of this problem once and for all.”

  Kaiser finished sniffing around the new animal and looked up at her with a confused look on his face and thought That just isn’t right.

  Her grandma Smith had extended the shield to cover the six of them and they stood looking through both shields at Chaos. A few moments later, they all stepped through the outer shield together. The lazy smoke that had been drifting around Chaos now took a more definite form, going from benign to menacing in the blink of an eye. A flicker of doubt flashed through her mind and she sent up a prayer.

  They took their stand on the west side of the reflection pool and he took his on the east side. They were now only about thirty feet apart and time seemed to stop for a few tense moments as they stared each other down.

  Those moments didn’t last long.

  In a flash, time went from standing still to moving in fast forward. Thousands of tendrils exploded from Chaos, completely destroying anything that they came in contact with. A swath was cut out of the reflection pool, draining any water that didn’t get vaporized onto the plaza. The five of them and both dogs scattered in all directions to avoid the lethal black whips and flying chunks of plaza and reflection pool.

  Ardra’s brain finally kicked in and she lashed back at him with flashing green tentacles of her own. She was hurling her grenades in his direction as fast as she could create them. His tentacles were like a shield in and of themselves, whipping her spiked little balls out of the air before they even reached him. Where black and green collided, electricity cackled and the sound that Piper’s whirlwind had made filled the air.

  She spared a glance around the plaza to make sure the others had gotten out of the way of his initial attack. Her grandmothers were standing side by side within the protective bubble, the whip in grandma Cooper’s hand was flashing back and forth like green lightning and Bishop Stauffer was standing a little further off, barking commands at the wolf that was dodging the dark assault as it pushed forward with deadly accuracy. Kaiser was doing his best to avoid the tentacles that occasionally lashed out in his direction.

  A knot of panic rose in her throat when she didn’t see Piper. Having seen what that energy could do to stone, she could only guess at what it would do to a person. She caught a flash of green light from behind Chaos and Piper appeared out of nowhere, still holding the spinning green top. She popped back out of existence right as Chaos thrust a spike outward in her direction. As fast as the spike had shot out from him, he pulled it back into him and used the energy to reinforce the black skin that surrounded his body.

  Piper popped back into view within the green shield near her grandmothers and Ardra focused her attention back on the matter at hand: Figuring out how to take this incarnation of evil down.

  She noticed that every time the bishop’s wolf got a hold of one of the tentacles, the energy that was separated from the main body was dispersed into the air, wasted. Smashing the grenades that she had been tossing at him into razor thin disks, she began aiming at the ends of the larger tentacles. He managed to smash most of them on their flat surfaces and destroy them, but a couple of them found their marks and, as she had hoped, the energy separated from him drifted away like a puff of smoke.

  A short scream tore her attention away from the maze of black smoke that was pushing forward with brutal force. She turned just in time to watch her bishop disintegrate into a cloud of ash. Her blood boiled and she let out a cry of her own, attacking with a brutality she didn’t know she had.

  As the ring the bishop had been wearing hit the ground, the wolf that he had been commanding flickered and evaporated into a cloud of green mist. A long, sad howl hung on the air among the sparks and shrieks for a moment before being carried away on the wind.

  Electricity filled the air around them, mingling with the clouds of green and black smoke left behind by each successful assault. Ardra was completely focused on the battle and spun left and right to avoid the limbs that were thrashing in her direction.

  A sharp pain exploded in the left side of her rib cage. As the air whooshed out of her, she struggled to get her feet back on the ground. She braced for the impact and positioned herself as best she could to absorb the shock. She hit the ground and rolled several times, jumping back to her feet and continuing her assault.

  Piper was still flashing around the courtyard providing a distraction and her grandparents were being slowly pushed back towards the gates of the temple, still tucked away safely inside the shield. Kaiser had taken up where Stauffer’s wolf had left off and was dodging and biting at anything that Chaos sent his direction.

  She took a moment to say another prayer for those of her loved ones that were left fighting at her side. These people, and the dog, were all she had left in the world. She refused to let another one of them be taken away from her.

  Another tentacle, this one much smaller than the last one, lashed across the right side of her face. She felt a trickle of blood run down her cheek and drip off of her jaw. She ignored it as best she could and pushed on. She was beginning to think that they may have bitten off more than they could chew.

  Another scream tore through the courtyard. Ardra’s heart stopped as she saw Piper, just behind Chaos, turn to ash. The bauble that she had been using to flash from place to place hit the ground and seemed to explode. A huge green tornado caught them all off guard and slammed them into the ground. Including Chaos, who had been all but standing on top of it when it blew.

  Ardra felt something snap inside
of her at that moment. Chaos’ head whipped up and his eyes shot straight through her as he displayed a dark, cruel grin across his perfectly formed teeth.

  She looked down at herself and saw that, mixed in with the green energy that she had been using thus far to fight him, was the same dark energy that she had been fighting against. It struck her then that the box that she had spent the last several months trying to keep closed no longer seemed to exist. There was nothing inside of her to put this ugliness back into.

  As she stood there in a panic, Chaos stood and was now approaching her with a sickening grin on his face. Right before he reached her, he stopped and cocked his head to the side.

  “This is better than anything I could have imagined.” He stepped back and watched her struggle with the new development.

  The battle had stopped for the time being. Her grandparents were recovering from the blow that Piper’s tornado had dealt them and both Ardra and Chaos had been thrown off enough that there were nothing more than lazy, unfocused tendrils snaking out from each of them.

  Her mind was racing and grappling with what was going on. Grasping at ideas that were as substantial as the whisps of smoke that seemed to be frozen in the air around the courtyard. Glinting like sun moats on a calm summer day. She wondered what right they had to be so calm at a time like this.

  Chaos must have gotten bored with the lack of action, because the next thing she knew, she was living a nightmare. A black tendril had shot from his hand and snaked its way into her mouth. She felt the familiar lack of control as the green faded from around her and darkness replaced it. Everything that came in contact with her new aura turned to ash. Black was completely filling her field of vision and she was powerless to stop it.