by Inelia Benz
“It’s called equal rights,” said Owen, who wasn’t about to start teaching his rival about humans.
The arrival at Dublin airport was a carbon copy of what had happened in Rio de Janeiro and London, except this time they were actually offered a police convoy to take Rossini wherever it was he was going. It took a lot of effort on Owen’s part and one word from Rossini’s to let them go by themselves in a hired car.
Owen felt overwhelmed, Rossini didn’t make any effort to stop the adoration of all those mortals. He wondered how Jennifer would react. What if she was also taken in by him? What would he do then? Maybe that was Rossini’s plan, destroy his heart.
Well, at least that would release him from his pain. If Jennifer fell in love with the Great Rossini there would be no heart left in his chest to be hurt.
Aeoife was busy in the kitchen preparing a luscious dinner for their arrival. She greeted Owen then turned to the older man, offering her hand and turning scarlet.
Owen was seething, how could Aeoife fall for someone like Rossini? He looked down and grated his teeth, then felt something very strange, Rossini was silent.
He looked at his senior in the Council and saw that he too was looking at the floor gritting his teeth. Must be the shock of meeting a witch, thought Owen.
“It is a great honor for me to meet Owen’s Mother,” said Rossini, still holding on to Aeoife’s hand.
“Call me Aeoife, any friend of my Owen is a friend of mine,” she said letting out a little giggle.
Owen thought he had already lived his most embarrassing moment, but it had been nothing compared to this.
The Great Rossini’s eyes shifted, digging into Owen’s own. Owen grabbed his mother by the arm and led her into the house, only this seemed to infuriate Rossini even more.
“Children,” said Aeoife, brushing Owen away and taking Rossini’s arm instead.
Owen was dumbfounded. He watched them go into the living room and closing the door behind them, leaving him on his own in the hall with the front door open and the luggage still in the car. Rossini traveled heavy. Not that they had plans of staying at Aeoife’s house, not Rossini anyway, he had a room booked at the Sea View Hotel.
He felt a soft tap on his shoulder, turned and saw Jennifer smiling up at him, her red hair all over the place, her eyes sparkly and her breasts bursting out of a T-shirt.
She looked down at them, “oh, these, well, you see, I am breastfeeding, not all the time, I am sort of share feeding, alternating between bottles and breastfeeding, only I haven’t been with Heather for three feeds now and they’re bursting, that’s why they look so big.”
Owen looked up at her face more embarrassed then he had been a few minutes earlier, the way Jennifer spoke about the natural function of her breasts unnerved him. Now he didn’t know if to deny his attraction or admit it, but he hadn’t been very subtle about it, that was for sure.
“I would give you a hug, but they would probably start running and ruin your nice suit with milk,” she added pointing at them with both her index fingers and pulling a face.
Owen reached over and hugged Jennifer tightly, she knew he loved her, so it was alright, he knew she didn’t love him, but she cared enough not to push him away.
“See, told you,” she said, looking at his jacket, her own T-shirt had two wet marks, which were getting bigger by the second.
There were more giggles from the living room, Owen looked at Jennifer speechless.
“I think we better leave them, there is something I have to show you anyway,” she said leading him out of the house.
They made their way back to Jennifer’s house. Owen felt it as soon as they went in, there was a protective shell somewhere in the house.
“It’s in the kitchen, Aeoife showed me how to do it. I never realized it would make itself invisible though,”
“That’s because it breaks the laws of our dimension, but what’s in it?”
“The couple Sean mentioned,” she said, spitting Sean’s name out like it was poison, “problem is I don’t know what to do with them now, can’t leave them there forever, they would starve to death, and I can’t have one of those bubble things in my mother’s kitchen, what if someone walked into it?”
“They would get… injured,” Owen said, knowing he was stating the obvious.
“They didn’t get a chance to communicate with other Shadow ones, but it is only a matter of time before they come looking for these two.”
“We could always kill them,” said Owen accusingly.
Jennifer looked away sharply, “I didn’t know I was actually trying to kill you, I thought it was my imagination, I thought it was just a fantasy, I would never try to kill someone. Never.”
“Never? What if someone tried to hurt Heather?”
“That doesn’t count,” she stated, “I would mush them into a million little pieces,” she added.
“Well then.”
“But they don’t want to hurt Heather, on the contrary, they want to take care of her, look after her, protect her.”
“Turn her into a monster, teach her the Path of Shadow.”
“Yes, that as well.”
Jennifer looked down at her chest, “I’ll just pop up to change my clothes, be back in a few minutes,” she said.
Owen looked around the small house, he knew it well. Not that he had been Borrowing into her mind all the time, he would never do that, but he had hang around the place a lot, watching things develop.
Jennifer came down a while later wearing a small dress and her hair tied back into a plait. Her delicate feet wearing sandals to match the color of her hair.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“Owen, I know that you love me, I love you too, but not in that way. I don’t think I will be able to love another man for a long time, if ever.”
