Gathering Shadows – Part 1 November 30, 2012
Posted by techtigger in flash fiction.Tags: #fridayflash, flash fiction, Nox and Grimm, serial fiction, serials
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–Interlude–
A breeze blew in through the window, warm and heavy with the promise of a summer storm. It ruffled the pages of a leather bound journal, so that the paper brushed against the broad, scarred hand that lay flat across it. Grimm blinked, brought out of his trance, and looked down at the words that slowly wrote themselves across the page.
The old knight smiled, pleased to see how well the enchantment was working. The story flowed out from his memories and wrote itself, just as Galen’s notes said that it would. The secret to pscyho-reactive ink was a secret no more. Nox would be thrilled – this meant that, blind or not, she could continue her studies of technomancy. Her ideas, his hands to build whatever contraptions she dreamt up. Not a bad compromise, he thought cheerfully. It would be good to do something that did not involve bloodshed. He had seen too much of it in his long life.
Grimm flipped through the pages of the journal, wondering what Nox would think of it all. It was easy to see where his memories ended, and Galen’s began. The crafty old enchanter had found a way to record his memories within the Key to Winds. He had given the key to Grimm, and it recorded his memories as well. And Grimm had been possessed by the Shadowkin, for two thousand years.
His smile faded as he looked at the blank pages that still waited to be filled. What came next would, by necessity, tell their tale as well. Grimm shuddered at the thought. It had only been a few months since the spirits of the Shadowkin were destroyed, and he was not looking forward to hearing their voices in his head again. It took him a long while, as the moon rose and set, to work up the courage to go on.
Finally, Grimm shut the window, cutting off the humid breeze just as the first drops of rain started to fall. Then he placed his hand back on the journal, and let the memories flow slowly out onto the pages.
“Sometimes you choose the path you are on. Sometimes it is set before you. I had no idea, when I helped Galen heal someone for the first time that my whole world was going to change. Every single thing, right down to my name…”
—————–
Gathering Shadows
Grey kept a firm grip on Galen’s hand. His father lay between them, his breath coming in short, painful gasps, and his skin had taken on a bluish pallor. Grey had seen too many people die of wyvern poison not to recognize the symptoms. Aurelius was on the way down. “Hurry Galen, please.”
The elder Air kindred grimaced. “Don’t interrupt. A healing this complicated requires a lot of juggling.”
Grey looked at him, perplexed. Galen hadn’t moved a muscle. He could only assume the man was working out something in his head.
After an eternity, (which was probably only a few moments,) Galen smiled, and gave a satisfied nod. “I have it. Brace yourself; this may feel a bit uncomfortable.” He sketched a few casting marks in the air, and they whirled around the three of them in a dizzying spiral. The marks gained in speed, rushing past in the familiar roar of a cyclone, before collapsing in on top of them.
Grey was in no way prepared for what happened next. The marks seemed to grow as they fell, burning bright before his eyes so that he could see them even when his eyes were shut. Every hair on his body stood on end as the marks sunk into him, moving through him like the blood through his veins. He could feel something inside him changing, a door being opened – and the world rushed in.
Every smell became more sharp; the damp, earthy scent of the cave, the sour, fevered sweat on those still afflicted by the poison, the resinous scent of pine boughs added to the fire. His hearing sharpened as well, bringing sounds up from the lower caverns, hound pups whining for their mothers and healers chatting as they drew water from the cistern. Every dropped spilled from their buckets was like the roar of the ocean on the beach, every footstep and avalanche of sound. Grey reeled back, his senses overwhelmed.
Galen was shouting something. “Can’t…too wild…Aurengrey, let go, I’ll handle the backlash!”
Grey shook his head to try and clear it, the sound of his own hair blowing about as loud as trees roaring in a gale. Hadn’t Galen said letting go could be deadly? He could feel Galen’s hold starting to slip.
Grey changed his grip and held on, the corded muscles in his arm standing out as he fought to steady them both. He could feel the energy swirling through him, swinging wildly, wobbling like a cyclone about to collapse into its center. Comprehension dawned on him like a thunderclap. Galen had tried to whirl the Wind around from the outside and gotten caught in its wake. A cyclone could only be controlled from within.
He ignored Galen, who was shouting at him. He shut out the sounds, the smells, all of the information the Wind was bringing to him and pushed it out, away from him so that he sat in its center.
The silence in the eye of the storm was pure bliss.
Grey felt his heart pounding in his chest and calmed himself, taking deep, slow breaths. Then he reached out with his senses and brought order to the storm, taming its motion and letting it flow around him.
Galen still sat across from him, a look of surprised relief in his eyes. “Remarkable,” he said, and gave Grey a rueful smile. “That was very nearly my last mistake. Thank you.”
He watched Grey for a long minute, and nodded again. “Hand the energy back, if you would. I have the knack of it now.” Galen sketched a new set of marks on Aurelius’ forehead with his free hand, and gently took control of the Wind.
It was only when Grey let go of the Air casting that he realized they had an audience. All of the healers crowded in around them, watching Galen intently.
The energy funneled down and spread across Aurelius’ body, forming little whorls of turbulence all across his skin. Galen placed a hand over each spot and extracted a tiny spine, no thicker than a hair. “See here,” Galen said. “The wyvern poison in the spines disrupts the flow of the elements, and without that the body’s systems begin to shut down. Remove the spine, neutralize the toxins and the body will begin to heal itself. Do not,” he said, looking around to catch every one of their eyes, “attempt a transfusion of energy as I am doing here. I mean it. If this were not such an extreme case, even I would not attempt it.”
Grey thought of how close they had come to having the casting implode, and agreed with him whole-heartedly. He was already feeling a bit woozy from the amount of energy draining out of him, but he forced himself to stay upright. “If there is another extreme case, I’ll be the donor. I know what to expect.”
“Let us hope it is not necessary,” Galen said.
It took an hour to get the last of the spines out of Aurelius. Galen dropped the last one into a glass jar with all the others, and let go of Grey’s hand. He held the jar up, squinting at its contents. “Pernicious stuff. I’m not one to tack imprecise labels on things, but I’d say this is as close to pure evil as I’ve ever seen.”
