Blessed (24 page)

They all sat in silence, waiting for someone else to put out the first idea. Piper sat slouched in an overstuffed armchair, hands in her pockets, staring at some invisible spot somewhere between her nose and the coffee table at her knees. Barb was poised on the edge of her chair, back straight, hands idly picking at her jeans and eyes darting back and forth from the Bishop and herself. The Bishop, accustomed to being a leader, seemed completely out of his element without having something to put on the table for them to build on.

She took a deep breath as she gathered her thoughts before opening her mouth. “I think we can agree that none of us wanted this for Ardra. We’ve also got to admit that we all knew there was a possibility, if not probability, that it was going to happen whether we wanted it to or not. Now it has happened and I’ve lost two children to this bastard. I’m not about to let him take my granddaughter. We need to hold him off as long as possible. I don’t care if that means we have to lay down our own lives in the process.”

The others nodded in agreement.

Having had her opening statement go over without objection, she continued. “We know that he’s going after the orbs and gathering information on us. We know that he’s found three of them so far and they’re leading him straight here. There are two left between his last known location and the one here. All we have to do is get us a map and look at the most likely surface routes he would take. The time between attacks leads me to believe that he’s using more traditional means of travel to conserve energy, so major highways and interstates are probably our best bet for locating him and at the very least, throwing a few speed bumps in his path.”

Again, nods all around.

They sat for a moment, each deep in their own thoughts, before the bishop shook himself from his reverie and announced that he’d go get the map out of his glove box.

Left alone to their own thoughts, the three women sat in silence for several minutes before Piper rose and started talking, presumably for no other reason than to to drown out the ticking of the clock on the wall.

“When the Council came to our house when I was 4 and told us that we were needed in Salt Lake, I was terrified. I didn’t want to leave my home and I was scared that my parents wouldn’t let me bring my toys. When I started school here the following year, I was again, terrified. Then I met Ardra on that first day of Kindergarten. We clicked so deeply that even then I knew being without her would probably kill me. A few years later, the Council came to us again and told us
why
they had moved us here. I laughed at them when they told me that it was my duty to keep Ardra safe. I had already accepted that role as her best friend and done so many times over the years. When they told me who she was and what her role could be in all of this, I didn’t doubt it for a moment. For years, I’ve seen in her a kind of subtle power. Something that draws people to her and makes them feel comfortable. Sure, the thought of her going up against some big nasty from another plane of existence scared the crap out of me, but I knew that with her and I together, we could do anything. Now that we’ve both grown up and learned more about how cruel the world really can be, I’m terrified all over again. She has had no warning about what she’s going up against and what hangs in the balance. The weight of that would crush anybody. I feel the weight by proxy and I want to lay down and die. We can’t tell her about this, at least not any sooner than we absolutely have to.”

Arlene rose from her chair and went to the girl’s side. She knew the panic that she was feeling. She was experiencing it herself, but now was not the time to let it get the best of them. For Ardra’s sake, they could not let their fears incapacitate them at such a critical juncture.

That would lead them into Chaos.

Once again, he rallied himself and prepared for an onslaught.

Upon his arrival in Omaha, he had seen the glowing mass in the distance and actually groaned out loud. The shields were already up and ready to go. He had the sneaking suspicion that the Council had finally gotten its troops in order and dispatched them to locations all around the world to prepare for him and do what they could to stop him. Had it been a few hundred years earlier, he might have worried about them. If the two he had taken by surprise in Nauvoo were any indication, these pawns wouldn’t really add much of a challenge to his task.

It didn’t stop him from being annoyed that the element of surprise had been taken away from him.

The beast inside of him growled in agreement when he made a silent vow to make them pay for the setback and he began to make his way through the city to the glowing bubble he could see over the rooftops.

As the base of the illuminated bubble came into view, his assumption was confirmed as he noticed the first of the people patrolling the perimeter. They were doing a good job of making it look like they were aimlessly wandering the grounds, but he noticed that not a single one of them crossed over the barrier that was flashing and sparking between them and himself. There were four of them in total and, unlike the two he had already taken out, these ones had the focused energies of someone on the brink of battle.

He let his armor solidify around his body as he slowed his pace to approach the barrier. The sparking seemed to notice him and became concentrated on the side of the grounds nearest him, drawing the eyes of the nearest guard. When they made eye contact through the barrier, the energy around the woman suddenly snapped into place and a green ball shot from her hand into the sky and exploded above their heads, signaling his arrival to the others.

He cursed under his breath and rushed forward as the others came running toward their side of the property, shields in place and out for blood.

He tossed a hand grenade of his own in their direction, hoping that it would catch them off guard enough to do some damage. Instead, it hit the barrier and exploded, leaving all four of them unscathed.

As he dodged the shards of energy that had ricocheted back at him, the crackling energy in the barrier suddenly shifted and focused into a point of blinding white light. A split second later, a searing crack of green lightning shot at him, nailing him square in his chest and sending him reeling.

As he flew through the air, he was peppered with exploding balls of energy from the hands of the guardians that had reached the battlefront. He allowed himself to phase almost completely to his natural state a split second before he hit the ground and reformed himself standing upright and ready for another assault.

His ears were ringing from the blast of energy that had caught him off guard and it took him longer than it should have to get his bearings due to the constant barrage of projectiles being hurled at him.

