The Sword of Michael - eARC (10 page)

“With Epson salts?” Maryka said. “I have that and lavender essence.”

“Perfect,” I said. “You know how he’ll feel. He’ll be tired and weak. If he’s hungry, just a little soup or something light like fruit or salad. Your systems needs rest, but you should be able to eat anything you want later on. Right now, lots of water.”

I handed Tony a cold bottle of spring water. “Start with this. And just rest. I’ll talk to you in a day or two, see how things are going…but right now, just rest. Drink lots of water, eat light today, and do the Epsom salt baths tonight and for the next three nights. Okay?”

“Yes, Marius,” he said. “Thank you.” He looked around at all of us. “All of you. Thank you so much.”

He got up and Maryka steadied him. Jolene and Sabrina touched him lightly as he left the room.

“Marius?” Maryka said as she steered him towards the door. “There’s a gift for you in your bowl…”

“Thank you, Maryka.”

She closed the front door quietly behind her. Dillon stood by the window, and we watched them get into her car and drive away.

I checked my offerings bowl. A check for five hundred dollars. A very generous gift indeed.

“Okay, all,” I said to my friends. “With great thanks to the Creator, how ’bout dinner and drinks on me?”

Chapter 14

Bella Italia is an Italian restaurant in the Kingwood neighborhood I like a lot. I liked it because a) Jolene adored it, b) they served massive portions of extremely good, albeit simple, Italian food, c) the manager, a former client, hired interesting and excellent servers and d) that same manager *never* let me pay full price.

Professional courtesy, right?

I did a blessing for the restaurant when it first opened and came in from time to time to do a tune-up (any public venue picks up energetic charge from the people who frequent it; if the venue isn’t cleared and attuned from time to time, the place itself picks up a charge and maintains it: happy, sad, light, depressed…sometimes even malevolent). For those services I always had a good table, all I wanted to eat and drink, excellent conversation and a sense of being welcomed home.

Just like now.

A big table, Dillon at the head, where I always seated him, though he was always the last to move into his seat; Sabrina opposite him where she could play him like a well-tuned guitar; Jolene and I on the wings across from each other, where we lived and loved as always.

Massive platters of pasta, meatballs and sausages, salad, crusty bread and of course, vino. Fruit of the vine. Though I rarely drank to excess, I loved the taste of wine and the energy that flowed from it through me.

As did Jolene.

The wine heightened our anticipation about what lay before us yet tonight.

Remember tired, hungry, horny?

We’d worked through the first two.

Jolene smiled. Touched the tip of her tongue, pink and live like a cat’s, to her wine glass.

“Get a room, you two,” Sabrina said. “All that second chakra stuff is making me horny. Dillon, how’s your back, baby? Think you’re up to taming the wild mare? Riding the bucking bronco?”

We all laughed as Dillon flushed, though you had to know how to look for that change under his olive complexion.

“I wouldn’t want to wreck our friendship, Sabrina,” Dillon said with mock gravity. “You know, once you’ve had me, you’d be ruined for any other man. You’d hold that against me.”

“Talk is cheap, gunfighter,” Sabrina said. She tilted her beer in his direction. “It
is
true that I tend to wear men out in search of The Best Cock.”

The laughter was good. The meal and the wine were good. The company the best.

Yes, Tigre purred. The best. More wine?

I want more of that Italian sausage thing, Burt said. Tasty.

First in Front floated cross-legged in the air, off to one side, as spirit guides do, and smoked his pipe. He eyed Sabrina.

You know she and I have a history, he said.

Silently, I said
“And you survived this?”

First In Front blew a smoke ring at me. It opened into a vision: Sabrina in her white buckskin dress, a teepee in the background, First In Front laughing with her…

“Don’t be talking to my other boyfriends now, Marius,” Sabrina said. “Me and him, that’s nobody’s business but ours. Besides, I got a thing he likes that you ain’t got.…

First In Front blew smoke at me and laughed.

Like I said. The best company.

For those with shamanic vision, the room was busy with our companions, guides and protectors; they like to enjoy, through us, the things that we enjoy—laughter, joy, good food, good drink, sex.

It’s comforting to know they are there, our extended family in the Other Realms.

Long ago, in a vision, I’d been shown that friends are the family we choose—in this life. Before we enter the flesh we select who we will be born to for the lessons we need to learn or to unwork the karma from a previous life. In the flesh, we’re drawn to people, often people we knew in previous lives, people we have unfinished business with—good, bad, indifferent.

Jolene smiled at me. “Yes. Past life karma here.”

