Chapter Eleven
Gol approached the desolate place from the east as he had left. It was a round about way but they did not want anyone seeing them come of go. It was a necessary inconvenience. No sooner was he in sight of the old buildings than he knew something was wrong. He could sense no life. Human life forms gave off a particular energy level that he could always read. Even half humans. The absence of any emanation from the buildings gave him cause for alarm. His brothers would not have left except under the most dire of circumstances. And if they left there had to be a great cause.
He stopped his approach and changed direction. Going back the way he came, he circled around and entered the district from the north. He moved stealthily using all the skills of the warrior that he was. Far beyond ordinary skills in human warfare, he also possessed the skill of his clan from beyond the human plane. Combined with his faster speed and quicker thinking mind, he was invincible in the human plane. It had taken the Creator of Life to vanquish him long ago. He feared no human. Surprise was always a good tactic, but whoever awaited him now had better have more than surprise on his side. He was Gol. Warrior of warriors. Not only was he the leader of the Alliance of brothers. He was also the eldest son. As such, he possessed a double portion of everything.
He sensed it before he saw it. The Seed was feeding. An alarm went off in Gol's head as he realized what that meant. It was strengthening itself at the expense of his brother's life forces. The Seed had consumed them. He had drunk their blood and vanquished them back to their own plane of existence. They were the Alliance so, unless one of them was in the plane of the Alliance when the others were killed, they could not choose to go there. They were all here. Their home plane was all that was left to them at death. Or inside the Seed, making him even greater and stronger. They would not have chosen that. Gol knew that he alone was left in the human plane.
Gol knew a moment of sadness. Quick. Merciful. Over and done with. Time to move on. The Seed must be dealt with. Gol knew he had made this mess. He would clean it up. And he would find a way to get his brother's back, too. He made himself that promise as he approached the feeding Seed.
“I knew you would come.” The Seed did not look up from its meal.
Gol waited. He said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was here to kill this Seed. He would do it or die trying. His strength and skills were far beyond anything the Seed could have possessed by this time in its development, even with its premature entry. He had considered this meeting all night as he had searched for signs of the Seed and followed its path of destruction. He had been too late to do their seeds any good. He had not arrived in time to warn his brothers. He would rectify all that now.
“What? Nothing to say, Daddy?”
The Seed spoke in a manner and tone that was designed to provoke Gol to attack. If Gol attacked, he violated his right to be in the human plane. He was only allowed to defend himself. Any attack initiated by Gol would break the deal of protection humans had with the Creator of Life. The Seed was not fully human and not sanctioned by the Creator of Life, but he was in the human plane by no means of his own devising. As a free and spirited life form, he had the right to defend himself against any attack and expect the Creator of Life to help him. Gol would not take any chances because he was still trying to work out a plan to bring his brothers back and dominate this world. The Seed knew all this.
Gol said nothing.
“Come to kill me? You'll have to attack me to do that.” The Seed spoke through its small, childish mouth but used adult words of provocation against Gol.
Gol waited. All that was necessary was for the Seed to make the first move. He knew the outcome. Unless the Seed had come out of the woman stupid, it also knew the outcome. This was only a matter of time waiting to be played out. One of them was not leaving this place. Gol knew which one of them it was. He would bide his time.
“I'm not moving or fleeing or anything that would provoke a response from you.” The Seed maintained.
Gol said nothing. He just watched. Waited.
“Want some?” The Seed lifted the head of Saph and showed Gol the brain matter he had been consuming. Gol could sense no spiritual energy left there. Saph had already fled to go home. All that was left was the blood energy, which Gol knew violated the deal with blood in this plane.
It was taking more of Gol's strength than he had imagined to stand still and accept the goading of the upstart Seed. He dared not respond because he might give in to his own personal nature and attack. He watched as the Seed lowered his head and chewed off a mouthful of Saph's human brain. He knew it was not really Saph. It was just the idea of this little creature making believe he was important that riled Gol. No one could measure how badly he wanted to annihilate this errant Seed. There was no instrument in existence in any plane that could fully fathom the hatred that burned inside Gol at the moment. He had created this Seed. He was going to destroy it. Not just kill the body. He was going to destroy its life force and take it inside himself. There was nowhere for the Seed to go. It did not belong to any other plane of existence. The only place it could go was back to where it originated. With himself.