He needed a moment to regain his composure and think about how he was going to not only get through that lightning-launching obstruction, but those peon druid descendants as well. As the ringing in his ears began to fade, a well aimed energy ball blasted him in the face, intensifying the ringing and blurring his vision. The beast inside of him raged and thrashed about, demanding to be released.

A solid wall of black energy shot up in front of him and flew towards the barrier at a startling speed, blocking his body just long enough for him to make a well timed retreat to a safe place down the street. He shook his head as he solidified in the shadows of an alley between two storefronts.

The ringing in his ears subsided and he did what he could to ignore the crushing ache that he felt all over his body. Now that he was out of danger, the creature inside of him had calmed considerably, however it was still urging him to hurry back and complete his task. The primal energy that was contained within him was not big on rational thinking.

He pushed the sense of urgency from his mind and did a mental check of all of his limbs. Other than the stiffness from getting the snot beat out of him, everything seemed to be working as it should. Next, he checked his armor. It took a bit more effort than he would have liked to reach a satisfactory state of solidity, but he finally got it to a point where he felt that it would provide adequate protection from his foes.

With one last focusing breath, he let himself fade into the shadows and willed himself back to the site of his last assault. Seeing that they were still on high alert and watching for him, he flashed over to the other side of the property in hopes of buying himself a little time before they noticed him.

He managed to slip past the guardians, at least for a few moments, but the barrier was much faster to go on the defensive. Another blast of lightning shot at him, barely missing him and leaving the right side of his body feeling rather warm.

He lashed a few tentacles of energy into the shield and launched a few blasts of energy before fading into shadow before the guardians could show up. The searing white light struck the ground where he had been standing the moment before. Luckily, he was now standing at a point one hundred feet from there and was pounding at the bubble with the hundreds of extra arms he had willed into existence and shooting energy balls as fast as his brain would allow.

As the sizzling white energy began to form in front of him and the guardians caught on that he had moved, he faded away and willed himself another few hundred feet around the building.

He kept up this tactic, changing it up and sometimes flashing back to the last point he had attacked, sometimes flashing to a point several hundred feet away and relying on his projectiles to attack from afar.

After a few minutes of this, the guardians changed their own tactics. They spread out, each one taking a station at one of the cardinal points. They extended their hands forward into the wall of energy and closed their eyes, going completely still.

Chaos stood still for a moment, waiting to see what they were up to.

It didn’t take them long to show him. The shield began to melt down, starting at the top of the dome and flowing down towards the points of contact the guardians had made. As each of their bodies began to glow with the bright green light being channeled into them, it dawned on him what was happening and he made his move.

He rushed forward as fast as his thoughts could carry him and took out the first two guardians before their shields had had a chance to solidify. As he moved to attack the third, the man’s eyes shot open and a blast of lightning grazed the left side of his face, bringing back the uncomfortable whine that he had come to loathe over the course of the fight.

Chaos lashed at the solid suit of energy that had now formed around the man and the crackle of energy meeting energy rolled through him like thunder. Seemingly unscathed, the guardian pressed forward, advancing his attack with a fierce brutality. Projectiles were flying through the air all around both of them, tentacles were savagely tearing at each other like cannibalistic snakes and Chaos could sense the other guardian rushing to her fellow tank’s aid. If he was caught between the two of them, he’d be pulverized. It was time to withdraw and come at it from a different angle.

He faded out and reappeared a few yards behind the backup guardian. Her heightened senses gleaned from the bit of the shield she had absorbed allowed her to stop mid-stride and spin around to block the barrage of razor thin disks that he launched at her. She countered with a well placed blast that missed his chest by mere inches, blasting him on his shoulder instead and spinning him around where he stood. He took it in stride and countered with a thick whip of his own. He wrapped it around the bubble around her and cinched it up, crushing the energy in on her body. He let the beast inside of him worry about deflecting the attacks that she launched on him in response and focused on crushing her like a tin can.

The light around her was fading rapidly and the attacks she was throwing at him were weakening with each passing second. Dragging her around the grounds to keep a little bit of distance between them and the male guardian was taxing him as well though and he started to plan for what was sure to happen when the woman was finally out of his way and he had to face the last one. His energy was starting to drain and he could feel his armor getting thinner even as the last of the light faded from the woman in his grasp.

The moment the last glimmer of light left her eyes, he reduced her body to ash and turned to face her friend head on.

Instead of engaging him as he had before, the man plowed right into Chaos with all of his might, bowling him over in the process.

He leaped up and spun around just in time to jump out of the way of the next attempt at bulldozing him.

This went on for several minutes, the guardian would rush him, Chaos would dodge out of the way at the last moment, clipping him as best he could as he blew past in a blur. When Chaos was certain that he had weakened him enough for his plan to work, he flashed away from him a couple hundred yards. Just enough for the man to get a good running start.

As the man charged, Chaos stood facing him, ready for the impact. Instead of dodging out of the way at the last minute, he formed a single vine, as thick as a tree trunk, and swung it with all of his might. The desired effect was achieved and the guardian went flying backwards like someone who had just been hit by a semi truck. His limp body crashed to the ground in a heap and Chaos made quick work of disposing of it before approaching the building.