Birthrights (11 page)

Jax backed away from the door up against the bed.
"Just a human,' she thought. Reality suddenly dawned on her. She
had melled something strange in the garage, the musty animal scent,
it was Rick. 'Oh God,' she thought. 'What do I know about Lycans?
Not a damn thing, but if I get out of this I am definitely gonna
learn everything I can!' She looked around and remembered her sword
on the wall beside her. She used her dagger to slice her dress
further up so she could move better. Then she replaced the dagger
with the sword on the wall. She knew she was going to have to keep
her distance from him and a dagger was only good for up and close
and personal.

Jax kicked off her heels as Rick knocked lightly on
the door. "Little pig, little pig, let me in..." he mocked the
children's story. He let out a guttural laugh that sounded more
like a growl. The door burst in and there he stood. Rick's eyes
were glowing, his face was contorting – the disfigurement no longer
just a play of light. He was beginning to change in front of her.
Rick took several steps towards her and continued his
transformation.

At that moment, something in Jax shifted. Whatever
had been awakened in her early wanted out and it wasn't going to
take no for an answer. Her body tightened and her breath stopped in
her lungs. Everything went silent. It was as if the world stopped
moving for just a split second. Jax closed her eyes briefly to give
herself a mental shake. When she looked up again at Rick, her
vision was different. She could see him fully covered in fur, face
like a wolf, glowing eyes, and much bigger and muscular than he'd
ever been. His clothes were in pieces around him. But there was
something else, she could hear his heartbeat and see his blood
flowing inside of him. Jaxon could smell his blood, his anger, his
excitement at what he thought he was going to do. She took all
those things in within a matter of seconds. The world had slowed
down, all except for her.

Rick growled showing huge sharp teeth and drool
dripped from his jaws. Jaxon looked right at the lycan version of
Rick, "I am so not tongue kissing you." He lunged. Jax spun left
and felt the sting of his claws as he made contact with her back.
Using the bed as a spring, she bounced up and behind him. Raising
her sword she slashed as she moved past him. Rick roared and swiped
at her. She stood facing him again, holding the sword up so that he
could see his own blood dripping down the blade.

Rick's inability to gain control over his own anger
had always been his downfall. Jax was using that against him now.
He jumped at her again. For Jaxon, time slowed down again. She felt
like she was leisurely walking out of the way, as if she had all
the time in the world to move. In reality, it was less than a
second and she was behind him again. Rick turned, confused that he
had not made contact with his prey.

Jax was confused too, but her body seemed to be on
auto-pilot and it would not stop to allow her to figure things out.
She would have to work it out on her own later. She took the
opportunity, the moment of confusion had brought, and swung her
blade from right to left. Rick howled and grabbed his mid-section.
Blood poured down through his arms. He roared at the pain and
lunged at her again. Jax jumped straight up and brought her sword
down and through the back of Rick's neck. His body fell limply onto
the floor, reverting back to its human form, with her straddled
over top of it. Jax thought she heard something from behind her and
she wheeled around in a defensive stance before she could even
think about what she was doing. The room was empty, save herself,
the dead body beneath her, and the piece of paper that was slowly
flitting its way to the floor from the bookshelf that stood beside
the doorway. Someone or something had been in the room a moment
ago. Her body sensed no more danger, and while she didn't
understand that feeling, she knew that she had to trust herself.
Jaxon stood up to her full height and looked around her apartment.
Blood was spattered everywhere, the dead body of her ex-boyfriend
lay beneath her, while drops of his blood rolled down her sword and
ticked their way onto the floor beside her. She took a deep breath
and all she could smell was the sweet metallic scent of blood
mingled with the musty odor of dog. 'Now is not the time to go into
shock, Jax.' she thought to herself. 'Get your things, get out, and
get to Caislyn. She will know what to do.'

