by Su Williams
“I do.”
“Since when?”
“Since I…”
I broke into their debate. “I don’t really give a shit where the power comes from. Let’s just figure this out.”
“No.” Nick wasn’t about to let this go. By the worry that pinched his eyes, I understood that something was very, very wrong. “Sabre…”
“I recently attained some abilities,” Sabre said succinctly, but the hint of naughty schoolboy eked into his curtness. Was Sabre embarrassed by something he’d done? That’s likely. Not.
“From where?” Nick countered, but then realization seemed to dawn on him. “No. Tell me you didn’t.” Sabre simply scuffed his feet. “Sabre. Tell me you didn’t.” Nick’s voice raised to something close to panic.
“Tell you he didn’t what?” I demanded.
Sabre’s chest puffed up with a sigh of resignation. “I garnered memories and abilities from William’s blood,” he said with no hint of remorse.
Earlier that spring, Thomas and William had attacked all of us, seeking revenge for the death of William’s beloved sister Sarah Rose. Only in the end, we all discovered that Thomas, not Sabre, had killed the girl. William was mortally wounded in the fight and Sabre took his dying blood that held his memories and all of the abilities the Wraith had stolen from other Caphar over the centuries.
“Are you insane?” Nick smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Of course you’re insane. This is the infamous Sabre James we’re talking about here.”
“Okay, whoa. What’s the big deal? He absorbed the gifts from a dead Wraith’s blood. So?”
Nick stormed across the kitchen and back. “So? So, we have no idea what Rephaim blood will do to Caphar. For all we know, it could kill him!”
A pinched smile puckered Sabre’s lips. “Still breathing.”
“Good god, Sabre.” Nick began to step away again, but stopped and whirled back around. “Well, at least you’re conducting your damned experiments on yourself instead of someone else this time,” Nick argued. Sabre countered with a shrug. Where the hell was this blasé attitude coming from? “Well? Tell us what you can do now.”
“I have acquired the ability to read peripheral memories. As well, I have also obtained some of the Wraith’s plans for our destruction. The locations they have unrestricted access to. Their plans on how to lure us out. What motivations they might use. This,” he said, rotating his finger in the air, indicating our current situation, “is nothing compared to what they had in store for us.”
I scowled at him and thumbed the handle of my sai. “This—” I said, mimicking his gesture, “may seem like nothing to you. But to me, this is huge. I realize Jesse and Ivy are no concern of yours, but this is my fault. I put my friends in danger just by being alive.”
“No, Em,” Nick tried and failed to reassure me.
Sabre stood before me and trailed warm fingers down the lines of grief on my face. The warmth spread from his touch throughout my body and mind. “We will find them.” Blessed reassurance from the man who scared me to death.
*
Only a few short weeks earlier, Sabre had sent me on the adventure of a lifetime. I was the front woman for a rock band. And until it all came crashing down around me, I fully believed it was real. Now, we sat in the same room where I’d awoken after the weave. I laid on the same recumbent chair, the Weavers perched on either side of me, each holding one of my hands. Eddy laid stretched out between my legs snoozing.
“Okay, Em,” Sabre began. “I need you to focus on the memories Thomas projected of Ivy and Jesse.” His voice held the same magic as Nick’s, with the power to calm and comfort. I basked in the brief moments of relief from the turmoil my life had become. “Now, I want you to look to the edges of those memories, not the focal point of action.” I complied, looking to the edge of the darkness that surrounded my friends. “Good. Now, not just the edge, but the memories in the peripheral…”
The building is large and made of cement. Jesse’s screams ricochet off the walls. It’s dark as midnight, except for a rectangle of light off in the distance. I walk to the open doorway and stand in the blinding sunlight. The building, as vast as a football field, sits amongst weeds and sprays of wild baby’s breath…an abandoned building that seems remotely familiar. The grey concrete behemoth sits in a field, surrounded by a fence. Traffic hums close by. I grope for anything familiar, any landmark to identify it. Open sky. Children laughing. A sign—that I can’t quite make out. It’s yellow, and red, and white with a smiling face amongst the letters: ‘c’, ‘a’, ‘r’, ‘l’….
I sat bolt upright. “Carl’s Jr. I know this building. It’s sat empty for ages just off Division beside the old Lowe’s building.”
