by K. R. Willis
We sat there staring at each other for several seconds before I could make my brain comprehend what he had told me. “Okay. Let me see if I have this straight. Some idiot summoned a very powerful demon and turned him loose on mankind for reasons unknown, the demon turned Europe into his personal playground and unleashed one of the world’s most deadly and catastrophic epidemics, which gave rise to supernaturals, and then a United Nations of those magically gifted supernaturals banded together and used one of our seven wonders of the world as the portal to send him back to Hell.”
“Yes,” Father said.
I rubbed my hands up and down my face, and took a deep breath of crisp night air. The sun set behind the trees that outlined the property. “My head hurts.”
“I’m sorry, Daughter. I know this is all very confusing and hard to understand.”
“If it succeeded, what’s the big deal? Why are you telling me this? What’s this got to do with me?” I got up and paced back and forth across the porch.
Father gently grabbed my arm as I passed. “If you will allow me to continue,” he said and guided me back to the rocking chair. I sat down and started rocking, trying to release the tension.
“The spell worked, and the Evil One stayed trapped for over four centuries. People began to forget about him. The Great Spirit issued a decree that no shaman should use his powers for anything but the most basic healing of the sick. Many darker things existed that they could do with their powers the Great Spirit strictly forbade.”
“Darker how, Father?”
He held up his hand and said, “I will get to that. Please let me finish.”
I shut up.
“Raging Buffalo was a very powerful shaman,” he went on. “He was actually a descendant of the shaman who sacrificed himself with the others, as well as one of the ones who forgot the story about the Evil One and the decrees of the Great Spirit.
“He had a son named Stone Wolf. He was Raging Buffalo’s pride and joy, and after Stone Wolf’s mother died, he was all Raging Buffalo had left. Shortly after he turned twenty, a raiding party from a neighboring tribe killed Stone Wolf. Raging Buffalo became consumed with grief.” He turned and looked at me with tears in his eyes.
“Three days after Stone Wolf died, Raging Buffalo performed a forbidden ceremony, and raised his son from the dead. When he did, it opened up a doorway for the Evil One to re-enter this world. When the spell broke and he burst forth from the underworld, it destroyed some of the rings at Stonehenge. It was not Raging Buffalo’s son that was brought back.”
I stopped rocking and said, “So the Evil One took over Stone Wolf’s body and reentered the world? He’s here?” I looked around as if he would suddenly appear in the clearing.
“Raging Buffalo’s punishment for what he did was that he had to find a way to deal with Stone Wolf, who was now the vessel for the Evil One. He would not be allowed to seek eternal rest until he had done so. Raging Buffalo battled his son for almost fifty years, but could not defeat him.”
“Why didn’t he put Stone Wolf—the Evil One—back underground like the Peace Keepers did before?” I asked.
Father started rocking gently and then answered, “He tried. He even built an exact replica here in the States of Stonehenge where he summoned the Evil One, but when he arrived, the spell didn’t work and he nearly killed Raging Buffalo. He found out later that it had taken twenty-two magical beings plus his ancestor to trap the Evil One the first time, and then they spilled their blood willingly in order to seal the rings and the spell.”
Silence stretched around us as we rocked and watched our two Spirit Warriors. My mind ran, trying to decide which questions to ask. I finally said, “I know I’ve asked this a thousand times, and I know I’m not going to like the answer, but…where do I fit in?” I held my breath, and waited for the answer I dreaded.
“After his failed attempt, at the ripe old age of 144 years old, Raging Buffalo knew he couldn’t destroy the Evil One. So he devised a plan to trap him. He lured what used to be his son to an undisclosed location, using himself as bait. He cast a spell that imprisoned him, and placed him in a comatose state.” He reached over and gently brushed a stray strand of hair from my face. “You are the answer to a prophecy foretold by one of the great seers of our people after Raging Buffalo imprisoned the demon.”