Grey let himself sag back against the wall, feeling as empty as a cloth sack. “What’s so imprecise about evil? Seems pretty straight-forward to me.”
“Life is seldom so black and white, my young friend,” Galen said. “But there can be no good reason for something like this to exist, no excuse for it. It should never have been made.”
Grey sat up a little. “That is the second time you’ve implied that these things weren’t natural. You promised an explanation.”
“I did,” Galen said, and let out a tired sigh. “You most certainly deserve to know what caused all this. I only hope you will forgive for not telling you sooner, for I feared you would not trust me to come help your people if you knew the whole story.” He closed his eyes, lines of fatigue etched deep in his face. “You see, it was my own family who created these horrors…”
—-
<– Back to the first half of Grey’s story, The Wanderer’s Tale – Part 10
Bloodlines – Part 7 November 27, 2012
Posted by techtigger in flash fiction.Tags: flash fiction, paranormal, serial fiction, serials, virgil
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Virgil found Sophie curled up on her bed with a book. She glanced up as he shut the door behind him.
“I still can’t get through to HQ… Oh my god, what happened?” she asked, jumping to her feet.
“Time to put your game face on, babe. This just turned into an official case,” Virgil said, and eased himself gingerly onto the cot. He ached everywhere from the mauling the ghost had given him, and the scratches on his arms were throbbing.
Sophie grabbed the blanket off her bed and wrapped it around him. “I think you’re right. Something has cut me off from the ghosts here.”
“Not something. Someone. I just don’t know who yet.” He rolled his head from side to side to work out the knots in his neck and back. “I did a little poking around, to see if I could stir something up. And boy-howdy did I. Our strangler is a class four malevolent haunt, and I’m pretty damned sure it’s being controlled,” he said, giving his partner a cautious look. She looked as composed as she was going to get, considering the circumstances. “I don’t know of any good way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. Your aunt was its first victim.”
She sat down slowly, her face a mask of grief. “She was a skilled Medium, Virgil. Better than I am. How did it get to her?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it caught her nodding off, like it did with you.”
She brushed away the tears gathering in her eyes. “Who are the suspects.”
“Everyone in the house, excluding you and me. Your entire family has the gift. Although I may be able to rule out most of them.”
Sophie took a deep breath and let it out, visibly trying to push aside her grief. “Fine then, let’s work the case. If we shut down the k…killer, and the haunt goes away. Give me your impressions.”
Virgil took a moment to think back over every contact he’d had with her family—handshakes, unintentional bumping of hands or feet at the table, or, in Desi’s case, completely intentional contact. He started with the least likely candidates.
“I think we can safely count out Alex’s three thug-lings,” he said. “I give them a year before they move on from tormenting neighborhood pets to bullying their school mates, but they don’t have a scrap of brains between them; certainly not enough to control a malign spirit, even if they worked together on it.”
“Desiree wants whatever she can get away with, and she has the Talent. But both attacks were too calculated and controlled for someone with impulse issues. That, and she’s terrified of ghosts.”
Sophie nodded in agreement. “You can’t control what you fear.”
“Mmm-hmm. Alex is already redecorating the house in his mind. So much for a son’s love,” Virgil said, making a face. “But he’s a minor talent, and as subtle as a wrecking ball. Whoever is setting up all the veils around the house has skill and a light touch. Which rules out Bryant. He has some power and wants more, but he’s clumsy, a poser.”
Sophie’ eyes widened. “Linda.”
“Only one left, though I almost ruled her out,” Virgil said. “She must be good enough to veil any talent from me, and keep you from connecting with any ghosts.”
“She never moved out. That would give her close ties to the spirits here,” Sophie said. “She’s been nearby and gotten upset every time the poltergeist acted up: the lights going out in the entry hall, the china breaking. And she would have felt it when I tried to talk with my Aunt’s ghost. The attack there came almost immediately. The only one that doesn’t add up is the attack on you.”
Virgil held up the necklace, and Sophie gasped. “That’s my Aunt’s! She used it to commune with the spirits in the house.”
Virgil gave it to her. “Linda was veiling that hallway to the root cellar where I found it, so she must be afraid or ashamed of what happened there. Her mother’s ghost went straight back there. I got to feel the re-enactment of her murder first hand.”
“They said she fell down the stairs,” Sophie said, cradling the gaudy gem in her hands.
“Nope. I ended up out by the front door when I was caught in that memory loop. Honora fought it, and tried to get away,” Virgil said. He rubbed at his sopping wet hair with a corner of the blanket. “The thing I want to know is, why go after her?
Sophie wrapped her arms around herself. “Power doesn’t make sense with Linda. She already has access to all the energy in the house, and she could have simply stolen the necklace. Unless my Aunt locked her away from the ghosts for some reason?”
“Or wrote her out of the will,” Virgil pointed out. “She was pretty testy with Alex, and people have done worse to get their inheritance.”
Sophie stared at her Aunt’s necklace, which dangled from her fingers. “We’re going to have to question Linda to find out for sure. All of this is still circumstantial. There might be someone else we’re not aware of.”
Virgil doubted it, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. People weren’t always rational about family. “All we have to do is get past her killer poltergeist, top-notch veils, and anything else she can do that we don’t know about. Piece of cake.” He tossed off the blanket and dug through his suitcase for the the pistol he always kept in a hidden compartment. “I know she’s family, but we have to go in assuming she’s armed and dangerous. If you can’t stay detached enough to handle that, we’ll have to run into town to send word to HQ, and get someone else run the investigation.”
“No,” she said quickly, “I can do this.”
Virgil gave her an encouraging nod. “If we move fast we can shut her down before anyone else gets hurt. I’ll lock down her mind; you keep the haunt off my back while I question her. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch her sleeping and have our answers before she wakes up.”
