Fade to Black
Follows right after Bad Moon Rising.
*Dom…..
I’m worried about Stevie and I really can’t help it. I have been completely driven to the point of insanity because of this girl. She’s laying on the backseat of the car I’m driving and she’s just staring at her hands, at the dirt and blood on her nail, naked except for a blanket tossed over her. Her hair splashed across her face like a sort of white blonde messy curtain hiding her partly from the world.
Even looking through the rearview mirror it doesn’t keep me from seeing the tears that just haven’t stopped since the battle at the Templar compound. The radio can’t mask the whine that comes out of her heart.
That fucking girl.
I’m at a loss with her so much. I’m Domitian Fenris, I’m a prince of the Fenris Kingdom, and we’re Werewolves from Budapest. I’m the youngest of seven brothers but the youngest of the Werewolves that pretty much control most of the packs in Europe. I was promised in marriage when Katya’s mother had negotiated for Katya and I to be married so that new blood, old lineage blood would be brought in to her pack and that I’d end up as Alpha.
I’m the youngest son so no; I’ve no clue to the price that was set on my marrying Katya. Hell…She was barely a year old when the bargain was struck. I ended up going to boarding school in New York and summering up in Moon Bat trying to get to know my future bride and queen.
Katya didn’t want anything to do with me and for awhile I had stopped going. Instead I went home where I was exposed to the night life of home and the manipulations of every bitch that wanted something from me like a child that’d tie her lines to mine, the new York night life was now better but they just thought I was a rich old money whatever from Europe.
By the time I had enough and went back to Moon Bay, I found Katya cumming around with this…well I couldn’t get it.
Steven Parker was five six five seven and about two hundred and thirty pounds with dirty blonde colored hair and grey eyes. He was this shlubb, no car chubby plus and glasses and drove around town on an old five speed bike.
In what world does a guy like him get more interest than a guy like me? I get it now knowing Stevie. It’s what’s inside. But at the time it drove me a bit nuts.
But then she turned him and that made problems and I really wanted to kill him for just being there. Katya had turned him without permission and then she was going to marry and mate with him over me.
Then the attack came and we both lost Katya and in her last bits of life Katya used the blood magic of giving power to her mate which should have been her offering to me on our wedding night.
I would have been the Alpha of this pack. But instead she gave her life force’s last spark and her energies changed Steven into Stevie because he/she was not of the Alpha blood lines and where I would have just absorbed the power the magic made Stevie’s form change to suit the powers of an Alpha female.
No one knew that her blood carried the human’s gift for mage-blood. To gift a mage with the power of the Were is forbidden. I’m not mage savvy but it’s because only the royal lines in my people can put their power into a changing bite or The Silvermark and change a Non-Were to a Were it’s a sacred thing, it defines the royal blood. A mage that was made one of us can use his or her own power to do what was/is only possible for the royal lines.
Those mages are usually executed; it’s far too dangerous to have them running around making their own packs.
And no, a non-royal Were cannot make another Were with a bite. The only way for them to breed is by having children. Even if a child is born to the Were or couple if they do not have enough natural magic in them the genes won’t waken in them. I’ve no idea why some children will have it and some won’t that’s where magic crosses genetics and I’m at a loss. Royals though are very, very likely to breed true with a human, and almost always with another Were.
Stevie is only safe because she had inherited Katya’s Alpha-ship and therefore the rule will not apply to her. But she’s gone and broken the custom of silence of the wolf in the blood of those families of her pack.
Silence about ourselves has saved our lived from being hunted down by mankind. People talk, but it’s all up in the air now because she was right. Even without the public knowing about us The Templar’s are waging a war and using science or science and magic but their intent was clear and we have the proof.
We lost people back there and some of them were non-wolves but family of. Stevie’s pack and they died so us as a species may live.
I don’t know how that’s going to play out with the heads of the great packs.
I reach up and pinch the bridge of my nose and try and breathe through the stress headache. It really doesn’t help as every instinct I have is to curl up to Stevie and try to nurse her spirit back together.
It’s so messed up me and her.
Most women just…just well fall for me. It’s either been the whole pheromone thing or it’s been my status or just my looks. And does Stevie even come close to getting caught up in those things? Oh no, she actually looked at me and accused me of being Euro-trash…charm her? Influence her hell I still think one of the only reasons is she’s still young that her wolf side is still responding to the mate effect.
It has no effect on the human side of her. I’ve never met a more willful tough, stubborn bitch in my life. And she had no real like of me, she had no real use for me when we first got together and still she promised to be real with me, she took a chance on me…
I look back in the mirror. “Soon Love we’ll be at the farm soon.” I give it some more gas and still it’s a long thirty minutes before we get there and pull into the farmstead.
There’s a lot of the people who stayed back here looking at us as I take Stevie and the case we retrieved into the motor home. The others are pulling in behind us but I’m inside with her. I set the case in a cooler and was taping it up when I could hear the commotion starting up outside.
I heard another sound and Stevie’s up and already headed for the door or the motor home. I lunge to my feet to get there. “Stevie, no…they knew the danger…” She shut me up by putting her fingers to my lips and gave me the saddest sweetest hurt smile that I’ve ever seen.
* Stevie…..
There’s nothing that anyone can tell you that’ll prepare you for this. Battle real battle is more than a fight, or a skirmish. It took all night to go through what we did there at the fortress it felt like forever, it felt like everything happened so fucking fast.
