Sands of Life-2

Chapter 2

Present day….

My head snaps back as the gloved fist lashes out catching me on the right cheekbone. My head snaps back into the stripped box spring mounted on the wall like a torture rack.

“Fucking A-Rab witch! You’re going to burn in hell for your consorting with the devil!”

I look my current torturer in the eyes and take a deep calming breath. “I am no witch; it is you that are the spawn of Shai-tan. You claim some holy mission but you are no soldier of god, no warrior of Allah. You have little shame, no honor and you smell like a whore’s douche-water…”

“Fucking slut!”

He uses me as a punching bag a few more times before his companion pulls him off of me and touches me with the wet sponge held by the jumper cable. Allah is with me, my Angel is in my mind and…I…DO …NOT…Scream.

They’re torture goes on for awhile. I go on for longer, longer than they can bear. It ends with them dragging me from the room beaten and soaked and one of their lords and masters in the guise of a priest is there. I look at him. He looks at me. I see it inside of him. The demon, I see it sliding under his skin, under the priest’s collar and I see the red in his eyes glowing, burning like hell it self and I meet his stare of hate.

Then me and the Malak, the angel within me stare at him together. He flinches and moves away from us, moves out of our light. “Get the heathen witch out of here. We’ll cleanse her soon enough.”

They drag me down the cold halls of this place. These “Templars” and toss me back in the cell marked with strange sigils and symbols that glow with a dark light. I curl around myself quietly and breath through the pain until it passes and I kneel and pray giving thanks. Every time I dip low to pray the sigils flicker, their dark majik dislikes my faith, dislikes my prayers.

I finish and scoop some of the sand off of the dirty floor and let myself go and what I know as reality becomes Allah’s truth and the sand in my hand becomes cool clear water.

“Are you alright Shadira?” The voice is smooth and light yet cultured and pleasant. It comes from the cell across the hall from my own. I look over to where he sits this dark haired man but no man. He looks like a model, but he’s never been but once I think. A nice smile, intelligent eyes despite everything we’ve been through, fine features like a cat if a cat was a man…all things most girls would dream of. But save for the upswept pointed ears. He is an elf, a real and true one of the fae. Hence the legend, and the long life. “I’ve been better Dorian Grey.”

“I am glad that you are still alive my Shadira. I was worried that you’d never come back. There’s far too many that never return from them.”

“Allah was with me today Dorian, as long as I can keep my faith they are the weaker for it.”

“I wish I had your faith Shadira, I’m afraid I’ve been here in this world for so long that all the colors of the world have washed away for me like my beliefs.”

My heart goes out to him. There is this weary beyond weary sound in him like he just can’t keep the pain of the ages out of his voice. Looking over his back is pressed to the wall and his head tilted back looking at the ceiling, even in the dim light I can see the tracks of wetness from tears running down his face.

“Dorian…if you wish that you had faith then you are still holding unto hope after all of the things you’ve survived. Faith, all faith is hope Dorian. I am in awe of the faith that you really have Dorian, I can see it shining in you even if you cannot.”

“How is it you know so much about Faith and Hope Shadira?”

“I learned my strongest lessons about it from the first man I ever loved. He still teaches me even know.”

“Justin right?”

“Yes, my sweet Justin. But there were others.”

“Tell me more about you life Shadira.”

I look out the window. The night of blood and ice will soon be here, the moon is not yet quite right for it. My angel shakes in anticipation inside of me…this is a crux, a turning point in the world, it can feel things moving around us in the greater sense of it all that neither of us can explain.

I take one more look out the tiny dungeon window. I move closer to the demon sigiled bars but not close enough for them to burn me and sigh. “Alright, now where did I leave off?”

“You had just arrived in Rio.”

***

Nothing in my life had really prepared me for life outside of America. I had been in the city for a month now and was staying in this old Spanish mission that had been refurbished by the Peace Corps. It wasn’t big, there was an eight foot yellow painted wall with archway gates and the chapel itself and adjoining it were the rectory behind it with another courtyard where we grew vegetables and had a modest veranda with a sort of outdoor kitchen and a bit of seating for us to gather and eat and relax.

