Clayton's Jade (Runes Stone Series) (14 page)

H
e opened the door.  Brad sat in a chair next to the bed holding Bridget’s hand. Lines of tension marked his face, as he just sat there as he waited for a response to anything to show she was still in there.  If he knew Bridget she was fighting like hell to wake up.

Brad looked up and finally noticed him.  “Hey what’s up?  You have that look on your face again.”   He really hated to tell Brad the bad news. 

“Kaylee accidently froze everyone and the tasmanian took her.  We need your help to find the Boy Scout trail.”  He had a look of shock hit his face, followed by anger.  He would have made a good berserker. 

“Why did this have to happen when most of our people were down?  We will have to figure out how she can control this new power, because if this happened in town it would end very badly.  I will go with you to get her back.  I know this area better than most of the people up and moving right now.”   He reached down and kissed Bridget’s forehead.  Watching him try to leave her in this state was very touching and he knew that if he was in the same shoes he would do the same thing.  He left Brad to finish his goodbye in private.  The hardest part about going out to fight was the unknown.
The question that kept running through your head was would you make it back to your loved ones.

When he turned and looked in the front room he was surprised at how many people were waiting to help him get Kaylee back.  The people that had been pulled into this were amazing and he was proud to know them.  Some of them were confused, because they had seen him kill the Tasmanian devil at the end of the fight the other night.  Well
, if they were going to put their lives on the line they deserved to know the whole truth.  He didn’t think it would make that much difference to them.

“Many of you saw me kill the Tasmanian the other night, you deserve the whole truth. This last fight was just part of a larger battle being fought over this world.”  He went on to explain about the Norse mythology and what was going on right now.

“So how exactly did he come back to life?” Tim asked.

And here comes the part that could make the difference.  “He made a deal with Hel.  She lives in Helhaim and has control of rebellious spirits and ghosts.  She could make our mission harder than it already is.  I want you to understand everything before you put your life on the line again.” Fighting something that you could see was one thing, fighting something that you couldn’t see was another. 

It was like the proverbial you could have heard a pin drop.  It wasn’t just quiet, it was dead silence.  Some of the people were looking at him like he had grown another head or something.  Finally, Tim looked at him and said “this guy took Kaylee because she can help stop Ragnarok from happening?  I say we help because if they win we all lose.  How hard are spirits to fight?  Do we stand a chance?”  As some of them started to snap out of the trance they had been in they agreed.    Well, at least they didn’t think he was completely crazy.

“Well, the first thing we need to do is look for some garlic, no it’s not for vampires.  Yes they do exist.  They will not be out there today.  Garlic is good for protection against evil spirits also.   Then we need to gather salt and water and for extra protection and we will need to have it blessed.  I also have a bunch of sage in my car that we can burn when we get close to the meeting area.  Also, we need to put rice on the floor by all the doors.  This will slow them down and make them count before they do anything else.”   For some reason spirits, demons and vampires all felt a compulsion to count what was in front of them. He had one squirt gun, but they would have to buy more.  They could put the blessed water into the squirt guns.  “Does anyone know where we can go to get the water and salt blessed?”  He didn’t want to deal with weird looks or have to explain himself. 

“We can go see James, he works for a minister at one of the Christian churches, and he is also a shifter.  I had better be the one to go in and ask him though.  He doesn’t like a lot of people to know that he is a shifter.”  Brad said as he looked up at the group.  “Also, if you know him please don’t let on that you know.”

“Let’s get going, the sooner we get to Kaylee the better off she is going to be.  I worry about what he is going to do to her.”  Going off in different directions they started to collect the various things that Clayton had mentioned that they were going to need.   They found several containers of salt, but they were still going to have to s
top by the store to pick up more salt, but at least it was a start.    Blessed salt and or water would burn some entities or keep them out of an area. The problem was how he was going to deploy the salt.  He wanted to come up with something that they were not expecting.  He had an idea that might work with balloons but he didn’t know if it would work or not.  One way was to fill them partially with salt and air then throw them, the other was just fill them with salt and have the bird shifters drop them from the air.  That would disperser the salt in a large area. The other way would only work for close range if it worked at all.

He was going to have to get metal containers for the sage to burn in.  He didn’t want the forest to catch on fire.  He walked towards th
e last two motor homes that  contained the supplies that had been collected.  They took two of the motor homes that way when they got the stuff from the store they could work on getting things ready while one person drove.  They had two different bird shifters, both capable of holding a balloon in their talons.  So as soon as the minister blessed the salt they could start filling the balloons.

They decided to stop at the store first and pick up a few gallons of water.  As they went through the store they picked up some energy drinks and some power bars, they figured they could use all the help they could get.  Then someone decided that helium would be better than just air and was worth a try so they added two dozen helium filled balloons to the purchase.  Clayton paid for everything, and then they loaded it into the motor homes.   Brad was in the other motor home which was leading the way.  They made several turns before parking in front of small white church.  It looked like a house with the exception of the sign in front on the white fence letting everyone know what time services were.  The grass was freshly cut because you could still smell it.  You could still see the lines that the wheels had left in the grass from the lawn mower. 

Clayton and Brad took the water and the salt that they had into the church.  This might prove to be interesting. He wondered how James would explain why they needed all of this stuff blessed to the minister and he would react.  James was in an office located in the back of the building.  When they entered his office he looked up startled that they were there.  When he saw the water and salt they were carrying his mouth just dropped.  “What are you up to Brad, and who is your friend?”