Dom had carried me to the car and he had thought to bring himself a change of clothes he’s such a euro-priss… but he opened the back door of the Impala he some how had gotten a hold of. He undressed me and used his own shirt off his back to wash off the worst of the dirt and the blood and grime…he’d kiss me occasionally and make me stare into those green eyes of his. He dressed me as best he could in his spares and tucked me into the back seat.
Honestly if he hadn’t hung onto my soul like that I would have found a way to kill myself.
Do the real soldiers feel that way?
Get out of battle and see nothing good in the world left after what you’ve done. Just wanting to eat a bullet…get off the ride.
Dom’s eyes, that link between us straining like a fraying cut rope and he’d not stop. I couldn’t even respond to it, just…I bare had the soul left to breathe. But it didn’t make him lose heart, he didn’t give up on me.
He had the heater cranked to full as he drove and I…I fell into that dark hole as I could feel it, the shock and horror and the creep up of the PTSD of the other’s just weighing down on everyone. Some of my vet’s were just hanging on, some were just slipping over that edge and falling.
What could I do but open up?
They’re mine.
Katya made me promise. I love them like I love her, yes still love her. Seeing her in there, seeing her spirit there guiding me, still loving me.
As they fall or find themselves in that dark space inside I’m there waiting. I’m there with them as the pain and the blood closes in.
Vietnam several times I’m in that jungle land with one of them or another. A rain soaked washed out killing field…ours and theirs. Or a burned out tiny village, or napalm roasted jungle the bodies of people that never should have gotten involved, kids.
Desert storm, the never ending sand, the gasses, the fear of the smoke being something else, oh fuck did I get my mask on in time. The shelling and long distance fighting, the patrols seeing dead civilians in these hovels that a dog shouldn’t live in…all because the enemy used their places. How they can see fire works anymore without seeing the flare zip of tracer rounds sending death out to people they might never see.
Iraq, the maze like streets, the fear and loathing they stare at you with and how being a stranger in that strange land preys on your mind. What are they doing, saying where’s the knife coming from, is that a sniper. The blast boom of a IED…blood and friends dying, the maze becoming a death trap…the way that fear eats at all of you some when you hit the insurgents you hit a little too hard.
The police officers, ATF, DEA guys all in their own firefights. This is home, America and you see the guns and poison on the streets killing out kids, sucking the heart out of places because when you’re poor…what do you have to lose? But it never stops, the tide never backs down and them fighting a losing battle and getting shot, seeing friends get shot, seeing them come after cops and stuff in their own homes.
It’s a flood, and we’re all drowning for awhile together. I get soaked in all the blood on my hands, and theirs and then we’re stopped and the whole thing kind of breaks up like a tornado that didn’t quite get to form, it’s still dark and stormy and that almost olive oil colored air is the mood, the sadness in all of us.
I blink a few times as Dom carried me into the motor home. I hear them, the questions the panic and that horrible feeling building in some of them, too. There’s flashes from them too…seeing someone in a formal dress uniform of one kind or another coming up the walk or to the door, the surgeon coming out of the doors to the O.R.
I have to.
They’re my family, my pack.
Everything hurts, everything hurts soul deep as I get up and Dom lunges to get in my way. He’s holding me saying “Stevie, no…they knew the danger…” I cut him off and that hurting himself, scared for me, scared for all of us look is there in his forest green eyes. And as much as I want to give in and just fucking bawl right now I draw strength from him, him loving me like that and Dom just being my Dom.
….Yeah, MY Dom. I Love Katya but I think I love him just as much? The more I know him, the more there is to love.
“We all thought we knew the danger Dom, I have to do this, I have to talk to them, I’m Queen. I owe them this.”
So as regally as I guess I can muster I step out of the RV into the rain with his bagging socks on my feet into the squishy grass and Dom’s black cotton long sleeve shirt and my panties.
There’s a lot of chaos going on and I take a shotgun from someone and climb up onto a picnic table and fire a shot into the air.
That get’s their attention.
I lower the gun and look them over.
“We were right.”
“Unfortunately we were right.”
“These Templar’s, these fanatics had made a virus, a plague and they used a sample of it to try to stop us from stopping them. A suicide bomber with a vial of the virus detonated it in the compound making it airborne and if it wasn’t for the rain none of us would be here right now.”
“We lost too many people. I know that one life is one too many but this was something that’s cost up too deeply, cost us too dearly and I can’t sugar coat it or spin it. I did this, I did this and brought us to this point. You followed me and your loved ones died.”
I’m crying, and wiping away tears and it’s giving me that crying voice that I’ve got to just push through making me sound hoarse because I’m having to talk over the crowd and the rain.
“I can’t be as sorry as I should be.”
“I can’t express the pain enough to make it fair.”
“But I wouldn’t change it either.”
“We have the virus or at least a sample of it. We have a chance to stop a plague that would have killed who knows how many? It struck furred and non-furred down both, if this had gotten out into the mainstream world we would have been facing extinction…”
“Even for now, even if we only delayed their plans everyone who went, fought, died here are heroes, heroes a hundred, a thousand times over…It’s all I can say…we either stopped it our bought time that we shouldn’t have had.”
I stop as I see Athena/Andrea and Miranda pulling in with a freightliner with the children. I take a deep breath.
