Warrior of the Ages (Warriors of the Ages) (3 page)

The shimmering column of light appeared again briefly, solidifying into a man that stood considerably taller and broader than Kahtar’s ample mass. His hand grabbed Kahtar’s upper arm, and before the door stopped swinging, both men vanished.

THE OLD GUARD reappeared with Kahtar inside a spartan surgery, bright lights and antiseptic in the air. Pulling free, Kahtar stepped towards his rookie.

Honor Monroe lay face down, unconscious, on a white marble table. A gunshot through the chest had left a massive exit wound, the hole in Honor’s back horrifying and large. Blood pooled inside the wound, running over flesh and onto the marble table. It dripped over the side, splashing onto the cream colored floor that absorbed it sponge-like. The remnants of Honor’s navy blue police shirt lay on the floor. Dozens of Warriors of ilu had clustered in the room. Several surrounded the head of the table, their healing hands touching Honor. The rest knelt on the floor, arms outstretched towards the heavens as they prayed for the healing of their clansman.

Kahtar approached, his eyes moving to the young doctor whose fingers were busy inside the hole in Honor’s back. He noted the long tube attached to Honor’s upper arm. It ran across the length of the table into the arm of another warrior, whose own blood now flowed into Honor.

The doctor glanced up at Kahtar briefly, his eyes immediately going back to Honor’s wound while defending. “The prayers of the clan weren’t fast enough. He almost bled out before the Old Guard found him. A transfusion saved his life.”

Before Kahtar could speak, the deep baritone of an Old Guard informed. “We found him, in the street, with this injury.”

“Was there any evidence of the assailant?”

“He was alone,” was the reply.

“Did he summon you?” Kahtar put a hand on Honor’s arm. It was cold, his face too white.

“It was providential.”

Kahtar glanced at the Old Guard’s eyes. They were solid black, no whites, no discernible pupil, impenetrable. Asking why the Old Guard might have been alongside a country road was futile. They did not explain themselves. Neither did they investigate crime scenes.

“Did someone go to the scene?” he asked the cluster of his warriors lining the room.

“Squire and Consider are investigating.” Welcome Palmer, the young doctor, answered him. “They were on duty here when Old Guard brought Honor. I told them they should go, that you wouldn’t mind.”

Distracted, Kahtar looked sharply at the doctor. Like all the Palmer men, Welcome’s eyes were emerald green, and he had the dark hair and striking features of his family. Kahtar didn’t particularly care for the Palmers. Not that they were dishonorable, but most of the Palmer men were involved in the sciences, few were warriors. He had no use for them. Welcome Palmer, though not a warrior had always seemed very like one. Kahtar could respect him, though not when he overstepped his bounds.

“I didn’t think that you would mind me releasing them on this particular occasion.” Welcome’s expert fingers moved over Honor’s flesh, the wound vanishing as it healed slowly beneath them.

Kahtar scanned into his rookie. The bullet had torn through Honor’s flesh brutally, nicking his left pulmonary artery. It was miraculous that the Old Guard had found him. Miraculous that Welcome Palmer’s maverick skills had kept life in him. Welcome would be in for grief from the head of the clinic, where traditional methods of healing were preferred, not blood transfusions, even if it meant death. Kahtar allowed his heart to slap against Welcome’s.

The young doctor nodded his head slightly in his direction, indicating acknowledgment of the gesture. It was a cool truce.

Even on the verge of bleeding to death the kid had something to say, Honor’s second voice sounded faint and weak as it whispered inside Kahtar’s head.

“
Was the car yellow?”
Hope swelled in Kahtar’s heart and prayer for healing burst from him towards the warrior. The prayer settled over the young man as a tangible thing. The prayers of Warriors of ilu were powerful, more powerful than a bullet. This time.

PARALLEL PARKING WAS embarrassingly beyond her skill level. It seemed a shameful deficit in a woman with three degrees, almost four if she could only have kept her opinions to herself in graduate school. Unable to resist looking, Beth peeked at the house and experienced, however briefly, stunned confusion. The yellow convertible ended up parked with one wheel on the curb and the back-end too far into the street. A thrill tingled through her as she clambered over a door without bothering to open it. She ran towards the house.

Stopping in the front yard she soaked it in. It was exactly like the 1935 postcard except it was in color and 3D. A three story Victorian, 35 Pearl Street, the home of her dreams towered. Heels sinking into crabgrass, hands clutching two fistfuls of hair, she drank it in. Snowball bushes, untamed lilac trees bursting with seductively scented blooms, Old-English ivy hugged an entire wall, the porch, a soft dove grey, embraced the enormous welcoming house which had been expertly painted half a dozen hues of gentle blues.