John and Kathy arrived at the site of Emil’s accident with the sun directly overhead. The bright orb overhead was a reminder of the noon day hour, which only served to reinforced John's memory that it was lunch time. He pushed the growling in his stomach back down and exited the Jeep to join Kathy at the side of the road.
Emil had led them to the spot where his crushed body had lain. John was surprised to discover that the spot where Emil indicated still held residual energy like a cloud of muddy water in a pond. He could see the very outline of where Emil's body must have lain. An elongated elliptical area in the grass a few feet from the edge of the road.
“Here?” John indicated what he saw.
“Precisely,” Emil answered.
“Can you see it?” Marcie wanted to know.
“I see a muddy place in the grass. Not actually in the grass. More like the view I have of the grass is muddied up.”
“That's it.” Marcie told him. “You definitely have the sight for Dark things.”
John was not so sure that was a good thing. It scared him that he could see things that were not actually there in the normal world. Of course, what he considered the normal world was not really here, either. It was only a plane of existence. Real was a matter of perspective. His was changing constantly.
Kathy was staring at the grass like it would reveal something to her. John had no doubt that if the grass knew something it would jump at the chance to answer her and do something for her. He could see that around Kathy had grown a dark smudge of image that seemed to loom behind her. He reasoned that her being in the vicinity of the muddy image he was viewing in the grass was affecting her own image.
“Any thoughts about what happened here?” Kathy asked in her head. She was addressing Marcie and Emil as well as John.
“I died here.” No one laughed at Emil's joke.
“Anything constructive?” Kathy's irritation at the joke was apparent.
“Hey, It's my death we're talking about here,” Emil reminded her.
“I know. I'm just thinking about the women who were killed and had their babies torn out of them this morning or last night or whenever it happened.” Kathy admitted.
“Saw John reading about it this morning,” Marcie offered.
“Didn't say anything,” John complained. He was not used to the comings and goings of his Mist friends yet. He wasn't sure he would ever get used to them. His religious training was too ingrained.
“Didn't figure you wanted any company.” She complained back.
“All right, guys,” Kathy broke it up. “We need something to go on, here. We can check the police reports but I have a feeling the parents have already done that and would have shared whatever they knew with us already.”
“I got the feeling they gave us whatever they knew, too,” John added his observations, trying to get back in Ka
thy's good graces. It was Marcie's fault anyway. She always started it by making nasty remarks.
“It wasn't a nasty remark,” Marcie reminded him she could hear his thoughts.
“Well, it was made in a nasty way, then,” John maintained.
“Just speaking the truth. You were not acting like you wanted me around so I left you alone.”
“How do you know what I wanted?” John asked the one hundred and thirty year old, little girl ghost in his head.
“You thought about calling on me but decided to wait until later. Is it later now?” Marcie reminded John of his thoughts when he was considering the story and his thoughts of the darkness coming on the horizon.
John shut up. He was not designed to argue. Marcie was a master debater. Must be something about her being killed as a precocious little tyke.
“I remember lying there and looking up at the guy looking back at me in his car.” Emil broke up the spat between John and Marcie.
“Did he know he had hit you?” Kathy asked, glad to move on.
“Must have because he started to get out and then changed his mind. I think he was probably scared because he had hit someone. Whatever his reasoning, a few minutes after he had stopped and looked back, he drove off, leaving me bleeding into the grass.”
“Sorry,” Kathy meant it. “Not the way people should do each other.”
“Can you remember anything new about the car?” John asked, getting into the spirit of the chase.
“Big, black. A Lincoln, I think. Did not notice the license plate. Wasn't really thinking about catching the guy at the time. It was quite painful.” Emil shared.
“I can't imagine lying out here alone and bleeding like that.” Kathy said walking around the spot Emil had outlined for her in the grass.
“I can,” Marcie spoke up.
“I'm sorry you CAN imagine it,” John said in an momentary display of compassion towards the entity in his head. “No one should have to go through that.”
“I agree. That's why I wanted to help with this. The more cases that are solved the more this kind of crime comes to the attention of the media. Victims are never good news stories. But court cases and verdicts make the news all the time. Put more people away for their crimes and get more attention for the victims, like us.” Marcie was on a crusade by her own admission.
