Blessed (17 page)

She closed her eyes and bowed her head in prayer. Her body relaxed and she opened her heart to His wisdom, letting Him know that she was in need of His guidance.

After several minutes of not feeling the sense of direction she was used to receiving during prayer, she started to get frustrated. She sent the prayer out into the universe again, this time with a little more urgency, and waited for a response.

Several minutes passed and still no response. She went into panic mode. Praying fervently and outright begging for guidance, tears and all.

After getting no response for the third time she grew angry. She rose to her feet and stomped her way across her room and threw the door open.

Kaiser was sitting on the other side of the threshold and staring up at her with what she could only define as puppy dog eyes, hoping he was forgiven.

His expression changed to one of fear as soon as she opened her mouth.

“What did they do to me?” She shouted at him. “Never in my whole life have I not received guidance and peace from praying! Never! All of a sudden all I’m getting out of it is a panic attack and a whole lot of anger!”

She loomed over him as if waiting for a response.

She let out a frustrated growl when, instead of answering her, he slumped to the ground with his tail between his legs and pressed his ears to the side of his head.

She slammed the door again and left him lying in the hall.

As she paced around her room trying to figure out what she was going to do next, her phone rang. She read the caller ID which read ‘Brother Williams‘ across the display. She took a deep breath so as not to sound panicked when she answered.

“Hello?” She answered.

“Ardra? Hi. It’s Brother Williams. Sorry to call so late. Did I wake you?”

“No Ben, I was up. What can I help you with?” She fought to keep the frustration out of her voice.

“Well, Bishop Stauffer asked me to call you and see if he could swing by for a few minutes. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. He seemed pretty out of sorts when I talked to him.”

That piqued her interest. What could her bishop possibly have to say to her that couldn’t wait until morning?

“Sure Ben, tell him I’ll be waiting for him at the front door.”

“Okay. Ardra?”

He waited for her to respond.

“Yeah Ben?”

“Everything ok? It’s been a weird night and I feel pretty out of the loop.”

“Yeah. Everything is fine over here.” She lied.

“You sure? You sounded a bit like Bishop Stauffer had when he called.”

“It’s been a pretty quiet night here Ben. I’m fine. Just a little tired is all.”

“Okay.” He said after a pregnant pause, “I better call him back and let him know you’ll be waiting.”

The line went dead and she set her phone down on her desk. She pulled the necklace off and tossed it, and the hair that was still sitting next to the box on the floor, back in her bottom drawer. She slid it shut with her foot and opened the door to the still-cowering Kaiser.

“Outside. Now.” Was all she had to say to him.

She followed him down the stairs and clipped the leash to his collar before tying it to the leg of the patio table.

She involuntarily slammed the back door closed and took a deep breath when she realized how flustered she still was. She didn’t want the bishop to think she was losing her mind when he arrived.

She turned on the faucet in the kitchen, splashed some cold water on her face and tightened her pony tail.

The doorbell rang as she was patting her face dry with the towel.

She tossed the towel on the counter and said to the empty room, “That was fast.”

She opened the door to a very hassled looking Bishop Stauffer.

“Sorry to bother you so late, Ardra. May I come in?”

“Nobody else is here right now. My parents are out of town.”

“I know. And under normal circumstances, I would have sent one of the sisters over. Unfortunately, we’re well outside of the realm of normal.”

“Well, that fits right in with the last couple weeks.”

She stepped out of the way and motioned him into the living room.

“Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything? A drink maybe?”

“No, no. I’m fine.” The distraught bishop responded.

He took off his jacket and draped it across his knees as he sat down on the couch and asked, “Would you sit with me please?” He patted the cushion next to him in an attempt to be welcoming.

There was an overwhelming sense of panic clawing its way through her stomach. She took a seat next to him and tried her best to stay calm as the man visibly arranged his thoughts.

“I’m afraid there’s no easy way to say this, Ardra. So I’m just going to have to come right out with it. I’m sorry there is no way to soften a blow like this, but another temple has been reduced to ash and your parents are missing.”

He wrung his hands together and searched her placid face for a reaction before continuing, “The last time they were seen, they were inside of the temple. I’m so sorry.”

She mustered every ounce of strength she had and used it to keep herself together until she saw him out and watched him disappear around the corner.

She went back inside, closed the door behind her and broke down.

The dark tentacles that erupted from inside of her whipped around the room in a frenzy, cutting a swath of destruction across the pretty surfaces of her mother’s perfectly designed living room.

Everything that got in her way was reduced to a pile of ash.

Exactly like my parents.
She thought as she fell to her knees.

The Chaos around her raged on, leaving her powerless in its grip. She watched as piece by piece, the monster inside of her erased all traces of her mother’s delicate touch from the room.

When there was nothing left to be seen of her parents, she collapsed in a heap and everything went dark.

The darkness retreated back inside of her and left her incoherent and sobbing amidst the Chaos.

He sensed that Chaos was near. Very near.

He focused his senses on locating the source of the power he was picking up on. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he turned to face the door. It was coming from inside the house.

He panicked at the thought of that vile creature being under the same roof as Ardra. He started barking furiously and tugging at the infernal leash that tethered him barely out of reach of the door. Each leap he took was futile and ended up with the collar he was wearing crushing his windpipe.

