"The Gathering" - Chapter 5

Pawns and Games

 

Eden Bennet leaned against the wall, partially hidden behind a huge dumpster where she had been waiting close to an hour. Her blond waves were neatly tucked away in a tight chignon at the back of her neck. Her breath fogged in front her, the autumn chill apparent. That was stupid. She thought critically. Someone could’ve known you were here.

She rubbed her palms together slowly, letting the slow friction of her skin rubbing together warm her hands and cold-nipped fingers. Her normal attire of long, gored skirt and long-sleeved blouse had been traded by an outfit more utilitarian and eminently practical for the task at hand. She still couldn’t come to grips how people sometimes dress here in this world. She preferred to remain in her native world, where technology has not yet supplanted magic as a governing force and basic elements of good and evil did not get blurred by shadings of gray. She shook her head in mild despair. The endless struggle between the two sides on her native world had reached the point where instead of an overt confrontation where victory could be grabbed through a decisive battle, both sides opted to employ a devious game of cat-and-mouse. Breaking the barrier between worlds is no easy feat, and the price exacted for such power is draining on their resources but each party seemed willing to invest in dipping into their magical reserves to harness potential recruits.

She hunkered behind the metal dumpster, crinkling her nose at the smell. Nikolai had tasked her to keep watch on this end of the alley while he flushed out their quarry. Eden doubted his choice of tactics and had been quite vocal about it. She suggested Vincent come along, his clairvoyant talents useful especially in tracking but not only Nikolai, but even the Council had overruled her arguments. She had even called in old favours from her extensive contacts to get someone with a background in tracking but all of them had been unanswered.

That itself worried her. It is one thing to decline, but another thing altogether to leave a request for aid unanswered. Eden has no illusions of her place in grand scheme of things—she’s merely a pawn. Granted, an extremely valuable and useful one but a pawn, nonetheless. Nothing compared to the unending struggle against the other side, where both sides calculate their losses in terms of hundreds, if not thousands.

She shook her head. Battles within battles, stalemate after stalemate, she thought despondently. And the end is nowhere in sight.

A soft patter of footsteps alerted her to her oncoming quarry. She had already magnified her hearing and vision with a spell that enabled her to see even in the darkest of shadows. The clattering of metal—most likely covers from the many bins packing the alley—sounded, coming closer.

Now! She could hear Nikolai’s mental shout in her head.

Eden stepped out from her hiding and gestured with her right arm, making a cutting motion even as she whispered the words to the spell. The effect is instantaneous. An almost visible curtain of wind gusted from behind her, sending tendrils of her blond hair whipping forward. The curtain of fast-moving air coalesced into a solid form, the force of the winds catching their quarry and holding him immobile, flattening him against the wall of the alley. The force of the impact rendered him unconscious.

She could hear the swift falls of Nikolai’s steps as he slowed down from his run as he neared her. Lately she seemed to be tuned to him. She suspected that may have something to do with having worked for a long time with a telepath and filed away the observation for future reference.

“Trouble?” Nikolai asked, smirking upward at their captive.

“Not really,” the witch answered. “Although I’m curious why they needed a trained combat meister and a battle-witch to capture one rogue werebeast.”

“How could you tell?” Nikolai asked. “That he’s a werebeast, I mean,” he qualified further.

“You didn’t read his mind?”

“I did,” Nikolai retorted testily, but the annoyance wasn’t directed at her, she could tell. “I couldn’t read anything deeper than surface thoughts. The rest are static.”

“Static?”

“Just raw impulses, primal urges.”

“Primal urges, you say?” Eden snickered. “How elemental.”

“Don’t start, Bennet,” Nikolai warned, but there was a small smile on his lips. “Let’s have a look at our werebeast, eh?”

Eden gestured and the blanket of air surrounding their captive bowed to her command, lowering him to eye level. She reached out and lifted his left eyelid. In the dim light illuminating the alley, his left eye glimmered yellow.

“Wolf-kind,” Eden confirmed. “You get any readings on a specific clan?”

“None,” Nikolai answered, a tinge of frustration in his voice. “His mind was gone. All I could get was raw instincts—fear, hate and such.”

“That’s an interesting development,” Eden slowly said. “Werebeasts who shift into social animals usually have a group mind running in the background of their psyches.”

“Correct,” Nikolai confirmed. “In his case, nothing.”

“You do realize we have someone who could help us?” Eden began cautiously.

Nikolai glared at her. He knew she was right but it breached all procedures the Council had agreed upon previously. He weighed his options and decided.

“To Hell with it,” he grunted. “It’s time Jasper learned, anyway.”

 *  *  *

“Stop doing that!” Wanda hissed.

Jasper and Vincent both jerked to attention, almost-identical guilty looks on their faces.

The three of them were at the bank waiting for their turn to be called, where Wanda and Jasper had to make a sizable withdrawal. Vincent had been amusing himself with ‘peeking,’—as he had so charmingly put it—into the restricted areas of the bank. Jasper had suggested he check out the combination of the bank’s safe and security details but the other just shrugged and spent the next twenty minutes ogling the female employees. Since Jasper could basically read the more obvious aspects of his fixations, he ended up getting distracted.

“I can’t believe I’m taking out this much money on his say-so,” Wanda griped, smacking Vincent’s arm with a backhand. “What are we going to do?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Jasper muttered. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Well, make him tell you then,” Wanda huffed, exasperated. “What’s the point of having those freaky powers if you don’t use them?”

“I do use them actually,” Jasper defended himself.

