I walked into my sister’s spare bedroom and found that Tyr had been recuperating from his injuries in the typical Æsir manner, which is to say by drinking as much as he could as quickly as possible. Melisande had managed to mostly keep ahead of him on throwing away empty bottles. There were about five bags of containers on one side of the bed and the nightstand beside him was still covered with an overflowing pile beside the unopened ones. Cassandra was already sitting cross legged on the bed beside him leaving an empty chair on his other side beside the bed.
Not surprisingly the king size bed was too small for him and his legs hung off the end of it. Melisande had fixed his already maimed arm in place with lengths of wood and some ace wrap and he had a bandage similar to mine wrapped around his stomach. His iron hand was sitting on the nightstand under the bottles. The stump where Fenrir had bitten his hand off remained raw despite the eons that had passed. According to Fenrir he could still feel Tyr's fingers twitching in his stomach on occasion. There was no way he was sober enough or healthy enough to be answering questions about what we’d been doing the last several days.
I settled down on the chair beside Tyr and nodded to Cassandra before resting my hands against the bandages around Tyr's stomach at the same time she rested her hands over his shoulder. I took a deep breath and sent my energy questing out into his body until I found the three diagonal claw wounds that had torn through the heavy layers of muscle. If it had not been for the sheer size of the Æsir the claws would have gone considerably deeper and likely cut through the arteries there. It wasn't hard to realize that if those same claws had hit me like that I'd have lost my guts. I slowly started pulling the edges of the wounds together and running strands of his own energy across the wound to hold it closed and increase the healing, without a talent for healing arts the best I could do was patch him back together and let his body do the rest, he’d still be unable to fight for a few days without tearing open the wound again. I could feel Cassandra at work as well and tried to match my energy to hers. After a few minutes I felt a tap on my arm and settled back as Tyr himself heaved a sigh of relief.
“Okay he should be good for now Cathal. Give him some time to rest. A tandem healing like that places a strain on the patient even if it is more efficient and quicker in the long run.” She paused long enough to climb off the bed and move around it to the bedroom door. “Besides it will give the two of us a chance to get something to eat. Between being healed and then performing a healing of your own you need something more solid than energy. That and I haven't had anything to eat since yesterday morning, I'm afraid flying on a full stomach doesn’t sit well with me.” I nodded looking at the sleeping Tyr and stood walking towards the door.
“Yeah food sounds good let's go see if Mel has anything in her kitchen I can cook. No offense but I remember your cooking and I don't think that's considered food.” I led the way down the stairs and into the kitchen. While still large and spacious with a lot of counter space Melisande's kitchen was full of dark black marble and matte black appliances that made it feel dark despite the ample lighting. I rummaged through the cabinets, fridge, and freezer for a few minutes before finally settling on a decision and pulling out a cast iron skillet and setting it on the gas stove.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I looked up from scrubbing potatoes and set them to the side when Cassandra came in. I thought about the memories that I'd regained over the last year and the emotions they invoked as I pulled out a clove of garlic and started dicing it. A wise old man once accused me of hiding from my past because of the amount of pain and suffering it held and I'd started to understand what he meant. I'd done a lot of pretty terrible things, and I don't mean kicking babies and torturing fuzzy critters terrible. I mean the backstabbing, mass murdering, and world destroying kind of terrible; that stuff still didn’t feel like the worst of my mistakes though. The fact that for all intents and purposes I was a different person now and there were more millennia separating the me of now from the me of then than I could count made no difference to me, nor did the fact that it was a war I didn't start and didn't want and I had been acting on the best intentions. I’d learned in the time since then that good intentions didn’t justify doing things at any cost.
“Honestly Cassandra I don't know if I ever will. I'm not proud or happy about the things I did back then. I hurt a lot of people…not just my enemies, and not just innocent bystanders. I hurt and betrayed my friends, my allies, and the people that trusted me. You know the true history of the Olympians and they’re one of the younger pantheons. The Titans and the Æsir are millennium older than even what their mythologies claim. Still even they were not yet born by the time existence began to heal from the scars of the last war I was involved in. By the time my family was cast down I’d become harsher, and I hadn’t just gained power but experience using it to hurt others. Even some of the tamer things I did could make the worst war criminals in human history look like saints, and every little flash of memory gives me one more nightmare to carry around.” I finished mincing the last of the potatoes and tossed them into the skillet with a bit of butter.
