Forged in Fire (21 page)

“This walkabout, as you call it. Will you try to reach the witch this way?”

“Yes,” I told him. “That bastard Justin is out there killing women and horses, looking for me. And all the time more spirits are drawn to Anezka’s place, collecting like a huge battery.”

“Interesting thought,” he said. “Perhaps he is planning an extraordinary spell of some sort, something that will utilize that much power.”

“That’s my thought. Can you imagine what he’d be trying?”

He shrugged and flagged down a waitress. “Two more?” he asked me as she came over.

“Sure, why not. I’m not driving.”

He grinned and ordered a couple more beers. At the last second he added crab wontons. The man liked to eat.

“I think you should be careful,” he advised. “The house traps spirits. You in walkabout would be a spirit, would you not?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll need to go slowly. Test the waters. Maybe do a couple trial runs where someone can wake me and pull me back into my body.”

“Is that possible?”

Good question. Not like I had much experience at any of this. “I’ll test that, too.”

The last beer and wontons vanished and Rolph still hadn’t asked about Gram. I took that as a good sign.

“I spoke with someone in the king’s organization,” he said, peeling the label off a beer bottle. “You are known to them.”

“How so?”

“They were once part of Jean-Paul’s organization. I am not sure in what capacity, but they had no love for him. As a matter of fact, they feel a debt of gratitude to you for ridding the world of his vile depredation.”

“That sounds promising.”

He nodded. “They consider you a liberator. A hero of the realm, as it were.”

“Cool. I think maybe I should meet this King of Vancouver.”

Rolph thought on it long and hard. I let him have his space, waiting with hands crossed on the table in front of me, emulating Unun in her patience.

“They offered me certain opportunities as a compatriot of yours,” he said at last. “Some I would have been more than willing to explore before Juanita found she was with child.”

“Being a dad is serious business,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.”

He sat back, pushing the wonton plate away. “I have to take many things into consideration. My life span is different from your kind. It concerns me that I will outlive Juanita and perhaps the child.”

“Will this child not carry your traits as well? Including life span, at least living longer than my folks, for example?”

“I do not know. And I believe that is the crux of my worry.”

“Do you love her?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

“Then spend the time you have with her. Let her know how you feel and raise your child to be strong and open-minded.”

The words seemed to settle him a bit. We paid the bill, and he hailed me a cab. Ever the gentleman. “Keep in touch,” I told him. “And let us know if there’s a baby shower or anything.”

“Damn,” he swore. “Another thing I had not considered. Perhaps her sister can do this for her. Does that seem fair?”

I patted him on the arm. “I’m sure the two of you can work it out, big guy.”

The cab arrived. He held his hand out for me to shake, and on impulse I hugged him. I think it was because of how scared he seemed about the baby. I rarely hugged anyone.

The look on his face was worth it, however.

“Be safe,” he said to me, holding the cab door open. “I will be sure to send you any knowledge I can find about this necromancer.”

Oh, right. I’d totally forgotten to ask. Too many competing thoughts.

“Please do,” I said after the door was shut and I rolled down the window. “He’s a crazy one. Watch your back.”

He patted the side of the cab, and we pulled away. “Stanley Park,” I said, leaning back with my eyes closed. He was basically a good guy who had a hard life. I really did wish him the best.

Now to see what Unun had cooked up for me.

Thirty-one

M
y meeting with
U
nun was short.
S
he gave me the herbs, explained the proper way to prepare the tea, and shooed me on my way. I was in and out of the village in under fifteen minutes. I could really feel the love.

Skella apologized when she dropped me off at the apartment. She was embarrassed. Katie was very polite to her, and I gushed about her help, so in the end she left happy. Katie, on the other hand, was pissed. “That took way longer than I thought,” she said. “I’ve been worried.”

“I met with Rolph,” I said, as if that fixed everything. “We had dinner.”

I looked over to see she’d cooked, of course. She had the skills. Tuna casserole was one of my favorites. I’d have it for lunch.

“Did you eat?” I asked her.

“No. I was worried about you.”

I took her hands in mine and walked her to the table. “Then eat. I’ll tell you what happened while you were at school.”

“Okay,” she said, sitting where I guided her. “Did you learn what you needed?”

I explained what I’d learned from Rolph. She asked a few questions, and we discussed sending a gift to Juanita. Once we were cleaning up the dishes, I explained about my ideas for walkabout and what I’d learned from Unun. I was anxious to try the tea Unun had prepared for me.

Katie was excited. This was right up her alley. She laughed as we made preparations for my first, deliberate walkabout. We moved the coffee table out of the middle of the living room and built a nest out of a sleeping bag, pillows, and blankets. That was for me. We made a bed for Katie on the couch. She got her guitar out so she could sing to me as I went to sleep.

We lit several dozen candles around the room and cut off the lights. Unun had insisted on natural light. None of the fancy technological contraptions. I steeped a cup of tea from the blend she’d made for me—careful to follow the instructions precisely. The water had to be a certain temperature before I could pour it over the ball of loose tea I had in my cup. I could add no more than a teaspoon of sugar, and the tea must steep for exactly one hundred and fifty heartbeats. I think I got it right.

Katie stopped singing long enough to whistle at me as I shimmied out of my jeans and panties, so I wiggled my rear end at her before stripping my shirt over my head.

Once I was naked, I picked up the perfectly steeped tea and carried it to the nest. I sat with my legs crossed and blew on the tea to cool it.

It was bitter despite the sugar. Luckily I only had to drink a few swallows for it to take effect. I guess I got about half the cup in me.

