Re: Episode 1.04: Aces and Eights
Pieran’s pain had reached an all new level in bad and he was exhausted beyond anything he’d ever known. He spent ninety minutes getting dressed, taking care to look his best. He even took a shave and with his straight razor in trembling hand, performed the most meticulous personal hygiene in his life. Not a nick.
It was late but that didn’t guarantee there’d be no owls in the mansion. Avoiding his neighbors would be tricky since Iain didn’t need sleep and Johnny kept chronic watch. Alexis was an insomniac of sorts so he’d have to creep past her as well. He planned his exit through the kitchen; if he was caught wandering he could claim a craving for classic PB&J with milk. Nobody would doubt the word of a boy scout, even an overdeveloped one - except possibly Iona with her damned telepathy. It was frustrating: there were just too many gifted people in Cornerstone to make his departure easy.
On the other hand that was a good thing. Pieran didn’t have any really great gifts himself which meant that Cornerstone didn’t really need him. Therefore: adieu Captain Dunsel? No great loss.
Fortunately, reaching his beloved panel truck was easier than expected since his left arm was now fully paralyzed and the pain searing through his nervous system threatened to topple him. Even his analgesic self-disciplines were running on fumes. He fumbled with the keys, fighting away the blurs, but a familiar aroma of spiced tea in the cool air made him freeze.
“Careful. You go sneaking off with the truck without permission and you’re liable to find yourself grounded.” Raven rounded the corner, her ever present thermal mug in hand.
“There’s somewhere I must go,” Pieran said, “something I must do now and alone.”
“You should be in bed, you’re in pain.”
“Pain is a thing of the mind, doctor. The mind can be controlled.”
Raven shook her head. “That’s assuming you have one. Right now, I’d say you’re way out of yours.”
Pieran simply turned away from her and unlocked the driver’s door. “I… I have to go.” He tried to pass the keys to the hand on his injured arm so he could open the door with his good arm, but the keys slipped from the limp, unmoving fingers and fell to the ground.
Raven snatched them up before he had a chance to react. “You’re half paralyzed, you’re in no condition to drive!”
“Raven please,” he implored her. “There’s something I must do.”
She studied his face. With a look of defeat she said, “Alright, but I’m driving.”
Creve Coeur Lake looked much the same as when they last saw it, but calmer now and without demon debris. Pieran was eerily withdrawn as his eyes scanned the lake’s placid black surface. He moved closer toward it. Raven tried to help him, but he shook his arm free and she let him go. Though his gait was labored, he moved curiously well. She remained near the truck, its headlights burning the midnight oil. He stopped half way between the vehicle and the lake, standing silent and motionless for a long time. “The scene of the crime…” His words were a barely audible whisper.
Raven rubbed her arms and shivered against the cold. The dark air was chillier than at the mansion. Pieran didn’t seem to notice. “My father’s father was a structural engineer,” he said, his voice stronger now. “When his son was a boy he would read to him The Adventures of Tom Swift. Later my father would read the very same stories to me. In fact my middle name, Thomas, was my father’s first name.”
Raven smiled slightly. “So your love of books was born in your childhood and your tool savvy comes from your grandfather.”
Pieran looked over his shoulder and smiled a friendly smile back at Raven. “You like knowing the origins of things.”
She nodded. “Things, artifacts, relics.”
“That’s me,” he said. “A relic whose time has come and gone.” Pieran returned his gaze to the lake as he continued to speak. “A twenty-two year old Cheyenne native called ‘Stands In The River,’ was murdered by the Whites at the Sand Creek massacre of 1864. He was an exorcist, healer, and spiritual warrior who fought wind devils and evil spirits.”