I was housed with the girls and the nuns in the nunnery that was like a real sparse dorm with thirty girls and only two bathrooms and three showers each it was chaotic. I loved it though. We had members from every age and country I could imagine at the time. I was up front about myself and they were more curious about me being Muslima than being transgendered. Two other local girls here were just like me, well not quite both Lola and Gisele were actually drop dead looking and I’d never look like that, not in a thousand years. Then again they went for the implants and the injected silicone.

The men and the boys lived on the other side of the courtyard in a cloister with the monks and even though we worked together we were housed separately. We fixed schools, taught in some of the barrio areas where you couldn’t get schools. Worked with other groups doing stuff like using old glasses donated free from other countries to those that need it, set up clothing hand outs and even ended up out in parts of the country side in villages helping with wells and planting crops and fixing things. We even helped build some better homes, school houses and clinics.

Things got to be pretty normal for me in the following year. By two thousand and eight I’d more or less mastered Spanish, had a good grasp on Portuguese and was semi able to speak a bit of Creole and German even. I was a pretty good Muslima, I prayed my five times a day and didn’t eat too much, never touched alcohol and even was a semi regular at one of the smaller mosques in the city and getting to be known in the Islamic neighborhood in the southern area of the city.

Once ever two weeks I’d go to Dr. Fernandez who I had gotten to keep track of my real life test and through him my blood work and hormone levels and ended up in February of two thousand an nine I went in and went through my SRS surgery.

I was finally a woman, and did it change much? No. There wasn’t any music in my soul, there was no great overwhelming feeling of being right. There was just this sort of milestone feeling like I could put so much of everything that I had gone through behind me.

I was comfortable in my real gender and I guess that did a lot in its own way.

Deeper down though it seemed to have started something else. The Malak would show, he was no longer a he though but came to me as a she and still clothed the same, in the white desert tunic and shirt but with a golden sash and a long white scarf with writings of the Quran on it in golden thread it obscured her face like a veil and she often bore a tall white candle instead of the sword, and on her head was a hijab of pure while.

She would come to me sometimes and guide me. Twice when there was a search for a lost child she would appear and point the way. Once her hand laid over mine when a man had drowned and I had performed CPR, he was gone under the water at a local community pool for too long and when her hand slid over and through mine his eyes had snapped open.

There was the man she told me was choking. The old woman with the heart attack in the market. And there were numerous times that I might have gone down the wrong street or alley and she showed to shake her head no.

Honestly I never questioned these things. I never questioned her. These were not all bunched up either. Just these strange visions and happenings that just happened every now and then throughout two thousand and nine.

But there were times that she didn’t show, didn’t come to my aid as it were. Three times’ I had been accosted by rude and pushy Muslim men who seemed to have taken a fancy to me and had tried to bully me almost into a relationship with them. Two were just that bullies, they though I’d be a meek little woman and just roll over for them. Those two got rough with me and I fought back, I slapped and bit and clawed them and used anything to hand to fend off their attempts at taking me and making a proper Muslima woman or bride out of me. They beat me pretty bad those two times and I made enough noise that I was rescued by the policia and I pressed charges much to the chagrin of several others in the community.

They got over it.

The third one was the sneakiest and he had gotten the Imam on his side to try to wed me to him for my own good and protection. I wasn’t being a good quiet and obedient Muslima and setting a bad example of being single when a man, a good man was more than willing to marry me and provide me with a home and comforts and a family.

I left that mosque and had gone to another where they had more than happily protected me from Hasim and his unwanted attention. He showed up one night having followed me three weeks later and he tried to get violent with me. It was a mistake. After my adventures with the other two very poor examples of manhood my friends at the mission had taken me along with them to study self defence in the form called Brazilian Jujutsu, that’s most often known as the main style of the people in that UFC thing and a fighting league in South America called Vale Tudo but for us girls who were learning the style it was a good style just for self defence like Judo or Aikido where we learned to use our attackers power against them.

I haven’t seen him since that night when he tried and tried to hurt me or rape me or likely kill me or all three. He was rabidly mad. He was tearing at my clothes as we fought and had torn my dress I had been wearing and he had a knife. I did everything I could to keep him from hurting me and the last time I saw him, he was limping away his knife in his own leg and calling me a filthy devil woman.