“What prophecy?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“The seer, Wise Eagle, was asked for her wisdom on the issue of the Evil One. Many feared he would wake up and break free of his prison, and the world would once again be threatened.
“She said a female child would be born into the Blackfoot tribe, the same tribe that had been home to both shamans—one who helped save the world with his sacrifice, and one who nearly destroyed it with his selfishness—and that that child would hold the key to destroying the Evil One once and for all within her blood.” He paused for just a heartbeat. “That child is you.”
My heart pounded so hard in my chest I thought I might pass out. “How do you know she was talking about me?” I asked in a small voice.
“Wise Eagle said we would know her because one of the side-effects of her gift would be that she could cure supernaturals of the virus that made them what they are because they descended from the Evil One. That is why Raging Buffalo sacrificed himself to save you on the night of your birth.” The weight of his eyes was almost too much to bear.
I started trembling. “No. It can’t be.” I shook my head, hoping it was all a dream. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t be the child from the prophecy. I didn’t want to be the child from the prophecy. I jumped out of the rocker, ignored it as it crashed to the floor, and took off running across the front yard toward the woods.
Keira! What’s wrong? Rya stopped playing with Falin and bolted after me, but I kept running.
Tears streaked down my cheeks, and tree limbs snatched at my arms as I ran through the woods under the setting sun. I didn’t know where I was going, nor did I care. I’d played in these woods growing up, and they welcomed me now.
Maybe I can run away. Somewhere no one can find me, especially the Evil One. I slowed down and stopped running blindly through the trees. Rya kept pace beside me.
You can’t run from this, Keira. I’m sorry. You have been chosen to bear this burden.
Don’t you understand? Doesn’t anyone understand? I don’t want to be responsible for this. I killed my mother and Raging Buffalo. All these supernaturals are dying because of me. I don’t want people looking to me to save them. I couldn’t save the one person I loved the most—how can I save total strangers? I stopped and slumped to the ground with my head in my hands and cried.
Rya came up to me and sat down beside me. You don’t have to bear it alone. I am here with you. She head-butted me a couple of times and finally, I gave in and wrapped my arms around her neck and cried into her soft fur.
CHAPTER 17
At some point, Father found me and took me back to the house and tucked me in bed because the next morning I woke up in the room I grew up in with Rya snuggled up against me. I currently sat across from him at the kitchen table eating my favorite breakfast: pancakes drowned in maple syrup. Father’s peace offering, I think.
We hadn’t said a word to each other since I followed my nose to the kitchen. I didn’t know whether to be angry with him for not telling me about the prophecy and the demon, or thankful. If he had told me, would I have had the kind of childhood I did, or would it have changed everything?
I stared at him for several minutes. He kept his head down, looking at his plate as he ate his bacon and eggs. Finally, I said, “I understand why you didn’t tell me about this when I was little, but you should have told me before I left home. Not knowing could have gotten me killed.”
Father lifted his head at last and looked at me. “I know,” he said. Then he dropped his gaze and went back to eating. After several moments of silence, I resumed eating as well.
Halfway through my last piece of pancake he said,
“Tell me what has been happening to you. The spirits were vague when they said you would be coming to ask about your birthright.”
With a little help from my chocolate milk, I choked down the rest of my pancake just as Father pushed his now empty plate away and leaned back in his chair. Dabbing my mouth with a towel, I cleared my throat and tried to figure out where to begin. I decided to start from the beginning, so I told him about my blood disappearing from the hospital, the supernaturals dying, me being blamed, and the shadow creature.
He stared off into space, rubbed his chin with his hand, and listened until I finished. I fiddled with the towel I’d used as a napkin and waited for him to say something.
“Ah,” he said. “It makes a little more sense now.”
“What does?” I asked, bewildered. I still felt as confused as a two-headed gecko.