“81 AD. Flavia Silvanus, twenty-seven: a ‘voice mystic’ whose melodies could charm the birds from the trees. Her speeches opposing Rome made her a criminal and she was sentenced to death. Titus cut out her tongue and dropped her in the Coliseum where his leopards devoured her.” Pieran paused, deep in thought. His voice was quiet when he finally spoke again. “So many others…”
A small zephyr stirred the fallen leaves. They danced lightly around Pieran’s feet before resting on the ground with gathered attention. Raven too watched and listened intently as he continued speaking.
“Pieran Thomas Swift, thirty years old; neither a wizard or a doctor, neither a soldier or a priest. An urn containing - not the cinders, but the souls of heroes and heroines past. From their voices he gained wisdom, strength, and character. But one repays a teacher badly if one always remains a student. So he became the Captain of their ship, and they were his constant companions. Together, they made war when that was the occasion; sang, wrote poems, and smoked a pipe when those were the occasions. They ventured on a journey to quell the evil that preyed on mankind. Through him they fought, loved, and fulfilled destiny. Through them he lived what some only dream of.”
Raven frowned as she took a few tentative steps behind Pieran and began to close the distance between them. She wasn’t comfortable with the direction his thoughts and words were taking.
“Pieran sought to fuse the souls within him into one voice, one wisdom, one conscience united. It was his Holy Grail. But, like the champions dwelling within him, his quest was cut short. A winged demon resembling an angel lured him with an embrace that folded around him like a feather bed - it was soft, warm, and made him feel safe. His spiritual collective had never given him that. But the angel was a deceiver. Her blade struck his body and her venom poisoned his heart. With one blow, thirteen eagles fell.”
His pain was ferocious and every word taxed him. “Much is expected from whom much is given. But I can’t anymore, Raven. I lost the Grail here at Creve Couer.” Pieran clutched the silver cross that hung from his neck. “Hope was lost. Only one thing remains.” A quick tug snapped the neck-chain and, with a pained yell, he hurled the slender pendant toward the lake. He was too weak to throw it far. It landed at the lake’s edge with a small splash. He whispered in a harsh, raspy voice, like reeds rustling in the wind, “If the enemy be unconquered, deny them victory.”
“Pieran, what are you doing?” Raven stepped into his view, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
He was exhausted. His words came haltingly and with great suffering. “I should have died on this battlefield. It was my time, but she made a mockery of me. I DO NOT ACCEPT IT! I will not live as her crawling decrepit creature. I will not suffer her mocking laughter through my veins.” He shouted at the lake with a great and terrifying voice. “Do you hear me, Erinyes? I decide how I want to live! And I decide how I will die. My name is Pieran Thomas Swift and I will be damned before I let you swallow these spirits. They belong to me; I decide their fate, not you, not anyone! And if I should fall into hell for it, then may my teeth be forever at your throat.” He lowered his arm to reach for something while his gaze remained fixed on the lake.
Raven’s eyes followed the movement of his hand to his boot sheath, the one he’d carefully crafted with a needle of deer bone. The repaired sheath now housed a wicked looking, oriental dagger. “Pieran, no!” Raven exclaimed.
He retrieved the Japanese Tanto and gripped it in his hand. “Here now eagles, fly once more.”
“I am not going to stand here and let you kill yourself!” Raven grabbed his hand in an attempt to disarm him. She briefly felt the warmth of his skin and the coldness of the weapon in her grasp, and then time seemed to stand still as she was flooded with images…
Running. She was running across a roof flooded with rain, the dagger held tightly in her hand. Strands of dark hair whipped across her face. The hair felt strange to Raven - too long. The exit lay just ahead, but so did the Thing that was hunting her. Raven crouched behind an air conditioner casing. She needed a distraction. She whispered something to the impassive steel of her final throwing star and, with a quick flip of her wrist, hurled it toward a jumble of steam pipes. Her shot was perfect, slicing into rusted metal. The pipe erupted in a geyser of steam. She heard the Thing snarl and move toward it.
