by J. R. Rain
Chapter Eighteen
Tammy liked to test herself.
Most often, she liked to test her range, especially since it always seemed to be expanding. These days, she was certain it was about a mile in either direction, although she wasn’t entirely sure how far a mile was. People who drove cars always seemed to know how long a mile was, and since she was supposed to get her driver’s license soon, maybe she would soon know just how far a mile was. Heck, maybe it was even two miles!
She shrugged at that. One, two, or even three, it didn’t really matter. She only knew that it was far. Like real far.
Even now, with her tuners (as she thought of it) stretched out as far as they could go, she was fairly certain that she was picking up the thoughts of a homeless man crossing the street in front of the Hungry Bear on Harbor and Bastanchury. His thoughts were faint, almost too faint to hear, but she tuned into them anyway, because why not? She was bored, sitting here alone on her front porch, with the sun angling directly into her eyes, while her mother was off jogging with Allison, and probably drinking too much—and certainly talking too much.
The man crossing the street was hungry. Tammy couldn’t yet feel others’ emotions—she tried to do that once, when she had heard about ‘empaths’—but she could certainly hear his thoughts, and he was wishing like crazy that someone would come out of the Hungry Bear and maybe give him their leftovers. God, he was so hungry. He wasn’t sure when he’d last ate. And then his thoughts briefly spun out of control and she saw static, and she was pretty certain the man was insane. In her mind’s eye, she briefly saw what he saw: the restaurant and customers and cars and static. Now he sat on a step, near the restaurant, and hoped for help.
Tammy tuned out again. The homeless guy was bumming her out.
The Hungry Bear was, like, far away. A long, long walk for sure. Even a long bike ride!
Tammy was certain her range had just increased again, even from the last time she tested it just a few days ago. There was, of course, something else she’d been meaning to test, something that even she was kind of scared to test.
But, what the heck? No time like the present, as her mom always said.
That coming from someone who was immortal. From someone who had all the time in the world. And Tammy knew her mom was immortal, too. She knew it, and could see it. Her mom, like, never aged. Never even a little. Her mom still looked as young as ever, all the way back as far as Tammy could remember. Tammy knew her mom had been attacked when she was thirty-one years old. That had been over ten years ago. Tammy, now at sixteen-years-old, knew that she would someday look the same age as her mom. And then, after that, Tammy would start looking older than her mom.
So weird, she thought, as she looked now for her first victim.
She found it within seconds. It was a busy sparrow working its way through the neighbor’s tree, twittering occasionally, hopping from branch to branch, pausing briefly and cocking its little head this way and that.
Tammy tuned into it.
Or tried to.
She got nothing. Static, if anything. The same kind of static she had just gotten from the homeless guy. She wasn’t sure what the static meant. Maybe she wasn’t receiving the signal correctly? She focused more, and found herself squinting. A small noise came from somewhere at the back of her throat. Jesus, was that a grunt? She didn’t know, and didn’t really care. In fact, there was only one thing she cared about, and that was the bird sitting on a nearby branch, presently grooming its wings.
You’ve really gone off the deep end this time, Tam Tam, she thought. The deep end of what, she didn’t know. Just another stupid saying adults had.
Deep end or not, she didn’t care. It was fun exploring her gifts. It was fun, quite frankly, being her. In fact, despite all the crazy, gross and illegal things she’d heard in hundreds if not thousands of people’s minds, she would still want to be herself over anyone else on the planet. Including Allison!
Her mind was drifting. She knew it. She focused again, squinting more, and, yes, there was another small grunt at the back of her throat. She didn’t know why she grunted, but it seemed to clear her mind.
Focus, Tammy. Focus.
She heard... something. No, she felt something. Something powerful. Something nearby. Something, somehow, above her, too. No, around her. But that didn’t make sense. She focused some more, and felt it again. Yes, definitely above her, and maybe around her too. But she was sketchy on that last part, as it didn’t make sense. More than anything, she sensed patience. An eternal patience. And something else.
