The Elder Origins (10 page)

“You remember the crewman, Jamie? The one
I bite?” But then she recalled that he had been lying next to her. He had collapsed before the others.

“No, it was not him. The native you attacked. The one you chased. I followed you. I caught up to you, but I was too late.”

She felt a rush from her heart down to her legs. “You found me. Then you tied me to the tree, Jamie. You were terrified of me.”

“No,” he said. “I was terrified of the others. I wanted them to help you. I knew if they saw you up close, they would fear you. I needed to persuade them to help. But I didn’t know what you were capable of. I knew not if you would
attack another.” He stopped, his eyes glancing away. “I was scared of myself as well, Madison, of what I might do to you.”

She stare
d at him even though he couldn’t meet her gaze.

“I drank from him,” he said softly. “You drank from that native man and I threw you from him. I tried to stop you, but…
the smell of him.” He turned to her again. She had blacked out from Jamison having thrown her off. She sensed the memory of what had occurred. He was replaying it in his head, and she could feel his emotions radiating the air around her. She had struck a tree behind her when he thrust her away. Her head had cracked against the hard surface and she plummeted to the ground feet below her. His strength had sent her through the air above him. He then turned to the bleeding man lying on the ground, and reached for his neck. His teeth penetrated his skin and there was nothing the man could do to stop him. He came to his senses and left the man to die. Wiping the blood from his face and mouth, he had walked to Madison on the ground. Her head healed before him and her eyes slowly opened. That was why he had looked at her in such a way. Disgust of what he had done. Amazement of how she healed miraculously in front of him. And he had gathered her in his arms to lament what he had done to her.

She remembered everything, but only faintly, and not as clearly as he did. Yet his emotions truly were within her mind.

“You will continue to drink, Jamie. I don’t care how adverse you are to it. I will not let you die here. We are not meant to die here. I have grown stronger, and so will you.” She laid his head back down.

“We were not meant to survive this,” he said solemnly.

“Your God no longer dictates what is meant for us. Only we can do that. It is out of his hands.” She stood and walked towards the flap of the tent and looked back to him. “We make our own way now.” With that she walked out and left Jamison on his bedding to rest. She wouldn’t be dictated by his sermons on morality. It was only his survival she had any regard for.

Madison saw Jayden standing by the fire, sip
ping from the remains within a jug. She stood just a few steps away. His emotions were still permeating the air around her. She almost resented that his presence was so staggering. She doubted her own was as potent.

“The others took their fill?” she asked.

“Enough for now. I will go to gather more tonight.”

“They will grow sus
picious if too many of their people disappear, Jayden.”

“I must collect as many as I can. I will go into their settlement if necessary.”

“Why tonight?” she asked.

He looked at her with a stern expression. She could feel him trying to tell her with his emotions, but all she felt from him was an awareness of what lay ahead. Something dangerous was approaching, an
d it had him on edge. He wasn’t frightened by it. Quite the opposite. He seemed eager for it.

“You will help me move the others to the stream and small fortress Lyndon and I built. We must get them there and properly fed before dawn tomorrow.”

“Why Jayden?” she said stepping forth. “What happens tomorrow at dawn? What did you see?”

“They are desperate,” he said, almost smiling. “Their plans to kill us failed. We are all that is left, and we figured out how to survive this poison they fed us through the strea
m. We were not meant to discover how to endure it.”

“You said before that they wanted us to consume one another.”

“Yes, and we would have,” he said. “The morning you awoke and attacked their man in woods, they had come to watch us awaken and finish one another off. But when you chased after them and killed that man, you found the one way to survive they never wanted us to find. You channeled your thirst toward them, not your own.”
              “You felt this through their emotions?” she said.

“So you have caught on. What emotions did you gather from Jamison, then?” he said proudly.

“Answer me, Jayden. What did you learn from them?”

“The poison in the stream, it was meant to be a sort of reflection of what they saw us becoming. And they did see us coming, long before we arrived. But strangely, we were not the ones they were expecting.”

“You speak of magic now? Some kind of foreshadowing?”

“Is it really that difficult to believe after all that has happened?” he said.

She shook her head in response.

“A reflection of what, Jayden? Please tell me without expecting me to immediately know your thoughts. Remember I only just discovered this new perception,” she said bluntly, tired of constantly trying to d
ecipher his meanings. She wasn’t up to the task of constantly meeting his challenge of wits.

“I meant exactly what I said. They saw us coming, but it was
n’t us. They saw our people coming and invading their lands. Forcing them from it and bringing inevitable bloodshed. Which we surely will once more migrate here, but it wasn’t truly us. We were an individual group that only desired to make a home for ourselves. They assumed we were the former. Our people were not meant to inhabit this land until future centuries. And that poison they created,” pointing to one of the jugs that still held water from the steam, “was meant to reflect the nature of the people who would take and rape their lands of everything they hold dear. It was meant to destroy us, but instead it made us stronger.”

“You sensed this?” she said.

“Yes, they discussed it to no end with their elders. They decided that we were the enemy. They hoped that our destruction would keep others from arriving after us. They didn’t realize that we were not this great coming of white men that they foresaw. Their emotions were easy enough to read. And their memories were completely clear with their intent.”

“They truly saw our journey here? They knew we were coming?” she said, with more curiosity than a true desire to hear the answer.

“Yes. They just got the timing wrong.”

