Rating: ‘R’ if you’re sensitive; ‘PG-15’, otherwise.
Genre: Horror/Supernatural phenomenon. Religious and
irreligious discussion
Information:
Familiarity with the other stories in the series is
sort of recommended. But if you don’t want to wade through them, all you really
need to know is that the boys have gone through the:
“My god, it’s a demon!”
“Demons don’t exist.”
“Try telling that thing that!”
terror/denial/acceptance/gub-the-evil-beastie
scenario.
Thank yous… Olwyn saw the first draft a wee while ago.
There then was a considerable lag as I tried to get other folk (who could add
an American twang) to beta the darn story. Then I found Susan (HMG), who made
time in her busy, busy schedule to go over it with a fine tooth comb. Lisa gave
it a quick overview ‘cos I couldn’t see any booboos by then ‘cos I was so
tired. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Any booboos left belong to me.
However, the boys belong to someone else
apparently,
Watchman eye and watchman hand
are spun of water, air and sand.
Darkness
where I find my sight,
Shadowless and burning night,
here where death and life are met
is the fire of being set
Watchman eye and watchman hand
are spun of water, air and sand.
These will crumble and be gone,
still that darkness rages on
As a plant in winter dies
down into the germ, and lies
leafless, tongueless, lost in earth
imaging its fierce rebirth;
And with the whirling rays of the sun
and shuttle-stroke of living rain
weaves that image from its heart
and like a god is born again
Fire of Being
by
Judith Arundell Wright (1915-2000)
Prologue
“Where have you been?” Jim
demanded.
Blair froze in the
doorway, in one hand he held the morning paper and in the other a paper bag
emblazoned with the local bakery’s logo. He held them up.
“Guess.”
“Why didn’t you tell me
where you’d gone? Where were you?” Jim stomped down the final two steps from
his loft bedroom.
“I don’t normally, Jim.”
Shaking his head, he crossed to the kitchen to start breakfast.
“I got up and you weren’t
here,” Jim continued.
Turning his back to the
Sentinel, Blair crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue as he popped the
split croissants in the toaster. Jim had always been committed when it came to
guarding his tribe of one, but since the incident in the fountain he had been a
tad overboard.
“Has Philip called?” Jim
asked surprisingly.
“No.” Blair slowly turned
and leaned on the kitchen counter. “Were you expecting him to?”
“Croissants?” Jim settled
at the kitchen table and glowered at the preserves and cream cheese set on the
table.
The pastries popped out of
the toaster. Distracted, Blair snagged the warm croissants and dropped them on
a plate.
“You woke up on the wrong
side of the bed.” Blair set the breakfast in front of Jim.
Grumbling under his
breath, Jim concentrated diligently on buttering his croissant. Ignoring the
moody, unpredictable Sentinel, Blair settled in his chair and applied himself
to his own breakfast.
~*~
Watchman eye
and watchman hand
are spun of water, air and sand.
By Sealie
The bluebook exam papers
always took so long that Blair had prepared himself for a prolonged session. He
had coffee, candy and Oysterband’s latest CD playing on auto-repeat on his
stereo. The mess of answers ranged from perfect, through amusing and into the
pathetic. He saved the best for the beginning and the end of the marking marathon.
While the exam books bore only numbers to identify the writers, after several
years of marking their essays he could easily tell one student from another.
Making a filling of the worst offerings in a sandwich of halfway decent exam
papers made marking palatable.
His office door slammed
open, bouncing against the wall, and a large figure filled the space. “Why the
hell didn’t you call?” Jim yelled.
Blair jerked back in his
chair. “What?”
“Why the hell didn’t you
call?”
“You’re nuts, it’s only…”
Blair cast a glance at the clock on the bottom corner of his computer screen
and winced. “Ah.”
“Yeah, ‘Ah’; it’s after
“Well, it’s only just
after
“They can’t expect you to
work after
“Jim! I’m a TA; it’s my
job. And I take the time to do it when I can,” he finished pointedly.
Immediately subdued, Jim
backed off, both physically and figuratively. “How long?”
Caught by surprise, Blair
hemmed and hawed, “Uhm, ten to fifteen minutes a book -– an hour and a half.”
“So
“Give or take five
minutes.”
“Right.” Jim fired a
gimlet stare at him and strode out of the office.
Blair sagged in his chair.
That was bizarre. There was something seriously off kilter with Jim; he was
obviously going nuts. Jim was watching him like a possessive father. Whatever
the cliché, he was as irritating as heck.
Blair sighed deeply. He
knew that the fountain was never far from the Sentinel’s thoughts.
Barely a click of a
clock’s second hand later he was standing in the corridor outside his room.
There was no sign of his Sentinel. Grinding his teeth (a la Ellison), he raced
down the corridor. Jim must have run all the way. Unless… Blair made an abrupt
about turn, ran past his office and up the staircase to the postgraduate coffee
room. It, too, was empty. It was now pointless trying for the parking lot,
since Jim would have had time to drive away.
Looking out of the coffee
room window, he could see that the parking lot was empty except for his lone,
beloved car, sitting under a single street light.
“We’re going to talk,
Ellison, the minute I get home.”
He had to get the exams
marked and put in the database before his supervisor -- who was threatening to
cut off important body parts if he was late -- acted.
He had barely put pen to
paper when he paused, his gaze drifting to the door. Jim was acting weird.
Blair could understand the hyper-alertness. He contained a shudder. He had
died, the paramedics had given up on him and Jim had called him back.
The water had been lovely.
Blair wiped feverishly at
the sweat beading on his forehead. No matter how hard he tried, Jim refused to
talk about the meeting of the spirit guides on the spirit plane. Jim now oscillated
between whacked-out over-attentiveness and cool dismissal. The Sentinel had always blown hot and cold,
but this was making Blair seasick.
Camping was probably the
solution. Jim needed to relax into the elements, touch base with his inner
sentinel.
Blair ground his teeth,
frustrated. Part of him wanted to quit marking and hash out Jim’s weird
behaviour, and the other part needed to finish the marking or he’d be up to his
neck in trouble with Professor Roberts.
‘And,’ he admitted to himself, ‘getting
Jim to open up is like getting blood from a stone.’ Blair nodded sagely,
dwelling on his inner monologue. ‘Camping.
Camping this weekend. That will straighten him out.’
~*~
Blair typed the last mark
into his computer file – saving the best for last, he gave Vicki Cuts an
exceptional ninety four percent. With something close to relief, he closed down
his computer and stretched a lugubrious stretch. He now had to face Jim. And an
hour and a half later, he now had the time to face Jim. The first step would be
to interrogate him about his diet over the last few weeks, specifically what he
had consumed at lunch.
He stuffed his backpack
haphazardly and slung it on his shoulder. Yawning, he lumbered out of his
office, concerned only with Jim and finding his bed.
He tripped over a pair of
outstretched legs.
“Fuck. Jim!”
The Sentinel glowered up
at him. “Careful.”
“What the hell? Where the
hell were you? Where did you hide the truck?”
“It’s parked on the other
side of the building.”
“Why didn’t you go home?
“Your car might have
broken down.”
Derailed, Blair stared at
the Sentinel open-mouthed. “My car is running fine,” he said eventually. “Have
you been sitting outside my office?”
“Yes.” Jim shrugged, as if
to say ‘stupid question.’
“Don’t you think that’s a little
bit obsessive?”
“Hey.” Jim was suddenly
intensely interested in a cobweb in the far corner of the corridor. “I was just
concerned.”
Blair sighed inwardly.
“Thanks, Jim, but--it’s…weird.”
The detective bristled.
Blair rushed to reassure
Jim before he could reinterpret his words to something desperately negative.
“Jim…Jim…I’m flattered
that you’re concerned. But hiding and then hovering outside my office is just
creepy.” Blair shifted his backpack uneasily.
Jim shrugged excessively,
rolling his shoulders as if to loosen a colossal weight of tension. Blair resisted the temptation to cuff him
casually over the back of his head. That was Jim’s personal habit, it didn’t
belong to him.
“Unless there’s some
reason? You don’t think that something’s up?” The thought came unbidden. Jim
hadn’t told him about his premonitions of Alex’s attack. Jim playing
closed-mouthed, both of them not communicating, had led to his death. Alex had
drowned him in
What if another Sentinel
was prowling at the edges of Jim’s territory?
“Jim?” Blair said with
shadings of fear.
“No.” Jim erupted to his
feet, hands outstretched to clasp Blair’s shoulders. “I would tell you.”
“So what is it?” Blair
demanded. “Why are you sitting outside my room?”
“Because…” Jim could only
verbalise. “Because.”
“Gee, that helps,” Blair
clamped down on the sarcasm in his tone. “I don’t get it; you’re like a
paranoid… something.” He flung his hands in the air, inexplicably lost for
words.
“Shoot me for being
concerned.” Jim’s fine nostrils flared. He turned and stomped away down the
corridor.
“Jim!” Blair chased after
him. “Jim, it’s not like that. I just-- I dunno. There’s something wrong.”
The detective stopped
abruptly and Blair barrelled into his back. Reeling, he fell back and large
hands automatically steadied him.
“Jim,” he tried again, his
tone beseeching.
“Sandburg, I just thought
I’d check on you; it’s nothing to be concerned about.”
“And wait for an hour and
a half?”
Jim flashed a cavalier
smile. “I thought you’d be faster.”
Blair knew that he was
lying through his teeth.
“So are you ready to go
home now?” Jim asked casually. “It is getting on to three-thirty and I have to
be at work in four hours.”
Blair had a lecture to
give in five and a half hours.
“Do you want to go camping
this weekend?” Blair said half desperately. “Just you and me and the great
outdoors? We could toast marshmallows.”
“Sounds like a good idea.
I’ll check with Simon.” Curiously relaxed, Jim threw an arm over Blair
shoulders. “How about we do some fishing, little Guppy?”
“Yeah, that would be
great.”
Filled with consternation,
Blair allowed Jim to draw him along the corridor. They would get back on an
even keel -- that, he promised.
~*~
Blair lay on his bed,
hands clasped behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep eluded him, or
to be more frank, he didn’t seek it. He didn’t have a handle on Jim’s parental
behaviour. Yes, Jim had reason to be over-protective, but his heart and head
told him that Jim should have relaxed this long after the event. His only
answer was to show Jim that they were fine, that they were still partners. Jim
didn’t need to be watching him as if he were a child.
“Sandburg!” Jim yelled
down from the loft above.
“What?”
“Stop thinking and go to
sleep!”
“How did you know I was
thinking?” Blair asked softly.
“You breathe deep and slow
when you’re asleep and if you’re not asleep you’re thinking.”
“Well, there is that.”
“Good night, John Boy.”
Determined to get the last
word in, “Good night, Mary Ellen.”
~*~
Jim stood over his Guide,
allowing his Sentinel senses to dwell on the sleeping form. Blair, in sleep,
was a peaceful figure. Jim catalogued each well-known facet of his Guide.
Deeply asleep his amber tipped lashes lay quiescent on his cheeks. His full
lips were parted, slightly dry as he breathed with his mouth open. The vibrant
hair was tightly tangled waiting to burst forth with the wake of day, to leave
snarls of hair in the shower drain, motes floating in the air and strands
between his teeth. Blair’s long fingers curled around the edge of his thick
fleece blanket, holding it against his chest as if he expected someone to pull
it away or seeking comfort. The skin revealed at the line of his neck and
shoulder was pale and cool to the senses. Blair chilled when he slept. His
breath ebbed and swelled. On the deepest breath, Jim felt –- sympathetically --
the telltale hitch of abused lungs.
It was Blair.
Smiling now, Jim pulled
the trailing edge of Blair’s blankets and laid them about his neck and
shoulder. With a final pat, he crept back up to bed.
~*~
His bladder punching at
his gut woke Blair. Eyes at half-mast, he staggered to the bathroom. Hugging
his arms against his chest, he whined, “Cold. Cold. Cold.”
It was frigid. To speed up
dealing with his insistent bladder, he didn’t bother closing the bathroom door.
“So cold,” he complained
as he finished.
Splashing a minuscule
amount of water on his hands, he trotted into the corridor. It shouldn’t be
this cold. His warm bed beckoned, but Blair stopped dead just outside his room.
The moonlight cascaded over the living area, sending deep, impenetrable shadows
into the corners.
He canted his head to the
side, but he was at the wrong angle to see up into Jim’s bedroom. He would have
to climb the stairs. A swathe of dark shadows crossed the skylight above Jim’s
head. Blair shivered involuntarily.
“Jim?” he whispered.
There was no answer from above.
Blair licked his lips, then crossed to the kitchen sink. Turning the tap, he
leaned over to sip straight from the faucet. The water was warmer than the
room.
The shadows were filled
with demons. Blair rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. His imagination
was going overboard. But he knew that vampires and nasties did slink along at
the edge of the world’s mundane existence. And occasionally they did threaten
both Sentinel and Guide.
Was that what was making
Jim act like an overprotective mother on steroids? Jim had sworn that another
sentinel wasn’t making him act so weird.
Blair was nearly at the
top of the stairs to Jim’s loft before he realised that he was moving.
“What?” Jim rolled over on
his king-sized bed and peered through the railings down at him. The moonlight
bleached his skin to a pearly grey, making his eyes shine.
“Jim, do you sense
something? You know--” Blair wiggled his fingers. “--supernatural?”
Jim froze. His eyes slid
to the left. Blair imagined his sentinel senses like questing fingers, casting
forth to analyse the environment around him.
“No,” Jim said
laconically.
“No?” Blair echoed.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Go back to
sleep, Blair; you had a bad dream or something.” He turned onto his back.
“Aw, come on, Jim. No
wiggins? Nothing like a feeling of mass but no heartbeat or warmth?”
“You mean like the sofa?”
Jim’s voice smiled.
Blair sighed. “You know
what.” He reached through the railings and mock-punched in Jim’s direction.
Jim rose smoothly into a
sitting position, the single sheet on his chest falling to his waist. Blair
held his breath as Jim bowed his head. He didn’t know if he was listening or
extending his sixth sense -– not that Jim admitted to possessing one.
Now that the Sentinel was
awake, the darkness in the loft wasn’t as menacing. Jim was probably going to
tease him in the morning for wandering around half asleep.
Jim blew out a resounding
sigh and then yawned. “I think you’re sleepwalking, Blair.” He slid out from
under his sheet and before Blair could blink, he had joined him on the stairs.
“Jim?”
“Come on, Chief, back to
bed.”
Blair winced as Jim’s
ice-cold hand cupped his elbow. “You’re freezing, man. I hope you’re not
turning down the dial so you can sleep.”
“I’ll throw a blanket on
my bed,” Jim acquiesced easily.
Blair stumbled down the
stairs, but Jim kept him upright. He allowed the Sentinel to conduct him to his
room.
“No tucking me in, man.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Blair dove into his
blankets. Even they felt chilled. He burrowed in deeply, hoping his body
temperature would cocoon him in warmth. He wriggled around until he could watch
Jim standing over him.
“You want some aspirin or
something? Maybe you’re catching the flu.” Jim’s hand twitched towards Blair’s
forehead.
“Nah, I’m just cold. Are
you sure there’s nothing weird?”
“Positive. I’ll check the
doors and windows. Philip blessed the apartment and didn’t you smudge the place
with sage, last time I was away at an arraignment?”
“Yeah, Naomi said it was
good for negative energies.”
“Well, the stench would
drive off anything.” With the parting shot, Jim slipped out of Blair’s
cubby-hole.
The oppressive feeling of
impending horror was gone now. Maybe he had been dreaming? Maybe he should talk
to Philip? Ask him what kind of beast was as dark as a shadow? Confused and
over-tired, with the now warming blankets dragging him to sleep, he decided
that his thoughts had been dream-driven. He was asleep a heartbeat later.
~*~
His alarm went off far too
soon. The clamouring across his room echoed painfully through his head. He was
warm; he didn’t want to face the day. Muttering imprecations, he struggled out
of bed and killed the alarm on his dresser with a heavy slap. Putting it on the
other side of the room had been one of Jim’s brainstorms: he had to get out of
bed to switch it off. When the clock sat on the table beside his bed, he had
reached the point where he could lean out and switch off the incessant beeping
in his sleep. He only set it on the far side of the room when Jim was up first;
otherwise the Sentinel would rip his head off.
Yawning and scratching his
butt, he staggered to the coffee pot beckoning in the kitchen. Jim was long
gone and not even a crumb marked his passing. Blair grabbed a bagel, split it
and popped it in the toaster. The coffee was cold. Blair peered down his nose
at it, not believing that it was dead. Jim liked his coffee in the morning; he
wouldn’t leave without a mug. For a second he wondered if Jim was still asleep,
but his coat was gone and his truck keys.
“Jim went without
breakfast?” he asked the world at large. Jim liked a decent breakfast, since
most days were unpredictable and he didn’t know when he would fit lunch and
dinner in.
Curious now, Blair peered
in the refrigerator. It was full. The food that he had purchased last weekend
was untouched. It looked as if Jim hadn’t eaten in days. That made no sense.
Jim had an active metabolism, he was a busy man -– he needed food. Blair had
even postulated that the Sentinel senses had a heavy energetic demand.
The toaster popped,
startling him.
On autopilot, he buttered
his bagel and stuffed a fingerful in his mouth. He had been busy at school, but
how had he not noticed that Jim wasn’t eating? Pensive now, he abandoned his
bagel and moseyed over to the big windows overlooking the bay.
He had his own concerns at
the moment. Recovering from the debacle with Alex had taken a lot out of him,
emotionally and physically. He had the Ph.D. panel breathing down his neck. They
were happy with the draft chapters he had given them, although they were
concerned that he hadn’t named his principle subject and they wanted him to
finish. His second draft -– intended for Jim -– was going much better.
Jim was walking on
eggshells around him. Unable to verbalise an apology, he settled for the little
things that meant so much: checking on him at the university or searching the
loft after being woken from a sound sleep.
Their camping trip had to
be the right idea. After he’d put his hours in at the university, he would go
see Jim at the police station and then drag him out to Wonder Burger.
They were partners, but
they weren't acting like partners.
~*~
Jim scanned the people in
the bullpen, making sure that they were all in their respective places. No one
was invading his personal space. That was good. He dotted the ‘I’s’ and crossed
the ‘T’s’ on his report. Simon would find nothing to complain about. Rafe stood
up and Jim tracked him walking across the bullpen to Henri’s desk. Without a
word Jim returned to his writing.
His ears pricked and he
heard Blair bounce into the main reception area. The kid started chatting to
the police officer in the kiosk, asking her about her son’s school homework. He
sounded a bit off his stride, though, as if he was only going through the
motions.
Blair had been acting
strangely recently. Jim couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was off. There
was something on Blair’s mind and he wasn’t talking. Normally when something
was bothering him, Blair examined, discussed and twisted the problem on its
side, and that meant that he talked, incessantly.
Dwelling on the vagaries
of his Guide, he extracted Blair’s file from the back of his miscellaneous
papers. He’d pulled together the file when he had first met the energetic
graduate student. He had copies of Blair’s State of
“Hey, Jim, what are you
reading?”
Jim jumped in his seat
caught by surprise by Blair’s voice. “What?” He glanced back down at the file
in his hands. “Nothing. Just a report on a potential perp.” He dropped it back
in its drawer.
Blair pasted a patently
false smile. “I was thinking we should get a bite to eat. You feel like Wonder
Burger?”
‘Wonder Burger?’
“Who are you and what have
you done with the real Blair Sandburg?” Jim was only half joking.
~*~
“So do we have any cases,
or anything?” Blair asked as he poked at his limp lettuce. He had pulled the assorted
salad bits from the chicken burger with profound dissatisfaction and set them
on the side of his plate.
Jim smirked, his cheeks
bulging with a mouthful of pre-formed chicken nuggets covered in barbecue
sauce. Blair’s skin crawled; at least he supposedly had a chicken breast
burger.
“Hmmm, a couple of home
invasions.” Jim swallowed mightily. “A suspicious death on the docks. And that
murder/suicide pact.”
It was a weird sort of
conversation, as if they were friends who had been parted for months and
weren’t slipping into the familiar groove of comradeship. Yet they had both
walked together the night before.
Blair was tempted to give
up, to concentrate on swallowing his sandwich, but Jim was playing with his
food. Blair could have sworn that he actually spat a mouthful of food into his
paper napkin. If Jim wasn’t eating, that
touched a core of concern in Blair’s gut. Jim’s moods were -– for lack of a
better word –- childish at times. He felt strongly. On the other hand, his
emotional detachment could be total: if he didn’t like something, he could
ignore it. There was no wish to understand the unknown.
Empathy was not Jim’s
middle name.
Blair gnawed at the
problem like he chewed on the fatty gristle in the nasty sandwich. Jim was
bothered by something and he wasn’t talking. That was hardly unusual. But the
other things worried Blair: that Jim was not eating and Jim seemed paranoid
about his comings and goings.
“If your face scrunches up
any more, it’ll turn inside out.”
“It tastes smooth, sort of
like, well, fatty.” Blair grabbed his napkin and delicately spat out the
contents of his mouth.
“Why are we here, Chief?”
Jim asked directly.
“I thought you were off
your feed. You like Wonder Burger.” Blair shrugged.
A faint blush touched
Jim’s high cheekbones. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Yeah, right.” Blair
smiled wryly as Jim munched purposely on a chicken nugget.
“You going to make dinner
tonight?” Jim asked in familiar short hand.
“Yeah, pasta and grilled
salmon?”
Jim screwed up his nose.
“Nah.”
“How about my special
lasagne?”
“With the cheese from that
speciality shop?”
“With the cheese from the
speciality shop.” Blair confirmed.
The twisted smile turned
as true as his heart. Blair was warmed by Jim’s smile and promised that he
would take proper care with the herbs for his most sensitive Sentinel.
“So,” Blair changed the
subject, “tell me about our cases.”
“The home invasions are
pretty straightforward. When I was on the crime scene, I noticed that liniment
odour for muscle strains – a lot of it. I interviewed the victim in the
hospital and he said that the gang-members were wearing some kind of football
jerseys, and I’m fairly sure that they’re an actual team from a local high
school.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I figure they were hiding
in plain sight.”
Blair shook his head,
appalled by the idea that high schoolers were capable of such acts and could be
so stupid.
“The murder/suicide
doesn’t make sense.” Jim set his uneaten lunch to the side. “Young professional
couple. The woman had just finished her Ph.D. in lipid biochemistry; she gutted
her boyfriend with an axe and then threw herself off the roof of
“What were their names?”
“Monica Symmonds and Gavin
McGuire.”
“Monica? I don’t know
her.” Blair breathed a sigh of relief. “Not that that means that I don’t, you
know, sympathize. I just don’t know her.”
“It’s okay, Chief.” Jim’s
expression took on a paternal cast.
Blair smiled sheepishly.
“So what’s wrong about it?”
Jim considered his next
words carefully. “There was no reason. Most suicides have a history of attempts
or depression and there wasn’t any.”
“You went over the scene
with, you know.” Blair rotated his index finger and thumb.
Jim shrugged
infinitesimally. “A little; I didn’t pick up anything strange, but…”
“You picked up something
you didn’t like? Was it supernatural?”
“No!” Jim rapped.
“So what got you--” Blair
paused, searching for the right word, “--dwelling on it?”
Jim leaned back in his
plastic seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not dwelling on it. You
asked what cases I was working and I told you. I’m also working on a burglary
and a suspicious death in the park.”
“I though you were in
Major Crime and not Homicide,” Blair cracked.
Jim shot him a leery eye.
“I’m a detective; I go where my captain sends me,” he deadpanned.
“So tomorrow you’re going
to be dragging me in at the crack of dawn to work on all your cases?” Blair
moaned theatrically.
“If you want, you can take
the day off.”
“Can I? Can I, please?” He
bounced maniacally.
Jim’s hand shot across the
table and grabbed his wrist, stopping his bouncing dead. Blair flashed an evil
smile at his Sentinel, knowing that the exaggerated super-bounce drove Jim up
the proverbial wall. But Jim was serious.
“If you don’t want to come
in, Chief, you don’t have to.”
“Aw, man, you know I’m
kidding. I have a few errands to run. I can get down at about eleven.”
Jim looked down his fine
nose at him. “Only if you limber up those typing fingers.”
Blair pulled his hand free
from Jim’s grasp and pretended to play a piano scale on the formica tabletop.
Jim smiled gently at his antics.
“You still up for going
camping? You are free this weekend?” Blair paused on the final note and looked
hopefully at him.
Jim froze, consternation
played across his face. The worried glance that the Sentinel then threw his way
was profoundly disturbing. It wasn’t hard to guess what was on Jim’s mind.
Blair coughed experimentally and saw Jim pale.
“I’m okay, man; I can go
camping.”
Jim shook his head
slightly.
“Aw, come on. I’m fine.
You know I’m fine.”
Jim tried to cover his
unease by concentrating on shredding his napkin to little pieces. “No, I have
some paperwork that I have to get finished for Monday.”
“Look, I swear to God that
I’m one hundred percent. The doc said that I had to be careful, and I have and
I’m fine. I really would like to go camping. I think it will do us a world of
good. Fresh air, de-stressing, good wholesome food – it’s just what the doctor
ordered.”
“You really want to go
camping?”
Blair rolled his eyes
heavenward. “Yes.”
“We’ll see,” Jim
pronounced. “Work. Weather.”
Blair knew that that was
as far as the Sentinel would go. If the weather forecast changed significantly,
they wouldn’t be leaving the city limits. Blair felt the imperious need to sit
down with a notebook to list all the things he thought were bugging the
Sentinel. But his gut told him that Jim needed a serious de-stressing vacation.
