A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe (21 page)

Caren was the only one in control.

“Stay where you are,” she
said. “The minute — the
second
I tell you two to fall back, you two get the hell
out of there, got it?”

“Confirmed,” Sheila responded.

Caren adjusted the zoom again in an attempt
to focus as tightly as she could on that man at the door. She knew
him from somewhere…someone from the Mirades Tower, one of the
executives she’d met in the past. He’d placed his palms flat
against the door now, and tilted his head ever so slightly, as if
to listen in. At that moment she could just about make out an
angular chin and the makings of a smile, but very little else. His
jaw moved, words spoken soft enough that they were not picked up by
the wireless mics. His shoulders twitched up and down slightly,
like he was laughing. He said a few more words, nodded again, and
with great fanfare, pounded on the door with his right fist.

They did not expect to hear the sounds of
heavy glass shattering. Sheila gasped and held back a scream,
forcibly pulling her hand away from the pillar. “Goddess! The
Mendaihu within…” she said as quietly and evenly as she could.
“They’re gearing up for a fight.”

“Now!” Caren barked. “Get back now! Go,
go!”

The two officers immediately broke into a
sprint back towards the car. Caren kept the main camera focusing on
the Shenaihu outside the church…apparently they had not heard their
movements, or had not cared. Caren breathed a sigh of relief,
knowing they were safer now, but it was a temporary relief…the man
still stood at that door, pounding on it every few seconds. Every
hit was followed by more shattering glass.

“Caren, they’re —” Sheila started, only to
have her mic cut off.

“Sheila?” Caren called out. “Are you still
there? Nick, can you see her?”

Nick tapped his mic back on. “She’s okay,”
he grunted, nearly out of breath. “I have a line on her, she’s
across —”

His mic cut off as well.

“Damn it all!” she heard from the hallway.
“Look — just keep me posted, all right? As soon as you figure out
what the hell is going on.” The door flew open and crashed against
the wall as Poe stormed in and crossed the room to his desk,
ignoring the vidmat. He threw his phone down on the desk blotter
and dropped heavily into his chair, shutting out the rest of the
world. He buried his face behind his hands and muttered curses
under his breath.

Talk to me, Poe,
Caren thought. She watched him with a mixture of
worry and frustration, knowing he wasn’t about to say anything. He
did it to protect her, but in the process he only hurt himself,
keeping everything locked in like that. That had to have been
Matthew on the phone. The kid must know what was going on here, and
damned if she was going to be left out of it. “Give me your phone,”
she said to him.

He looked up in surprise. “What?”

“Just give me the damn phone!”

He winced, but handed it to her. “Don’t you
have your own?”

She shushed him and hit the speed dial for
Dispatch. Gena, the youngest of the three operators, answered. She
heard multiple lines ringing in the background. “Gena, this is
Agent Caren Johnson,” she said curtly, interrupting her before she
could say anything else. “Patch me through to Special Forces, Agent
Craig Chiappara.”

Gena stumbled through an answer, but
connected her right away. For a brief moment, Caren felt sorry for
her; whatever was going down at the church had to be happening
elsewhere if the Dispatch switchboard was that busy. Thankfully,
she only had to wait a few more moments and wade through Special
Forces’ dispatch team to get to Craig’s desk phone. He was an old
friend of her mother’s, and she was damn lucky to have him as a
personal contact at a time like this.

“Caren!” he answered. “I can’t say I’m
surprised to hear you calling right now. What can I do for
you?”

“Hi Craig,” she said quickly. “Need your
help — there’s something going down at St. Patrick’s on Ormand
Street, south central McCleever District, can you get a team up
that way as soon as you can?”

“Already on it, hon,” he said. “I’ve got a
group heading that way now. You have anyone up there?”

“Two Agents, Kennedy and Slater,” she said.
“They’re retreating as we speak.”

“Confirmed, two agents retreating, confirmed
St. Patrick’s Church, Ormand. Anything else?”

She exhaled slowly. How the hell could she
say this on an unencrypted call? “Just be careful,” she said
finally. “Possible schism in progress.”

