The Promised One (The Turning Stone Chronicles)

by C. D. Hersh

  Only one of the bulbs over the three steel doors worked, casting a single pool of light near the middle of the alley. She picked her way over trash. A paper cup crunched underfoot, and she stopped as the noise echoed through the alley.

  “Are you her?” a man called out.

  She reached for her gun tucked in the holster at the small of her back and took aim in the direction of the voice.

  A man stepped to the edge of the light, a shadowy figure against the building, and held up his hands. “Don’t shoot. I’m unarmed.” He stepped into the center of the pool of light. “I’ve got your ring, like I promised.”

  Her breath caught in her chest. “Shaw?”

  “Yeah. How long is this going to take?”

  “What?”

  “Shit. Don’t play coy with me, woman. Take the damned ring and get rid of my curse like you promised.” He swung his arm and lobbed something into the air.

  A glint of gold flashed as a small object crossed the pool of light. He’d thrown a ring! She holstered her gun and darted forward, focusing on the ring’s arc, trying desperately to follow its path. The ring sailed out of the light. A metallic ping sounded near her feet. The ring! She dropped to her knees searching, hands scrambling frantically across the rough pavement. Her fingers closed on a circle of metal. She shoved the band onto her middle finger.

  A feral scream drew her attention. Wheeling toward the sound, she saw a black shape leap off the roof onto Shaw. A panther! Shaw yelled as he fell to the ground, flailing wildly against the animal. Everything went into slow motion as adrenaline rushed through her, heightening her senses.

  The cat shook Shaw like he was a rag doll and dropped him. Then bounded toward her and leapt, golden eyes—slits of topaz in ebony—gleaming in the dark. She fumbled for her weapon. Her fingers as helpful as frozen fish sticks. The panther toppled her to the blacktop, trapping her arm behind her.

  The gun’s metal barrel jammed against her back. Razor-sharp pains ripped through her shoulder as the cat tore through her sleeve. She threw her free arm over her face to protect her head and throat. The panther’s teeth sank into her forearm. Pain shuddered all the way to her shoulder. She clenched her fist tightly, determined not to let go of Baron’s ring. Screams mingled with the cat’s ferocious roar.

  A bloodcurdling howl pierced Alexi’s fogged mind. A battle cry as wild and ferocious as the panther. The cat’s weight lifted off her, its focus on a new victim. Through blood-covered lashes, she saw Eli brandishing his sword as he and the panther circled around her. The security light caught the polished metal and sent starbursts flashing across the darkened alley.

  “Are ye all right, lassie?” Eli asked, as he thrust and parried at the panther.

  “Better, now that you’re here.”

  The cat advanced and Eli swung his sword, causing it to retreat. “Ye couldnae wait, could ye?” he said reproachfully.

  “Patience has never been my strong suit.”

  The sound of an engine roared at the alley entrance, tires skidding to a stop. Light flooded the lane. She moved her head to the side so she could see who was coming.

  “Rhys,” she called, when she recognized his Stetson silhouetted against the headlights.

  He rushed to her side, gun drawn, and then scrambled backwards when the panther snarled. “Everybody okay?”

  “Barely,” Eli answered. “Hurry up and shoot the black devil, laddie.”

  Rhys edged farther away from Alexi to get a clear shot then leveled his gun at the cat. “Move aside, old man.”

  Eli stepped to the right, sword held high, ready to strike. The panther leapt onto the dumpster and then to the roof. Rhys fired. The cat yelped, the sound laced with pain, and disappeared over the roof.

  Within seconds Eli and Rhys were at Alexi’s side. “She’s lost a lot of blood,” Eli said. He ripped the sleeve off Alexi’s blouse and tied it around her bleeding arm. A bright red stain soaked through almost immediately. “I dinna know if I can stem the flow.” Rhys dialed 911 as Eli tore off her other sleeve and wiped the blood from her face and neck.

  “Most of the blood is coming from that wound,” Rhys said. He took the other sleeve from Eli, fashioned it into a tourniquet, and tied it above the hemorrhaging gashes.

  “Check on Shaw, Rhys,” Alexi said. When he left, she removed Baron’s ring, hands shaking from the effort, and held it out to Eli. “If I don’t make it, Rhys is going to have to take my place,” Alexi whispered. “Give him Baron’s ring and make him understand what he must do.”

