Pulse of Heroes

by A. Jacob Sweeny

  “You just think that. He lowered your inhibitions. We can influence people and simulate the effects of alcohol or even drugs. I’m sure you didn’t have much control when he was around.”

  “No, Elliot! It wasn’t like that. It was me, I was drawn to him… I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to be with him! I’m not who you think I am. Stop trying to keep me a little girl because I’m not.” Elliot had never been in a situation where he had to excuse the girl he loved over being with another man. Of course it upset him thinking about Hadeno’s dirty paws all over his innocent girl. But who was he to speak. He had been with countless women in the past, and not every one of those encounters was something that he was proud of, even if it felt right at that time. He had given into lust many times, and with human women finding his kind irresistible, it was hard not to eat from the beautiful feast that was served at one’s feet. It had taken him a while to develop into the person he was today.

  “Michelle, you’re young and unmarried. What you do on your own time is not my concern; you don’t have to tell me about it. In fact, I prefer that you don’t.” Elliot meant that last bit very much. Yet deep inside he was concerned. There was the possibility that Michelle was already impregnated and carrying Hadeno’s child. There was no way he could detect such low levels of hormones. She was ovulating, that he was sure of, and he was sure that Hadeno knew that as well. He decided to push that thought aside, and he asked her again why she was hurting, and if she would at least let him help her. Something in Elliot’s demeanor had changed, or maybe it was because Michelle didn’t like to hear him not care about what happened between her and Hadeno, so she told him a bit of the truth.

  “Haden pulled me hard and I fell off the horse, but I don’t think he meant for me to fall.” Elliot felt his fists curling inwards. The bastard had manhandled the poor girl, which was probably why her dress strap was torn too. And she was too embarrassed to tell him everything; she didn’t trust him anymore. That much Hadeno had made sure of. Michelle heard Elliot’s breathing deepen and recognized that as a positive sign. Maybe he was a monster like Haden, but he might care something about her somewhere in that strange brain of his.

  “Listen, if we’re ever going to get out of here you can’t be in pain like this. Let me help you, please.” Elliot was right about the pain, but she wasn’t sure if she should let any of them do any more of their weird voodoo stuff on her. “Michelle, please. Have I ever hurt you physically?” She inched closer to Elliot and when he felt the hem of her dress make contact with his pants he felt relieved. Her scent was close to him again, and she was still sweet as he remembered. She sat up on her knees and showed him where the pain was, and Elliot went to work. She felt the numbing sensation in no time and thanked him politely for his help, but then jumped away from him as soon as she could. Elliot was surrounded by coldness again and mourned not being able to hold her.

  “I want you to know that I missed you every day I was away from you. I didn’t plan on walking away like that, and I know now that I should have handled things differently. But my first thought was to put as much distance as I could between you and anything dangerous. I made a mistake, I’m only…”

  “Human?” Michelle mocked him. “You’re not human, not even close.” Elliot felt as if she had twisted a knife in his heart. She would never look at him the same. He had lost her.

  “I still love you very much. I don’t care what you want to believe. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Michelle hadn’t had a chance to think about that. Elliot was there, after all. She felt even more confused. How could she trust him? Maybe he was only saying that he loved her now that he thought someone else might have her attention.

  “I will tell you all about The Pulse, I promise, but please take this.” Elliot fidgeted with his boot and pulled out the spring-loaded spear. He placed it in Michelle’s hand and moved her fingers along the handle, showing her where the lever for the spring was. He used her finger to pull at it and the blade jumped into its groove. He told Michelle to carefully measure the thing with her fingers and try to imagine what it looked like. “I don’t plan to die here, but if something does happen to me I will do my best to pass this to you. When you get a chance, when his defenses are down, you thrust the blade as deep into his body as you can. Then run. This will kill him. It is made out of Nizabar.” Michelle couldn’t in her wildest dreams imagine plunging a blade into anyone. Elliot told her that Hadeno was carrying his sword, the one that had been stolen in China.