If Jim didn’t have the presence of mind to decide for himself, he would go over
Jim’s head and talk to Simon. There was an explosion on the horizon; Blair
could feel it in his bones.
~*~
Blair curled his body over
Jim’s report as he read it from cover to cover, incidentally hiding it from
view. He was trying to get ahead on the ins-and-outs of Jim’s casework because
of the madness that was the end of term.
“Whatcha doing?” Henri’s
bass tones were warming. “You look like a little kid.”
“What?” Blair looked up.
Henri was across the bullpen working on his own files.
He imitated Blair, his arm
curled to hide block his writing from prying eyes. “You should be sticking the
tip of your tongue out too.”
Blair immediately poked
his tongue out.
Henri laughed.
“I’m just catching up on
Jim’s files.” The files were piled high.
“Are you going to Simon’s
barbecue this weekend?”
“Barbecue?”
“Yeah, didn’t Jim tell
you?”
“No,” Blair said
hesitantly. “Jim and I were thinking about going camping this weekend. He must
have forgotten.”
Automatically, he focussed
on the Sentinel. Through the slates of the blinds in Simon office, he could see
Jim pacing as he expounded on a report. It was the most vibrant that Blair had
seen Jim in weeks. He spun on one heel, jabbing a finger at his superior. Simon
was less than impressed, sitting straight in his chair. The cigar in his mouth
worked back and forth. Jim growled loud enough to get the attention of the rest
of the bullpen. Henri rose up in his chair to better see the
fight-in-the-making.
Jim slapped the mahogany
desk hard. Simon erupted to his feet like a force of nature.
The bile spewing between
them tasted like acid in the back of Blair’s throat. They were going to come to
blows, Blair could tell.
He was halfway across the
bullpen before he knew that he was moving. He flung open the door.
“What!” both men demanded
simultaneously.
Blair coughed nervously.
“Uhm… you all right?”
“Yes,” Simon snarled.
“Detective Ellison and I are discussing a case.”
“You can’t close it,” Jim
leaned over the tabletop. “There’s something…”
“Detective,” Simon said
warningly. He did not lean away from
Jim. They froze, their noses almost touching.
The air between them
seemed to crackle. Blair could see the cusp on which they stood, both big men
were determined to be in the right. Jim’s fist was clenched and his fair skin
was flushed with anger. That was wrong, they were simply arguing cases.
Violence was out of bounds. Another wrong word, and Jim could overreach and
their relationship would be in the dust.
“No,” Blair said weakly.
“Chief?” Jim spun on him.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, it’s…” Blair
couldn’t verbalise it.
Jim's warm hand cupped
Blair's elbow. “You’ve gone as white as a sheet. Simon, can I--?” He canted his
head to the long sofa against one wall of the office.
“No,” Blair protested as
Jim led him to the sofa.
“Humour me, Chief. Just
sit down.”
Blair was forcibly sat. ‘What the hell is happening here?’ he
wondered frantically. ‘One moment I’m
fine and the next I’m feeling as if I’ve caught the flu.’
“Here,” Simon said,
pushing a mug of hot coffee in Blair's face. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“Yeah, we had Wonder
Burger,” Jim said over his head.
“No wonder he’s feeling
sick,” Simon said with a tinge of humour.
“What were you talking
about?” Blair asked, between sips of hot, sugary coffee.
“The murder/suicide case –
Simon wants to close it.”
“You all right, son?”
Simon crouched down.
“I think the chicken’s
disagreeing with me.” He smiled sheepishly.
“Is he all right, Jim?”
“Yeah, I think it’s just
the post-exam breakdown. Bad food and not enough sleep.”
“You know,” Blair said snarkily into his mug, “I’m
right here.” But the mug hid his true, perplexed expression. The overwhelming feeling of doom
had passed. Jim and Simon were focused
on his imaginary problems rather than their own anger. He took a gulp of the
coffee.
What had he seen? He
hadn’t seen anything: he had reacted to Jim’s body language, the coarse anger
seething through him. Jim had been a step away from punching his superior. Jim
was conditioned from years in the Army not to hit his commanders. And more
importantly Simon was his friend.
He was so very tired. It
would be easy to close his eyes and sleep, deal with all the weirdness
tomorrow. The miasma settling over him was almost palpable.
His eyes shot open. He was
right; there was something seriously amiss here.
“Chief.”
Blair looked at the light
fixtures. Were they new and possibly inducing some kind of seasonal associative
disorder? Had the cleaners changed detergents? He would bet his bottom dollar
that there was something environmental.
“Chief?”
“There’s something wrong.”
Blair pushed off the couch. “I don’t know what.” He paced around the coffee
table. “Have you heard of sick building syndrome? It’s an industrial disease,
when something in the working environment makes people sick. Jim’s been
super-weird recently. Temperamental, moody, clingy.”
“Excuse me?” Jim folded
his arms over his chest.
“Has anything changed
recently, Simon? New contractors?”
Simon sucked gamely on the
stub of his cigar as he cogitated. “No. Maybe the service has changed their
cleaning products, but I asked them to inform me if they did.”
Jim flung a half-grateful,
half-resentful glance at Simon.
“Are you sure? Because
Jim’s been acting really weird.”
Jim turned away with a
disgusted snort. Blair was up and after him in a heartbeat.
“Children. Children.
Children.” They stopped and turned to Simon. “You want to tell me what the
problem really is?”
“I dunno.” Blair shrugged.
“I’ve got some hypotheses, but no evidence.”
“Well, figure it out.”
Simon dismissed them with a huff and returned to his desk. “The Symmonds and
McGuire case is closed.”
“Simon!” Jim began
immediately.
“Come on, Jim.” Blair
tugged on Jim’s sleeve, stretching the cable knit sweater. “I want to talk
about camping this weekend.”
“Hey.” Simon perked up.
“You’re coming to my barbecue, aren’t you?”
Jim twisted back to face
Simon, Blair still pulling on his sweater. “Of course we are, Simon. I just
forgot to tell Blair.”
Blair’s thoughts ran
sideways doing the lambada. Jim actually forgot something? His anal-retentive
Sentinel had actually forgotten something?
He was a man with a
mission: he was going to find out what was up with Jim. The first phase was to
get Jim away from Major Crime.
“Come on, you must have
some legwork you need doing. Or –- I know!
Let’s go check out Symmonds’ place. I’ll be there; maybe we can pick up
something new.”
“Sandburg.” Blair winced
at the flatness in Jim's tone. “This way.“
The iron grip around his
bicep propelled him forwards. Blair thought about planting his heels on the
floor, but he suspected that Jim would just pick him up. They ended up in the
break room.
Blair waited until Jim
slammed the door shut on the rest of Major Crime.
“What!” Jim was back to
pointing his finger. “What do you think you were doing with Simon?”
“Me?” Blair patted his
chest, displacing Jim’s finger. “When?”
“Now! There’s nothing
wrong with me.”
“Really?” Blair demanded.
He stepped right into Jim’s personal space. “You’re not eating. You’re fighting
with Simon. You’re following me around like a lost puppy.”
That was a mistake.
“If you don’t like my
concern, Chief,” Jim said venomously, “you know what you can do.”
Blair felt the blood drain
from his face with that ultimatum. The sudden rush of blood from his head made
him sag and Jim was there, gripping his forearms firmly, holding him up. The
constant threat of homelessness hanging over his head was debilitating. A
simple word could break their friendship forever. He damn well knew that Jim’s
responses were fear-based, but wasn’t he ever going to get a break?
He wasn’t going to live
like this.
“Are you going to throw me
out?” Blair rapped. “For talking to you? For expressing an opinion? Are we
going to go down that road again?”
Jim looked as if he were a
candidate for a coronary. His face froze in a rictus. The planes of his
cheekbones, nose and chin showed starkly through bleached skin. Harsh, acid
breathing sounded loudly in the small room.
Jim could only say one
word, “No.”
“No, you’re not going to
throw me out?”
“Yes.” Jim shook him by
his forearms. Blair resisted. He stood stock-still, leaning away from the
Sentinel’s body. Jim’s eyes were bright, shining with a multitude of
conflicting emotions.
“What’s the matter, Jim?
You have to tell me. If you don’t I can’t help you. I know you’re not eating,”
he uttered the words softly. Jim turned
his head to the side, trying vainly to find some degree of detachment from the
immediacy of the situation.
“I’m just not hungry. It’s
not my senses. I just am not hungry.”
“And,” Blair prodded into
the silence.
“I’m not sleeping… much.”
“Any visions?”
He felt rather than heard
Jim’s soul-mocking smile. “You have to sleep to dream, Chief.”
Blair knew that he had to
look at his friend in the eye if he was to have an inkling of what was going on
in his mind. As soon as he flexed his hands, making his arm muscles move, Jim
released him.
“So it’s nothing with your
senses?” Blair shifted across so he could see Jim’s face.
“Everything isn’t my
senses,” Jim said bleakly.
Blair clamped down on the
reluctant flush of embarrassment. “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth, “but
they throw a wrench in the works.”
Jim gave a ghastly smile.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
Frustrated beyond belief,
Blair punched him in the shoulder. “We have to consider them.”
“You’re always so
clinical.” Jim rolled away from the punch, and took one long-limbed step out of
Blair’s reach.
“And if I don’t I’m not
doing my job.” Blair chased after him. “We can figure this out holistically,
Jim. The whole thing.”
“Maybe I’m just off my
feed. It happens.”
“To you?” Blair asked
disbelievingly.
“Everything tastes…
weird,” Jim admitted.
Blair did not crow.
Jim blew out a deep sigh.
“Okay, I’ll update my food journal.”
Blair smiled sadly. “I’ll
go through my notes.”
~*~
They didn’t go camping.
Blair wanted to, but they had promised that they’d go to Simon’s barbecue. He
was looking forward to the semi-annual event. It was only the second time he
had been invited. The first year he had been excluded from the general invite.
It had smarted, but he simply hadn't been considered; he hadn’t even been
living with Jim. The second time he had
been laid up with the summer flu and a rampaging case of gastro-enteritis.
He peered at his
reflection in the mirror. Dark bags hollowed out his eyes.
‘Still not getting enough sleep.’ He remembered reading
that using a laptop or cell phone before bed sometimes prevented a user achieving
a deep state of sleep. ‘Maybe I should
take a break before bed?’
Easier said than done: his
life was get up, go to the university, work on the thesis, run to the precinct,
back to the university, work on the thesis until late, go home and then go to
bed.
The camping trip had been
a necessity for Jim. Now that they couldn’t go, he kind of resented that he had
to take time out of the thesis-writing to go to a party.
‘All work and no play makes Blair a boring boy.’
He checked his reflection
again. His hair was getting too long, but he didn’t have the time or money to
get it cut. He clubbed it into a bush at the back of his neck and secured it
with a covered elastic band.
“Don’t take all day,
Chief,” Jim hollered.
“Coming.”
He was no further in figuring out what was the matter with Jim. The food diary
yielded no unusual suspects. Neither did
Jim have any suggestions. Although his contribution to Blair’s questions had
been a terse, “I don’t know, Chief.”
The trip to Simon’s was
spent in silence. Blair yawned widely into the void between them.
“Early night, Chief?”
“Huh?”
“If you’re taking the
afternoon off, maybe you can take the evening off. Take a break.” Hands fixed
on the steering wheel, Jim shrugged.
“Yeah, maybe,” Blair
acquiesced. If he had lost his momentum, he could at least enjoy the rest of
the day.
Jim screeched to a halt
outside Simon’s two storey house. Conveniently, Simon’s drive was empty despite
the cars belonging to Major Crime parked on the road. Blair guessed that the
gang had left it free for a certain Sentinel.
Sounds of laughter wafted
over him as Blair slipped out of the truck. Jim inhaled appreciatively. Blair
shared a grin.
“Smells like Taggert’s
barbecue sauce.” Jim licked his lips.
“And Simon’s home-grown
burgers.”
“Guys!” Daryl swung open
the front door. “The burgers are almost ready. You better hurry up, or none
will be left.”
“Run and tell H that the
well-done one is mine.” Jim ordered.
Daryl spun on his heel and
sprinted down the corridor. They had a quick flash of a Jags sweatshirt
disappearing into the back yard.
“I think he’s scared of
you or something.”
“Daryl?” Jim asked. “Nah.
It’s respect.”
Blair rolled his eyes
heavenward and bounced forwards.
The party was in full
swing. Blair placed his contribution of home made coleslaw and freshly baked
savoury cheese bread on the table as Jim dumped a couple of six packs of beer
in the large ice cooler under the table.
Jim grabbed and cracked a
beer in the same motion and passed it to Blair. It tasted like nectar and in
that moment, Blair decided to take the rest of the day off.
Blair watched covertly as
Jim accepted a burger from Chef Banks and ladled Joel’s sauce on sparingly. He
took an enormous bite and smacked his lips in gluttonous pleasure.
Moving further into
relaxing, Blair downed a mouthful of his beer.
He took a burger and his beer and sauntered over to a tree that begged
to be relaxed under. He settled with something close to relief.
Jim chatted with Henri’s wife.
Their large-eyed toddler, hanging on Marie’s hip, watched him with a fatuous,
adoring grin. Jim finally relented and lifted Micky from Marie’s loose grip.
The baby chortled with delight. All kids adored the Sentinel; it was as if they
realised instinctively that they would be perfectly safe with the large man.
For the most part, Jim tolerated their infatuations, but kept them at arm’s
length. Blair thought it fascinating, knowing that the kids saw behind the high
walls that Jim hid behind.
Blair sat up, startled.
Something was wrong. Micky was sobbing
into Jim’s neck, more miserable than any child should ever be.
Worried, embarrassed, Jim
looked to Marie, who was reaching out to her child.
“Darling. Baby.” She tried
to pluck Micky from Jim’s arms. But the child was having none of it. His grip
was determined.
“I’m sorry,” Jim said.
Instinctively, he held the sobbing mite closer.
Blair couldn’t help
himself; he stood and found himself at their side.
“Chief? He won’t stop.”
“Hey, Micky.” Blair leaned
close so he could see the face pushed up against Jim’s neck. “What’s the
matter?”
“Monster mans,” Micky
sobbed.
“Where?” Jim demanded,
scanning the crowd.
Henri juggernauted over;
his wife and child were both upset.
“I don’t understand.” Marie
tried again to pluck her child from Jim’s grasp. “He was fine a second ago.”
“What’s up?” Henri
demanded.
“Micky’s been upset by
someone.”
“Jim?” Henri challenged.
The Sentinel blinked,
surprised by the accusation. “I…”
“If Jim had upset Micky,
he wouldn't be clinging to him for dear life,” Blair snapped.
Jim tried once again to
untangle the toddler.
“Micky?” Blair gently
stroked the jet-black curls. “Where’s the monster man? Please tell me where the
bad man is and I’ll make him go away.”
Micky shifted his head
slightly to look at Blair.
“I’ll make him go away. I
promise.”
Jim’s large hand patted
Micky’s back, practically obscuring his shoulders.
“The monster man?” Blair
prodded.
Micky pushed off Jim’s
chest with both arms. Fresh tears streaked down his cheeks as he looked over
Jim’s shoulder. Transfixed, the child was stiff with fear.
But there was nothing
behind Jim, only a tangle of bushes, a tree, and a discarded beer can.
Marie said tentatively,
“There’s someone in the bushes?”
Henri bounded towards the
back of the yard, reflexively reaching for his weapon that wasn’t there. Micky
launched himself from Jim’s arms. Blair and Marie caught him simultaneously.
Free, Jim ran at Henri’s heels.
As one, the crew of Major
Crime ran after their comrades. Blair pitied the fool who threatened a beloved
of one of the boys in blue.
Blair held Marie and Micky
as Jim slipped soundlessly between his fellow detectives, hunting for the
source of the toddler’s terror. Simon directed his officers to cover the jungle
of his backyard in a systematic manner.
They emerged as one. Rafe
brushed pussy willows off his white polo shirt. Henri panted heavily as he
crossed to his wife and child. Blair relinquished them into the circle of his
arms.
“There’s nothing there,
Darling.”
Jim stalked out towards
them “I didn’t see anything,” he announced baldly.
Henri looked up. “Thanks,
man.” It was an apology of sorts.
Jim shrugged. He crossed
to the buffet and grabbed a beer. He downed the contents in one gulp.
“Maybe it was just the
shadows and things,” Blair ventured.
“I dunno.” Henri chucked
his son under his chin. “Come on, Sweetpea, smile for Daddy.”
Rafe, Hakon and Charleton
milled uncertainly.
“The burgers are more than
ready,” Simon announced, back at his post. Moving on from what was probably a
child’s imagined fears, the party began anew.
Blair watched as Jim
downed another beer. He waggled the can in his hand; he had half left. Jim had
been the designated driver. If they both continued drinking, they would have to
get a taxi back to the loft. Sentinel and Guide stood stock-still at the edge
of the party while the celebrants relaxed back into the mood. Daryl hit the
stereo, and jazz -– obviously his father’s choice -- drifted around the garden.
The party restarted in earnest. Rafe’s latest young thing latched onto his side
and they slow-danced across the lawn hip to hip.
“Young love,” Blair said
whimsically.
“Young lust,” Jim mocked.
Blair batted his Sentinel
on the shoulder.
“Ow.” Jim clasped his
shoulder.
“Hey, turn it down.”
Jim cocked his head,
concentrating on the dials. “Must have had it tweaked high.”
“You want another burger?”
Blair asked, as his thoughts ran rampant.
Jim nodded.
Blair gave Jim his
half-full beer to look after and went to hunt some food for his ailing
Sentinel. As he lightly spread Joel’s barbecue sauce on the burger, he kept an
eye on Micky. The toddler was ensconced in his father’s arms and his gaze was
firmly fixed on Jim. The only way Blair could describe his expression was
disquieted. It didn’t set very well on a small boy’s face.
“What are you doing with
that burger, Sandburg?” Jim demanded.
By the time he had thrust
the bun in his Sentinel’s fat face, Micky’s was still transfixed. While Jim was munching happily – Blair made a
mental note that this was the most he’d seen him eat in an age – he circled the
Sentinel. He caught Micky’s eyes when he stood at Jim’s left shoulder. The
toddler’s brow scrunched, his attention was broken, and he leaned back in his
father’s arms, chortling as he was tickled.
“What are you doing?” Jim
looked at him over his shoulder.
“Nothing,” Blair said
absently as he circled on the spot. The
skin didn’t crawl on the back of his neck. No one walked over his grave. A bit
peeved, he looked behind him, but there was nobody there. His next decision hit
him between the eyes; almost with a headache.
“I left my coat in the
truck.” He held his hand out for the keys.
Jim handed the keys across
without a word, but the lines between his brows spoke volumes. A hop, skip and
a bounce later, Blair clambered into Jim’s beloved truck and carefully backed
down Simon’s drive. He half-expected the
Sentinel to appear on the porch, but he hadn’t followed. Blair drove down the
street, imagining he saw Jim running after the truck in the rear view mirror.
Man on a mission, he cut his way through the downtown traffic, heading to the
opposite side of the city, to Father Philip Callaghan’s manse.
~*~
He called Philip on his
cell phone, so the gates to the Legacy house opened on his arrival. The dour
Catholic priest was waiting at the door as Blair pulled into the parking space
in front of the Victorian manse.
“Blair, is everything
okay?”
The anthropologist trudged
across the gravel path, his very demeanour alerting the priest that there was
indeed something wrong.
Philip met him halfway
down the manse steps.
“I dunno, man.”
Philip grabbed his
forearms and peered into his eyes. Blair didn’t know where to begin. He hated
the feeling of not knowing what was going on.
“When was the last time
you ate? Is it Jim?”
“Kinda,” Blair could only
say. “I need to talk it through with you, you know? For you to listen and give
me your considered opinion.”
“I can listen. Come in. Come in.” Philip shepherded him inside,
leading through the maze of rooms to the kitchen.
Blair found himself
planted on a stool and plied with hot chocolate.
After his first sip,
Philip spoke, “Tell me from the beginning, Blair.”
“There’s something up and
I can’t get a handle on it.”
Philip blinked dolefully.
“I…”
“Okay, I’m sorry, you
wanted it from the start. I’ve been really busy writing and to be honest, just
a little bit freaked about the Alex thing.” He glanced desperately at the priest
seeking empathy.
“Before you take any
blame, Blair, why don’t you tell me what’s happening?”
Blair grimaced and
released his death grip on his cup to tangle his fingers in his unkempt curls.
“There’s something up with
Jim. He’s--” Inspiration struck, “--depressed. He’s not eating. He’s clingy,
following me around.”
“It’s not another
sentinel, is it?” Philip asked softly.
“No!” Blair said
vehemently. “Jim swears it isn’t.”
“Is it a sentinel
problem?”
“No, that’s the problem.”
Blair flung himself away from the table, hands conducting a discord. Pacing, he
blurted, “I mean, I can’t think of anything. It’s nothing organic. I checked
with the cleaning staff at Major Crime. I checked Jim’s food diary -– he hates
filling in the thing -– and he hasn't eaten anything unusual. I’ve ruled out
all the obvious suspects.”
“Something on a case?”
“Maybe.” Blair fixed his
piercing gaze on the priest. “He’s fixated on a murder/suicide case.”
“Have you been back to the
scene of the crime to find out why?”
“You know, you’d make a
pretty good interrogator,” Blair said.
Philip smiled grimly. “I’m
well trained. But you’ve changed the subject. Have you been back to the scene
of this murder/suicide?”
Blair huffed. “No, Simon’s
closed the case. And something came up the last time I mentioned it.”
“Really?” Philip drawled.
“Okay, we had kind of a
fight. You have to remember that Jim’s just this mess of fear-based responses.
If you poke him, he’ll bite your head off.”
Philip worried at the mole
on the side of his face. “Okay; if Jim’s depressed, have you thought about
counselling?”
Blair inhaled deeply
before he attempted to counter that recommendation. “I--”
“I realise that you act as
Jim’s de facto counsellor, but perhaps
a professional would be of help?”
“What? Are you nuts? Can
you see Jim going in for that?”
Philip was unfazed by his
exclamations. “Jim has a stressful job and some fairly serious incidents in his
past.” He held his hand up before Blair could interrupt. “I’m not breaking the
seal of the confessional. I’ve seen the ‘Time’ magazine interview and I have
one or two parishioners who are policemen. Given the heightened nature of his
senses, it’s likely that he experiences everything much more vividly than the
average human.”
“He has a phenomenal
memory. He can remember everything. It’s just accessing the memories that he
has problems with.”
“Is that why you think
he’s depressed?”
“I’m fairly sure that
something’s eating at him and he’s so
not telling me about it.”
“So he’s depressed,
clingy? Paranoid, maybe?”
“Paranoid actually is a
good description.”
Philip hummed
introspectively. “Have you considered a post traumatic stress disorder?”
Blair froze. It could have
been funny if they had had a video camera. He stood open-mouthed, hands
arrested mid-motion. Not even breathing, he froze.
“Oh, wow, I’ll have to do
some reading from my old psychology text books.” Blair’s expression turned
introspective. “It hinges on processing or not processing trauma, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Philip said sagely.
“You seem pretty
knowledgeable.”
The priest ticked off on
his fingers. “Avoidance is a classic symptom. Showing an increased startle
response.” He chewed on his bottom lip, thinking.
“‘Avoidance’? Jim excels
at that. If I remember correctly, there was something about flashbacks in the
diagnosis of PSTDs, wasn’t there?”
“Intrusions -– flashbacks
or nightmares where the traumatic event is re-experienced,” the priest supplied
calmly. “Hallucinations.”
“You know more about this
than I do, don’t you?”
“I have done some
counselling in my profession,” he pointed out.
Blair returned to his
stool and sipped on his lukewarm chocolate. “I like the sound of it. You think
maybe a post traumatic stress disorder with a sentinel facet?”
“Why sentinel facet?”
“I think he’s reacting to
something, something that I can’t see or feel or test for. He’s also mothering
me something chronic. And he’s checking up on me. I have no idea what he’s
protecting me from; and that sounds like paranoia.”
An expression of
disappointment flared briefly on Philip’s pale face. “Okay. What if it he’s not
paranoid?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if he is reacting to
a real thing?” Philip explained patiently.
“Like what?”
“Something that only a
sentinel can sense.”
“You mean?” Blair wiggled
his fingers beside his head.
“Supernatural or
paranormal. Have you felt anything?”
Blair crossed his arms
over his chest. “I don’t feel things, man. I’m the guide, not the sentinel.”
Philip dismissed his words
with an irked, sarcastic, ”Yes, of course you don’t. So what haven’t you felt?
You know that there is something wrong with your sentinel and rather than
discuss it with Simon Banks, a member of the medical profession, or anyone
else, you came here… hmmm?”
“Hey, you’re my friend.”
“Thank you.” Philip nodded
gravely.
Blair slumped – as much as
he could on his stool. Pensive, he nibbled on his thumbnail. He knew that the
priest was reading him like a book as he almost telegraphed his thoughts to all
and sundry.
“You’ve changed the whole
topic of the discussion, I thought we were discussing PSTD,” he accused.
“I’m simply offering
another avenue of possibilities. One that, given Jim’s abilities, I think you
can’t ignore.”
“What kind of supernatural
thing?”
“I’m not too sure.”
Shrugging, Philip took Blair’s empty mug and stood to prepare a new batch of
hot chocolate.
Blair waited patiently,
knowing Philip’s tendency to potter as he contemplated. But he couldn’t keep from filling in the silence.
