TOUCHING GOD
"Who are you?" the girl asked of what looked like herself.
She giggled and laughed, with a child's delight. "I am your counterpart."
So much was happening, all around them. Battle. Gunshots. Blood shed. There no was way to keep track over everything that was occurring around them. The entire world had fallen apart into entropy and cacophony. They were lost, and, yet, not lost at all. Nothing made any sense.
"No…"
xxxx
He was shaking, trembling, violently so.
"Dane…." Taylor's voice. It met his ears but sounded so distant, so far away. "C'mon, man. Snap out of it."
But he couldn't. Somehow, the man just couldn't shake the feeling, that eerie, pervasive, mentally raped sensation. Horror still held the bassist hostage. How could that drunk girl have known? How could she have had any idea of who he was or what? How could anyone have known about his dreams?
Taylor didn't even know….
How could this creature have had any clue?
xxxx
Cold.
Wet.
Liquid.
Suffocating.
Nycole didn't know what was the worst out of all those sensations. Perhaps in the was the drowning, lost feeling, separated from her body and from everything around her save the liquid that flowed over her body and bogged down her clothes. At that moment, Nycole could find nothing more annoying that struggling and fighting against clothes heavy with sopping water.
And hands.
There were hands, strong and locking around her arm.
Nycole snapped to clarity, prying at those hands. Those fingers gripped her upper arms harshly, holding her beneath the flowing water. The girl dug at those deathly clamped fingers, squeezing onto her arm.
Finally, they pulled her from under the torrential, drowning waves. A first burst of fresh, cool air rushed into her burnt chest, aching from a stark lack of oxygen. It felt so unbearably cold, peppering at her throat and the very flesh of her lungs. Yet, the chilling ice bore down so sweet and refreshingly. Nycole gasped at it, drawing in each breath with the same longing desire as babies did their first, stifling, hacking inhalation, taking in with each puff of air the same, deep sense of relief.
"Fucker!" Nycole struck out fiercely, lashing out upon whoever had dared hold her under, tearing away from those hands.
"You're welcome," Brett sarcastically teased. "What the hell were you thinking?"
Nycole ripped herself away from him. "Get away from me."
xxxx
Everything was falling into place, as everything was falling apart around her.
Robin could feel it in her heart and in her soul. A welt began to throb and ache on her heart, with the depth of the very purest of blows. A sting. The teenager hurt, deep within, for some reason. Amon. The Thirteen. They were in trouble. Everything was coming to pieces all around Robin.
And it stemmed from the Thirteen. And from this strange girl.
The interloper leaned close to Robin's ear. "You can't fight us. You can't get in our way. And you know it." This red head sang the words, practically chirping them with the harshest of venoms. "Our power is too great."
Robin felt a mild smile curve in her lips. This one was foolish. She didn't know who she spoke with. The girl had no idea the power lurking within Robin, the power of the Arcanum. Robin could take this creature down in a heartbeat without a second hand. This was just a petty, foolish child, playing with the purest and most deadly on fires. Robin had the upper hand.
"You wouldn't dare," the girl snarled suddenly. "Open your eyes and look around you."
Robin glanced about, her eyes scanned the bus station. All around her were so many people. So many witnesses who could turn her in at a moment's notice. With startling accounts of spontaneous combustion and several witnesses to back the stories up, Zaizen would have to investigate. He'd be there as soon as the American authorities were called in, acting through whatever far flung limb of Solomon that had long since penetrated and poisoned Washington D.C.
No. Not witnesses. Innocent bystanders. Potential victims. Robin gritted her teeth. She was no murderer, and the girl would not risk any innocent lives. The girl was a person, not a witch, not a murderer.
"See. You're too flawed to even strike back at me," the devil girl hummed. "Too… human and compassionate."
Robin blinked slightly, but understandingly. This haughty little bitch seemed to know more than anyone else could ever know of the Thirteen, more than maybe even Kathain and Nycole. The teenager had to find out more, and to know exactly what information this creature was concealing. Robin had to find out what this interloper had planned.
"Who are you?"
"I am Sierra," the girl replied.