“This is Clayton and we need you to
have this water and salt blessed for us.”  The look that James gave Clayton said you are behind this and I know it. 

“What are you going to do with it?”  Clayton threw Brad a look and mouthed I knew this was going to happen.

“Do you really want to know?  If you are serious I will tell you, in fact you can come along and help.  If not just bless the stuff so we can do what we need to do.”  Clayton was tired of being looked at like he was crazy when he tried to explain what was going on.  He could see that James was trying to decide what he was going to do.

“James, you need to be sure of your decision, because once you know you can’t go back.” 
How do you explain to a someone that there are more than just one god, in fact there are several without him going wacko in the head?  If anyone could handle that information it would be James.

James looked from Brad then over to Clayton. His chest expanded as he took a deep breath then he released it.  “You might as well tell me, because I will not bless anything until I know the whole story.”

Brad looked at him and said “first you have it bless it then we will tell you.”  Then James got up and took it down the hall to the minister to have it blessed.  When he was done he sat back in his chair and waited for them to explain everything to him.

As Clayton told him, he stared gathering all the religious artifacts that he could carry and put them into a canvas backpack. “Let’s go.  I am going to help all I can. I still have my beliefs but now there is just more to it.  I can work with that.  I might have to have a word with Odin one of these days over his temper.  If he had kept his cool we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Now Clayton would pay good money to watch that.   “I believe he will be up at Kaylee’s next week for a ceremony, I think that was what he said anyways.  Would you like to ride with Brad or myself?”

“I will ride with Brad.  I think that everyone here knows that I am a shifter by now.  I don’t think he had a way around that.  What you two don’t know is the type of shifter I am.  I am from a very old line.  I am a dire wolf.”  James stood still waiting to see the reactions of the guys.

“So that’s why you’ve never changed in front of anyone and you always left town right before the full moon.  You didn’t want anyone to see a dire wolf since they died out.”  Brad stated it like it didn’t really matter.  “We are all different, it’s no big deal.  Kaylee has a nice chunk of property that everyone in the group shifted on this last full moon.  We have some weird shifters in our group.  In fact there is a narwhale at the house recovering.”

“It really doesn’t matter to you guys?  I have some property up by Kaylee also.  It is perfect for the full moon, plus no one is around to see me.”  Something bad must have happened to him to make him think that other shifters would view him differently.

“There are things that are way worse out there than us, and one of them has Kaylee.  Now if you don’t mind, get in the motor home and help with getting stuff ready, so we can be on our way.  Brad will fill you in on anything else you would like to know.”  He got into the motorhome and shut the door to the one he was in and watched them get into the other one in front of them.  “Ok guys time to get busy. Everyone had the balloons and straws to pour the salt into the balloons with.  Most of them had a lot of salt and just two dozen had salt and helium he didn’t think it would work, but he wanted to cover his basis.   They had to let half the helium out still holding it so the rest didn’t escape then someone poured salt into it with the straw. Then a couple of people put salt and water together just in case the ones with helium didn’t work.  They were not going to have time for a test run to see if they worked, so they backed it up. 

The other group was taking out the squirt guns and filling them.  Once the guns were filled
, they were put into the backpacks that they would be using.  Between the guns and the balloons the backpacks were full.  Then they all opened the energy drinks and raised the tiny bottle up in good luck and downed the contents.  To him the flavor tasted like cough syrup but if it worked it was worth it.  Nothing like a bunch of hyper pissed off animals running loose.

They pulled into a dirt parking area where the trailhead to the Boy Scout trail started.  They each grabbed a backpack on the way out of the motor home and the key was stashed on the back under the wheel cover.  The same was done on the other one.  Then they hit the trail moving at a decent speed until Clayton felt something cold slide against his skin.  “Stop!  Something is in this area.  Let’s test one of the helium balloons. At the very least they don’t pop that well and we just litter the ground with them then they pop during the fight. I see just a win win situation.”  Brad was reaching into the backpack in front of him while Clayton had been talking. 

Then he threw the balloon out towards the ground.  It floated for a little while and when it came close to landing a gust of wind picked it back up carrying it up higher.  When it got high enough it touched one of the needles on the redwood tree and popped spraying the air with salt which fell slowly to the ground.  He could almost hear one of the spirits scream as the salt fell to the ground hitting everything in its path. 

Well
, it didn’t quite work the way it was intended but it still came through in the end.  When this was all over he was going to have Dagda come out here and clean it up as salt was bad for the plants.  At least now they knew it would work in a roundabout way, however they had pissed off whatever spirits had been in the area.  The spirits would be up ahead waiting for another chance at them.  “What should we use next?  You know they are going to come at us again, and this time they may draw blood.”

“Why don’t we just get a little head start and use the bird shifters with the salt balloons.  Just to see how those work.  We can back it up with the salt water ones if it doesn’t work,” Gavin suggested.  He already had one of each in his hand.  Right next to him was a red-tailed hawk waiting for its prize.  At least it seemed that way to him.  The hawk flew up ahead and was out of
the line of sight for just a little while before it came back and shifted back into one of the girls.

“Again it worked but not as good as we would want.  It was a direct hit to one area. Good if we are in a fight, but bad for area disbursement.  I believe the salt water will have the same effect.”  They kept walking until the found the area that the balloon had landed and saw what she had been talking about.  The other thing that was odd, there were no little animals or birds.  A hush had fallen over the forest area where they were.  Something big was in this area, but what they didn’t know.  He had a bad feeling they were going to find out though.