Seizing her chance, Raven raced toward the exit, only to find the door fused and frozen shut. A glob of acrid gel dribbled from the lever and onto the roof, hissing as it spilled into the fresh rainwater. She looked back toward the venting steam. A monstrous shape pushed its bulky mass through the roiling clouds and would soon be upon her. There was nowhere else to go. Raven wiped the flat of her blade on her pants, cleaning the Tanto of the oily black blood that still dripped from it - evidence that she had succeeded in defeating one of her targets. Now she readied herself to plunge that same weapon into her own heart. Defeat on her terms was an honorable escape and far better than capture and death at the clutches of the demon clan she’d come to slay. Yet as Raven lifted the blade, she saw a flash of something long and thin cross in front of her. A slimy appendage hit her arm with terrible force. She heard the crack more than she felt it as her arm snapped, and the dagger fell from her limp fingers.
The image abruptly shifted, as if someone had changed the channel.
She was standing on the same roof, but the sky was darker now and broken by lightning flashing in the clouds. A beautiful Japanese woman with long, black hair hung in the ropey coil of a proto demon’s tendril, held aloft over the edge of the 40-story Tsuchihana Building. The woman’s right hand dangled lifelessly from an arm that was bent in a painful and unnatural way. Raven once again held the Tanto, but her hand felt different now - larger. Looking down she saw that her skin was covered in dark scales and the fingers that gripped the dagger now resembled claws. Raven shifted her gaze from the weapon she held to the dark smear on the woman’s pants. The thoughts that raced through Raven’s mind were alien and hard to understand, but the emotion was unmistakable - pure hatred. Raven shouted something in a guttural speech no human tongue could imitate. The woman simply looked at her captor with a crooked and sardonic smile. Raven knew in that moment that she wanted the girl to die a horrific death, now and at once. She lifted the helpless girl into the sky and with another unintelligible phrase, shouted an unholy invocation. A bolt of lightning shot from the clouds, incinerating the human female. Raven savored her screams.
The images stopped as abruptly as they had started, but the feelings they brought forth lingered with Raven. Her hand was still entangled with Pieran’s as they both gripped the dagger. She looked at his face. A crooked, sardonic smile formed on his lips. Then with strength she thought he no longer possessed, he pried her loose and tossed her aside like a doll. “Pieran, stop!” But then Raven realized, Pieran was no longer the one in control.
He took the blade of the Tanto and wiped it across his pants, in a gesture that looked all too familiar to Raven. “I will not let you kill him! This is his life, not yours!” She aimed her fist at Pieran and shouted, “Epausa!” But nothing happened. “Damn it!” Raven felt helpless as she watched him press the point of the deadly blade against his heart. “Rakurai!” The Japanese word for lightning screeched from her lips, a scream of desperation and rage.
Pieran froze and looked back over his shoulder, sudden fright filling his eyes. Then, all at once, whatever had seized him vanished. His knees buckled as he fell to the ground and the dagger dropped from his hand. Raven rushed to his side, taking the weapon and throwing it as hard as she could outside his reach. But she needn’t have bothered. His last reserve was spent and he collapsed against her, racked with heartbroken grief.
“I am going to find a cure to this hellish poison and you are going to stay alive long enough to let me do it.” Raven sounded almost angry as she held him in her arms. “So everyone lurking in that head of yours better be paying attention, because I don’t want anymore trouble out of any of them. No more noble self-destruction. You people want more opportunities to slay demons? Then you leave him the hell alone and let me do my work!”
His sobbing diminished and she could feel the tension leave his body. He relaxed against her and she spoke gentler, mopping his brow of icy sweat. “As for you, Pieran Thomas Swift, here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.”
Pieran turned his head to look at her face, his tired, wet eyes wide with surprise.
“From the book Illusions, by Richard Bach,” Raven said, almost smugly. “I go to a bookstore everyday. Did you really think I would not look up the book you quoted me?” She smiled at him and, as he nodded, he couldn’t help but give her a weak smile in return.