Awakening the Mare (Fall of Man Book 1) (19 page)

Windows were broken, parts of buildings were
burnt or destroyed, and splashes of what could have been blood were
on the exterior of all the structures. I was mortified.

“Like I said, we in this town were invisible
to Savages. Want to know why?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Davis told you there was one Mare. Remember?
That Mare lived here. Like they do with you, the Savages stayed
away from us. We bartered with Angeles City, we were a haven. But
Davis never bought it. He chalked up our invisibility to our
location and not one person.”

“If you were so protected, what happened
here? Where is everyone?”

“That’s the other reason I brought you
here.”

“To tell me?”

Marie shook her head. “To show you. You have
a gift, Vala.”

“I know.”

‘No, you don’t. You have a gift that Davis
and the others are unaware of. I know, because I knew the Mare. The
other Mare… she was my older sister.”

“Does Davis know that?”

“Oh, yes. But Cecelia, my sister, never told
of this gift to anyone. Except me. It is a weapon that you can use
that isn’t deadly. You have abilities, as you know. However, this
one, you weren’t told about. You can get the truth. The ability is
extraordinary and is called retrocognition.” Marie grabbed for my
wrist and held firm. “Look at me. Look at me and focus.”

I locked on to her eyes and instantly I felt
sluggish. My head spun and I was dizzy. I was connected with Marie
and then suddenly, I wasn’t looking into her eyes, I was looking at
Marie from a distance. It was a different time. I could tell by the
way she looked. Her hair was shorter, less gray. It was as if I
were a remote viewer. She was speaking to another woman.

“
It isn’t anything more than a dream,
Celia,” Marie said to her sister. “These are no more than vivid
dreams.”

“
No. No. She came to me again, I swear she
did,” Cecilia responded. “She warned me. What should I do?”

“
You can’t go. You can’t trust
this.”

“
She said she’d send them.”

I went from witnessing the conversation as if
I were there, to looking at Marie again. I was confused. Send who?
What warning?

“Davis told you not to worry,” Marie said.
“Davis told me not to worry as well, that the Day Stalkers weren’t
a threat. No one had ever seen more than one or two at a time. We
found out our little ‘God protected’ community wasn’t as infallible
as we thought.” Again, she latched on to my wrist. I was
transported back and I realized, Marie’s memories were now my
experience.

Hands and arms were all reaching, they had
crashed through the glass of Marie’s window and reached in. So many
of them.

Gunshots rang out and the screams of the
damned carried into the house. It was loud, unbelievably loud.

Marie struggled to close the thick wooden
interior shutter. Then Leo placed his rifle behind his back and
aided her.

Marie closed her eyes. “They’re everywhere
out there.” She jolted when someone’s scream from outside carried
to her.

“
Help me! Oh, God, help!”

Marie turned.

“
No.” Leo stopped her. “Keep sealing the
house. We’ll be fine.”

“
Our people are dying out there!” Marie
said through sobs. “We can’t just stand by and do nothing.”

“
Yes, yes we can. We’re alive and
safe.”

Marie raised her head. Cecilia had stepped
into the room.

“
This is my doing.” Cecelia said. “And I
have to stop it.”

Marie shook her head. “What can you do?”

The wooden shutter burst open and dozens of
arms reached in, grabbing onto Marie.

She screamed in horror as they pulled at
her. Then I got my first close look at a Day Stalker. His face
pale, skin torn from one cheek. His neck had a huge gaping hole and
the flesh that remained on his body was rotten.

As soon as I saw him, I snapped out of that
vision.

Marie released my wrist.

I was trembling and my heart was racing. I
was there, I experienced Marie’s fear, her desperation, and even
though the Day Stalkers never touched me, I could feel their cold
hands on me. I saw what she did and I felt what she had.

“When you cried out on the street during your
patrol and killed the Savages, that was what Cecilia did,” Marie
explained. “They had me. She just wanted to save me. Her blast of
emotions wiped out the hundreds of Day Stalkers and many of the
people in this town.”