“Alright!, we’ve got close to two hundred children that need us. Please be gentle, these children have quite literally been through hell…these kids are part of what our loves died for.”
I step off the table and it’s my dad that’s there first with this look on his face I’ve never seen before in my life. He’s hurting bad and I think for the first time in my life he’s actually proud of me. He pulls me into this huge hug and holds me and he’s crying because he’s shaking and I’m trying hard not to bawl. I actually bang him on the chest a few times before he lets me go.
I look at my Daddy, something I haven’t called him since I was a little kid. “I can’t…I can’t right now there’s too much to do…There’s just too much dad…Can I take a rain check on losing my mind for a bit.”
He gives me this fond look. “Oh yeah stubborn as all get out, you’re definitely my daughter….I’m sticking close, you’re pushing it too much but yeah…” He looks out over the gathering. “There’s stuff you’ve got to do or at least get started.”
He does stick close as I wade into the thick of things stopping only to get into the rubber boots mom came over with and a hot blanket…I can’t…I take it and wrap it around the first couple of kids getting helped off the semi.
I never seen them until now. I’ve never see kids, mostly ethnic kids and girls look like those poor abused animals in the SPCA adds, there’s something broke there in some of them, gone…Andrea’s powers are shaking like she’s boiling inside and she’s crying as she takes each one of the little ones off the truck with her own hands… There’s this aching look of yearning in her that just makes sense.
Goddess, Immortal…but unable to ever had children of her own…And of course it’s Andrea and she loves kids.
I’m there helping then too as much as we can and after a bit Shadira arrive too who frowns at the Elf… “Car trouble.” It’s not a real frown more of a pout thing but that changes as she’s taking some of those kids in her hands and there’s this look in her eyes of been there…done that. And with shaking hands…she reaches out and touches bruises, cuts, sore and even broken bones…I heard her right forearm break itself as she took the hurt into herself… her eyes get so bright inside…It’s fucking really hard to swallow that lump in my throat. She has tears as bright as moonlight spilling out from her eyes as she looks at me and Andrea… “I can’t heal what’s broken on the inside but by heaven I’ll do this.” Every hurt fades and but nothing takes the physical pain from her, the pain of all that healing time compressed into moments.
Andrea offers her hand to Shadira…and I do too “What strength I’ve got it’s yours” I say.
She takes the pain, the wounds we supply the energy. Athena far more than me…pulling and burning off more essence than is possible…but…just at what point do you say no to burning off that much power when you heal the rape damage…of some little ten year old girl.
The three of us are there doing everything we can, getting lost in it and soon others are getting them off to the farm house and the RV’s to get them cleaner up. Giving them clothes and being as gentle as possible. There’s this sad grace through out the camp right now.
Shadira sags hurt, beyond hurt and her elf comes and pulls her off her feet and into his arms like she’s this delicate china doll. I don’t understand a word of what he’s speaking but it sounded very Lord of the Rings.
Andrea smiles watching and says. “You’re the reason that I breathe, You’re the light in my dark, you’re everything I’ve ever yearned for and never dared to dream.” I think she translated what he was saying, but of course she’s a goddess she’d know the language. She sighs and looks at me and we hug side by side for awhile. “You’re a piece of work Parker, You know that?”
“Yeah, but you’ll get used to me.”
We hug a bit more and her girl’s coming over and Dom and Mom and Dad too. “You think you can make some calls Andrea we need to take care of the kids that are snatched from homes and we really need to talk this out somewhere safe, somewhere neutral we need to figure out what we’ve got to do next…”
She nods. “I’ll call Tyr first and we might be better served to get a hold of the Great Lakes Packs and the Native tribes, The Shaman’s will be neutral as much as they can.”
She shoves off the truck and into Miranda’s arms and I do the same as Dom gets close and I swear, it’s never felt so good to be held by him. I’m swept up into strong arms and his warm chest and I’m feeling the heat sinking into me as he carries me off to the RV. As soon as he’s unbuttoning the shirt I’m in Dad swings Mom around and takes her off and I hear her go “Oh.” in the distance.
Dom strips me naked and soon we’re into the shower as hot as we dare getting the water and we make love in the need to feel something, something just good…be…be…us instead of ourselves hurting alone.
It hurts, it heals and It’s never been me and him like this before…
He carries me after to the bed. And we curl into each other and I swear I can feel his midnight black wolf curling defensively around my heart and soul keeping the nightmares at bay…Loving me so much, so intensely and letting me slip into sleep, letting it…
Fade to Black…
Fade to Black-2
Chapter 2
It’s still raining out I can smell it. Even before I open my eye’s I can smell it, hear it so clearly and feel it on my face…no… those are tears.
I don’t want to move. Dom and I finally made love and we crashed soon after that and I didn’t even dream, I felt nothing and no one and just pretty much passed out. I hurt, I hurt inside in ways I didn’t know people could. It’s not from fighting or from the sex it’s just…I just hurt from everything? I know that the soldiers in my pack get it…heart sick, soul sick.
I dreamt of Katya even in the darkness that had swallowed me up with the exhaustion and the pieces of my heart that had died from the battle and losing my people and being right. I dreamt of her and she wasn’t in those bloodstained clothes that she had been wearing.
She had been in this simple white shimmering camisole and …and nothing else…she had held me and kissed me…and…
I woke up.
It’s not fair to Dom really, he’s been…well, there’s a ton of people of women that’d be nuts not to love him. I do. I’m just really not sure about being in love with him.
