Splinter Skill

by A C Bell

  “I thought I was supposed to be the cynical one,” Nikki jested.

  “Who is he talking about?” Mom asked.

  “Agent Stokes. Peter and I gave him statements after Lorraine was attacked by a cynocephalus.”

  Mom inhaled sharply. “You didn’t tell me about that.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you because he wasn’t after me,” I said. Mom quickly turned to Peter and Nikki followed suit in confusion. Peter was holding the business card Stokes had given him in his lap and was staring hard at it so he wouldn’t have to look at them. When he wouldn’t meet her eye, Mom looked to me.

  “And Lorraine, is she...”

  “She survived.” I dipped my head, thinking of the hate on Lorraine’s face when we’d visited her. I’d never seen her angry before then. It killed me how badly I’d screwed up her life.

  “Adeline?” Nikki’s voice was quiet and her tone suggested that my face was easy to read. I really didn’t want to explain the horrors Lorraine was suffering with her transformation.

  “Let me see that card,” Raiden interjected.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he stood and Peter held the card up. I sent him a grateful small grin while he dialed and he nodded subtly. He put his phone on speaker and digital ringing sounds filled the tense silence in the room. When Stokes didn’t answer, he switched it back off speaker and left a message. No one seemed to want to talk after, but eventually, Mom stood.

  “Who wants cake?” Without waiting for an answer, she flitted into the kitchen. I caught a brief glimpse of her face as she passed through the archway and saw a crack in her stoic expression. Slade and Raiden exchanged a look and a nod and made for the front door.

  “We’ll be right back,” Slade explained. I nodded and trailed after Mom. She was at the counter pulling the lid off of her pastel pink cake dome, revealing a large chocolate cake. The rich smell of chocolate and peanut butter made my mouth water. Mom’s back was turned to me but I heard her sniffle. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and stooped to rest my chin on her shoulder.

  “It’ll be okay,” I assured her. I honestly believed it, too. There were plenty of people around to protect me, even if the SAU wouldn’t. We’d figure out how to stop Ian.

  Her chuckle was strained from trying not to cry. “A racist lunatic wants to hurt you and you’re comforting me.”

  I watched her plant teal colored candles into the supple chocolate mountain like rows of brightly colored soldiers and I finally felt myself relax in the comfort of home. “I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

  Her tense shoulders eased and she continued to work so I released her and leaned on the counter beside her. I tried to sneak a taste of icing but she smacked my hand. I chortled.

  “Hey, Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can we skip the singing this time?”

  “Nope.”

  ✽✽✽

  I shoveled another bite of cake into my mouth and the rich chocolate melded with strips of peanut butter cream cheese filling. I pulled the next present onto my lap; It was from Nikki. When I peeled the purple paper back, I found a high quality royal blue pleather jacket—she knew my distaste for real leathers and furs—and I beamed.

  Nikki cackled at my expression. She and Peter were huddled together looking at the digital photo album Mom had gotten me, browsing the countless family photos and dad’s drawings that she’d scanned into it. “New and improved. You were so heartbroken when you lost your other one. It’s from the same seller you got that one from. Hopefully that means it will fit,” Nikki said.

  I stood and slipped my arms into the sleeves and felt the cool material settle comfortably against my back. “It’s perfect, thank you!” I leaned over and hugged her. “I won’t lose this one, I promise.”

  I sat down and Peter dropped another present into my lap. Ripping away the mint green paper revealed a large shoe box. The combat boots inside had stylish grey fabric up the sides and had a note clipped to the cuff that read, “Pocket knife here”. I recognized Peter’s messy griffonage and grinned. It would be more comfortable than keeping the knife stuffed in my sneaker.

  The front door opened at Slade’s and Raiden’s return, each toting a gift. Guilt made me frown. “You didn’t have to do that. We haven’t known each other that long.”

  “We know,” Slade said as he dropped what felt like a heavy book into my lap. Raiden set his on the arm of the couch and he and Slade reclaimed their seats by the wall.