“I’ve hypothesised about
Jim’s sixth sense being heightened. But he couldn’t see that demon that
terrorised you. He just knew that it was there by its absence. And the vampires
we met didn’t breathe. No heartbeat -- that sort of thing.”
“There’s rarely empirical
evidence for the supernatural. Otherwise,” Philip said with grim humour, “it
wouldn’t be supernatural.”
Blair made the sort of
inspirational leap for which he was famous. “You’re thinking about ghosts,
aren’t you?”
“The murder/suicide,” Philip confirmed. “Since you
told me that he’s fixated on it.”
“If he’s seeing a ghost,”
Blair mused, “he could be seeing it out of the corner of his eye. Or just
sensing it on the borders of perception. It’s no wonder he’s bent out of
shape.”
“So what’s your
explanation for being bent out of shape?” Philip asked softly.
“What?”
“You’ve lost weight you
can ill afford to lose. It doesn’t look as if you’ve washed your hair in an
age. And you’re normally a lot… quicker.”
The flat assessment caught
Blair by surprise.
“I’m thinking you might
have a diluted version of Jim’s ailment.”
Blair looked inward in a
meditative moment. “No,” he said hesitantly, “I don't. I’m overworked and
worried about Jim.”
Philip accepted Blair’s
words with a simple nod. “So what’s our next step?”
Blair took the hot
chocolate powder from Philip’s hands; he always thought better when he was
doing something.
“Can you see ghosts,
Philip?”
“No,” Philip said
unequivocally. “Not unless they want to be seen.”
“Do you think Shaun can?”
“Unfortunately he is at
his parents’ home in
Blair growled under his
breath as he poured hot water into the mugs. “Can I get his cell number? I’ll
give him a call.”
Philip was back to
worrying at the mole on his cheek. “Uhm, I think it’s on my cell phone. I’ll
get it before you go.”
“Right.” Blair fixed with
priest with his deep-thinking gaze. “Can you come around and talk to Jim?
You’re familiar with PTSD. If it’s not supernatural, it still might be some
kind of stress reaction. We have to rule out one or the other.”
“After working in
Blair carried the filled
mugs back to the scoured kitchen table. “Why don’t you come to the loft
tomorrow night? I’ll cook something ethnic and complicated so it’ll keep me in
the kitchen while you talk with Jim.”
“Sounds like a plan,”
Philip said, the cavalier phrase sounding strange when coupled with the white
collar of his priesthood.
“And the ghost?” Blair
answered his own question. “We’ll see if we can get Jim to remember something.”
“When he finds out, he’s
not going to appreciate being ganged up on.”
“That is the understatement
of the century.”
~*~
Jim slammed shut Rafe’s
car door and took his leave of his fellow detective with a curt nod. He had no
idea where the brat had gone, but taking the truck without permission was
almost a criminal offence.
He slammed into his home
and kicked the door shut. He already knew that Sandburg wasn’t home, but he
looked anyway. Blair’s room was an absolute pit. It defied reason how he could
tolerate the mess.
“Who does he think he is?”
Jim turned in a slow circle.
Blair’s capacity for chaos
was unparalleled. It was if he were an alien species. He toed a sheaf of
letters over. All without stamps, they were addressed to people all over the
world. Curious, he crouched and picked them up.
They were probably related
to his sentinel research. One was addressed to a petty officer based on the
British Royal Navy vessel ‘Invincible.’
“
He slid a fingernail under
the edge of the envelope, but he couldn’t open the letter without it being
obvious that it had been tampered with.
Blair’s sentinel research.
He hadn’t seen anything since that first clinical, detestable chapter. The top
drawer of Blair’s dresser was open and that was all the justification he
needed. There was no sentinel research, just Blair’s important papers. A
well-stamped passport was tucked in a corner.
“Christ, the kid’s been
all over the world.”
There was a diary, which
he left untouched, a social security card and a worn folder. Inside the folder
sat two birth certificates. The cat’s curiosity well stroked, he teased them
out. One proclaimed that Blair was a
boy, born on
The fake was Blair
Sandburg’s certificate.
He ran his fingers over
the warp and weft of the paper. The letters f and e had been finely abraded off
the paper, making female into male. Blair’s chest was rather hairy for a girl.
Blair was a fake.
~*~
End of Chapter I
Chapter II
Blair let himself into the
loft. He had returned to the party, but Jim had left. The loft was silent, the
drapes drawn, and no lights shone. Breathing harshly, Blair picked his way
through the gloom. The sun had not yet set –- the curtains didn’t need to be
pulled.
“Jim, man?” Blair
whispered, face upturned to Jim’s bedroom. “Do you have a migraine?”
He hovered at the bottom
of the stairs, debating whether to go up.
“Sandburg.”
“Jesus!” Blair spun on the
spot, clutching his chest. “You’ll give me a heart attack. Are you all right,
man? Why are you sitting in the dark?”
The Sentinel sat in his
yellow chair like an ancient king on his throne.
“Where have you been?”
“Uhm, I went to Philip’s
to return a book.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not!” Blair said
indignantly. He had had an overdue library book belonging to the priest in his
bag.
The figure sitting so
stiffly in the chair shifted slightly.
“Your heart’s racing.”
“Of course it is; you
scared me out of my wits. Why did you come back to the loft? I checked back at
Simon’s.”
“I was concerned,” Jim
said, his tone so flat that it sent shivers up Blair’s spine.
“I’m sorry,” Blair
muttered obediently. “I didn’t think I’d be missed. I saw my backpack and
remembered the book, and I just went for it.”
“Next time, ask.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Jim rose sedately to his
feet. Blair held still as Jim stalked towards him. Transfixed, he waited for
the detective to walk straight over him. At the last minute, Jim eased by him
like a slow moving great river. Frozen, Blair was trapped. The only thing he
could hear was his own harsh breathing. The soft tread of footsteps padding up
the stairs finally impinged.
“Where are you going?”
“Bed,” Jim said without
looking back.
“Uh… Philip’s coming
tomorrow for dinner. I thought I’d make kuftis with peanuts.”
Jim stopped, one foot
poised above the next step. “Whatever.”
“I...” Blair couldn’t go
on. The poisonous atmosphere was leaching the energy from his bones. ‘Should I tell him that I think he’s
suffering from PTSD or possibly haunted?’
He laughed nervously; they
would need some better evidence than vague hypotheses before he presented that
to Jim.
The detective had made it
to the darkness of his bedroom and was hidden from view.
“Are you going to put your
sleep mask on, Jim?” he said at a deliberately normal level.
“Yes,” came the
monosyllabic reply.
“Okay, I’m going to put
the lights on.” He didn’t wait for agreement or rebuttal. He wanted the lights
on. Anything to drive away the omnipresent feelings of misery and hatred. The
simple action of light flooding the room was as comforting as Jim’s one-armed
hugs.
He had to do something to
dispel the negativity saturating the loft. He couldn’t live like this. He
wouldn’t live like this. It sucked snail snot.
If it was a ghost haunting Jim, he wasn’t sure what he could do – that
would require some research. But if Jim was suffering from PTSD, there were
certain things that he could do. Moving frenetically through the room, he lit
candles, including the single candle in his incense burner. Ransacking through
his essential oil collection yielded a fair collection suitable for emotional
situations. He settled on Clary Sage and carefully dosed the warming water with
a single drop. The scent lightly permeated the room. His next port of call was
the kitchen. Comfort food was called for; he’d been taught at the feet of a
master. Naomi’s recipe for Jewish Chicken Broth was legendary. It could cure
all ills. There were many supplements to the diet that could help depressed
people. He could add some oats to the soup, and asparagus.
Misery assailed him. How
the hell could he think that his mother’s chicken soup would help? An upswing
of hope caught him by surprise.
If he didn’t do anything,
the depression would win.
~*~
Jim lay on his back,
staring at the windows above through the weave of his sleep mask. Blair wasn’t
the man he thought he was. He was an impostor. He mentally discarded a thousand
and one possibilities. He knew that Blair wasn’t a trained covert operative.
The kid was too clumsy when they sparred. Even the best of the best couldn’t
keep that level of incompetence. What better sort of a plant to spy on a
sentinel? Maybe he didn’t have to be trained. Blair was intelligent and an
obfuscator at heart; his best cover was to be his deceptive little self.
A strange scent tickled
his nostrils. It smelled woody and introspective. He pushed his sleepmask up and pulled the
Summer Blossom birth certificate from his chino pocket.
“Oh.”
He felt the roar of the
panther deep inside his soul; his bones reverberated with the growl. The
Sentinel knew this feeling; it heralded the latest cruelty that his sentinel
senses had thrown up at him -- hallucination.
‘I called him Summer Blossom.’ She smiled tremulously. ‘He’s my baby,
but I can’t keep him.’ A woman so thin she appeared to be a wraith held out a
wrapped blanket.
Jim’s arms accepted the swaddled babe. It was undeniably brand
new, so small and underweight it was swamped by the blankets.
‘Please look after my baby; don’t let Stuart get him.’
She leaned down and brushed the babe’s forehead with her lips.
A single tear fell where the kiss-wrinkled skin slowly smoothed. Jim gazed into
the woman’s cerulean blue eyes -- eyes that were a perfect match for Sandburg’s
-- as she moved back.
The dream whispered away.
Jim threw the birth certificate with a snap of his wrist. It sailed through the
air.
“Now I touch things and
see. It doesn’t make any sense!” he grated wretchedly. He silenced himself
ruthlessly, not wanting the stranger in his home to rush up to help him. The
dichotomy confused him. His friend, the stranger, help? Of course Blair would
help him. Jim scrubbed his face with his hands. Each individual bristle scraped
his palms.
‘What’s the matter with me?’
He twisted on his mattress
and looked down into the living room. Blair had adopted a meditative posture,
facing the late evening sunlight shafting through gaps in the closed curtains.
Jim inhaled appreciatively; the introspective scent was slowly being superseded
by the aroma of the perfect Chicken Soup.
Jim slipped off his bed
and padded soundlessly down the stairs. Summer Blossom didn’t move. Adopting
the mannerisms of his spirit animal, Jim slinked up behind the student and
dropped to his knees. The kid’s breathing remained deep and steady. Jim reached out, his thumbs pausing a
hairsbreadth from the vulnerable nape of Blair’s neck.
‘Go on. A quick twist and he’ll never bother you again.’
‘No, I can’t!’ Jim protested. ‘He’s
my friend.’
‘How can he be? He’s an impostor.’
‘No, he’s not. I don’t understand the certificates; but
Blair’s my friend.’
Jim twitched as a figure
moved just at the corner of his eye. His head jerked around and he saw a flash
of green combat fatigues. Hunched over, Jim scuttled away, only straightening
when he was in the kitchen. He grabbed a kitchen knife and spun to where the
man had stood. Even sentinel senses picked up nothing.
Jim set the knife on the
counter.
‘I’m seeing and hearing things. That looked like Sarris. Shit,
I’m hallucinating. Did I see that birth certificate? Did I?
Blair sat so peacefully,
so vulnerable to his ranger born skills. Imagining Blair’s neck snapping
beneath his fingers was painfully easy. A simple twist and Blair would be no
more.
‘No more threat. No more dissertation.’
The knife gleamed. He
could see his reflection in the honed steel. Wide blue eyes smiled at him when
he knew that his own eyes were bloodshot.
Jim bolted.
~*~
The slam of the loft door
threw Blair out of his meditative trance. He knew without asking that the loft
was empty. An abandoned room had a resoundingly hollow quality. Blair unfurled
his limbs and stood. Only empty shadows greeted him. Where had Jim gone? He was
out the door and down the steps in a flash. As he barrelled through the doors
onto the sidewalk, he saw the trailing smoke of the Ford’s exhaust.
But where was the stupid
Sentinel going?
Standing in the centre of
the street, his feet in an oily puddle, he yelled, “Jim!”
Slowly, miserably, he
trudged back into the loft. The door hung open. He picked up the phone; there
was one avenue of search. He pecked out Jim’s cell phone number. A stilted
voice told him that the cell phone was switched off. Reluctantly, he set it
back on the cradle. It wasn’t like Jim to not switch on his cell phone. His
work dictated that he had to remain in contact.
But Jim was allowed to go
out. He shouldn’t be too concerned; Jim was a grown man. He snatched up the
telephone. Calling Simon and asking him to put out an APB on the Sentinel would
probably be construed as overreacting, but it was extremely tempting. Unbidden,
his fingers dialled Cascade P.D.’s secretary.
“Major Crime,” Rhonda’s
dulcet tones announced.
“Hi, it’s Blair. I don’t
suppose that Jim’s called in? Told you what he’s up to?” he said, getting
straight to the point.
“Like he normally does?
Rhonda said sardonically.
“Can you do me a favour?”
“What?” she asked lightly.
“I need to know where Jim
is, and he isn’t answering his phone. Can you, maybe, ask dispatch to get the
uniforms to keep an eye out for his truck?”
“Why?”
Rhonda had the
disconcerting ability to see through all his bullshit, so he spoke the truth,
sort of. “I’m worried about him, we had a fight. I need to talk to him.”
“He’ll come home
eventually,” she said understandingly.
“Yeah, but…”
“Look.” Her voice smiled.
“I’ll keep my ears open and if I hear anything I’ll let you know. You’re at
home?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, someone will spot
him. He’s fairly memorable. I’ll give you a call.”
“Thanks, Rhonda.” Blair
hit the off button and stood looking at the phone until he realised that standing
there achieved nothing. He upended his backpack on the kitchen table. Two books
fell out. Philip had loaned him two introductory texts on psychological
disorders. If he couldn’t follow Jim, he would be prepared for his return.
He ladled out a bowlful of
soup and set it beside the books. Absently spooning the restorative soup into
his mouth, he began to read.
PTSD is found in individuals who have been exposed to
prolonged traumatic circumstances, such as sexual abuse, and is especially
prevalent in those who were hurt during childhood. Developmental research is
revealing that many brain and hormonal changes may occur as a result of early,
prolonged trauma, and contribute to difficulties with memory, learning and
regulating impulses and emotions. This may also contribute to severe
behavioural disorders e.g. impulsivity, aggression, alcohol/drug abuse. In
adults these individuals are diagnosed with depressive disorders.
Main symptoms:
Intrusions – flashbacks or nightmares where the traumatic
event is re-experienced
Avoidance – reduced exposure to people or things that might
bring on the intrusive symptoms,
Hyperarousal – physiologic signs of increased arousal such as
hyper vigilance or increased startle response.
Depression, anxiety and dissociation arise from traumatic
experiences.
In the purest sense, trauma involves exposure to a
life-threatening experience. This fits with its phylogenetically old roots in
life-or-death issues of survival, and with the ‘old brain’, e.g. the limbic
system.
“Shit,” Blair said
pithily. If Jim wasn’t a prime candidate for PTSD, Blair was a Beverly
Hillbilly. He flicked through the index looking for treatment scenarios. There
were drug regimes, the most widely-used drug treatments were the selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitors, such as Prozac and Zoloft. He dreaded to think what the Sentinel’s
reaction to the chemicals would be. As an addition or alternative,
cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, and exposure therapy were possibilities.
Blair laughed with a disquieting shade of hysteria; Jim would really enjoy
those.
He closed the book. He had
only touched the tip of the iceberg, and already he thought helping Jim would
be impossible. He chastised himself for his uncharitable thoughts. If Jim were
ill was sick they would deal. The alternate diagnosis of a haunting seemed much
more auspicious.
The phone rang. Blair
snatched it up. “Blair!”
“It’s Rhonda.”
“Do you know where Jim
is?”
“Apparently, he went down
to evidence and collected files from a Symmonds and McGuire case. Does that
help?”
“Oh, that’s good. He’s
searching himself.” Blair threw the phone down without another word, snatched
up his backpack, thrust the two books into its depths, and remembered at the
last minute to dump his soup bowl in the sink. Shaking his head, he ducked out
the door. Now that he had an idea where to start to look for Jim, he would seek
until he found him.
~*~
As it was, he had to stop
at the central precinct and beg the receptionist in Major Crime’s evidence
lock-up to give him the address of Monica and Gavin’s apartment. He had avoided
Simon by ducking into the men’s room as the captain passed along the corridor;
for some inexplicable reason he didn’t want to tell the captain that they again
might be venturing into the supernatural world.
Blair ran noisily up the
stairs to the top apartment of the rickety building. He slowed at the landing,
his steps suddenly coming uneasily. A broken police tape hung on either side of
the doorframe. The door was open.
He resisted the first
impulse to call out for Jim. If Jim was over-stimulated that would be a
mistake. And, the voice of reason said, if the ghosts were there, they would
react. Blair stopped dead. At this very moment, Jim might be under siege.
His better instincts left
him; Blair kicked open the door. “Jim!”
The sitting room was
disturbingly unfurnished; the predominant feature was candles. Candles at the
fireplace, candles on the mantelpiece, candles on the windowsill. The scents
mixed and soared. Blair drifted around the room, avoiding the low slung, saggy
baggy sofa with a threadbare throw. A pine bookcase sat in the corner of the
room, with the only expensive piece of equipment in the room, a stereo, on top.
The CDs piled beside the player were an eclectic mix of rock and roll, Celtic,
classical, rap, jazz, and house. Blair registered a "Clannad" CD, and
wondered if Monica or Gavin had purchased it.
“Jim?” he tried again. He
had expected the Sentinel to be standing in the centre of the room, venting.
There were no clues to Jim’s symptoms in this vacant house. Blair crouched and
fingered the few books. Then it struck him: two Ph.D. students with no books?
The lack of a television he understood. If anything, Ph.D. students knew how to
prioritise. When a book was balanced against a meal, breakfast cereal went a
long, long way to keep the body going.
“Bedroom?”
The door creaked as it
opened and he found the library. A bed might have been in the centre of the
room, but the pillars of knowledge on either side drew the eye.
Their taste in books was
more eclectic than their music selection. Fantasy novels, science fiction,
manuals, thesauri, guide books, almanacs, encyclopaedias, biographies, civil war
history books, and homeopathy treatises were piled in leaning Towers of Pisa.
Blair guessed that Monica and Gavin were two very skinny people. A whole pile
next to the bed was devoted to self-help books. Blair settled on the
dust-covered quilt and began to pick through them.
‘Working Your Way Through Depression.’
‘You Can Be Popular.’
‘A Ten-Step Programme to Becoming the Person You Know You
Are.’
Those were only a few of
the titles, but the theme was depressingly consistent.
“Huh?” Blair scattered the
evidence over the bed. Jim had said that Monica had not shown any signs of
depression. The books before him were one big honking clue to the contrary.
Jim was the lead detective
on the case, and kept it open despite this evidence that Monica or Gavin were concerned
with their place in the order of things.
Jim knew, on a level he
was incapable of verbalising, that there was indeed something wrong here (and
had pursued the case regardless). So wrong that the door was open and Blair had
entered like Red Riding Hood into Grandmother’s cottage.
“Oh, shit.”
Blair sat frozen,
contemplating his options. It was a
one-bedroom apartment, with a living room, kitchen and bathroom. That left the
kitchen unsearched. Blair crept out of the bedroom. Nothing moved in the living
room. The door to the corridor was closed.
‘Oh, God.’ Blair’s fingers rose to his mouth.
Movie monsters flitted in
every dark corner. The obvious answer was to run from the apartment. But the answers to Jim’s affliction possibly
lay in this apartment. He skirted along the wall, placing one foot slowly in
front of the other. He peeked into the bathroom. A layer of talcum powder lay
undisturbed except for a single trail of bare footprints on the linoleum. No
one had ventured into the white-strewn room. That left the kitchen.
Bracing himself, Blair
pushed the swing door open.
“Hey, Sandburg.”
Blair sagged with relief.
Jim sat at the kitchen table, sifting through a book.
“I was worried,” Blair
began.
“It’s all in here.” Jim
held up a black-backed journal. “A descent into madness.”
“What?” Blair slipped his
backpack off his shoulder and let it fall to the floor.
“Monica. All here.”
Gingerly, Blair took his
seat opposite the detective. “In what way?”
“She loved Gavin. But he
betrayed her, or at least she thought he betrayed her.”
“Is that why she killed
him?” Blair asked softly.
Jim lifted his head and
Blair was speared by red-ringed eyes. “Yes, he betrayed her and she was
justified.”
Blair shivered. “How?”
“He told everyone her
deepest, darkest secret.”
"What was it?"
Jim’s finger skimmed a
passage. “He told their friends that she was frigid.”
“That’s hardly a ‘deepest,
darkest secret’.”
“Because she was molested
as a child.”
“Oh, my God.” Blair rocked
back in his seat. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s all here.” Jim
flicked to the back of the journal.
“She gutted him with an
axe because Gavin told--”
“Looks like it.”
“Shit.” Blair teased the
journal away from the Sentinel. The last few pages looked as if they were
written by a pre-school child. Badly formed letters dribbled across the page.
Blair skimmed through the vituperative words, chronicling the young woman’s
betrayal.
“Have you read all this?”
Blair asked. The pages were indexed with post-its and fragments of paper acting
as bookmarks.
“Yes,” Jim muttered.
“When did she decide that
Gavin was… When did she start feeling that things were going wrong?”
Jim reached over and
flipped to a page marred with scraggly doodles. “Gavin had been away. She was
all excited and… it’s all there. She thought he’d had an affair, ratted her
out.”
“Did you read this diary
when you first investigated the case?” Blair fingered the edge of a post-it
sticking out from the leaves of the book.
Jim gazed at him,
perplexed. “Yes. I kept it safe.”
“Why?” Blair shook his
head. “Why did you say that the case made no sense when Monica was possibly
suicidal?”
“There’s more here than
meets the eye. I just haven’t figured it out yet.”
“What are you sensing,
Jim?” Blair could finally ask.
“When?” He sounded so
depressed that Blair’s heart bled.
“Why did you run out of
the loft, Jim? What made you come here?”
“These--” Jim struggled to
say the word. “My-- damn senses are acting up.”
“How, Jim?” Blair stood
and skirted around the table to stand at Jim’s elbow. “You’ve got to tell me
what’s going on or I can’t help you.”
Jim planted his palms down
on the tabletop. Breathing harshly, he carefully spoke his next words. “I touch
… objects and I see things.”
Blair gnawed on this
thumbnail, his thinking cap clearly on, he was only momentarily thrown by the
unexpected statement. “Like what? Can you give me an example?”
Jim glanced at him
furtively. “I touched stuff belonging to Alex Barnes and saw images.”
“Psychometry?” Blair questioned
breathlessly. “It sounds like psychometry; it’s a clairvoyant gift where a
sensitive person is receptive to images retained by or associated with
belongings. Oh, wow, Jim, this is amazing. Do you think it’s psychometry?”
“How the fuck should I know,
Sandburg? You’re the hippie geek that believes this stuff.”
Blair blanched at his
venom. “That’s uncalled for, Jim,” he said softly.
Jim pushed away, circling
around the kitchen bench to put as much space between himself and Blair as
possible.
“Jim--”
“Look, Chief, it just
slipped out. You’re interested in this sort of stuff.”
“Yeah, and you’re the one
who experiences it.” Blair took one measured step to the right. “What are you
seeing? If it was Alex, why’s it bugging you now? What did you see here that
rattled your cage?”
“I haven't seen anything
here. But I saw Sarris at the loft.”
“Veronica?”
“No. Her father.”
“Did he say anything?”
Blair asked calmly.
“No! Of course not.”
“Jim. Jim.” Blair took
another careful step. “I’m trying to figure out if he was really there or a
hallucination.”
“Hallucination?” Jim asked
indignantly, moving one step away as Blair advanced.
“Okay,” Blair said easily.
“So your senses are telling you that Sarris was really there?”
“No!”
“Give me a break, man.”
“Sorry,” Jim grated.
Blair’s brow furrowed as
he strove to figure out the best step forward.
“How about we try a guided meditation?”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing too weird. We’ve
done it before. I’ll just talk you through.”
“No.” Jim pushed by him
and arrowed towards the door.
“Jim!” Blair got between
him and escape. He held his arms out, but didn’t touch the over-stimulated man.
“Get out of my way,
Sandburg.”
“We’ve got to figure this
out; you can’t keep running away.”
Jim cocked his head, his
mouth falling open as he inhaled. He didn’t protest when Blair finally touched
his elbow with his index finger and directed him to the saggy, baggy couch. As
the cushions brushed the back of Jim’s calves he sat.
“Right, Jim,” Blair began,
“I want you to listen to my voice.”
Blair breathed a sigh of
relief. He had Jim exactly where he wanted him. Jim responded to meditation
very favourably, and in the right frame of mind his memory became eidetic.
Utterly relaxed, Jim took slow, shallow breaths. His eyes were quiet behind
closed lids.
“Jim, I want you to
picture a time when you were happy and content.”
The corners of his mouth
twisted up slightly.
“Where are you?”
“In the loft, first day. Home
finally.”
“Good. Now, this is your
safe place, Jim. This is where you come when I tell you to go to your safe
place.”
Jim simply nodded.
“Looking back from today,
when was the last time you enjoyed food?”
“Two months ago,” Jim
answered easily. “The Wednesday deli special.”
‘Two months!’ Blair echoed. He was appalled at himself; how
could he have been oblivious to his friend for so long? He rubbed the centre of
his chest where the fountain water still burned.
“Go back an hour on that
day. Where are you?”
“At my desk, looking at a
report.”
“What’s it about?”
“I’m reviewing the
Satterly case before I appear at court.”
“Okay. I want you to go
back another hour.”
“I’m in the records room
getting the Satterly deposition.”