  “So he did kill your friends?” she asked, disappointed.

  “He or one of his men.” Michelle told Elliot about Adi, and he didn’t put it past Hadeno to arrange his killing too.

  “There was blood on the sword, and he said it wasn’t his. Who’s out there, Elliot? Someone is hurt!” Elliot swallowed hard; that sword was toxic. Had he lost one of his best friends? He told her that everyone except for Kahl was up there, and Michelle couldn’t believe that they were all out there, risking their lives for the both of them. Elliot told her that they were his only family. Michelle felt bad for him.

  “Please tell me about The Pulse,” she asked him, finally taking his hand.

  The ‘Pulse’ was the word used to describe a genetic marker that was carried from one of them to their human descendants. It sometimes skipped generations but there was no discernible pattern. It just appeared randomly. The Pulse, depending on how diluted the blood was with that of ordinary humans, gave the carriers something Elliot described as a stronger life spark, and emerged in different ways: talent, leadership, entrepreneurship, intellect, physical strength, health and beauty. It showed up in both sexes, but in females it manifested itself in an additional way. They were more intuitive, and attuned to nature and the subtleties of the soul. Some were even clairvoyant. Many of these women were what history had called medicine women, even witches, and many of them traveled like gypsies bringing their gifts to all people. They didn’t make magic potions in the classic storybook sense, but they could feel where an illness festered and knew which medicine would counteract it. Michelle asked Elliot what he meant about them being clairvoyant, and he explained that many received flashes of images that they couldn’t make sense of unless they investigated further. These visions sometimes came as a déjà vu, or in the form of nighttime dreams or even sometimes through daydreams. Michelle confessed to him that Eranka had told her that she was part gypsy. And she told him about the strange dream she had after she almost died in a car accident on Halloween night.

  “But how did you guys know I have it?” Michelle was very curious. Elliot told her that they were able to sense it. “Is that why you liked me? If I didn’t have it then…”

  “At first I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t until we got closer that I became convinced. But Rion said he suspected it since the first day he met you and Francesca at the church on Easter.” Elliot stopped talking after saying Francesca’s name. The poor lady was dead, and if Michelle knew she would be crushed. There was no use in making a bleak situation even worse; he’d tell her later. He continued, telling her that when Rion saw her wearing the bracelet that her aunt gave her, everything fell into place. Michelle jingled the bracelet to show Elliot that she was still wearing it.

  “That’s the one. Those charms are ancient. They came from Rion’s own treasure trove from when he was King in Georgia. They belonged to his queen wife. After he made a decision to leave Georgia and the political life he undid the long necklaces and divided the gold between his daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and in-laws. The fact that your great aunt told you the charms have been in your family for generations is just another clue. Most of Rion’s descendants were devout Christians, as he is still, so when the forced conversions to Islam were taking place in Georgia they dispersed all around the Danube. They settled in Hungary, Belarus and other surrounding countries.” Elliot told her that when Rion arrived in Georgia a few weeks earlier he actually did some research into Michelle’s ancestry. He found some convincing evidence to co
nfirm his suspicions. “Now that I think about it, Rion has always been oddly drawn to you.” Maybe that’s what Elliot had picked up on whenever he saw the two of them interacting. He always felt somehow jealous, even left-out. Michelle opened her mouth in awe and although Elliot couldn’t see her, he could only imagine the look of shock on her face. He could tell that it made her happy.

  “You mean we’re family?” she asked, astounded.

  “Well, I wouldn’t use the term ‘family’ too loosely, because you are many times removed from him, but if that’s what you want to call it then I guess so.” Michelle wished she could hug Rion. She had always liked him and he had always been very kind to her. Michelle felt like a fool for the way she had treated him at the concert, not to mention how she had handled herself with Haden. What if the blood splatters on Haden’s sword were his? What if Rion was injured or dead? She became overcome with worry.

