Heart of Stone (3 page)

When all was once again quiet he
strolled over to the cabin and knocked on the door. “They’ve gone
Tyra, you going to invite me in or shall I just let myself
in?”

His arrogance was obviously the answer
to her question.

“
Who are you?” Tyra was
pretty sure she knew but the question still needed to be
asked.

“
Simon Harris of course,
who were you expecting at this time of night? Your fairy
godmother?” He paused. “I suppose technically I am your
godfather.”

He seemed to be joking, with himself
or her Tyra wasn’t sure.

Having never met the man Tyra didn’t
know what he looked like but the personality sure as hell fit what
her family had described. She opened the door.

Tyra had always imagined that Uncle
Jack's friend Simon would be an older man, older than her uncle
anyway if they had known each other for so long. Grey haired,
grizzled in appearance with perhaps a bit an old sea captain’s
goatee beard. He’d carry a walking stick and his posture would be
like some gnarly old oak tree, to suit his reputed
personality.

The thirty-something man standing in
Tyra’s doorway was nothing like that. The pair of clear steel grey
eyes piercing her very soul were the only grey things about him. He
took off his beanie revealing short cropped coppery brown hair that
looked almost metallic. He turned to close the door, took off his
long wool felt coat, put his semi-automatic on the kitchen table,
then turned to face her.

“
Why the hell didn’t you or
Annie call me to tell me you were coming here?” He
growled.

Definitely
arrogant
, Tyra thought as she calmed
herself so as not to respond to his open hostility. “My uncle is
dead, apparently mauled by some large animal. I got pulled out of
bed in the middle of the night to see his grisly remains. I spent a
day running around madly to arrange for some extended time off
work, threw together some supplies and made a quick dash up here
because my mother insisted I have some mysterious duty or destiny
to fulfill and in the middle of all that I was supposed to ring
you? A man I might add who is like some sort of family legend but
who I’ve never met and appears to be way too young to be who he’s
supposed to be”.

Simon ground his teeth. “I’m the man
who until last night kept your uncle alive and every other guardian
before him. It is my job to protect you. I can’t do that if I have
to wait until you shout your plea for help loud enough into the
ether for me to know you need me”.

Tyra was astounded and disbelieving
that he’d heard her distress. “How is someone who is foolish enough
to stand in the open when there were men out there with guns going
to be of any help to me?”

“
Foolish!” Simon bristled.
He strode into the bedroom, unlocked the gun safe using the pin
number which he obviously knew, brought out a handgun and loaded
it.

I’m a dead woman,
Tyra thought to herself.

Simon walked right up to her, place
the gun in her hand, putting her finger on the trigger. “Shoot
me!”

“
I’m not going to shoot
you. What, are you crazy?”

Tyra lowered the weapon and was going
to unload it when Simon grabbed her arm placed the gun at his chest
and forced her to fire. The blast deafened her. There was a bullet
buried in the wall behind him, but he was still
standing.

“
What the hell!” Tyra
screamed, tears streaming down her face as she dropped the gun in
her hand to the carpet below.

Simon calmly unbuttoned his shirt,
grabbed Tyra’s hand again and placed it on his unmarred
skin.

Tyra started shaking in fear and
wonder. “What are you?”

“
Ah, a very good question
indeed?” But not one Simon was inclined to answer just
yet.

A myriad of questions raced through
Tyra’s mind. “Where’s your car? How’d you know I was here and in
trouble?”

Just like that Simon vanished from in
front of her. Tyra stared at where he’d been then suddenly felt a
hand on her shoulder. She swung around, terrified, ready to hit out
but Simon swerved out of her way.

Tyra’s heart pounded. “You’re scaring
me” she yelled, her emotions now frayed into a million
ribbons.

“
What I’m trying to show
you”, Simon sighed as he calmly picked up the handgun from the
floor and sat himself down into the one comfy chair in the room,
“is that I am an immensely powerful being. Nothing”, he paused,
“well almost nothing, can hurt me. I can be anywhere I choose in an
instant. I don’t need transportation. I came when I heard your
terror in the ether, I connected with it and followed it here. I
could have spent half the night explaining all this to your no
doubt disbelieving mind but I don’t like wasting time.”

Tyra sat her still shaking self as far
away from Simon as she could, on one of the kitchen chairs. “Well
it’s not possible”.

Simon casually unloaded the handgun.
“What’s harder to believe is that your family would keep you in
ignorance and away from your destiny for so many years. Do you know
anything?”

“
I’ve been busy having a
life for the last fifty years or so, a nice normal life and a good
career. I have a loving mum who raised me on her own and had a
pretty nice but somewhat eccentric uncle who told me nothing of
mysterious enemies, destinies or arrogant indestructible beings.
That’s what I know.” Tyra couldn’t believe she was having this
discussion anyway.

Simon, absent mindedly rubbed his chin
with his thumb. Having made some decision he got up and walked over
to her. “I think you’ve had enough for one night. I don’t need you
in shock. Go to bed and we’ll talk more in the morning. I’ll keep
watch”.

“
Sleep!” Tyra shook her
head, “you’ve got to be joking, I’m buzzing with that much
adrenalin I couldn’t sleep for a week if I tried”.

“
You will, I command it”.
Simon raised his hand to her forehead and caught her in his arms as
she collapsed into a deep dreamless sleep.

Tyra woke, startled to find
herself naked in bed, she never slept naked. Rummaging through her
half awake brain the last thing she remembered was an evening too
strange to be true. However the male figment of her imagination
from the evening before was ratting around her kitchen cupboards
obviously making breakfast. Stretching she got up and found some
clothes. Noticing two impressions in the bed she had a moment’s
horrifying thought,
had anything happened
to her while she slept
, she pressed a
finger to the opening between her legs, phew!