And that’s not fair. Not with his arm around my waist here in bed and his body pressed to mine. There’s tears pouring out of my eyes as I just stare out my window in the RV. It’s sort of matching the rain…my mood, I woke up crying.
Everything I did is just right there swirling away in my brain.
I feel like shit on about ten different levels.
I don’t want to do anything but just curl up somewhere with my tail over my face. I rub my face and get the tears out of my eyes and gently lift Dom’s arm away from me and slip out of bed and stop to stare out the window.
There’s tents everywhere but it’s grey and wet and miserable out. The fires are out we had going and there’s a few people still on guard duty moving around in the rain and the mist. I pick up a bad nostalgic moment from a pack member in his sleeping bag as we both stare out at the lonely guard on the south fence.
Just a kid a teenager in a salvaged helmet and in a poncho in the raid an M-16 in his hand…
I feel it like the one remembering his time in that south east asian hell-hole he had been sent into when he was only as young as this kid is. I feel so responsible. I feel this almost hand on my shoulder and a squeeze.
~It’s different your Highness, this, this was something real, something that was really out to kill us, to kill our families and our loved ones not some drug war or some pissing contest or some brawl over oil…you did the right thing your Highness, a hard thing but the right thing.~
I pull the feelings of that strength and loyalty and belief from him and the others that feel the same way and use it to get me going. I pass by the door to the RV and smell meat. I open the door and there’s a plastic cooler there I take it into the trailer and set it on the counter and then go and slip into the shower. I turn it on hot but step right in letting the chill of it wake me then letting it get as hot as I can stand it before adding and of the cold.
So people are bath people but I’m more of a shower girl. I like the way the water cascades down and around my body and flows down around my curves. I’m now pretty convinced that I was hiding some transgendered stuff from myself and from others. Honestly I was or had a few of those fantasies about girls where I was one too. I kind of shrugged them off as my teenaged brain thinking up lesbian stuff but no…It might be the majik but I’m way too comfortable in my own skin like the way that I am now.
Just thinking about it has me drifting away into the whole shower soapy fantasy land and I’m not in the shower alone in my mind in here with me in the steamy mists is Katya and she’s touching me. Caressing my aching for her touch breasts, the way she rolls every so gently but not my nipples between her thumb and forefingers.
The way her hand reaches around from behind me to dip into my sex and to slip into me and start to pleasure me in all the right ways. I can’t help but to ride her hand to orgasm. “Nnnnn…Kat…Katya….”
I come down from it and she’s not there and I can hear Dom’s up and he likely heard me. The running water wouldn’t conceal that much even if I was quiet…It’s a bit too much and I sink to the shower floor and pull my legs up tight and cry.
……………………..The water was cold when I got out and dried off and thankfully it wasn’t Dom but grandfather and he’s cooking. I look around and see a shimmering sigil on the door to the bedroom.
“Silence Sigil.” He says. I nod and slip into a white tee shirt and panties then throw on one of Dom’s long sleeve shirts. I stop to smell it. Grandfather looks at me. “Given what I heard that’s a little mixed isn’t it?”
“Yeah, very actually. I hate it Gramps.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Talking won’t bring Katya back…God-dammit Gramps, why? Why did it have to be me? Why did I have to fall in love with someone and have them taken from me?”
“Stevie, you’re not the only one this has happened to. There’s a whole bunch of them just outside who just won’t get it but are going through it too.”
“I know, it’s just so damned unfair.”
“Life’s not fair Stevie, it never was and it never will be. Fair’s something that mankind came up with.”
“So there’s no Why?”
“I’ve no Idea, you could try to ask the Greek goddess of wisdom out there or the elf or the earthbound angel but they kind of all look like they’re still looking for answers too. Okay…maybe not the elf.”
“Heh, sounds like you’re not a fan.”
“I’ve had encounters with the Fae over the years. The fact they’re part of a species that regards us as vermin or food or just about as significant as fish.”
“Are they a species?”
“As much as the Were are there’s many types of the Were-Gene, there’s who knows how many kinds of fae.”
I sit and Grandfather tosses chopped onions into the pan and then once they were sizzling he tosses in little chunks of bacon and a bit after that some chunks of venison along with bits of liver and whole chicken livers, gizzard and hearts he cooks them just enough to change colors and sets it in front of me with coffee and toast and dumps the yolks of three eggs ontop of them.
It sounds gross and normally it’d be grossing Steven out but this has me drooling, that oniony-bacony thing going on with the sear of pretty much raw meat all slathered in the richness of raw egg yolk…its food porn to my carnivore brain.
Dark roast coffee and blood go together. I’m sopping up the liquids with my toast and dammit if my mood isn’t getting better. Or as someone would say I’m starting to feel more human.
“You’re looking better.”
“I feel a bit better at least in body I guess.”
“Stevie you went through a serious fight and did serious magic the last two day and you haven’t really stopped since this started kid you’re running pretty close to empty. Even the way you heal in combat takes a lot out of you and you’re feeling fatigue from that and the pack too.”
“Yeah I’m getting that….Grandpa?”
“Yeah Sweetie.” Okay that made me blink and get all girly trembly lipped. He’s never called me this before and there’s something well Grand-dad with grand-daughter about it that suddenly means something.
“I’m scared.”