A change in tactic was in order. He turned around and started using his teeth to saw through the thick material of the leash. It was a slow process and every second that passed felt like an eternity. The strength of the chaotic energy grew by the second.

He gave up trying to chew through the leash and went back to barking and tugging against it.

The pressure the collar was putting on his throat suddenly released as the leash gave way. He propelled himself towards the door, throwing his entire weight into the closed portal. Barking and scratching furiously at the door didn’t get him far at all, so he forced himself to calm down a little bit and think like a human instead of an animal.

The handle!

It was one of those fancy ones instead of a round knob. He sent a silent thank you out into the Universe and jumped up on his hind legs.

As his front paws came down on the tile floor of the kitchen, he used every sense he had to try to get a grasp on what was going on. He didn’t
see
Chaos, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. It was a big house after all.

A few seconds later his brain kicked in and broke through the confusion. He no longer felt Chaos’ presence. A different kind of panic burrowed into his stomach. What if he was too late?

He used his hyper-sensitive nose to sniff at the air, his olfactory nerves sifting through the scents and relaying their meanings to his brain. Her scent was coming from the living room.

He walked around the corner nervously, afraid to find her body lying lifeless in the middle of the floor. There was no way he could have prepared himself for what he found instead.

Sitting in the middle of the floor, head bent, shoulders heaving, was Ardra. The smells flowing off of her ran the gamut from anger to fear to sadness and back again. All around her was destruction. This was a sight he had been prepared for. Knowing what was in the works and all that was at stake, he had expected to see another scene or two exactly like it before the fight was over.

He had not, however, expected to see this scene with no signs of Chaos having been present and his charge sitting in the midst of the ash. Everything in the room had been destroyed. There were sections of sheet rock missing, having been reduced to ash as well. Piles of the thick sediment gathered in piles around the room, marking the places where all the pretty things had stood.

His real problem with the scene was the fact that Ardra was alive and Chaos was nowhere to be found. There was no way she had
accidentally
defeated him. It simply wasn’t possible. While she was incredibly strong, she had no idea what she was capable of or how to fight against him. He had a long way to go before he could be comfortable with her even being in the same state as that monster.

He slowly padded across the charcoal colored floor to her side. He lie down next to her and nudged her foot with his nose to let her know that he was there. She didn’t make a move to acknowledge him, so he didn’t push it. He wasn’t sent from the room, so he decided that she must be working towards forgiving him.

He let a single whine form in his throat and remained completely still while she continued to sob quietly to herself.

Eventually, her hand found that magical spot right between his ears and scratched softly.

After several minutes of absent scratching, she finally said, “I’m sorry for earlier Kaiser. I guess I can only handle so much weird coming at me before I snap. My whole world being rocked at its foundation was a little more than I was willing to deal with.” She took a deep, shaky breath at that point before going on. “However, it’s just you and me now, and I have a feeling you’re the only one with any answers for me.”

He licked her hand softly and did his best to comfort her.

After several minutes, she stood from the floor and brushed her knees off. She walked from the living room to the kitchen and sat at the well lit dinner table. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and mashed at the buttons for a few seconds before dropping it onto the table and taking another deep breath.

He could only imagine what she had gone through in that room, yet every passing moment he saw more of her normal self return.

With one major difference: There was a hardness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. A resolve that spoke tomes about how different she really had become due to whatever had happened.

He cocked his head to the side and looked up at her, wishing now more than ever that he could talk to her. He needed answers.

She picked up on his body language and said, “I just sent Piper a text and told her she needed to get here ASAP. For most of our lives, they were her parents, too. She needs to know.”

Her parents. Of course. His heart broke for her as the weight of the news settled onto his shoulders.

Ardra cast a glance toward the living room and he smelled the fear flow off of her in a quick wave before she picked up the phone again. “I better tell her to use the back door.”

She caught a glance of her reflection in the glass of the window and made a face. He jumped up on his hind legs and put his paws on her chair and licked her cheek, leaving a clean streak and making her laugh.

The sound relaxed a few of the knots out of his stomach.

“Yeah, I better wash up. I don’t want to scare her to death when she gets here either. I look like I just escaped from a burning building!”

The woman stood and jogged up the stairs.

Kaiser walked through the still open back door and did a quick patrol of the yard. With no fence surrounding the property, he didn’t like how vulnerable the house was.

After checking the entire property and sniffing every rock and tree, he was confident that nobody else had been there without his knowing. He had picked up on the musky odor of the man that had come to speak to Ardra about her parents. He had smelled Ardra’s trail from the door to the mailbox and even the rapidly fading scent of her parents that had been left on the front porch, but nobody else.

His nose wasn’t the only tool at work; He had also been running all of his other senses to the maximum, trying to feel for anything that left an imprint anywhere. Both physical and Astral clues were being logged for future reference.

As he sauntered through the back door, careful to remove as much snow as he could from his paws, Ardra came down the stairs with a fresh outfit on and methodically drying her hair with a towel. He stopped in his tracks and took her in. She was tense and guarded, but still oozed strength and dignity.

She was built to handle what was to come.

She didn’t realize it yet, but she was slowly becoming the woman that would, with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, save the world.