Jaxon grabbed her bag, shoved in jeans, some t-shirts
and underwear. Then she grabbed her brush and toothbrush and her
file of important papers. She grabbed a second bag and threw in
some daggers and a few blades. She looked around wondering where
her purse was. Then it hit her, it was in the garage, she'd have to
get it on her way out. After grabbing some shoes Jaxon ran
downstairs to the garage to grab her purse and go.

The garage was silent. The bodies of both of Rick's
friends were gone. Her purse was laying near the front tire of the
Pontiac that she had watched Mr. Crew Cut fly over. The wall of the
garage still held the evidence of his demise. Hesitantly, she
dropped down picked up her purse and turned to run. Her car was
only a few parking spots away. Jaxon hit the unlock mechanism on
her key chain and dove into her Nissan Sentra as she got to it. She
immediately locked the doors behind her. She knew these silly locks
and doors would do nothing to keep her safe, but she could live
with the delusion as long as it got her away quickly. The car was
started and reversing out of the parking space before she even
realized she had done it.

As she put the car in drive and tore out of the
garage she was also calling Caislyn on her cell. Caislyn
answered before the first ring finished, “What happened?"

"Oh my God, it was awful! Wait, how did you know
something happened? Never mind. I'm..."

"You're coming here, now." Case said finishing Jax’s
sentence as usual.

"Yeah, I'll be right over. You are not going to
believe anything I tell you."

"Wanna bet?"

***

Flickering Flames

Caislyn was already waiting downstairs in the
bookstore when Jaxon arrived. She quickly opened the door and
stepped aside to allow Jax to enter. The poor girl was shaking so
hard you would have thought it was freezing outside instead of the
unseasonably warm weather that was hovering over their town.
Caislyn reached out and grabbed hold of Jax in a one armed hug as
she shut and secured the door.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Caislyn asked as she
looked her friend over for any signs of her having been injured. It
was at that moment, while she looked Jaxon over that Caislyn
realized this person, her friend, was so much more. 'I would be
just as devastated if anything ever happened to her as I was when
my parents disappeared,' she thought. She hadn't waited for Jax to
answer her, she just started guiding her to the back of the store.
"Let's go upstairs and get you a drink."

Jax dropped her bags and began heading toward the
stairs, she turned back around when she noticed Caislyn had let go
of her and had turned to physically make sure the door was
locked.

“Why don't you just do some magic flip of the wrist
to lock the door, I've seen you do that before,” she asked
Caislyn.

“The act of physically doing something holds a
stronger weight than magically doing it. You are putting both your
mental and physical weight behind a lock when you perform the task
this way. Upstairs I am not as worried about things because of the
double locks down here and the wards that increase on each floor of
the building.” As Caislyn caught up to her she continued to
explain, “this is why when you want a spell to be potent you
actually cast the circle and perform all the ceremony that goes
with it, instead of doing it mentally. It adds more strength
to the spell."

"Oh," Jaxon responded, thinking it over in her head.
"I guess that makes sense."

"Let's go, we'll talk when we get up there." Caislyn
turned and looked at the door behind her once more. "I will feel
more secure talking upstairs after what happened, and I know you
will too."

Jaxon sat on the couch in the living room while
Caislyn went to make some hot chocolate, laced with butterscotch
schnapps. When she returned with the two steaming mugs she noticed
Jaxon was fervently looking around the room for something. Caislyn
simply handed the mug to Jax and sat in the chair opposite her.

"Jax, what are you looking for?" Caislyn asked before
she continued to sip from her own mug.

"Where are they?" Jaxon asked, almost breathlessly.
She was breathing heavily, her blood was pumping so fast she felt a
rush of pressure in her head and knew she needed to calm herself,
but she also needed answers, because this night had been her worst
nightmare come true. Well, except for the fact that she wasn't sure
how it had turned out differently than the nightmares that always
awoke her in her sleep.

Caislyn looked questioningly to her friend, "where
are who, Jax?"

"Not who." She said turning back toward Caislyn,
"where are the sketches? You said you had already seen what had
happened, so there must be sketches, right?"