There was a hearty chuckle from the
kitchen. “I assure you Tyra that if I’d had sex with you you’d have
known about it.”

Tyra didn’t know whether to be
relieved or affronted, let alone worry that he had a sixth sense
for just about everything she thought or did. She sighed. She was
too old for him anyway.

Simon had made them both some muesli
out of the nuts and edible seeds Tyra had brought with her, a pot
of her favourite Japanese green tea and there was a small jug of
berry juice on the table. The food was more tempting than
continuing to worry about the previous night’s sleeping
arrangements. It was morning, she was alive and apparently
reasonably safe, and had the dubious madman in her kitchen to thank
for it. Life could be a lot worse.

Simon sat down and poured some juice
on his muesli. “You have questions”.

That was an understatement. Tyra
chewed her breakfast for a moment while she considered what to ask
first. “How can bullets pass right through, not harm you, but I can
touch you? You’re solid, you’re eating.”

“
I am not from your plane
of existence. I do not exist as solid matter. My body is of a
higher vibrational frequency than yours. I choose to manifest the
appearance of a body capable of acting in this world. It’s a mental
construct.” Simon paused to take a sip of his tea.

A mental construct that
obviously enjoys food.
Tyra brushed a hair
off her forehead as she considered this.
Okay, going down the rabbit hole here
. “What’s your true form?”

Simon got up and rummaged through some
cupboards until he found what he wanted. He brought over a pair of
dark wraparound sunglasses and a set of earphones from near the
entertainment unit. “Use these for a moment and don’t take them off
until I say”.

Curious but going along with his
instructions Tyra put them on.

Suddenly the room was impossibly
bright and a high pitched sound nearly brought Tyra to her knees.
Relief swamped her as it all stopped a few seconds
later.

“
You can take them off
now.” Simon sat back down. “What you just saw would blind
unprotected eyes. Its not actually possible for you, as you are
now, to perceive me at that frequency level.”

“
So what does that make me,
some kind of demon from your underworld” Tyra grumbled.

Simon laughed heartily. “Close but not
quite, this plane is just a more slowly vibrating level of
existence. All planes of existence look normal and solid to those
that exist in them but none of them are truly real”.

Okay, here comes the
existential question of all time,
Tyra
thought to herself. “What then is real?”

Simon seemed pleased. “That is an
excellent question”.

Tyra frowned. “And are you going to
answer it?”

“
Not yet”.

Frustrating
man
. Tyra decided to finish her breakfast
rather than try and engage in further conversation, for a
bit.

After breakfast Tyra collected up the
plates, put them in the sink of washing up water and handed Simon a
tea towel to dry up with. There was something companionable about
sharing the chore, she wondered if was it something she had missed
out on by never having a man in her life. “One more thing you might
(emphasising the ‘might’) tell me. Where does the power and water
for this place come from?”

Simon’s piercing grey eyes considered
her. “I’ll take you downstairs in a moment and show you. It’s time
you met your destiny.”

Tyra shook her head in
amazement, again.
Of course there’s a
hidden door in the wardrobe!
It was just
another of many signs that her life had taken a strange turn. The
door was another of those bank vault style doors like the one on
the front of the cabin, this one accessed apparently by Simon’s
hand print.
Mental constructs have
handprints?

There was a platform on the
other side of the door and a ladder that descended into an
underground cave. It smelled of damp but the air was quite
breathable. Electric lighting made the area seem quite pleasant and
spacious. Tyra followed after Simon as they continued on down a
narrow passageway that looked, by the chisel marks and amount of
dust on some of the rocks, like it had been hewn by hand many years
ago. Halfway along the passageway they came to a small pool that
collected the rainwater dripping down the rocks. A pump obviously
took a feed of water back up to the cabin before the water from the
pools overflow disappeared down a crevice.
One mystery solved.

“
The cabin's power comes
from wind turbine up on the hill, it's mostly hidden from view but
I'm looking to install a more secure backup electrical
supply”.

Tyra tensed for a moment, Simon's mind
reading was going to take a bit of getting used to.

At the end of the passage was a grotto
and in its centre a large piece of crystal about two metres in
height. Tyra had never seen a crystal of its like.

Simon, sensing her curiosity decided
an explanation was in order. “We believe the enemy call it sama
crystal. It's formed when a beam of dark light from one of their
weapons comes in contact with a carbon based life form. Our
scientists have studied it and have determined that its dense
crystalline structure is octahedral and that it’s a rare form of an
element that contains no electrons or protons, only neutrons.
Chemically it would be zero on the periodic table. Because it has
no electrons we can't use our sonic technology to dissolve or
change its molecular bonds. Don’t ask me to explain the physics of
it as I’m not a scientist’s tail end. Our experts muttered
something about how high energy quantum states operate at absolute
zero temperatures and something to do with degenerate nuclear
matter, none of which I have the foggiest notion of.

Tyra rolled her eyes. She walked over
to it for a closer look.

Simon watched her attentively, as if
waiting for something. “Put your hand on it and close your
eyes”.

Tyra did just that, on
impulse first caressing the rock then placing her right hand firmly
in place. She closed her eyes, her inner focus being drawn into her
third eye, just above and between her eyebrows. There was a flash
of blue light as if a doorway had opened in her mind.
“
Where the hell have you
been?
” A loud and very angry masculine
voice reverberated in her mind.