I’m not saying that Muslim men are bullies or all of them are bad, actually by and large most of them that I have met are wonderful people. Most people can be decent, and kind but there is a respect I get as a woman from the Muslim men I have met that is different then that from many others. It is a cultural respect though that calls you to respect your role in their culture as well. That being said I’m still modern and American enough of a woman I’m not going to be treated like garbage.

Things came and went until one night coming home to the mission I saw Ferouz the Imam that was aiding Hasim in his efforts to try to force marriage on me picking up a young thirty something Middle eastern man from the mission. I watched them as they left and then I saw my angel hovering over the courtyard her candle replaced by a shamshir (sword) I followed the call by her to the courtyard were there she hovered all six wings slowly moving over one of the trash cans. I looked inside and moved some wadded up papers and saw a bomb…

Somekind of series of taped together pipes five in total like those dynamite bundles you see in the old films. There was a cell phone taped to it and wires. Her hand hovered over mine and she stared into my soul.

~Choose.~

“Choose?”

~Chose, Shadira for once the choice is made there is no going back.~

“Chose what?” I ask even though I thought I knew.

~Chose.~

“Will Allah take me? Will there be heaven for me after the life I’ve lived, the things I’ve done?”

~It is not my place to judge.~

“I understand.”

~Do you? There will be no Martyrdom for you in either choice. The road will be harder than anything you have faced or you will not be recognized being this close to the blast.~

“I understand, I do, these people don’t deserve this.”

~Chose.~

“I have.”

As I reached into the trashcan she was there her hands on mine and the scroll scarf fell from her face, my face and I/We pulled out the bomb and the cell-phone rang. I curled my body around it trying to muffle the bomb blast and folded my wings around it and…

There was pain, my death, her birth, and the bomb went off.

Then there was a voice.

THE VOICE…

There was the warmest brightest light that I’ve ever seen, felt, been a part of and then I was back…standing in the courtyard holding the bomb. I sort of felt like myself but not…

I take the bomb and dump out the things I had gone shopping for and put it inside. I’m in a daze but I’m not. I know for a certainty that I have died once already and we have been born and that nothing is what It seems.

I feel things here in this city on the edge of my senses here lurking in the steamy Rio night. I walk all the way to Imam Ferouz’s small little temple and it’s late but there are people inside. I walk into what should be HIS house and feel the filth inside. Violence without cause has lived here, there is a stench lingering like a stain of burned flesh, human grease, and the lingering hint of sulphur here. He is not an Imam, not any longer he abuses his power, he uses it for his own gains and for “Their” causes.

There’s three men here with him as I walked in. Ferouz’s eyes widen seeing me. “You!, You should not be here it is not permitted for you to be here woman.”

“Be quiet Ferouz Ibn Kattief Ibn Terique.” His mouth opened in shock that I’d talk to him in such a way.

The three men stared at me and I saw something in the oldest one. A red shimmer under the eyes. Something slithering under the skin. One of the younger men glares at me then the other young man. “You fool, what did you do wrong.”

“He did nothing wrong. Fasil knows his craft well Davvid.” Both stare at me then Ferouz as I take out the bomb. “As you can see he was successful. You both learned you lessons well from your time in Hezbollah.”

The third man glares at me eyes simmering even hotter and I let my angel reach through me and the bomb becomes light then turns to desert sand between my fingers. The two and Ferouz gaped, Ferouz wet himself as we let him glimpse but of us, what we have become.

The third man that wasn’t a man began to pull a long knife over a foot long. There was a wave of power, tainted essence majik and all the doors and shutters slammed shut. I look at them she recognized the stink off the power.

~Sammael….~

*Shadira….*

I barely remember the fight, the Shamshir in my hand as I changed and I became her and she became we as me and the demon met blade to blade. The inside of the room burst into flames both holy and unholy as we fought. The men forgotten the moment I killed them, Sammael uttered a command in demon-tongue and they rushed me. The two Hezbollah terrorists I cut down and with a finger two his forehead I turned Ferouz who chose hate versus love, evil over light to a statue of sand.