“So that's why the pain was so deep, you've been carrying it for so long that it has become integral to your identity.” I shrugged as I cut up the last bits of sliced ham and corned beef from Melisande's meat drawer and started on mincing the garlic and onion.
“I try not to poke at those emotions very much. Even if I didn’t really understand until years later what was really happening to me, I’d already distanced myself from my emotions as a kid because of the empathy my vampirism causes. The time I spent with my biological father did the rest because I shut out my emotions completely to handle the emotional abuse. You haven’t seen me much since I was thirteen so you don’t know how bad it was. For a while there was some concern that I might have developed full sociopathy. I was almost eighteen before I really started to feel anything again. I barely have a handle on dealing with my human emotions. I'm not sure I would be capable of handling emotions that have been festering for eons on top of the ones I already fight to keep in check.” I set a whisk along with a bowl and eggs on the table in front of her. “Mix these please?” She took the bowl and whisk without complaint.
“I think I can do that. So I'm guessing by the emotions you fight to keep in check you mean the loneliness? She's beautiful,”
“Don't try talking to him about her, Cass. He may be more mentally stable than I am but talking about her is a good way to unhinge him. Cathal may wear his heart on his sleeve sometimes but he won’t tell me what sort of bad blood got between them.” Melisande used a spatula to turn the contents of the skillet and smiled. “Making more of your hash omelets again?”
“Yes and I don’t tell you because it’s none of your business, if I wanted you to fix my mistakes I’d let you live my life and give you my job.” I paused setting aside the chef’s knife long enough to hug my sister and move away from the stove. “You can handle the rest from here. Cassandra would you like tea or coffee?”
“Coffee.” I opened the freezer pulling out a bag of fresh beans and began the comforting ritual of grinding beans and brewing coffee. Neither Melisande nor I spared expense on our beverages. The few visitors and guests we had usually ended up feeling thirsty as a result of being fed on. It wasn’t intentional on our part and I hadn’t been able to figure out a cause. There weren’t exactly a lot of groups lining up to do research on metaphysics and the results of having the life sucked out of you, although there was no shortage of people claiming to be experts on the subject despite not having a lick of actual power. As Melisande served up the omelets, I pulled out the sugar and cream she kept on hand for coffee, along with a mix of cups from the rack hanging on the wall.
The mugs weren't fancy. Melisande's cup was black with red letters that said 'I always listen carefully to your opinion before I mock it', Cassandra's said 'I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to worship me', and I was left with another one that said 'I'm not insulting you, I'm describing you with extreme accuracy'. My sister found the mugs amusing, and while I’d never admit it out loud to her, I did too. The omelets tasted great with just enough roasted garlic and onion in the mix to help enhance the flavors of the meat.
“Hmm, perhaps I should have added cheese. So are you going to be staying in town for long Cassandra or was an hour flight a reasonable house call?” I refilled my cup and took another bite.
“Actually, it was four hours, I was in California with friends. As for staying, well Mel told me the gist of what's going on. I agree that the seals can't come down uncontrolled. Nobody is really sure about why The Council placed the seals and they aren’t exactly the sort of group to share their secrets. But I know that if they fail like they have been for the last week then it's going to be pandemonium. That sort of situation means more work for Hades dealing with the recently dead and I don’t get to see him enough as it is. I'll stay here in case of anymore emergences.” I thought about what she said. If the seals collapsed uncontrolled it wouldn't just be easier to manipulate energy on earth, every metaphysical doorway and portal would be active again, every person would start regaining their old memories and abilities and the sudden influx of energy would likely overload electronic technology and render it useless.
If it weren't for the shields I constantly wrapped around myself to contain my energy, I could blow out every light on a city block just by being there. An entire planet of people with a fraction of my power would make the dark ages look like a kindergarten art class. Emotions always gave a boost to the strength of a person’s power and made it act erratically, suddenly breaking the seals without even a little prep work would be cause for mass hysteria. And even once they settled in, until people learned control, even common things like a lover’s quarrel could trigger anything from rainstorms, to small earthquakes, or continent-wide firestorms. Hell, if there was anyone else wandering around earth with even half the power I could bring to bear without the seals interfering and they lost control, humanity would be keeping company with the dinosaurs, and that would be without the kind of interference that would cause the spontaneous conversion of every atheist on the planet. As it was it would only take a couple hundred people with minor talents to wipe out over half the population on accident.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“You're correct about that Perseph-Cassandra, fortunately I think it's the work of an individual and that means it can be stopped. Unfortunately, we need to take a risk with your mind Cathal, the group that ambushed us at the Starpath was targeting you; whoever is behind this knows who you are and has a grudge against you personally. We didn’t get a lot of information from the trip and whoever it is that’s orchestrating this is able to protect himself from Heimdall’s sight. I don’t know who else you talked to either. They wouldn’t let me or the tiger see them, just you but they couldn’t tell us much either.” Tyr walked into the room; his large frame hunched partially to avoid hitting light fixtures.