Virgil tried not to get twitchy while he waited for Sophie to get dressed again, with limited success. Something about this whole situation still didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. That was the problem with being the canary in the coal mine; no one figures out what’s wrong till the bird keels over…
<-Bloodlines #6 ~~~|||~~~ Bloodlines #8 ->
Bloodlines – Part 6 November 20, 2012
Posted by techtigger in flash fiction.Tags: flash fiction, paranormal, serial fiction, serials, virgil
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Honora’s ghost floated next to Virgil, still wringing her hands. She looked harmless enough, but he wouldn’t be the first Agent to think that about a spirit, only to end up getting shoved down a flight of stairs. He eyed up the rickety wooden slats that descended into the root cellar. The dim glow cast by his zippo gave him just barely enough light to make out a packed dirt floor at their base, but not much else. A sour, rotting smell wafted up at him.
He stood up and backed away from the opening. “Chivalry be damned. No more games, Auntie. Either you tell me what you want down there, or I go back to bed and call it a night.”
Honora floated closer, and pointed down the stairs.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Virgil said. He pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. “Here. Drain the battery and speak through it.” He tapped the screen with his thumb to turn the volume up, and held it between them.
She reached out to touch it, and a dry, papery voice whispered out of the speaker, “Seal the well.”
A breeze made the flame of his lighter flutter, sending light and shadows dancing around the stairs. Something glittered on the bottom step. The ghost floated over to the stairs and beckoned again, pointing to the object.
It wasn’t that far, but the stairs were steep enough that falling down them would hurt. Still, if it got the old biddy to leave him (and his cigarettes) alone, it might, maybe be worth it. “Virgil, you’re an idiot,” he muttered to himself, and dashed down to pick it up. It was a necklace, and the clasp was snagged on a nail.
He held up the lighter and took a quick look into the darkened room. The darkness looked back into him. And then it started crawling towards him.
Virgil yanked the necklace free and ran like hell back up the stairs. He kicked the trap door shut and slammed the bolt home. Then he leaned against the wall, his heart pounding and a prickle of sweat all over him. “What were you messing with here, woman?” he said, holding up the necklace to get a better look at it. As far as he could tell, it was just costume jewelry—a dark purple stone surrounded by smaller white ones, all set in a gaudy gold filigree. “This is it? All this fuss for a piece of junk?” he said.
Honora floated closer and placed a hand on his arm. A chill, splintered glass sensation ran through him as the ghost drew more energy from him. “Seal the well,” she whispered.
He narrowed his eyes in annoyance at the apparition. “Could you be any more cryptic?”
“Seal the well.”
“And Sophie wonders why I hate working with ghosts,” Virgil grumbled. He stuffed the cheap necklace in his pocket and glared back at the trap door, just in time to see the bolt slide open.
“Oh, crap.”
He took off down the hall at a run. Virgil hadn’t survived working for the Agency this long by ignoring his instincts. Whatever was down there would play for keeps. The hallway stretched out endlessly in front of him, and nothing looked familiar. “Crapcrapcrap spatial distortions…” He sent out a quick, psychic blast to try and stun whatever rudimentary mind remained in the haunt. It growled, low and guttural, and something slammed into his back. He went sprawling to the floor and tucked into a roll, using his arms to cover his neck and head to avoid getting strangled. Fingernails raked at his forearms, and a weight pushed down on him.
It growled again, right in his ear, and started shoving his face into the floor. Virgil let out a muffled yell as he tried to wrestle free. Something cold slipped into his hand, and he yelled again until he realized it was the necklace.
As soon as it pressed against his palm, he knew exactly what Sophie had done to tear apart the ghost that had attacked her. He reached up into the haunt and tried to grasp the core of energy it used to manifest itself, but it shrieked and pulled away. The shadowy figure retreated down the hallway and collapsed in on itself, and Virgil heard it slam the trap door shut behind it.
He sat up, shaking from head to foot. Somehow, he had ended up halfway out the front door of the house with a dusting of snow covering him. He dragged himself back inside and shut the door, leaning back against it while he brushed the snow off and inspected the scratches on his arms.
That was when the next attack came, swift and silent. It was textbook one-two punch – soften up your target with a ghost, then hammer their defenses with a psychic probe while they’re down.
Virgil was hurt after the mauling the ghost had given him, but they didn’t call the Agency a Tactical Unit for nothing. There was no way in Hell he was going to get taken down by a goddamned civilian. He held onto that anger, built it up into rage, and turned it into a white hot, mirrored surface. The attack was reflected back, and he magnified it into a needle-like lance that blew past his assailant’s attempt to hide behind a veil. The house shuddered around him, and Virgil turned the heat up even higher to burn through the dark so that he could see who was behind the attacks.
They wrestled back and forth; an invisible struggle between two minds, all of it happening in the space between eye blinks…
…and it was abruptly cut off as someone opened the door behind him. He fell backwards, tripping up the person coming in, causing them to land on top of Virgil.
The new comer scrambled to his feet, and Virgil found himself looking up at an older man. He was tall, his brown hair peppered with silver, and he wore an expensive tailored suit that he brushed off and set to rights. Everything about him proclaimed “successful family patriarch.”
“Good god man, are you all right?” the man asked.
Virgil ignored him for a moment and tried to reconnect with his assailant, but the presence was gone. He wanted to howl up at him, “You let it get away!” but thought better of it. For all he knew, this guy was the killer. Better to play it smart. “Yeah, fine, I just slipped on the ice. You’re Uncle Bryant, right?” he said, trying to look nonchalant as he lay there shivering and dripping melted snow onto the carpet.
Bryant gave him a paternal smile. “And you must be Sophie’s co-worker. Desi was all aflutter about you,” he said. “What were you doing outside at this hour?”
Virgil held up one of the knotted cigarettes, “Your dear departed sister does not approve of smoking.”
Bryant laughed. “My apologies. Virgil, was it? I was in the same pickle myself. Went to light up a cigar, and every one of my matches had the head cut off. Spent the last half-hour scouring the house for another pack, until I remembered I had one in the car.”