See? This is what it’s like being involved with a psychic. There’s no hiding anything.
“Honey? Do I look fat in this?”
You can’t get a word out without…

“Well?” she said sweetly, tipping her glass at me. “Do I?”

I sighed, hid my grin. “No, Goddess. You do not.”

“You might tame this one yet, Jolene,” Sabrina said. “I got a bit and a bridle I’ll lend you.”

“That would be lovely, Sister,” Jolene said.

They both laughed woman’s laughter, leaving us mere men out of the joke. Goddesses. We must worship them. Or pay the price. Most times both.

“Yes,” Jolene said. “I’m thinking a hefty fee…”

When Light Workers commune together in ceremony, there’s a joining at a deep level, a telepathic level, where communication is instantaneous and deep and rich with nuance and much, much, faster than normal speak or conscious thought. While this capability exists in all humans, those attuned to the Light and who consciously work in the Light have it much closer to the limen of consciousness—hence this whole psychic thing. The decompression period after an intense ceremony eases the spirit back into the flesh and the reality of the Middle or Ordinary World, even while that telepathic union lingers in the wake of that extraordinary heightened awareness.

Great for spirit work; a wee bit challenging for us mortal mens contemplating an enthusiastic night of sheet-swimming.

“There’s a lot more going on with that man,” Sabrina said.

“Huh?” I said.

She ignored me, as did Jolene, who said, “Yes. He’ll need more.”

“Oh,” I said. “Tony? What do you get?”

“Soul retrieval,” Sabrina said. “He’ll need some work. And more unchording. You got the demon out, Marius, but Tony has lots of resonance. That was a chorded and intentional possession; there’s someone out there who was running that and it all ties back…”

That took the wind out of my sails. I nodded. “That’s what I get…what we discussed before.”

“What’s that?” Dillon asked.

“We’ve got layers here,” I said. “Like Shrek. It connects to these multiple attempts and passes at me. There’s someone incarnate in the Middle World who’s acting as a portal for the Dark Forces…”

“The Decanter thing?” Dillon said.

“Yes,” Jolene said. “That is a dark place.”

“I won’t go there,” Sabrina said. “Love you to pieces, Marius, but that place will drain the Light out of the strongest. I don’t want you to go over there.”

Jolene silently considered Sabrina, then looked at me. It was unlike Sabrina to be so directive; she was up for anything in the Light and had stood both on her own and by my side in many a journey on behalf of others.

“What do you see? I said.

Sabrina took a long draw from her beer. Paused. “I see loss, Marius. I see and feel sorrow and anger. I see you balanced on the edge of the abyss. More than that is not clear. But there’s danger to you, as always. But also to all who walk with you. More than you’ve ever experienced.”

She stared into space, focused and intense, connected like the Medicine Woman she is to her guides as the information came across. The channel closed, and she blinked rapidly.

“Is there more?” I said.

“Not now, Marius. If more comes to me in journey or dream, I’ll let you know.” She waved her empty beer bottle at the server, an elaborately tattooed skateboarder named Ev, to bring her another. “Tony will need a soul retrieval…I can do that for you, if you want. He’ll need some follow up. But the chording…you’ll want to track that back. At the end of that binding is the Who. Somewhere along the line you’ll get the Why. That will tell you what you need to do.”

“Time enough for all that,” Jolene said. “We all need to…sleep.”

Dillon grinned into his beer glass.

“Then we can reconvene, after dream and journey, to see what else has come through for us,” Jolene said. She smiled demurely at Dillon. “You sure you’re not going home with Sabrina, Dillon?”

Dillon laughed. “I don’t know how I’d look on the back of her bike.”

“This makes me have to pee,” Sabrina said. “Excuse me.”

“Me too,” Jolene said.

The two women went off, leaving Dillon and I grinning at each other.

“Why is that women always go to the bathroom at the same time?” Dillon said. “Not just psychic-shaman type women. Every time you get two or more women gathered together, if one has to pee, they all have to pee.”

“Uh…because we’re all connected?” I said.

“Oh, spin that happy New Age shit on somebody who doesn’t know better,” Dillon said. “Nice try, though.”

We sat for a moment and enjoyed it.

“So what does all this mean?” Dillon said. “For you and me?”

“Means we have to be careful, brother,” I said. “There’s only so much we know. What we do know, we’ve talked about.”

“Maybe we should develop the situation,” Dillon said. “Recon by fire.”

“We already did. Someone…or something…noticed.”

“That worries me.”

“Yeah.”

Jolene joined us.

“Where’s Sabrina?” I said.

“Outside for a cigarette,” Jolene said. “She said to tell Dillon to grow some and come join her. What does that mean?”

We laughed, Dillon most of all.

