by Peter Hartz
Then Gil released the man, who stood somewhat unsteadily, unsure of what to do next, still staring at his feet through eyes filled with tears.
Phil felt the pillars of his life suddenly washed away by a tsunami of emotions. He was a man of science, of logic, of the physical world. While not an atheist, he was the next best thing; someone who believed that if there was a god, that being didn’t care about this world or anyone in it. He had been looking at ‘Gil Owens’ when the shape change had happened, and he held his breath as the most impossibly huge wolf he had ever seen appeared where Gil had been the moment before. Stranger still, the massive form had huge, furry wings that seemed not out of place one bit. Then the wolf was gone, and if that had been all, he was prepared to believe in the man’s claim of “magic”. But it wasn’t all.
He had acted as the team’s counsellor, big brother, father figure, and shoulder to cry on since he had come to Michelle and Dave’s company several years before. His US Army training in criminal investigation had made data security an excellent career for him, and he had applied himself with the same intense focus that had aided him so well in his military career.
All of his experience and training had allowed him to focus on what mattered, and eliminate what didn’t. That made him a creature entirely of the physical world – what he could see, feel, and evaluate. Every event, every bit of the physical world around him, every action; all of it could be identified, classified, ordered, and processed. Everything had rules that had to be followed. Gravity produced a measurable effect. Bullets did specific damage. Bombs wreaked havoc on the human form; the more damage, the less chance of complete recovery and the greater chance of permanent marks and scars left behind to tell the story of where the person had been and what had been done to him.
But what he had just witnessed defied logic. It defied classification. It defied the brain’s ability to be processed and put neatly into the context of past experience and training. Legs simply did not instantly reappear completely whole some years after being destroyed by a roadside improvised explosive device. The ability to walk did not simply come back as if it had never left, not after shrapnel had severed the spinal cord in the back in two places.
Phil felt himself begin to shake as his mind rebelled against what he had just seen. The blood drained from his face, and his eyes tried to cross as his vision tunneled and the colors of the room around him washed away to grey, then black and white. He closed his eyes and pulled in a huge breath, letting it out slowly, then did it again. And again.
Nearly seven deep breaths later, he felt himself coming back from the brink of passing out, and slowly opened his eyes. He was looking down at his hands as they gripped the front edge of the narrow table in front of the seat he was occupying, and noticed that his knuckles were white. That led him to realize that he was gripping the table so hard that his fingers, hands, and arms all throbbed from the effort. He struggled to loosen his grip and disengage his hands from the desk, all the while the sound of someone laboring to breathe rasped in his ears. He swallowed, and the breathing sound stopped momentarily, but it returned a moment later when he took a breath, and he shook his head, trying to clear it.
His left hand suddenly released its death lock, and he tried to pry the fingers of his right hand off of the desk before it, too, suddenly let go. He fell against the chair back and sat there nearly hyperventilating, staring at his hands as the color slowly returned to them, his mind blank and occupied with only his hands. Then the memory of what just happened came back to him, and the hands clenched into fists.
David looked over the shocked people in the room, and every one of them was struggling with what had happened. He looked back at the most incredible person he had ever known. Staff Sergeant Nathan James Beloit, USMC, Retired, had always had a certain serene composure about him that others were always amazed by once they got to know him. The being inside the body that had been in the fire and brimstone of war had moved beyond the hurt and pain, the paralysis, and the amputations, to see that life was still worth living, that challenges were still there to overcome (like the rock climbing wall earlier) and that there was a lot of life left to live, and not just to exist in.
But now, that serenity was gone, and it was replaced by something else: the look of a child that had just been given everything he had ever asked Santa Claus for, for every year, all at the same time. The amazed smile looked out of place with the tears streaming down his face. Or, maybe it didn’t. It was ok with David either way.
He looked back at Gil, and the grey man’s smile was tinged with a bit of sadness. David thought it through, trying to figure out why Gil was sad, and something astonishing occurred to him: Gil was a deeply compassionate person, and the pain in Nate had cried out to him to be put to right. It was almost impossible for Gil to ignore the state of the extraordinary man in front of him, so he had acted. And that sadness was from Gil knowing all the suffering that Nate had endured for years before he could encounter Gil and be made whole again.
David wondered what the impact would be from the change, because Nate was not exactly an unknown. Highly decorated for valor and courage under fire, he had served three tours in Iraq and two more in Afghanistan, the last of which had nearly killed him. He spoke regularly to returning wounded vets at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in town, a true inspiration to those who had lost so much, and was due to speak there again in a few weeks. That next time would be a trip.
David’s attention returned to Gil, and the other had simply stepped back from the prominent position at the head of the room as those who had witnessed his incredible, reality-defying act of compassion and power. David snorted inside as he thought that people had already forgotten about the Harrower Wolf that had appeared in front of them mere moments before.
Several minutes later, David realized he could tell who seemed to have recovered their internal balance: as they found their psychological footing again, their eyes were inevitably drawn to stare at Gil. He didn’t seem offended by the attention, merely smiling warmly and gently at each new pair of eyes that locked onto him. Ironically (or maybe not), the last to look at Gil again was Phil. Appropriately, however, he was the first to break the silence.