My eyes closed. “That’s why Davis is
cautious.”

“My sister didn’t mean it. It took everything
from her. She lived another year, but was never the same. No one
knows where the Day Stalkers came from, how they got here, but they
did.”

“If Davis knows this, then why is he
dismissing my warning?”

Marie shook her head. “Maybe he’s scared. I
don’t know. But you need to be prepared. You need to find another
way.”

“Did they ever send another warning?”

“No. I think they thought they got her,
because after the attack, she stopped using her gifts.”

“Should I go back to Akana?” I asked. “Maybe
I should leave.”

“That’s not why I brought you here, Vala. I
didn’t bring you here to drive you away and make you go back. I
brought you here to be prepared. To learn from my sister’s
mistakes. To show you the gift of sight. You can do it.”

“How?”

“You can’t fight what you don’t know,” Marie
stated. “I brought you here not only to experience my memories but
to experience the memories of this town, live that fateful day,
learn from that day. Pick up everything you can from here, and find
a way to fight the Day Stalkers.”

“So you think they are coming?” I asked.

“You received a warning, Vala. It wasn’t a
dream, it wasn’t a ploy. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ they come,”
Marie said, grabbing my hands. “It’ s matter of when.”

In all my years, though not many, I have
never heard people argue or yell at each other. To be fueled by so
much emotion that they project negative energy all around them.

Davis was that angry.

He was speaking in a stern voice unlike any I
had never heard from him, nor would I have ever expected he would
use with Marie.

“What were you thinking?” Before she could
answer, he said the same thing to her as he did to me days earlier.
“You
weren’t
thinking.”

Marie wasn’t me; she didn’t respond like me
either. Her left eyebrow raised and her hand swung out. “Don’t you
dare
take that tone with me, Mathew Davis. I am not your
flunky, your inferior, your grunt, or a child. I am your elder and
you will respect me, you hear me?”

I mentally cheered Marie on as she stood up
to Davis, though I didn’t understand how it had come to an eruption
of arguing. We returned to Lyons Estates relatively quickly, just
before lunch. I was squashing grapes with Mindy in the bin,
stomping our feet to music, when Davis showed up.

At first I thought he was mad because I was
stomping and smashing grapes instead of picking them.

“Get out of there, Vala. Clean up and meet me
inside.” He turned and walked away.

Then I saw Tanner. I thought perhaps he had
told on me for not picking grapes. After I washed my feet and
arrived back at Marie’s house, Davis asked. “Were you two at
Rio?”

I didn’t know the meaning of Rio.

Marie said nothing and I pled pure ignorance
of the question.

“Don’t try to cover, Tanner told me.”

Marie scoffed. “How would Tanner know?”

“Well, for starters, he said Vala wasn’t in
the field. Then he told me that the horses were gone and so were
you two. So I sent him looking. Were you at Rio City?”

“Yep,” Marie answered.

Then Davis did his ‘what were you thinking’
bit.

After Marie scolded him to ‘respect her’, I
believed that was it. End of Argument.

But no. Davis yelled right back at her, “I
will respect you when you follow the rules. This was against the
rules.”

“What was so wrong?” Marie asked. “We aren’t
prisoners. We can go and do what we want.”

“I cannot protect you if you leave the
province, Marie. I can’t.”

“I didn’t need your protection, I had Vala.”
Marie folded her arms, never flinching or backing down. I realized
at that moment I had so much to learn from her. She was strong and
unwavering.

Davis growled.

“Don’t you growl at me, young man. I mean it.
And if we are finished, I have wine to make and Vala has grapes to
stomp.”

“I’m not done. Why did you go?”

“Because she needed to know about Day
Stalkers."

“And taking her to a graveyard was the
answer?”

“Absolutely.”

“Vala,” Davis said, “did you learn anything?”
he asked, his question laced with sarcasm.

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“You two are frustrating! Marie, you know how
valuable she is and you have her squashing grapes.”

“She’s having fun. Fun. She is not just a
weapon. She is a person with abilities. You need to start treating
her like a person. Like a woman, Davis. A part of me thinks you
view her as some robotic thing and not a human.”