Katie took the cup as I lay back. She pulled the blankets over me as sleep took me.

In what felt like a split second, I was up and out of my body. I could see pretty well, and I was indeed walkabout. My body lay on the ground at my feet, my chest rising and falling in a very deep sleep. Totally cool. I wasn’t dizzy or lightheaded or anything that Unun warned me could happen.

The entire world, or at least the apartment, was in black and white. Like an old movie. It was both cool and unsettling at the same time. That is until I turned around and saw Katie asleep on the couch.

There, much to my delight and annoyance, was a colorful rainbow of light arcing from Katie’s sleeping form to my own. I felt like a commercial for the national GLBTQ campaign to prove that gay people love just as deeply as straight people.

Frankly, I found the irony thick. I avoided rainbows in an effort to distance myself from the crusaders, and here was a vibrant manifestation of one.

Then I noticed that the candles were burned down to stubs. Maybe it wasn’t as quick a transition as I’d thought.

Just like the first three times, I had difficulty moving around. Unun had told me I could will myself into a direction if my mind was centered and my thoughts clear of distraction.

That being the case, I hovered where I was for nearly fifteen minutes. I wasn’t sure how long the tea would last, or how long I could stay in this form, but I didn’t want to waste the time I had.

Finally, I found the ability to move. I’d moved during my other walkabouts, but it was like swimming upstream through molasses. Here, I was just thinking I wanted to touch Katie, even though I couldn’t actually feel her. I wondered if she could feel me. And just like that, I found myself flowing across the room toward her. It was only three feet, but when you’ve been hovering in one spot, craning around, unable to move, three feet is like a miracle.

I tried to brush her hair from her eyes, but her hair didn’t move. It was strange, though. I could feel her when I touched her, but inside, like an emotion.

She didn’t react outwardly. Total bummer. I’d totally hoped for one of those Patrick Swayze
Ghost
moments.

Now that I’d figured out how to move, I explored the apartment. I could see places I didn’t know existed before my eyes had opened in the astral form, but I didn’t have X-ray vision or anything.

Not much different from the real world, only everything remained black and white. As I thought about it, I don’t think things were black and white the other times I’d gone astral. Maybe it was the tea. I’d have to look into that as well.

The bedroom was just like the rest of the house. I poked around, looking for secrets, but beyond the box of toys Katie kept beneath the bed the room was pretty blasé. I turned to leave, but something behind the bed caught my eye. I could barely make out a shadow of a door behind the headboard. There was no door there in the real world. Perhaps it was the memory of a door.

I floated above the bed and examined it. I’d traveled between solid objects on other walkabouts, so I figured I could probably put my hand through the wall where the impression of the door was. I had a feeling the door had been in that space long before the apartment had been built. An older building, then. It had a presence beyond its physical existence. I had no idea how I knew that. It just felt right, ya know?

The apartment on the other side of that wall should be a mirror image of this one, and it had been vacant for a while now. I pitied anyone who moved in there. Katie and I tended to get a little rambunctious. The occasional hollering and banging about.

The thought made me all tingly. It was strange. I was definitely a little turned on despite the fact that I had no physical body that could react at this moment. Spiritually aroused, I guess.

I reached for the doorway, feeling a bit of a daredevil.

I pushed my hand into the wall to the right of the doorway, and it felt like I was trying to push through oatmeal. Thick and viscous. I could do it, but it would take some effort. Next, I tried the doorway. There was more resistance than when I moved through the open air, that’s for sure. The space wanted to be a doorway, so it was easier, if that makes any sense.

I leaned my head forward next, pushing through to see the other side before I committed my entire being. I’d been able to pull my hand back with no problems. As I slid across the threshold something odd happened. Unlike crossing from the living room to the bedroom, this had a different feel.

A sucking sensation pulled me sideways into the wall. I fought it, struggling against the force. I flung my arms out, grabbing either side of the narrow gap between the wall, and halted my forward motion. My mind raced back to Skella and her description of the sideways. This was it, in the raw.

The sideways was not the narrow point between the walls. Instead, it was a whole wide world. A world full of sharp angles and crystal. If I flowed against those shards that made this new world, I knew my spirit would be shredded. Danger, my mind screamed. This is not where you want to be.

I redoubled my efforts to pull away and felt myself moving a fraction of the way out of the slipstream.
Clear your mind, Beauhall,
I thought to myself
. Keep your head and will yourself out.

I was locked in a balance, part of me being pulled forward like taffy, the rest held back in the real world.

Something tiny scuttled across the crystalline landscape—a many-legged thing with pincers half the size of its body. Crap. A wave of spindly, many-legged creatures swarmed over the distant hills. And, following in their wake, came the mack daddy of eaters. Skella’s warnings had not done it justice. My mind flashed to Shelob from
Lord of the Rings,
but even that beast paled in comparison to this monster. Here was a predator on par with the dragons, only this creature had only one thought: eating. I could feel its hunger washing over me in great putrid waves. I might have started screaming.

The slipstream pulled at me as I struggled, losing strength and hope. “Help me,” I whispered. I could do no better than that.

“Fool!” a voice blasted into my psyche. I looked around, and a streak of light sped toward me. I had no idea who or what it was, but there was color there, a golden glow that was warm and welcoming.

“Get back,” the voice echoed across the crystalline world. I was shoved back across the threshold.

I woke screaming. The eater had been nearly upon us. Yet, somehow, I was free. I knew who the other was. The second he touched me, I knew.