“Yes, I concur. This is one of the buildings in William’s memories,” Sabre said. Something in Sabre’s voice felt—off, but each time I reached my mind to him I was met by a brick wall. I’d have to learn that trick, so I could keep people—other Weavers—out of my head.
Eddyson stirred in my lap. “So what do we do with the boy? I can take him home, but even that’s not safe from Thomas.”
Nick shook his head. “No, not really. But it’s probably the safest place for him right now.” His eyes narrowed at me. “So, did you really phase with Eddyson?”
“Yeah.”
His eyes widened in amazement. “I’ve never heard of Caphar doing that before. Non-corporeal objects only, nothing flesh and bones. It’s like, one person’s will can’t override another person’s will.”
“Helluva lot of good that does us right now, though.”
“Well, hopefully Thomas doesn’t know you have this gift.” He scowled. “Or that Sabre now has William’s abilities.”
Sabre snorted and rose from his chair. Nick and I eyed each other. Sabre wasn’t prone to keeping his opinions to himself. “I should teach you two something, before we go,” he said to the wall. We watched the back of his head until he finally turned around, wrinkles of worry corrugating his brow. “But I will leave the decision up to you.” He was quiet, searching our faces for several long breaths. “As you both may have discovered, I now possess the ability to fully block you out of my mind.” Nick and I both glared at him. The thought of not knowing what dark and mysterious plans swirled in the mind of the notorious Sabre James was beyond frightening. “I am also able to impart this gift to you. If you want it. It will keep Thomas from knowing your mind.”
“But if we block him out, he won’t be able to communicate unless…” An evil smile blossomed on my lips. “…unless he comes to us. Yeah! I’m in,” I said. Nick scowled at me. He still wasn’t comfortable with the idea. “No more popping in like a hologram. He’ll have to manifest.”
“Either you’re both in—or only those of us with the block are going.” Sabre was back to giving orders and Nick pinned him with a reproachful glare. I bit my lower lip, watching between the two for who would back down first. I wondered if there was some back and forth arguing going on that I wasn’t privy to. Finally, Nick snorted, resigned to necessity and logic. Sabre stepped up to me, his hands bracketed my head, and a tiny pulse of energy trickled and tickled inside my brain. And then it was gone.
“Take Eddyson home. Meet us back here in ten. Armed.”
“I’ll go with her,” Nick offered as he stepped toward me.
I spun on him. “Seriously? You don’t think I can take care of myself for ten minutes?”
“No. I…I mean, yes, of course you can. It’s just…”
I raised my hand to stop him. Nick’s mouth slammed shut like a startled clam closing its shell. I shook my head, clutched Eddy to my chest, and phased from the house. I only lingered a moment to bask in the awe on their faces.
*
It felt like the showdown at the OK corral as the three of us stood in the hulking shadow of the abandoned warehouse. The wind whipped bundles of baby’s breath across the lot like flowering, white tumbleweeds, and tugged at our clothes and hair like a
persistent child. Strips of cotton candy clouds glowed pink as the sun slid toward the horizon, and our shadows crawled long and lean behind us. With a silent nod, Sabre led us into the darkness. Sweat trickled down my neck and back, and panicked breaths hiccupped in my chest.
Relax, Em. Nick’s thoughts caressed my mind in that spellbinding way of his.
Relax? Seriously?
Emi, keep your head. Slow your breaths.
I gave him a quiet, aggravated snort, but complied. The peace of his presence soothed my raging pulse, and his smile warmed my heart. Thanks.
I’m going to vomit! Sabre protested. Nick and I quietly chuckled. Anything to make Mr. Bad Ass squirm.
The images Thomas projected to us showed Jess and Ivy at a distance from the doorway. So we skulked along inside the north wall through the darkness, scanning the building with every ability we possessed. I cast a glance back over my shoulder to the square of light from the doorway. The angle is different. Sabre’s groping fingers bashed into a perpendicular wall and he led us to the left. In the distance, a dim penumbra of light glowed. And at the edges of the circle of light sat two chairs. Baby!
Emari! Stay calm, Sabre chastised.
Calm. Right, calm. A deep draught of breath appeased my lungs and decelerated my heart rate.
We stalked forward in silence, each step, each breath hushed and measured.
Anybody sense him? asked Nick.