“Of course,” Wanda returned sardonically. “Running out on restaurant bills, scoring freebies, petty shoplifting … Need I go on?”

“You don’t have to be so fucking superior about it,” Jasper grumbled, rolling his eyes.

“Hah!” Wanda egged him, poking his side. “Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy doing that!”

Jasper was about to fire a quick retort but it was made moot as their number was called by the PA system. Forty minutes later found them in Wanda’s VW Polo heading out of the city. Following Vincent’s sketchy directions, they had taken one off the turnoffs leading towards the countryside, something Wanda wasn’t too happy about. She started by snipping about the fact she was wearing a pair loafers not suited for trekking in the countryside. Vincent returned that she won’t be required to walk much. Wanda then moved on to not knowing the directions, and Vincent calmly told her where to turn and which route to take.

After several instances of Vincent’s mildly patronizing instructions, Wanda started snapping that she did not sign up for a cross-country drive to God-knows-where on a somewhat-stranger’s say-so. “And you’re pretty strange,” she said, ending her tirade.

As what had now become an established pattern, Jasper found he is thankful he is in the backseat as Wanda and Vincent argued with each other.

“Oy,” Jasper huffed softly to himself. He fished out his iPod, plugged the headset into his ears and cranked up the volume to drown out the bickering.

He leaned his head to the side, resting his temple on the windshield while he watched the idyllic countryside zipped by. The late sun now had taken a soft, mellow cast to its golden light and it tinted the deepening noon with soft patines of gold. He looked at his watch, noting that in three hours time it will be close to sundown.

“All I’m saying,” Wanda was saying, “is that if I’m going to be traipsing in the countryside while carrying a large wad of cash in my purse I’d like to know where we’re going.”

“And I’ll tell you all in good time,” Vincent told her reasonably, his usual beatific smile on his face. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re hot when you’re ticked off?”

“Yeah, Jasper does.”

Vincent looked at her askance. “Your brother tells you you’re hot? Your brother?”

“What?” Wanda replied, confused. “We’re close like that.”

“Close,” Vincent repeated dully, a sick look on his face.

“Yeah, close,” Wanda affirmed. She gave Vincent a quizzical look before continuing, “what? You have issues with siblings bonding or something—Oh for crying out loud, Vince! This isn’t Flowers in the Attic! And stop trying to change the topic.”

“I’m not.”

“You are,” Wanda sated firmly.

“I’m not!” Vince whined, his voice climbing half an octave.

“You are!” Wanda returned, matching him in pitch and volume.

“I’m—stop the car!” Vincent shouted.

Wanda hit the brakes, sending the blissfully inattentive Jasper’s head hitting the headrest of Vincent’s seat.

“What the hell!?” he grouched, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Oh, that’s gonna bruise,” he remarked to no one in particular.

Wanda had edged the car to the shoulder of the road, where they had left the city limits some time back and are on one of the less travelled back roads. The particular one they’re on was essentially a small asphalt line cutting across the encroaching wilderness. Over on the not-so-distant horizon on the left side of the road, the Blue Ridge could be seen.

Vincent opened the door and got out. He seemed to be scanning for something, his head cocked to the left with his eyes closed. Jasper had seen enough of Vincent’s abilities at work to know that the other man is trying to sift through multiple scannings of places distant and near and try to marry them to their current location. When the small frown came, Jasper knew he and Wanda should be on alert. Negative emoting is a very rare occurrence for someone as outgoing and upbeat as Vincent, and his own empathic abilities picked up on the small note of concern and alarm emanating from Vincent. He was about to follow the source of the alarm with his mind until he encountered a block. Vincent had thrown up a mental shield to block his probes.

Jasper was starting to go from mildly annoyed to irate. It is one thing to be made travelling cross-country on vague details, as Wanda had pointed out. Another still to sense alarm and refusing to divulge the cause or nature of it. He was about to point this out heatedly to Vincent when the other man turned.

“Stay in the car, Jas,” he said, a rare, stern note of command in his usually affable voice. Wanda had opened her door and was about step out when Vincent continued, “You, too, Wanda.”

Jasper halted Wanda from unleashing another verbal assault by grabbing her wrist. The exchanged a look with each other. Years of growing up together had made them able to communicate non-verbally in a very short time. Wanda, shouldering her purse crosswise across her chest got out of the car, followed by Jasper.

“You really want to do this?” Vincent glared at the two.

“Seems like the day could use some excitement,” Jasper said jauntily. “And it feels to me like you could use some help. Note the word feel.”

“And don’t even think of saying something as insulting or banal such as I’m just a girl,” Wanda continued quickly before Vincent could get a word in edgewise. “Oh, wait,” she said, motioning for them to wait as she returned to the trunk of her car.

She reached in and grabbed something from the inside before closing the trunk and returning back to them. Jasper could see that she is now holding a short length of wooden rod roughly two feet in length. He threw a questioning look at her.

“After the attack, I signed up for escrema classes,” she explained, twirling the rod and making some practice swipes. “You know, self-defense and all that jazz.”

“Fine,” Vincent said, throwing up his hands. He was about to turn away to head into the brush but then abruptly pivoted to face them. “But you follow whatever I say, no matter how bizarre it is. Got it?”

“You showed your sopping wet crotch to me in a restaurant,” Jasper snapped testily. “I think bizarre I can handle.”

Vincent didn’t reply, but the rigid pull of his shoulders contrasted with Wanda’s snickers. They followed him into the brush.