She watches for a few seconds. “They’re gone.”
“But Edik is still right where you can see him. In two minutes he will begin moving forward, closing in on us, not trying to keep hidden.”
“Closing in on us? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“If you were out here by yourself, you would be justifiably scared out of your mind.”
“I’m approaching that point right now. What . . .”
“Hush sister. You’re with me. Nothing will happen to you. Although they are right now in their hunt mode, they are still completely under my control, responding only to my commands.”
“What do you mean responding to your commands? You haven’t given any commands except to me to stand here.”
“I’ve been giving commands continuously. Every move they make is being dictated by me.”
“Are you saying you’re controlling them with your mind? I don’t believe you.”
“Edik is now getting closer.”
She nods her head.
At thirty feet away I stop him. “He is now going to sit, and then lay down.”
A few seconds pass and she nods her head.
“Now he is going to stand and come the rest of the way until he can place a paw on my shoulder, which he will do. He is no longer in the hunt mode.” Thirty seconds later his paw lands on my shoulder. I stiffen up that side to keep from being knocked over. “Look behind you.”
She turns around. “Holy crap!” Hansel and Gretel are lying on the ground, one licking the others head.
“If you had been game, they would be gnawing on you right now. Sit down next to me.”
She gives Edik a guarded look. I instruct him to go to the kittens. Christi sits down. We watch them for a while and then Christi says, “You’re like . . .”
“Weird?”
“Well, yeah.”
“A witch?”
She looks at me. “Your nose isn’t crooked and you don’t ride a broom, or at least I haven’t seen you ride a broom.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay, then. I’ll assume you’re not a witch.”
“No pointy hat either.”
“True. What I was going to say was that you’re telepathic.”
“Bingo.”
“That’s it? I’m an outcast in school because you’re telepathic?”
“I talk to animals.”
“Nobody has ever said you talk to animals. They’ve said you can start fires, you levitate cars, you can fry someone’s brain just by thinking it, that you do incantations and voodoo. Oh, and you perform animal sacrifices. Sarah’s brother thinks you killed their dog.”
“He was run over by a car. Sarah and I both watched it happen.”
“He’s saying you made it happen.”
I look up to the treetops. “Holy shit to hell! What has happened to that school?” I look back at my sister. “You can’t go back there.”
“I have to. Finals are next week. Missing this week is going to kill me.”
“I’m not talking now. You can’t go back in the fall.”
“Where else am I going to go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Aunt Suzie’s. That’d be a school change.”
“Dad wouldn’t go for it. Besides, if they get married she’d move in.”
“Are they talking marriage?”
“Not that I know of, but I think she has hinted at moving in.”
“Are you okay with that?”
“I guess. It’s weird.”
“No shit.”
“You think Matt’s mom will mess that up?”
“I don’t know, little sister. I don’t know.” For a good minute we just sit staring at the young sabre-toothed cats. They are like a pair of bookends, heads almost together, looking at us. Their eyes open and close slowly as though they need to take a nap but don’t want to miss out on the conversation. Edik is off to the side, relaxed, not paying us much mind. I know that his senses are on guard for threats and game.
Christi breaks the spell. “In the cavern you said you’d tell me everything when we get home. You are definitely coming home, aren’t you?” Her voice is full of optimism.
“We have the tickets, don’t we?” I haven’t even gotten to sleep in my new house in Bozeman yet. “Yes, I guess, for a few weeks. We’ll see how it goes.”
She takes my hand and leans her head on my shoulder. “Thank you.” She sighs. “You’ll tell me about the cloned babies?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you about the babies. I’ll tell you everything.”
Chapter 64
June 29, 2009 – Monday
Fort Worth, Texas
We are packed, Christi and I, and we aren’t even sneaking out in the early dark morning, although it is barely past sunrise. Dad is not entirely on the same page with us but he has given his blessing in any case. We are flying up to Kalispell, Montana where we will be picked up by Sharon and Matt. From there it is over to their place in Columbia Falls where my car–it’s now my car because Dad agreed to put it in my name, though it’ll always be Mom’s car–awaits its driver. Yes, that means Sharon and Dad have talked. Nothing came of it, or at least I don’t think so. The desire burned in me to break into his thoughts, but I remained a good girl and stayed out. I made a vow over my mother’s watery grave and I am determined to stick to it. No more use of my powers.
We’ll spend a night there and then drive to Bozeman where Christi is going to live with me. Now at eighteen years plus two weeks, I can be her legal guardian and she can go to school where no one knows who we are. I talked to Mandi last week. She is in fact transferring to Missoula, and has yet to return to Bozeman for her things. Her reunion with her mother went well, but the following weeks turned to crap. She turned her stepfather in for rape and all hell has broken loose. Another story entirely.
Mandi doesn’t know that I will be spending the night in Matt’s home. It’s better she doesn’t know; after all, it doesn’t mean anything. Christi and I will be Sharon’s guests, not his. I have no intentions toward him.
Still, there was that dream last night . . . he and I . . . wow!