  “Dinna talk like that, lassie. Yer going tae live.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Her voice sounded as drained as she felt. She put the ring into Eli’s hand. “He’s a good man, Eli. Not like the one in the legend you told me.”

  The sound of sirens filled the air, drawing closer. Eli grasped her hand tightly. “Hang on, lassie. They’re nearly here.”

  “I’m trying.” Her eyelids felt like two-ton boulders pressing on her eyeball. She closed her eyes and darkness swirled around her followed by a prism of brilliant light that pierced the inky black. Every word sapped more of her strength. “Promise me you’ll make him understand,” she whispered. “Promise, Eli.”

  “I will, lassie, I will.”

  Eli gently touched her face. Then she drifted through the darkness toward the light beckoning her.

  Chapter 46

  “Laddie, come quick!”

  Eli’s yell sent Rhys running. Alexi lay motionless on the ground, eyes closed, her white face in sharp contrast against the blacktop. He crashed to the ground beside her and gathered her in his arms.

  “Lexi, can you hear me?” He rocked her in his arms, desperately wanting to hold her tight, but afraid to hurt her. “Lexi, sweetheart,” he pleaded. “Don’t go.”

  The shrill blare of sirens filled the alley, followed by pounding feet. Someone knelt down next to him and eased Alexi from him, elbowing him aside. He tried to maneuver his way back into the circle of paramedics surrounding Alexi, but Eli gently edged him away.

  Another paramedic rushed over to Shaw’s body. “What happened here?” he asked. “This man is torn to pieces.”

  “Don’t bother with him. He’s dead,” Rhys said. “Help your buddy with my partner.” The paramedic laid his fingertip on Shaw’s throat. “I said, help your buddy with my partner.” He strode toward the paramedic and yanked him to his feet, shoving him toward Alexi. “She’s alive.”

  “Barely,” one of the other paramedics said. “A minute later and she’d have been gone for sure.” He barked some orders and the paramedic Rhys had manhandled scrambled back to the ambulance and came back with medical equipment.

  Rhys watched helplessly as they tended to Alexi. She couldn’t die, not when things had been left so badly between then. The paramedics moved Alexi to a gurney and into the ambulance.

  “Where are you taking her?” Rhys asked.

  “University.”

  “Be on your tail. We’ll take my truck,” he said to Eli. “If someone tries to cut between us and the ambulance, I’ll plow right over them.”

  Like opposing pendulums, Rhys and Eli paced the emergency waiting room, as they strode back and forth across the gray polished linoleum floor.

  After half an hour, one of the ER nurses stuck her head out of the registration booth. “Sit down, you two. Watching you is making me seasick.”

  Rhys took a seat in the waiting room away from the other patients. Eli sat down beside him.

  “I should have been here to protect her,” he said to Eli. “It’s my job.”

  “Ye canna blame yerself. Twas my job, too. If anyone has failed her, and Baron, ‘tis me.”

  “This whole thing started with Baron. Damn all this shifter business. You’re right. This is your fault, old man.” His fists curled into tight balls. “It was your idea to make me babysit Sylvia.”

  “And if ye’d kept yer eyes on the she-devil it might not have happened either. Ye could have killed h
er,” Eli said. “Then none o’ this would be happening, laddie.”

  “And if I’d have been with Alexi, she wouldn’t be lying in there nearly dead. She can’t die, not now.”

  “I’ve nae desire tae let her go, but if ‘tis the lassie’s time, there’s not much we could have done tae prevent it. Much as we’d like tae believe we hold our own cards, sometimes we havenae any control over our life force.”

  Life force? His fists uncurled, and he grabbed the old man by the shoulders. “You said I pulled the life force from you and Alexi. Can I give it back?”

  Eli blinked at him. “So now yer believing in the power?”

  “Do I need to believe? Because if there’s a chance I could help her, I’d believe in Cinderella’s fairy godmother.”

  “Ye dinna need tae believe, but even if ye wanted tae, ye canna put the life force back intae a body.”

  “Mr. Temple, Mr. McCraigen, you can go in now,” said the registration nurse.

  “Is she awake?” Rhys asked.

  “No.”