It took him a few moments to respond.
“Confirmed, schism. You sure about that?”

“Positive,” she said. “And keep me
posted…those are my officers, and my case. Appreciate it, Craig.”
She hung up and handed the phone back to Poe.

The silence was suddenly cut by the frantic
sounds of car doors opening, and Sheila and Nick spilling into the
vehicle, out of breath and cursing up a storm. The secondary screen
switched from the outside view back to that of the visor cam and
the two agents strapping themselves in. Caren breathed a sigh of
relief, but it was hollow. On the main vidmat screen, the church
doors had swung inwards. Everyone held their breath at that moment
as the forty bodies outside the church stood there at attention,
and the man in the lead stepped forward slightly. He chose not to
enter the church, only peer inside. His jaw moved as he spoke
briefly to someone within. Caren zoomed the camera in even further
until the image began pixelating, but she had to see who the man
was and who he was talking to.

She got her answer seconds later in the form
of Nehalé Usarai just inside the door, his hands held up
defensively. He barked a few words at him, but the man refused to
respond in kind, only nodding at him. He stepped aside, and turned
away from the door. Caren finally got a look at this mysterious man
and pinpointed the camera on his face, capturing and logging it as
many times as she could.

“Janoss Miradesi,” she
said, shuddering. He was known publicly as part of the upper
management at EdenTree, but in Caren’s line of work he was also a
known Shenaihu and one of the leaders of the Shenaihu movement down
in South City. She’d hoped he wouldn’t be involved, but this had
proved otherwise.
Goddess…what the hell is
he doing there? Is EdenTree behind this?
“Sheila, do you see that?” she called out.

“Affirmative,” she said, reaching forward to
start the car. “Damn it, I didn’t even read his signature — he was
deliberately hiding on us.”

“Did you catch either of them?”

“I’m not familiar with edha Miradesi’s
signature,” she said, frowning deeply. “But I am now,” she added in
a growl.

“You two get the hell
out
now,
you
can’t do anything else there,” Caren said. “We need the Special
Forces to calm this one down. Chiappara has a team heading that way
now. Check in with them, then back away from there as soon as you
can, clear?”

“On it,” she said, and tapped the camera
off. The vidmat reverted back to sleep mode, leaving Caren staring
at a blank screen. She let out a slow breath, relieved and
exhausted at the same time. They were safe, for now.

“Don't get too comfortable,” Poe said, head
hung low.

She hesitated, looking at him.
“Matthew?”

“Yeah, Matthew.” She felt the chill of the
room, and the coolness in his voice. She couldn't tell whether or
not it was desperation or resignation. It seemed a curious mixture
of the two.

“What did he say?” she asked, her voice
softened.

“Nothing good.” He forced himself to sit up
straight, and looked straight into her eyes. She shivered,
realizing what he was doing…he was looking deeper within, at her
own soul. This wasn’t just about the church. “There were four other
attacks in this city in the past twenty minutes,” he said, no color
to his voice. “All Shenaihu. He's rechecking his sources for
confirmation.”

One of All…
Caren paled.

They both stood in
silence, unsure of what to say next. Caren wanted so much to say
something, anything, but whatever words she found meant nothing
now. The reality of the situation had hit her, and hit her
hard
. She had come to
the point where she could no longer dismiss what was inside of her,
yearning to come out. She could not dismiss the fact that her own
awakening had coincided with Nehalé’s ritual, that he might have
even accelerated its growth. She looked over at Poe, bit her lip,
and said nothing.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Alien Relations Unit, Branden
Hill HQ

Caren closed her eyes and leaned heavily
against the wall of the debriefing room foyer, physically and
emotionally drained. An air vent overhead blew a cool breeze onto
her face and pushed away the beads of sweat from her forehead. She
relished its calming, distractive effect on her nerves, letting her
forget her surroundings for the moment. She’d never liked the
Questioning part of her job—interrogating the suspect or being
interrogated for a case herself, the process was absolute hell for
everyone involved.

Goddess…how did I get to this point?