Possession. Not like the kind of possession Mother or Kingsley or Fang dealt with, but ownership. Whatever was above and around her felt entitled to something. Whatever that something was. And just as she pondered the sensation, Tammy knew immediately what it was. Something nearby felt entitled to her mother. Felt as if it owned her mother. It felt very strongly about this. But it was so patient. So... damn... patient.
And then she lost it, whatever it was. She tried to capture it again, but it seemed just to elude her. Whatever it was, she suspected it was still nearby.
She knew her mother had made an arrangement with her one-time guardian angel, Ishmael, to watch over the two of them; in particular, Anthony, since, supposedly, Tammy still had her own guardian angel. Tammy wasn’t sure what to think about guardian angels. She never heard them or saw them or felt their presence. She probably would never have believed in them, if her own mother didn’t have, like, a weirdo relationship with one. Yes, Tammy had seen the angel in her mother’s memory. And Ishmael was, well beautiful. Lordy, he was handsome. Heck, if she had an angel just like Ishmael, she would sure as heck choose him over the hairy Kingsley. Then again, Kingsley was sort of hunky in his own way. And, for all she knew, he was just as strong as any angel.
Still, her mother’s guardian angel was radiant. And powerful. And devoted. And obsessed. Then again, she’d never personally seen him and had never tried to tune into him, if that was even possible.
That is, until now.
It was him. She was sure of it.
How could something so beautiful and epic and old and powerful be so hung up on her mom?
Her regular old mom?
Tammy didn’t know. She also knew that guys were weirdos. Like, big weirdos. Even supernatural guys. Probably even angels, too. She had seen the things guys lusted for, hungered for, and were willing to hurt and to kill for. Most of it centered around women. Or weird sex. Somehow, her mother had gotten under the angel’s skin—if they had skin—and he’d been willing to give up his place in heaven for her. As in, his stature as her guardian angel. What he was now, Tammy didn’t know. But hadn’t she also just felt his darkness, too? His strange obsession? Yes, she had. It was there, brewing, and it didn’t feel very different than the kind of darkness she felt from ordinary men she came across every day.
Tammy spent some time clearing her head. As she did so, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for her mother, too. Boy, what a hornet’s nest her mother had walked into—or jogged into—all those years ago. One night of jogging—and a vicious attack later—had opened up worlds not just to her mother...
But to all of them.
Some good had come from it. But also a lot of strange crap, too. Tammy, admittedly, liked some of the strange crap. No, she liked all of it. Well, maybe not the parts where people got hurt or killed. But she liked the mystery of it all. The excitement of it all. The potential of it all.
She reminded herself to focus again. And again.
Finally, she got her head back to the subject of the bird. A bird that had been replaced by another bird or two, during all that thinking. The bird, she knew, had to be there, in her thoughts. Logic suggested it would be. All she had to do was find a way in. Or, more accurately, to understand how to get in. And once she was in, she suspected, she could get in over and over and over again.
As far as she knew, no one, but no one, could do what she could do, although Tammy always su
spected the Librarian might have similar gifts. Gifts that rivaled hers, or exceeded them.
Focus, Tammy!
More static. Now a break in the static. Now more static. Ugh, this wasn’t going according to plan. The static looked like snow. The same kind of snow she would sometimes see on the TV when there was a bad connection. Maybe she was wrong, maybe she wasn’t able to slip into the mind of a bird...
The static wavered, then disappeared—and was replaced with something peaceful, calm, excited, eager, hungry, curious, adventurous, hungry, hungry, hungry...
There. A small movement in the grass.
Movement, movement, movement.
Hunger, excitement, eagerness, patience.
Patience, patience.
Now! Now! Now!
Flight, soaring, attack, pounce, snip, scoop, swallow.
Triumph, eagerness, and now flight. Beautiful, easy, effortless flight.