“I wish there was some way of stopping any more victims from being hurt and maybe some way of alleviating the pain of memories after the fact.” John was sincere.
“Thanks for the wish,” Marcie told him. “Only good relationships and moving on takes the brunt of the pain away, though.”
“Then I want to be a better friend,” John meant it. Too much pain was already out there. He did not want to add to it in any way.
“So do I,” Marcie whispered in John's ear in his head. “See me later, Big Boy.”
John heard Kathy laughing and knew that Marcie had not whispered only for him to hear. It surprised him to watch how easily Kathy accepted Marcie constantly propositioning her husband. He had much to learn about Kathy. She was a complicated woman. He wondered if he would ever get to the bottom of her bag of tricks.
“Never,” Kathy laughed in his head. “You can't even remember that when we're plugged into the Mist I can hear your thoughts.”
“Maybe I did remember,” John responded and gave her a wicked smile.
“Well, aren't we just the little tease today?” Kathy laughed out loud.
John loved that sound. It was the sound of hope. He wondered if there was much laughter at the Gallot's house. They didn't seem to be all that humorous to him. Didn't exude much hope, either.
“I wondered the same thing, myself,” Emil said in his head.
A momentary pause filled the time as John and Kathy surveyed the scene and tried to imagine the night of the accident. Emil had given them a pretty good picture of the events and the time line. They were trying to get a better view of it with all the background of actually seeing the place where it happened. Both John and Kathy wanted so much to be able to bring hope back into the life of Emil's parents. John because he had lived his whole life wishing his father had found something besides being used to be hoped for and Kathy because she wanted to erase the bad her father had done to so many families. But they needed to learn something the parents did not already know. Answers. That's what would bring hope to them now. Answers.
Gol waited. The Seed finished his meal and was growing antsy. Gol was depending on the energy of youth to drive the Seed to try and escape. Gol was blocking the door. Going out the windows was not an option because of the risk of cuts. A bad cut would bleed off too much energy and possibly drain the Seed before it could get medical attention. Though human in form, the Seed was still of the brothers physical makeup. And the blood in the human plane flowed freely once allowed to escape. That's why so few existences in the planes were in physical forms. Too much opportunity for blood to flow.
Gol knew that the Seed would not risk getting cut unless there was no other option. Even then, it would probably fight before making a dash through the windows. They were small paned and had metal bracings on them that looked old and rusted. A nasty cut was almost a sure thing if the Seed chose that route. It would make it easy to track at the least. Blood left a good trail to follow.
“How's it feel to be so old you can not remember what it was like to be young any more?”
The Seed challenged Gol again, trying to provoke the giant to attack. The Seed knew that it could not make a break for it until Gol made some move to attack. He needed Gol to make the first move so that his escape move would not be considered an attack. Gol was blocking the only way out. He had to escape. He held no notion that he could match Gol in strength, speed or stamina. Not yet. He needed time and energy to complete his growth process. He could feel it building inside him. He needed time. He had to get away and allow his new body time to generate the strength he would require to face Gol. Facing Gol was a guaranteed proposition. They would forever be at odds since he had thwarted Gol's plan by arriving early. But the timing of the showdown would be better for him if he could get away and fight another day.
Gol could not only recall what it was like to be young, he had spent his entire life beyond the realm of the human plane remembering it so that he would not repeat the mistake when he got another chance. He had been young once and cocky. He had challenged the people of the Creator of Life to a duel of submission. A one on one fight. Their best against him. They had sent out a young man, not more than a boy. He had been sure of himself and took no care for his safety against such a small, insignificant opponent. The boy had been no warrior. There was no glory to be gained by killing the young man sent against him. Only the stark realities that the enemy was scared of him. While he was reveling in the fear he had planted in the enemy and taunting the boy they had sent out to him, he did not pay attention to what the enemy was up to.
They had invoked a call to their benefactor, the Creator of Life. He had answered and, in His way of showing off His great power, had sent them a child to rescue them from their tormentor. The Creator of Life was like that. If he had to get involved, after he had already given them everything they needed, he was going to teach them a lesson, too. The lesson was simple. The youngest or smallest among you, who depended on the Creator of Life for everything, was more than enough to meet any challenge designed to overthrow what the Creator of Life set in place.