‘This is going to take an age,’ Blair reflected. “Okay,
Jim, I want you to look back through the day and tell me if you felt anything
unusual. Tell me if your skin crawled or the hairs on the back of your neck
rose. Anything like that – if you felt something, anything unusual.”
Jim’s eyes shot open; he
scuttled backwards along the couch. “Nothing,” he snarled. “Nothing at all.”
Blair was open mouthed
with shock. He closed his mouth with a sharp snap. “Yeah, looks like it.”
Jim ended up on the far
side of the couch, crammed up against the cushions. “Nothing.”
“Jim, this is as
aggravating as hell. Talk to me, man. When did you feel something? What did you
feel?”
The Sentinel was as
inscrutable as his panther. Blair doubted that torture with bamboo shoots would
extract the information from him. But they needed to know; he was sick of
running around with blinders on.
“What?” he prodded again.
But Jim surprised him, “I
felt--hot eyes on me, and the whisper of a brittle, dry wind.” He crossed his
arms over his chest.
“When? It was here, wasn’t
it?”
Jim’s eyes slid to the
left, seemingly more interested in the CD player. “Yes,” he grated.
“Finally,” Blair exulted.
Jim launched himself to
his feet and placed the couch between them. “You’re assuming that one is
related to the other, Einstein. “
“Well, it obviously
affected you,” Blair said pointedly.
“What does something
walking over my grave have to do with food tasting like shit?”
“And the other stuff?”
Blair tackled. “Your little paranoid delusions? And seeing Sarris?”
“I don’t see the link.”
“Just because we can’t see
it, doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. We just have to find out what it is.”
“And how, Einstein, are we
going to do that?”
“Séance?”
“Like hell we will!”
“You see,” Blair continued
earnestly, “I think you’re being haunted.”
“What?”
“I think Monica and Gavin
are hovering on the edge of your perception. And that’s… negatively impacting
on you.”
“Negatively impacting.”
“Will you quit with the
echoing? It’s really irritating.”
“If that’s the case,” Jim
said dryly, “why am I seeing Sarris?”
“Oh.”
Jim grimaced whimsically.
“Try again, Chief.”
“Okay!” Blair snapped. “I
think you’re suffering from PTSD and depression and you need to go to extensive
counselling with a psychologist to address your abandonment issues and repeated
traumas to your psyche.”
“There’s nothing wrong
with me,” Jim said through gritted teeth.
“Of course there isn’t.”
Blair shrugged aimlessly. He felt like he could wait until the next Ice Age and
Jim would still be standing there glaring down at him. “You know that whatever
it is, it's going to win because you
won’t face it.”
He stared at Jim, but the
Sentinel was entranced by his hands, working his fingers against an unseen
object. His long fingers twisted, then his hands dropped.
“What was that about?”
“Nothing.” Jim folded his
hands against his chest. “I think you might be onto something with the
haunting.”
“Really?” Blair was
astounded at his capitulation. On reflection, however, ghosts were eminently
preferable to mental illnesses in an ex-ranger-detective’s world. Despite his
well-structured barriers, and exceptional ability for denial, it appeared that
Jim had realised that something was seriously wrong. Blair was surprised that
he hadn’t been picked up and thrown against a wall.
‘What came first?’ Blair mused, ‘the
PTSD or the ghost?’
He went stark white as the
ramifications opened before him. Monica had been, like Jim, hurt. She’d been in
a relationship, working towards a career, for all intents and purposes getting
on with her life. Then she had turned a corner and decided that suicide was the
answer. Blair ran his fingers over the back of the young woman’s journal.
“You’ve read this?”
“Yes.”
“’Till she thought Gavin
had betrayed her, do you think she was suicidal?”
“Where are you going with
this, Sandburg?”
Blair picked up the book
and flicked through the pages. “Maybe Monica’s not haunting you. Maybe whatever
drove Monica to suicide latched onto you when you investigated her death.”
Blair skimmed through a
paragraph where Monica described her partner. Gavin had surprised her in her
office with a carton of her favourite
soup and a warm bagel. The simple act had given her a great deal of
pleasure.
“Why me?” Jim asked.
“Because you’re damaged,’ Blair thought. ‘It was all there ready to feast upon.’
“Sandburg?”
“I dunno.” Blair called up
every acting skill and biorhythm feedback trick he knew. “You were first on the
scene?”
~*~
Wretchedness dutifully
followed Misery into their empty home. Before Jim could retreat to the fridge
to swamp his sorrows in beer, Blair spoke, “I think we should go to Philip’s.”
Hand on the fridge, Jim
paused. “Why?”
“Because we don’t know
anything.” Blair held up Monica’s journal. “There’s no descriptions of the
haunt. Philip, at the very least, has experience in this sort of thing.”
Jim snorted. “And we
don’t? Demons from the other side, vampires, weird fairy shit?”
“We have practical
experience. But we need to do research and I don’t have the esoteric library
facility in the loft.” Blair waved his hand at the anthropology books on the
bookshelf against the wall.
“You’re so sure that
you’ve guessed this thing right,” Jim said disparagingly.
The thrum of ‘rightness’
in his gut screamed at Blair that he was on the right track. He knew the
sensation well. He called it inspiration, inspiration that was born of
experience, knowledge and hope. It guided him.
He scrabbled in his pocket
and pulled out his cell phone. Philip’s number was in the memory. The priest
answered almost immediately, “Blair?”
“Hey, Philip, I think we
might have a haunting problem. Do you mind if we come over and hit the books in
your library?” He smiled innocently at Jim as he spoke.
Philip was wise to Blair’s
open explanation. “Uhm, really, a haunting? Uhm, yes, why don’t you pack an
overnight bag? You and Jim?” The concern in his tone was palpable.
“Yeah, good idea.” He
nodded at Jim, who was listening with a granite expression on his face. “We
don’t know how long it will take to figure out what’s happening. Research can
take a lifetime. Okay, right, thanks.”
The ring of a closed line
echoed through the deathly quiet loft.
“You’re expecting us to
stay overnight?” Jim crossed his arms. The Sentinel preferred to sleep in his
own bed if given any choice. He loved camping, getting back to the elements,
but again that was about his own space. Staying in a strange house in a strange
bed was not at the top of Jim’s list of things to do. Blair wondered how he had
hacked the Army.
“I think it’s a good idea,
Jim. We don’t know what we’re up against. Suppose this ghost is here in the
apartment? I would think Philip has protections at the manse.”
“You can do that salt and
sage smudge stuff here.”
“Yeah,” Blair hedged. “But
that doesn’t help me find out more about our unwelcome guest.”
As implacable as the
statues of
“Ready?” Jim snapped.
‘Oh boy, this is going to be fun.’ Blair swallowed, apprehension
curdling in his gut. He forced his lips to curve upwards, and with the patently
false smile on his face, ducked around Jim to the kitchen. The ‘sentinel first
aid kit’ was tucked under the sink. It held a plethora of sentinel-friendly
products, including earplugs and sleepmasks. It filled up half of Blair’s
backpack. Jim watched him stoically as he wrestled it in, obscuring the PTSD
books.
“Ready?” Jim snapped
again.
”One last thing.” Blair
retrieved Monica’s journal from the kitchen table and laid it on top of the
first aid kit. “Ready.”
Jim snatched up his coat
and stormed out the door.
Blair traipsed in his
wake, mentally reviewing the contents of the kit. He had the sedative Valerian
and the anti-depressant
~*~
Philip was waiting for
them on the porch. Blair smiled at his friend’s predictability; you could
always count on Philip.
“Hey, Philip.” Blair
leaped out of the truck before it had stopped completely, earning a black
glance from Jim. Blair pulled a mess of faces at the priest as Jim was
distracted hauling their stuff out of the truck. Philip met his gamut of
expressive communication stoically, and Blair knew that he had got the point.
“Haunted?” he asked Jim
pleasantly.
“It’s Sandburg’s idea.”
“The alternative’s too
horrible to contemplate.” Shocked at his own words, Blair plastered his hand
over his mouth.
“And the alternative is?”
Philip asked softly as he conducted them into his home.
“That I’m going nuts,” Jim
said so flatly, his tone hurt Blair’s ears.
“Nuts? Really, Blair, your
Psych 101 lecturer will be turning in his grave.”
“I never said nuts.” Blair
took the line that Philip handed to him. “I thought PTSD might be a factor.” He
made sure that he stood between Jim and escape.
“Ah, PTSD, pervasive. It
affects a lot of people.”
Blair wasn’t surprised
when they ended up back in Philip’s warm and welcoming kitchen. The housekeeper
was notably absent, but the warm, caressing scents said that she’d been busy.
“Mrs. Givens has made
scones.” He pottered by the stove. “Jim, there’s two guest bedrooms on the
third floor opposite the laboratory, and there’s one on the second floor beside
the bathroom. Take your pick.”
Blair marvelled at
Philip’s deft handling; the man was an experienced counsellor or had a heart
big enough to hold all his friends’ trials and tribulations. Jim needed choices and he smiled in response.
As soon as he was out the
door, Philip mouthed, “What happened?”
“Monster,” Blair mouthed
back at the priest and emphasised his words by holding fingers like horns at
his temples. “I think it’s feeding off of Jim.”
“What kind?” Philip segued
into American Sign Language.
Blair raised his shoulders
in the universal sign of cluelessness. “We can’t let Jim know we talked first.
He’ll see it as a betrayal.”
Philip nodded wisely. “So
you think you’re being haunted?” He spoke out loud rather than signing.
“I think it’s more
insidious than that. Monica was under a lot of stress, and I’m wondering if it
was supernatural in origin.”
“In what way?”
“I’ll have to read her
journal.” Blair up-ended his backpack, first aid kit and books. “The suicide
victim wrote about –- as Jim calls it –- her descent into madness. But first a
cup of herbal tea?”
Philip was always game for
tea. Blair selected the appropriate herbs to add to the camomile tea. As he
measured out the smallest effective dose of herbs for his sensitive friend into
a ceramic mug, he wondered about his whereabouts.
“I’ll make tea,"
Philip said. "You read the young lady’s journal.”
~*~
Jim prowled around the
guestrooms, as he listened to the voice whispering in his ears.
The dry murmuring seemed
to say, ‘Crazy. You’re crazy.’
Jim rubbed his temple
tiredly, convincing himself that it was rustle of the leaves on the tree
outside the window. He decided that he didn’t like this bedroom. The third
floor rooms were mirrors of each other, separated by a pale green en suite
bathroom. Each room had two single beds, and Jim set their bags on the two
single beds in the east bedroom.
‘You’d be better off dead.’
Jim shut the door and the
whispering of other voices called him back to the kitchen.
“Hey, Jim.” Blair looked
up from the journal and smiled widely. “You get us settled in?”
“I put us on the third
floor.”
“’K.” Jim noticed that
Blair didn’t ask if they were together, he just assumed it. Carefully, he sat
opposite his Guide. Earlier that afternoon, he had seriously considered
breaking his best friend’s neck and now they were sitting waiting for a Roman
Catholic Priest to dole out tea and baked goods. It was insane. He was insane.
“Tea, Jim?” Philip asked
and set a cup of yellow, pissy looking water at his elbow.
“What’s this?”
“You’ve had it before,
Jim,” Blair said without looking up. “It’s camomile.”
“It doesn’t smell like
camomile.”
“There’s some other herbs
in it.” His words were punctuated by the swish of pages moving from left to
right. Blair had a pad of paper by his side and he jotted down notes.
Jim took a tiny sip of the
tea and immediately dialled down his sense of taste to nothing. ‘Poison!’ Jim spat out his tea. After
wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he demanded. “What the fuck did you
put in this, Sandburg?”
Blair did not back away
from his vehemence. “Nothing that you haven’t had before. Camomile with
“Whatever.” Jim abandoned
the cup with a grimace. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Jim?” Blair began.
The Sentinel glared him
into silence.
“The church grounds are
very peaceful,” Philip said calmly, gesturing easily at the back door. “There’s
a gate on the north garden wall that will take you into the grounds.”
Jim threw back the bolts
and slipped out into the garden. He stormed down the path, rubbing his arms
against the chill rising from the ground. The sun was about to disappear below
the horizon, making the garden a shadowy, foreboding place. He compensated
automatically, dialling up his sight until the remaining light was amplified
and the world around glowed with an inner silver light.
He pushed through a wrought
iron gate into the church grounds. Moving between the trees, he bypassed shrubs
and flowers without thinking, heading unerringly to the centre of the grounds.
The roar of traffic died and Jim dropped to his knees. He rested his hands,
palms down, on the cool, green grass.
He was going insane. He
had thought about killing Blair. Even now, he knew that he could do it without
breaking a sweat. Yet he remembered Blair saying that he was haunted and he had
to believe that. Vampires existed, they had met Blair’s sidhe, so why not
ghosts that made him see and do things?
If this had happened four
years ago, he would have killed Blair with the knife that he now held in his
hands without pausing to think.
“Knife?”
Surprised, Jim examined
the long knife, twisting it back and forth to the rhythm of the wind in the
trees. He didn’t remember taking a knife from the manse. It had a curious,
diamond-shaped blade.
“Ah.” It brought to mind a
woman with dark hair and enigmatic eyes. She had died for him. She had been
special. Everybody died: his mother was dead, Bud was dead, Sarris was dead,
and Blair was dead. Blair had died in the fountain. He had listened for any
sound from the still heart and the silent lungs. He’d called to Blair with more
passion and more hope than he had ever plumbed in his life. He hadn’t begged
his comrades in
“The wolf came back,” Jim
said.
He’d left Philip alone
with a wolf in Blair’s body.
Jim erupted to his feet.
He had to take the impostor out before he was betrayed and Philip was killed.
Werewolves might be difficult to kill, but he doubted that they could survive
having their heads sawed off.
~*~
Blair set the journal
aside. Speed-reading was an art that he excelled at, but skimming at this rate
gave him a headache.
“Did you find anything of
use?” Philip sat at the other end of the table where he had waited patiently.
“I don’t know if it’s
relevant, but it all starts when Gavin returns from Voluntary Services
Overseas.”
“Where did he work?”
“
“That’s a starting point.
You’ve told me Jim’s depressed, miserable and paranoid. So Monica shows all the
same symptoms after Gavin returns?”
“I know it’s a starting
point, I just…”
“You’re tired.”
“Damn right, I’m tired.
This has been going on for months. I keep running, but never catch up.” Blair
shook his head resignedly and then thumped his forehead on the kitchen table.
“You’ll hurt yourself.”
Philip settled by Blair’s side and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You are
catching up; Jim’s listening to you.”
“Yeah, sure he is. Jim ran
out and I didn’t follow. I had to read this thing.” He spoke to the
well-scrubbed wood. “I have to figure out what’s happening before he
self-destructs.”
“Come on, Blair.” Philip
levered him to his feet. “Let’s go to the library and see what we can pull up
on the Legacy database.”
“That’s a good idea.” He
allowed the priest to drag him along. “You know of any ghosts that make their
haunts miserable?”
“To be honest, no, but how
does possession grab you?”
“You know, I should be
responding to that with a really rude comment, but for some reason nothing
springs to mind.””
“You are tired.” Philip
patted his arm.
“Possession?” Blair mused
as he pushed open the library door. “I like the sound of that. No, I don’t like
the sound of that, but I think it makes sense.”
“So I think our first port
of call it to look for an Ethiopian ghost that possesses people?”
The butterflies that
constantly churned in Blair’s stomach turned into a flock of plummeting hawks.
“Shit, where’s Jim?”
Philip caught his arm as
he moved away from the library. “Unless you’re willing to tie Jim up, I think
it would be better if we found answers sooner rather than later.”
“What are you thinking?”
Blair snapped, responding to Philip’s unbearable, concerned tone.
“I…”
“No way! You’re thinking
Jim’s gonna kill himself or something, aren’t you?”
Philip coughed discreetly.
“There are a number of things…”
Jim and suicide were
inconceivable. The Sentinel would engineer his own death in a bad shootout
rather than mouthing on the end of his service revolver. In normal
circumstances, he couldn’t imagine that Jim would hurt himself. But these were
far from normal circumstances.
“Shit!” Blair pulled away
from Philip’s grip, yes, they needed answers, but if Jim killed himself in the
meantime they were pointless. He slid over the wooden floors, his hiking boots
leaving black streaks. As he skidded into the kitchen, the back door was kicked
open.
“Jim!”
“Werewolf!” Jim bellowed.
Blair’s eyes widened in
shock. Jim launched himself across the table. His trajectory was perfectly
calculated; he slammed into Blair, knocking him to the floor. Air was forced
from Blair’s lungs with a loud huff. The mad eyed Sentinel sat astride his
chest. The analytical part of Blair’s mind noted that he held a Phurba knife
clasped between his hands.
“Die!”
“Jim!” Blair wheezed. He
held out his hands in what he knew would be a futile warding gesture if the
knife crashed down. “It’s me – Blair. Your friend.”
Jim’s arctic blue eyes
narrowed. “People don’t come back from the dead,” he said coldly. “Things do.”
Adrenaline gave Blair the
breath to talk. “I’m not a thing!”
Jim’s hands flexed around
the knife, his knuckles blanched white. “Werewolf,” he muttered doubtfully.
“You brought me back!”
Blair protested.
Jim crashed sideways.
Philip stood over them, holding a frying pan. Blair sagged backwards onto the
cold floor. The relief made his guts clench.
“Fuck, man.” Blair levered
himself up on his elbow. Jim’s legs lay across Blair’s waist. His face was
mashed against the floor and his mouth was pushed open. A trickle of blood
snaked through his short hair to his temple.
“I think I just stunned
him.” Philip dropped the pan and crouched beside the detective.
“He’s got a hard head,”
Blair said inanely. “You wanted to tie him up. Let’s get him tied up.”
Philip looked at him
curiously. Feeling madly hysterical, Blair wiggled out from underneath Jim. The
Sentinel was still lost in unconsciousness.
“Should we move him to his
room?”
“I don’t want to move him
too much, in case he’s hurt his neck or something. Help me.” Holding his head
steady, Blair manhandled him onto his back.
“I didn’t hit him very
hard.”
“Shouldn’t he be waking up
if you only stunned him?”
“Maybe we should get him tied
up, if he’s thinking you’re a werewolf,” Philip’s accent came through strongly.
“He wasn’t kidding with that knife.”
“Good idea.” Blair scanned
the kitchen.
“Ooh, hang on, I’ve got
something that will work.”
Before Blair could
protest, Philip had ducked out of the kitchen. Blair turned back to his
Sentinel. He reached to brush the blood from Jim's temple and realised that his
fingers were trembling. “Sheesh.” He clamped one hand around his other wrist
and managed to lay a still hand on Jim’s cheek. He was solidly unconscious, his
face lax; maybe Philip had hit him too hard.
“Here.” Philip dropped to
his knees on the other side of Jim’s supine body. He held a set of iron
manacles.
Blair immediately grinned.
“Now, what do you do with those?”
Philip ignored his
juvenile sense of humour. “They come in useful in my line of work.” Obviously
well practised, he clamped the irons around Jim’s wrists and ankles.
Blair retrieved his first
aid kit and set to work on the bloody bump on the side of Jim’s head.
“Shouldn’t he be waking
up?” Blair said again, worried. “Maybe the E.R.?”
“How are we going to
explain the manacles to a physician? If you say he attacked you because he
thought you were a werewolf, he’s going to end up in the psychiatric wing.”
“If you’ve rattled his
brains, I want him to get medical attention.”
“We’ll give him five more
minutes and then call the paramedics.” Philip gripped Jim’s wrist, fingers
against his pulse. “It’s strong.”
Jim coughed and
spluttered. His eyes flicked open, and he made an abortive attempt to get up.
The ex-ranger immediately took stock of his situation, sagged back to the floor
and glared at them balefully.
“How are you feeling,
Jim?” Blair asked solicitously.
“How the hell do think,
Sandburg? You’ve tied me up. Why the fuck have you tied me up?”
“You tried to kill me,
Jim.” Blair held up the knife. “With a sacred Buddhist phurba. Talk about bad
karma, man.”
Jim lapsed into angry
silence, his lips firmly clamped together. He focussed on some far point over
Blair’s shoulder rather than looking at his face.
“I don’t hold it against
you, Jim,” Blair continued earnestly. “Philip thinks maybe you’re possessed. So
it’ll be safer for the moment if you stay tied up.”
“I am not fucking
possessed. Not again. Not after Hymir. Never again. You hear me? I would know
if I was possessed. I am not fucking possessed.”
“It’s a theory, Jim. Just
a theory,” Blair said rapidly, interrupting the line of swear words. “We
thought it was a ghost; it probably is a ghost.”
Jim thrashed under his
hands. “I’m not possessed.”
The degree of terror in
Jim’s eyes was unprecedented. He had gone through stoic into the realm of
terror. Blair had tried again and again to get Jim to talk about Hymir, to no
avail. Blair had finally accepted the excuse that Jim had buried it deeply. He
didn’t believe the excuse in its entirety, but he did believe that Jim had
locked parts of the whole horrific experience behind closed doors to escape the
mental and perhaps even physical rape.
Jim was scared now; there
was fear in his eyes. Fear didn’t set very well on Jim, nor for that matter on
any man. Had his cup finally ran over with the accumulation of ages of abuse,
neglect and betrayal?
“Hey, man,” Blair gripped
his shoulders. A brainstorm came out of nowhere. “You’re not possessed. Micky
saw something at Simon’s. He was watching the monster man in the bushes. You
saw Sarris, or something that looked like Sarris.”
Jim froze under his hands.
He was listening, Blair could tell, needing to latch onto the smallest hope. It
was apparent that the haunt affected him and that was only a step away from
possession. But when push came to shove, it wasn’t possession, and in that he
could believe.
Jim flexed his wrists,
rattling the chains. “You want to release me now?”
“Uhm… no.” Blair shrugged
awkwardly. “Just give us a minute to find out more about the ghost.”
Jim glowered, and Blair
met his expression with relief; this was the Jim he knew and loved. The
Sentinel flexed his wrists again.
“You need to tie me up
better.” He easily looped the length of chain between his hands. “This is a
weapon all in itself. You have to incapacitate me.”
“Uhm, I know.” Philip
reached down and hauled him to his feet. Blair moved to help him. “The wrought
iron staircase in the library. We use it all the time.”
“And I thought that my
life was weird.”
Philip smiled sheepishly
as he gave Jim a hand. Blair took Jim's other elbow. His head hung low, Jim
shuffled between them, weighed down by the chains. They manacled him to the twisted
iron banister with a length of chain around his waist, his arms secured on his
lap, attached to his ankles by a shorter length of chain.
“Are you comfortable
enough?” Blair grimaced at the icy man before him.
“Fine.”
‘Oh great,’ one word answers were always a bad, bad sign. “I thought
the cushion would help.”
“The cushion is fine,” Jim
said with perfect diction.
“Great.” Blair winced.
“I’ll uhm… get to the books, see if I can figure out what’s happening.” He ran,
he knew that he was running from his friend and Sentinel.
Philip had the Legacy
computer database up and running, waiting for him. Blair slipped into a chair,
and pulled the keyboard towards him.
“There’s a few books on
the other subject we were talking about in the library,” Philip informed him.
“I’ll go and check them.”
“Okay.” Blair nodded
distractedly, already choosing the key words for his metasearch. His fingers
trembled on the keys, causing him to mis-strike. There was a horrible sinking
sensation in his gut; he could feel the blood in his fingers and toes rushing
to his innards. He was cloaked in a frigid inferno. How could he feel so hot
but know that his skin was cold and clammy? Blair bit his bottom lip and
breathed slowly and evenly in through his nose and out through his mouth. Jim
might have thought that he was a werewolf, but he hadn’t followed through with
the attack. He had stayed his hand. Blair paused a moment, resting his hands,
quiescent, on the keys. A meditation mantra came immediately to mind, and he
worked through the ritual, forcing calm on his pounding heart.
~*~
The moon rose, its path
climbing across the plane of the library windows as wind rustled the leaves on
the trees.
When Blair looked up from
his research, the edge of the crescent moon peeked out at the top corner of the
window. The library was dark; the only light in the room came from the reading
lamp illuminating the computer table. Blair checked his watch. Dawn was about
an hour away; he had worked all night.
“Philip?”
There was no answer.
Standing, Blair craned his neck to look up into the second tier where Philip
had been referencing the abnormal psychology books.
At the staircase, Jim woke
with a start, rattling his chains. “What’s happening?”
“Philip?”
“Yes?” The priest peered
over the balcony. Only the flash of white at his throat stopped him from
looking like a stooping raven.
“Whoa.” Blair plastered
his hand against his chest. “I thought…?”
“I was reading in the
nook.” Philip waved vaguely to the back of the library. “Have you found
anything?”
“Possibly.” It was Blair’s
turn to wave to the neon glow of the computer. The lurid green shadows made
Blair imagine demons lurking. “Philip, where are the light switches?”
“Beside the door.” Philip
trotted down the spiral staircase to the ground floor.
As he found the switch
beside the doorframe, Philip settled in front of the computer. Jim winced as
the lights flooded the library.
“Sorry,” Blair said
automatically as he crossed to Philip’s side.
The priest was scrolling
through the text. “Persian Gulf, eh?”
“It’s the most
appropriate. They’re related to djinn, I think. Jim’s described a dry, brittle
wind a couple of times. These ‘winds’
or ‘baads’ make people ill. More
importantly, they are linked with mental illness and depression.” Blair glanced
apologetically at Jim. “They’re the only thing that even came close. Maybe this
thing hitched a ride from
“Did you read anything
about the goal of these baads?”
“No. Maybe they feed off
the negative emotion or something, when they find a good source,” Blair’s voice
dropped to a whisper, even though it was futile.