“More, you think?” I asked. “Or are we done?”

“I can’t fit anything else in,” Dillon said.

Jolene smiled. So did I.

“What about Sabrina?” I said.

“I think she’s ready to go,” Jolene said. “It’s been a long day and she’s ready for bed. Or bedding.” She winked at Dillon. “Dillon? Are you sure?”

Her wicked grin. Oh, Creator God, how I loved that grin.

Dillon just hung his head.

I held up my hand and Ev came right over.

“Ev, I need the check,” I said.

She was gamine all the way through. Grinned. “Sorry, Marius.
Your
money’s no good tonight. Word from the boss.”

“You tell him I accept with gratitude, okay? And I wish many blessings on him, you and this whole establishment. And Ev?”

I handed her a fifty.

“That’s for you.”

“Marius…” she said.

“Thanks for your great service.”

She dimpled. “And you for yours, Marius. You come back soon.” She winked at Jolene. “Make it be soon, Jolene? Okay?”

Jolene touched Ev’s tattooed sleeve. “Soon, my friend. Thank you.”

“Thanks, Ev,” Dillon said. “Marius, thank you. Jolene? You are the Goddess.”

“I honor the Divine Male in you, Dillon,” Jolene said.

“I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll take it…” Dillon began.

A high-pitched shriek shattered the harmony and calm of the restaurant. A woman ran towards the rear of the restaurant, sheer terror on her face.

“Oh, God!” she screamed. “Oh, God, Oh, God!”

Jolene snapped her head around. “Sabrina?”

Dillon was already moving. That’s the true test of the Warrior Called; they run
towards
the danger, not away. He was moving fast. I hesitated, torn between Jolene and Dillon, and Jolene solved it for me by shouting: “Go! Fast!”

I went.

Fast.

Right behind Dillon.

Who came to a sudden halt, his pistol ready in his hand. I yanked my Glock out.

In the parking lot, Sabrina struggled in the arms of something vaguely humanoid in shape, if a human were ten feet tall and work a dark veil over its head, wreathed in smoke to dim it’s outlines, and was surrounded by four men back towards a van with the side doors open.

The customers in the lot fled in all directions.

The four men weren’t really men.

Goat headed, with long nimble hands that seemed quite comfortable with the M4s tucked professionally into the sockets of their otherwise human looking shoulders. There was at least one human, from the waist up anyway, sitting behind the wheel of the idling van.

“Goat headed gunfighters?” Dillon said. “Marius, help me out here…do we need iron, silver or will just plain lead do?”

“I’m thinking go with what we got,” I said. “Federal HST.”

We lit up the goats.

Parenthetically, the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command once commissioned a study of the effectiveness of various ammunition. They decided the best source of data wasn’t ballistic gelatin but living flesh. But since shooting bad guys in a controlled fashion is frowned upon in the US of A, they chose French Alpine Goats.

Why?

A French Alpine Goat has, statistically, the same average thoracic cavity and configuration of the statistically average human male. So the testers tied up the goats and shot them, once for each goat, once for each type of ammo, and studied how long it took to incapacitate or kill the goat.

Before they finished it off—humanely—with a shot to the head.

And among the things the operator community learned was that goats aren’t easy to kill.

So Dillon and I could consider our field test of Federal HST 9mm +P 124 JHP a continuation of that study, albeit flawed by multiple simultaneous body shots.

We advanced on the goat formation, our expended brass arcing in a brilliant spray out of our twin Glocks. Dillon had hooked me up with the Dawson Precision +5 Magazine Extension for my G-17 magazines, so I had twenty-two rounds of goodness in each of the three magazines I carried when armed. I fired at the two goat-headed operators on the left, keeping a solid cadence with no pause between shots, back and forth between the two who tracked us while Dillon worked the two on the right.

The goat-headed gunfighters sprang aside nimbly. Their legs angled strangely in their 5.11 pants. Goat legs, too? I hoped they had the same thoracic cavity and they weren’t running plates under their shirts.

I watched my rounds hitting in the chest, track and furrow red along one forearm that certainly
looked
like a human arm. The goat staggered and had sudden difficulty bringing his M4 on line. It was running an EOTech and a white light and what looked to be an IR laser on the rail. The implications of that didn’t sink in till the lights went out in the lot.

“Dillon!” I shouted. “They’ve got night vision!”

My own night vision in my Mark One Eyeball was shot between the parking lot lights (now absent) and the muzzle flash from the very hot rounds I’d been putting out as an Instrument of Goat Extermination. A string of shots from a carbine-bearing goat came my way; apparently their Goat Night-Vision was built in and they could track their IR lasers without the cumbrance of a head set.