In his youthful ignorance, Gol had forgotten that he was challenging the chosen people of the Creator of Life. This absence of forethought made him make the mistake of not expecting anything more than a young man and a young man's fighting skills when he saw his opponent on the field of battle. He took the scene at face value, much as the Seed was now. And, just as he had been felled by that young man with a stone to his forehead, he would see this Seed meet a suitable end.
“It is not my memory that you need to worry about.” Gol spoke for the first time.
“So, my
opponent speaks. Have you come to kill me or to swear your submission before me?” The child-like Seed smiled wickedly, the blood of his meal showing in his taunting smile.
Gol shook his head at the taunt. The Seed was too young to know. He would not hold that against him. After all, he had created the Seed. But he would use his youth against him. All was fair in love and war. And this was war.
“As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,” Gol quoted an often used scripture from the human bible.
“What's that supposed to mean?” The Seed demanded to know.
“Too bad you are not going to be on this earth long enough to learn such things,” Gol threatened the Seed.
“Are you threatening me?”
“No rule against threats.” Gol laughed now.
He was goading the Seed to think about some action. Unfamiliar with the ways of the warrior, the Seed was not versed in the art of verbal parrying. It would be the same as if he slapped the creature physically. The result would be a physical response from the unpracticed Seed. That would be all Gol needed to act. A deadly scenario was like a gunfight. Whoever moved first started it. Whoever was quickest and most skillful survived it.
“Well, just so you know. I am onto you and your tricks. I am not moving.”
“Didn't ask you to. Your thoughts are all that is necessary to provoke an action. Think about moving toward this door and me and I will tear you to pieces before you finish the thought.” Gol explained his strategy.
“Not thinking about it.” The Seed announced, firmly.
“You will.”
“Why?”
“Because now I have planted the thought in your mind. Unfortunately you can not avoid it because you are so unskilled in the ways of the warrior.” Gol challenged him again.
“Killed your brothers easily enough.” The Seed smiled again.
“Surprise and sneaky tactics have no honor or glory attached to them. You gained nothing but the placing of yourself in an unhonored position to defend yourself against one whose honor is irreproachable.”
“You?” The Seed laughed at such a thought.
Gol did not change his expression. He did not change his position. He waited. It was inevitable. The Seed did not know enough about the honor of a warrior to understand what he had done or not done. Gol's words would shake him like a leaf in a storm. The wannabes always felt shame in the presence of the real deal.
“Who are you to talk to me like that?”
“Your executioner,” Gol kept his demeanor calm and relaxed. His voice did not raise.
“Again with the threats?”
“A promise.” Gol always loved that line. He had to fight to keep the smile from his face.
“You promised to give me life.” The Seed accused Gol.
“And I did. Now I promise to destroy you forever. And I will do that, too.”
As Gol spoke the Seed tried to take a chance and move away from the door with a feinting move designed to draw Gol away from the opening, leaving it exposed for him to escape. Gol did not bite. He stayed his ground and waited. The Seed had no way of knowing Gol could see speed at a level far beyond anything the Seed was capable of operating in. But the move had been made. Now all that was left was the finish.
The Seed was fast. He moved twice more, making his way swiftly toward the door at the side of Gol. Unfortunately he was as young and unskilled as Gol had been telling him he was. He never saw Gol move. There was never any indication that something had changed. He just felt the pain radiate up his arm and back down to his hips. It was so intense that he had to look down to see the fire that was burning him up. Instead of fire, he saw the opening Gol had ripped in his side. Gol had torn his arm away from its place at his shoulder and ripped downward until the entire side of his torso lay exposed to Gol's view. About the moment the Seed believed Gol's words and regretted his own ambitions, Gol reached into the chest cavity of the Seed he had given life to and pulled the blood pumping organ from its place. The look of incredulity on the Seed's face was the look of youth amazed. The Seed had never considered his death. Now, faced with it, he could not outrun the darkness that chased him. He was still screaming a silent cry of unbelief as Gol devoured his life force and consumed all that he was, taking him back into himself, where he had belonged all along.