Someone hadn’t loved me enough to take care of me, and that had to mean that for some reason I wasn’t good enough.
I had received help, seen psychologists, and as the years went by, studied my own self-help books in order to squash this feeling. Rationally, I knew it didn’t matter. But it never hit me at moments of rational thought. Only when I wasn’t looking. When surprised, afraid, overwhelmed, stressed, or caught off guard. That’s when it sucker-punched me.
Like my very own monster under my bed… in the dark bedroom of my mind.
I felt a small tear on my cheek and wiped it away. Not a tear of sadness, but… one of joy, remembering how much they had loved me, all the things we had done, trips we had taken. Biological or not, they were my true parents. My mother had died of cancer in my late teens, but if there was a Heaven, I knew she was smiling down on me now. I wanted to make her proud.
And with a slight stumble, I realized that I felt relieved. Focusing on their love had helped me. The nightmare still lurked, but it was almost as if remembering their love had locked the door on it. I could still hear it, scrabbling against the door, but it couldn’t reach me as easily.
I smiled.
And heard a crash from the alley behind me. I whirled instinctively, hand rushing to my chest. The church loomed up behind me, fifty yards away.
But that fifty yards may as well have been a mile as the monster smiled at me. A Demon.
She was cloaked in yellowish fog, and tucked against the wall as if wanting to stay hidden from prying eyes if possible. I slowly began to back up, thinking furiously. She smiled, or seemed to smile, the smoke shifting and eddying around her as she glided closer, matching me.
“Stand still or I will kill you here, in sight of your church,” she hissed in a low tone.
I stopped, hoping and fearing that someone from the church or the adjacent buildings would see the monster. The scent of rotten eggs slowly drifted my way, a gentle breeze having prevented me from sensing it before she startled me. “What do you want?” I managed.
She studied me, form rippling. Her breasts were much more prominent now, and her hips were visible, wide child bearing hips. “Cease your meddling, child. Or you shall meet your Maker.”
I ignored the sudden wave of goose-flesh over my arms, and took a cautious step back. “I am not meddling. You have your piece of the spear. I have none,” I said, continuing to walk backwards. She was growing angry, her fingers slowly extending in white-hot claws
But I stayed to the center of the alley leading up to the back of the church. She would have to step out into the open, and I was ready to scream for all I was worth, or cast a big boom of magic that would draw people running from blocks away if I had to.
“Stay still, child. You’re in over your head. I have no quarrel with you, yet. But that can always change. Stop moving!”
I didn’t.
Instead, I turned and ran as fast as I could. She let out a roar behind me, and I darted to the right as a lance of flame flew past me, crashing into an invisible wall in midair, splashing over an unseen shield of some sort. I didn’t have time to question that as I pumped my legs faster, racing past the space where the fire had hit. I crossed the property line, darting back and forth, staring at the door to the church. Surely, a Demon couldn’t—
The sounds behind me had stopped, and the stench was gone. I risked a glance over my shoulder to see I was all alone. My eyes darted back and forth as I backed away, eager to get inside. Then it hit me. I had crossed the property line of the church. That’s where the fire had hit. The air directly above the property line of the church, almost as if an invisible dome rose up from that blessed line on the ground. I had thought the church itself would be safe, but hadn’t considered the property around the church. But it made sense. It had acted as a wall against her, even though I wasn’t religious. It had still protected me. I felt my ass bump into a wall and almost jumped out of my skin before realizing it was the door to the church. With one last look, I slipped inside, panting as I sank to the floor.
I definitely needed help. And I needed to warn Father David about this.
Chapter 20
I ran into Sister Agatha almost immediately. She looked scared to death. She must have heard the sounds outside.
“Oh, dear child. We tried to call you. I was preparing to leave to visit my family out of town, but I’m so glad the Lord brought us together first.”
I blinked at the onslaught. “What?”
“Father David was attacked last night. He’s in the hospital. Didn’t you check your messages?”
I shook my head, feeling numb. I had thought the missed unknown call had been another telemarketer. “Is he okay?” I asked, mind racing. “Take me to him. Please.” Roland couldn’t visit him. I was all he had. I needed to know what happened.
“Of course, child. I’ll take you myself.”
Thankfully, she had parked out front. She took my fear of the Demon as merely a result of the shock of hearing that Father David was hurt. I didn’t dissuade her, and didn’t see any Demons waiting for me. We reached St. Luke’s Hospital in less than five minutes since it was practically across the street, and were standing outside his room only minutes after parking. The waiting room had held several familiar faces, all from the church. They nodded sadly at me as I raced past them.
The nurse assessed me, glanced at the Sister beside me, and seemed to deem me trustworthy. “He was severely beaten early this morning. Luckily, the janitor found him in his office. He was awake, but delirious. He’s sleeping now, but I think he will make a swift recovery. He did sustain some serious damage to his ribs.” I nodded, lips tight as she opened the door. “Do not wake him.”
“Has… has he said anything?”