“Raging Buffalo came to me in a dream a few days ago,” he said. “He said you would face three trials concerning blood, death, and a cursed shadow, and that you would find the answer to the first two by looking to the ones who are afraid. The third concerns his son, so he explained it to me so I could tell you.” He cleared his throat.
“Raging Buffalo is the keystone to the imprisonment spell he used on Stone Wolf. Without him, it doesn’t exist. When he thrust his essence—his spirit—into you to save you as a baby, his physical form died, weakening the spell, but you hold his essence within you, so it didn’t crumble completely. The older you get, and thereby the further away from the baby who needed his essence to survive, the weaker the spell becomes. Your essence strengthens each year, and the one given to you by Raging Buffalo weakens, taking the spell with it. Eventually, Raging Buffalo’s essence will disappear, and so will the spell holding Stone Wolf.
“At twenty-two years of age, the spell has weakened substantially. Stone Wolf is still imprisoned, but he is awake now, and looking for a way out. Did you say the creature you saw resembled a large cat?” he asked.
I bobbed my head up and down, too engrossed in his story to speak.
“Good. This all seems to fit then. Stone Wolf’s Spirit Warrior was also a puma, like his father’s. When the Evil One took over Stone Wolf’s body, Raging Buffalo believes his evilness took control of Sabin, his spirit puma, and turned him into an evil shadow of his former self. Sabin is pure evil now, and the Evil One is using him to spy on the outside world in preparation of his escape. He is having him spy on you because he knows you are the only thing that can stop him once he is free.”
“But how does he even know about me?” I asked, fear blossoming in my gut.
Father shook his head. “It would seem the Evil One is able to track Raging Buffalo’s essence, through his tie with Stone Wolf perhaps, and it led him to you. With his knowledge of blood and rituals, he would know that Raging Buffalo’s essence is the only thing holding the spell together that keeps him imprisoned. Once he tracked what remained of Raging Buffalo’s essence to you, he used Sabin to investigate and found out who you really are. He’ll stop at nothing to either possess you or kill you.”
I leaned back in my chair, deflated. I not only had werewolves and vampires after me, but also the greatest evil the world has ever known. My mind felt numb, refusing to process the information father had just given me. How could this be true? Why was this happening to me? Why couldn’t the Great Spirit have chosen someone else? I just wanted to go back to being plain old me…a classic car mechanic whose biggest fear revolved around donating blood.
CHAPTER 18
Father walked me out to Old Red. He kept quiet, deep in thought. After everything we had discussed, I could almost see the wheels turning inside his head as he struggled to find a way to protect me. I knew he wanted to ask me to stay so he could watch over me, but he knew I’d refuse. I had to find my own way, and I had Rya, Sally, and Sam to help me. The thought occurred to me that this must be the reason he had Sam teaching me to fight all these years. He’d been quietly preparing me to face my future.
We stopped at the driver’s side door and he wrapped his arms around me. He had always been easy to hug, like a great big teddy bear, so I took full advantage of that now. My insides tightened painfully, and I choked back tears that hadn’t been there seconds ago. This isn’t goodbye, I told myself. We’ll figure this out. Reluctantly, I pulled back and noticed the same shimmer of tears in Father’s eyes. We just stood there, staring at each other. Finally, he nodded; neither of us needing to say the words we both knew were there.
“Be careful,” he offered instead.
“Always.” I turned and opened the door. Rya, let’s go.
She and Falin came trotting out from behind the house, both of them soaking wet. I opened my mouth to ask her what happened, but she cut me off.
Don’t ask, she growled, stalking toward the truck.
Oh, no you don’t. I stepped in between her and the door. You are not getting in Old Red sopping wet, young lady. She wasn’t fancy, but the old truck and I had been through a lot and I kept her neat and tidy. As if I needed any more reason not to let her up on the bench seat, she shook herself like a dog, slinging water all over me, Father, and anything else nearby.
