younger, more vulnerable and not the cocky, arrogant man
who had been standing before them since he had appeared
just an hour before. Had it really just been an hour, she
wondered. It felt like days and they still hadn't figured out
where Kal was.
"You're one of us." Veli took a few steps towards
Drew before stopping suddenly by the sheer look of malice
that crossed Drew's face. "I've been searching for you since
you were a baby. I'm Veli; this is Leonardo, Charma,
Marina and Isabelle. The young man who just vanished is
Kal. You can see what we can see, you're one of us and
none of us are, as you say, freaks. We're something akin to
warriors. We protect humanity from the evils in the world
that humans are simply not capable of handling by
themselves. This thing today that possessed your boss and
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the other man is one of those things."
"I'm not one of anything." Drew's tone was sharp.
"And if any one of you ever brings this up again, I'll expose
you for killing the sheriff and that other cop. I don't do
weird things most of the time and if I don't want to I don't
have to see anything at all. You've got your map, good luck
with your friend." Drew turned quickly and walked out the
way he came but not before he had to have seen the look of
sheer disappointment in Marina's eyes. He almost paused
under it but kept moving.
"Wait!" Marina called after him and charged
towards the front door but he was already gone, obviously
practiced at disappearing when he didn't want to be found.
Maybe he turned back into a wolf, Isabelle thought. It
would be easier to disappear like that. Marina seemed to
crumble for a moment in front of the door but quickly
regained herself and didn't take Charma's outstretched hand
when it was offered to her. Isabelle thought that her eyes
looked focused, determined, and slightly older than they
had looked just moments earlier.
"Now we have two major problems." Leonardo
crossed the room to shut the door. "Three if you count Dot
who is going to wake up from whatever stupor Charma has
placed her in any moment and is going to want some
answers." As if on cue, Dot appeared in the doorway of the
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room. She was shaking and confused.
"What happened to those men who were here
earlier? Something has happened, hasn't it? Where is Kal?"
Her voice was strained as if she had just woken up from a
deep sleep and wasn't quite right yet.
"Charma, would you mind?" Leonardo asked,
gesturing towards Dot. Charma quickly crossed the floor
and put her arms around a now shaking Dot.
"Don't worry, Dot. All will be well." Charma closed
her eyes and held Dot very still. A moment later Dot's eyes
opened and she had a cheery look on her face.
"Well," Dot stated easily. "I guess I'll just be going
into town to get some more supplies. I don't know why I
didn't remember these things when I went earlier. Love you
all." Dot turned easily and walked out the front door
towards the beach.
"Thank god I taught that woman how to use a speed
boat." Veli turned towards Leonardo.
"Maybe Drew can catch a ride," Marina muttered
under her breath.
"Is that how you've kept her in the dark all of these
years? Charma just changes her memories and sends her
away?" Isabelle stood up from the floor. She hadn't realized
that she had sunk to her knees until she felt herself rising
from them. "Doesn't it cause brain damage?"
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"Not yet." Charma's tone held an unusual edge.
Isabelle got the impression that Charma wasn't in love with
her lot in life and didn't enjoy being the means of deceiving
Dot. "But some day it might and then I'll be responsible for
damaging the closest thing I've ever had for a mother."
Marina was still staring at the ceiling watching the
now illuminated map above her. She seemed to be the only
one who could see what was interesting up there, other than
the fact that there was a map on the ceiling to begin with,
but if she could get Kal back using whatever it was that she
was seeing, then Isabelle wasn't going to distract her.
"Problem number two would seem to be the ever
approaching sunset. As I'm sure everyone here is aware,
Isabelle has to try to reach Abraxas to find out the location
of the books before it gets too late. We are running out of
time. Problem number three would be locating Kal and
getting him back from wherever he is and whatever just
took him," Leonardo finished, starting to pace.
"Obviously it's the Darkness that took him." Veli
shrugged.
"Yes," Leonardo answered sharply. "But unless he
is manifesting in his true form and using his true powers,
unless he has gotten that strong all of a sudden then
someone else provided the power to take Kal and if they
can take Kal then they can take any of us and I personally
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don't want to find myself on the receiving end of it. We're
not prepared to defend ourselves from it yet."