“THz…” He coughed as his voice sounded hoarse and dry, then laughed, sounding somewhat shrill and unsteady, but it was a laugh after all.
“That was some ‘magic trick’, Gil!” The room erupted into laugher at the incredible statement, and even Gil chuckled a bit.
Phil continued on. “Ok, I think we can accept certain things as true now. Nate, you ok, buddy?”
Nate looked up at the sound of his name, and that smile beamed so bright that people suddenly felt a little blinded by it.
“Hush, DUH?!?!? Why wouldn’t I be? I feel INCREDIBLE!” The last word boomed out over everyone, and the laugher started up from everyone again. Then Nate shocked his audience by leaping up and doing a complete backwards flip, landing again where he had stood with his clenched fists over his head in an athlete’s victory pose. The move was perfect.
“Alright, calm down, Marine. We need the floor intact. And the ceiling as well, come to think of it.” Dave wasn’t sure who had said it, but it set off everyone again.
But then the moment turned serious as the retired Marine turned to Gil, and his next words shocked everyone into a silence that hovered over the room like a cloud.
“If you go there, I will follow you to hell.”
Gil smiled slightly and briefly, and answered. “I have no wish to go back there. And it would not be seemly for you to follow me anywhere. I have no desire for servants or thralls. And you have a life to live here.”
David spoke up then. “Nate, you need time to process what has happened. Hell, I think we all do. I’m not sure if Phil there will be ok for a while, so we need to look after each other and make sure that everyone is alright.”
“And, the rest of you lot could use, though not as much, what I have done for good Nate here,” Gil
added quietly. “I can see that most of you have old wounds and such. I would be honored to cast the spells that would restore you all.”
The quiet statement took everyone by surprise, and not a sound was heard as the entire group held its collective breath. Then the woman who had so quickly climbed the wall earlier spoke up, her voice hoarse with emotion, and almost silent as a whisper.
“You would do that for us? Really? You don’t even know us!” Heads nodded as she continued. “What do you want in exchange for this?”
Gil glanced at her as he answered the woman. “Truly, I desire nothing. Tis a task I am happy to bear for those who protect the weak from the strong.” A single, vast, singing pulse flashed through his entire being as his patron endorsed his actions, much to his surprise. But he kept any indication of such off his countenance, and continued. “Indeed, it is an obligation that you all are due for the service you have so selflessly given to others. If David or I should need some small thing while we find and follow the trail to the evil doers, I would hope that you would be willing to assist, but I would never demand a thing from you in exchange for doing what I feel is right. To do so would go against my own sense of honor.”
Heads nodded now, and some eager smiles were seen around the nearly dozen men and women in the closed off training room.
A member of the in-house security team making his way around the building that evening had just walked past the closed training room door on his way to his next check point. He knew David’s training team was inside, as he had been at the front desk next to where the climbing wall was situated in the main lobby, and had seen them all file into the elevators for the brief trip up to the next floor and into the room they now occupied just off the rotunda. He had watched on the security monitors as they entered the room, and the door had closed behind the last one. There were no security cameras or microphones in the training rooms, because of the sensitive nature of some of the meetings that were held there with representatives of defense contractors and those private corporations that wanted secrecy and non-disclosure agreements and the like. Everyone on the security team had been briefed that certain things were not to be talked about, even amongst other security guards.
Unlike most companies who contracted out for private security teams, Dave had insisted that the security team members be full employees, with benefits. His feelings were well known on the issue. He felt that people how contracted out roles like security and maintenance were abrogating their moral responsibilities to those that worked around them. He also felt that full time employees could be counted on to go above and beyond when the circumstances required it, and his belief in that had been affirmed more than a few times over the years since the new facility had opened and the business had grown. Those same employees had shown loyalty to Michelle and Dave over the years, and had seen that loyalty returned in full.
Carl had been with the company since before the building opened, and had always wondered if he was dreaming. The security role paid quite a bit more than the same job at other companies, and his wife appreciated the benefits, especially the company medical insurance plan, a lot. They were both getting older, and with age came the variety of ailments and indignities that an aging body graced its owner with.
It was a rewarding role. He was an Army veteran back in the day, and he appreciated immensely the efforts David expended in trying, and succeeding, to get recent veterans the job training and experience they needed to have long and successful careers. All were eligible for the GI Bill, but the spots on David’s team were a coveted prize that were the envy of anyone not lucky enough to get picked. Carl knew that the program couldn’t be cheap, but David did it anyways, with Michelle’s blessing. She took almost as much satisfaction out of it as David did. And David got the joy of doing something to help his brother and sister veterans.
Now he paused suddenly as he thought he saw colored lights out of the corner of his eye coming from behind the closed blind in the window to the training room. Turning, he saw nothing out of the ordinary, shrugged, and kept walking along the path to the next waypoint, humming softly to himself. He presented the access card on the lanyard to the card reader at the next door in front of him, opened it, and went through and on his way.