"Oh!" Caislyn sat her mug down on one of the coasters
that were haphazardly tossed about her living room tables. She got
up and walked to her bedroom. The brand new pad sat on the
nightstand beside her bed, still opened to the last image she saw
in her visions before she woke up. After doing research so early in
the day about her parent's whereabouts, Caislyn had fallen asleep
earlier than she normally did. Apparently that was enough to get
her in dreamland in time to start sketching what Jaxon was
encountering, because thirty minutes later she was sitting up in
her bed, asleep and sketching. As soon as her consciousness
realized it was Jax that she was sketching, she was brought out of
her reverie and stopped sketching, so the last one in the series
was incomplete. It hadn't been until Jaxon called that Caislyn knew
how the fight ended, it was also the reason Caislyn had been so
shaken. She hadn't know if she had lost another person in her life.
Caislyn took the pad into her shaking hands and walked back to the
living room and handed it over to Jaxon.

Jax mumbled a quick thank you to Caislyn before
flipping to the beginning of the book and looking through the
sketches Caislyn had done. She quickly flipped through the pages,
disappointed at only seeing four sketches and the last one didn't
even look finished. She turned back to the first page again,
needing to see the details of what had happened to her. It was a
bit surreal to stare at a moment of time in her life, frozen in the
charcoal and graphite on a page, especially when that moment had
come and gone so quickly in her own eyes. Jaxon jumped back as the
images on the page finally started making sense and she saw Rick
standing there wide-eyed and so realistic she thought he might walk
off the page and attack her again. 'That can't happen,' she thought
to herself, 'I took his head, he won't be coming back this
time.'

"Jax, you don't have to do this right now. It's too
much, after what you just went through, let's just sit and talk for
a bit." Caislyn eyed her friend, concern showing in the lines
forming across her brow. She tried to reach for the sketch book,
"here, let me take that for now."

"No!" Jaxon yelped as she pulled the sketch pad
closer to herself. "I want to see it the way you saw it." A far-off
look crossed her face, a veil, covering the torment that lay
beneath it. "I have to know. I need to know that I didn't just
imagine it, that it's finally over." She remembered how things,
bodies, were missing when she was leaving and she didn't want to
believe that it was just some sort of psychotic break on her part.
If it was in these sketches then it really did happen. She looked
down at her hands, "besides, I have to know..." in looking back up
at Caislyn, her friend was able to see the pain and all the
questions as they showed themselves in the emotions she wore. "I
have to know what I am, because no human could move the way I
did."

Caislyn understood then that while this was about
Rick and what Jaxon had gone through, it was also about Jaxon
needing to know who she was. "Sweetie, I don't think those sketches
are going to give you the answers you're looking for. It's too
much. There are other ways to find out and this one is just so
painful. Are you sure you want to do this, right now?"

Jaxon was clearly shaking as she turned the page in
the book, there she saw the fight taking place in the garage, where
she was dealing with the first guy. “I don't even know who this
is,” she said blankly, “This isn't one of the guys Rick used to
hang out with.” She turned the page again, this time she took
longer trying to understand what was happening in the
sketch. It was as if her mind would not allow her to see the
entire picture at once, for fear of damaging itself further. “This,
there is something not right about this one.”

“What do you mean,” Caislyn got up and walked over to
sit next to Jax on the couch. She looked over her arm at the
sketch, “oh, there was a lot of movement in this scene. I think
it's a bit hard to capture when you are looking at a
sketch. Let me show you what is happening, as I saw it.”
Caislyn began tracing her fingers over the sketch, “This is you and
you were moving pretty damn fast, which is why these charcoal
streaked areas are trailing behind you. Think of it as the pieces
of you that have to catch up with the whole.” She pointed off to
the side, where Jax had just stabbed the stocky guy, “This is the
guy you just stabbed.” She sighed and watched as Jax took a
steadying breath, “This blur here, was another man, I guess. He was
moving way to fast for me to catch in the sketch as anything other
than a blur, but he was definitely helping you out. He took out
this guy over here, while you were running upstairs.”