He comes over and he hugs me and I bury my face into him and shake, I don’t cry I am sort of getting better but I think I was like five or six when my Grandpa hugged me last and…..
“I know Stevie….here...”
He’s hugging me but he holds his hand up and in all those old man work scars he has on his hands I see lines of mana interconnecting like constellations only their sigils and amazing looking…I reach up and place my palm on his and there’s this flash of power in my head, blue-white and like a burst of stars and I feel him…and I can tell he’s feeling me and I’m getting images and feelings, how much he loves me, even before the changes, how proud he is of me…he’s been to war, he’s fought things that go bump in the night and those that abused their magic and to really feel that and see/hear him talking to my parents who talked about the same things…what others in the pack, the family have said…
It’s like he’s baptizing me in the truth. Just stuff that most people never get to see or feel…someone else’s perspective. It’s casting light and love on my dark places and washing those mental and emotional wounds clear. I know how big this is too, I can feel how potent a sharing is and can be and I let him just control it…show me and pick me up inside.
I blink as it breaks and there’s tears shining running down my face again but their good tears. Dad and Mom are coming inside with others Athena/Andrea and Miranda plus their fostered daughter and Shadira and Dorian as well. It’s strange really getting a look at “The Elf” as grandpa would call him.
I move and make room for everyone and they start to take seats and Mom starts to pour coffee. Dorian gets this look on his face and takes the cup and adds nine sugars to it. Yes definitely a fae, but he does it with almost royal dignity. Shadira’s staring at him and says something to him in what I’m going to say was Arabic or something. He sips his coffee then kisses her and she makes a face after licking her lips and she looks at us and turns an embarrassed shade of red. She’s really quite beautiful when she does that with her complexion and those big fall into eyes of hers.
Mom passes me a plate pretty much like the one I had but piled higher. “Go wake Dom, he’s likely hungry.” I nod and pad down to the bedroom. I’m going to need to get some clothes on anyway. I’m not sure if it’ll do for me to be traipsing around in my panties.
I slip into the room popping the sigil of silence that grandfather had placed on the door and I look at him while he’s sleeping. There’s honestly part of me that loves Dom very much and I feel like shit that I can’t seem to get there, to keep my promise to him.
I set the food down and give him a shake and his eyes snap open green but wolf like and wild and I fall into them for a minute before they fade back into the man. I give him a small smile. “Hey…Morning….Mom made you some breakfast…Thanks…thanks for last night.” I lean down and I kiss him.
He reaches up and he kisses me back and there’s a lingering and a longing there in him I can almost smell. I go with it a bit before pulling away. “I need to get dressed, there’s a command meeting brewing along with breakfast.”
He nods. “You’re welcome…He get’s up and walks over and takes the tray of food and holds it in one hand while he’s naked and leaning against the dresser and he quarter shifts. That’s my preferred state…pointed ears, sharper teeth, the eyes and the senses and a shift in strength from human to more than but I’ve still got control of all of me without getting too feral and stuff.
He eats using his claws and fingers literally scarfing the food down occasionally chewing but dammit this form makes him look good. Tall and dark to begin with he puts on about twenty pounds of muscle in this for and there those feral exotic eyes. And the way that he smells. I can’t help but look as I’m getting dressed the dark hair and eyes and I’ll say this Dom in this or full human state has the most thick eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a guy and makes him smoky and mysterious.
He’s staring at me. I can’t read him unless he lets me like the rest of the pack and right now he’s not letting me. He finishes the food and grabs a pair of black combat fatigue and walks out before putting them on making all the girls raise eyebrows and take looks save Shadira who covers her eyes and Mom doe’s a little squeak of “Oh!”
Yeah…Dom’s very put together, more than human right…yeah…there’s some people who’d call me a lucky girl. I mean he’s not huge or something stupid but he’s definitely yay in that department.
He gives my mom the plate. “Thank you that was wonderful.” But he still kind of stalks angry and hurt into the bathroom and shuts the door.
I sigh and go to sit with the others.
“Alright, so does anyone have an idea what to do next?”
Andrea sips her coffee after we share a glance. “I spoke to the director and he’s on his way.”
“Officially?”
“No, he’s coming as himself.”
“Au-naturelle then?”
“Such as it is anymore yes.”
“Anyone have word of the shamans of the local tribes and the local packs?”
Grandpa nods. “The Shaman’s at least, they’re sending some help and escorts maybe, they want a meeting first.”
“Okay, I guess it’s us waiting.”
Things kind of go into small talk mode and I get up and head to the front where there’s the big bucket seats and I can take out my laptop. I power it up and set the scrambles and plug it into the mobile uplink.
I take a sip of my third cup of coffee for the day and start sending out e-mails and messages telling the bad news and the worse news to the people I’ve got out in the field and check the messages from them as well.
I read one very recent from Erica Price.
[I made contact with the Temp agency, they’re hiring local kids and really need to modify their human resources policies they’re very non inclusive. Lot’s of wonderful hardware here at the trade show.]
Lovely, Templars are recruiting from local kids…I’m guessing gangs and stuff they did that here with the bikers. The human resources I’m thinking that it’s business as usual with them and that there’s weapons involved….
I stare at the screen and I hate doing this, I hate sending news like this in just a message but they need to know. I actually debate not sending this because she’s in the field and I’ve no idea how this might effect her there.
[Erica, we were right and the tour turned out badly, a bunch of people got Lost…Kelly was one of them. I’m sorry but the office still needs you there working on the project. I’m sorry….]