“What about treatment?”
Philip whispered back.
Blair shook his head
miserably.
~*~
Jim watched from his
position. They were the crazy ones. They thought that he had been possessed by
a bad wind. Jim shook his head tiredly. It made no sense; but if it wasn’t a
ghost, then he was going insane. He had always feared insanity, believing that
his senses would ultimately take him to the padded room of his most furtive
nightmares. He had contemplated breaking Blair’s neck; he had threatened those
around him. Perhaps the best thing would be to remove the threat. Jim flexed
his wrist, feeling the length of the phurba lying against his forearm under his
jacket sleeve. His ever so observant captors hadn’t seen him secret the knife
away. It would be easy to kill the werewolf that was sitting next to the
priest.
Jim clenched his fists,
driving his nails into his palms. It was Blair, his Guide, sitting next to
Philip, the Catholic Priest. Werewolves did not exist. But then again, if
depression-inducing winds and vampires and demons did, why not werewolves?
Sandburg’s spirit guide was a wolf; was it that big a stretch of the
imagination?
He clenched his fists and
tested the strength of the links. He wasn’t going to break these bonds like
some modern day Samson. He pulled out the small Swiss Army knife from his pants
pocket and went to work on the lock. His sentinel senses allowed him to
visualise the inner workings of the mechanism. It was child’s play.
~*~
The final lock fell away
and Jim rose smoothly to his feet. The chains slithered to the floor with
barely a rattle. Focusing on the figure leaning over the computer, Jim could
see the wolf lurking under the skin. He edged silently forward. The priest
dozed at the werewolf’s side, head pillowed on his arms. The werewolf’s
attention was absolute, caught by the sheaf of papers he held before him. A
wind lifted the curls corkscrewing around Blair’s neck. Jim blinked. That
wasn’t a werewolf; that was his partner. No, it was his partner possessed by a
werewolf. How could he save Blair from the wolf? Blair caught his movement out
of the corner of his eye and turned slowly and deliberately in his seat.
“Jim.”
Jim stood still, not
talking. Blair lifted his hand and held it out as if to an unfamiliar dog.
“You remember that I told
you about the ghost?” Blair was saying. “Well, I think that this ghost feeds
off of your bad feelings.”
“Don’t patronise me,
wolf.”
“Wolf?” Blair echoed.
“Don’t you think I know
what you are?”
“I’m Blair. Blair
Sandburg, innocent grad student and tagalong observer.” He smiled and then said
evenly, “Come on, Jim, focus. Tell me what you hear. Are you hearing a wind?”
Jim cocked his head. A
myriad of sounds moved around him, from the whisper of breath in his lungs to
the rustle of leaves on the trees outside the library. A sirocco blast of dry
hot air brushed his cheek and he shivered along the length of his spine.
“See!” Blair exulted and
clasped Jim’s hand.
Their touch was
incandescent. The world around Jim made a slow, lazy loop into the monochrome
that heralded the spirit world. Jim stood in the corner of a room. It was bare
and bleached of colour except for a small boy who sat in the centre of a room.
A mop of burnished copper curls was like a lighthouse to his senses. Jim was
about to step forward when the door swung open.
A woman burst into the room.
Long red hair tumbled around her distraught face. Her purple flared
blouse and green trousers clashed horribly with her red hair.
“Darling! Stuart’s found us again. We have to move again. It’s
an adventure, sweetie.”” The woman picked up the tot, swinging him onto her
hip. A chubby hand clutched at her blouse. One-handed, she started tossing
items into a large backpack. Still holding him, she pulled out his toy box and
dragged it to the centre of the tiny apartment.
“Mama,” the baby mouthed.
“Where’s your bedtime book, darling?”
“Book, mommy?”
Frantically, the young woman tipped up a cardboard box of
ragtag, well-loved toys. “We have to move. If we don’t find the book we’ll have
to leave it. Where’s the book? Alastair, if we don’t find your book we’ll have
to leave it. Dair, we need your book.”
“Bed, mommy.” The toddler pointed to the camp bed tucked in
the corner of the room.
Almost crying with haste, the mother pulled back the blankets,
throwing them to the floor. A dog-eared book lay tucked under the pillow. It
went into the bulging backpack. The young mother made a single turn around the
apartment, and dismissed everything that was left. She slung the backpack over
her shoulder and hefted the child higher. Then with a kick that made the
ex-ranger proud she kicked over the flickering oil lamp on the bedside table to
the floor. The glass smashed and the oil spread; the flame licked over the
seeping oil. For a moment it burned with a clear, transparent heat and then the
acrylic carpet caught fire.
The woman ran from the burning. She jackrabbitted through the
door, and without pausing a beat, she smashed a dilapidated fire alarm on the
wall. It didn’t ring. She gave it a
shocked fleeting look, then ran without a backward glance.
Jim coughed as the smoke
twisted around his lungs.
“Jim?” Callused hands
patted his face. “Are you all right?”
Blinking furiously at
cough-wrought tears, Jim felt the burn of smoke deep in his lungs.
“You with me?” Blair
persisted.
“Blair?” Jim hazarded.
“Yeah.” He smiled widely.
“What was that? You okay?”
“Blair?”
“Yup, Blair.” He patted
his own chest. “The one and only. That wasn’t a zone. That was something
different.”
“I didn’t see the wolf,”
Jim mused, madly. “I saw a kid. A little kid.”
“You saw something? Did
you have a psychometric episode?”
“You weren’t a wolf,” Jim
persisted.
“I am not a wolf, Jim,”
Blair said patiently.
“The wolf came back when
you drowned.”
“Oh.” Blair looked to the
left and the right. “Where?”
“No!” Jim punctuated his
words by poking Blair in the chest. “You’re a werewolf now.”
“Really.” Blair bit his
bottom lip, containing a crazy smile.
“Yes.” Jim squinted at his
werewolf-guide.
“Jim, if I was a
werewolf,” Blair said sensibly, “wouldn’t I have like changed? Claws? Hairy
skin? Okay, don’t go there. I mean, Jim, listen to me, listen to my lungs. Does
that sound like a werewolf?” He coughed introspectively.
Jim listened, and heard
the wheezy hitch of congestion. “Chest infection?”
“Just a bit of a cold. A
werewolf with snotty lungs doesn’t really compute, does it?”
Jim scrabbled at his hair,
twisting his fingers through the tufts. His head hurt. His senses didn’t lie to
him. This was Blair; therefore there was a demon.
“The demon?”
“Where?” Blair scanned the
library again. Philip was sitting by the computer, woken by their exchange. He
had kept quiet; now, he too, scrutinised the library.
Jim knew that he was going
to hurt Blair and if he didn’t hurt Blair he was probably going to hurt someone
else. That was not an option. He had to go. Jim spun away and sprinted to the
door. Confused, his senses spiralling, he fell against a book stack, knocking
it to the floor. He sprawled on the books. Images assailed him. He saw Father
Callaghan, bowed over a book as a winged demon rose up behind him. As he turned
to try and figure where the threat came from, his fingers brushed an idol he
had also knocked to the floor. He saw a woman, screaming as she was ripped
asunder. Shying back, his hand brushed an old, stained book. He couldn’t begin
to interpret the array of images that assaulted him. He was lost in it; a
complex story of story of love and betrayal, with an ancient warrior at its
heart.
“No!” Jim screamed in
turn. “It’s not real!”
A body hit him low,
rolling him away from the objet d'arts that assailed him.
~*~
“Jim?” Blair gently patted
the detective’s shoulder. He had knocked a moaning Jim to the floor, away from
the mess of books that he had fixated upon. Now Jim lay on his back, his gaze
fixed on some point in mid air, out of focus and lost. The muscle beneath
Blair’s hand was taut.
“Blair?” Philip crouched
beside them and laid his fingers against Jim’s jugular.
“He’s in some kind of
weird zone again. He told me that he’s being having psychometric episodes.”
“Seeing pictures or
virtual movies?”
Jim’s breathing was short
and sharp, spiralling towards hyperventilation with every intake. Perspiration
made his forehead sheen. Blair set his own hand against Jim’s throat. The pulse
bit against his fingers, too fast and too thready.
“Listen to me, Jim,” Blair
crooned. “Listen, you’re in a bad place now, but I want you to concentrate on
my voice. You’re lying in Philip’s library. You’ve touched something and you’re
picking up images.” Blair gently stroked Jim's curled hands, trying to
straighten his clawed fingers.
“Blair, we need a doctor.”
Blair said blankly,
“They’ll put him in the psychiatric wing. It will kill him.” He continued to
murmur to his Sentinel.
“What about Jim’s personal
doctor? Can we call him? Have you brought him into your confidence?”
“Of course not,” Blair
snapped defensively. “Do you know anyone?”
“Any doctor that I know
that would treat Jim in this condition without his medical history, I wouldn’t
trust with his treatment.”
“Jim,” Blair beseeched,
“snap out of it, man.”
The expression on Jim’s
face took on a disturbing cast. Blair felt a chill working up his spine; what
was he seeing in his mind’s eye?
“There’s a medic
associated with the Legacy House in
“Call Shaun. I know he’s
at home, but maybe he can recommend a colleague.”
Blair waited until Philip
had closed the door. He slapped Jim clean across the face. The blow rocked
Jim's head to the side, but the expression of nothingness on his face did not
change. Hitting Jim went against Blair’s better instincts, and he berated
himself for doing so. Naomi had taught him that violence was never the
answer. He returned to stroking Jim’s
face with his fingertips and whispering softly.
“Jim, snap out of it,
please.” Abruptly, Blair spun on his heels and addressed mid-air. “You know, I
won’t let you have him. I am going to figure out how to get rid of you.”
The sheaf of papers on the desk rustled as a wind
brushed them. Blair scowled, he had the distinct impression that he was being
mocked.
Okay, if the library
offered no solutions, he’d find someone who could help, even if he had to
travel to
Philip barrelled back into
the library. He had a ceramic bowl in his hands and a hand towel over his
shoulder. He settled on his knees beside the supine man.
“What’s that?”
“Water. Perhaps a
cleansing ritual will help.”
“Did you call Shaun?”
“He recommended trying
this, and if it doesn’t work I have the phone number of a Dr. Doyle.”
“Doyle?”
“A colleague of Shaun’s.
He says that he knows Jim.”
“What?” Blair cast a
shocked glance at his comatose Sentinel. “He never said anything to me.”
“Deal with it later,”
Philip advised sharply. “Keep talking to him, that will help.” The priest
pushed the bowl across the wooden floor up against Blair’s knee. A white
facecloth lay in the bottom of the bowl. Blair wrung it out one-handed and then
gently wiped the Sentinel’s forehead. Jim’s eyes closed, his first reaction
since entering the psychometric zone. Blair wadded the cloth and carefully mapped
the wing of Jim’s eyebrow. He dipped the cloth in the water and then stroked
the long planes of Jim’s cheek. Blair felt Jim relax under his ministrations.
Philip’s head was bowed
and he was praying. Blair couldn’t make out the words, only the lilt of Latin.
He made a mental note to ask Philip what he was saying later. Blair wrung the
cloth out and concentrated on Jim’s well-proportioned nose. Jim’s lips opened
slightly as Blair moved on to moisten them. The tip of his tongue appeared and
Blair squeezed the cloth, allowing a drop to fall into his mouth.
“You with me, Jim?”
Jim didn’t react, so Blair
continued his cleansing. Philip set his crucifix on Jim’s chest and began a new
litany. Blair drew the damp cloth across Jim’s square chin and up along his jaw
line. He then mirrored his actions,
moving the cloth over the right side of Jim’s face. With every stroke, Jim
relaxed infinitesimally.
Jim held his hands tight
against his chest, the fingers so taut that the tendons and veins stood proud.
Blair reached down and took the hand clenched over his heart. It too succumbed
to his ministrations, the clawed fingers relaxing with the massage. Blair laid
Jim’s lax hand back on his chest. As he concentrated on Jim’s right hand, he
noted that his assumption that his hands were larger than Jim’s was wrong.
Jim’s hands were long like his body; he was in proportion. Turning one in both
of his, he felt the calluses from hours of weapons’ practice. He rinsed the
cloth in the bowl and started anew on Jim’s right hand, carding the cloth
through his fingers until they too relaxed. As he lay Jim’s hand down, he heard
a long drawn breath escape from Jim’s lips as he eased into sleep.
“Wow,” Blair whispered.
“He’s fallen asleep.”
“Good sign?”
“Jim couldn’t, wouldn’t
sleep if there was a threat. It’s a physical impossibility.”
“Can we get him to his
room?”
“Without waking him up? We
haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell.”
“Hmmm,” Philip pondered.
“I’ve got an idea.” Without another word the priest scuttled off.
Blair sat quiescent,
allowing his breathing to drop to a meditative rhythm. Jim hadn’t slept well
for months; this was a gift. He awoke to the soft whisper of unfurling
material. Surprised, he opened his eyes. Philip was setting out a deflated
air-bed.
“We can unroll it next to
him and roll him onto it and then blow it up.”
Blair nodded; it seemed
like a good idea, although the execution might be difficult. Remembering
experiences in the hospital, Blair carefully rolled Jim slightly to the left
with Philip controlling his legs. Then the priest slid a folded edge mattress
under Jim as much as possible. He was amazed that the Sentinel was sleeping
through the manhandling. Philip nodded and Blair lay him back. Philip crawled
on his knees to the other side of Jim. Then both rolled him to the right.
Philip drew out the folded edge of the air-bed laying it flat.
Both looked to Jim; he
slept peacefully. “Ten out of ten,” Blair mouthed. He still held his breath and
he shuffled backwards holding Jim’s head off his lap with his hands. Philip
smoothed out the pillow of the mattress.
“I’ll blow it up?” Philip
asked.
Blair nodded; he would
hold Jim. Huffing and puffing quietly over what seemed an inordinate length of
time, Philip blew up the mattress. Slowly it filled, supporting the slumbering
Sentinel. Blair gently laid his head on the rising pillow. Philip left it
three-quarters filled, cradling Jim. Blair unfolded a blanket and draped it
over his friend.
“Are you sure he’s
asleep?” Philip asked.
“Yeah, look at his face.”
The accustomed spray of lines at the corners of Jim’s eyes had softened. His
mouth was slightly open. “No way is he under threat. What did you put in that
water? Valium?”
“It’s holy water, I lifted
it from the font,” Philip said soberly.
“Cool.”
A bare smile crossed
Philip’s face. “Yes, indeed, cool.”
Blair rocked on his
haunches. “Sometimes I hate the weird aspects. Vampires gave me the willies.
But if there’s vampires, man, that means….” He couldn’t say anymore.
“That there’s an opposite
force?”
“Yeah,” Blair said
bashfully. “I died, man. I saw it. It was a forest and it was… sublime.”
“You’re truly blessed,
Blair.”
“Just lucky, I guess.” He
dropped his head so his face was hidden by his hair. He hadn’t discussed this
with Jim yet; or more accurately Jim refused to be drawn. Blair didn’t feel
that he could talk it through with Philip, thinking that Jim would see it as a
betrayal of confidence. Although, if there was anyone who would understand and
believe, it would be the Legacy priest.
Philip never pressed. “Come,
I have an idea.”
Blair let Philip draw him
back to the computer, away from his peacefully sleeping Sentinel. “Can we leave
him?”
“We’re watching. There’s a
Legacy mailing list; we can ask for help. Write an e-mail, and I’ll forward it
to the group.” He consulted his watch. “
”Okay.” Blair deliberated,
already scripting out the message in his head.
Philip pulled out the
computer chair and gestured Blair into it. Reaching over, Philip opened his
e-mail programme, and pulled the Legacy list from the address book.
A single click and Blair
began his request. “I’ll draft out what we have so far but, leave out the
sentinel aspect.”
“I’d be surprised if you
didn’t. I’ve a few ideas on how to protect Jim. You write the letter, I’ll get
the accoutrements.”
“Accoutrements?” Blair
echoed to his retreating back.
~*~
Blair had sent the e-mail
with the urgent flag ticked. Jim still slept, re-charging his batteries, as
Blair waited impatiently. Even willing a message to download didn’t work. Blair
sighed deeply; they were depending on the kindness of strangers. He wanted to
hunt out the information, to do the research. That was his raison d'être. That
he hadn’t found the answers personally galled him to the very depths of his
soul. Was that pure arrogance? Yes. If asking for help got him answers, he
would give thanks.
Blair looked to the source
of his concerns. Jim snored lightly; his sinuses were obviously acting up. He
hadn’t moved on iota since he had been plunged into sleep. Even Philip
precisely drawing out a fine line of white crystals in a circle around his body
hadn’t disturbed him.
“Salt?” Blair whispered.
“Salt,” Philip confirmed.
“Protective in a number of traditions.”
“I suppose it can’t do any
harm.”
“That’s not the right
attitude.”
“Sorry. Can I help?”
“The Cross of Kinloch
Rannoch is in my office. Jim would probably associate that with protection.
Would you like to get it?”
“Yeah, sure.” Blair was
just about to leave his seat when the icon on the desktop chimed. A message was
deposited in the email inbox. Hands shaking, Blair clicked on the mail. He
scanned through the text and then read out loud,
Dear Philip,
Interesting problem, it
sounds very similar to the problems of the ahl-i hava. In the region of the
Minab, the people of hava – who are the dispossessed, unprotected and
disassociated -- can be possessed by Winds. The affected are recognised by the
shamans. The Winds demand blood sacrifice, gifts, poetry and drumming before relinquishing
their grip on their steed. When the Wind’s demands are satisfied, the Wind
leaves and the person becomes of the ahl-i hava – one who can live out of
harm’s way.
Given that your client’s problem
has been linked with Ethiopia, might I suggest that you also look into the
Thonga/Bantu tribes, since there are many similarities between their rituals to
free people of unhappy spirits which induce the ‘madness of the gods’ and those
of the ahl-i hava. Perhaps – tongue in cheek – you have a Catholic spirit which
shares both aspects? Henri Junod has published in great detail on the rituals
to help tribal members inflicted by these spirits.
I’ll continue looking for
info, but I thought that this might be helpful in the meantime.
Yours truly,
Tariq.
“Henri Junod--” Blair
said.
“Isn’t he an--” Philip
interrupted.
“Anthropologist,” Blair
supplied. “He pioneered the use of photography to document the tribes that he
studied. Hey, there’s a collection of his research at
Philip met his earnest
interrogation with a solemn frown. “He was in the Iran Legacy House until
forced out of the country. His family didn’t make it out. He relocated to
“To help?”
Philip nodded sagely. “He
was born and brought up in the
“He talked about Winds of
the ahl-i hava. We have baads or Winds in the
Eyes wide in his pale
face, Philip nodded. “Trust me, Blair. I will do everything to keep Jim safe. I
think--if we’re right and it is a Middle Eastern demon--I think that the Wind’s
goal is to make Jim kill you. In doing so, it will drive Jim to utter despair.
It would be the sweetest wine to a sucker of souls.”
Blair studied his
Sentinel, sleeping so peacefully on the camp bed. It was hard to believe that
he was under attack from an emotion-eating demon. “We can’t let it have him.”
“We won’t.” Philip carefully
gripped Blair’s shoulder. “He’s scared; he can’t trust himself. But he has
listened to you so far. He needs to trust to survive. Someone who he knows
won’t let him down. “
“You sure about that?”
“Yes. You won’t let Jim
down. He might forget that in his head, but not in his heart.”
Blair hung his head.
Occasionally, protecting and guiding Jim seemed like an insurmountable task. He
fought against Jim’s automatic railroading and dismissal nearly every day.
“It’s upped the ante, Philip. It’s got Jim thinking that I’m not me, that I’m a
wolf, for fuck’s sake.”
“I never said it was going
to be easy.”
Blair rolled his eyes
heavenward. “Gee, thanks, man,” he muttered sarcastically.
~*~
Blair hit the library like
a force of nature. Peggy simply stood aside as he blew through the foyer,
vaulted over the entrance turnstile and galloped to the anthropology section.
“That is a boy on a
mission,” she said in an aside to her assistant.
“He shouldn’t be allowed
in until eight-thirty,” the younger woman protested.
Peggy peered over her
hackneyed pince-nez. “You’re welcome to try and stop him. Actually, I’m
impressed he waited until we opened up. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he
had attempted to break in.”
Blair emerged between two
stacks, dumped an armful of books on a tabletop and then blew down the next
stack, snatching up books and journals. Peggy counted under her breath, at
five, Blair appeared at the far end. Frustrated, he clawed at his curls, snarling
them until they looked wind-tossed. Muttering under his breath, he darted to
the computerised library catalogue. Birdlike, he tapped out his question and
then waited, his body language screaming his impatience. Judging by the
expletive that followed, the request wasn’t granted. He tried again, and the
printer warmed up. He snatched the printout from the machine as he turned away
from the bank of computers.
Peggy braced herself as he
approached. But he was sweetness and light as he carefully asked, “Hi, Peggy,
thanks for letting me in. I wonder if I could get this thesis on the Thonga of
Mozambique from the special section.”
“Who’s the author?” the
librarian asked patiently.
“Oh.” He searched the
printout. “Berthoud, Julian Muhlaba.”
The senior librarian
carefully typed in the name. “I’m afraid--”
“No! I need it.”
“Blair.” Peggy held up her
hand. “You can see it, you just can’t take it out of the special section.”
“I’ll have to read it in
the readers’ room?” Blair asked intently.
Peggy nodded.
“No photocopying then. I
can take notes. Right? I’ll move these books into the reader room. When can I
get the book? How long will it take to bring the books up from the archives?”
“I’ll tell you what,
Blair--”
“Yes?”
“Blair.” Peggy curbed a
smile at his rapid-fire answers. “You go sit in the readers’ room, and I’ll go
down to the archives right away.”
“Thank you, Peggy,” Blair
said with perfect politeness. “I’ll go get the books I’ve selected so far. Do
you know if there’s anything in the special section about the ahl-i hava?”
“I don’t know. How do you
spell it?” Peggy said with the utmost patience.
“Oh.” His eyes flashed
blue fire, then he spelled out, slowly, “A-h-l hyphen i. New word, lower case
h-a-v-a.”
“I'll check.” The librarian
gestured to the glass-enclosed room opposite the librarians’ desk, where staff
and grad students were allowed to consult the books from the special section.
“Thank you.” Blair paced
over to the books he had already selected, snatched them up and arrowed to the
readers’ room.
The younger librarian
waited until he had closed the sound-proofed door behind him. “Wow. I’ve known
Blair to be focussed, but that was another plane altogether.”
Peggy wiped her brow. “He
was a bit like a tornado, wasn’t he?”
~*~
Blair took over the entire
conglomerate meeting-sized table in the readers’ room. Copious notes streamed
from his pen, scrawling across his legal pad. His first subject was the ahl-i hava and they were in fact related
to the baads. Tariq’s Winds were the baads, but the ahl-i hava were not the Winds, rather it was the name of the cured
victims of the baads. As Blair read, he found that there was more
than one type of Wind, and a specific type of shaman was needed to cure an
afflicted person of the specific Wind. The Mashayikh
Winds would make their hosts quite sick, but generally didn’t kill them. The Zar winds, or the pagan-killer death
winds, were a possible culprit. The Zar had
originally come from
Jim insisted that he
wasn’t possessed, but the Zar could
become incarnate in certain human beings. Jim had seen Sarris, and Mickey had
reacted to a definite figure in Simon’s backyard; and maybe that spoke of a
corporeal entity rather than an intangible spirit. Blair slowly drew a red star
next to the Zar, since apart from its
intangibility it seemed to be the best suspect, and picked up another book.
He searched for the
spirits of the Thonga and that led him back to
The djinn were born of
smokeless fire, breeding in searing hot air. They had been nature spirits but
had grown to have a disruptive influence on human kind and, according to a
document on the internet, were capable of causing madness. The shaytan were the
most malicious and wicked djinn. They were more liable to attack after
nightfall and Blair had felt more threatened during the
“Right, okay,” Blair
muttered to himself as he found the ritual to exorcise a shaytan. “I have to
read from the Qur’an and beat Jim. I have to beat him many times. Right, that one’s out. I can’t beat Jim.”
Another paragraph told him
that he might be able to curse a djinn out of his Sentinel. But what if it
wasn’t a Persian djinn? He scrutinised his notes from the Legacy library,
another name for the Zar was the jinn-i Zar. He wondered if the etymology
of the word was similar to djinn and genie? He scrawled jinn-i Zar at the bottom of his notes, then dropped his head on the
open book before him. Before he had no answers; now he had too many.
He cracked open a bleary
eye and read the word scrawled just in front of his nose. ‘Shaman.’ Shamans
used ritual beating of drums, sacrificed goats and recited spells hidden in the
cadence of poetry to drive off the Thonga bush demons, demon which were very
similar to the Zar. The fact that shamans were important in
driving off the baads of the ahl-i hava and the Thonga bush demons
both reassured and terrified him. Incacha had named him shaman, and to be
brutally frank he had done absolutely nothing about his reluctant inheritance.
“Shaman,” he whispered,
trying the word on his tongue. “Shaaaa-maaan.” He didn’t feel like a shaman, he
felt like a grad student in an impossible situation. This was Jim’s life and
sanity that he was playing with. It wasn’t like throwing a can of soup at a
criminal; it was fighting against supernatural forces beyond his ken for Jim’s
very soul.
