Blessed (30 page)

A sound that was very much like the shriek of metal being mutilated suddenly filled the air. She instinctively threw her hands up to cover her ears as she spun around in a circle to see what could have possibly made such a wretched sound. She caught a glimpse of Chaos’ face before she turned away and even he appeared to be intrigued. Kaiser let out a howl and lie down on the ground looking miserable.

The tornado that was swirling around her didn’t hold a candle to the one that had just appeared behind her. Large enough to encompass most of the courtyard, it swirled around maliciously causing her to will one of the sea mines into her hand so that she could throw it if needed. At that moment, the air suddenly grew still and the smoke that had comprised the vortex began to dissipate. There was no way that she could have prepared herself for what she saw after it cleared.

Her brain struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. Her best friend, her grandmothers and her bishop were all standing behind her, each with their own little green surprise: Her best friend had a spinning top in her palm, her mom’s mother was projecting a shield from the broach she had worn for as long as Ardra could remember, her dad’s mom had a whip hanging from her hair pin and Bishop Stauffer had a wolf sitting at his side.

All of them had a soft green glow surrounding them and all of them were poised and ready for battle.

She stood there dumb struck as the group of people she was closest to approached her with big smiles on their faces.

“No time to explain.” Piper said. “Let’s take care of this problem once and for all.”

Kaiser finished sniffing around the new animal and looked up at her with a confused look on his face and thought
That just isn’t right.

Her grandma Smith had extended the shield to cover the six of them and they stood looking through both shields at Chaos. A few moments later, they all stepped through the outer shield together. The lazy smoke that had been drifting around Chaos now took a more definite form, going from benign to menacing in the blink of an eye. A flicker of doubt flashed through her mind and she sent up a prayer.

They took their stand on the west side of the reflection pool and he took his on the east side. They were now only about thirty feet apart and time seemed to stop for a few tense moments as they stared each other down.

Those moments didn’t last long.

In a flash, time went from standing still to moving in fast forward. Thousands of tendrils exploded from Chaos, completely destroying anything that they came in contact with. A swath was cut out of the reflection pool, draining any water that didn’t get vaporized onto the plaza. The five of them and both dogs scattered in all directions to avoid the lethal black whips and flying chunks of plaza and reflection pool.

Ardra’s brain finally kicked in and she lashed back at him with flashing green tentacles of her own. She was hurling her grenades in his direction as fast as she could create them. His tentacles were like a shield in and of themselves, whipping her spiked little balls out of the air before they even reached him. Where black and green collided, electricity cackled and the sound that Piper’s whirlwind had made filled the air.

She spared a glance around the plaza to make sure the others had gotten out of the way of his initial attack. Her grandmothers were standing side by side within the protective bubble, the whip in grandma Cooper’s hand was flashing back and forth like green lightning and Bishop Stauffer was standing a little further off, barking commands at the wolf that was dodging the dark assault as it pushed forward with deadly accuracy. Kaiser was doing his best to avoid the tentacles that occasionally lashed out in his direction.  

A knot of panic rose in her throat when she didn’t see Piper. Having seen what that energy could do to stone, she could only guess at what it would do to a person. She caught a flash of green light from behind Chaos and Piper appeared out of nowhere, still holding the spinning green top. She popped back out of existence right as Chaos thrust a spike outward in her direction. As fast as the spike had shot out from him, he pulled it back into him and used the energy to reinforce the black skin that surrounded his body.

Piper popped back into view within the green shield near her grandmothers and Ardra focused her attention back on the matter at hand: Figuring out how to take this incarnation of evil down.

She noticed that every time the bishop’s wolf got a hold of one of the tentacles, the energy that was separated from the main body was dispersed into the air, wasted. Smashing the grenades that she had been tossing at him into razor thin disks, she began aiming at the ends of the larger tentacles. He managed to smash most of them on their flat surfaces and destroy them, but a couple of them found their marks and, as she had hoped, the energy separated from him drifted away like a puff of smoke.

A short scream tore her attention away from the maze of black smoke that was pushing forward with brutal force. She turned just in time to watch her bishop disintegrate into a cloud of ash. Her blood boiled and she let out a cry of her own, attacking with a brutality she didn’t know she had.

As the ring the bishop had been wearing hit the ground, the wolf that he had been commanding flickered and evaporated into a cloud of green mist. A long, sad howl hung on the air among the sparks and shrieks for a moment before being carried away on the wind.

Electricity filled the air around them, mingling with the clouds of green and black smoke left behind by each successful assault. Ardra was completely focused on the battle and spun left and right to avoid the limbs that were thrashing in her direction.

A sharp pain exploded in the left side of her rib cage. As the air whooshed out of her, she struggled to get her feet back on the ground. She braced for the impact and positioned herself as best she could to absorb the shock. She hit the ground and rolled several times, jumping back to her feet and continuing her assault.

Piper was still flashing around the courtyard providing a distraction and her grandparents were being slowly pushed back towards the gates of the temple, still tucked away safely inside the shield. Kaiser had taken up where Stauffer’s wolf had left off and was dodging and biting at anything that Chaos sent his direction.

She took a moment to say another prayer for those of her loved ones that were left fighting at her side. These people, and the dog, were all she had left in the world. She refused to let another one of them be taken away from her.

