Awakenings (34 page)

“You’re the guy who plays chess five moves ahead of his turn. You have your endgame picked out after the first move and suddenly, in real life, you don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow or the next day. Are you delaying decisions you don’t want to face, Cal, or have you made them already and don’t want to tell me?” Cat demanded, hovering over him.

Cal would have preferred the battle at Gagarnoth to this moment. His back was again against a cliff, except he couldn’t slash and hack his way out of this trap—he was an immovable object confronted by an unstoppable force … a slip of a woman who held the key to his heart. The problem was his heart now had a second lock, a backdoor key that led to his past, and more and more it looked like both keys needed to be turned in unison to keep him whole, like submarine commanders launching a ballistic missile.

“The first one,” Cal finally said.

“The first what?”

“I’m delaying decisions I don’t want to face. All options look like I’ll have to go back if I’m successful. And I
have
to be successful.”

“Or die trying?”

“Or die trying,” he confirmed. “There are millions of people depending on me. Aandor is a city that became a nation that became an empire. A whole society. The entire balance of power is unraveling there. We need to preserve the succession and reclaim our seat of power over the empire to preserve peace on the continent. My family is depending on me.”

The words “my family” struck Cat like a slap. She and Bree had been his whole family until yesterday.

Cat took a moment and then asked, “Is there room for your daughter—for me—in your new life? In whichever world you choose?”

“There has to be. I’ll make it so. I have to sort things out first, then come back for you.”

Cat stepped back from the bed, arms tense, fists clenched. A tear broke through her veneer.

“Cat … it’s complicated.”

“There’s no guarantee that you’d even live through this war!” she said. “You could be hacked to pieces with those fucking meat cleavers you medieval jocks use.”

“As opposed to getting blown apart cleanly in the Bronx by a drug dealer’s bullet.”

“Don’t be smart with me, Cal! You don’t have the right to be smart with me! If you did manage to live through that hell, if you go back, there’s a good chance that the next time I see you Bree will have her own kids and I’ll be an old crone. What the fuck am I supposed to do for the next thirty years? Pretend you’re dead? Live my years never knowing for sure? What about Bree? What about our child inside me?”

“WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, CAT?”

Cal shoved the food tray off the bed. He leaned forward challenging Cat for answers.

“Tell me what to do!” he persisted. “Should I ignore that the prince exists? Go back to the Bronx and take my ESU training? Retire in twenty years with a beer gut, coach Little League, walk my daughter down the aisle, bounce fat grandkids on my lap, and fish until I keel over in my rowboat? Be content that I led a
good
life?”

“Fuck you,” Cat said, in tears. For a moment, Cal thought she would slap him. Instead, she hugged him hard. “Yes. Damn it. Yes!” she whispered in his ear. And even as she repeated the word, Cal sensed Cat knew better. That she would never respect him or love him again with the same fervor if he could turn his back on his family and his responsibilities that way, even for her sake. Her tears rained on his shoulder.

“I love you, Catherine,” he said.

“I know you do,” she said, sniffling. “I’m just trying to figure out what our life is becoming. Has become. Will things ever be the same again?”

Cal took a moment to think things through. He was figuring out his strategy as much for himself as to give Cat her due. She deserved a straight answer. He got out of bed, pulling the comforter behind him for a cover. He threw kindling on the dying fire and a big log on top of that, then took a chair next to the hearth. Cat sat on the stone platform in front of the fireplace facing him.

“I know you came up here with me to defend our life—to help find a quick fix and make all these new people in our lives go away,” Cal said. “For a brief moment in time, Cat, I believed we might do it, too. But it’s not going to happen. There’s no easy fix. I have to look for this boy, Cat. Not as a hobby or something I do in my spare time. I
have
to look for this boy,” Cal emphasized. “If I can’t find him during my sick leave, grieving over Erin’s murder, then I’ll cite psychological stress and use my vacation time, too.”

“That’s about four weeks in all. What if you still—?”

“Then I’ll think of something else. With Lelani’s help, I hope to find the prince in the next few days. I’ll consider what to do with the boy as I search. It would depend on his current living situation.”

