The Thrice Born Read online

  He figured if she came armed with the sort of weapons that she did, she would know what she was talking about. He gave her and a short bow, and then attacked with an overhead slash. Her blade met his easily, fending off the strike and followed through with a quick thrust to his midsection above his black belt. He dodged it and returned a swipe to her neck, flat side leading.

  He needn’t have worried about the contact of a sharp edge. Estelle blocked the movement, then brought the base of her guard against his blade, shoving him back. He gripped the hilt, accidentally engaging the trigger.

  A blast of fire streamed from one jet, burning a fiery hole in the mat near her bare foot. She gave him a furious look before he could apologize.

  In retaliation she beat him back with a set of quick swipes, each progressively harder, the last catching him near his temple.

  But it didn’t land. She stopped the blade just short of actual contact. Instead she gave a quick uppercut of the pommel into his ribs, and then drove the tip down his thigh to his knee as he stumbled from the impact. The sword tip etched into the mat between his legs, an awkward position that pushed the flat side of the blade against his inner leg. With a quick movement she shoved the sword.

  His knee bent wrong and he was forced to the mat in a dull thud on his back.

  She pulled the sword and aimed at the wall, sending a burning line of fire along racks of slenderer swords. The leather-wrapped hilts of the katana and wakizashi charred, cords blackening and tightening, a few falling to the floor.

  She stopped the blast and looked to Jason on the mat. “Practice with this,” she said, letting the tip of her sword edge under his still in his hand. “This is better.”

  Somewhere from deeper within the casino a fire alarm went off. Jason looked to the scorched wall where some of the trail of blaster damage was smoldering, a few places lit with small fires.

  “You’ve made your point,” he told Estelle just loud enough for her to hear.

  She smiled ruefully.

  Jason stayed at the Crib that night; he wasn’t sure about Estelle’s mood and when he called to tell her he was watching a couple of cheaters on the game floor – albeit not of the caliber she had been – she understood.

  He did watch the cheaters at the slot machines for a while, but he spent most of that evening and well into the night practicing with the sword blaster in the singed dojo. The blaster was no katana or staff, but after a few hours the weight and thickness of the blade became natural to him. He didn’t realize how late it was until Benjamin joined him, watching from the side of the practice floor as Jason put himself through his moves.

  “Pearl’s under the impression Estelle is a martial artist, too,” Benjamin called as Jason paused to wipe his face and neck with a towel.

  Jason loosened his obi, tossing the towel angrily to a scorched wall. “What’d you tell her?”

  “I told her I don’t know what Estelle is.”

  Jason gave a quick nod, breathing hard despite his solo session.

  “The Fire Marshal was here earlier.”

  Jason nodded again, eyes narrowing on the smoked damage of the walls.

  “Guess one of the guests must have said something.”

  Now Jason’s expression darkened with unspent emotion. He let one arm sweep to the charred wall. “You should have gotten this fixed by now.”

  “Maintenance was all at the pool and no one is around now,” Benjamin defended.

  “Well, get them around. Right now!”

  Benjamin nodded, easing up to his next question. “Does she have to be so damn violent?”

  Jason’s temper diffused with the turn of subject. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He untied the belt and let the shirt hang open, tired and hot with annoyance and curiosity. “I don’t understand her.”

  Benjamin looked to the pile of swords on the floor where Jason had let them remain. “Are you afraid to sleep with her?”

  Jason ran a hand through his damp hair, tired from his practice and weary from thinking. “I’m afraid to sleep at all.”

  It wasn’t exactly true, but Jason left it at that for the manager as he dismissed himself for a shower. The hot water in the shower of his private quarters moments later did little to clarify anything for him. He let his mind run, but it kept pulling up thoughts he wanted to push away.

  The island. The woman from his vision whom he’d called Astara. The strangeness of his unborn child.

  The odd impromptu swordplay of his wife.

  The thoughts still plagued him as he dried off and changed into a pair of lounge pants and considered dinner. He hadn’t eaten much that day, and he was in no real mood for food.

  Before he could decide, the phone rang and he settled at an upholstered chair in the office to answer it.

  “I know you’re confused,” Estelle’s soft voice came over the line without a hello. “I wish you would trust me, my love.”

  Jason sighed, closing his eyes as he pictured her in his mind. “I trust you, darling, but I am so damn confused right now.”

  “I know. It would be best to forget it all.”

  He laughed. “After that act in the dojo this afternoon? How? I’ve got the burn marks to not forget.”

  There was a slight pause on the other side.

  “Can we go for a walk tomorrow? In the park?” Her tone took on a different warmth. “I felt the baby kick and I wished you were here with us, Jason,” she said.

  He nodded. “We’ll talk, and then –”

  “No. Just a walk. Maybe we shouldn’t talk about some things yet.”

  His fingers tightened on the phone. “When?”

  “A better time than now.”

  “Okay,” he said after a moment. “And no more antics like this today, Estelle, darling. You’re a very pregnant woman.”

  She giggled. “That I am. The park at ten?”

  “The park at ten.”