No. But he could be blocking, just like us, Sabre countered. Okay, now. Just like we planned.
The three of us descended on the two slumped figures. Weapons at the ready, the guys stood back to back in the center of the circle of light, while I went to Jesse, who seemed to have fared the worst.
“Jesse, honey?” I patted his cool cheek and felt for a pulse. Slow, but steady. At least he wasn’t still submerged in Thomas’ nightmare. “Jesse, honey, wake up. It’s me, Emari.”
His head lolled from side to side. “Em?” he rasped.
“Yeah, Jess. It’s me. I’m getting you out of here, okay?” My fingers pried at the knots anchoring him to the rickety wooden chair.
“O-kay,” he drawled.
When the knots were loosed, Sabre helped me pull my friend to his feet. “There, and back for the girl,” he reminded. I nodded and clutched Jesse’s body to mine.
“What if I can’t?”
“Plan B,” Sabre hissed. “Now, try!”
I closed my eyes and breathed. Slow. Calculated. I imagined helium filling my body and leaching into Jesse’s. I commanded the effervescence to expand and consume, and it bent to my will. Bit by bit, we diffused from the dark warehouse and into my movie monster bedroom. I opened my eyes to the familiar, comforting faces of Dracula, Wolfman and Edward.
“Oh! I did it!” Jesse slumped against me and nearly sent us both sprawling to the floor. Time for super human strength. I guided him to the bed and eased him down, then kneeled on the mattress beside him to check his pulse. Slow and steady. “One more. Hang in there, Jess. I’ll be right back.” And I phased back to the warehouse.
Nick had Ivy unbound, semiconscious and leaning heavily against him. “I feel like a house elf,” I whispered thinking of ‘the boy who lived’ and his faithful elf that saved the day. Let’s hope this doesn’t end as badly. Ivy’s eyes fluttered, too mentally exhausted to hold them open.
“Hey, Sweets.” A tiny, weary smile curled her lips.
“Hey, Baby girl. Let’s get you home.”
“’kay.” The lilt of enthusiasm in her voice, and her unwavering faith in me renewed my strength and lured a smile to my lips.
I cast a glance at Sabre. “No Thomas?” He shook his head. “I don’t like this. Something isn’t right.”
“I know,” was his only response.
“Get there and stay there. We’re right behind you.”
I clutched Ivy to me. “Okay, Baby. Close your eyes.” She complied with a soft hum of relief, and I wrapped us in light and air, and phased back to the cottage.
What met me there wasn’t completely unexpected. Thomas sat at Jesse’s side on the bed, caressing the hair out of Jesse’s eyes. My stomach dropped to my feet. I sedated Ivy with a thought as I lowered her into the rocking chair and drew my sai.
“Get the hell away from him!”
“Aw, Miss Sweet. You cut me to the quick,” Thomas smirked.
“Get. Away. From him!”
“But I’m not finished with him yet.”
“I don’t care. Get away!”
“As you wish.” The words meant nothing like they did with Nick. His were razor sharp and destructive. As Thomas drew his hand away, Jesse’s body arched and bucked. The Wraith’s smirk grew insidious. A horrified scream curdled from Jesse’s lips, and Thomas chortled and evaporated.
I threw myself on the bed, the sai clanging to the floor at my feet. Jesse lay motionless, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, a silent scream still in his mouth. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, quick. Too quick.
“Jesse?! Oh god! Jesse!” Was this what Nick experienced after Thomas messed with my head? When he’d climbed inside and rummaged around, savaging my memories? I clasped the sides of his face and tried to force him to focus on me, but whatever image Thomas engraved on his mind had his sole attention and horror.
“Emari! What happened?” Nick flew to my side.
“Thomas,” I panted. “He was here. He did something. Something really bad.” Nick placed a tender hand on Jesse’s face. His breaths convulsed against my side and his hand jerked away. “How bad is it? What did he do?” Nick’s eyes roamed to Sabre who leaned over to check on Ivy, and he shook his head. “What?” I balled Nick’s shirt in my fist. “What? Tell me!”
“I can’t…I don’t know how to fix this, Em. It’s like—like his mind has been completely scrambled or erased.”
“Erased?”
Nick’s shoulders slumped and his eyes grew murky with defeat. “I’m sorry honey. I don’t think…I don’t know if we can fix this.”