She cursed quietly at the predicament she
now faced. If she had been any more aggravated by the attack at St.
Patrick's Cathedral, it would most likely have been directed at her
parents instead of at the Shenaihu. She knew that to be a pointless
gesture, as she could not will herself to do so. Through her blood
she would always be irrevocably tied to battles against the
Shenaihu. The innate knowledge of the Mendaihu soul welled within
her, waiting to be brought out. To curse her parents' mission was a
pointless gesture; to curse her parents' heritage was to curse at
her own soul.

Mendaihu
sehndayen-ne
, she thought.
Teachers of the faith. Priests in their own
right.
Aram and Celine were, among other
things, dedicated and ordained teachers of the Mendaihu faith in
the Universal One. The dedication to their faith and the Bridgetown
community gave her a sense of fierce pride. Pride, which the
Mendaihu never relied on.

She smirked, remembering
her father’s words regarding that deadly sin.
Pride is all well and good, Karinna, but the minute you rely
on it, you're dead. Faith is the real energy; pride is just the
sugarcoating.

To hell with this frustration, she was damn
proud of her parents! They had saved many a soul while serving on
the Alien Relations Unit, just as she had. They had taught her, and
many others, the way of the Mendaihu, and how to harness and
utilize the powers in the energies of the universe. But was she
honestly Mendaihu? Even with the training and her bloodright, was
she even worthy of the name? Being Mendaihu was a tone of being she
felt she had to earn rather than inherit, and she was a hell of a
long way from reaching that goal. Today’s events were proof of
that: she had not been prepared at all for any of it. But who could
have been?

What did you do to us, Nehalé?

If she were any other
person in this city, she would be terrified of these Shenaihu right
now. This was not an army, or some ragtag group of self-professed
revolutionaries, bent on political overthrow. This was not some
jacker gang like Vigil, who sought repentance by way of anarchy and
disruption within the corporate system. And this was not a
religious crusade. Far,
far
from it. It was not a display of revolutionary
zealotry.

Like the Mendaihu, the Shenaihu were a
spiritual force transcending political boundaries. In many ways
they were very much like the Mendaihu, and not just in spiritual
presence. Their reality was beyond the normal limits of human and
Meraladian life. They could look through the mind of an innocent,
straight into the very soul within. They craved inner meaning, far
past the tangible possessions and short-term stimulation of the
modern worlds. Like the Mendaihu, as with so many other spiritual
followers, the Shenaihu passion to achieve their spiritual goal was
unyielding: redemption within the Universes, to retain the
knowledge they once had as eternal souls in the ether and lost upon
becoming real in this universe.

So alike, yet so utterly, unchangeably
different.

She knew she should be terrified of them,
knowing what they could do. They’d caused death and chaos during
the last Embodiment. And they had killed her parents five years
ago, leaving her an emotional and spiritual wreck. And today, they
had killed recently awakened Mendaihu at the church and who knew
how many other places. Forcibly taken spirits from their bodies and
ended their physical lives, without remorse. And it was all in
response to Nehalé Usarai’s ritual.

But she wasn't scared of the Shenaihu.

In fact, she understood
them all too well, and
that
terrified her. Like Poe, she was a seasoned
profiler, and it was second nature to learn how to think like the
other, no matter who they were. She needed to release this fear,
before it was too late. She needed to tell someone what she
understood about the Shenaihu. She felt it strongly, wordlessly,
within her soul, begging to come out. She had tried a number of
times with Poe without success, though she blamed herself for her
inability to find the right words. She did not get much farther
with Farraway. She hadn't had the time or place to sit down with
Sheila, her ex-partner and once close confidant, but the temptation
grew stronger daily since the Nehalé’s ritual.

Inside the debriefing room, she could hear
the clamor of Sheila's voice filling the room. That girl was never
one to go quietly when asked, and had fought against Questioning
all the way. For perhaps the fourth time, she described the visit
to Nehalé Usarai's apartment and what she had sensed there; the
call to the cathedral and what she had witnessed and sensed; the
aftermath and her own personal reactions. Inspector Farraway, cold
and distant as usual, listened without interruption.