Blair mentally shook
himself, and returned to his books. His fingers of their own accord crept
across to the dictionary that lived in his backpack. He read: Shamanism is a
magic-religious phenomenon in which the shaman is the master of ecstasy. And
ecstasy is the withdrawal of the soul from the body; mystical or prophetic
exaltation and rapture. It can be catalysed by hallucinogenic plants, fasting,
meditation and drumming. The shaman communes with the inhabitants of the higher
and lower regions. They can accompany souls of the deceased to the next world
or affect the well-being of the sick. To protect their community they can
incorporate spirits into themselves. They speak with nature spirits and tell
stories.
“Gee, well, like I didn’t
know that already.”
But Blair knew that that
was only one definition. Unconsciously he scowled, if Jim needed a shaman to
rid him of this jinn-i Zar, he would
damn well get one. Inspiration washed over him, making him tingle. He could
guide Jim to the otherworldly jungle; he had done it before when Jim had denied
his gifts after shooting a security guard. Jim had also reluctantly admitted
that he had seen Incacha in a vision at the temple of the sentinels in
“Yes!” He stood and in the
same motion scooped up his books and notes. Juggling the pile, he scurried
through the library, tossing an absent “Bye, thanks, Peggy,” in his wake. He
was aware of alarms sounding as he passed through the library’s electronic
barrier. The security guard grabbed the acne-ridden student behind him and
demanded that the undergrad open his bags.
~*~
Blair crossed to his
Volvo, unaware of the eddies of winds scuffling dead leaves in his wake.
~*~
Jim yawned, turning onto
to his side. His bed shifted beneath him. He mumbled under his breath,
realising that he was on an airbed. Stretching, he inhaled, expecting to smell
familiar pine scent; instead he was greeted by musty old books. Jim cracked
open an eye expecting to see Blair sitting next to him reading a tome. He
jerked away from a concerned but familiar face peering down at him.
“Philip?”
“Hey, Jim,” Philip said
diffidently.
Jim sat up slowly. The bed
shifted beneath him, the air rushing to the sides until his ass touched the
ground. A plush, high-grade sleeping bag was draped over his body. “What the
hell happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.” Jim shrugged off the
bag.
“Stop!” Philip held out
his hands in a warding gesture. “Don’t disturb the salt.”
“Huh?” Jim sat in a circle
made with a line of salt as thick as his wrist. “You want to explain?”
Philip scratched at the
mole beside his nose, plainly wondering what to say. “Uh, from the beginning
or… I’m guessing that you’re missing a few hours?”
Jim scratched his skull
and winced when he encountered a bump. “You hit me?” he ventured.
“Yes, you were thinking
about stabbing Blair.”
“What!” Jim kicked off the
quilt as he jumped to his feet.
“No!” Philip darted
forward, trying vainly to stop him. The sleeping bag fell across the carefully
drawn line of salt.
“Ooops,” Jim said in the
face of the man’s obvious consternation.
“Oh, bu—“ Philip clamped
his mouth shut. He sighed deeply and then let it go. “Never mind. How are you
feeling, Jim?”
“I feel fine,” Jim said
slowly. “In fact, I feel better than I have in ages. How long was I asleep?”
Philip consulted his
watch. “Seven hours.”
Jim shook his head. “You
said that I tried to stab Sandburg?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I
remember… I remember Sandburg saying he thought I was being haunted?”
“Yes. You came here so
Blair could do some research and hopefully we’d be able to construct some kind
of protection. But the ghost -– Blair thinks it is some kind of demon from the
“The demon that drove
Monica to suicide?”
“And made her kill Gavin.”
“Why me?” Jim demanded.
“Jim,” Philip began.
Shaking his head, Jim
said, “I went kinda nuts, didn’t I,” he finished half-apologetically.
Philip could only nod.
Jim glanced at chains
piled at the base of the spiral staircase. “You used them on me after I tried
to stab Sandburg.”
“You were quite amenable,
once I hit you with the frying pan.”
“So what did you do? I
don’t feel…” Jim gestured vaguely at his temple.
“Blair cleansed you with
holy water, I prayed and drew a warding circle. I beseeched Michael, Gabriel,
Rafael and Uriel to guard you.”
“And that’s all it took? I
feel fine.”
Philip folded his arms.
“It does seem too easy.”
“Where’s Blair?”
“He went to the
“That’s what’s haunting
me?” Jim couldn’t help looking around.
“No. I did some reading
when you were asleep. We have a good library,” he said parenthetically, “as I
understand it, you become one of the ahl-i
hava once you are freed of the baad.”
“Huh?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s enough to give me a
headache.”
“Do you have a headache?”
Philip asked sympathetically, but his tone abruptly changed. “Is it a headache
because I hit you or because the baad is
coming back?”
“No, everything is sweet.”
Jim stood tall and inhaled. “It’s like I’ve been sick and suddenly I’m cured
but I didn’t know I was sick in the first place.”
Philip gnawed on his
thumb. “It’s never this easy. It’s just not. It’s just not.” The priest began
to pace, his unease was almost a physical thing. “It pulled out all the stops
making you go after Blair.”
“Maybe the damn thing’s
hedging its bets.” He kicked the sleeping bag out of his way; he knew what to
do. “If its goal is to make me as miserable as sin to feed off of me there’s
more than one way to go about that.”
“How?” Philip asked his
retreating back.
“It’s gone after
Sandburg.”
~*~
Mirror, signal, manoeuvre.
Blair double checked the lane and moved out to overtake the old woman tooling
along quite happily at thirty miles an hour in the right lane. The bypass cut
out the downtown traffic. It was a toss up between the back roads or the bypass
which way to travel fastest to Philip’s house. Blair always decided by the flip
of a coin.
His cell phone rang, its
call partly muted by the leather of his backpack. One hand on the steering
wheel, Blair routed in his bag.
“Blair,” he said as he
flipped open the cover.
“Blair, it’s Jim.”
“Jim? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Where the
hell are you, Chief?”
“Uhm.” Blair glanced at a
road sign. “On highway 16 passing the intersection to country road 12; I’ll be
turning off at the next junction.”
“You’re coming back to the
manse?”
“Yes. That’s where you
are?”
“Yes. Get back here as
soon as possible,” Jim said urgently.
“What’s the matter, Jim?
Is Philip there?”
“Philip’s fine, I haven’t
done anything to him.”
Blair shied back from the
phone. “I didn’t say you had, man.”
“Look, Chief, you have to
look out. I think…”
“Boo!” Lash flung himself
across the passenger seat, hands raised to rend and tear.
“No!” He hit out
ineffectually to stop the mad revenant. The Volvo lurched with a screech of
brakes and an almighty crash. The steering wheel spun to the right, out of his
control. He grabbed it, trying to control the crazy skid across the lanes. The
car hit the roadside barrier head on and it shredded like paper before him.
End of Chapter II
Chapter III
“Sandburg! Sandburg!” Jim
yelled down his cell phone as he stood in the rectory foyer. “Blair?”
“What happened?” Philip
demanded.
Jim closed his eyes to
concentrate better. The line was still open and he could hear tinkling glass
against a backdrop of racing footsteps and running motors.
A tinny voice demanded,
“Is he alive?”
“Call the paramedics,”
another person said.
“Don’t move him until the
paramedics arrive,” Jim entreated down the mouthpiece.
“Jim?” Philip tried as the
detective attempted to get the bystanders’ attention.
Jim opened his eyes.
“Sandburg said he was passing junction 16. Let’s go.” He grabbed his leather
jacket off the coat rack.
Philip grabbed his own
coat and followed Jim out of the front door. “Do you want me to drive?”
Jim fired a black look
over his shoulder. Philip smiled sheepishly, “Silly me.”
The Sentinel paused in the
truck cab, still listening to the voices on the other end of the line.
He could now hear the wail
of sirens: paramedics and police. He concentrated harder, deep furrows creasing
his forehead, trying to hear if Sandburg was breathing.
Philip coughed lightly.
“If you’re going to be listening, I’d really prefer it if you let me drive.”
Jim thrust the cell phone
into Philip’s hands. “Try to stop them from moving Blair.”
Philip fumbled with the
phone as Jim sent the truck screeching down the rectory drive, sending waves of
gravel in the wake of the skidding tires. Philip tried to get a spectator to
pick up the phone, but it was made difficult by the noise of Jim’s manic
driving.
Jim sent the truck up the
junction onto the ring road travelling south with his siren blaring and lights
flashing madly. It was a mile to country road 12: Jim did it in forty seconds.
Philip clung to the dashboard with white knuckles. Traffic in the northbound
line was trickling, indicating that there was a blockage ahead. The cars in
their lane were slowing down, probably to gawk at the accident. Jim raced the
accelerator, edging the truck closer and closer to the car in front.
“Jim, please, if you kill
us before we reach Blair we won’t be able to help.”
Jim tried to glare him
into silence, but he had to deal with the car looming ahead. As they topped a
rise, ambulances and police cars came into view. They were clustered together,
blocking two of the three lanes. The tail end of Blair’s Volvo poked above the
edge of a ditch and a green clad paramedic was scuttling down the embankment.
Jim pulled hard on the steering wheel and sent the truck careening across the
central meridian.
A blasphemous word hovered
on Philip’s lips. Miraculously, they made it through the slow-moving traffic
without mishap. Jim had barely stopped the truck when he barrelled out of the
door. A uniformed cop moved to intercept him, but at the last second twisted to
the side, allowing Jim to go forward unmolested. Jim slid down the grassy bank
on the passenger side of the tilted car. The paramedics were on the opposite
side.
Blair lolled against his
seatbelt, his chin tucked down on his chest. The first paramedic, a dark,
thickset man, was taking a moment to take stock before opening the driver’s
door.
“Sir?” Jim turned to a
young woman decked in paramedic green who was picking her way down the bank
behind him. “I need to get in on this side.”
“That’s my partner,” Jim
explained and pointed into the interior.
“Yes, sir.” The paramedic
used her emergency kit to lever him away from the vehicle. She opened the
passenger door and crawled into the cab with Jim practically on her heels.
“We need room to
manoeuvre,” the male paramedic protested from the other side of the cab.
“Detective Ellison, you
have to let them work.” A hand pulled him back. Jim recognised the cop from the
patrol vehicle. “You have to let them work, sir.”
Knowing that they were
right, Jim backed out. He would have helped if there hadn’t been a plethora of
paramedics. He dropped back to stand by the engine, his sentinel senses
allowing him to feel as if he were in the cab with them.
A drop of blood splashed
on the lead paramedic’s white surgical glove as he touched Blair’s throat.
“Strong pulse.” He unfurled his stethoscope. “Get the backboard, Fred.”
Fred leaned over his
superior’s shoulder. “Took a nasty crack to the side of his head.”
“Backboard,” he repeated.
Fred left with alacrity.
Jim focussed. Blair was
sheet white; the bones of his face seemed to be about to poke through his skin.
The left side of his face was painted with blood, which was drying black at the
edges. He looked dead. The paramedic leaned far into the cab, twisting his body
so he could carefully peel back Blair’s eyelids to check his pupils.
“Pupils even.”
Blair groaned and shied
away from the searching light.
“No, don’t move.” The
paramedic cradled Blair’s head between his palms. “Just keep still. Can you do
that for me, son?”
“No,” Blair said
obstinately.
“No, son, I want you to
listen. You’re going to let me keep your head still, until my friend, Lucy, can
help me get a backboard on you. Do you understand?”
“Jim!” Blair completely
ignored the paramedic; his hands flailed ineffectually. “Jim?”
“Can I?” Jim shifted
around the female paramedic, poking his head through the door.
“Jim?” Blair demanded,
reaching out towards Jim without even looking in his direction.
Jim couldn’t push by the
paramedic. “I’m here, Chief. I want you to listen to the paramedic; you’ve
taken a bad knock on the head. They need to check you out.”
“Incacha, Jim, you have to
go to Incacha. Incacha will have the answers.” Blair pulled his head out of the
paramedic’s grasp and stared blindly ahead.
“Son, calm down.” The
paramedic accepted a neck brace from Fred and deftly wrapped it around his
patient’s neck.
Blair blinked at him
owlishly. “I don’t know what the djinn is… Ooops.” Despite his confused state,
he looked sheepish.
“Hey, kid, you want to
tell me your name?”
“Jim?” Blair's gaze roamed
around the car.
“Hello, Jim,” the paramedic
said, but he glanced at Jim in askance.
Jim shook his head. “His
name is Blair,” he whispered.
The paramedic nodded
perfunctorily. “Blair, you want to tell me what day it is?” he asked as he felt
his patient’s torso.
“No, I don’t,” Blair
sniggered.
“Chief,” Jim chastised.
Blair’s eyes closed and
his head rocked forwards a tiny fraction on the neck brace.
“Stay with me, Blair,” the
paramedic ordered, to no avail: Blair slipped back into unconsciousness.
“Here’s the brace,” Fred
said. Together they carefully manoeuvred the support behind Blair. Wrapped in
straps like a modern day mummy, Blair was lifted from the crumpled Volvo to a
gurney. Jim stood beside it. He led the
entourage to the top of the bank and the ambulance. Hands clasped around his
rosary, Philip stood beside the open doors.
~*~
‘Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim.’
The Sentinel tried to
concentrate on the doctor’s words despite the summons echoing in his ears. The
doctor held a chart and peered at the attached sheaf of paper over the top of
his gold-rimmed glasses.
“Mr. Sandburg –- Blair –-
is going to be fine. He’s young and healthy. I’m not saying he’s not hurting;
he sustained some pretty significant bruises on his chest and collarbone. He
did hit his head and gave his brain a good shake, but he’s going to be fine.”
‘I know you’re there, Jim. Come on. Jim. Jim. Jim.’
Jim spoke through gritted
teeth. “Are you admitting him?”
“No.” The doctor shook his
head for emphasis. “He has a slight concussion, so I want you to watch him
closely for forty-eight hours. He wants to go home and his scans are clear.
Although, he’s a bit…”
“Addled,” Jim supplied
dryly.
“Confused,” the doctor
corrected.
‘When I’m calling you ooooo oooo ooooo.’
“Can I see him?”
Doctor Stevens nodded,
then jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the enclosed cubicle behind him. The
incessant cajoling continued unabated. Jim was surprised that Dr. Stevens had
not sent Blair for a psych-consult.
He acknowledged the
doctor’s care and attention to his partner with a precise nod, before taking
his leave of him. Once inside the small room, he was aware that there was
another person with his Guide behind the curtain.
He whipped back the
screen, expecting to see a demon. With a startled squeak, the nurse jumped
away.
“That’s Jim,” Blair said
brightly. “He likes to make entrances.” He rolled his head on the pillow and
giggled.
Jim shrugged a shoulder
apologetically at the nurse. “I’m Detective Ellison. How is he?”
Nervously, she tucked a
strand of black hair behind her ear. “He’s had Tylenol because of his headache.
I’ve heard of this reaction, but I’ve never seen it.” Smiling, she stroked Blair’s
forehead. “His tests came back and there was no evidence of narcotics or
alcohol.”
“I knew there wasn’t. I
should have explained, Sandburg’s… Blair’s my…”
“Pain in the ass,” Blair
yodelled. “Guppy.”
“Roommate,” Jim inserted
with a brittle smile.
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“He used to colour-code
his leftovers. I cured him of that, though. He still pairs all his socks even
when they’re all identical white socks with padded soles to protect his
delicate little, well, not so little, feet.”
Jim shook his head as the
diatribe continued. The nurse’s bottom lip quivered.
“He’s off his head,” Jim
pointed out somewhat unnecessarily. “Doesn't that mean it will be difficult to
determine if he’s suffering any serious brain damage?”
“A degree of confusion
isn’t unusual and his scans came through clear. You’ll have to keep a close eye
on him for sickness or change in consciousness, but otherwise a good night’s
sleep will put him to rights. In fact if you’d like to keep an eye on him for
two seconds, I’ll go and see what holding up his release.”
“I’ll stop him falling off
the bed.” Jim didn’t quite escort the nurse out of the cubicle, but it was
close. He was back at the bedside in a flash.
“Chief.”
“Hey, Jim.” Blair smiled
blearily up at him. “I totalled the car, man.”
“What happened?”
“Oh.” The colour drained
from Blair’s already impossibly pale face, lending him an ethereal quality that
Jim didn’t like in the slightest. “It’s not a djinn -– it’s Lash. He was in the
car. He jumped at me.”
“Lash?” Jim couldn’t help
but scan the room.
“Yeah.” Blair gripped the
bedrail with both hands and hauled himself up to Jim’s nose.
“Calm down, Chief.” Jim
laid gentle hands on his shoulders. “It wasn’t Lash, like it wasn’t Sarris at
the loft. It was your windy thing.”
“The jinn-i Zar,” Blair whispered conspiratorially, his mood changing
mercurially. “I know what to do.”
“What?” It occurred to Jim
that if the wind demon succeeded in affecting him now, Blair would have little
or no defence. Maybe he should get Philip.
Blair scratched at the
bandage on the side of his head. Jim shifted his grip to stop him peeling off
the large dressing.
“Did they shave my head,
Jim?” he asked pitifully.
“No,” Jim lied; they had
removed a chunk of curls just over his ear. “What do I do to stop the wind
demon?”
“Aha ha!” Abruptly
distracted from their conversation, Blair waved a finger at the corner of the
room and then said, sing-song, “There it is. I can see you. Go away. You can’t
have him!”
Jim spun, pulling out his
Sig Sauer with supernatural speed. There was nothing to aim at, just the angle
where two walls met.
“Chief, get behind me.” He
felt Blair struggle off the bed then twist his fists in the back of his jacket
to stay upright.
“I can see it, Jim,” he
said, insanity tingeing his voice with stress fractures.
“I can’t. What does it
look like?”
“A billowy black cloud.
It’s seething. Hey, man, I can see something you can’t. Isn’t that cool?”
“Blair,” Jim said firmly,
deliberately using his given name, “what did your books say about getting rid
of this thing?”
Blair peered around Jim’s
shoulder. “I think I’m supposed to hit you with the Qur’an. Or beat a drum and
say spells hidden in poems or… I can’t remember.”
“Great,” Jim grated
sarcastically. The nurse was going to come back any second and be greeted with
a pretty picture.
“Sorry, man.” Blair patted
Jim’s shoulder. “I don’t think shooting it’s going to do anything.”
“Why isn't it affecting
us?”
“Dunno,” Blair said helpfully.
“It's just sitting there fuming.”
“Back up, Chief. Towards
the door. Tell me if it moves.” He took a step back, pushing Blair towards the
exit.
Identifying the enemy was
part of the soldiers’ creed. Jim opened himself to the djinn; he allowed his
senses to deliberately extend forth. Hunting like his jaguar spirit guide, he
sought the spoor of the demon. Eyes wide, hearing poised, breathing lightly
through both his nose and mouth, he waited for any sign. The hair rose on his
arms, waiting to shiver at the beast’s approach.
And he felt absolutely
nothing.
“Damn.”
“Jim?” Blair's fingers
clenched in his jacket.
“What?”
“It’s gone, man. It
disappeared *poof*.”
His skin crawled and he
allowed himself the luxury of a shudder. The pad of rubber-soled feet outside
the cubicle sounded just before the nurse turned the door handle. Metal against
metal -– the door mechanism scraping -– pierced his ears. Of its own accord,
his hearing flicked, down to normal levels. Shaking his head, he tucked his gun
away and managed to twist Blair around to his side as the door opened.
“What’s going on here?”
the nurse demanded.
“Blair needs the
bathroom.” Jim propelled him to the door.
“Well, get him in the
wheelchair--” she jiggled the chair towards them-- “before he falls over.”
“Okay.” Jim dumped his
Guide in the wheelchair, as he kept one eye firmly fixed on the corner, a
corner devoid of any demon spoor.
“I’ll take Blair to sign
his release papers, Detective Ellison.” Shaking her head at his antics, she
manoeuvred Blair into the corridor.
“I’ll take him.” Jim
reached out and grabbed the nurse’s shoulder. She stopped instantly, surprised
by his touch. “I know where reception is.”
“My--”
“I’ll take him,” Jim said,
his voice strained.
Plainly concerned, the
nurse looked to her patient. “Are you all right with that, Mr. Sandburg?”
“Hey, yeah.” Blair waved
his right hand negligently. “Jim just wants to get out of here. He sees demons
in every corner –- or maybe not.” He chortled to himself.
Jim gifted the nurse with
a parody of a smile. “I don’t like hospitals.”
The nurse’s expression
segued into an understanding ‘aw’. “You can take him. You do know the signs of
any head injury complications that you have to watch out for?”
“Yes,” Jim answered shortly.
“You have the leaflets?”
she continued doggedly, refusing to give up her charge until she received some
reassurance.
“I was a medic in the
army.”
She finally nodded. “You
look after him.”
“He will. He will,” Blair
carolled.
“I will. I only pretend
that I want to strangle him,” Jim whispered with black humour. The nurse shook
her head and moved down to the corridor to her next duty. Jim breathed out
explosively. With the demon drifting around, he didn’t want Blair out of his
sight. He allowed a naked scowl to cross
his face; he couldn’t sense the damn thing. It probably wasn’t even there and
Blair was hallucinating. An uncharitable thought occurred: maybe the weird wind
demon would find another person to pester in the hospital. He shook his head;
he hated it when his thoughts wandered. No one could deny that he was normally
more focussed.
“Jim?” Philip asked
softly.
Jim jerked around. The
priest stood in the middle of the corridor, clutching Blair’s backpack and an
armful of books to his chest.
“Blair said that the thing
was in the room with us.”
“Did you see it?”
“No,” Jim growled. He reached out and pulled
the door shut.
“I don’t think that that’s
going to help.”
“Have you got any
constructive suggestions?” Jim snapped venomously.
The priest was silent,
simply shifting the mass of books in his arms.
~*~
“Okay,” Philip said
seriously over the width of his coffee table. Jim and the priest sat facing
each other. Blair was curled up in loose
a ball under a quilt on the sofa, snoring softly.
“Yes?”
“You don’t feel as if the jinn-i Zar is haunting you again?”
Jim had read and digested
Blair’s notes before passing the pad to Philip.
He had sat listening to Blair breathe as Philip worked through Blair’s
notes. The Sentinel drummed his fingers quietly on the tile-topped coffee
table. The jinn-i Zar was at the top
of Blair’s list of suspects. Until it was proven otherwise, Jim had decided,
their demon was therefore a jinn-i Zar. Blair
had declaimed that Jim at heart was obviously Napoleonic before settling down
for a much-needed nap.
“No,” Jim said shortly.
“I wonder why?” Philip
hauled a dictionary of mythology out of Blair’s backpack. “I would have thought
it would be back at you like a shot.”
Jim took Blair’s notepad
back from the priest and turned once again to the last pages. “Why?”
“Nothing’s changed, has
it?”
“What do you mean?” Jim
asked suspiciously.
“It’s not as if what made
you vulnerable has changed.”
Philip leaned over the
table and tapped the top of Blair’s notepad with his index finger, where the
words "dispossessed," "defenceless," "depressed,"
"disassociated," "dejected" and "disheartened"
were underlined with red pen. All the D’s. Jim cast a scathing glare at his
sleeping Guide. What was it about the kid and his character assessments?
“I am not…”
“Depressed?” Philip asked.
“I am not depressed,” Jim
finished, but couldn’t help then add, “or disassociated.”
“It’s interesting that you
pick those two words.”
“Oh, please,” Jim drawled.
“Denial is not a river,
it’s a state of being.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Yes.” Philip shook his
head sadly. “It’s not a very good one, is it?”
“No,” Jim said
stolidly.
“You’re not facing the
problem and until you do you will be vulnerable to the jinn-i Zar.”
“If it’s got any sense, it
will be heading back to
“Maybe it’s not sentient.
Or maybe you’re an irresistible buffet of repressed, frustrated emotion.”
“I don’t have to listen to
this!” Jim snarled, quietly, in deference to his sleeping Guide.
“Unfortunately, you do.”
Philip was not deterred. “While I can and do respect your wishes not to explore
your feelings, you, sir, are your own worst enemy and you do not have the
luxury of denial.”
Jim seethed, surprised at
the depths of his anger. Philip sat still in the face of fury, his eyes calm
and understanding. Jim searched for, and found, control, calling on the
disciplines of his childhood, rangers and adulthood.
“Yes, well,” Philip said
sadly, “I doubt therapy will help in the short term and I’m fairly sure that
this is all going to come to a head in the near future.”
“You’re normally a lot
more self-effacing; maybe it’s affecting you,” Jim attacked.
Philip shrugged. “Could
be; it wouldn’t be the first time I was assaulted by the demons of doubt and
denial.” Studiously ignoring Jim’s flabbergasted expression, he returned to his
textbook. Jim sat stunned, his hands flat on his lap, castrated by Philip’s
honesty. The priest kept his head down, studying Blair’s books.
~*~
“Ah ha!” Philip exclaimed,
jabbing at the page in front of his nose. “This is why you’re safe.
Jim slid a glance to check
that Blair was still sleeping before raising an eyebrow to encourage the priest
to continue.
“The Hafaza. They’re
angels from Persian lore that protect the living soul. They defend the soul
against Satan and evil spirits, especially the djinn.”
“And?”
Philip’s finger tracked
the sentence as he read. “Mortals should be most alert or concerned with their
safety at dawn and sunset, for it is at those times that the Hafaza change
their guard.”
“Back up.”
“Right, there’s four of
these angels.” Philip chose his next words carefully. “And they change shifts:
Two on and two off, day and night. In addition to protecting their charge’s
soul, they record your deeds in these books, which are assessed on the final
Day of Judgement.”
“Right,” Jim drawled.
“Okay, I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but my protective spirit is a
black jaguar, not four angels doing shifts.”
“Yes, but it was at dawn
when I beseeched the archangels to protect you.”
“So they’re your angels.”