Madison stepped forward and sat with Jayden, allowing him to tell her what he had encountered. He sensed everythi
ng that had passed between the Elder’s warriors. They had channeled the ocean and winds to bring their small village to the ground. They had channeled the fires to burn the remainders to the ground. And they forced the sea’s strength to take their dead to sea so that they may serve as warning to others not to sail near their shores ever again. It had all been meant as a warning to the white men not to come to their lands. But they had been wrong. There were no others coming, at least not for a lengthy period of time. There were no
others
to warn. They had yet to be born.

“You learned all of this from the emotions of those you just killed?”

“Yes. They consider themselves warriors for what they have done,” he said.

“And they are going to attack. They mean to kill our sick before they can completely recover,” she said. She felt a connection as if her emotions and Jayden’s were merging. “Jamison must complete his recovery so we can fight back. You have to find more so we can feed them,”
she said, her voice now strong and as assured as Jayden had been.

Jayden smiled as he looked at
her.

“So now you see,” he said
, very pleased that she had come to the same conclusion. “We must prepare. They plan to attack at early dawn tomorrow.”

“Leave one of the horses so I can move the others deeper into the woods. We must take more shelter,” she said.

“You don’t need the assistance of the horse, mistress that I can assure you.”

She felt him snickering without his face ever having moved.

“Fine, go then. No sense in waiting then. Go now and gather more of them. I want my brother fully recovered before tomorrow. You take the horses and bring back what you can.” The realization of what she just said struck her instantly after she stopped speaking. She had just condoned the order to kill innocents to keep her brother alive. Something she wasn’t certain her brother could or would have sanctioned.

“Do not have pity for those who wish to harm you, Madison,” said Jayden, leaping onto his horse with one swift movement. He was still sensing her emotions from feet away. “For they took no pity upon you.”

Jayden left promptly leaving Madison surprised that he had actually followed her request. She almost wondered if he was looking for her to give him her blessing before setting out. But a man such as Jayden, she knew, held no regard for how others felt about his actions. She suspected that he only took pleasure in the fact that he had persuaded her to follow his revolting plan.

Madison moved in the fleeting manner she had learned and placed her hands under Jamison’s legs and neck.
He weighed little to nothing. It was as if she were picking up a small animal rather than a man. He didn’t wake entirely, but he placed his arm around her back. With rapid movements she carried Jamison to the stream. She could maintain a fair amount of her original speed, but she was still running with her loved one in her arms. She carefully navigated the woods, making sure no part of his body struck a piece of forest. Jamison could feel the air move quickly about him. But he only thought it a strong breeze sweeping through his tent flap. The movements and the speed were becoming more natural as she ran. She felt as though her body grew stronger with each step. It was adapting more as she gained speed. She hardly needed to tell it how to move. It already knew, almost as if her limbs had always known of their capability, but never had the aptitude to make use of it.

She placed Jamison softly on
the ground and laid him as comfortably as she could. Standing above him, she quickly expanded her mind as best as she knew how. She sensed nothing malicious nearby, not even a tender forest animal. She ran the mile back to their camp moving faster than before, faster than when she had chased after Jayden. She gained speed and power with each step, gently leaping over any forest debris under her. The power of creating such a strong current of air as she moved stimulated every nerve on her skin. She felt outside the confines of her body once more.

She carried each man just as carefully as she had Jamison, knowing that their lives were potentially at risk sho
uld she not watch her step with such speed beneath her. A few men coughed along the way, although none of them stirred enough to awaken. She imagined that they were in the same state that she was in. She lined them up next to one another and then headed back to their camp, watching over them as best she could with her senses.

Just as night
began to fall, Jayden returned, with only two bodies on the horse trailing behind him. The sight of them hanging over the horse he trailed immediately made her insides churn. Her throat ran dry and she fought with everything she had to bring about words rather than a growl. She needed their blood in that instant.

“What is this? This can’t be all,” she said impatiently. “This is not enough for everyone to recover by morning.”

“Listen to you, telling the hunter that his job was not done properly,” he replied, a cavalier expression creeping upon his face as he looked at her. “Here,” he said, tossing her one of the jugs. “There are two more in the woods. I drained them before I came.”

She looked at him in disbelief. He had two jugs. The one he gave her, one remaining on the horse, and two spare bodies, undoubtedly still alive… barely.

“You actually managed to bring enough,” she said.

“Your gratitude is overwhe
lming,” he said grimacing as he dismounted the horse. “Take a few sips, it will keep you strong. You feed your brother and Lyndon; I will get the crewman.”

“The crewman has a name, does he not?” she said sarcastically.

“Of course he has. Damned if I know it.”

She took a few sips of the blood within the jug he handed her. The feeling as it saturated her tongue and eased down her throat nearly caused her to lose all sense of where
she was. There was only the substance in her hands. It was as if it moved throughout her entire body before ever reaching her stomach.

“Only a few sips, now. Your brother needs most of that,” said Jayden looking at her. He had one hand behind their one remaining crewman. He stirred briefly to t
ake the drink, yet he still wasn’t completely awake.

She went to Jamison and did the same. She brought him to her knee and gently woke him. Bringing the jug to his lips, he reached for the bottom of the jug to hold it firmer to his mouth. His body recognized its
needs before he had time to regard the contents. He didn’t hesitate to drink the entirety of the jug before letting go. Jayden came from behind and handed her the other jug. He had already drained the other man still on the horse. She gently laid Jamison down and did the same for Lyndon, propping him up on one knee as she knelt down. Holding him up, he seemed slightly stronger than Jamison. She assumed he had taken more of the blood than Jamison had prior to now. He drank with his eyes closed, also partially asleep.