The 13th Mage (22 page)

“How about if we look for her now?”

“We?
I didn’t say anything about
"
we
"
, just go away will you, look there is plenty of space here, why don’t you find your own patch of beach and let me be?”

“I didn’t ask me here, you did.”

Something pinched at Owen’s chest.

“I didn’t ask for you, now please go.”

Something stabbed at him hard, he looked down but there was nothing there.

“I can see it, it looks like a black knife, and it has a label on it.”

“Right,” he said and turned around, the whole thing was surreal, a knife indeed.

“Don’t you want to know what the label says?”

“No, but I guess you are going to tell me.”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

They watched the last of the sunrays vanish, a purple and orange splendor bathed them and the world.
Slowly stars began to appear, big bright stars.

“Ok, what does it say?”

“I knew you would ask.”

“What does it say?”

“Remorse.”

Owen laughed. H
e laughed so hard tears burst out of his eyes.
The knife dug deeper in his chest, he laughed until there was no more laughter left in him and the pain was too difficult to bear.

Remorse indeed, there was nothing he was remorseful about.

The knife dug slightly to the left.

“It’s going for your heart,
and
it will be there any minute now.”

Owen held his chest, it was hurting badly.
But he didn’t have any regrets, nothing to regret.

Where was Jennifer? He wondered.

“She’s still in Hell, you left her there.”

Owen was jolted upward.
Jennifer in Hell?
And he comfortable in Heaven.
That must be it, he felt very sorry now.

“Don’t worry, she doesn’t know you are here having a great time, she thinks you are dead, when you left that place your body stayed dead as a doornail.
She even buried you so the vultures wouldn’t eat your corpse.

“No.”

The knife hurt so bad he began to black out.

“How did I get here, how did you get here?”

“You got here through compassion I believe, I am not really here, I am just a figment of your imagination.
I would never speak like this to begin with if I were real.”

The blackness around him started moving, he was blindfolded, his hands and feet tied behind his back, his mouth and eyes taped over.

A bug crawled slowly toward the grave, any minute now, she thought, any minute it would be within her reach.
She squashed it with one swift movement.
The bastards had been trying to crawl under the rocks for days now, trying to get to Owen’s body. Bastards.

Jennifer felt rage growing as each bug tried to sneak into the grave, it grew bigger and bigger until it exploded with a huge bang, leaving a large crater less than fifty meters
a
way from her.
S
he was shocked by the explosion. I
t left a ringing in her ears, her lungs unable to breathe and rubble covering her from head to
toe
.
Before she could get her thoughts in order another explosion turned the day into night.

She could hear screaming, a deep rumble, a tank was getting closer.

She looked up, all around there were buildings in ruins, corpses lying here and there, and there was so much blood.
She was no longer in the desert, Owen’s grave was gone.
Underneath her was damp rabble and blood.

She felt sick and frightened.
There was a tank getting closer, firing at random, there was chaos all around.
A man ran out of a building carrying a young boy, a soldier came to meet them, but instead of helping he shot them both point blank.

Jennifer screamed in disbelief.
The man and his boy lay on the ground, blood pouring out of them, the man moved toward the boy, pulled him to his chest, and covered him with his arms.
The soldier shot them again.

This is not happening to me, she thought.
"
This doesn’t happen in my country, this happens to other people,
"
but the soldier turned and saw her, she stepped back, he pointed, she was paralyzed, she knew she must dive, but she was frozen with fear.

The soldier shot, but no bullet came out, he shook the gun, hit it.

Jennifer felt her legs return, her mind began to work, and she ran.

“Ah,” said a kind voice, “I think Owen is back, before you do anything let me tell you I have your little girlfriend here, she’s still in Hell poor thing, your dead body her only company, or maybe she’s moved on to Anger, wouldn’t surprise me with that temper of hers.
You shou
ld have told her how to get out. I
t was very bad of you not to stay with her.”