Dad shuts the trunk and we all climb into the car, Christi and me in the back, Dad and Aunt Suzie in the front. Our flight leaves from Dallas-Fort Worth International in just over three hours. Dad waits while we all get buckled, Christi having to dig her buckle out of the seat crack. There’s a click, an “Okay,” from Christi and then Dad starts the car. The belt around my chest feels too tight so I loosen it, but the tightness doesn’t go away.
The damned tightness doesn’t go away! The car pops into reverse and the tightness jumps to my center, rises like a phoenix up into my throat and the movie starts playing in my head. The car starts backing.
The vision that arises is a girl on a bike, newspapers in a basket on the front and in the back. She wears a Cowboys ball cap; her blond ponytail wiggles out the hole in the back, bouncing against a sleeveless yellow sweatshirt that says, “I’M A SISSY! WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OF IT?” Three hoop earrings hang off of each ear. Her head is down as she reaches for a newspaper with her right hand. Her head comes up as she passes our mailbox and the huge bush that hides our driveway. With an easy movement of her arm, something she has done thousands of times, she flings the paper and then sees the backup lights of Dad’s car. In a flash she slams her left hand onto the brake, flinging her over the front wheel. Both hands hit the pavement first, and then her left cheek. In the corner of my vision the bike bounces well out of harm's way, but in the dead center, the young teenager, who challenges you to make something of being a sissy, slides under Dad’s rear driver- side wheel and is instantly crushed to death. He never sees her.
“STOP!”
I don’t even realize I’ve screamed until our heads finish whip lashing and the car stops rocking. A newspaper bounces across the roof, then the hood, before vanishing onto the driveway.
“Sorry!” the sissy girl calls even as she is reaching for the next paper, vanishi
ng from sight.
“Wow!” Aunt Suzie says. “How did you see her?”
A rhetorical question, I expect, so I don’t answer. Dad turns and looks at me. I smile back. He knows. I take Christi’s hand and squeeze it. She knows, too. I told her everything, just as I promised.
Dad takes a breath and relaxes, then cautiously pulls out onto the street. I sit back, think about what just happened, and come to one horrible conclusion. I may have vowed to my mother that I wouldn’t use my talents, my powers if you will, again, but sometimes I have no choice.
Sometimes trouble just has to come looking for me.
# # #
Thank You...
...for reading The Last Sabre. If you enjoyed the sabre-toothed cat trilogy, please consider my time-travel duo, Before Anne After and Time Will Tell. Through a series of small errors and oversights – a missed phone message, an unlocked high-security door, a lax in protocol, a falling purse – eight month pregnant Annabelle Waring unknowingly stumbles into her husband’s time-travel experiment. She awakens in a 1943 Charleston Navy Shipyard barracks with no memory of the event. Her existence and her sanity become questionable. If not for her newborn baby and a Charleston, South Carolina police officer, she would certainly have checked herself into the funny farm. Her doctor, alias German spy, learns before she does that she is not only a time traveler, but a highly educated woman in the field of nuclear science and World War II history. When she finally discovers her own secret, Anne must strive to get both her and her infant daughter home, even at the risk to her own life.
And now, the first two chapters of Before Anne After...
CHAPTER 1
Friday ~ July 17, 1987
Gripped in her left hand was the insert from the Summerville Journal, an ad for fine handmade furniture in an exclusive showroom in Summerville–Low Country Wood Artists, celebrating forty years serving South Carolinians. With her right hand she reached toward the smooth scripting lines cut into the fine wood. It was her name, Annabelle, an inch high, five inches long, obviously carved by a craftsman. The entire inscription read, “For my mother, Annabelle.” Just as her fingers brushed it there came a tingle and she immediately saw a vision of a man and a young girl, like a memory that she didn’t understand. She pulled away. She had never before seen this piece of furniture, or the carving, and had no recollection of the man or the girl. Becoming suddenly startled by a woman standing next to her, she gasped the breath she had been holding and straightened up.
“I’m terribly sorry to scare you,” the woman said. “I’d have announced my presence, but you seemed to be rather involved with this desk.”
Anne flushed. “I was just remembering something. Very strange. It’s gone now.”
“Can I be of assistance to you then?” the woman asked.
Anne put her hand on the desk. “Oh, I wish. It’s just too far out of my budget.”
“We can work up a payment plan; no interest.”
“My husband would shoot me.”
The woman laughed. “I understand. Here’s my card in case you should change your mind. This is actually an antique, built by my father a few years before I was born, well before the business was started. It’s a very cherished piece.”
She glanced at the card and then slid it into her pocket. “Your father is quite a craftsman.”
“Yes, he was. He passed away six years ago. My brothers are the craftsmen now. Actually, we prefer to call them artists. They’re as good if not better than their father.”
Anne looked around the showroom. “They must stay very busy.”
“They create only the finest pieces. We contract out all the rest or we simply couldn’t keep up. Everything still meets my father’s standards though so you can count on quality with everything we sell.”
The movement of the roll top was exceptionally smooth. “I can’t believe this is, how old?”
“About 55 years give or take a year. None of us kids know for sure.”