“Fair enough,” Cat said. “And if he’s not alive?”

Cal stoked the fire. It popped a few cinders on Cat, which Cal quickly brushed off with his hands.

“If the prince is dead,” Cal continued, “my mission is a failure—and House Athelstan loses its claim to the throne. If the prince is dead, it would be better for me not to go back. My family there would be better off for it.”

“God forgive me, Cal…” Cat’s eyes began to well. “Part of me wants the boy not to be alive. I feel like a selfish horrible monster. I want you back home.”

“Catherine—”

“But if this little boy died because you weren’t there to protect him, you’ll never be the same man again. You’d never forgive yourself.”

“Will I ever be the same again either way, Cat? Will anything?” Cal was scared, about his mission, his family, his very purpose for being, and Cat was the only person on earth he could ever admit such a thing to.

“I always wanted you to find your past,” Cat said. “Be careful what you wish for, huh?”

“Let’s take things one day at a time. One of the other guardians might have raised the boy. If we whip the bad guys, we might have years here before any big decision needs to be made.”

“What if everything turns out okay? Are Bree and I even invited to join you in Aandor, Cal?”

Cal was surprised by the question. He had assumed Cat could join him if she wished. Yet did she want to be a nobleman’s wife at court in a feudal society? Her family, friends, and history were here—Cal understood what it meant to not have those things in one’s life. How could he place such a burden on someone who never bargained for problems of this magnitude? Or perhaps he didn’t ask her to come because of Chryslantha. The thought of his wife and his betrothed actually meeting bothered him greatly. He felt he had betrayed them both. But what was he thinking … that he’d return to Aandor without Cat and Bree and take up with Chryslantha as though nothing had happened? Cat would haunt his memories in Aandor just as Chryslantha preoccupied them now.

“Cal, are you okay?”

“What?”

“You spaced out.”

“I would never abandon you, but … do you really want to come to Aandor?”

The air hung heavy between them as Cat considered the question. A medieval life without modern conveniences; no electricity, television, motorcars, public education, women’s equality, or even aspirin. How would Bree take to that change? What would she lose by going to a medieval world?

“I don’t know,” Cat answered honestly. “I’m trying to be a ‘Stand By Your Man’ type of woman. Fucking song! But this—”

“We don’t have to figure it all out now,” Cal said. He took her hands, leaned forward and kissed the tears on her cheeks. She moved to his lap and nuzzled her face in his neck. “Let’s see how things play out,” he added.

Cat laughed softly. “I always thought the worst scenario I’d have to contend with if we found your family was that they lived in trailer parks and were related even before they got married,” she confessed. “Our problems never came this big.”

“It’s not the size, it’s what you do with it that matters,” Cal said, smiling.

Cat chuckled, even as she was tempted to punch him. She kissed him instead. “Dope,” she teased.

With her arms around his neck, she asked, “What now,
my lord
?”

“We get out of this room and attend a good man’s funeral. Come up with a plan to pick up the prince’s trail. The sooner we accomplish this, the quicker we can get back to New York and see our daughter again.”

CHAPTER 19

CANDLES IN THE WIND

The sky was a perfect blue and the wind strangely warm. Cal thought of Ben as the breeze caressed him, as though the air were made of Ben’s essence and he wasn’t truly gone. That idea brought solace to his troubled thoughts as they laid the old man to rest beneath Rosencrantz’s shade.

Cat stood beside him. She hadn’t let him out of her grasp since their talk in the Scottish bedroom. She was still angry at him for the secrets he held from her, but Helen’s loss put things in perspective—a dark foreshadowing of what Cat might experience soon enough. Lelani leaned against the tree, drawing in its healing energies and recuperating from her injuries. Seth brooded in his own lonely corner.

Ben’s children had argued with their mother that he needed to be autopsied and then put to rest with his ancestors at the family cemetery in Puerto Rico. But Helen would hear nothing of it. Ben had been caretaker of the world’s only sentient tree … the world’s last wizard. There were greater traditions to uphold.