Virgil watched him as he talked but didn’t get much off of him, except that he was actively veiling his Talents. If he was the murderer, he was one cool customer. Virgil felt as wrung out as a dishrag, and this guy didn’t have a hair out of place. He had even given himself an alibi for not being on watch over his sister’s coffin. Damn. There was only one good way to find out for sure.
Virgil held out his hand and braced himself for another assault. “Give me a hand up?”
Contact. Virgil was skilled enough not to give anything away other than annoyance, but to his surprise, Bryant was an open book. No sharp, controlled probes; just the usual babble of thoughts and emotions he got from everyone.
::POWERhes’gotpowerWILLheSharetheSecret?Bitch/sisterNeverSHAREDdamnedWOManGoingONaboutfemaleBLOODLINESandITSherHOUSEnotMineMaybethisGUYcanMakeLindaGIVEmeHOUSE::
Virgil broke the contact as soon as he was on his feet. Bryant had talent, but it wasn’t enough to even make the bottom rung of what the Agency would find useful. It was no wonder they hadn’t recruited him along with Sophie; he didn’t have the chops for it. He certainly didn’t have the skill to power that haunt.
Which meant the culprit was still somewhere in the house.
Virgil brushed the last of the snow off his shirt. “Thanks, Bryant. I think I’m going to call it a night before your sister decides to tie me into a knot as well.”
Bryant chuckled, but looked a bit disappointed. “Maybe we can talk in the morning? I’d be interested in getting your professional opinion on a few things.”
“Yeah, sure,” Virgil mumbled, and hurried back to his room before Bryant could start digging for the “secret” to psychic powers. There wasn’t any, but he doubted anyone so obsessed with power would believe him.
Virgil paused outside the room, his hand hovering over the door knob. He was not looking forward to telling his partner that her Aunt had been murdered. This night kept getting better and better…
—
<-Bloodlines, Part 5 ~~~|||~~~ Bloodlines, Part 7 ->
The Wanderer’s Tale – Part 10 November 17, 2012
Posted by techtigger in flash fiction.Tags: #fridayflash, flash fiction, Nox and Grimm, serial fiction, serials
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The Air kindreds waited to one side, silent spectators as the Forest kin buried their dead. There was no time for ceremony – Aradann and his people called the trees, and their roots wrapped gently around the bodies and took them down into the earth.
Grey was the only one to break ranks and pay his respects alongside the Forest kin. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Aradann. In that moment, despite having only just met, years of living with the same terrible grief made them close as brothers.
Grey looked out over the brown, fresh turned earth as the trees moved away. “If you want, I can use a cyclone to bring enough stone to cover the graves,” Grey offered.
Aradann gave him a sad smile. “Thank you, but there is no need. The wyverns will not touch them. We eat berries that are harmless to our kind, but make us lethal to them.” The smile ran away from his face as he looked at the newly settled grove. “So now they simply kill us, rather than eating us.”
Grey thought of all the shattered bodies, obviously dropped from a great height. He gripped the Aradann’s shoulder in sympathy. “I’m sorry.”
“We knew the risks when we came down to the plains from our stronghold,” Aradann said. “Come, we should keep moving. Your own people still need help, and if we tarry too long these brave souls will have died in vain.”
Grey got everyone aloft in minutes. Galen had taught him the trick of lifting so much weight, and while he did not have the older man’s finesse, the tornadic winds he summoned moved them much faster. The miles fell away beneath them, tree-clad slopes giving way to rolling plains, and then to dry rocky ground as they reached the near end of the canyon. The closer they got, the more tense Grey became – for all he knew, he might well be coming home to a tomb.
The main entrance to the caverns was set mid-way up the canyon wall. Grey flew in first, dismayed to find there was no Wind barrier over the entrance. He darted through the entry cave, only to be brought up short at its back by a solid wall of granite. His fears were coming to life – it looked like the Mountain sealed up the bodies of his kin, to keep the wyverns from digging them up.
He started to pound frantically on the rock. “Tairwyn! Anyone! Open up!”
Cavall pushed through the crowd gathering behind him, barking and jumping up to scrabble at the wall.
Galen shouted at him over the noise. “Is there another way in?”
A gravelly voice answered them. “Not anymore.”
The wall melted away, revealing a worn, haggard looking Mountain kin. Grey could just make out the long, drooping mustachios the man wore, and let out a whoop. “Tairwyn! You’re still alive!”
“Stones below, it’s good to see you laddie!” Tairwyn said, pulling him into a rough hug and pounding him on the back. “I live, though there’s less of me now than there used to be.” He let Grey go and looked curiously at the group waiting behind them. “Who are your friends?”
“I brought help, healers, and more medicine,” Grey said. “Where are the others? How are they?”
Tairwyn herded everyone into the passageway and sealed it up behind them. “Right where you left them. We had to close the entrances, not enough of us left standing to keep guard day and night. Most of my folks are recovering, but I’m afraid we’ve lost some of yours,” he said, shaking his head. “The poison won’t get out of their system. It’s like it was made to kill the Wind tribes.”
“It very well might have been,” Galen said, his expression bleak.
“You’ll explain that to me later, right?” Grey asked, and waited for Galen’s nod. “All right then. Let’s get to work.”
—
They say the character of a man can be seen through how he treats others. Those were Galen’s thoughts as he labored over the grievously ill members of the Wind tribes. It would have been perfectly natural for Aurengrey to want some immediate answers. Or to rush to his parents side, and demand that they be treated first. And yet, he had calmly accepted Galen’s promise and patiently helped to organize everyone so that those in the direst need would be healed first. He worked tirelessly, refusing to rest despite having just fought a battle and flown their entire group for miles. He teased a little girl to make her smile, and cajoled a temperamental elder to cooperate with the healers. It was obvious the warriors of the Mountain kin respected him. The Forest kin had accepted him without question.
Galen was more than a little impressed himself by this quiet young warrior. He had watched Aurengrey throughout the journey – he fought like a demon, but took no joy or pride in it. He was selfless, earnest, and had a depth of compassion and wisdom that belied his youth. If the greater Houses of Air had not fallen in their civil war, Galen would have sponsored him to become a Wind Knight.