  As I peeled the red paper off of Slade’s gift, the cover of The Kamasutra was slowly exposed. I must have looked as horrified as I felt because the guys all roared with laughter. I left the book abandoned in my lap, my face burning as vibrant red as the wrapping paper, and Slade leaned over to pluck the cover off. A book on mythological creatures stared up at me instead. Mom and Nikki were trying not to laugh out of comradery.

  “Very funny,” I quipped while the guys continued to chortle. I ignored them and picked up Raiden’s gift. It felt like another book, which was confirmed when I ripped the paper back to find a first edition copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I gaped. After Ian’s attack on the bookstore, I had completely forgotten about finding the book in Alexandra’s shop. “How did you know I was looking at this?” I asked looking up at Raiden.

  He grinned. “Alexandra mentioned it. She even gave me a good deal on it. I guess there’s a kinship between book lovers.” The fact that she had given him a discount was heart-warming. “I think she left a message inside, too,” Raiden said.

  Sure enough, when I tipped the book over a small envelope tumbled out. It contained a small note and what I thought was an old coin little bigger than a dime until I saw an intimately familiar insignia. The note inside explained the pendant, but it wasn’t for me.

  “What is it?” Mom asked.

  “Just wishing me a happy birthday.”

  ✽✽✽

  Raiden volunteered to stay at Mom’s house to make sure she was safe. Since school was more pressing for those of us who hadn’t gone through it before, Slade offered to escort me to and from my classes until we got an answer back from Stokes. But, since he and Raiden had driven here together, I offered to give Slade a ride back to his apartment. It was time he and I had a chat, anyway.

  Once we were finally alone on the road, however, I didn’t know how to begin. Slade made friendly conversation that I was far too preoccupied to participate much in. I turned the radio on quietly in the background in hopes that he wouldn’t notice while I contemplated how best to say what I needed to. Alexandra’s note had complicated things a little. We were nearly to his apartment when he fell quiet. A pensive frown curled his lips as he watched the street lights pass by.

  “What’s bothering you? Ian?” he finally asked.

  I shook my head and decided to pull into the lot of a vacant taco joint and flicked on the overhead light so we could talk. Since I could think of no segue or way to ease the blow, I settled for bluntness.

  “Slade König, huh?”

  20 Misconceptions

  Slade watched car lights flash by as they zipped down the boulevard. The only indication that he’d heard me was the clenching of his fingers on his knee, no longer strumming along with the quiet radio. I looked down at my hands in my lap. “You knew I would find out, then?”

  “I did.”

  “Does Raiden know?”

  Slade’s lips pursed slightly and he shook his head stiffly. “He has plenty of interest in mythology, but history has never been a passion of his, so he’s never actively looked into the Vjesci. When Worg sent us to find you, I told Raiden I would take care of that part of it.”

  I cleared my throat awkwardly. I really didn’t want to ask my next question, but it had bothered me ever since I’d read Xavier's journal. “And the, um, virgin blood?”

  Slade’s deep voice erupted into laughter, filling the cabin. I must have been grimacing or something, because when he looked at me he laug
hed even harder. “What gave you that idea?” he asked amidst chortles.

  I told him about the article I’d found online when I read the journal, about a modern vampire cult based on the Vjesci who called their volunteers “Pure Feeders” and that Xavier had used the same phrase in his journal. Slade shook his head.

  “Wow, it really suffered in the translation. And of course, they would twist the ritual. As you know, Vjesci are born, not made. For the first twenty or so years of our lives, we’re just as alive as humans and in this state we’re considered pure. Then we go through ‘Das Verwelkend’, or ‘The Withering’, and slowly become undead. But even once it starts Vjesci are still considered pure, so during the marriage ceremony, the bride and groom would bite each other on the wrist so that their first act of feeding was with the person with whom they would spend their immortal life. This was called ‘Die Fütterung der Reinen’; ‘The Feeding of the Pure.’” Slade turned his right arm over, thumbing four prick mark scars on the outskirts of his wrist. I gaped.

  “You were married?” I cringed at my own rudeness. “Sorry.”

  Slade chuckled and nodded. “Briefly.”