With tears in her eyes, for the first time in her life, Beth White felt at home. It made no sense. She’d never paid a whit of attention to where she lived before, but this place had called to her like a living thing.

Rushing back to her convertible she hauled out a giant silver handbag and dug through it, locating the old postcard. How could anything so random feel so right? She’d unearthed the postcard wedged between the pages of an encyclopedia at a rummage sale, at a defunct church in a terrible neighborhood. Dad would have had a coronary if he knew she’d even stopped in the place.

Turning the postcard, Beth held it up to compare with the actual living house. It could have been taken today. Dancing on the sidewalk she hugged herself. Maybe, just maybe, this was meant to be. What were the odds that librarian had even known where this house was? All the postcard said was ’35 Pearl Street’ handwritten with the flourish of a fountain pen. The house might have been in any one of thousands of obscure locations, in one of many states. Yet not only had the librarian known where it was, she’d known it was for sale.

Scrambling the contents of her purse, Beth fished out a wooden box. Dashing up the limestone sidewalk, she pounded across the porch. Opening the box she produced an antique lever lock type of key. Certain it opened every door in the house, like any good skeleton key, she jammed it into the keyhole and burst through the door.

Home!

This part felt a bit anti-climatic. The pristine façade had pushed an idealized view of what the interior would hold into her imagination. Reality was abrupt as usual.

Dust and cobwebs covered every surface. It might take a hazmat team to clear them out. Ancient, crumbling wallpaper hung in loose sheets on the walls. Filthy chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, but not one light switch or electric outlet was in sight. Upon closer examination the light fixtures all appeared to have been designed to hold candles, but 1935 wasn’t that prehistoric! Weird.

Racing from window to window to look at the view of the neighboring park, and peering over the tops of the trees lining the river below, an anomaly struck Beth. There were no power lines in this section of the village. Retracing her steps, she marched back to the front windows to look, and studied the house next door. It had the appearance of a nouvelle restaurant about it, though oddly there was no place to park. Even odder, there were no power lines to it either. Behind the restaurant an alley stretched, revealing the backside of shops on Main Street. Only one had a sign above the back door and it appeared to be a fine furniture store. The sloping roof was covered in solar panels and a generator sat outside the back door.

Oh well, Beth decided, she was all about being green. The zoning board would have answers and then, after she found someone willing to shovel the half foot of dust mites out of this house, she would finally have the shop she’d always dreamed of. The last six years had been a sacrifice towards fulfilling this dream, now it was just a matter of opening shop. How hard could that be? Patting the door on the way out, she unashamedly spoke to it.

“You are a dream come true.”

DIGGING THROUGH HER trunk crammed with random treasure absolutely necessary before the moving truck came, Beth tugged out a wooden board. The sign wasn’t very big, two feet wide by one foot high. Dad had painted it a creamy white that hinted at yellow, the name of Beth’s shop was burned into it in scroll lettering, Sweet Earth. For some reason, as she stood on the wide front porch, Beth couldn’t bear the idea of hanging it up. Maybe the color wasn’t right or maybe because it wasn’t in the postcard, but it didn’t belong. I’m getting to be such a freak, she thought propping it up against the wall, outside the front door.

“Hey, you!”

The voice belonged to a young woman wobbling up the slate walkway from Pearl Street. Dressed in an old-fashioned waitress uniform in the only shade of pink that Beth would call ugly, the woman plodded along in a pair of outlandish glittery pumps. Stopping at the foot of the steps, she looked up at Beth.

“I’m Brenda Blake. I work at the diner, Cliff’s.” Smoothing the awful dress with both hands, she wheezed a smoker’s laugh, “Obviously, right? Heard you were looking for help.”

The bleached blonde clomped her way up the stairs, exposing miles of dark roots and a pierced eyebrow. Beth caught a whiff of cigarettes and started to formulate a polite rejection, trying to let her down gently.

“I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with other businesses in town, hiring employees from other restaurants.”

Brenda cackled, “Other restaurants? There’s only Cliff’s. I get you though, but I’m on flex time at Cliff’s on account of my girls, and I wouldn’t leave there. We’re family, well the kind you wish you had, you know? I can work here whatever hours you want. I need the money.”