  A light rain fell the next morning as Jason and Estelle met for a stroll in the park. The pedestrian traffic was low, with most of the park-goers still at mass or a church service. It would be just after noon that the park would have its usual Sunday visitors, predominately older souls who met for conversation of the olden days and squirrel feeding.

  It would be an older crowd than Estelle and Jason, but sometimes, like when he thought back on the events of the island, Jason wondered how much older.

  Estelle walked at his side, her raincoat sprinkled with a motif of tiny umbrellas and ducklings. Her arm was under his elbow, tucked possessively like they were teenage lovers. His own raincoat was a blue slicker, and getting warm with the increasing humidity.

  They talked little, enjoying each others’ company, waving off the squirrels mistaking them for visitors with peanuts and pretzels to share. They stopped at a small pond where several sets of geese and ducks were swimming among the cattails.

  Estelle looked to them, watching them intently. “We’re not alone,” she said, eyes flicking to the waterfowl.

  Jason chuckled, slipping his arm around her waist, her tight belly at his fingers on her opposite side. “They’re harmless things,” he said, watching a duck go tail-up as it dipped its neck into the water.

  “Something else.”

  He watched Estelle’s eyes move over the pond water, seeing nothing amiss among the willow trees and benches.

  Before he could question her more, a large bird shot head first from the center of the pond like a phoenix rising, scattering the waterfowl into every direction.

  Once out of the water, the Nephilim extended its arms out, its skeletal wings still closed at his sides, mouth opening at them in a screech as it bared its teeth. It landed at the bank, lips curling.

  Jason tried to pull Estelle behind him, but she stood her ground, her hand going to the edge of her raincoat snaps.

  “What on Earth...?”

  Estelle stepped in front of him, her eyes locked on the creature as it advanced. “Back away slowly, my love.”

  From
under her raincoat she brought out her sword blaster. Jason looked away from the Nephilim to Estelle’s weapon and back again. “Estelle...”

  She made a waving gesture with her hand for him to stay back.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “A fallen creature,” she said, her hand gripped around the sword. “It has no power, no truth.”

  “It looks powerful to me.”

  She took a broad stance, placing herself between him and the creature.

  The Nephilim stood to its full height, stepping toward them as if to launch, and then opened its wings and flipped out a sword blaster to its ready hands.

  Estelle gave Jason a gentle push away and then he watched in amazement as her body transformed into the Astara he’d seen in his dream state on the island. She grew taller, her features elongating, her belly seeming to shrink into her new size, and her raincoat and dress seemed to melt into a long white tunic.

  He blinked a few times, shocked at the almost angelic figure she’d become. He stumbled back a step, and then remained motionless as the creature charged her.

  Astara met the rush head-on, swinging her sword at the creature’s head. It evaded and smacked her wrist with its wing, sending a sting through her arm. She kept her sword, cringing at the numbing impact, and fired back at it with a full-power blast. The Nephilim screeched at the singeing of its wing and leapt towards her, smashing the burning wing under Astara’s chin.

  She fell back, dazed, and Jason rushed to her side. He turned her face, recognizing her as both his Estelle and the Astara now, and grabbed the sword blaster that had fallen to her side, pausing for a moment as her features changed back into the Estelle he knew, her breathing slowing as she lost consciousness. He put a hand to her chest, feeling her heart still beating.

  He stood and faced the Nephilim, an anger surging through him as he’d never before felt. With renewed fervor he slashed at the creature. It sidestepped, hitting him with both wings on either side of the face. Jason recoiled from the bone-shattering blows, and then the creature flapped both wings to his shoulders in a squeezing force that made him gasp. Jason managed to shove the sword point to the creature’s singed wing, loosening its grip.

  In that brief pause, Jason slipped out of its hold and drove the sword point into the creature’s chest beneath the bony sternum. It screamed, dropping its own weapon, clawing at the sword, ripping it from Jason’s clutch as it drew back.

  He made a lunge for his weapon, but the Nephilim staggered and smacked him hard with the undamaged wing, still struggling to pull the sword from its chest. Jason folded from the blow of the wing, and before he could get back on his feet, Estelle was suddenly beside him. She leapt to the creature and wrenched the sword out and point blank fired a stream of fire into it.

  She kept the blaze on the creature as it shrieked, clawing at its flaming chest until it was a mass of angry fire.

  The creature gave a agonized scream as Estelle grabbed Jason’s arm and together they backed away.

  “Look away, my love!” she said as he paused, watching the creature burn and writhe as it fell to its knees.

  He turned and put an arm around Estelle and pulled her away from the pond.

  Jason wanted solace after the scene at the park. Estelle wanted to go home, but the Crib was closer, so he took her there and used the back ways to see to her safety of his private rooms. She immediately lay down and slept, exhausted, he decided, and offered him no explanations.

  He didn’t ask for any. He covered her up on the couch with a blanket and smoothed her hair from her face, watching her fall asleep with a simple turn of her head. He placed a hand on her large belly.

  A strong kick came to his palm.