Galen had long since put aside his own sword, but he had never given up on the ideals that were the foundation of the order, nor stopped searching for one he felt worthy to carry on their legacy. There was little doubt in his mind that in Aurengrey, he had found what he sought.
The question was, would he want anything to do with Galen when he found out why his people had nearly been destroyed?
Galen finally settled down by Aurengrey’s parents. Aurelius slept fitfully, his breath rattling in his lungs. Merina was awake, but delirious. She reached out and gripped the hem of Galen’s robes. “Where is my Aurengrey? My sweet little boy? Please, tell him to come home. You will, won’t you?”
Grey hurried over and held her gently in a hug. “I’m home, Mom. I haven’t been little for a long time though,” he said, laughing quietly.
Merina looked up at him with feverish eyes. “Don’t tease, papa. Have you seen my son?”
Grey let out a choked sound. “She always said I looked like my grandfather.” He clenched a fist in frustration. “I feel so useless. I can snap a wyverns’ bones like they were twigs, but I can’t do a thing to help her.”
“Don’t belittle your efforts,” Galen said. He waved for Xenobia. “See to her, please. I am afraid Aurelius will need all of my attention.”
“Of course, my Lord,” Xenobia said. She sat by Grey and placed her hands on Merina’s head. “Hold her still.”
Galen did the same for Aurelius, placing a hand on either temple. He summoned Air, and let it course out through him. His House was Zephyr, a far gentler wind than the ones used by Cyclonis, but he had to hope it would be enough. He let his thoughts sink down, working the Air into patterns and setting them loose. He lost track of time, his whole being focused on this one, singular task. Find the poison, and neutralize it.
Aurelius was not responding. The poison had spread everywhere. Galen’s entire body went taught, as if he were straining against a great weight. His own breathing became labored, coming out in short gasps. Finally, he let out a sharp cry and slumped forward, feeling as if all the life had drained out of him.
“Not enough,” Galen croaked, his voice gone hoarse. “I can’t channel enough of the right sort of Wind to reach him.”
Grey looked over at him in panic. “I’ll channel any kind of wind you want. Just tell me how!”
Galen sat back wearily and shook his head. “Too dangerous. Healing comes from within, and you have no training. It would kill you both.”
“There has to be a way!” Grey said. “Can’t I give the energy to you somehow?”
Galen rubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe. A transfusion of his own element…Yes, it just might work.” He sat up straighter. “Give me your hand.”
Grey thrust his right hand out to him. “Take whatever you need. As much as you need.”
Galen took Grey’s outstretched hand, and clasped it firmly. “Whatever you do, do not let go. All three of our lives depend on it.”
“I won’t falter,” Grey said, as calm and steady as Galen could have wished.
The healing was going to be tricky. He had to take enough of the element from Aurengrey to learn its ways, but not so much that it drained the boy and overwhelmed his own system. Then he would have to share it with Aurelius, and hope that his strength didn’t fail. And all of this had to be done soon. Aurelius would not live to see another hour, let alone another day. There would be no second chance.
But situations like this were exactly why Galen had become a healer. He gave Aurengrey an encouraging smile. “Let us begin…”
—
NEXT WEEK – Grey’s story continues in GATHERING SHADOWS, Part 1.
Sometimes you choose your path. Sometimes it is set before you. The dark road that Grey took in becoming Grimm was a long one, but herein lies the first steps…
—
Bloodlines – Part 5 November 13, 2012
Posted by techtigger in flash fiction.Tags: flash fiction, paranormal, serial fiction, serials, virgil
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Virgil walked Sophie back to their room, keeping a close eye out for any shadow people. The house was unusually quiet. The ghost must have used up too much energy in its attempt to kill Sophie for it to manifest again.
When they got to the room Sophie stopped so abruptly that Virgil nearly ran into her. “What is that smell?” she said, making a face.
Virgil took a sniff, and sighed. “Desiree stopped by. That lady has more issues than just being rude.”
Sophie sat down on her bed and groaned in dismay. “I’m so sorry, Virgil. I thought this would be a simple matter of soothing a few ruffled feathers.”
“Considering what just happened to you, I’m glad I came along,” Virgil said. He snagged the fresh pack of cigarette from his coat pocket. “Will you be okay for a few minutes? I need some fresh air, the perfume is killing me.”
“And the cigarettes won’t kill you?” Sophie said, her one eyebrow arched.
“I like to pick my poisons, thank you very much. You keep your eyes open.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m on my guard now. Don’t stay out too long, it’s a cold one tonight.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
He scooped up the offending linens on the way out and tossed them onto a porch swing. Then he brushed the snow off the railing and leaned on it, breathing deeply to clear the smell of Bargain-Bin-Not-Quite-Chanel-Number 5 from his head. Then, having gotten his quota of fresh air for the day he tore open the pack of cigarettes and tapped on the bottom to slide one out. He got nothing. The brand-new pack was empty. “Son of a bitch!” he cursed, and stomped back inside.
He found all of the cigarettes lined up across the end of his bed, each one tied in a knot.
Sophie was oblivious to any foul play. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor in a meditative stance, her eyes closed. A small hand bell lay next to her knee. It was a standard tool that operatives used for working with ghosts—the sound of it ringing disrupted the energy wavelengths a ghost moved in, which gave a trained Medium a hold to control them with.
She opened her eyes as the door slammed shut behind Virgil. “I can’t get through to the switchboard ghosts at HQ, and the locals won’t talk to me,” she said. “It’s like I’m running into a wall. I’ll have to drive into town tomorrow to find some cell reception, so I can report the attack to HQ.”
“Can you pick me up some smokes while you’re there?” Virgil said, jabbing his thumb in the direction of his abused Lucky Strikes.
Sophie had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Oh dear. Hee. Ahem. I’m really am sorry, Virgil. Aunt Honora had some very definite ideas about smoking.”
“She’s here? You’ve talked with her ghost?” Virgil said.