  Alexi’s pale face nearly faded into the white hospital sheets in spite of the transfusion paraphernalia pumping blood into her. Rhys quickly crossed the room and went to her bedside where the doctor stood.

  “How is she?”

  “She lost a lot of blood and will have some scarring on her arms. She’s stable, for the moment, although we’re not sure why she isn’t waking from the anesthesia. She should have come to already.” He checked the transfusion bag and made an adjustment. “Is it true she and that DOA that came in with her were mauled by a panther?”

  “Aye,” said Eli.

  “A panther? In Cleveland?”

  “Must have escaped from the zoo,” Rhys said.

  “She’s lucky to be alive then. That cat tore the other guy to pieces. If you have any other questions, I’ll be around for a couple more hours.”

  “Thanks,” Rhys said as he moved a chair next to Alexi’s bed. “Why don’t you call a cab and go home, old man? I’ll stay here with her.” He laid his hand over Alexi’s and stroked it.

  After a couple of seconds, Rhys felt Eli’s stare. Rotating in the chair, he saw the old man next to the medical cabinet, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “What?”

  Eyes narrowed thoughtfully, Eli stroked his beard. “What would ye say if I told ye Alexi had a last request o’ ye?”

  “I’d say, keep it to yourself because she’s going to recover,” Rhys said gruffly.

  “Och, I canna do that for I promised her I’d abide by her wishes, and being as she isnae able tae tell me otherwise, I’m bound tae make good on my promise. Did ye mean it when ye said ye’d believe in anything if it would save the lassie? Even using the power o’ the ring?”

  “Yes, I would do anything to save her, but you said it’s not possible. So using the power of the ring is a moot question.”

  “Mayhap, but she’d want ye to, you know. Twas the last thing she said tae me afore she went unconscious.”

  “What? Blow life force into her?”

  “Nay, there isnae anything ye can do tae save her life. She wants ye tae use the ring. Take her place in the Turning Stone Society—become the Promised One for her.”

  He released Alexi’s hand and stood. “If I wouldn’t buy into that while she was alive, and she would be the only reason I’d ever consider it, what makes you think I’d want any part of it if she were gone?”

  “Twould be a way o’ keeping her memory alive.”

  “I prefer the real thing, not a memory.”

  Eli moved closer to him. “What I’ve witnessed o’ ye and Alexi is more powerful than anything I’ve seen my whole life. The world needs a power like that tae defeat the rogues and bring the promised peace.”

  “I’ve got a job that keeps the peace already. I don’t need another.” He reached for Alexi’s hand.

  Eli stopped him, moving them away from the bed. “If she canna fulfill her destiny, and ye won’t take up yers, ‘tis time I showed ye the results o’ yer selfishness.”

  Rhys tried to shrug off Eli’s grip, but, for an old codger, he held him with an amazingly strong grasp. Eli grabbed his other arm and a shock ran through him, nearly paralyzing him. His focus went wacky and the room listed to the left. Eli steadied him then, after kicking the chair away from the bed, eased Rhys into the seat, still gripping both arms.

  “Relax, laddie. It’ll be easier that way.” Eli squatted down in front of Rhys and stared him squarely in the eye.

  Rhys found himself unable to break eye contact. Eli’s steel eyes darkened to deep gray then to an iridescent black, the irises swirling wildly like pinwheels in a hurricane. His eyelids grew heavier. He struggled to keep them open, but failed. After a couple of seconds, his head drooped, his chin resting on his chest.

  Eli’s voice came through the darkness of his closed eyes, thick and soothing. “From the beginning ‘tis been the duty o’ the Turning Stones tae protect, like ye and Alexi protect yer city, but our responsibilities have grown far beyond the boundaries o’ the Druid forests. With great power comes great responsibility and great troubles when we havenae been able tae keep up our end.”

  Pictures began flashing before Rhys, like snippets of the evening news on fast-forward. Chainmail-covered knights charging into mobs of white-robed, turbaned, dark-skinned men brandishing scimitars. Blood as red as the crosses on the knights’ chests seeping into hot, dry sands.

  Rows of straight-lined soldiers in bright red uniforms firing smoking muskets into ragtag armies pouring from the forest underbrush.

  The clash of iron and roar of cannons as men dressed in blue and gray slaughtered each other while women in hoop-skirted dresses and gentlemen wearing fancy waistcoats watched from red-checkered picnic blankets.