“Oh, I do not. Stop. And stop acting like
some overdramatic hormonal female trying to protect her helpless
child.”

Marie gasped. “Well it’s better than acting
like some small minded hick dictator sending his flunky wonder boy
to do his dirty work.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Yes it is. You are telling us what we can
and cannot do. For a man who wants to fight so diligently to give
us our freedom from the Sybaris, you certainly are taking liberties
to secure that only
you
control our freedom.”

Davis opened his mouth to speak, closed it
and then shook his head. “I’m done. This is out of control.
Everything I do, Marie, it’s not done as a power trip. We are the
minority. I need us safe. I just want to have us all close so I
know we’re safe. That’s all.” He snapped his finger at Tanner.
“Let’s go, wonder boy.”

Once he had gone, I asked Marie. “Why was he
so angry?”

“I think Davis still feels guilty about what
happened in Rio. So he buried the town. In doing so, he is trying
to bury what he believes was his mistake.”

“You’re very good,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean so strong. I never have heard a woman
face off with a man like that. Well, Ethel and Fred. But not in my
real life. I want to be like you, Marie.”

Marie smiled gently at me. “That means a lot.
Thank you.”

“Well, I want to go finish the grapes. We
have a lot to squash.”

“Go on, I’ll be right there.”

“You’re going to watch us?”

“Oh, no, I’m angry and I need to stomp out
some of that frustration. I’m washing my feet then I will be out
there.”

That made me laugh and I was thrilled that
she was going to join me and Mindy. Marie was amazing and I didn’t
want to sound infatuated with her, but I wanted to know more. I
wanted to know what made her so internally powerful and not afraid.
How did she get like that? She was one person I wanted to see face
off with Nito.

I’d give up a pint of blood to see that.

Perhaps as she stomped her anger out on the
fruit she could teach me and Mindy a thing or two, because what she
possessed as a woman was rare in the aftermath of the event, and a
quality we all needed to get back.

Patrolling the night before was more like
planning. Everyone was preparing for the full moon. I couldn’t
believe I had been in Angeles City for nearly a month. It had been
a month since I had physically seen my mother, though I visited my
sister through projections all the time.

There was talk about having the children be
by me since the Savage Sybaris avoided me, that I was a sense of
protection. Davis asked me to promise that if I were responsible
for the children, I would keep my cool. I knew what he meant by
that. Marie said she would be with me to ensure I did the right
thing.

I was glad they were civil to each other.
Then again, by the evening following the argument, Davis was over
for dinner and they acted as if nothing had transpired.

Me, I couldn’t stop being mad at Tanner, and
this time it had nothing to do with the girl he kissed.

There was a word I learned from
Full
House
.

Tattletale.
And Tanner was certainly
that.

It was all hands on deck that morning after
patrol. The fields needed tending and the grapes were on that verge
between ripe and rotten. It was a hearty harvest, so there were a
lot of us in Marie’s vineyard.

Children darted in and out. They’d steal the
grapes and eat them. Tanner followed me and I could hear Marie
laughing. She must have known how he irked me.

“What did you call me?” Tanner asked.

I balanced my basket while I picked. “A
tattletale. A big fat tattletale.”

“I am
so
not fat.”

“Now who is being literal?” I asked.

“You know, I think I liked you better when
you were clueless and spoke wrong.”

“I liked you better when I didn’t know much
about you.” I reached for grapes.

“I think the problem is, you like me
more.”

“What?” I laughed.

“Yeah, you like me.”

“If I did, I don’t anymore. You have a
girlfriend.”

“I do not,” he argued.

“You do. I… I was practicing projecting and I
saw you and some girl on the beach. You kissed her.”

“Yeah, so?” Tanner shrugged. “That doesn’t
mean she’s my girlfriend.”

“So you fraternize with promiscuous
women?”

Tanner laughed hard. “She is not promiscuous.
It was just kissing. Geez. Lighten up. She has a boyfriend.”