"He's gone. I doubt we'll ever get him back." Veli
opened a bottle of water and took a sip. "We need to focus
on Abraxas and the books before the Darkness grows any
stronger and it's too late. We can't afford to wait until it's
too late."
"What?" Isabelle whirled around on Veli. "I'm not
going after any books until we get Kal back. You might as
well understand that right now."
"He's either dead or turned over to be used as
Darkness' pawn." Veli put his hands on his hips. "It is the
way of things."
"The way of things?" Isabelle turned on Veli, her
eyes gleaming. How had Kal put up with this man for
years? "There's a rule book for this kind of event? We just
say whoops, Kal's gone, let's move on and find some god
forsaken prophesies? Not going to happen. What if the
prophecies tell us we can't win without Kal? I think he's
probably pretty pivotal to our effort. The only thing I'm
working on is finding Kal and then as far as I'm concerned,
he and I are leaving here pronto and you can find your own
book without my help. And by the way, just as an aside,
I've been in Kal's mind. He's not capable of turning evil. He
would die first, which is what I wish you would do at the
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moment." Isabelle whirled around to Marina. "Can you still
see whatever it is that you can see on that thing?"
"Let's not pretend that you wouldn't be more
anxious to find Kal if you weren't so afraid and jealous of
him." Leonardo spat back at Veli.
Isab
elle was relieved to see that they were on the
same side on this issue.
"I can still see him," Marina finally answered. "His
life force is still strong. I can see it clearly on the map. It's
stopped moving. He's still nearby. Evidently, whoever
pulled him away from here isn't strong enough to take him
very far. We could probably be there in a few hours. It
looks like he's somewhere close to the Maine, New
Hampshire border." Marina turned towards Isabelle. Her
eyes were slightly glowing and Isabelle could see the same
strength and determination flowing back at her. Marina had
no intention of leaving Kal to die.
"I've never been jealous in my life," Veli answered
Leonardo. "Not of Kal's father and certainly not of Kal."
"Oh sure you are. Kal just handled that
confrontation without your help at all. You kept insisting
that he was using too much power and not focused enough
but he was so much stronger without your power, without
your interference and every time you joined in you
weakened us. He doesn't need you anymore and you're so
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jealous you might as well be green," Leonardo shouted
finally.
"We've been without the books before, Veli, and
we'll have another chance next month." Leonardo crossed
to Marina and Isabelle and seemed to calm down a bit.
"There's no way any of us are leaving Kal, Isabelle. You
can count on all of us." Charma crossed the room to join
them, nodding silently in her consent.
"So that's how it is?" Veli was furious. His eyes had
started to glow with a faint red light. "All of these years I've
taken care of you, fed you, and protected you. I never asked
for this responsibility. You were thrust upon me without as
much as a by your leave by Abraxas. And now you seek to
defy me? You have no idea of that evil that we are dealing
with it. I've seen it. I was there when we all foolishly
brought it back from Hell, or whatever dimension it was. I
never cared about such details. There were others to handle
that. It all amounted to the same thing—it was hell and we
brought it here. You will not defy me on this or so help by
all things that are holy I will make you pay for your
foolishness with your own blood."
"What?" Leonardo looked incensed. "What do you
mean you brought it back? I thought this was the Darkness
that had always existed?"
Isabelle took a step back towards Marina and
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Charma. Leonardo's eyes had started to glow in a matching
color to Veli's. Now more than ever she wished she had Kal
with her, these people were all still essentially strangers to
her and she felt as though she had been sucked into a
family drama that even her years as a social worker and all
of the psychology classes that she had taken in college were
not going to help her solve. Leonardo was not supposed to
have offensive powers, as far as Kal had known anyway
but right now he looked like he was going to attack Veli
physically.
"We made a mistake." Veli was starting to huff and
puff in such a way that Isabelle couldn't help but think of a
dragon. Was he going to turn into a dragon? "It's not
important. What is important is that we can correct it now.
We can get Abraxas' books and we can find out what is
going to happen and we can stop it this time and not let it
all just be destroyed again."