Melisande left the room and came back with a bed sheet that she threw at him. Regardless of what pantheon they come from deities have a somewhat disturbing lack of modesty, and even covered in old battle scars as he was Tyr still had the sort of body that would make a Calvin Klein model insecure. Tyr was built large in all aspects and could give a horse a run for its money. I like to think I’m confident and pretty secure but everyone has their limits, and Tyr was built in a way to make the best endowed man feel insecure.
“I know what your suggesting Tyr and the answer is no. I'm not letting anyone, not you, not Khan, not even Melisande dive into my head and try and pull out old memories. If someone is targeting me, it could just as easily be because I'm the acting guardian for Earth and not for personal reasons. Even if it was for personal reasons, I don’t need my memories intact to know you could populate a small planet just with the people I know personally that would have a reason to hold a grudge against me. Not to mention the ones with the resources to know about me, and that was in my last life. If you start accounting for the people I don’t know that have a reason to hold a grudge against me, or who would have had time to accumulate the knowledge and resources then our suspect pool could include anyone. Besides we haven't heard back from Thoth yet.” There was the sound of a dainty throat clearing at the other end of the room and a gorgeous woman with dark skin and hair, literally stepped out of the shadows.
“You likely won't for a while yet, I'm afraid my husband has become quite consumed with his work again. The last time I saw him he was digging around in one of his libraries for some obscure reference tome he half recalled seeing during a previous era that he thought might have a reference to the calculations on planet wide protective shields and their energy requirements. I do have something for you that he thought might help if anyone can read it; I'm not familiar with whatever language or dialect this is and his translation attempts were unsuccessful.”
I stood up as she walked towards the table as much from courtesy as anything else. Her eyes were slightly canted, chartreuse colored jewels, which contrasted sharply against her ebony toned skin and the long floor length black hair with its shimmering blue and purple highlights. She had less muscle tone than my sister though they were about the same height, and while they both moved with grace, Melisande’s was that of a trained and skilled fighter. This woman though, moved with a sway to her body that matched the sensual purr of her voice and displayed her curves in a way that would have left Hugh Hefner stammering. Cassandra and Melisande were both looking at me expectantly waiting for my reaction. Once the woman reached the table I gave a polite bow feeling the texture and flavor of the energy that drifted off her like a heady perfume and took a hazard at guessing her identity. My knowledge of the Egyptians was sketchy at best but there were only so many feline goddesses that would call Thoth her husband to my knowledge.
“Greetings Bastet, Daughter of Ra, wife of Thoth. I'm sorry my work has deprived you of your husband.” I moved my plate and cup out of place before gesturing to the chair.
“A classical Gentleman, how precious.” Her voice had a slight purr to it. She seemed to turn every word into an erotic statement. “I can see why you didn't want me meeting him before now, Melisande. Don't apologize for my husband’s shortcomings though, Cathal. If not this, it would be some other research project. At least I don't have to worry about him blowing anything up with this. He agreed to leave the hazardous work to Hephaestus this time.” She settled herself in the chair allowing me to push the chair in before taking my coffee cup for herself and refilling it. She set what looked like a leather-bound journal down on the table as I took the last seat. She laid a hand on my arm and smiled, the gesture causing my hormones to revert back to puberty.
“Oh, I'm not a gentleman all the time. Try to bespell me again little kitten we'll see how much of your power I can eat. Now, let me look at this book Thoth found.” I drew on the energy Bastet was using against me and sent a pulse of cold into her hand until she jerked it back with a hiss. I smiled politely when I noticed the mist coming off the cold blisters. I flipped open the book and frowned at the symbols scrawled across the heavy material, unless I missed my guess the sheets were some kind of animal hide that had been scrapped thin and stitched together. I thumbed through the pages and finally shook my head and closed my eyes drawing and focusing energy into my eyes and brain shaping it into the construct I'd developed to translate languages. I opened my eyes and flipped through the pages again and frowned.