  “I thought you didn’t scar? You said you could heal anything except a burn.”

  “Anything that’s not fatal,” he corrected. “And before Das Verwelkend is complete, we scar the same as anyone else.”

  I nodded and fell quiet. I took Alexandra’s letter out of my inside jacket pocket and thumbed the bump of the pendant in the envelope. “This all explains Alexandra’s note a little better.”

  “What do you mean?” Slade’s brows creased together as I pulled the paper from the envelope and turned the radio off so I could read it to him. “‘Adeline; When your friend returned to purchase this book for you, he brought a man named Slade Mason with him. When I shook his hand, I had a vision; the third I’ve had in my lifetime. In it, I saw him with a Vjesci I met a year ago. She came into my shop looking for information on a djinn she was tracking and this necklace must have fallen off while she was browsing my collection. I didn’t know how to bring up such a painful memory for him, but given how closely the two were connected, I feel it would do him more good than it will do burning a hole in the drawer of my desk.’”

  When I finished, I dipped the pendant into my palm and held it under the luminescence of the overhead light. The same moon-shaped crest that was on my father’s ring—which I’d realized during my studies also represented a ‘C’ for ‘Cahn’—stared up at us with an elliptical ruby iris.

  “The initials ‘KC’ are carved into the back. Kendra Cahn, right?” I guessed.

  I finally looked over at him and almost dropped the pendant. Tears had streaked down his cheeks and he made no move to wipe them away. He just stared at the pendant with a heartbreakingly haunted look on what was normally such a carefree face. It had been difficult to imagine Slade had been around for half a millennium, but just then, unspeakable witnessed horrors passed behind his grey-blue eyes and I could see every one of those long years.

  He leaned forward and dipped his face into his hands. “She’s alive…all this time, she’s been alive…”

  I let him sit in silence for some time and he just sat with his head bowed, his hands behind his neck. Eventually, he sat back up and accepted the pendant. “Worg has mentioned her before, but he’s old. Very old. His mind is leaving him. I thought he was just confused and didn’t remember what happened.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  His mouth twitched into a deeper frown. In the end, all he said was, “There are few Vjesci left. Let’s leave it at that for now, okay?”

  “Okay.” I nodded grimly. A thought suddenly struck me. “Slade, if you were married to Kendra, does that make you…?”

  A warm smile eased the grief in his features. “A monkey’s uncle? Yeah. I’ve avoided family ties since then, but when Worg warned me that you were in trouble, I knew I had to find you.”

  I sat stunned, staring at him. I didn’t know any of my family. Dad hadn’t known his parents and Mom’s had passed since they immigrated to the US from Egypt. The rest of my family was still there if they were still alive. They’d cut my grandparents off after they immigrated. Neither of my parents had siblings. Thinking about how detached my family was had always made my heart ache. Now, here was my five-hundred-year-old great-great-whatever uncle. I didn’t know how to wrap my head around that.

  ✽✽✽

  When my last class let out at six o’clock the next day, Slade was practically bouncing with anticipation. He’d finally received a call-back from Stokes asking us to pick him up at the airport. We were now waiting restlessly at baggage claim. I expected to find Stokes in his FBI standard black suit so I didn’t actually recognize him at first in his blue jeans and dark green sweater. His taciturn frown, framed by a salt and pepper goatee, was difficult to miss, though.

  “Agent Stokes, thanks for coming.” Slade and Stokes shook hands and to my bewilderment, Stokes actually cracked a smile.

  “I decided I would draw less attention this way,” He extended his hand to me and I shook it.

  “I-uh-thank you for coming all this way,” I said shaking the surprise off.

  “What do you want to do first?” Slade asked.

  “I need to see the evidence before we go to the crime scene.”

  “The police station it is, then,” I said.

  We stashed his suitcase in Farrah’s trunk, but he kept a satchel on hand. After the hour-long drive back from the airport, it was almost nine o’clock. Stokes was able to use whatever high level of clearance he had to gain access to the evidence the police had collected while Slade and I waited in the car and then we swung over to the convenience store. I let Slade and Stokes hurry on ahead and hoped they didn’t notice my hesitation.