She studied me, deciding if I needed to know that information. The Sister’s presence sold her, because she answered as I stared at his motionless form. “He kept repeating help her, and I’m so sorry, Father.” She glanced at him, shaking her head. “Like I said, head trauma can bring about the most bizarre statements. I once heard a man — fully awake — telling me it was of vital importance that he speak to President Hoover. This was last year,” she shook her head sadly. “Don’t worry child. We’ll look after him. He needs rest to heal.”
Sister Agatha was sobbing beside me, clutching her rosary as she prayed under her breath.
“Thank you.”
“As long as you can be as considerate as the other guest he had, I’ll let you go in to see him.”
I was suddenly standing directly in front of her, holding her upper arm. “He had another guest?”
The startled look on her face slowly morphed to an understanding, but still displeased look at me gripping her arm. “Yes. Shortly after he arrived. A young man. He was here long enough to pray beside him, and then left. I watched him the entire time. You aren’t the only one to love this man,” she added softly.
I nodded, releasing her. “I’m sorry. This is just… unbelievable,” I whispered. Had it been Nate? Surely the Demon hadn’t come by. She had said a young man, but there weren’t any young men that worked for the church. A relative?
I realized the nurse had left, so I slowly approached Father David, wondering what the hell I was going to tell Roland, and how it was related to my troubles. Could it be a simple theft? I asked Sister Agatha this, feeling her standing behind me, still murmuring her prayers.
“The office was in shambles, and although the donation box was left untouched, several of the golden crosses Father David adored were missing from his desk. The police will find out for sure.”
I nodded, taking one last look at Father David. His face was scratched and bruised, and he had a bandage wrapped around his temples. “Can you have the police watch over him?”
“I will ask.”
“Thank you. Can you take me back, please?”
“Yes, my dear,” she said, placing an arm around my shoulders and guiding me away. I would call Roland on the way home. He had to
know about this. Immediately.
Theft? Or the Demon?
I had no idea, but I did have suspicions…
Chapter 21
Roland hadn’t answered the phone. Claire had answered hers on the first ring, whispering angrily as she told me that whatever I needed to tell him could wait. He hadn’t been sleeping enough in her opinion, and whatever I would tell him would likely keep him up for hours. I knew she was right, so hadn’t badgered her about it. But I did make her promise to call me the moment he woke up. Having nothing else to do, I had decided to go train while I waited for him to wake.
I took slow, deep breaths, eyeing the empty stone room before me. Sweat dripped down my brow, and my hair was slick at the base of my neck, sweating under the weight of my thick ponytail. I had been training with weapons in the adjacent room for the past twenty-five minutes, losing myself in the forms that were ingrained into my memory after so many years. Anything to avoid thoughts of Father David.
I took another, deeper, breath, clearing my head, blocking out all sensory evidence but the cool, rough stone beneath my feet.
I fed my thoughts into a single image. That of a feather. A single white feather floating before a black velvet background. As thoughts, fears, and emotions buffeted me, I fed them into the feather, growing it finer, more detailed. The feather ruffled slightly with each onslaught until it finally calmed, slowly rotating in my mind.
All was calm.
I was calm.
My muscles tingled with anticipation, finely attuned to my surroundings, one with them, but separate from them. I watched my body as if a spirit looking down on it.
A light, pleasant, familiar chime pierced the silence.
Before the sound had time to cease, I moved.
I sprinted for all I was worth as the empty room began to abruptly change. A pillar of stone erupted from the floor, but I was already jumping for it, and as my foot touched the rising stone, I rode the momentum up a dozen feet into the air before flipping forward without looking ahead, sensing my surroundings with an inner sight I couldn’t describe. Habit. Muscle memory.
My feet landed lightly on a second pillar just as it finished rising up from beyond the first pillar. I paused, cocking my head slightly, and then dove forward at a minute signal. A stone slammed down from the ceiling, hammering into the pillar I had just vacated as I drifted through the air like a puff of dandelion.
At least that was what I felt, weightless for a breath or two before I flung out my hands at a faint noise, latching onto a wooden horizontal pole that suddenly dropped down from above me. My momentum carried me forward, swinging one time before I let go to once again sail through the air. I caught the next beam just as it dropped from the ceiling, swinging entirely up and around until my body momentarily displayed a handstand on top of the second beam. Then I calmly folded in on myself in one practiced, controlled motion, leaving me crouching on the second beam where I had just been swinging. Any mistake in timing or instinct and I would fall.
I waited. For seconds or minutes, I wasn’t consciously aware, trained only to focus on my immediate senses, not time — the crashing stones behind and below me as they pounded into each other, ready to crush me if I had made a mistake. A faint steady grinding of gears controlled the arena, and I was aware of each minute sound — as familiar to me as a mother’s laughter would be to a child.
That thought threatened to derail my focus. You never heard your true mother’s laughter…
I squashed the thought with my newfound control — not perfect control, but enough.
Long familiar questions whispered in my ears despite my defenses. Why had I been abandoned? What kind of parents could do such a thing? Was something wrong with me? Was I not good enough for them? I forced it back down easier this time, but it was distracting.