I wipe a few tears away and click to the next report.
Fade to Black-3
Chapter 3
The reports take me awhile. It’s why I guess that armies really do run on paper. I didn’t really want to do this stuff but I need to. Mom keeps refilling my coffee and Dad’s still kind of surly; I can really start to see why he hates this, why he never wanted to be part of the life. He actually shot me a sort of sympathetic sort of look and then left after looking at everyone.
Athena/Andrea is sitting with Dorian and are talking is a very foreign language save for the names of people and places that don’t fit the language I mean what ever they’re speaking stuff like “New York” doesn’t seem to translate to. I think he’s getting caught up on current events.
I wonder just how long it’s been and what he’s missed. Andrea seems like she’s seen and awful lot of stuff. She must have been through an awful lot and she looks tired while she’s talking to Dorian except for when she’s looking at Miranda then there’s this sweetness that get’s into her eyes.
Dom comes out of the shower and gets himself a coffee and he’s dressed darkly even for him. SWAT styled combat pants and boots a plain black t-shirt and a dark black hoody under his leather jacket. He sips at it black and doesn’t really say too much.
My fault really I can feel the hurt rolling off of him. And despite how dark he’s dressed he seems to be so calm. So all that hurt rolling off of him like heat is coming from the inside. I reach out to him. “Dom…”
“I’m fine Stevie, it’s and arrangement I forced on you or tried to remember this is on me, it’s my fault.”
He gets out and he leaves like dad did, is this going to be a habit that the men in my life get up and walk away?
I get up a bit pissed and hurt and go after him. I need to square things with him and he’s got a good lead on me already through the camp and heading to the tree line.
“Dom wait.” He ignores me.
“Dom please.” He still ignores me.
“God dammit Dom would you just fucking stop already!” I grab his arm and spin him around and he shoves me open handed a dozen feet hard slamming me into a tree.
“Stevie go away! Just leave me the hell alone!” he shouts at me with a bit of a snarl there.
I let a bit of my own wolf out and snarl back at him. “No! We need to have this out; we need to talk about this dammit!”
“About what Stevie the fact that you might love me but you’ll never be in love with me? That I’ll never be Katya?! Don’t you think that I don’t know that! The link runs both ways Stevie I know you’re never going to really love me!”
“Now! you’re doing this now! Jesus Dom of all fucking times for you to be doing this and you fucking pick now of all times to do this!”
“Yes now, Dammit I lost people too, friends too you fucking forget that I knew this pack long before you were bit into it your highness!”
I’m crying and yeah I did forget that, I forget a lot of things…like the promise that I had made him and god dammit even as hurting as he is he’s not throwing that in my face and he’s right…he’s not Katya and I feel like a really shitty person for feeling so much for her that he’s taking a backseat to a dead girl despite the way that he had opened up to me.
“I’m sorry, Dom, I’m really sorry I’m trying here but I don’t know what I’m doing or what I’m feeling half the time I’m just trying to keep us all alive and…and…”
“Stevie, just leave me alone…please, I just need some space.”
Oh god it hurts because I can feel him pulling away from out link like I’m this fire and he’s been burned so many times before. Oh…oh… god it’s this horrible feeling when you’re feeling someone who loves you pulling away from you. It’s bad enough when that happens in a relationship but to feel it, literally feel it on the inside, in your heart them moving away from you and that it’s you’re fault.
I can’t stop him. I just can’t stop him as he just walks away from me deeper into the woods.
I walk back after a few minutes…half an hour through the camp just kind of numb. I get a thump on my upper arm and Natasha one of my seconds and one of the few spell casters I’ve found since I started things looks at me and she’s got a flash in her hand. It’s still early and what the hell really and I take a swallow of three of the hard stuff inside and cough a bit. “What the hell was that?”
“Moonshine with a little vodka to smooth it down.” I watch her take a sip from the flash with no reaction on her face just like she was drinking water.
“Hmm, Vodka to smooth it down…right.” Tasha’s shinny but in a good way with messy sorta ash blonde shoulder length hair and these killer icy blue eyes. She was with me when we ran into Athena at the biker joint. She looks different this morning but in a good way.
Army green t-shirt and fatigues with hiking boots and a big over sized flak jacket on. The one thing that’s the same is the heavy sort of eye make up she has on. She really has this soldier girl meets Russian hooker thing going on.
“Stevie?”
“Yeah?”
“Just let him be, it wasn’t ever going to work out anyway.” She takes another drink and even lights a smoke. I don’t know how she can do that with enhanced senses. She takes a long drag then she walks away.
“What do you mean it wasn’t going to work?”
She keeps swaying as she walks for another fifty feet and turns just enough to look at me. There’s even this smile there with the hint of sharp teeth.
“Isn’t it obvious Stevie, You’re a lesbian.” She turns smoke in her lips and shoves her hands in the pockets of her flak jacket and she walks away.
I’m…
I’m stuck in mental and emotional neutral until I felt something skim the area? That felt strange and I head to grandpa. “Did you feel?”
“Yes something tried to get past the wards on the farmstead.”
“Yes I had strengthened the when Shadira and I were settling down once the children were settled in.” Dorian says as he walks up to us. “Whatever it was it was strong and it wasn’t mortal.”