Sophie’s smile faded. “No. I’m guessing she doesn’t want to speak with me. Desiree was right about that, we didn’t part on the best of terms.”
“That may not be the issue,” Virgil said, heading out into the hall. “Sit tight, and keep trying to get a hold of HQ.”
Virgil was finally starting to see the pattern in the paranormal incidents. The mischievous nature of the pranks with the cigarettes did not match up with the violence of the attack on Sophie. He was fairly certain that those lesser events were simply Honora trying to get his attention. Whoever attacked Sophie was probably also cutting her off from the local spirits, which meant that her Auntie couldn’t talk to her. The question was, did Honora know who was behind the disturbances? And if so, did Sophie get attacked for fear that Honora would tell her? There was only one way to find out.
Virgil went back to the parlor where Aunt Honora’s body lay, lit softly by candle light. No one was on watch, which was odd, considering this was a wake. Uncle Bryant was supposed to have taken over for Sophie, but there was no sign of him. No one-had come running to see what the commotion was earlier, either. He took a quick look around, and even stuck his head into each room along the hallway, but there was no one downstairs.
“No love lost anywhere with this family,” he muttered. He poked around the parlor, but Honora’s ghost made no attempt to contact him. He finally decided to settle for another of the Agency’s standard techniques. When an Agent needed to speak with a spirit, but didn’t’ have a Talent for working with them, the easiest way to get them to talk was to provoke them. Which basically meant pissing them off enough to manifest.
Virgil plunked down on the edge of the table that held Honora’s coffin, hard enough to make it rock. He crossed his arms and glared at the corpse. “All right, you old bat. Listen up.” He held up a knotted Lucky Strike. “Nicotine is the only thing keeping me from turning the brains of your pig-ignorant relatives into pudding. Now, I get it, you want to talk. But if you want me to cooperate, you had better leave my smokes alone. Do we have a deal?”
Virgil looked around again, but the room remained quiet. He reached down and gave the corpse a condescending pat on the cheek. “That’s a girl. I knew you could be reasonable.”
A bit of lace around her high collar caught on his watch as he pulled his hand away. The heavy makeup the embalmer applied had rubbed off in one spot, revealing a purple bruise.
“Hello, what’s this?” Virgil said, and leaned forward to take a closer look. He pulled a tissue out of the box that had been placed by the coffin for the mourners, and wiped away more of the makeup. Honora had two hand-shaped bruises around her throat that matched the ones Sophie had just gotten. “Damn. I hate it when my hunches are right. You didn’t die of natural causes, did you?”
The candles flickered once in reply.
He leaned back and crossed his arms again. “All right, Auntie. Now that I’ve got your attention let’s play twenty questions. Blow the candle flame once for yes, twice for no.”
A filmy mist rose up from the corpse and formed into a younger version of the woman who was laid to rest. It floated out into the hallway and beckoned to him, in a classic example of a ‘White Lady’ haunting.
Virgil snorted in amusement. “Drama queen. Fine, we’ll do it your way.”
He followed her out into the hallway, and through a door that he could have sworn wasn’t there before. It led down a short, narrow passage that ran between the kitchen and the dining room. The only light came through the open door behind him. At the hallway’s end was a small trap door set into the floorboards.
“Oh, hell no. I am not going down into the root cellar alone. I saw Evil Dead, lady. This stuff never ends well.”
The ghost waited by the trap door, the very image of a damsel in distress complete with wringing hands. Virgil could feel the sense of pleading urgency from her. He blew out his cheeks. “Chivalry sucks,” he said. He pulled out his zippo and flicked the striker, holding the tab down to keep it lit. He crouched down to open the trap door. “This had better not be some trick…”
—
<- Bloodlines #4 ~~~|||~~~ Bloodlines #6 ->
The Wanderer’s Tale – Part 9 November 9, 2012
Posted by techtigger in flash fiction.Tags: #fridayflash, flash fiction, Nox and Grimm, serial fiction, serials
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Grey leaned against the smooth stone railing of the balcony outside his room, breathing in the damp morning air. Fatigue still weighed on him from three arduous days of flying through the typhoon, but he could not resist the chance to study the sweeping vista that spread out below the castle. The city of Zephyra sprawled across the high plateau, ten times the size of all the seaports he had seen and it was still only half finished. Everywhere he looked colorfully dressed Air kin bustled about, like brightly plumaged birds.
Even the air itself shimmered, filled with the sound of fountains and wind chimes and wind flutes. Grey had never heard anything like it. The entire city raised its voice in an ethereal song to greet the new day. He was so entranced that he did not even notice that Galen had entered the room until Cavall barked a greeting. He turned and smiled at the older Air kin. “Your city is beautiful!”
“She is the child of my soul, my dream,” Galen said. “Normally I would offer to give you a tour, but time is of the essence. Are you ready?”
Grey gave the city one last look, and nodded. “Let’s go.”
They did not bother going back through the castle. Grey gathered his few belongings, called Cavall to his side and they simply flew from the balcony to a large courtyard near the city walls. He was surprised at the number of people waiting for them there. Men and women of all ages had gathered near the gate, laden with supplies.
Galen held up his hand and got immediate silence from them. “We will take the portal network to the eastern shore. From there we must cross the ocean diagonally to reach the southwestern continent. Aurengrey can guide us from that point. Are there any questions?”
Grey cleared his throat. “Um, sir? My home is west, not east. And what is a portal?”
Galen gave him a surprised look. “The world is round, my boy. By going east we can take advantage of the high winds and circle around the globe to where you started. As for the portals, well, some things need to be seen to be believed.” He motioned to the guards to open the gate and brushed his hand over the lintel. Energy flowed over the stones, lighting up casting marks carved into the granite.
The power built up until Grey’s hair stood on end. The air in the opening wavered like a heat mirage, and with a loud SNAP the view changed. Instead of a paved road he was now looking out at a neatly manicured lawn.
The healers walked through as if it was perfectly normal, chatting amongst themselves. Galen went through last, pushing Grey ahead of him. “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. I’ll close this one and we’ll open the next. I expect we’ll reach the coast in an hour.”