It was the opening that Sammael wanted and drove his blade deep in my right arm. It’s left a blackened scar on my even now, it looks odd like a thin shiny bruise. I know had I been alive as I once was the tainted blade would have killed me outright.

The remainder of that fight blurs in my mind because I can’t remember some of the things done because I’m still far too human to understand them. By the time dawn came I staggered out from the burned mosque into the clean sunlight and Sammael gone, his willing host a pile of ashes. His essence fleeing away from us a tight cloud of blood colored smoke, hate and anger.

I don’t know how I wasn’t seen leaving there, I don’t know why nobody saw the small mosque burning down or why none of the buildings nearby didn’t light up and burn the area down.

I do know I cried for what was lost, what had been taken and twisted and tainted. I know I was in shock the entire walk home. I could feel these pockets of darkness as I passed pulling away from me and from the rising sun itself.
It took me two weeks to recover from it. From dying and living and the battle. There was so much to adjust too now. Being able to sense and see evil, for what it was…to following a handsome boy as he walked with a girl out somewhere private during one of our dances we used to put on for the teens in the area…driving my suddenly there Shamshir through his heart or what passed for it as he changed and grew long fangs and the Vampire was going to feed on her…

Everything had changed so much I thought I might go mad. But there was things I…she had never known that I knew and yet got to be blessed with reliving for the first time. Can you really remember fully getting to enjoy washing your hair, that first bite of fried chicken with crispy skin and that first taste of chocolate, your first ice cream headache…I gave Allah my life, and He gave me a new one in return.

Literally and more than I knew. I fainted in my room when I woke feeling ill and there was blood on the sheets between my legs. I knew what had happened, she, me my Angel, My Malak self did not.

When It hit us that I could be a mother, we could be a mother that we could bear life and love and care and nourish and nurture another life another soul…I cried for hours and prayed all the rest of that day giving thanks. I could be a mother, I could be a mom…that one thing more than any other thing is what I hold onto. Keeps me alive, keeps my faith.
The thought of my children.

I slowly was getting adjusted to who I was becoming and was finding new joys out of life each day.

Then the year passed from the old to the new. I defended those who I could as things would happen. Vampires, Rio was rife with them and other evils. Black Santeria priests that performed the darkest of rites. Necromancers and just plain murderers touched by the Monster below.

It all came to a head during Carnival this year.

I had been partying and dancing with friends from the Corps and having a good time when my friend Julie a nice girl from Australia had gotten separated from the rest of us and I saw her with two young men and the scent of mana and charm majik thick in the air like a too cloying cologne.

I followed the scent and them as they stole down an alleyway. They were tearing off her clothes and she was just dazed under the sway of majiks, like she’d been ruffied. I stepped in quickly and broke one’s nose with a palm strike to his face. The other pushed her aside and said words in black Latin that caused me great pain. Then I was tasered from behind. I tried to fight them, I tried to get up but there were more of then with boots and snap batons and they beat me. Mortal men, my powers were being hindered by the two sorcerers. I was bound by chains marked like these bars here in our cells and I heard a long slow hate filled chuckle.

“Good evening Steven, it’s so nice to see you again.”

I looked up to see. Agent Adam Harcourt of The Office of Homeland Security staring at me a sick smile on his face.

“You’re out of your jurisdiction Adam.” He purpled with anger at me using his first name but he smiled even more evilly and crouched pulling off my hijab and grabbing me by the hair.

“I’m a Justifier of the Holy Templars you freak witch and I’m here to make you pay.”

He slammed my head as hard as he could into the pavement.

***
“The next thing I knew I was here in this forsaken place.”

Dorian nods and looks over to where I’m sitting with my arms around my knees. “I’ve heard a lot of stories Shadira but nothing like yours.”

I nod but stare out my cells tiny window again. “Shadira? You’re smiling and crying…why?”

“Three days Dorian, three days.”

“Three days and what?”

“Three days and they’ll have reaped what they’ve sown. Three days and it’ll be the reckoning they’ve never thought would come. May Allah have mercy on their souls because she will not.”

“She?”

“She…the witch-wolf, and her pack. In three days they’ll be here.”

I look at him and our eyes lock. “Three days.” he says.

“Yes.”

(This Merges now into Bad Moon Rising-3.)