It was a beautiful service. A local minister who knew of Ben’s special circumstances led the service. He added elements into the service that reminded Cal of the Druid culture back home. Ben’s children each read from scripture. They sang hymns. His body had been anointed with lavender oil and wrapped in a clean white linen. He was placed directly into the earth without a coffin. In time, his flesh would become part of the meadow, and those who knew him in life would always feel his presence in this place. The Reyes children looked at Cal and his group as intruders who brought carnage to their parents’ home. The bodies of men and monsters were still strewn about the meadow when the children had arrived. Cal and Seth had spent the rest of the morning throwing them into a pyre. They worried that the lingering smell of burnt flesh would pollute the ceremony, but a timely warm breeze cleared the air at the last moment. No doubt, the tree’s doing. The kids hadn’t said anything to Cal, but he knew they blamed him for their father’s death. He agreed with them; another burden to carry.

Cal had gone to too many funerals in his day—too many fallen comrades on both worlds. It was part of being a soldier, a protector. As a young man, duty and honor motivated him. This conflict was not a job, though … it was about family. It was everything he held dear in the universe thrown like dice into a cosmic crapshoot of war and peace. So many pieces in flux. How could he possibly make it all right?

Seth was taking the death especially hard. He sat on a fold-out chair next to the trailer, smoking a cigarette, contemplating the grass. Seth hadn’t spoken since Cal found him huddled with Helen and Ben. The cop couldn’t understand it. The boy had no conscience, and yet he was broken up over a man he knew barely a day. He wished he could expel him from the mission, but Lelani insisted that Seth had a purpose. She had faith in her old teacher’s decision.

The Reyes family headed back to Puerto Rico via the conduit, leaving the four of them alone. Lelani took out the lead canister Cal had found on the mage and turned it in her hand. Seth joined them, looking worriedly at the canister and its bright yellow and black markings.

“Well?” Cal prompted.

“It does not bode well,” Lelani said.

“Our ‘bodings’ always suck,” Seth said.

Cal gave Seth a stern look, and Seth dropped the attitude.

“There are certain forbidden magicks in Aandor,” Lelani continued. “They are carefully monitored by wizard councils in every kingdom. I believe Dorn is taking advantage of the lack of oversight here to engage these taboo sorceries.”

“And he needs plutonium?” Cat asked.

“These spells are unique. They cannot be powered by normal means. They need irradiated elements—radium, uranium—as catalysts. These are accelerators and increase the magic’s potency exponentially.”

“But…,” prodded Cal.

“But they are unpredictable; unstable. The energies can get away from sorcerer’s control in the blink of an eye. Mages have killed thousands, entire villages, trying to harness this kind of power. No one has successfully tamed it. And this is with the elements we know of. We have no enrichment processes in Aandor. I have no idea how plutonium will react to magical energies. This world is in grave danger.”

“That’s just fantastic,” said Seth. “A psychotic megalomaniac has found a way to supercharge his magic spells.”

“Who is supposed to fight this guy?” Cat asked. “Didn’t you say you’re still just a student?”

Lelani looked at Seth.

Seth pointed at her accusingly. “No way!”

“It’s us and Rosencrantz,” Lelani explained. “You have to come up to speed and relearn how to wield magic. What we lack in power and experience, we must make up in numbers.”

Seth looked morbid at the prospect.

Cal took a deep breath and tried to look commanding. “We still have a mission to find the prince,” he said in his most confident voice. “He’s out there and in serious trouble. Dorn is trying to find him before we do. There are a few towns nearby. I’ll check their records to see what happened the night we all came through thirteen years ago. We also have the other members of our party waking up from their long sleep. Most will honor their obligations. We need to make ourselves accessible to them—help them. They will have families. Cat, I want you to come up with a strategy to help the guardians’ families cope with this disruption to their lives. You’re best suited for that. Once we find a trail, we’ll divvy up the tasks according to our resources at the time. We’ll figure out how to save the world along the way.”

Seth remained bothered by his role in Cal’s grand scheme. “I can’t fight wizards and dog-men,” he pleaded. “I just can’t.”

“You did fine last night,” Cal said, coming dangerously close to a compliment.

“I’m a pornographer,” Seth insisted. “I can’t save the world.”