“Mel what do you make of this?” I turned the book around and pushed it across the table to my sister dismissing the energy construct as I did so. She thumbed through it and frowned before handing it over her shoulder to Tyr, he shook his head and handed it to Cassandra who did the same after looking through it.
“I don't know, I don't even recognize this and I can translate most everything ever spoken or written in Europe.” She handed me the book and I looked at it pensively for a few moments while I finished off the last few bites of my meal and refilled a new coffee cup for my third refill. This cup was another classic of my sister’s, ‘Conversation before my first cup of coffee constitutes murder’. I didn't know much about Thoth personally, but I doubted a deity devoted to knowledge would offer to help me and then give me a book that I couldn't read.
“Bastet did Thoth say anything about the book or give you anything else with it that might be of help?” She looked at me for a moment and then pulled the book over before flipping open the back cover and tapping it eight times. After the eighth tap my personal emblem shimmered into appearance in its usual blue overlaying a shield with the crossed hammers and anvil of a blacksmith done in green.
“He doesn’t recall how it came into his possession. It was in a stack of other old tomes that predate Earth awaiting categorizing and shelving. According to him the symbols belong to a language that is older than us and may be written in a cypher as well. He spent two days trying to translate it and all he could do was find those emblems embedded in the back cover. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to stand in for my husband again and record the results of weighing hearts and make sure Anubis hasn't changed the weight of the feather while we weren't looking again.”
She nodded to my sister and vanished, no smoke, no sound, just here and then gone. I sat and stared at the two overlapping symbols. The only reason my personal crest would have been hidden on a book like that was if I wrote it, it was something like an autograph. Now that I knew it was there, I could feel the familiar cold buzz of my own energy resonating with the book. I even knew that hiding the symbol the way it had been meant it wasn’t a cypher but that the book had a complex energy construct hidden in it that distorted the words so that only someone with the right knowledge could read it. If that was the case I should be able to reverse the construct, I reached out a finger and traced a delicate trail of energy over the emblem, and then several more as each one failed.
“Crap, crap, and double crap. Cassandra, Tyr, can I have a moment alone with my sister?” They both nodded and left the room Cassandra muttering something about checking on Khan. I turned the book around and fixed my sister with the harshest glare I could manage. “Tell me about the emblem.” Melisande pulled the book over and traced the lines of the two symbols separately. She sat quietly for a few moments without looking at me before getting up and starting another pot of coffee. After a few minutes of staring out the window she began to move around refilling her sugar dish and then the cream before filling the sink with hot water and putting the dirty dishes in it before sitting back down.
“When's the last time you spoke with your father?” The question was so unexpected that it nearly knocked me out of my chair. I pushed down the anger that came to the surface whenever I thought about the man and took a few deep breaths to calm myself counting down from ten and then again from twenty.
“You were on the line for the phone call with me. It's been almost fifteen years,”
“I don't mean Cray, Cathal, I mean the individual that raised you before this.” She sipped at her coffee and gave a vague gesture over her head and pointed at the air.
“I don't know if I remember those lives really, I have names, a few scattered and disjointed memories that are so blurred they might as well be burned out films, and then the memories of war but that's all.” I stood up and put the rest of the dishes in the sink before getting another cup of coffee. “Is that what the other symbol is from? My last lives?”
“Talk to Khan, Cathal. If Thoth is right and that book can help you he may be the only one you know now that might be able to help you without a memory regression.” She walked out and left me alone in the room with the book.
I sighed tucking the book under my arm and went outside and sat on the porch. I breathed in the autumn air and smiled at the promise of snow the smell carried. I'd been given two reasons in the last hour to start poking around inside my subconscious mind to try and find a buried memory that may or may not help. The idea of doing that scared me, my first and only time I had ever done that had nearly killed me and the person guiding me. Doing it now when I had more fears and emotional pitfalls to feed my inner demons would make it worse. I went inside, found a notepad and pen to leave a message on, and left the book sitting on the counter beside the note. I needed to think and the best way for me to do that wasn't by sitting around, I grabbed a loose fit shirt out of the closet by the front door and left.