Owen knew this was as close to a declaration of mutual love he would get, he was comfortable with it. Time, if they manage to buy it, would allow Jennifer to grow to love him, he knew that too.
She led him to the kitchen and pointed at a disjointed spot near the back door.
“I say we kill them.”
“No! That would make us as bad as them, can’t you see that?”
Killing another mage was a way of the Shadow, it wasn’t killing in the strictest sense of the word, it was more a diminishing of their earthly presence to make them take centuries to get back into shape, at any which point they could send them back to near non existence, making their journey back an impossible one. Killing them outright would make them be reborn, impossible to locate and even more dangerous than they had been in the first place.
“We could take away their power,” he said, remembering the Council had the knowledge of taking mage power away.
“Turn them into mortals? But that would still let them go to their friends and tell them what they know, and what if their friends gave them their power back to them?”
Yes, it was a possibility, if power could be taken off someone it was conceivable that power could be restored.
“There is only one way to make them lose interest, and I don’t know if it applies in this case, seeing as what they are after is your daughter and not you particularly.”
“What is that?”
“Facing them. You have to battle against them yourself, choose the Way of Light without outside help. But I don’t think you are ready, you have only been mage a few months, they, on the other hand, have thousands of years of experience.”
“Did you face them?”
“All mage do.”
“How old were you?”
“Just over three hundred, I have to admit that they nearly had me for a while, it was a close contest.”
“Aeoife told me she overindulged you, you were a very spoilt child. That was probably the reason.”
“She said that?” he asked, surprised that Aeoife would go around telling stories about him. He wondered what Rossini and Aeoife were up to now, feeling a knot in his stomach
at the thought.
“Anyway,” he added, “like I said, I don’t think that applies in this case, because their ultimate aim is to control Heather’s upbringing, so logically Heather is the only one who can permanently get rid of them, and she won’t be able to do that until she is an adult and experienced herself.”
And there are no guarantees she will choose the Light, he thought.
“Aeoife told me the man you arrived with has a time machine in his possession, we could borrow it, go into the future, get Heather as an adult, bring her here to battle with the Shadow ones and be done with it,” said Jennifer in a totally matter of fact way.
So, Aeoife had been telling her about the Staff, he thought, “I think you’ve been watching too much television,” he replied.
“I have two people stuck in a nowhere place bubble in my kitchen, you have been poking around in my brain for God only knows how many months, my ex-boyfriend is stuck in another world or dimension, where some elves or aliens or something have brainwashed him into becoming a bee sort of being, I am talking to a seventeen hundred year old man with magic powers, I have magic powers myself and a child who devil like people are trying to kidnap and who say she is some sort of devil spawn and you are telling me I watch too much TV?”
“Well, if you put it that way…”
“And you think traveling into the future to get my child as a grown up is a fantasy? When there is a machine that can take us there?”
“Yes, now that you mention it…”
“This is unreal! All of this is absolutely unreal!”
“Well, no. Not really, it’s the semantics that makes it unreal. But if you think about it logically you will see that it makes perfect sense. Our powers are not extraordinary, they are just a matter of shifting atoms, something they do all the time anyway, we just tell them where to go and what to do. Thinking that there is only Earth with life on it in the entire universe is completely illogical if you think about it. And I am as mortal as any human, it’s just that by my capacity to move atoms and molecules I can hold on to my integrity as a being, which stops my body disintegrating or decaying even, unless I tell it to.”
“But we can’t travel into the future?”
“Well, no. You see the future is not decided yet, there could be countless of possible results, what if we landed in one where Heather was brought up by the Shadow Ones?”
“That’s impossible, because in her past she would have gotten rid of them.”
“In some of her pasts, not necessarily our one. She is free to choose the Way of the Shadow.”
“But my girl won’t do that.”
“She’s not your girl. She is a very powerful mage who decided to be reborn in a body which was more Old One than human, so that it could have the power to use the Staff. Which brings me to another point, even if we had the Staff in our possession, something that will be very difficult to do as Rossini won’t lend it to us, we couldn’t make it work. We are not powerful enough.”
“We would be if we took Heather with us.”
Owen’s stomach turned, a mortal mother would never put her baby in danger, no mother would. He looked into Jennifer’s eyes, was it really her? Or had a shadow being taken her place? They were powerful beings, they had nearly fooled him in the past. He looked toward the shell and wondered who was really in there.
“Where is Heather?” he asked, his heart in his throat.
“You know where she is. Why are you asking me?” asked Jennifer, if it was Jennifer, moving away from him.
“Okay,” he said, “I also know her mother would never put her in a dangerous situation, so who am I talking to?”