“Oh…” I say and Grandpa is frowning at Dorian. Dorian ignores it as much as like Spock would someone being perturbed by the whole thought of someone being mad at him.
I look when I heard the ring of a cell phone way out here where cell phones shouldn’t get a signal and Andrea is answering her phone. She’s smiling and doing that trying not to laugh thing and is nodding a few times. She walks over to us as she’s doing so.
“That was the director, he needs a drive here apparently his transport spell had been turned and he’s somewhere south of here in a marsh? I have to go and pick him up.”
Dorian does the eyebrow thing and asks her. “You are an Olympian and he is an Asguardian and he commands you’re loyalty?”
She smiles at him. “Only sort of Mr. Gray, Tyr is also earthbound like myself by choice and he happens to be my mortal life superior in the same organization.”
“Indeed as you’ve said very strange times indeed lady.” He looks at me. “Your Majesty I’m afraid that my time here will be short lived for I’ve learned of a great force of good that requires someone to help her with enough experience to help her through the things ahead of her.”
“Sure that’s fine you’ve been a huge help to all of us.”
“So you’re leaving to get into the head of some poor talent huh elf and drag her into you twisted power games?” my grandfather snipes at Dorian.
“Hardly, young sir. I’m going there because the Ashe and the Morrigan are getting involved with her and there needs to be something done down there before it gets out of hand.”
“Likely…” Grandpa snorts.
“I’m sorry that you’re family got involved in those troubles Parker but the creator gives us all choices. Your brother chose his own path all those years ago. Good day everyone. Majesty the blessings of Leaf and Star, Fire and Fountain upon you and yours.”
I’m as confused by the exchange between him and Grandpa but I actually give him and Shadira both light hugs and kisses to their cheek and say with a bit of a joking way. “Go with god.”
She gives my literally this shiny literally heavenly smile and she gives me a Namaste bow which is like a yoga thing or Hindu or something?
I watch them leave and Andrea leave and I sigh. Then look at Grandpa. “So you going to enlighten me as to the stuff about the fae and my Great Uncle that I never knew that I had?”
He looks at me and I look at him and despite that he’s a tough hard old guy I’ve gotten a lot harder inside myself and for awhile there’s a staring contest and he breaks away first. He then digs through his pockets and takes out his pipe and takes his time stuffing it and lighting it.
“It was a long time ago but we were just starting to learn the ways of using power and we had both been pretty excited and pretty keen on using our power and testing our limits when Jeremy had found some old books in an estate auction that were from the early colonial days and the described an area that was off limits to the settlers that even the Indians steered clear of.
I took these to our teacher who told us that these were lands that had been claimed by the fae upon their exodus from Europe to here. He forbade us to even go there.
We didn’t listen.”
“So what happened?”
“We were caught by these….elves from something called the court of silver leaves and because we were mages our lives were forfeit to some treaty or something I’d never heard of and the fact that we didn’t know fell on deaf pointed ears.
They said just because we had been raised in ignorance that it wasn’t and excuse. They took us away separately and I never seen him again not alive at least.
I was held and tortured there for I don’t know how long and then they through me out of their realm and twenty years had passed.”
“And Great Uncle Jeremy?”
“The state police had found the remains of his body at the closest crossroads near that damned valley the day your father had been born. He’d been gnawed on…the cops had no idea of what had happened and couldn’t place the blame on me because of the timeline and my own disappearance and stuff without my aging so they just “forgot” that it happened. I’ll never forget, and I’ll never trust them Stevie, never they play by their own rules and ours never matter to them.”
I was going to say something but there’s a tingle and flooding zip of multiple mental contacts from my scouts.
“We need to talk about this later Grandpa, but we will talk about this I need to know more about this whole frigging world I got dumped into. C’mon the First nation’s contingent is here….they brought our dead from the stronghold.”
I move to where I can see them and my chosen elites or what’s left of them move through the crowd to join me…Huh…okay…they’re all women. Why didn’t I? I can’t be can I? I mean I’ve slept with Dom?
I slowly watch them pulling in with a small convoy of trucks and cars and a few RV’s and there’s a lot on guns and weapons with them too.
“They look more like guerilla fighters than Native Americans.”
Dad’s there beside me surprisingly. “The reserves here and back home have a lot more going on than either of our governments will admit to and considering the ooga-boogas running the stuff in the government they might just be not looking on purpose.”
“Yeah…I can feel our kind out in them too.”
“Let’s be careful, the euro-weres never took over here in North America for a reason.”
“Thanks Dad, you don’t have to be here.”
“Yeah, I do.”
Fade to Black-4
Chapter 4
I’m greeted by several of the native leaders that are there and there’s some Cree, Hurons, and Algonquin as well as Bearskin Mohawks…I get this distinct feel off of them like they’re Were but not wolves…I’m not stupid enough to ask what.
They get led to me and I can’t really let that go down. This might be my camp but not my home turf so I go to them.
I’ve been practicing this ever since I knew that they were coming and I channel a spell I’ve made.
Hopefully this’ll work, I use essence in casting it rather than mana and reach back into the mana of the world and use what it has heard and listened to over the ages and focus on the chiefs and shamans and their head warriors that they’ve brought with them and I smile and give them a slight bow/nod of respect before talking to them in their own languages.
It raises eyebrows.
“Thank you and many welcomes to our camp wise men and chiefs, warriors. It has been a very sad loss we have suffered to find out a horrible truth.”