Chapter 22
The guards came early Monday morning. He was cuffed and chained, not brutally, but not gently, either. His wrists ached where the normally too-tight handcuffs held him as they led him into the courtroom. He walked over to the defense table and stood by his attorney, and the bailiffs didn’t bother to unchain him.
The judge banged his gavel, and talking stopped. Other preliminaries followed, but Koren didn’t pay much attention. The judge then turned to him, and spoke.
“Do you have anything to say before we get to the victim impact statements, Mr. Davis?”
He nodded. “Yes, Your Honor. I do. I did not do this.”
The judge seemed to sigh, then nodded. “Unremorseful to the last. Very well –“
What the judge was about to say was drowned out by the very loud sound of wolves howling. Koren winced as the sound assaulted his ears, but he had been almost expecting something. To the others who’d been there for the sentencing, the shock was near total. But it paled in comparison to what happened next.
With a rush of wind that carried with it the smells of woods and vegetation, Diana appeared. Only this time, five very large wolves with varying shades of dark grey to midnight black fur appeared with her. The wolves looked around, then stood or sat closely at their mistress’s feet, but their eyes continued to wander from person to person in the courtroom warily.
The crowd of people in the courtroom watching the proceedings gasped initially, and one person let out a soft scream that cut off abruptly. The silence that followed was broken only by the breathing of the wolves that seemed to gather around the woman in brown leathers and boots. It was almost like the gallery was holding its breath, waiting for the next apparition to appear.
She stood in the middle of the courtroom, between the judge and the defense and prosecution tables. And she stared at the judge, without saying a word. The judge stared back at her, too astonished to speak, frozen in place. Then she turned, and glanced at Koren before glaring at the prosecutor. He stared back transfixed, and Koren realized she was sifting through the prosecutor’s memories like she had his a few days ago. Then, after a few moments, she snarled at him.
“You WORM! You KNOW of this child’s innocence, but you wish to put lock him away in a cage for the rest of his life because you do not like the color of HIS SKIN!” The outrage in her voice couldn’t be missed, and she glared at him, jutting her head towards him slightly. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides as her entire body radiated her opinion of his part in the whole proceeding. “I shall return to you shortly, you dog!”
The proclamation of Koren’s innocence from the woman brought a gasping cry from Koren’s mother Martha, seated behind the defense table, as his sister wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders to comforting the now sobbing woman as her own tears began to fall.
The prosecutor surged to his feet in anger, but what he was about to say was drowned out by the sudden tumult that overwhelmed the room as everyone started to speak at once. Then he shrank back into his chair as one of the huge wolves at this strange woman’s feet stood and growled loudly at him, lips drawn back in a snarl that clearly indicated how the wolf felt, which prompted the other four to stand with the first and lent voice of their opinion to that of their brother. He shrank back into his chair as far as he could as he eyed the wolves that stood less than ten feet away fearfully.
The judge banged his gavel over and over, trying to shout down the noise and bring order to his courtroom once again, while trying to process what was happening.
Diana turned to the judge at the noise, and waved her hand back behind her at the crowd. A cold wind washed over them, silencing them except for the soft crying of a now-hopeful mother and sister.
&n
bsp; The Honorable William Hastings pointed his gavel at the woman that had appeared in his courtroom, and spoke up sternly. “Just who do you think you are, young woman? What right do you have to interrupt my courtroom like this?”
She looked at him for a moment, and he stared transfixed as she looked inside him. Then she nodded once, and spoke.
“I am the Goddess Diana. Mortals have oft called me Diana the Huntress. I am here in the cause of justice, at the invitation of young Koren Daniel Davis. I have searched his memories, and can find no evidence that he is guilty of what that worm,” she inclined her head towards the prosecutor’s table briefly, “has accused. I will ensure justice for the young human.”
The judge gaped at her briefly, then harrumphed. “He has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of murdering a young woman. That is all I need to mete out justice as required of me by our laws.”
“Tell me, you who would sit in judgment. Do your laws deserve higher place than the true justice of the Gods and Goddesses? Do you wish me to believe thus of you?”
“This is a human court of law! I will not have these proceedings disrupted by anyone.” He waved his gavel at the three guards that had been staring blankly at the woman and the wolves that had just appeared in the court room. One saw the judge waving furiously at them, and nudged the others.
They all glanced at the Judge Hastings, and then at each other. With a shrug, they started forward, clearly intending to do something to return control of the room to the judge, while one spoke quietly into his radio to try to bring some help to deal with… whatever was happening. They didn’t get very far. The wolves stood up on all fours, and seemed to draw closer to the woman. But even that wasn’t necessary.
“Touch me at your peril, mortals. I will entertain no such actions that would impede me upon the just path I am meant to follow.” The words were clear, but the voice that spoke them sent chills down the spine of everyone in the room. She spoke with a hollow, rasping sound that was low and intense with something approaching menace, and the guards were terrified at the sensations that it conveyed to them. The woman seemed to be nearly eight feet tall all of a sudden, and her form glowed with a white light that seemed to draw the eye of almost everyone in the room. Almost.