Owen disintegrated his bondage, he was in the back of a car, beside him sat the blond Shadow, in front the other drove, the passenger seat was occupied by a very well tied up Jennifer.

“I can kill her in a split second, so don’t try anything,” the blond continued.

“Where are you taking us?”

“Away from your other friends, I think.”

Aeoife and Rossini, Owen thought.

“Don’t try to call them, we can sense any type of communication, if I hear you call them something very nasty will happen to Jennifer in her Hell, it might even kill her for real.”

Jennifer, he thought to himself. He loved her, if anything happened to her he wouldn’t go to hell, he would simply cease to exist.

Her head shift
ed
slightly.

Love, he realized, he could still communicate it, and these beings couldn’t detect it.
He started thinking of Jennifer, he thought of the first time he saw her, the times when they would have meals together, watching her belly get bigger and bigger as the months
went by, if only he could go back to that time.
He remembered her hair, her emerald green eyes. His heart swelled with love.

Jennifer shifted in her seat, and moaned.

“Well, I guess we’ve underestimated this one,” said the driver.

The other stared at him suspiciously.

He looked outside, countryside, they could be anywhere, looked at his watch, a few minutes past
noon
.

They turned into a private road and a few minutes later arrived at a large country house.

Three men came out to meet them, one of them took Jennifer in his arms and carried her inside, and the other two took Owen by the arms and led him in.

A fourth man appeared, “have you got her?”

“No.”

“Did you try his houses?”

“Yes, we’ve already checked all his houses, have gone over the ones in
London
several times, but there is no sign of her.”

“And you are sure this is the right one?”

“Yes, this is she, she is marked.”

The man turned to Owen and offered his hand, “be welcome Eoghan Uí Néill to my humble abode, it’s an honor to have the latest Challenger as my guest.”

“David Andrews,” said Owen, accepting the handshake.

Not an evil presence inside an innocent human, but an innocent human inside an evil presence, Owen thought, remembering the man from the newspaper Jennifer had visited.

“I suppose Jennifer must have spoken to you about me, or were you Borrowing at the time?”

“Why the imposture? The newspaper?”

“We couldn’t locate her, she should have been in Skerries, but when we went to collect her she wasn’t there.
As you know it is impossible to locate a rebirth unless you know where it’s going to happen.
We knew Jennifer had been visiting your big brother in her dreams, but all he could get out of her was that she was in
London
and that she bought that obtuse paper. As you know there are over thirteen million people in
London
.
We simply had to think of a way to coax her out, to open her curiosity enough to bring her out of hiding.
I was very disappointed when she turned up at the paper without her baby that day, although her mage abilities were a nice surprise, we didn’t expect her mage genes to become active just yet.”

There was a large explosion nearby, the house shook, plaster falling to the ground.

“What was that!?” Shouted Andrews.

“I think it’s Jennifer’s genes making an entrance again,” Owen replied smiling to himself.

One of the women ran into the room, “she’s injured Ray, And she’s loose in the grounds. I couldn’t contain her.”

“Let her go, she’ll be no good to us until she cools down a bit. She is becoming more like one of us every day,” Andrews added as he turned to Owen, “soon she’ll be a fully-fledged Shadow.”

“I think she’s just angry,” answered Owen.

“Anger, one of our best allies, the fourth World, the first being Hell, a place you have recently visited I believe.”

“How did you do that?”

“Ah, well, it’s a mental construction, one of our best work.
We have all lower worlds in our m
inds, if you care to visit them. W
e use them as training grounds as well as temporary cells.”

The Lower Worlds, thought Owen, if only he could remember his early training.

As though reading his mind Andrews began naming them, “Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger where your little friend is at the moment, Tranquility and Rapture.”

“What of the Higher Worlds?”

“We have no use for them.”

“Learning, Realization, Compassion and Enlightenment,” Owen said.

Andrews clapped in mock appraisement.