Grey turned to stare at the portal as it shut down. “How? That’s not possible!”
Galen briskly moved to a second arched gate, and repeated the casting. “What is the shortest distance between two points?”
“A straight line, unless there are obstacles to fly over,” Grey said.
Galen shooed him through the next portal. “Aha. There you are wrong. The answer is, nothing.”
Grey looked around at his new surroundings, a small fort sitting high in the mountains. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It has everything to do with folding time and space, but you’ll just have to trust the evidence of your own eyes,” Galen said, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.
They continued moving east, passing through portal after portal until they reached a citadel overlooking a sandy beach. Galen shaded his eyes against the mid-day sun. “Ah, here we are. Gather close, everyone.” He paced around the group, sketching casting marks in the sand with a piece of driftwood.
Grey looked around at the cheerful group of strangers packed in around him, feeling lost. One of them, a young woman smiled up at him. “Relax, Aurengrey. You’re amongst friends.”
“It feels more like being in the middle of a strange dream,” Grey said.
She laughed and gave his hand a squeeze. “Get used to miracles. Galen makes them every day. My name is Xenobia, by the way.”
“Call me Grey.” He looked down, and saw they were already over the ocean. He hadn’t even felt them lift off. Get used to miracles, he thought.
His second ocean crossing was much easier and faster than the first one. He had a few hours to talk with Galen and the others, and while he still didn’t understand how the portals worked he could at least see that it was just a matter of study to figure it out. They landed as gently as they took off, on a rocky coastline covered in pine trees.
“Were you able to get your bearings as we landed?” Galen asked him.
Grey gave him a curt nod, his eyes scanning the skies. “Yes, we need to move due east from here. Better set a guard.”
Xenobia looked back and forth between them. “Why?”
“No birds,” Grey said. “They always go to ground when there are wyverns are in the area.”
Cavall started to growl, a low ominous rumble deep in his chest. Grey started to gather the winds for a war casting. “Stick together! They like to pick off stragglers just like any predator.”
Galen closed his eyes, listening. “I think they have already found other prey. Beyond the ridge.”
“That ‘prey’ might be my tribe out foraging for food!” Grey said. He rocketed up into the air, spinning the winds around him in a deadly cyclone. He felt a disturbance in the air behind him, and saw Xenobia following him. “Go back!” he yelled.
“If your people are out here they will need a healer!” she yelled back.
“Dammit, you don’t know what you’re up against!” Grey said, but it was too late to turn back. A young wyvern, probably set out as a sentinel, let out a high pitched shriek as it saw them. Grey whirled his arm around as if hurling a ball, and a wind shear smacked into the wyvern, breaking its back. Grey flew high to avoid the plummeting beast, and readied another casting.
The scene below them was complete chaos. Trees whipped about as if possessed, their limbs tangling around any wyvern foolish enough to get too close. The beasts circled overhead, dropping boulders and darting downwards into the openings they created. The bodies of more than a dozen Forest kin lay broken on the ground, obviously dropped from a great height. The smell of blood was everywhere, mingled with the resinous scent of pine sap from shattered trees.
Xenobia covered her mouth in horror as she looked at the bodies. Grey yelled to her, “Forget the dead, you can’t help them. The Forest kin will be in the trees!”
Grey looked around, planning his attack. He needed to clear her a path to get to the ground. “When you see an opening, don’t stop for anything. And watch out for their tails!” He corkscrewed down into the fray, screaming out castings that crashed into wyverns as he passed through their ranks. He arced back up, hoping that Xenobia had gotten through but he couldn’t afford to look back. The wyverns were recovering from the surprise attack and circling around him in a tightening ring.
That was exactly what Grey wanted. He used their own motion to help power his next casting, a massive cyclone of the kind that gave his tribe their name. The winds picked up speed, roaring louder than the cries of his foes as they realized they had fallen into a trap. Their wings got caught like sails in a tempest and Grey could hear the fragile bones breaking. A few of them folded their wings to fall below the lowering funnel cloud, only to be caught by the flailing limbs of trees and smashed to the ground.
Finally, the last of them succumbed and fell to the earth. Grey let the winds go, but followed them down to make sure the fall killed them. A battered group of Forest kin were already moving amongst the beast, directing tree roots to take the wyvern’s heads off.
Grey landed, and was relieved to see Xenobia already working on some of the wounded. Her face was pale, her eyes still a little wild but she looked otherwise unharmed.
The leader of the Woods kin walked over to meet him. “Not many would have come to the aid of those who do not share their element. We owe you a great debt,” he said, and held out his hand. “My name is Aradann.”
Grey shook it, noting that the man’s skin had almost the same texture and color as the bark of the pine trees. “Mine is Aurengrey. And the pleasure was all mine. Any day I can take down a few more wyverns is a good one.”
Aradann laughed. “Spoken like a man who has lived with them as neighbors! Though you do not dress like the people of the plains.”
“Borrowed finery,” Grey said, with a wry smile. “I’m afraid I can’t stay long, my own people need the help of these healers.”
“The Wind tribes living in the canyon?” Aradann said. “You had better hurry then. Word came from the Mountain kin that they were desperate for medicine. We were coming to deliver some when we were attacked.”
“But they still live?” Grey said anxiously.
“Yes, barely. Can you direct us to them?”
Grey let out a relieved sigh. “I’ll do better. I’ll fly you there.”
—
<– The Wanderer’s Tale – Part 8 ~~~|||~~~ The Wanderer’s Tale – Part 10 ->
Bloodlines – Part 4 November 7, 2012
Posted by techtigger in flash fiction.Tags: flash fiction, paranormal, serial fiction, serials, virgil
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Virgil walked back to the bedroom, weighing the need for a cigarette against the brutal cold outside. It ended up being a moot point. His pack of cigarettes was empty, the package turned inside out and left on the middle of his bed. He spat out a curse, wondering if one of Alex’s little thugs-in-training had been through his luggage. Everything else was where he had left it though, so he decided to just dash out to the car to grab another pack of smokes. Things were tense enough in the house without him raising a fuss over something so trivial. He immediately regretted the impulse however, having forgotten to wear a coat. By the time he got back inside his teeth were doing their best impression of castanets, and his temper had worn down to a thread.