"Why am I sensing guilt, Veli?" Charma bravely
stepped forward. "What did you do? You have to explain it
to us. Your wife wants you to explain it. What did you do
that we now have to undo? We're not just talking about a
hypothetical fight. It is here, it is time, they have Kal and
we have to know the truth. We're not children in this world.
We live with the humans, we are adults."
"It wasn't just me, god damn it," Veli snapped. "It
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was all of your parents. We thought we were so smug, so
talented, so worthy. We thought it was time to put an end to
things. The Great One kept preaching about Evil and Good
and our job as the balance of things. He kept insisting that
there would always be evil in the world and that it was our
job to just make it a little better, to protect the humans, to
keep balancing things out. But the Darkness kept being
reborn. It kept coming back as different things, every
decade. We would fight it and fight it and fight it. My
father was killed fighting it as that dragon. He left my
mother alone with three children to raise and minions of the
Darkness that had broken through our shelters killed both
of my brothers in their sleep. That was the first time we
knew that it was even capable of having minions. We
would beat it and it would regroup for ten or so years and
beat it again. We live a long time; it was a lot of battles. We
started to get frustrated. Everyone had lost someone they
loved, most of us more than one person, and the humans
were just so oblivious to the whole thing. Why did they
deserve this much help? Abraxas and the Great One had
orchestrated this whole façade that kept humans out of our
village. They could walk there but they couldn't see it and
then they would be filled with the strongest desire to leave
it and not return."
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Veli took a deep breath and seemed to regain some
of his composure. "None of the humans I came in contact
with ever seemed worthy of my father's and brothers'
deaths. Why did we have to keep waiting for the Darkness
to find us? Why was it so important to keep the status quo?
We started meeting in secret. Abraxas knew but he kept his
mouth shut and didn't tell the Great One. We gathered
together to summon the evil to us. We were sure it would
be weaker if it didn't have time to regroup. The idea was
that we were going to trap it, to contain it within a binding
spell. We didn't think we could kill it but we were sure if
we could contain it, not give it a chance to get out or a
chance to go back from where it came from then we could
essentially be rid of it. Your mother," Veli stopped to point
at Charma. "She wrote the spell for us and she was the best
spell writer I had ever seen. I keep waiting for you to be
able to do it but you're so weak, all of you were supposed
to be so damn powerful, and you're like a bunch of
weaklings. Worse than most children I knew."
"Enough," Isabelle shouted. She had seen this kind
of behavior before. Veli was trying to push his guilt and
frustration onto all of them instead of facing up to his own
culpability. "Finish your story, Veli. You have our
att
ention. Our own weaknesses, most of which are probably
your fault, are not what we are discussing here."
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"Kal's father was going to bind it and then Charma's
mother was going to permanently contain it. But as with
everything having to do with Kal's family, Kal's father
failed at his task. It was such a basic thing and we had done
it a million times. I could have probably done it in my
sleep. He couldn't hold the binding, he was so pathetic. It
was too strong, too powerful for him. We could hear it
laughing at us. Its voice was low and powerful like
something out of a nightmare. Kal's father started
screaming. He was in so much pain. I tried at that point to
assist him but it was too late. The Darkness broke the
binding and it wasn't weak or tired. It felt, I'm not sure I can
tell you the best word for it; maybe the best word is raw. It
felt raw, like a feral animal. It was loose but it didn't leave
right away, not before it touched us. Each one of us felt it
inside of us for a moment.
"That's why I know that Kal has turned if it has
been inside of him this whole time. This much time with it
would be unbearable. No one could resist it. After that it all
went to hell. The Great One died, my wife perished
suddenly and the whole group got suddenly pregnant with
you, the ones who were supposed to save us all. Now look
at you, Abraxas should have let you die as babies and been
done with the whole thing." Veli was finished. He looked
exhausted and older, Isabelle realized. He seemed to have
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aged ten years in just moments.
"We're supposed to save the world from what you
did?" Marina raised her voice, pointing at Veli. "You
caused this to happen. There is an evil loose out there so
powerful that it could drag Kal physically from this room