Tammy opened her eyes, blinked hard. Her last image was of telephone wires, and then endless sky, and the Earth far below...
She grinned, then gagged. After all, she’d experienced the sensation of finding a roly-poly bug, snipping it in half, and then swallowing each half. And loving every minute of it.
“So very gross,” she said, wiping her mouth.
Of course, it was also incredibly, wonderfully, insanely awesome.
She was just about to find another bird—she liked the way they thought, she liked how each movement was clean and calculated and pure and eager—when she caught wind of another thought.
A thought that was pure evil.
Chapter Nineteen
We were on Main Street in Huntington Beach.
One of my detective friends lived in an apartment above this very street. My detective friend probably enjoyed living above mere mortals, like a feudal lord. My detective friend tended to think highly of himself. My detective friend also had a heart of gold. My detective friend would probably agree with all of the above.
“Say, doesn’t Knighthorse live around here?” asked Allison, who, I was certain, was crushing on the man. She tended to crush on all the men in my life.
“Not true,” she snapped.
“Not even a little?” I asked.
“Okay, maybe a little.”
My kids were at home, taking care of themselves, which is why I had my ringer on high and my phone in my hand. Three months ago, Allison had been the one to tell me that someone had abducted Anthony from middle school. No mother—supernatural or not—could deal with another call—or text—like that. Ever. Again.
Which was why my ex-guardian angel, Ishmael, stood watch nearby. True, Tammy’s own guardian angel was on the job, but he seemed to have a far more hands-off approach than I was comfortable with. Anthony’s own guardian angel had long since abandoned his post—thanks to my son’s brief foray into immortality all those years ago, back in the hospital, back when I had temporarily turned him into a vampire to save his life. Now, with Ishmael standing guard over them, I could rest easy.
Or try to.
What the fallen angel was capable of doing, I wasn’t entirely sure. I suspected he possessed great strength. I also suspected he couldn’t be killed, like ever, in any way, shape or form, silver or no silver. Stake or no stake. Ishmael, after all, was a spiritual being who could summon a physical body. And from what I understood, spiritual beings couldn’t die.
But some of us get reabsorbed, I thought, as we found an outdoor seat at Chi Chi, along the busy, busy sidewalk.
“Reabsorbed sounds so... gross,” said Allison.
“Well, that’s how I see it,” I said.
“But that’s not how it was actually phrased,” she said, having earlier relived my experience again with God. “Return home, I believe, were the words used.”
“Return home, reabsorbed, winking out of existence. It all feels the same. It all feels like crap.”
The patio was jam-packed. Luckily, a hum of conversation in the air mostly drowned out our words. Our very strange words.
“It’s not crap, Sam. It may not be heaven, but it’s also something else. I suspect it’s total and complete bliss, with access to all that is and ever will be. I suspect it’s peace and joy magnified thousands and thousands of times. Millions of times. Sam, you would be going home to God.”
“Can we change the subject?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Besides, I don’t think you’re ever gonna die. You’re just too... nasty.”
“Nasty?”
“I mean that in a good way.”
“There’s a good nasty?”
“There’s feisty nasty. Street-smart nasty. There’s a nasty that doesn’t take shit from anyone, and always, always beats the bad guy in the end.”
“Even if the bad guy is my ex-husband currently hiding out in my son?”
“Maybe that’s just the thing, Sam. Maybe it’s time to forgive Danny and not think of him as the bad guy.”
“He tried to kill me.”
“He set you up.”
“Is there a difference?”
She thought about it. “Maybe not. Either way, we can agree he made poor choices in the past.”
“The poorest of choices. And I thought he was long gone, and now he’s back, and he’s living in my son, and I have no way to remove him...”
To remove him meant journeying into my son’s own mind, which I had no access to. Of course, there was also the small problem of my son wanting his father around. Liking his father around.