  “What if Haden hurt him?” she asked Elliot in fear. All Elliot could do was to reassure her that Rion was the best swordsman that he had ever seen, even better then himself. Elliot wanted to hug her, but when he came close she stepped away from him again. “What does me having this Pulse have to do with having children? And what did he mean by the ‘curse’?”

  “Michelle, I really don’t want to discuss this right now. I need you to trust me when I tell you that this is neither the time nor place to delve into this. I was planning to tell you. I just haven’t found the right opportunity. I didn’t want you to be troubled with such things. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t concern you at all. It never will. How about we worry about getting out of here first? Discussions, we’ll leave for another time.”

  “I’m really scared, Elliot. I just want to go home.”

  “I know,” he said, wishing that she’d let him hold her. “ I’ll get you out of here.”

  Elliot used his fingers to search the wall for sharp edges. The wall was made out of the same stones as the first room he had been locked in. The plan was to chip off a small piece to jam into the lock when Hadeno opened it again. That way when it was engaged it would only appear locked. While Elliot traced the cold walls Michelle did the same on the floor. There had to be something there she kept telling herself as her hands gently traced back and forth across the flat floor stones. Michelle had noticed that Haden’s bedroom floor had the same flat stonework, and remembered him telling her that he incorporated many elements of the castle into his newer dwelling.

  “Do they have scorpions here?” she asked Elliot, knowing full well how wimpy she sounded but she couldn’t help herself. She feared scorpions and hated spiders, with their double-jointed legs and their grayish bodies that looked like little clumps of clay. And the hairy ones, she didn’t even want to think about those disgusting creatures. Elliot tried to make a joke of it, telling her that spiders were the least of their concern. They needed to worry about crazed Hadenos instead.

  Earlier, Elliot had been utterly perplexed by Hadeno’s erratic ramblings, as his words sounded no different than those of the lunatics locked up in the prisons that were called hospitals for the mentally ill. Hubris and delusions were not uncommon amongst certain ones of their kind, just as among regular men. There were always the same excuses they gave for their relentlessness, as if their pursuit for power was somehow valid and varied from the regular, ‘I have the answer to humanity’s woes’, or ‘God sent me here to save the world’. The fact that these maniacs were running most of the world politics didn’t help matters at all. But what did any of this have to do with him, he wondered? For Hadeno to talk about him as being some sort of sacrificial lamb made no sense whatsoever. The scary thing was that Hadeno clearly believed in the truth of everything he was saying. It was always the madman that knew not that he was.

  “I have an idea,” Michelle said, taking off her bracelet. She searched with her fingers for the little gold duck and slid it off the string. “Why don’t we use this,” she said, placing it into Elliot’s hand. “It’s perfect.” Elliot applauded her quick thinking while Michelle handed him the rest of the charms to hold because she didn’t have a pocket. “Elliot, I know that all this is really happening, but it doesn’t feel like it. I don’t know why…” she said, hoping that he could help. But all he could do was tell her that everything was as real as day, and that their lives depended on their effective responses. He apologized to her again about having dragged her into something so dark.

  Despite knowing that he truly loved her, Elliot had still wondered if it would have been better if the two of them had never met. But after she shared with him the details of her dream, it was hard to think that way. The fact that she was collecting shells from the seashore could have been a coincidence because the girls were throwing seashells and plastic pearls out the car window. That he had seen for himself. But it could also have been a warning about the imminent danger lurking at Fort Bragg. The empty armchair symbolized an unexpected, unknown visitor. The starfish, a good luck symbol, signified hope and happiness. And the pulsar obviously foretold of upcoming extraordinary events. Michelle had also told Elliot how disappointed she felt when she opened the shells and found them to be empty. Did the shells reflect her life journey? Could it be that Michelle’s curious personality would lead her to search for many things? Elliot was at a loss about the broken arrow. But at the end of the dream she did find that pearl on the chair’s cushion. That was easily explained as a pearl of wisdom; knowledge, secret knowledge that’s as precious as the sought-after treasure. Was it his task to be Michelle’s guide? He certainly felt as if he was constantly feeding her vast curiosity. And when he gave her the black pearls, was that a completion of one of her journeys?