  Goose-stepping soldiers, arms raised in salute to a black mustachioed Fuhrer. Lines of gaunt, nearly naked men and women dragging themselves to gas chambers.

  Illegal booze joints. Tommy guns and gangster slaughters. Vice and rampant corruption in America’s cities.

  Airplanes painted with red circles diving through a haze of bullets. American ships going up in flames in the blue ocean waters. Slant-eyed American citizens imprisoned in war camps in their own country. Atom blasts. Death and radiation sickness.

  The whine of an airplane too low in the sky and the earsplitting crash as it rammed New York City’s Twin Towers and burst into super-hot flames. Ash spewing across the city as firefighters carried hundreds of dead and injured from the burning buildings.

  Roadside bombs. Turbaned Taliban fighters. Women whose husbands horribly disfigure them when they try to escape abusive, suppressive relationships.

  “Do ye see it, laddie?”

  He did, and the violence and blood and hatred flowing in those situations made him sick to his stomach.

  “When we fail, the balance o’ good and evil gets upturned. Don’t ye want to fight those things?”

  He did. That was why he became a cop.

  “If The Turning Stones canna find one before the rogues, we face being plunged intae another dark reign o’ mankind’s history.”

  The pictures flashing before Rhys grew darker, bloodier, and more savage as wars and evil increased in America. Buildings being destroyed, entire cities on fire, and people dying from germ warfare. Families living their lives in bombed-out shells that used to be happy homes in the heartland of the United States. Bread lines rivaling those of the Great Depression in major cities like New York and Cleveland. Children slaughtering other children for a scrap of clothing. Mothers prostituting their daughters for bread to feed their families. Fathers using their toddlers as bait in suicide bombings. This was not the future Rhys had fought for in service or wanted for his country.

  Anarchy ruled the world as atrocity after atrocity played out in front of him, sickening his soul. He began to shake, and Eli loosened his grip. Slowly, the horrors faded until the only things left in his vision were intermittent, blurred negatives of evil. El
i released him. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and reoriented himself.

  “What did you do to me, old man?” His voice sounded as shaken as he felt.

  “Gave ye a vision of what it will be like if ye don’t take up Alexi’s cause. I’ll not be fooling ye, twill not be an easy road, but if ye don’t take it, twill be even worse.”

  Rhys slouched down in the chair, laid his head on the back of the chair, and stared at the ceiling. Had Eli shown this to Alexi? Was that why she had become so adamant about saving the world?

  Lying so quiet in the bed, she seemed frail and helpless. How would she be able to stop everything Eli had shown him? “I don’t know, old man. Seems impossible to me.”

  “That’s because ye don’t know the ring, or its power. And, if I’m not mistaken, ye don’t really know yer own power.” Eli nodded toward Alexi. “‘Tis what she’d want.”

  He stood on shaky legs and went to Alexi’s side. He’d failed her once, and she’d ended up here. “I don’t want to do this alone,” he said, as he took her hand in his.

  “She didn’t want tae do it alone, either, but she made the sacrifice for the greater good. Besides, ye’ll not be alone. I’ll be by yer side every step o’ the way.”

  If Alexi was willing to give her life for this cause could he do any less for her? In his police career, his army career, even as an Eagle Scout, he’d pledged to serve. How different could this really be? He took a deep breath and let it out in on giant whoosh. He faced Eli. “Okay, I’ll honor her wish even if I have to do it alone. I’m in.”

  A weak squeeze on his hand made Rhys whirl around.

  Alexi smiled at him. “Make that two.”

  The tension in his chest drained away at the sound of her voice. She would be with him. Joy filled his heart as he bent and kissed Alexi’s forehead, then moved to her mouth, slanting his lips over hers, deepening the kiss. “Thank God, you’re awake. I thought I was going to lose you,” he whispered into her mouth.

  “Did you mean what you said?” she asked between kisses.

  The motion of her lips leaving his left him aching for more. “I did. And I’m sorry for the grief I gave you.” He tenderly brushed her dark bangs to the side of her forehead. “I understand now.” Alexi struggled upright. Rhys sat on the edge of the bed and eased his arm behind her back. “Are you okay to sit up?”