“This is a family heirloom? Was Annabelle your grandmother?”
“Annabelle?” the woman said with a blank expression.
“The name carved here, under the roll-top; hidden. Don’t know why I noticed it.”
The woman peered in and ran her fingers over it. “I don’t remember that.”
Okay, Anne thought. It’s not an heirloom. She’s trying to sucker me into a sale. But I still like it and it is well built. “Why are you selling it?”
The woman looked at Anne, blinked several times and then turned back to the desk. “I don’t know.” She became silent for a very long time. “This is really strange. I can’t for the life of me remember why I put it out. I don’t remember the carving, although Annabelle was my grandmother’s name. Do you want to know something else that’s very strange?”
Anne only looked at her.
“When I was a little girl, five, maybe six, I was told by someone ...” She thought for a few seconds. “I can’t remember her name. Anyway, she told me that I would sell this roll top desk today.”
“You’re kidding!” She’s pulling my leg, Anne thought, almost laughing.
“And I didn’t remember that until this very moment. This is very, very weird.”
“Why today?”
“We are forty years old today, Low Country Wood Artists. This was the day I was told I would sell this, by a woman named ... I don’t remember.”
Anne continued to feel she was being led into a con, but when she looked into the woman’s eyes she saw sincere confusion. The woman backed away from the desk and said to Anne, “You’ll have to excuse me. I don’t know what’s come over me.”
“That’s quite all right. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment to get to. It’ll give me some time to think about it. If I come back and it’s gone, then I wasn’t the person meant to buy it.”
Anne wasn’t sure the woman heard her. She simply turned and stepped through a door marked “PRIVATE.” Anne ran her hands over the roll top once more and then left for her appointment.
Anne Waring finished dressing and then waited. She liked clinics. She looked around and wondered why. It was clean, sterile and organized, but there was something more. It was the aura; soft silence in a busy environment? She didn’t like being a patient and had no secret drive to go to medical school. She just liked the atmosphere. She mentioned that to Steven one time but he only made a face at her.
She rested her hands on her swollen belly and looked at the posters and literature on the walls. They depicted various health issues a responsible and health conscience mother or mother-to-be should be concerned about. She was reading about nursing when the exam room door opened.
“It certainly does look like a girl to me.” Dr. Rose handed her an ultrasound photo after she settled into the chair. He pointed with a pen to a spot on the photo, which, if it were a boy, would show some kind of appendage or at least some shape. “You know, doing an ultrasound at this late date is unconventional. Being able to tell the sex at eight months is nearly impossible. In this case, however, I’d be willing to put five bucks on a girl.”
“Steven wants a boy,” Anne said and then lowered her voice to imitate her husband. “The first born should always be a boy. That way the other siblings will always have a big brother to look up to. It’s got to be a boy, Anne, no choice about it.” Anne grabbed Doctor Rose’s arm. “He said that last night and I had this vision of a gang of children in single file parading down the street. Was I relieved when he said he only wanted three.”
Doctor Rose chuckled. “Believe me, when she’s born your husband will be the happiest man alive. It’s amazing how they change overnight.” He picked up her records and stuck them in a slot on the exam room door. “So far everything is just fine. By my calculations I still hold you due ... let’s see ... four weeks from today.”
She shifted her position in the chair. “August seventeenth and it had better not be a day late.”
“First births often are late, so don’t get too upset if
we slip past the twentieth.”
“I know! I know!”
“How is the Lamaze coming?”
“It isn’t. Steven has gone once. He says it’s just a bunch of hype and was invented by women looking for employment.”
Dr. Rose laughed. “I haven’t heard that excuse yet.”
“What’s the point in going without my partner?” She had tried that once and felt completely out of place. It was a source of stern disagreement between her and Steven.
“Even by yourself there’s a lot you can learn, Mrs. Waring. It really is important. Would you like me to call your husband?”
“I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but if you think there’s a chance, you’re welcome to try.”
“I certainly will. Stop at the desk before you leave to schedule your next appointment. And keep walking!”
Anne Waring wrestled her husband’s old truck out of the clinic parking lot. No power steering, no power brakes, no air conditioning, and you needed to be a Sumo Wrestler to roll the windows up and down. That plus eight months pregnant and a hot and humid South Carolina summer afternoon, didn’t make driving around town very pleasant. She was stuck with the monster, as she preferred to call the truck, because her Celica decided to quit on her in the middle of rush hour traffic the previous day. “The timing chain broke and it’s $350,” was the report she passed on to Steven on the phone after the shop called midmorning. Great!
In fifteen minutes she was again standing in the furniture showroom, enjoying the cool air, dreading the fact that she would have to go back out in that heat again to go home.
“May I help you?”
Anne turned. A young salesman was approaching. “I was looking at something with ...” she pulled up a mental picture of the card handed to her earlier by the sales lady and said, “Heather Browning. Is she available?”
“I believe she is. I’ll get her for you.”
When Heather appeared, Anne was admiring the desk again. “I was kind of hoping it would already be sold so that the decision would be made for me.”
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