  There was a sound at the top of the stairs and Elliot handed the gold duck back to Michelle. He squeezed her hand and told her that he had faith in her. When and if Hadeno opened the gate, he would distract him and it would be her job to jam the thing into the lock mechanism. Michelle felt her legs growing weak with fear, and the adrenaline surging through her body flushed her skin and sped up her heart. Elliot gave her a small kiss on the head before they separated and took up their planned positions.

  Haden switched on the electricity and Elliot recognized the same caged ceiling lamps from his earlier confinement. Michelle squinted her eyes, as it took a few seconds for them to adjust from complete darkness. Elliot didn’t have that problem, and was standing taut and ready. At this point, he could only hope that Michelle could go through with the strategy and not freeze up when it came time to do her part. When Haden appeared in front of them, Michelle could hardly recognize him because of the diabolical expression on his face. She had seen him angry before, but this was completely different. His eyes glowed so brightly that she couldn’t look at them for more than a couple of seconds.

  “You son-of-a-bitch had my two best friends killed. So I took some of yours,” he said, raising the blood-drenched sword for Elliot to see. Michelle looked back at Elliot with worry but he didn’t even flinch. His eyes were as bright as Haden’s. Haden told Michelle that he wanted her out of there, but she told him that she wasn’t going anywhere with him because he scared her.

  “Then you die here with him. Is that what you want?” Hadeno used a large key to unlock the gate and the heavy dead bolt screeched and scratched the metal as it retracted. He held his sword out towards Elliot in warning, and Elliot knew that the second he tried anything Hadeno would grab Michelle at lightning speed; he couldn’t take that chance. Haden grabbed Michelle from the back of her dress and pulled her towards the open gate. But Michelle wrapped her hands around the bars and held on as tight as she could.

  “I don’t want to go! I won’t!” she shrieked, and Elliot did all he could to remain calm. If he moved an inch that sword would plunge straight into her.

  “Elliot knows I can rip you to shreds with one hand. I’m being very gentle with you, but I don’t have to be. Isn’t that true?” He pulled Michelle away with one tug and she was in his arms. But not before s
he had inserted the small charm into the lock. She had succeeded. She then tried to kick Haden and when that failed she tried to scratch him, but he held her tightly and she couldn’t reach him. Elliot couldn’t take seeing the way Michelle was being handled and prepared himself to charge. But Hadeno read his intentions and immediately turned the sword to point at Michelle.

  “You won’t stab me. How could I carry your son with a huge hole in my belly?” Elliot was just as surprised at what she said as Hadeno was. Michelle didn’t sound like that frightened little girl; she sounded like a grown woman with strength and conviction beyond her years.

  “I don’t need you because now the one I’ve been searching for my whole life is coming, so don’t step on that pedestal just yet,” Haden growled back at her.

  “Really? You can find someone like me? A seventeen year old in the prime of her life? One who has never used any drugs or even touched a cigarette? And a virgin, to assure the paternity of your children?”

  “Let her go, Hadeno,” Elliot said in a controlled voice. Good girl, he thought to himself. Until he heard that, Elliot had pretty much assumed that they had already had intercourse, especially as Michelle was on the fertile part of her cycle, and Hadeno wanted her pregnant.

  “You have no say, you son-of-a-bitch, and a bitch she was. I can take my revenge on whomever I want. An eye for an eye, Elliot, just like the old times.”

  Hadeno dug the sword deeper into Michelle’s waist and a tiny drop of blood rolled out like a small tear and stained the fabric of her dress. Michelle bit down on her lower lip and sucked in a deep breath. The blade was so sharp that the slightest of pressure was enough to puncture her flesh. It burned more than it hurt, but she didn’t want Elliot to be distracted by anything.