  The crime scene tape was still up and the place probably wouldn’t be open for at least a few more days since it was still an open crime scene. Stokes swiped a pocket knife through the seal on the doors and strutted inside, his blue eyes roving around analytically. Slade paused to hold the door open for me when he spotted me dawdling behind.

  “I just need a minute.” I smiled through the building emotions in my chest and he nodded and left me to it. He’d read about my dad, so he knew my problem. Three deep breaths. One. Two. Three. I shook myself to get the last of the reluctance out.

  Inside, Stokes was withdrawing a green squirt bottle from his satchel. He shook it while he muttered a spell and ushered me away from the door. As he sprayed the air above the door mat, a faint ethereal mist appeared, ever so slightly glowing. I gaped. Partly because I’d never seen magic like this used before, but also because I hadn’t known Stokes was a sorcerer.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s the remnants of magic. We call it a mark. This solution exposes it so we can tell if magic has been used in an area.” He stepped back to spray more of the area and found more mist. “Since he used a glimmer spell, none of the witnesses got an accurate look at him. That’s what this residue is from. The surveillance tape was in fact ruined, but I found signs of magical tampering on it. This was undoubtedly a sorcerer, we just need to find some kind of proof that it was, as you suspect, Ian Brackett, otherwise he could say it was anyone.”

  Stokes sauntered down one of the aisles and Slade moved to follow but grinned at the expression on my face. I pointed at the mist, which had almost disappeared as the solution faded.

  “So cool!” I mouthed. Slade chortled and tugged me after Stokes. Stokes was in the back corner spritzing more of his solution outside the broken coolers. “So how do we find proof?” I asked.

  “I need to gather a sample of his magic so I can compare it once we interrogate him.” The agent held an empty glass phial under a bright streak of magical residue that arced toward the bathroom, left from Ian throwing us around. It was much more potent than the mist by the door and looked like a streak of disembodied LED light. “It’s not as exact as, say fingerprints or DNA. It’s mor
e like comparing blood types. But a match is worth enough to warrant further investigation. The tricky part here is collecting the mark without contaminating it with my own magic. I’ll have to do it slowly so I don’t use enough magic to leave my own mark. It’ll take time.”

  And it did, at that. It took over an hour, so Slade and I waited in the car again to let Stokes focus. I started to drift asleep while Slade idly fiddled with Kendra’s pendant on the leather cord around his neck. Once Stokes was finally done, I drove Slade back to his apartment. Stokes insisted on coming back to my dorm and it didn’t sound like a bad idea to have him look after us. Nikki was asleep when we got back to the room. I could just make out her form in the dark, lying on her bed. I peeled off my new jacket and draped it over the footboard of my bed.

  Stokes marched into the room with watchful eyes. The light of the hallway streamed onto my empty bed and fortunately left Nikki’s in shadow. She didn’t need to be woken up for this. Stokes stooped to the floor to check under my bed and withdrew a flashlight. He checked under Nikki’s, too, while I pulled off my new combat boots.

  “I’ll be in the bathroom,” I said. Stokes straightened.

  “You have a bathroom?” He looked past me where the door of the dorm had hidden the bathroom door. “Let me look inside first,” he insisted.

  The moment he stood, someone threw the bathroom door open and bolted into the hallway. Stokes gave chase and I moved to follow but looked back at Nikki. Why hadn’t the sound woken her?

  “Nikki?” I tugged on the chain to the lamp. It illuminated the room and my entire body froze. She was lying still as if she were sleeping, but her eyes were wide open. For a terrifying moment I thought she was dead until she blinked to let me know she wasn’t. Some sort of binding spell?

  Fingers dug into my hair. Ian pulled it out of the way and I felt a needle dig into my neck. I thrust my elbow behind me into his ribs and he made a pained sound. It was enough to get him off of me, but whatever was in the needle was also apparently enough to incapacitate me. My heart raced fearfully at how quickly it worked. My limbs weakened and my vision blurred and I stumbled over onto Nikki’s bed. She still couldn’t move.