Ridiculous or not, that last question always hit me at the worst possible moments, and it was why I doubted myself. Why I didn’t want to be a Shepherd. Well, one of the reasons, anyway. It was why I trained. To become good enough. Even though deep down I knew that question would return, and I would mess things—
I almost missed my cue, but at the last moment, I recognized the warning sound and moved, lunging back out into open air right as a trio of spears erupted into the space I had just been crouching, the wooden bar having dropped away a heartbeat after I leapt. I was back in the void, blocking out all fear. I could do this easier when I was only training. It was those other times when my focus failed.
When it mattered.
My fingers latched onto crevices carved into a third pillar, easily twenty yards from where I had begun this race. My body struck the rock, the pain acknowledged as if it had been someone else’s body. But I didn’t wait. I instantly began scrabbling laterally and down, avoiding stone projectiles that abruptly pelted the stone I was climbing down, following me in hot pursuit as I clambered down the pillar. My feet touched the ground and I rolled backwards on instinct as I felt the ground vibrate, feeling my now-calm face scowl in distant surprise.
Fire erupted from the grate where I had been standing, only for a moment, but I realized I suddenly had more to worry about than the once familiar grates erupting with never before seen fire. Because I was still standing on a large section of grate that had never been here before.
He had changed the room.
The grinding of stone was my only warning.
I turned and sprinted as fast as I could. Wooden spikes exploded from the floor in a rolling wave that chased me until I dove onto plain stone and off the new grated flooring.
Unless he had changed other things, too…
I paused, waiting, eyes darting about. Then twin sticks coalesced in my fists, crackling with energy as I heard familiar territorial growls behind me. I spun to face my opponents, ignoring their grotesquely monstrous grins.
Gargoyles.
They resembled winged goblins, none of those feline-looking beasts this time.
But they each wielded stone spears — points condensing to a microscopic tip. Not practice spears this time. Another surprise. They would draw blood if I wasn’t fast enough. I smiled back at them, or, at least I felt my face smile.
The gargoyles attacked in concert. One dove for my face, wings spread wide, while another ran at me so as to approach from an opposite angle than the flying one. The third, center gargoyle stayed in place, brandishing daggers in each thick, three-fingered set of claws.
I dropped to my knees, flicking one of my sticks high to stab the flying gargoyle in the stomach, and the other stick flung out to my side, blocking a spear thrust. I realized my weapons were no longer escrimas, but three-foot-long spears that tore through the gargoyles like paper, leaving piles of gravel and dust where the gargoyles had once been. On instinct, I flung up my hand ahead of me, discarding the spear that had stabbed the airborne gargoyle as I remembered the third attacker. I began the first step to cast a shield of light, but was surprised when a shadow bloomed into existence before my palm before it should have, revealing a black fan of power that seemed to suck light from around me. The fan resembled the one I usually trained with when practicing wrist dexterity.
Stone daggers hammered into the delicate looking fan and disintegrated to nothing as black crackles of power rolled over the projectiles, seeming to eat the organic blades. The gargoyle stared in surprise. I almost did as well, but training and instinct took over. I flung the fan with a thought, this time actually using my magic. It flew from my wrist, sailing straight through the gargoyle’s neck as smoothly as a scalpel in a surgeon’s hands.
The fan was suddenly back before my palm, and I stared down at it as the gargoyle crumbled to gravel in my peripheral vision. It seemed to be made of feathers. Inky black feathers, the opposite of the pure white feather I imagined when clearing my head during meditation.
But I hadn’t consciously chosen to make it. I heard the familiar sounds of the training room grinding down to rest, and let out a breath. Those fears of mine had almost gotte
n me hurt. And that hadn’t happened during training for a very long—
Soft clapping came from a small set of speakers off to the side of the room. A stone-colored mesh partition rolled up from the wall — camouflaged to look like the rest of the wall — and disappeared into the ceiling, revealing a digital screen. Roland watched me from his bed back at my apartment. “Well done, Callie. Well done. Looks like you found your shield…” he was grinning. “And to think that I used to tease you about your propensity for pretty things. Fans,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
A faint smile tugged at my lips, remembering all too well his comments on my love for the fan, but I didn’t answer his question about where it had come from, because I didn’t know how to do so. “Like you told me about the changes to the room?”
His eyebrows furrowed. “What would be the fun — or gain — in that? You’re here to learn, not to memorize rehearsed movements. You’ve already memorized the ones we have, so I changed them.” He shrugged as if answering why rain was wet.
I nodded slowly, but still wasn’t happy about it. “I was just trying to let off some steam. Clear my head. What if I hadn’t been paying attention?” I almost wished I could take it back as soon as it left my lips.
He just looked at me. Darkly, if that was possible.
I muttered under my breath. Where was the damned remote to turn off the video feed? Then I remembered Father David. My eyes shot to the screen, suddenly nervous. He noticed, and gave me a sad nod. “I received word already. I called some policemen to watch over him. Not Shepherds, but better than nothing. They owed me a favor.” He smiled sadly at me. “It changes nothing, Callie. If anything, it only convinces me we are doing the right thing. We will talk this afternoon. Claire is threatening to force-feed me baby food if I don’t eat her soup,” he muttered, and then hung up as I heard Claire shouting at him in the background.
Unchained: Feathers and Fire Book 1 Page 10