“No.” Denial was fast and unrelenting. “Try.”
“Emi, honey…”
He reached to touch my cheek but I batted his hand away. “Don’t ‘Emi, honey’ me, Nick. Fix him. Try.” The sorrow that shadowed his eyes snapped something inside me. I slammed my fists into his chest and bolted away from him. Everything my violent hands touched smashed to the floor or against the wall until bits of glass and plastic, metal and paper littered the floor and fluttered through the air.
Nick phased and whirled around me. He clutched my arms to my sides and gave me a shake. “Emari! Stop!” I struggled against him. “I said, Stop! It’s time for you to grow up now and accept that your life has changed forever. Stop acting like a spoiled little girl who’s not getting her way and face what you’ve got to face!” Tired and torn, I slumped into him.
“I can’t…”
“Yes you can. All of us have to grow up sometime.”
“No. I can’t…I can’t do this. It costs too much.”
Nick’s sigh seemed to come from a tormented place. His arms softened around me. A caress instead of a cage. “I know, Sweets. I’m sorry.”
Chapter 19 Hollow
Nick and Sabre managed to guide Jesse’s mind into slumber, tutoring me as they did. Exhaustion, physical and emotional, pressed down on me like floodwaters. What strength I had eroded away under the force. I wandered from room to room absorbing the memories from every surface I touched and rooting them deep within my mind. My fingers grazed the lid of the magical titanium spider’s nesting place, and a thrill of energy zinged up my arm. Ari pulsed on my breast. I’d almost forgotten about her. The prick of her metal legs prodded my skin, and I reached up to hold her in my fist and wish on her like the first star at night. Images danced and flashed past my mind’s eye.
An ancient man, with a hoary head, and a beard that spills down his chest, shuffles over a cobbled floor in a dim room lit with candles and oil lamps. Ari pulsates in his palm. Her ruby and titanium glows w
ith ethereal light. The old man places the spider on the chest of a young man laying prone in a shadowy corner on a straw-stuffed mattress. Ari throbs with each of his heartbeats. Her radiance dims and the old man picks her up and runs a palsied finger down her back. She shutters and shrinks into her smaller form. He places the spider on the younger one’s forehead, where the surface of her body glows an other-worldly radiance. The old man’s hand, pale and speckled with age, pats his patient’s cheek with obvious fondness and compassion. “All is restored,” he whispers, weariness heavy in his words.
“That is…was Asa.” Despite the reverent whisper, Sabre’s voice startled me back to reality.
“Seriously, Sabre? I can’t have a thought to myself?” I groused.
He continued as though he hadn’t heard me. “Asa was my mentor—after William hanged me and left me for dead. He taught and trained me. For all intents, he was my father, as well as my teacher and friend.”
My hand drifted to the spider pendant around my neck. “Did you see it? The memory she showed me?”
“No, not all of it. I just—your eyes were so distant. I was worried maybe Thomas…” This was as close to an apology as Sabre James got.
“I think, with Ari, I can fix Jesse.”
“Emari…”
“No, Sabre. That man, Asa, he did some ritual sort of thing, using the spider. And then he said, ‘All is restored.’”
“That could mean any number of things, Em.”
“No. I know what she showed me. Asa meant that he restored the other man’s lost memories. I can do this, Sabre.”
“Emari, Asa was losing his mind toward the end. He was nearly seven hundred fifty years old. With that many centuries of memories in his mind, he was beginning to lose track of them. And lose a grip on his sanity.”
I couldn’t fathom having to live in this life for seven hundred years. “What happened to him?”
Sabre’s eyes grew dark and retrospective, observing the final scene, the final words of the old man’s life. “He gave up the ghost,” he said with a rueful smile. “His memories became so muddled, he simply sat down in the midst of the woods and went to sleep, never to awaken.” Sadness twisted the Weaver’s voice. “When I finally found him, slumped against the trunk of an ancient tree—it was too late. His spirit had gone and only the ghosts of his memories lingered in his dying blood.” His fingers quivered as though reliving the scene. “I took all I could handle. Then, his flesh turned to dust under my fingertips and the wind took him into its arms.” I watched him as he waxed nostalgic, no doubt the memories of his grief as fresh and painful as they’d been that day. “They grew up together—the man and the tree.”