Another tentacle, this one much smaller than the last one, lashed across the right side of her face. She felt a trickle of blood run down her cheek and drip off of her jaw. She ignored it as best she could and pushed on. She was beginning to think that they may have bitten off more than they could chew.

Another scream tore through the courtyard. Ardra’s heart stopped as she saw Piper, just behind Chaos, turn to ash. The bauble that she had been using to flash from place to place hit the ground and seemed to explode. A huge green tornado caught them all off guard and slammed them into the ground. Including Chaos, who had been all but standing on top of it when it blew.

Ardra felt something snap inside of her at that moment. Chaos’ head whipped up and his eyes shot straight through her as he displayed a dark, cruel grin across his perfectly formed teeth.

She looked down at herself and saw that, mixed in with the green energy that she had been using thus far to fight him, was the same dark energy that she had been fighting against. It struck her then that the box that she had spent the last several months trying to keep closed no longer seemed to exist. There was nothing inside of her to put this ugliness back into.

As she stood there in a panic, Chaos stood and was now approaching her with a sickening grin on his face. Right before he reached her, he stopped and cocked his head to the side.

“This is better than anything I could have imagined.” He stepped back and watched her struggle with the new development.

The battle had stopped for the time being. Her grandparents were recovering from the blow that Piper’s tornado had dealt them and both Ardra and Chaos had been thrown off enough that there were nothing more than lazy, unfocused tendrils snaking out from each of them.

Her mind was racing and grappling with what was going on. Grasping at ideas that were as substantial as the whisps of smoke that seemed to be frozen in the air around the courtyard. Glinting like sun moats on a calm summer day. She wondered what right they had to be so calm at a time like this.

Chaos must have gotten bored with the lack of action, because the next thing she knew, she was living a nightmare. A black tendril had shot from his hand and snaked its way into her mouth. She felt the familiar lack of control as the green faded from around her and darkness replaced it. Everything that came in contact with her new aura turned to ash. Black was completely filling her field of vision and she was powerless to stop it.

A yelp from close by to her left had her heart skipping beats. She saw Kaiser struggling with the black cloud that was pouring out of her. He was soon pinned to the ground and she could feel herself draining his life force away. No matter how much she tried to contain it, it kept pressing forward, destroying everything in its path.

Soon, the only thing she could see were Kaiser’s bright blue eyes staring at her, silently begging for help, and the foul face of Chaos, contorted with the sick pleasure of watching her suffer. As his face began to swim, she noticed a more familiar darkness obscuring her field of vision: Unconsciousness.

She fought to focus on Kaiser, but he was fading fast. The darkness was not only draining him, but now it was draining her as well. She felt herself fall to her knees and then down onto her side. She closed her eyes and thought, well, I tried.

Not yet Ardra. Don’t you give up yet.

The sound of her friend’s voice in her head tore her heart in two. She had failed him. Just like she had failed Bishop Stauffer, and her parents. Just like she had failed her grandmothers who had fought so hard at her side.

Someone grabbed a hold of her sternum and pinched with all their might, causing her to arch her back and grit her teeth in pain.

A light flickered inside of her. This was it. She was going to see that light at the end of the tunnel that everyone was always talking about. She’d get to see her parents again.

The light grew brighter and brighter, filling her field of vision.

It struck her as odd that the bright white light wasn’t white at all, but green.

Her body grew warm, then hot. She noticed that her skin felt like it was stretched to the point of splitting. She wondered if this is what dying felt like for everyone.

As she waited for the inevitable, she realized she could still feel Chaos close to her and opened her eyes to see if he was going to heaven with her.

The pressure released as green light erupted from within her. The darkness around her dissolved instantly and she caught the look of shock on Chaos’ face before he disintegrated  before her eyes. As the light pushed out from her body, the courtyard slowly cleared of the smoke that had been left behind from the battle, being blown away by the light spring breeze.

The light faded as quickly as it had come and with it, her consciousness.

Once again, she let the darkness take her.

Kaiser tossed the box containing the pendant that had started it all into the suitcase on the bed. Below it were the clothes they had already packed. Ardra admired his lean muscle and browned skin from across the room where she was closing the last box of items that would go to the local thrift store. She still wasn’t used to the fact that her dog was now her boyfriend. The way she saw it, there were a lot of things that she thought she’d never get used to that had settled in pretty quickly. This would too.

After the smoke had cleared from her battle with Chaos, the man she had befriended during their bickering sessions at the fountain had taken the place of the furry version that she had befriended over the course of the entire nightmare. When she had questioned him about it later, he simply smiled and said, “Fate always rewards a job well done.”

And that was that.

The shock of being told that her entire family had been aware of the whole “Chaos coming to get her” mess for generations had now worn off. When her grandmothers had explained that to her a couple of days after she had kicked his sorry ass, she had almost collapsed to the ground again.

Even Piper and Bishop Stauffer had been sent by some mysterious Druidic council to watch over her. She had fired about a billion questions at the two older women, and they had answered them to the best of their abilities. When it came right down to it though, it was something she was going to have to work out on her own.

None of them had wanted this life for her. As a matter of fact, they had all tried their hardest to make sure that this life would never find her. They couldn’t run the chance of leaving her unprotected though, so they had taken it upon themselves to make sure that she had the level of protection she needed, without the invasive lifestyle of having round the clock personal bodyguards escorting her everywhere.