  He smiled at the movement, relieved the child inside was still vibrantly alive. For a moment he watched Estelle sleep, amazed again when he recalled her transformation into Astara.

  So that was what it was.

  He wasn’t too imaginative or delusional.

  It had been her, and him, at another time.

  Jason still didn’t understand, but he left the matter at that, and let her sleep while he went back into town.

  He wasn’t sure where to go, but found himself at a late service in a Catholic church. He knelt in an empty pew at the back of the moderately large auditorium as the congregation listened to the figure at the lectern read.

  A low Gregorian chant was piped through the speakers, an underlying drone as Jason fought the turmoil in himself.

  “We’ve been reading from John 20,” the priest was saying above the chant, his tone blending with the Latin, adding a calmness to Jason’s personal battle. “Mary Magdalene has discovered that the tomb that Jesus’ tomb is empty.”

  Jason bent his head, the words of the priest echoing in the cathedral’s tall paneled walls.

  “Please turn to John 20, verses 11 to 18.”

  Jason leaned over the pew cushion, eyes closing tightly as he sought answers, not only for his questions with Estelle, or Astara, but from his own past.

  “‘And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.’"

  “‘Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?’” the reading continued. “‘She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.’"

  The reading ended, and a murmur of ‘amen’ went through the congregation, but Jason was in commune of his own, remaining at the pew kneeling as the mass broke.

  Chapter Ten

  ENOCH

  The next morning found Jason and Estelle back on their way to the park. He hadn’t wanted to go, but she insisted.

  She’d insisted with those flirty blue eyes pegged on him over coffee at the Starbucks down the block from the casino, using her feminine wiles that had become no less effective on him despite her very large belly.

  “I wish you’d go home and rest,” he told her as she nibbled at the cheese Danish as they drove to the park. “I’d feel better knowing that you were out of danger from whatever that was yesterday and off your feet.”

  She sighed, sipping her coffee. “I’m better equipped to deal with them than you are, Jason,” she admitted. “I know you have questions,” she added before he could begin the conversation they’d had for the last few days. “But, you must understand, I came to find you so we could be together, to continue ... our lives. Not to bring up the past.”

  He looked down from the street’s traffic as she put a hand to his arm, the bracelet peeking from her raincoat sleeve.

  “Please give us that, for the moment, my love.”

  He glanced to her face, the soft expression in her eyes far from the stern non-nonsense one she’d leveled on him at the dojo. He nodded, looking back to the cars ahead as he turned down the side street. “I’m trying to understand. I just want to protect you, Estelle. Let me do that.”

  Her fingers slipped from his sleeve. “I know.”

  He took the back street and found a spot at the curb to park. The pond was at the inner back part of the park, and was more active during the festivals and shows than everyday strolling. It was Monday, a slow day for the public spot, but Estelle had insisted on visiting it again.

  They got out and Estelle left her raincoat in the back of the car as the day’s warmth grew.

  “Uh, I’m so warm today,” she said. “Are you keeping your jacket?”

  He nodded. “I’ll carry yours in case it rains.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, breathing in the damp air. “I just want a short walk. We can leave it here.”

  He’d kept a few changes of clothing for her at the Crib, and her skirt
and blouse were a bit on the snug side, not quite ready for her growing shape.

  “We can do this another time,” he said hopefully, taking her arm as they stepped to the sidewalk.

  The park was nearly empty, no one suspecting the altercation that had taken place the day before with the creature from the water.

  “I just want to look at the pond.”

  They wound through the fully-flowered ornamental trees and landscaped shrubs to the pond, Jason’s trepidation and alertness growing. He felt that Estelle was not quite at ease as she claimed.

  They found the pond again, looking much the same as it had been the day before, with a few ducks and geese nestled among the cattails and weeds, seeming unaware of the monster that had arisen from the watery depths so recently.

  “I’m jittery just being here again,” he admitted, feeling her fingers tense on his arm. “Did we have to —?”

  “We cannot hide from them now,” she said. She looked out over the water, guardedness clouding her eyes. “There are so many.”

  He followed her gaze, not seeing what it appeared she did. “I’ve only seen the one.”

  “Their eyes are everywhere.” She looked to each of the ducks and geese. “They are the Watchers.”

  In the distance a rumble of thunder grew louder, the sky clouding momentarily, giving the bright water a grayer appearance.

  “For months, I’ve been seeing the signs,” Estelle told him, shaking her head. “I even did something...something horribly wrong.”

  He stopped walking, making her face him. “What are you talking about?”

  Another bout of thunder rolled over the sky, bringing with it a bout of tepid, soft rain.

  Estelle unhooked her arm from his and showed him the bracelet. “Look.”

  He did, seeing the porcelain beads of the bracelet she’d taken to wearing. A quack from the pond made them both look to the water. A mother duck and her nine ducklings were swimming in a line among the gently falling raindrops that mottled the water.

  “You see this?”

  Jason glanced down at the bracelet Estelle lifted higher for him to see. She used a fingernail to remove a few of the colorful beads, and he got the feeling there was much more to the piece of jewelry than simply fashion.