“No, they’re your angels.
They’re everywhere. They’re ineffable.”
Jim clenched his fists,
making sure that they were out of view of the priest. “What do Michael,
Gabriel, Rafael and the other one…”
“Uriel.”
“… and Uriel have to do
with these Persian Hafaza?” He wasn’t completely ignorant; he had gone to
church as a child, he’d heard of the archangels. He hadn’t heard of the Hafaza.
“Yourself and Blair are
from a Judaeo-Christian background. These angels are powerful cultural
archetypes in those traditions. Angels have been around since before 2500 B.C..
The Aryans who came to
Jim resisted the
temptation to say ‘So?’ The priest was as verbose as a certain anthropology
grad student.
“The devas appear in the
early sacred Hindu writings -– The Veda. The devas also appear in
Zoroastrianism. It’s Zoroaster’s angels that evolved to appear in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam.”
“Get to the point, Philip,
please.”
“We called on an ancient
force to protect you from an equally ancient force. Angels and djinn go hand in
hand.”
“You’re a Roman Catholic
priest. Why do you believe this shit?”
Philip bristled,
affronted. “I also have experience of the Legacy. Not everything is cut-and-dried,
no matter how much you want it to be so.”
Jim lowered his lashes,
accepting the words. “So we’re safe?”
Philip hummed. “If it’s
going to try anything, it’s going to try it at dusk. If the Hafaza are
protecting you, that’s when they’re at their weakest. ”
Jim possessed an innate
time sense, a fact that he hadn’t shared with Blair to ensure that he would not
be tested until the end of time. Sunset was three hours from now.
“If that’s the case, what
does your beseeching Michael, Gabriel, Rafael and Uriel at sunrise have to do
with the jinn-i Zar?”
“We focussed the
archangels’ attention at a critical time, when you and they were most
vulnerable.”
“You’re making this up as
you go along!” Jim said, loud enough to wake Blair.
“What’s up?” Blair tried
and failed to turn over on the plush cushions. “Oh, God, I hurt.”
“You want some Tylenol,
Chief?”
“Shoot me, please.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
There was a smile in his voice only for Blair. Jim patted him gently on his
shoulder, aware of the pained sweat beading his top lip.
“Thanks, Jim.”
The Sentinel had them
ready, tucked beside the sofa in easy reach. Blair tried and failed to sit up,
defeated by the line of abused muscles cutting diagonally across his torso
following the stretch of his seat belt. Helping, Jim provided the muscle,
allowing Blair to move into a sitting position. Blair pulled his knees up
relieving the pull on his tender stomach. Jim dropped the maximum strength
pills into Blair’s outstretched hand. He chomped down, grinding them into mush
before swallowing them dry.
Gagging at the taste in
sentinel sympathy, Jim gave him a cup of Philip’s lukewarm tea to wash away the
dregs.
“Would you like a cup of
camomile tea, Blair?" Philip asked solicitously. "It’s a muscle
relaxant.”
“No, man,” Blair grumbled.
“I want a beer.”
“You’ve got a concussion,”
Jim countered immediately.
Still grumbling, Blair
settled gingerly into the pillows that Jim stuffed behind him. “I deserve a
beer,” he muttered. He sat scrunched up, waiting for the painkillers to take
effect. Jim took pity on him and feathered a hand through his curls, cupping
the back of his head. Blair remained quiescent. Jim’s sensitive fingers
encountered a tangle in his hair. Blair relaxed as Jim worked his fingers
through the knot, just as the Sentinel intended. He kept up the gentle massage
until the pinched lines around Blair’s mouth smoothed.
“So what have you
discovered?” Blair finally asked.
“I think we have a
reprieve until sunset,” Philip said. ”Then the fight will begin anew.”
“How come?”
Philip began to explain.
~*~
“You’re just making it
up,” Jim protested again. “Angels. Genies.”
“Djinn,” Blair corrected.
Jim rolled his eyes
heavenward.
“We may not have any
evidence,” Philip said softly. “But the particulars support our hypothesis.”
“Let’s forget about the
angels,” Blair said tiredly. “We’ve got a reprieve; do any of us believe that
it’s over?”
There was no hesitation;
both detective and priest shook their heads.
“So we’re in agreement.
Jim’s seen an entity.”
“You saw Lash in the car.”
Blair shuddered and then
winced. “Yeah, I did. The jinn-i Zar
can manifest itself to the non-gifted. It made me drive off the road when it
jumped out at me.”
“Did the jinn-i Zar interact with you on the
physical plane?” Philip asked.
“It didn’t touch.” Blair
chewed his bottom lip momentarily. “I don’t believe how blasé I can be about
that. Familiarity does breed contempt.”
“It may not be able to
touch you, but it can cause harm.”
Jim grumbled quietly under
his breath. Too much talking and not enough action. But despite his moans, the
Ranger in him understood the need to gather all the information before mounting
an offensive.
“When I was driving back,”
Blair said consideringly, “it was to tell you about an idea.”
“Yes,” Philip said
patiently.
“Cut to the chase, Chief.”
Blair fixed him with a
pensive look, and Jim knew that he wasn’t going to like the suggestion.
“In most of the texts I read,
a shaman interceded for the victim to drive out the baad or jinn-i Zar.”
“And?” Jim shrugged. “No
problem, then. Shamans are a dime a dozen in Cascade.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become
you,” Philip rebuffed gently.
“I know,” Blair said, his
tone edged with razor sharp hurt, “that Incacha passed on the way of the
Shaman, told me to guide you to your animal spirit. And I try…”
“Chief--”
“No, I’m talking. And I do
guide you, I know that I do. But I haven’t done anything about the shaman side
of the equation. It’s not as if there’s anyone that I can apprentice to, is
there?”
“Chief--”
“So I was thinking."
Blair fixed Jim with a horribly intense stare. "You finally told me that
Incacha spoke to you at the fountain and at the temple of the sentinels. You
need to speak to him again. Find out what a true shaman recommends.”
“I--” Jim darted a glance
between his Guide, injured on the couch, and the priest, always so
understanding, peering at him across the coffee table. “I don’t know if I can
do it.”
Blair had his serious
expression on, lips pursed, eyes narrowed as he peered over the top of his
glasses. “I think it helps you to contact Incacha when you’re emotionally
wrought. I think the conditions are right.”
“Emotionally wrought,” Jim
mimicked.
“Upset, then,” Blair shot
back. “We’ve got to do this, Jim. I know you hate every minute of it: examining
your feelings, accepting your senses as beyond weird, thinking you’re a freak.
But you’re bigger than that, Jim. It’s just baggage that your dad dumped on you
because he didn’t understand your gifts, and the crap you picked up from your
macho peers. You are different, but that doesn’t make it bad. I can spout
political correctness at you until the cows come home, but there’s no such
thing as normal. You’re a sentinel. Learn to live with it.”
Jim rose to his feet and
turned to the windows away from his Guide. The sun was shining and the green
lawn was verdant. It was hard to believe they had once fought a demon that
lived under that grass. Blair’s words burned him to the quick. Behind him, he
could hear that Blair was holding his breath, his heart was beating a rhythm
quickened by dread as the student wondered if he had finally over stepped his
bounds. But perhaps a friend could say those words without being thrown to the
lions? On two, maybe three, separate occasions he had been offered the choice
to continue as a sentinel and he had chosen of his own free will to be the
Sentinel. So be it: he had to face this latest threat head on.
“So what do I need to do?”
Blair’s mouth actually
fell open. “Uhm, I guess, meditate. Come here.” He beckoned Jim over to the
sofa. “Sit, relax.”
Doggedly, Jim sat on the
centre cushion. Blair shifted his feet fractionally so they didn’t touch. He was quite a sight: grey, bruised and,
judging by the smell of sweat, scared out of his gourd. A tad vindictively, Jim
decided that, as soon as he had a spare moment, he was going to write a
character assessment of one Blair Jacob -- also known as Summer Blossom –
Sandburg. That stopped him dead. He had forgotten about the question of Blair’s
parentage.
“What?” Blair asked
defensively.
“Just a flash.”
“Flash of what?” Blair
glanced to the left and the right.
“Something I saw before
when I touched something.”
“What? The wolf?”
“No.”
“Is it pertinent?” Philip
asked quietly from his position on the floor.
Jim shook his head. “No.”
“This psychometry could be
useful,” Blair mused. “You could touch something belonging to the jinn-i Zar and figure out what it
wants.”
Philip coughed. “I think
that’s a spectacularly bad idea. Jim would be opening himself up to the djinn.”
Jim shuffled back into the
plush folds of the sofa and laid his head to rest on the cushion behind him.
“The psychometry comes and goes. I don’t know what triggers it. You got me to
the spirit shaman before by meditation; let’s go that way.”
“You mean Incacha?”
“No,” Jim said tiredly, “I
don’t always see Incacha. There’s another guy; he’s a shaman.”
“How do you know he’s a shaman?”
“He has a staff,” Jim said
shortly, closing his eyes. “Now what?” Air gusted over his right cheek as Blair
sighed.
“Breathe in slowly over
the count of five.”
Jim could see Blair, even
with his eyes shut. He leaned forward intently, oblivious now to the bruises
marring his body. Blair’s pupils were dilated, as they always were when he
guided Jim.
‘How come I never noticed that before?’ Jim mused. Blair zoned in
his own little way when guiding. Jim flicked his senses out over the younger
man: heart rate was slowing, metabolism slowing -- all the signs of a body
entering meditation. Jim followed his path, allowing his own heartbeat to dance
with the same rhythm. Blair’s voice continued its sibilant song, resonating
through his senses, smoothing the sharp edges.
‘Ah.’ The Sentinel entered
the blue-tinged otherworld. The plane was quiet, still, life held motionless as
if standing on a cusp. In this world, no insect hummed or bird sang. As such
Jim didn’t like it; it smacked of façades and unreality. A sentinel was
grounded to the earth, not the spirit plane.
‘Open your eyes.’
“What?” Jim spun on his
heel. A temple, a replica of the one in
A black, sleek jaguar
garbed in velvet fur stalked out of the entrance directly before the Sentinel.
Jim waited, hands clenched together behind his back, feet shoulder-width apart.
The cat settled back on its haunches.
‘Speak.’
That was a new wrinkle. Normally,
at least he got to talk to a human, even if it was a reflection of himself.
“I need the help--
advice--of a shaman to get rid of a jinn-i
Zar.”
Wind ripped through the
jungle. Leaves streamed off the trees and branches whipped away from trunks. To
his left an ancient tree, as high as the sky, was torn up by the roots. The cat
snarled, hackles rising as it tensed in the face of the onslaught.
Battered to his knees, Jim
shaded his eyes from the wind and debris. “Tell me what I can do!”
A flash of lightning and
the thunder riding on its heels flung him out of the spirit plane. The scream
of the jaguar’s defiant roar in the face of the wind filled his mind.
‘Look to the light.’
Jim fell back against the
cushions, gasping for breath. He couldn’t grab any air from the hurricane winds
ravening his body.
“Jim, Jim, chill, relax.”
Blair was in his face. Jim latched on to the lock of curly hair that had
escaped Blair’s ponytail. It hung by his ear, still, not swaying in a voracious
wind. It was all in his mind. Jim shuddered from the top of his head to the tip
of his toes, and banished the sensory madness.
Blair blinked, surprised.
“What was that?”
“It’s destroying the
spirit plane.”
“What?” Blair folded into
a foetal curl, burrowing into the dubious protection of the sofa. Philip was on
his feet, moving towards them, Jim didn’t know what he intended to do; he
didn’t have a frying pan this time.
“It’s in you? It’s still
affecting you?” the priest asked.
“No, no,” Jim said fast
and furious. He wasn’t deluded or insane; he didn’t think that Blair was a
werewolf or that he was going to betray him. He was absolutely certain that
Blair wasn’t going to betray him -– at least, not intentionally.
“Jim.” Blair snapped his
fingers in front of his nose. “You in there?”
“It’s at the temple. It’s
destroying the jungle.”
“Well, that’s you, isn’t
it,” Blair said passionately, “The spirit plane is an extension of you. It
exists.”
“It’s all in my mind,” Jim
disputed.
“No, you don’t understand.
It’s--it’s an interpretative framework.”
“An interpretative
framework?” Jim echoed.
“Yes. It’s the way you
interact with the sentinel part of you. Reality is in the mind -– it’s as real
as me.”
Jim sighed deeply, and
gave up disputing his words. “So?”
“The jinn-i Zar’s changed its attack: it’s gone after the sentinel.”
“You make me sound
schizoid. I’m the sentinel.”
“Come on, man, who are you
kidding? You’re anything but integrated.” He scanned the living room, spotting
a half-burned fragment of paper in the unlit fireplace. “What’s that say?”
Jim flipped the mental
switch in his head that let his sight telescope forward. Tiny muscles in his
pupils should have contracted; other muscles should have changed the width of
the lenses in his eyes, focussing his sight. But nothing happened. Jim raised
his chin high and flared his nostrils: no melange of scents or distinct odours
set about him. He could barely smell Philip’s ‘Old Spice’ aftershave. He knew
that he didn’t need to check his sense of touch, but he picked up a scrolling
strand of hair on his chinos and felt nothing but a fine strand, no scales or
residue of frizz control gel.
“They're gone, aren't
they?”
Jim nodded. He felt fine,
though; balanced. “The sentinel’s gone.”
“It’s messing with your
head. It’s changed its attack.”
“I feel fine,” Jim folded
his arms across his chest. He blinked, surprised by the cosy feeling of
wellbeing, and repeated, “I feel fine.”
“It’s stolen your sentinel
abilities and you ‘feel fine,’” Blair spat with fury, tiny specks of spittle
sprayed the air around him. “It’s attacking the mystical side of your
abilities.”
“Chief—”
Blair stretched out his
hands and they shook as he exhorted, “It’s killing you and you ‘feel fine’!”
“Children--” Philip
clapped his hands, “--you’re getting side-tracked. Focus. You were on the
spirit plane and it’s under attack. This is not a good sign. Jim, did you get
any advice from the shaman?”
“Yes,” Jim said curtly,
shooting a dark glare at the student. “The jaguar said to look to the light.”
“What does that mean?”
Blair demanded.
Jim rubbed his face with
his palms. He hated cryptic answers. Then again, this piece of advice was as
cryptic as clear glass. Jim lowered his hands. Blair was perched beside him,
vibrating with tension, waiting for Jim to speak.
“You’ve got the answer.”
“What? Who’s got the
answer?”
“You already know the
answer,” Jim explained, as he enunciated each word he looked directly at the
student.
“No,” Blair said slowly.
“I don’t. I have a few ideas.”
“The spirit shaman said
‘look to the light.’ Incacha told me that you’re the light.” Jim flicked a
finger at the notebooks and textbooks littering the table. “We’ve got the
answer.”
“I’m the light?” Blair
flushed. “Wow.”
“Don’t let it go to your
head, Chief.”
“I’m your light. That’s so
cool.”
A number of sarcastic
retorts rose in Jim’s mind, but he couldn’t extinguish that flame of enthusiasm
flaring in those deep blue eyes. “So, Chief, what’s the answer?”
Blair gestured imperiously
at the table. “Hand me my notebook and the little leather bound book, the one
that’s about the same size as a paperback.”
The priest handed them
across before settling to perch on the edge of the coffee table. His expression
could have spoken volumes to those who could understand his body language. Jim
didn’t have the slightest idea what he was thinking about.
“One common denominator is
wind.” Blair clutched the books against his chest, thinking out loud, he mused,
“Okay, we’ve got wind. The shaytan are born of smokeless fire, the baads are of various Winds. The Zar, Mashayikh, Jinn and the Liwa Winds are the baads. Oh, I remember…” Blair’s mouth fell open as thought banged
him over the top of his head.
“What?” Jim asked.
Blair tore through the
small book, hunting, he found the requisite page and began to read, “The word baad is derived from va meaning ‘to blow’. Vayu or Vata is
the God of Winds. In the Sassanian era, as traditional Zoroastrianism was
developing into a more orthodox form, Vayu was split into a guardian of pure
and beneficial atmospheric changes and an embodiment of impure and harmful
changes.”
“A god is haunting me?”
“Don’t you think you
deserve a god?” Blair asked glibly.
Jim shot him a dirty look.
“I’ll stick with the jinn-i Zar, thank
you very much.”
“Vayu,” Blair said
seriously, “was the first to accept sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice? What kind of
sacrifice?” Jim demanded.
“If we’re talking about baads, it depends on the type of baad.” Using the shred of paper, he scanned
the page. “Blood sacrifice for the Zar.”
“No way!” Jim was up and
out of Blair’s reach in a heartbeat.
“Jim.” Pinned by his bruises, Blair didn’t
shift from the couch.
“Whose blood?" Jim
asked tightly. "Not yours.”
“I don’t know,” Blair said
urgently. “There’s spells and stuff that I don’t know also. But the act of
sacrifice appears in all the texts, be it djinn, jinn-i Zar, baad or Vayu.
The djinn are satisfied by a drop of
blood from your finger, and one of the baads
is appeased by the blood of a she-goat.”
“A she-goat?” Jim said
derisively, “You don’t have spells. We… I… can’t…. I will not give this thing
one single drop of my blood to appease it.” He crossed his arms and glared at
all and sundry.
“It’s a ritual,” Philip
said softly. “Rituals are about focusing the will. The jinn-i Zar covets your pain, your fear, your terror--”
Blair interrupted. “We
have to break the link. If the jinn-i Zar
is on the spirit plane and it’s attacking the temple… You’re not aware of it
like before. Is the temple a metaphor for the seat of your sentinel self? Or is
it an actual place? The jinn-i Zar’s
gone there, so it’s still touching you. All are inextricably linked.“ Blair’s
thoughts rambled uncensored. “We have to break the link.”
“That’s what we’ve been
trying to do all along.”
“What sacrifice can you
make that will break the link to the jinn-i
Zar? What sacrifice can we make
that will break the link to the jinn-i
Zar?”
“It feeds on despair,”
Philip spoke lowly. “What makes you live in despair, James?”
“What?” Jim said
defensively.
“What,” Philip began
slowly, “can you sacrifice?”
“Jim, pass over my
backpack, will you?” Blair gazed with profound sadness at the slumped bag.
Curious and apprehensive,
Jim pushed it into Blair’s reach with his toe. Blair viewed his backpack as if
it were a snake. He looked as if he had killed his best friend. What had he
stored in the bag that provoked such a reaction? Jim watched as Blair
manhandled his laptop out of the bowels of his backpack. Face curiously
expressionless, he held the laptop out. When Jim did not take it, he waggled it
impatiently.
“What?”
“Take it. Just take it.”
Blair shook the laptop for emphasis, wincing at the pull on his bruises.
Seeing the pain on the
mobile face, Jim took it, and held it close to his chest. “Why?”
“Because you hate it.
Because it drags on you. The Nobel Prize, the book publishing and everything -–
it makes you think that everyone will call you a freak,” Blair said sadly. “If
you don’t have my Ph.D. hanging over your head, maybe you’ll be less
vulnerable.”
“No, Chief. No. What will
you do? You’ve been working towards your Ph.D. for years.”
“I’ll figure something
out. I’ve had papers published during my time in Major Crime, I’ll rig
something together. Jim,” Blair barked, “you hate it!”
“I--” Jim backed up.
“I told you once that I’d
give it all up.” Blair was on his feet, bruises forgotten. “I’ve been writing
it for us. I want my Ph.D. Do you think I don’t? But I don’t want it at the
expense of your soul!”
“Blair?” Jim entreated.
“No.” Blair planted his
hand on top of the computer clasped against Jim’s ribs. “Look me in the eye and
tell me that not having the thesis between us doesn’t make you feel better.”
‘Oh, God,’ Jim whispered in the silence of his mind. The thesis was
a guillotine hanging by a fraying hair above his head; its publication was
likely to expose him and that he loathed with a passion. “I can’t ask you to
give up your dream,” he said tightly.
“My dream was finding a
sentinel.” Blair pushed the laptop hard against Jim’s chest. “Take it, man,
before I start to cry.”
“Your back-up disks.”
“I couldn’t chance another
Bracket. Everything pertaining directly to you is on this password-protected hard drive. I told myself if my computer died,
it was fate. There’s nothing backed-up on the servers at
“Chief, I….”
Biting his bottom lip,
Blair turned his head to the side, refusing to look at his friend. “I said I’d
do it once before. This is twice. Don’t make me offer a third time; it will
break my heart.”
“Come.” Philip touched
their shoulders. “Come with me.”
~*~
Philip stood amidst the
trappings of his faith. Despite the hour and the sun shining outside, the
church was freezing cold. Sunlight through the clerestory windows dappled the
red carpet on the aisle with a multitude of colours. The altar was draped with
fine white linen that had been carefully embroidered. Philip stood before it
wearing his Eucharistic garb of amice and chasuble. The thick wool hung heavily
on his shoulders. Blair could feel the weight of his own sacrifice weighing on
his own shoulders. He had always known that it would come to this, that he had
to decide between Jim and the thesis. The journey had been one he really wanted
to take -- to pursue the study to its very end. There was still information to
accrue, vagaries of the sentinel phenomenon to plumb. Utilising his backup plan
would mean hours and days and weeks working on something that he really wasn’t
interested in. And he was enough of a butterfly to want to avoid such an
ordeal. Writing an alternate thesis would take time away from his true goal.
‘Damn, why did things have
to change?’ Blair shifted his knees on his cushion; his body ached from the
crash. Jim knelt at his side, head bowed as Philip set liturgical vessels on
the altar. Jim was a lapsed Catholic. His father was a confirmed atheist, but
his Mother had been Catholic. If his father had not been so adamant that there
was no higher power, Jim probably would have chosen that route himself.
Perversity, thy name is Jim Ellison.
“Suscipe, sancte Pater,
omnipotens aeterne Deus, hanc immaculatam hostiam…” Philip whispered, offering
up the bread on the paten dish. Holy Father, almighty and Everlasting God,
accept this unblemished sacrificial offering, which I, thy unworthy servant,
make to Thee, my living and true God.
The obvious solution was
to go with the data that he had collected from Alex Barnes, but that was
incomplete. Maybe he could change the data attributable to Jim to Alex.
Philip, at the altar,
poured wine into an ornate, jewelled chalice. “Offerimus tibi, Domine, calicem
salutaris…” We offer Thee, Lord, the chalice of salvation.
Blair wondered if this was
an ancient version of the Eucharist or a special Legacy ceremony. His thoughts
harkened back to his dilemma. He did not want to give up the thesis, but that
was why it was a sacrifice, and if it helped Jim, freed him from a jinn-i Zar that strove to drive him
insane and kill those around him, it was a small sacrifice.
“Hoc est einem corpus meum.” This is my body.
It was a massive
sacrifice.
Jim accepted a portion of
bread from the priest and swallowed it whole. Blair bypassed the offering with
a polite shake of his head.
If he did a simple swap,
Jim for Alex, people would still make a connection, surely? He pictured the
conversation, ‘‘Hey, Blair, how come you spent so much time with the detective
guy? Is he one of those sentinels?"
“Hic est einem calix
sanguinis mei.”
He could easily argue
himself into taking the thesis back. The laptop sat on the altar and Blair
despaired at the information that would be lost. Three years of data down the
toilet.
Jim took a healthy gulp of
wine from the chalice. Philip nodded at Blair, but this time didn’t offer the
goblet.
Philip returned to the
altar to set down the chalice. The Legacy priest stood before the Sentinel and
Guide.
“James Ellison,” he began,
“Blair offers this sacrifice built from sweat, blood and tears. What do you
offer?”
“Me?” Jim shot a shocked
glance at Blair, who shrugged. This was Jim’s call, he had a good idea what the
priest intended, but it was Jim’s decision. The urge to help was almost
irresistible, but Jim had to choose rather than be told what was needed.
“What sacrifice can you
make that will break the link to the jinn-i
Zar?”
“Blood?” Jim hazarded, his
expression twisted with revulsion.
“I was thinking that you
could address that which makes you vulnerable.”
Jim’s eyes flicked over to
the laptop on the white draped altar.
“That is the pinnacle of
your problems but the foundations are still unsteady.”
“Oh, fuck,” Jim swore
uncharacteristically. “What it is with the Zen nonsense? Just tell me.”
“Counselling,” Philip
snapped, and then sighed. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Counselling,” he repeated more easily.
“Counselling!” Jim echoed.
“I don’t need counselling.”
“Yeah, right,” Blair
murmured loud enough to be heard.
Jim’s head snapped and he
glared. “I don’t need counselling.”
“It’s not a fate worse
than death,” Blair said, keeping the tone deliberately light. “I’ve been going
to psychologists since I was in diapers.”
“Yeah, and look how you
turned out.”
Blair squashed the sense
of hurt from that deliberate attack. “No demon thinks I’m a tasty snack.”
Jim ground his teeth
together. “I am--”
“The matter in hand is freeing
ourselves of the Zar,” Philip said
soberly, diverting their spat before it had a chance to get started.
“Yes,” Blair continued,
unable to allow Philip to hold the reins. “Jim, you’ve got issues. A counsellor
can help you. I mean, you obviously can’t come to me,” he finished sadly.
“You think,” Jim said
unbelievingly, “if I agree to see a therapist it will help?”
Philip nodded. “Yes.”
Jim sagged back on his
heels and Blair waited. What would he decide? Jim was vulnerable because he was
a seething mass of post traumatic stress disorder and bowed by insults
throughout his life, passive parental abuse, death of a mentor, betrayal,
isolation, loss…. A lesser man might have caved years ago.