Robin frowned, her lips pursing into a tight little scowl. "I didn't ask your name. I asked you who you are."
"I am the Oracle to the Thirteen."
xxxx
"No."
This couldn't happen. This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't the sequence of events that was meant to happen. This was all wrong.
Leanna glanced away. She couldn't watch any longer, not as Robin was confronted by this red head, this girl that, somehow, Leanna already knew who this person was. Somewhere, deep within her brain, locked away, remained the last bits and pieces to the puzzle that the assassin required. And this girl was one of them.
But, this was all wrong.
Leanna had been watching the whole time as Robin left the Thirteen. The assassin had followed with keen interest, in each and every footstep the teenage Craft user took, waltzing perhaps a hundred paces behind the deserter. The entire stroll from the hotel to the Greyhound, Robin held her head high, further intriguing the trailing assassin. It all unfolded precisely as Leanna had plotted. Robin would leave, get on a bus, and go far, far away, driven by her own heart and moral code of ethics. And she would be forgotten.
Leanna only need ensure this occurred as it needed to, without interruption. It was her job, no, her duty as an Oracle. And, so long as nothing happened out of the ordinary, these events would have naturally preceded.
But, then, these interlopers had to step in.
Leanna felt a shudder inside, an unusual, instinctive reaction of her body to the girl, to the red head who dared approach Robin. This creature bore a distinctively familiar gait and cockiness to her, a deep, dark knowledge seething about her very presence. This was someone who, down inside, Leanna felt she knew.
"No…" The assassin whispered the word to herself.
She allowed her mind to flow open and expand, to breach the very depths of time and the universe, to grace every tiny corner of the cosmos. Flowers bloomed. Babies cried. Blood spilt, and fire crackled. A smile traced across the curves of her face.
"This has to stop."
xxxx
"What do you want?"
Robin hammered on every word of that question, slamming it to the stranger, Sierra, with a touch of anger and pure rage. Rage of the witchcraft that lay within, eternal and never faltering.
Sierra shrugged, giving a slight chortle. "I want the other Thirteen dead."
Other Thirteen? Robin raised a curious eyebrow. In all her time with Geoff, Brett, Amon, and the Thirteen, she had never heard of such a thing. But, then again, she had only ever been aware of two Oracles, never three. This world of the Thirteen, of these dark magicks and arcane evil, remained alien and uncharted territory for the teenager.
"I want to see their evil quest ended. I want to see their unique brand of darkness banished," Sierra sang into her ear, purring with almost feline delight.
Evil? Robin gasped. Amon? Evil? Yes, he was brusque and curt, a very stern and hard to get close to fellow, but he had never shown any signs of evil. In truth, Amon did what he needed to do. The man never engaged in any purely evil or sinful tasks. His heart lay elsewhere, away from desire, lust, and destruction, in some unseen, frozen land. But, on the same token, Robin and even the Thirteen still had no clue as per the reasons for their gathering and acting as a whole.
All that remained with Kathain, with the Oracles.
With Sierra.
"Evil?" Robin whispered, breathing the forbidden word in a hushed voice.
Sierra nodded, drawing close, pressing something unseen and sharp, a knife perhaps, deep against Robin's side, twisting it slightly to illustrate the mere point of the matter. "This world and everything in it will come to an end."
Sierra was mad; she had to be. The Mad Queen herself.
"Let her pass."
Leanna's voice, strong and determined. Another Oracle. Another creature Robin couldn't trust. The situation was growing worse and worse. She had to end this, and end it now. The girl had grown tired of these petty games and sociopolitical bullshitting.
"Stop it," Robin growled.
The world exploded around her.
Time expanded, following in the wake of her growing holocaust. The flames burst out from Robin, licking and lapping at the world around them. Those red, and orange tongues of pure, liquid fire trailed around them. And, in the growing wake, came time. The world slowed, as heartbeats became death knolls, and each flame grew into a massive tidal wave, continuing out and into the world.
"Leanna!"
xxxx
Mmm…. I smell a fight scene. Hope you have a bag of marshmallows at the ready.