“Yes, you are right,” Jennifer said, slumping down on one of the kitchen chairs, “they came after Aeoife had left. She told me of their nature, what they would try to do, she said you should have trained me, told me how to fight them. I did my best. I don’t even know if I won or lost. They are in there, both of them. I was sitting here wondering what I should do next, until I felt you arrive. But I guess you are right, bringing my baby into this is something they would want me to do. I guess they’ve won after all. I cannot be trusted.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Owen said taking her hand, “according to Aeoife being paranoid is one of my best traits, we make a great team together.”
She looked toward the back door, the shift was hardly noticeable, and anyone could walk into it. Owen nodded.
She closed her eyes and the shell began to open, revealing two angry mages who looked more like a couple of housewives than the powerful dark beings they really were.
One blond the other brunette, perfectly dressed, they reminded Jennifer of her friend’s mothers, they always looked that way, no matter the friend, their mother always looked like one or the other of these women. She imagined them making cookies and apple pie, Heather would have a wonderful upbringing with them, they were older too, much more experienced with children than she was. To think that she had given up her youth to take care of an infant when she had everything to live for, she could go back to school, go to university, become a doctor, be free to go out with her friends.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” said the brunette.
“I brought biscuits, chocolate chip,” said the other, sliding toward the table.
“Best way to chat things through is with a nice cup of tea,” said the first setting the mugs and plates on the table.
“Milk and honey I believe?” she said to Owen, who stared at them open mouthed.
“Yes,” he babbled, the women were carbon copies of Aeoife, the type of women who were always there when you had a problem, always had dinner ready at the end of a day of climbing trees and swimming in the lake. Hot cocoa and apple pie.
Heather would have a wonderful life with them.
He felt Jennifer’s hand squeezing his. He looked down as she spelled something on the table, LIES, yes, he thought, concentrate on lies. It’s all lies, he thought, they are untruth incarnate. He watched helpless as Jennifer put the tea to her lips. He slowly reached up and moved the tea away, a tear rolled out of Jennifer’s eye.
He felt the energy surge from his solar plexus, it was hot, it was gold and it traveled up his chest reached his throat, opened his mouth and spoke.
“NO.”
The order reached the walls and bounced back, it crawled through his bones, through the floor, Jennifer stood up, her hand lifted, her index pointing directly at the closest woman, he saw the gold energy shake and get sucked into Jennifer’s body, concentrating, ready to come back out of her finger much more powerful than before.
The women screamed, they joined hands and pointed back at Jennifer, Owen realized what would happen and threw himself on top of her, blocking their way.
There was a thunderous roar and blackness.
Shit, Owen thought, too late.
Chapter 13
Jennifer couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything, she imagined she had eyes and opened them. Nothing happened.
Her body began to hurt. Every cell in her body was hurting now.
It was cold.
She moved her hand, stones, sand.
She felt sad, terribly unhappy. She lay there for an eternity, and then sat up for no particular reason. There was no reason to get up. She was blind.
The air smelt fetid, it was thick.
Carbon monoxide, thought Jennifer, no matter how much she tried to breathe in there was not enough oxygen to clear her lungs. She lay back down.
“Jennifer?”
“Owen?”
“Jennifer!” His voice came from the right, but there was no way she could locate him now that she was blind.
“Owen! I’m here! I can’t find you, I’m blind.”
“So am I. Well, actually, we are not blind, it’s this place, there is no light here.”
A place with no light? Thought Jennifer, it must an enclosure of some kind. A large sort of cell, which would explain the lack of oxygen.
; “Keep talking,” said Owen, “so I can reach you.”
She told him about the carbon monoxide theory, about the pain, about the stones and the sand, spoke until she felt something cold feeling her foot. She screamed.
“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
“I feel I’ve been here before, there is something about it. It feels familiar,” Jennifer said. Something was stirring inside her.
“Try to think, concentrate.”
“I can’t, there’s no point. One thing’s for sure, there is no way out. We’ll be here forever.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Owen replied, “if that was the case you couldn’t have been here before. You would still be here from the first time.”
He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders, then reached over and hugged her tightly
“It will keep us warmer,” he said.
There was no breeze, no movement of any kind, everything was still. They waited. Hours went by, still they waited.
A red tint began to filter into their vision. They were able to make out each other's outlines. Slowly the red tint became brighter.
A large red sun appeared in a distant horizon.
“Oh my god, this is some sort of desert, it’s not an enclosure. Where’s all the air gone?” Jennifer asked.
The sun became larger by the second.
“I think we should find shelter,” said Owen.
“That’s not our sun,” said Jennifer slowly following Owen off the ground, “we are not on earth!”
“That’s impossible, of course we are on earth, there has to be a logical explanation to all this. Come on, try to walk, we might be able to reach those hills before the sun gets hotter.”
“Don’t you feel much heavier? The gravitational pull here is much bigger. No wonder I didn’t want to get up.”
“There is no way any magic could send us to another planet.”
“The only other explanation then is that we’ve died and gone to hell.”
“That’s also impossible.”