“Jim, please, it’s the
same as going into surgery for a damaged knee ligament. It’s been attacking you
for months. You’ve gone along, surprising quietly considering, with everything
we’ve been saying, because the alternative was that you went postal, with me as
your main victim. Jim, you were solid, you didn’t give in. I’m proud of you,
man.”
Jim turned eyes filled
with suppressed emotion to Blair. “I… will do it.”
Philip spoke soberly, he
held the chalice clasped between his hands. “Do you promise?”
Jim rose on his knees, his
back straight, and declared, “On my honour.”
The Sentinel jerked back
as if strafed by lightning. Blair barely had time to catch him as he toppled.
Arms filled with Jim’s unconscious, heavy weight, Blair struggled to hold him.
The sudden movement paining his aching head and there was nowhere to put Jim
except the cold marble floor. He laid him down on his side, placing his hand
between Jim’s cheek and the heat-stealing slabs.
“Jim?” Blair tried. He
looked to the priest. “Philip?”
“I don’t know.” The priest
crouched down. “What do you think?”
Blair brushed Jim’s short,
soft hair with his fingertips. Kneeling down, he peered at Jim’s deathly still
features. “I think that he’s either gone to face the jinn-i Zar or it took him.
I can’t go there.”
“You can.” Philip touched
Blair’s chin, raising his head. “You’ve been to Jim’s otherside. You said it
yourself.”
“I was dead.”
“You saw the jinn-i Zar in the emergency room. You
can deny it, but you are an integral part of this, Blair. Perhaps, your
concussion helped you see the Zar,
took you to an altered state?”
“Meditate. I could
meditate. What else can I do?” he muttered to himself. Taking the cushion that
he had knelt on, Blair settled it under Jim’s head. Once the detective was
comfortable, he folded his legs into a stiff lotus. His body clamoured. “This
isn’t going to work. I hurt too much. I can’t meditate.”
Philip's brow furrowed. “A
sedative?”
“Do you have any?
“I have some sleeping
pills.”
Blair made an instant
decision. “Get them.”
Lifting his long alb away
from his feet, Philip ran down the aisle. Blair gritted his teeth and unfolded
his legs. What was happening with Jim? If the Zar attacked the seat of Jim’s sentinel-self and won, would Jim
ever wake up?
Huffing and puffing,
Philip returned. Blair was impressed, he’d ran to the manse and back in record
time. “I had them in my coat in the foyer,” Philip wheezed. “I filled the
prescription the other day.”
Blair snapped his fingers
and stretched out his palm. “Give.”
“My scrip is three
tablets.”
“Give me two.”
Philip shook them out onto
his hand. “Maybe you should only take one.
Although with the concussion -–“
Blair downed the tablets
in one gulp. “Thanks.”
“— you probably shouldn’t
take any,” Philip finished worriedly.
“How fast do they work?”
Blair lay down beside his Sentinel.
“They’re very fast.”
“Good.” Blair wriggled his
hips, trying to get comfortable. His back hurt, his chest hurt and his head
hurt. He hadn’t eaten anything for what felt like days, and he was very
light-headed. Realisation heralded his spiral descent into Jim’s otherworld.
The last thing he heard
was, “I didn’t think they worked that fast.”
~*~
“What the hell?” Jim
picked himself up off torn, muddy soil and was promptly blown off his feet.
Sprawled facedown, he smelled loamy earth and recognised the spirit plane, even
though the land was ravaged, the trees uprooted and the lianas torn out of
their moorings. Wind roared through the trees, casting branches into the
turbulent sky. The roar of the storm was deafening; the wind pummelled him with
heavy fists, forcing Jim to lie flat. This was no petty breeze; this was a
hurricane; Blair had said that he deserved a god.
“Vayu!” Jim struggled to
his knees and called the god’s name. “Petty god, show yourself.”
::Mortal, give me your pain::
It had a voice, it had a
form: so he could defeat it. “No, my pain is mine.” The gust of wind blew him
head over heels until he tangled up against the roots of a ripped-up tree.
“Oh, my, God!” the voice
was distinctive and well known.
“Chief!” Hanging tightly
to the torn roots, Jim stood. Debris blustered around him. His skin was
abraded, and he smelled the coppery scent of blood. It was akin to being
pummelled with a battening ram. Feeling his way around the web of roots, Jim
found the trunk. Using it as shelter, he worked his way towards the plaintive
call. Driving rain was turning the
formally verdant earth into a morass of mud. He tripped and fell full-length in
the mire. He pulled himself onto his hands and knees and began to crawl. The
wind wailed and on its wings he again heard Blair’s voice.
“Sandburg!” Shielding his
eyes from the pelting rain, he scanned the war torn land. Blair was here; he
would find him. He saw a flash of blue plaid as the line of trees parted. A
tornado higher than a three- storey house ripped them up by the roots and split
them asunder. Caught in the cyclone, Blair tumbled in mid-air around and around
in its edges.
“Blair!”
Tossed this way and that
like a rag doll, Blair nevertheless screamed in defiance. Jim stepped away from
the shelter of the tree. The wind was focussed on abusing Blair, no longer
tearing at the firmament.
“Let him be,” the Sentinel
ordered.
The tornado shuddered as
Blair was spun into its still heart. He dropped like a stone, falling to the
earth. For a heart-stopping moment Jim thought that the motionlessness of his
body promised death, but then Blair unfolded. Plainly dizzy, he stood, fighting
for balance and then took stock. His blue eyes were piercingly light in the
blue-toned world around them.
Seeing the Sentinel, he
yelled, “Jim?”
Jim could only hear a
whisper of his voice.
::I have your bane, Sentinel::
“What?” Arms outstretched,
Jim pushed into the wind.
::Give him to me and there will be no threat, no pain, no
danger to your self::
Jim froze as the storm
battered him; he could almost zone on the heat of the rising bruises on his
arms.
::No more dissertation:: it whispered seductively. ::Give him to me and no more pain::
The roar of the wind spoke
softly in his mind. Ahead of him, Blair gazed mutely, a tiny hopeful smile on
his face, a confused shrug on his shoulders. A concussive blast of
undisciplined anger beat down upon their heads. Spurred into action, Blair
reached out to touch the wind spiralling around him. As he touched the
streaming air, lightning cascaded down, ensnaring him.
“Don’t!”
Blair arched, his spine
drawn back horribly, as the lightning danced over his body.
::He is in my power. Say the word and he’ll be lost for all
forevers::
“No.”
::Why?:: it asked simply.
“He’s my friend.”
::Would a friend write about you? Would a friend dissect
you?::
“Yes and yes.“ Jim drew in an almighty breath.
“To help me.”
Jim thrust his hands
further into the maelstrom.
::Sentinel, he threatens you:: the sly and enticing voice
whispered through his bones. ::He’ll
betray you::
His deepest fear.
::He’ll betray for fame and fortune. Would a friend betray
you?::
Jim planted his foot
forward another step into the tornado. Dust and debris forced him to shut his
eyes. Tears streamed down his face, trying to clear the grit. His hearing
peaked, straining to hear Blair against the windstorm wailing about him.
::Give him to me::
“Why are you asking?” Jim
demanded.
He felt as if the skin was
being flayed from his arms. Soon the hurricane winds would tear him limb from
limb. Blair was almost within reach. A wall of wind pressed down on him and he
ducked away from he knew-not-what. The mass that clipped his bare shoulder was
larger than a car.
Red-hot rivulets of blood
streamed down his arm, mingling with the mud and camouflage paint. A drop
trickled to his elbow, burgeoned and splattered to the earth. He hurt in the
spirit world; would he hurt in the real world?
He still quested forth,
knowing that Blair was ahead, suspended in the air by the rapacious lightning.
There: he felt the warmth of Blair’s hand. Fingers gripped his palm and Jim
clenched down. He yanked Blair into his arms. The maelstrom grew and in its
wrath Jim protected Blair with his own body.
“Jim,” Blair whispered,
and impossibly, Jim heard.
“Chief?”
“Thanks, man.”
The winds twisted around
them. They crouched in the dark heart of the whirlwind as the winds were
inevitably drawn back into the storm away from them.
“Jim?” Blair said softly,
as he uncurled in the Sentinel’s protective grasp.
“Yeah, Chief?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
Jim couldn’t help himself,
he squeezed his Guide affectionately, just once. “What?”
“Are your sentinel senses
working?”
“Yes,” Jim responded
immediately.
“This is your arena, Jim.
It’s a different level of reality than you’re used to.”
“It feels pretty real to
me.” Jim moved the arm around Blair’s back and felt the pull of the wound on
his shoulder and the hot blood draining down his arm.
“This is the source of
your sentinel senses; it’s not a concrete place,” Blair said quickly. “You
control your own senses: you’ve denied them before and you got them back when
you wanted to. You came here and claimed your rights.”
“But it’s destroying the
jungle.” He couldn’t see beyond the ravenous winds, but the damage had been
appalling as he had fought through the maelstrom to Blair’s side.
“It’s destroying nothing.”
Blair squirmed in Jim’s hold until they were face to face and chest to chest.
He peered over Jim’s shoulder at the screaming winds overhead. “This is an
illusion. You’ve still got your sentinel senses. The jinn-i Zar disrupted your link to your sentinel senses in the
mundane world and you came here to fight it. Your senses came back because it’s
no longer between you and what’s yours.”
“How?” Jim demanded,
cutting straight to the point.
“You can change the
reality of this spirit world. You did it before; you brought me back from the
dead. You can control this!” Blair laughed wildly. “Take control.”
“How?” Jim shook his head.
“Think of that thing--”
Blair pointed at the tornado rampaging overhead, “--as a disease. A parasite of
despair.”
“And?” Jim yelled against
the roar of the wind.
“Cut it out.”
“What with?”
“Jim.” Blair rolled his
eyes heavenward. “What are you wearing?”
“Huh?” He looked at his
arms. They were streaked with blood and grime, but he also bore the tribal
markings of the Chopec on his skin. Automatically, he reached over his shoulder
and gripped the pommel of his machete. He had a weapon. Revitalised, he drew it
like a sword and rose to his feet. The Brazil Bolo felt at home in his hand: a
good twenty-five inches in length, formed from steel, it felt as real as
Blair’s heartbeat. With something close to glee, Jim slashed at the wall of
wind swirling around them.
This would work. He felt
the screech of the jinn-i Zar as he
slashed it amidships -- the pain echoed viscerally through his guts. They were
joined. The jinn-i Zar infected him
like a disease. He would cut it out of his mind, body and soul. He cut again,
regardless of the pain. This was so much more fun than therapy. The winds
surged and buffeted his body, mocking his change of heart. The jinn-i Zar had a line straight into his
very thoughts, he realised.
"I'll talk. I'll hate
it, but I'll talk. You have no dominion!"
He felt Blair at his back,
urging him, but he was oblivious to his words. The mindset of the warrior was
upon him: to fight until he won. No mercy. No leniency. He brought the machete
down in a left to right line and felt the strength of the winds part before the
blade. The winds were weakening with every exhortation.
"You're no longer a
god, Vayu. No one worships you, you're a parasite." Jim slashed precisely
at the wall of wind. The winds parted before the blade, shrieking.
This was what he had come
to the spirit plane for. Not for vague affirmations of oaths to address his
'issues' but to defeat the jinn-i Zar
face to face. Spinning on his heel, he lashed out at the winds threatening
Blair's back and they seemed to contract away from his slice. He had it on the
run. The djinn's form diminished, the winds spinning tighter and tighter around
them. The wind washed over them and suddenly they were outside of the still
heart, facing a man-high nest of whirling winds. Jim bent his weight on his
knee, lunged and neatly pierced the wind with the point of his blade. His
machete hit mass instead of slicing air and Jim imagined that he heard a
screech.
“You defeated yourself,
Vayu. I’m wise to you now, you bastard. You want my permission, because then
I’ll be ‘letting’ you take Blair. Five
minutes… one minute later, when I come to my senses, I’ll be following you to
whatever hell you’re taking him and you’ll get what you want: my misery to feed
on.”
Jim's words heralded his
final strike: severing the base of the tightly whirling whirlwind from the
firmament.
Its anchor cut, the jinn-i Zar lost cohesion. The winds blew
outwards, fragmenting madly. A cold, icy blast cut past Jim, chilling his guts.
Above him, the clouds still boiled angrily, but at the far edge of the horizon,
beyond the jungle, the pure, perfect blue of a calm sky peeked through. It
expanded with every beat of his heart. The trees creaked as the winds fell and
branches sprang back into place. A chirp sounded in the wake of a scalding hot
sirocco blast of air. The winds died. A single leaf twisting in the final eddy
drifted to the earth.
Drained, Jim allowed his
machete to fall from his hand. He stood calf-deep in a morass of slimy mud. His
skin pricked unpleasantly as the mud seeped through his combat boots. The djinn
had wrought disaster on his spirit plane. Those trees which were still standing
were devoid of leaves. The lianas were torn from their moorings. Unaccountably sad,
the Sentinel turned to his Guide.
"Hey, Jim,
look." Blair crouched in the mud his hand cupped over a mound of earth.
Even though he was caked with mud, his curls matted into dreadlocks, he looked
bizarrely happy. Blair shook his head, flicking a mud caked ringlet out of his
eyes. It left a damp patch on the mud drying pale brown on his cheek.
"What?" Jim
growled.
"Here." Blair
opened his hands to reveal a tiny, brightly-coloured butterfly. He grinned, his
teeth gleaming in his muddy face. "It's a metaphor, a bit clichéd of you,
but still a metaphor. It survived the storm."
It was a butterfly, not a
metaphor. Blair was hard to understand, but this was taking opaque to a whole
new level. Caught by the shimmering colours on the butterfly's iridescent wings,
Jim crouched down. It was beautiful.
~*~
"Jim?" A soft
voice encroached on his contemplation of many colours. "Jim?"
Jim opened his eyes and
met a whole new melange of colours, flaring out from a luminous black sphere.
Gold, amber, green and russet brown, the colours sparkled with concern.
'Concern?' Jim wondered. Realisation came on its heels; he reined in
his sentinel sight and focussed on Philip Callaghan's moon-white face rather
than his sorrowful eyes.
"Philip," he
whispered.
"Thank God," the
priest breathed lightly. "Is it over?"
Jim struggled onto an
elbow and rubbed a hand over his weary face. He could almost feel imaginary mud
caking his skin. He lay in the nave of the church on cold, cold marble.
"Jim?" Philip
asked again.
"Yes, it's
over." Automatically, he checked on Blair. He still slept, curled on his
side a mere handspan from Jim's elbow. Steady, even breaths warmed Jim's skin
through the warp and weft of his shirt. Philip had draped his alb over Blair's
body.
"Come on, Chief, time
to wake up; it's over." He shook his Guide vigorously. Blair slept on,
undisturbed.
"Uhm," Philip
began.
"Chief?" Jim
tried again.
"I don't think that
that's going to work," Philip said softly.
"What?" Jim
scowled at Philip standing over him.
"I… uhm … he couldn't
get into a trance state… so …uhm…."
"What?" Jim
demanded. A frisson of concern began to stir in his bones; he ducked down so he
could peer into Blair's face. His mouth was open, lax with sleep.
"He took some of my
sleeping pills."
"What?" Jim
spat, looked up at Philip, appalled. "He's got a head injury. What were
you fucking thinking?"
Philip could only shrug
and look doleful.
"Shit." Visibly
careful, Jim lifted one of Blair's eyelids. The pupil was widely dilated, but
shrank infinitesimally under Jim's regard.
"How many?" Jim
grated.
"Two."
"What's your
dose?"
"Three. He hasn't
overdosed, but well… he would have been very tired after everything that's
happened…" his voice drained away to nothing.
"It's
irresponsible," Jim snapped. He set his fingertips to Blair's throat,
feeling the measured pulse and the skin chilled from sleeping on a cold stone
floor.
"Did he help?"
Philip responded.
"Of course he did," Jim snarled.
"We've got to get him off this floor."
"Uhm… good
idea."
"Help me," he
ordered. Shifting Blair onto his back, Jim took charge of his head and
shoulders. Scooting forwards, he clamped his arms around Blair's chest and
lifted. Blair’s head rocked down until it rested secure, chin propped on Jim's
crossed forearms. Silently, Philip took Blair's legs.
~*~
Blair slept on and on, so
deeply asleep that he snored deep in his throat. He had spent the better part
of the evening and then whole night listening to Blair’s peculiar hitching
snore. Jim had lost count of how many times he had reached out and tested the
warmth of Blair's skin and the throb of the pulse at his throat. If either had
changed during the night, medical intervention might have been necessary. Blair
was as snug as a bug in a rug; tucked under a quilt and a blanket. For the
first time in hours, he shifted. His arm emerged from his cocoon to rest by his
head on the pillow.
Jim took that as a sign
that Blair was waking up.
‘Taking sleeping pills with a concussion. Idiot.’ he thought censoriously.
He had debated with Philip
about taking Blair back to the hospital, but the medical staff would probably
have simply monitored his Guide, and Jim knew that he was more than capable of
watching a sleeping anthropologist. Blair would get one-on-one attention at the
manse. With a judicious amount of shaking, Jim had managed to get Blair to
growl at him a couple of times during the night. His fingers twitched and his
eyelids moved as his eyes roamed. Dream time. After hours and hours of solid sleep,
Blair had finally reached a lighter level.
Jim coughed deliberately,
but Blair slept on. The Sentinel shuffled back in his wooden chair, folded his
arms over his chest and stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the
ankle.
‘More time to think,’ he thought,
disgruntled. Then again, to dwell on weird hallucinations where Blair wasn’t
Blair and he saw people who were dead out of the corner of his eye didn’t seem
like a good idea.
Blair mumbled so quietly
that even a sentinel couldn’t make out the words. Jim leaned forwards, ears
cocked to listen. Even at close quarters he was unintelligible. He wanted Blair
awake so they could discuss their journey to the spirit world.
“Chief!”
Blair coughed, blinked and
grunted all at once.
Jim waited patiently. Blair
had his own rhythm when he woke; it was best to go with the flow. Blair flailed
sleepily, trying to get onto his back, but he had stiffened into immobility
during the night. He whimpered.
Jim leaned over. “I know
you’re feeling like shit, Chief, but is it a general sort of shit or I-need-to
get-you-to-the-hospital shit?”
Blair was singularly
monosyllabic. Jim took the grunt -– based on tone -– as an “I’ll live.”
“How do you feel about me
helping you into the shower?”
He waited a moment for
Blair to respond. He translated the long drawn out vowel as a request for a
bath.
“Okay, Chief.” Jim swung
his legs off the beside table. “I’ll run you a nice cold bath.”
“Jim.”
That was perfectly clear.
~*~
Blair lay in a
hedonistically deep bubble bath. His colour had evened out to a flushed red. A
cold bath would have been better for the mess of bruises scoring the length of
his torso from left shoulder to bony arch of his hip. But Jim could appreciate
his desire for a muscle soothing deep, hot bath.
“How are you feeling now,
Chief?”
“Hmmm.” Blair’s eyes were
tightly closed.
“I’ll take that as a ‘good
as it gets, considering’.”
Blair’s fingertips wiggled
out from under the white suds.
“What do you remember,
Sandburg?”
That garnered a response.
Blair cracked open his eyes and fixed a crystal blue gaze upon the sentinel.
The colour was luminous as on the spirit plane, penetrating, wise and as deep
as the ocean. An otherworldly cast settled over the well known features. Jim
blinked and looked again and Blair was Blair, bruised and tired. The spider web
of stitches at his bare temple were the only incongruous feature.
Blair sniffed. “When?”
Jim leaned forward bracing
his elbows on his knees and cupping his chin on his folded hands. “When Simon
had us for a barbecue,” he said sarcastically. “When do you think?”
“Oh! In the church with
Philip. Yeah,” he sat up forgetting about his bruised ribs. “That was so cool.
We were there. You defeated the jinn-i
Zar. You did it. You did it. And I got over there or into you? That was so
weird. It worked. I didn’t know if it would. That was so cool.”
Jim rocked back on the on
the toilet seat, his ears ringing.
“What was in those
sleeping tablets?” Blair continued unabated. “They worked faster than possible.
How long have I been asleep? Hours? Days. What’s been happening?”
“Chief?”
“I feel really weird. When was the last time I ate? When was the last time that
you ate?” Blair demanded piercingly.
Jim answered the concussed
trail of meandering questions. “I don’t know when you ate. I had pancakes,
bacon and syrup a few hours ago.”
“Good.” Gingerly, Blair
settled back in the suds. “So after it all, how are you feeling?”
Jim screwed his nose up at
the change in subject. “I feel fine.”
“And?” Blair wasn’t
backing down an inch.
“I fought Vayu and won.”
“Vayu? It was a god?”
Blair questioned. “I couldn’t hear a lot when I was inside of it.”
Jim shrugged, “I don’t
really know. I’m just guessing, but I think it was Vayu.”
“So what happened before
you got me out?”
Jim searched for the right
words. “He wanted my permission to kill you.”
Blair shuddered in the
water. “And?”
“I said ‘no’.” A ghost of
a smile twisted Jim’s lips, as if he could countenance any other action. “That
was the whole point. If I let…”
“Yes, Jim?” Blair prodded
when Jim lapsed into blushing silence.
“If I let him take you, he
got both of us.”
Blair smiled sublimely; it
proclaimed that he was proud.
“What about the
butterfly?” Jim said out of the blue.
“What about the
butterfly?”
“You know, after Vayu was
defeated.” Jim couldn’t help but smirk. “You found a butterfly.”
“Ah.” Blair hummed as he
mused a moment. “As I said: a bit clichéd of you. Change, I guess. A
caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly. It’s growth. Change. Vayu fought
you and you’ve changed in response.”
“What about the temple?
Vayu destroyed it.”
“Yeah? And how does that
make you feel?” Blair said with Freudian intensity.
Jim almost balked, but
remembered his promise. “I want it back the way it was before.”
Blair smiled slightly. He
couldn’t help himself. It graced his face. “You wanted the sentinel?”
“Yeah I guess,” Jim
admitted.
An immense grin broke out
on Blair’s face, like sun shafting through the spirit plane’s storm-tossed sky.
“Cool, man. That’s cool.”
Epilogue.
Blair sat on the steps of
the anthropology building. He had a meeting with his supervisor and two members
of his Ph.D. committee in twenty minutes. He needed first to sit opposite the
symbol of the change in his life. The water had been a re-birth, a realisation
that they could both die, in a way that superseded both his experiences with
Lash and being shot in the mine while rescuing Simon. Death was real, no longer
abstract.
“Why am I dwelling on
death?” he wondered out loud. “Because I’m killing my thesis?”
That was overly dramatic.
The sentinel phenomenon was still his raison d’être in a way that sometimes in
the dead of night scared him. It was work, hobby, and love, and always on his
mind. He felt the queasy-freezing touch of tremors running through him from
head to toe.
What the hell was he going
to do?
“Hey, Chief.”
Blair started, surprised
by the familiar voice. He had been –- as a beloved aunt had said when he was
little –- away with the fairies. The
sentinel stood over him; he looked as if the weight of the world rested on his
Atlas-broad shoulders. They hadn’t arranged to meet until the evening.
“Jim? Are you okay?” he
asked, worried.
“Here, Chief.” Jim pulled
the laptop from behind his back and passed it over.
“What?” Blair clutched it
against his chest. All his data back in his hands. The relief was astounding.
“Write your thesis, Chief.”
Jim was trying vainly for stoic, but the emotion was in his eyes for all to
see: haunted and terrified. They were his ‘I’m a freak’ eyes.
“I can’t.”
“Look, you got data on
Alex, you’ve got hundreds of cases of people with one or two hypersenses.”
Blair scrubbed his face
with one hand. Boy, it was so tempting, to run with the opportunity. “They’ll
figure it out, Jim. Most of my friends are halfway to figuring it out. You come
down here, I spend hours, days, years even, with you, and I study sentinels.”
Jim crouched before him so
they were eye to eye. “Tell them I’ve got the hearing and the touch. Hey,
everyone down at the precinct has guessed that much. Serena, Rafe, Henri and,
eventually, Joel, poor guy. Lose me in
the thesis with your other participants.”
“I think. I can’t,” Blair
burbled, his mind awhirl.
“Hey, Chief, I think it
would be more obvious if you dropped me like a hot potato.” He smiled
deprecatingly.
Blair closed his eyes and
let his head hang so his curls veiled his face. He took a meditative breath. It
was so obvious. Why had it taken him so long to figure that out? In fact he
hadn’t, Jim had led him to the water. The question was, should he drink his
fill?
“Chief,” Jim said softly.
“Look at me.”
Blair looked up. “Yes?”
“Hide me in the
jungle.”
Blair smiled. Hide Jim as
if he was one tree in the forest of data? Oh, indeed, he could do that. It
would be simplicity itself to present case study one hundred and fifty-nine
with hyper hearing and touch – not mentioning the sight, taste and touch would
be an omission. He suspected that there would be a few sleepless nights ahead
of him as he trod a fine, ethical line with the data. But could Jim? That
begged the question, “Can you bend the truth if people ask? Because you know it
could happen. We might have to go to the commissioner and the D.A.”
Jim smiled radiantly,
“I’ve learned how to obfuscate from the best.”
Finis
Author’s note: I wanted a demon
that fed on people’s emotions. I was kind of surprised to find out that there
weren’t a lot of them about. There’s lots of demonic entities that eat people (go figure) but subtle
demons…? Nah.
Main References :
Frazer, J. G. (1922). The Golden Bough A Study in Magic and Religion
http://www.iles.umn.edu/faculty/bashiri/Gulf%20folder/gulf.html