You asked for it, she said, amusement in her voice. Before I realized what she had planned, she trotted over to me and reared up on her hind legs and grabbed my shirt with her claws. She kneaded my skin through the thin material, and then head butted me with her massive wet head and dissolved into the tattoo I’d known for so many years. My skin tingled all down my right side as her magic pushed and pulled until she was in the right position along my body. Then she solidified and no longer moved.
Yuck! I shook myself and wrung my hands. It felt like I’d been slapped with a wet, slimy octopus.
Father laughed so hard he doubled over. “Looks like she got the last laugh,” he said and pointed. I looked down and saw that my clothes all along my right side were wet.
Dammit, Rya…but my heart wasn’t in it. I gave up and joined my father. We laughed like that for what seemed like an eternity, enjoying the simple things while we could.
***
Halfway back home to Vaughn, I pulled over at a little diner called Dottie’s Café. Three men sat on stools at the bar with their backs turned toward me, a young family occupied a booth in the corner, and a few old men scattered here and there drank coffee and read their papers. The waitress, Donna, according to her nametag, led me to a booth in the opposite corner. She sat me down, gave me a minute with my menu, then took my order.
Since it was slow, it only took a few minutes to get my food. I sat there and ate, listened to Rya tell me about how much fun she had with Falin, and people watched. Two kids, a boy and a girl, argued back and forth about who got to choose the movie when they got back in the car.
I wondered briefly what it would have been like to have a brother or sister growing up, then quickly realized I’d had one of each—Sam and Sally. They’d been as close to me as siblings would have been, and still were. Thinking about them made me pull out my cell phone and dial Sally’s number.
She answered on the third ring. “Hey, you on your way home yet?”
“Hey, Sally. Yeah, I’m about an hour away. Everything okay?”
“Yep, Sam’s pissed at you, though. He said you should’ve taken him with you to your father’s.” She giggled.
Ugh…something else for me to deal with. “I’ll talk with him when I get back. Did you find out anything about Janelle Williams?”
“Yeah.” She snorted. “Get this. I only found records for two Janelle Williamses anywhere in the US. One of them is an eighty-three-year-old great-grandmother of six, and the other is thirteen. They’re definitely not our girl.”
“She’s using an alias?” I thought for a moment. “It’s looking more and more like she’s the one responsible for all this. We just have to find her.” It was like following a trail of breadcrumbs, except the neighbor’s dog kept eating my crumbs.
“Now what?” Sally asked.
Quickly and quietly I summarized my talk with Father. “He said I have to look to the ones who are afraid.”
“What the heck does that mean?”
“I have no idea. Would you see what you can come up with?” I asked. “I need to go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can find. Be careful.” We said our goodbyes, and hung up.
Donna dropped off my ticket, I paid, and went to the ladies’ room. I pushed open the restroom door and wrinkled my nose; it had that musty old bathroom smell, but at least it was clean.
After washing my hands in the stainless steel sink with soap from an Alcatraz soap dispenser, I dried them and walked out the door…and bumped into someone. “Excuse me,” I said and stepped to the right. He stepped with me. I knew it was a man by his well-defined muscles. I said, “Sorry,” and stepped to the left. Again, he was right there with me.
I blew out a frustrated breath and tried again. “I said excuse me, sir.” I tried to push past him, but he wouldn’t budge.
“Khalid,” his deep voice said.
“What?”
“My name. It’s Khalid, not sir.”
“So? Can you please move?”
“Do you know what Khalid means?” he asked.
I finally stopped trying to push past him and took a step back; getting my first good look. He didn’t tower over me, but he had a good three or four inches. His black hair hung loose around his angular face, and pale bronze skin suggested he had a dark tan at one time, but let it fade. I didn’t remember seeing him in the dining area earlier.
“Immortal,” he and Rya said at the same time. She hadn’t been paying much attention, but stood front and center in my mind now. Goose bumps broke out all over my body. “Kind of poetic, don’t you think? Since I am eternal.” He smiled and the hall light reflected off two very pointy fangs.