I knew the devil could arrange for my son’s death, to get at Danny within, Danny, who had outsmarted the devil once, which was kind of funny if it wasn’t so terrible, especially since Danny wasn’t really all that smart, despite being an attorney.
Allison and I knew the devil had another angle too. Yes, the devil wanted Danny, but he wanted my son, too. In particular, access to my son’s unusual gifts and strengths. What the devil wanted my son for, I hadn’t a clue. But I think he saw my son as a sort of future thug, a henchman of sorts, capable of doing the devil’s dirty business, which sounded about as terrible as it got.
“Maybe we should change the subject again,” said Allison.
Meanwhile, our Moscow Mules were being served in sub-Arctic copper mugs that somehow made the ginger beer and vodka even more delicious. Too bad I couldn’t get buzzed, or drunk, which, come to think of it, was probably a good thing. I’d read somewhere that drug addicts and alcoholics were susceptible to possession. Just as I thought that thought, a ripple of knowing rise up from the depths of my mind. Yes, Elizabeth was agreeing with me. And she should know. She and her misfit band of highly evolved dark masters had done a hell of a lot of possessing.
What was the point of all of that possessing anyway? What was the point of mastering the dark arts? Of controlling people? Of all the battles and wars? Of selling of your soul?
I directed all of the questions to Elizabeth herself, communicating directly with her for the first time in months. Of course, I knew she had done the opposite of selling her soul. She and those like her had bypassed the apparent natural order of things, to the unending irritation of the devil himself, who, apparently, could not lay a hand on them, much less find them.
Allison used this moment to excuse herself to the bathroom, mentioning something or other about this very much not being a conversation she wanted to be a part of. Then again, I wasn’t really paying attention to her. When she left, I heard the words rise up from deep within me:
Power is overrated, Sssamantha. Control is what we are after.
Control of what?
Of all that is.
As I considered her words, a cold chill washed over me. God, I knew, was often referred to as all that is. Heck, Allison had just used the term.
You want to defeat God? I asked.
There is no God, Sam. There is only opportunity.
Excuse me, but I very likely just had a conversation with God.
Perhaps, Sam. But let me ask you this? Why do
es God seek to continuously expand? To continuously and forever more expand? What is it he seeks? Why does he use us so?
I, admittedly, had never delved into that question. I suspected it was because God was bored. Or whatever the equivalent of boredom was to something so powerful that it could create whole multiverses.
Never bored, Sam. God seeks to fill the Void.
Void?
That which isn’t known.
Not following, sweet cheeks, I thought.
God is forming as we speak, expanding as we speak, seeking as we speak.
Forming into what? Expanding into what? Seeking what?
We do not know, as of yet.
Although I didn’t let the crazy bitch out much—or ever—I was still irrevocably connected to her. If I so chose, I could delve into her own mind. I never so chose. I was, quite frankly, frightened by what I might find. I really, really didn’t want to know what was banging around in there, unless I had to, and so far I hadn’t needed to. With that said, I caught her subtle impressions and sly nuances.
But you aim to find out? I said.
There is unlimited potential within that which you call God, Sssamantha. The source entity, as many call it, is so vast that even it does not know its boundaries.
And you seek to find his boundaries?
No, Sssamantha. I have no use for helping our source entity. No, I seek to lay claim to the unknown space, if you will.
And then what? I asked. And here comes Allison, by the way. She really doesn’t like you, you know.
Elizabeth ignored me, perhaps reveling in her first taste of freedom in some time. No, not reveling. Making the most of it.
We can be gods, Sssamantha.
Why not lay claim to the moon, or some forgotten planet? Why not rule Mars and get the fuck off our planet once and for all?
We do not seek worlds, Sam. We seek to create them.
If you desire to expand into unknown realms of the universe, then why do you seek to return to the Earth?
Because we need a launching point. We need a home base. We need a gathering point. Where we are now we are without form and we are muted. We have been tamed.