This old Cree fellow looks me over and nods. It’s odd because honestly I was expecting Indians (Native Americans.) from like the movies in like buckskins and stuff not these guys in old clothes, fatigues and the shaman I’m talking too is wearing a fleece and denim jacket and a Budweiser baseball hat and running shoes. Then again these are the first Native Americans I’ve ever met in person so…
He does speak in Cree back to me. “You do us honor to have the care to speak to us in the old way. We thank her majesty for the care she has shown us. I wish we were here under better times, but the times of both of our peoples has not been the better of times for a long time.”
“Unfortunately this is true sir.”
“Tomas, Tomas Whitewaters.”
“Stevie, Stevie Parker.”
There’s a round of introductions and there’s gifts of tobacco given, and some other things traded back and forth between us. The Huron chief opens the pack of smokes I gave him and looks over the Wall-mart gift card. “The wife’ll like this.”
“I’m glad and we’ll enjoy the totems and I’ll treasure my jacket.” They gave me one of those buckskin jackets with the tassels and everything. I like the antler buttons and the wolf in a mini medicine wheel pictogram look they have. There’s also an eight inch bowie knife forged by one of the shamans with an antler handle that has power in it. I’ll admit that given this whole deal with this green eyed angel bit I feel better with a spelled weapon as back up.
They help us pack away and seal up out dead. “How are we not getting sick or our kin amongst you?”
“The virus is like some other germs warfare types out there it is neutralized when it is in contact with large amounts of water. The downpour during the end of the battle saturated everything down.”
“Thank goodness for small mercies.”
“Indeed.”
It’s a long day, it’s a really long day because we don’t have the things to embalm with and wolf traditions require burning anyways. Dom comes back to help but he will only look at me and there’s hurt there. I feel like shit about the promise that I made and the way that I’ve hurt him. That added into the mixture of dealing with our dead, going through their bodies for the personal effects to send home and then wrapping them up.
I’m going to say God bless Andrea because she’s a rock for me during this whole thing and even though she’s Greek/Roman in origins she’s a Christian now. But she uses some of her powers to spin muslin cloth from fibres in the air. It was strange to feel and see her for more than the FBI agent that she usually is and being the goddess she was born as.
The first nation’s warriors guard our flanks and the shamans help us wrap out dead and fill the bags with cedar shaving to keep them smelling good and they perform their own rites to help send our loved ones on their way. I’m crying because they didn’t have to do all of this and there’s something in me that just wants to dance and to scream in mourning and to cry while I’m dancing as the chiefs sit under a tent with a tarp and they drum…and they chant… and they sing…and they wail for us. In between it all are the few lines I manage to pick out being chanted by the shamans as the help me…us.
“Kihci….manitow…”………………….Great Spirit.
“Pakitnamakewin….”…………………..Let these one’s pass.
“Kiweta……”…………………………..Take them home.
“Kiweta……”…………………………..Take them home.
I can’t help but cry a little more and even though I’m not a Native American, or a first nations person there is just something haunting about the whole thing and the respect that’s being so freely given.
The first nations others the women that came are helping to cook and get things ready and there gets to this point where we’re done…Bodies wrapped belongings gathered and the wooden boxes filled and the last nail is driven home.
Grandpa comes up and he passes me a flask of whisky and I sip at it.
I see Andrea out there sitting with the dead and I go out with her and sit with her and drink sitting amongst our dead and there’s a loud crackle of these speakers set up outside the RV and I see Dom there and he’s putting on something…
I don’t know the song, I don’t know the band but it makes me smile as much as it’s tearing at my heart and I look at him and there’s this heartbreaking sad sweet smile on his face as he looks back at me.
“Fare thee well, love…”
“Fare…thee well, love……………..”
“Far away, you must go.”
“Take your heart, love…”
“Take your heart, love……”
“Will we never meet again.. no more?”
“Far across, love…”
“Far across, love…………………….”
“O’er mountains and country wide.”
“Take my heart, love…”
“Take my heart, love……………….”
“No one knows the tears I’ve cried.”
“So I’ll drink today love….”
“I’ll sing to you, love……”
“In pauper’s glory, in time I’ll bide…”
“No home or ties, love…”
“A restless rover, if I can’t have you…….”
“by my side.”
“Oh come back, love…”
“Oh come back , love……”
“The sun and the moon…”
“refuse to shine.”
“Since I’ve gone, love…”
“This lonely girl’s had no peace of mind…”
“So I’ll drink today…love……..”
“I’ll sing to you, love…..”
“in pauper’s glory, in time I’ll bide….”
“No home or ties, love…”
“A restless rover, if I can’t have you….”
“by my side…”
“Fare thee well love…fair thee well, love…!”
“Far away…You must go, far away…you must go…”
“Take my heart love, take my heart, love….!”
“Take my heart love, take your heart….”
“Will we never…meet again no more…?”
“Oh will we never…meet no more?
The song brought everyone out of their tents and standing up from their seats beside their fires and while no one sang we just listened.
Just listened.
And by the time the song was over….
Dom had left.
I could just feel it, not him, but the void of him not being there.
I walk to the last trace of his scent just a little stream in the far field, leading to the highway. I sit down in the wet grass and there’s tears…I’m always fucking crying…I just look out into the night and whisper and sing… to Dom, to Katya.
“Fare thee well, love. fare thee well love……….”
*This was the last chapter of Fade to Black*