The shadows nipping at his heels did not help matters any, and when he got back to the room he had no patience left for what awaited him there. Desiree, draped across his bed, in a negligee that was so transparent that she might as well not have been wearing it. Virgil looked away and held the door open. “Get out.”
“But you look so cold! I could –“
“Get. Out.”
Desiree dropped her voice. “I’m frightened. I just thought you could, well, you know…” her voice faded off.
Virgil rolled his eyes at her. “Play the big strong man to protect you? Sorry, honey. I spent a lot of time out in Hollywood and trust me; you can’t pull off the sweet ingénue.”
Desiree slithered out of the bed and posed. “If not that, then what do you want me to be?”
“About two floors away from me,” Virgil grumbled, and backed the message up with a telepathic suggestion to leave.
Desiree recoiled, all out of proportion to the mild contact. This time the fear in her eyes was not feigned. “I should have known you weren’t normal. No one in this house is normal!”
The brief contact with her mind gave Virgil an unpleasant picture of her past. Someone had abused her, very possibly using a psychic Talent. That explained a lot about her behavior, and completely changed the nature of her unexpected visit. She really did need his help. “Look, I won’t hurt you,” Virgil said, “and if you ever truly feel threatened by something in the house, let me know. I won’t turn away an honest request.”
Desiree gathered the tattered threads of her dignity around her, along with the gauzy negligee. She swept past him into the hall. “Why should you care? It doesn’t want you.”
“What do you mean by “it?” Virgil asked, but she ran up the stairs out of sight, and he was not about to chase a nearly naked woman through the house.
He shut the door to the room and stripped the covers off his bed. They reeked of the cheap eau-de-toilet Desiree had doused herself with. Sadly the replacements he found were nowhere near as warm, but he wasn’t going to sleep anyway. He had too much to think about.
If he was right, and someone in the house was using their Talents to harm others he was going to have to call this in to HQ and make it an official case. His partner was not going to be happy about that. Sophie wanted a nice, dignified funeral for her aunt. But if there were civilians in danger from the paranormal, he couldn’t turn a blind eye. All he had were guesses though. He needed to find out what exactly happened to Sophie’s aunt, and track down who was riling up the ghosts. One thing was for certain, it wasn’t Desiree. There had been no reaction at all from the family poltergeist when he used his Talents on her.
Virgil wandered out to the parlor to find Sophie. If he could rule out foul play with Auntie Honora he could chalk the rest of his concerns up to paranoia and get some sleep.
There were no shadows waiting for him in the hall, and the parlor was dark. He stopped just inside the door and felt around for the light switch. “Sophie? You in there?”
A strange, hoarse sound came from somewhere inside, followed by scratching and thumps.
Virgil found the light switch and slapped it on, blinking in the sudden glow. Sophie was lying on the floor with one of the shadow people crouched on top of her chest. Her hands were clawing frantically at its wrists as it strangled her. Her feet thumped on the wooden floorboards as she struggled.
Virgil launched himself at it, hoping it had materialized enough to grab onto but his hands passed straight through it. “Damn it! Hang in there, Sophie!”
He looked around the room for anything that could be used as a bell to disrupt the ghost, but the only things nearby were the coffin, and a rocking chair knocked over beside Sophie . The ghost must have caught her nodding off while she sat vigil with her aunt’s body, and then kept her locked in sleep. Her struggles became more frantic, and Virgil cursed again. His Talents ran toward the living – he was going to have to go into her mind to wake her up, so that she could banish the spirit herself.
It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. She was already on the defensive, and any break in her concentration could give the ghost a hook into her psyche. He had seen enough cases of possession to know how bad that could be. The victim was never quite right afterwards. He knelt by her head, his hands resting on her temples. Every instinct screamed at him to hurry, that she was running out of time, but he had to go slowly. He let his thoughts slip in through the landscape of her dreams, dodging blocking walls and carefully avoiding getting sucked into memory pools. He took every punch she threw at him without trying to stop them. Any defense he put up could hurt her, so he took the blows and hoped she didn’t break anything important. After what seemed like an eternity, he got past the last barrier and found the image she had of herself standing in an empty space, eyes closed. He called out her name, sending the thought ringing through her consciousness like a bell. “Lares. Lares. SOPHIE.”
Her eyes snapped open, and she tossed him and the ghost out with a violent blast of psychic energy. Virgil’s consciousness arced back into his body, sending him flying backwards into the rocking chair. Lares plunged her hand into the ghost and tore something out of it. The thing let out a wail that set every hair on Virgil’s body on end, and it exploded in a shower of ectoplasm.
He slipped and staggered through the mess to her side. “Are you okay? What happened?”
She coughed and held a hand to her throat. Her neck was purpling with hand-shaped bruises. “I tried to talk with the ghost, to get it to calm down, but it attacked me,” she said, her voice wheezing. “I should have paid more attention to you, Virgil. I saw that something was wrong at dinner, and you never get twitchy without good reason.”
“Well, you know me, the canary in the psychic coal mine,” Virgil said, with a wry smile. “You hit like a girl, by the way.”
She let out a hoarse chuckle. “I recognized it was you. But the ghost kept trying to look like you, so I wasn’t always sure who to hit.”
“Are you sure it was the family ghost?” Virgil asked. “You did say this place was a psychic locus. Maybe without your Auntie to regulate it, some less-than-savory entities are getting pulled in.”
A frown put small lines of worry across her brow. “That is possible. I may have to cleanse the house before we go.”
“I think you had better plan on it,” he said. The shadows were gone but the silent rage still prowled the hallways. Virgil had a nasty feeling that his intervention here had just painted a large target on his back…
—-
<–Bloodlines #3 ~~~|||~~~ Bloodlines #5 ->
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