“And you are planning on separating them again, destroying what we know as the Earth.”

“See, this is what really makes me angry, people going round telling lies about us.
There would be no profit in separating the worlds, on the contrary, with a world filled with fully fledged enlightened people we wouldn’t be able to get very far at all. They have a habit of poking their noses where it doesn’t belong.
Always being reborn into the lower worlds messing with people’s minds, teaching them about equal rights and evolution and wreaking havoc in otherwise perfectly functioning societies.”

“I suppose you would bring back slavery,” said Owen.

“I didn’t know it was gone,” replied Andrews.

“Touché.”

There was another explosion, “three hundred meters southwest,” said Andrews, “it might be wise for you to calm your young charge down Eoghan.”

“Call me Owen, and no, I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said walking toward the drinks cabinet and pouring himself a large brandy, “although you can try to if you so please.”

Andrews smiled, “she’s ruining my grounds,” he said looking out the window, “why doesn’t she just leave and be done with it?
We could then follow her and see where she takes us.”

“You won’t be able to follow her.”

“Oh, yes, she won’t get away this time, We’ve implanted a human locator, nice little gadget, completely undetectable,” he said and looked at Owen, “even by a mage.”

Another explosion.

“Doesn’t she ever get tired?”

“The youth of today,” said Owen, feeling extremely proud.

“She is not following a logical pattern,” said Andrews, “she should be gone by now.”

“Didn’t your mother teach you it’s rude to talk about people in their presence?”

Jennifer’s voice was like a breath of fresh air to Owen, who couldn’t contain his pride.

She stood on the doorway, a black box in one hand and a syringe in the other, her long red hair flying all around her, her body covered in leaves and mud, bits of an old dress and Owen’s jacket.

She looked like a Goddess, thought Owen.

Andrews stepped back toward the wall, fear deforming his face.

“Don’t’ hurt me,” he begged.

She stormed across the room and stood so close to Andrew he could hear her heart beat, she smelt of roses, Owen frowned.

“This,” she whispered, lifting the syringe, “is for you.” And she stuck it deep in his shoulder, “and this,” she said, lifting her hands to his head, “is to keep your mind busy for a while.”

Andrew’s eyes rolled back, his face distorted with pain and fear, and then fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

“Come on,” she said to Owen running down the corridor and out the front door.
Owen followed her, still dumbfounded by what he had just witnessed.

They had turned his Jennifer into a cold blooded killer.

“Don’t worry so much, he’s not dead, just in a place I made up just for him.”

She stopped in front of a 4x4, and sighed.

“Can you drive?” she asked Owen, disappointment written all over her face.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Good, I’ve got lessons booked for next month,” she said walking to the passenger side.

They reached a signpost ten minutes later,

M6 60 miles.

“We’re in
England
,” they said in unison.

“Why do you think they brought us here?” She asked.

“Easier for you to get to
London
quickly. What do you want to do now?
London
or
Dublin
?”

“I’m not going anywhere near Heather until I have eliminated the threat.
I saw what they have planned for her.
We’ll go north on the M6, toward Manchester, then turn west toward Wales, we should reach Holyhead in about four or five hours, we’ll be in time for the evening ferry,” said Jennifer who had made the journey to Ireland by land several times in her life.

”We can stop and have a shower on the way,” Owen said.

“Not yet. L
et’s put more miles between us and those animals first.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Jennifer nodded.

“What did you inject him with?”

“Oh, some tracer bug they wanted to implant me with,” she said, “I have a thing about needles, can’t stand them.”

Owen laughed.
They hadn’t changed her too much.

“And this,” she said reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a black box, “is the receiver, we just need to plug it into a computer.
Won’t be much good once Andrews comes round, but while he’s unconscious I reckon we could find out where their main hideout is.”

“Well done,” he said.

“Oh and Owen.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t die on me like that again.
I didn’t like it.”

“Okay,” he said, a warm feeling filling his chest.