~oOo~

Blair sat quietly on the floor, not making a move, not uttering a word. He'd done quiet before, so many, many times before. At three, he was an old hand at quiet. With Lucas's head now resting in his lap, he stroked the teenager's hair with an almost fanatical obsession. The man, the one who had been crying, was in the bedroom now, and the one with the black eyes had come and gone, but not before making noises that brought back an unnerving familiarity.

The front door to the cabin swung open and slammed back into the wall, making Blair jump.

"What are you looking at?" the huge man yelled, reaching for another bottle of whiskey.

Blair remained quiet, not saying a word, just stroking his brother's hair.

Then the man got that look. It was the same as Tom's, and Blair knew what was coming.

"What's wrong with you, you stupid little bastard. Cat got your tongue?" The man raised his arm and formed a fist, and Blair closed his eyes and waited.

He waited, but nothing happened. Daring to open his eyes, the only thing the youngster came into contact with was Robert's stunned look. Blood dribbled from a wound on the man's arm and Bagheera sat, preening his fur. The cat had responded to Robert Wilder's words as if to an incantation, effectively silencing him.

Wilder stuttered and spluttered, unable to form an intelligible word. Chilled to the bone by a deepening of the coldness which had been plaguing him on and off for months, he stumbled backward. The wound on his arm continued to bleed and he looked at it as if it were an apparition. His eyes flickered from the child to his nephew and back to Blair again. "Devil's spawn," he gasped. Continuing to stumble, he clasped the bottle to his chest as if it were a holy cross and edged his way toward the front door. "Devil's god damn, fucking spawn."

~oOo~

Jim's re-emergence back into the physical and the conscious world was not a painless event. His chest felt heavy and constricted, making breathing difficult, and pain sliced through his arm with the insistence of a buzz-saw. Rolling to his side, he struggled to his hands and knees and coughed up more phlegm than he thought could possibly exist in one man's body.

"Never a pleasant side effect of limbo, Enqueri." The warrior leaned over and smacked the sentinel hard on the back.

"Incacha!" Jim lumbered unsteadily to his feet. "Blair, Lucas ... do you have them?"

"No, no I do not."

"Why?" Jim rasped out, still coughing. "You know what's happened, don't you?"

"I am well aware as to what has taken place, Enqueri."

"Wilder and Lucas's father ... you've taken care of them, then?"

"No," Incacha replied forlornly. "I have not done that either."

"I don't understand ..." Jim's world jolted to a sudden, screaming halt. The only reason he could fathom for Incacha being with him and not protecting the boys was that the boys no longer needed protection. "God, no?" he whispered.

"They are not dead," the spirit guide assured gently. "But if you do not find your way, your balance, they could very well be."

"What?" Ellison stuttered, still trying to process the first part of Incacha's answer.

"Finding your way, sentinel, is the only way they will survive, and if you cannot do this, then their fate will rest heavily upon your shoulders until the day you pass."

Jim stared at the Chopec Warrior as if he'd just spoken in tongues. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, confused and somewhat affronted by Incacha's statement. "If the boys are still alive and Wilder is still with them, orb outta here or whatever it is you do and go protect them," he ordered.

"I think you are somewhat misguided, Enqueri." Incacha got to his feet and stood to his full height. "You are their Sentinel and it is your job to protect them. Unfortunately for your Guide and the Guardian, it is a job you have not been taking seriously."

"You have got to be kidding me!" Jim answered, his anger dangerously on the rise. "After everything we've been through, after everything those kids have been through, you have the gall to accuse me of not protecting them?"

"When was the last time you used your powers, Sentinel? When was the last time you used the gift that has been given to you?"

"What the hell has that got to do with this?" Jim barked.

"When!" Incacha thundered.

"I don't know!" Jim yelled. "Last week when I was looking for the cinnamon in the back of the pantry, I suppose."

"The fact is you have not used your gift to its full capacity since the guardian came into your life."

Jim thought back, and realised that what Incacha said was true. When Blair had been missing, the grasp he'd had on his senses had been pretty damn freaky. But since then, when things had settled down to more or less being normal, so, it seemed for the most part, had his senses.

"There are certain spiritual powers, Enqueri, who believe that a Guide is wasted upon a Sentinel who does not embrace what he has been given. These same powers also believe that a Guardian is not a guardian without a Guide to protect."

"This is bullshit." Jim scrubbed his hand roughly through his hair. "They're not Guardians and Guides, they're kids, my kids."

"In this realm perhaps, but in others, they are nothing more than what I've stated."

"Well, you know exactly where you can shove that realm and the powers that be, don't you?"

"If only it were so easy," Incacha replied sadly. He gestured toward the ground. "Sit, Enqueri. We have much to talk about."

"No, we don't," Jim retaliated. "What we need to do is for you to get me out of here so this cop can do what this cop does best."

"Sit." It was no longer a request, but a command.

The look in Incacha's eyes had Jim planting his butt on the nearest rock.

"Survival of the fittest is, I believe, how your culture describes it," Incacha began. "As in everything to do with nature, it is those who adapt to their environment and those who meet head on and empower themselves with the circumstances of this environment, who are the ones to survive. Those who shy away, who ignore what is right in front of their eyes in favour of clutching to the ways of the past, are the ones who meet an early demise."

"And all that means what exactly?" Jim asked sardonically.

"You see me, Enqueri, you see the animal spirits, you know you have a power that not many human beings possess, but still you choose to ignore. You stay focused on your physical world and disregard what has been shown to you by the spirit world. The spirit world does not take being ignored lightly."

"I don't ignore it," Ellison bit back. "The god damn zoo that's taken up residence in my living room is a testament to that."

Incacha was becoming annoyed at the flippant nature of his sentinel. "Your choices are clear, Enqueri. You either can adapt to the new world or you can choose to flounder in the old one. If you choose the latter, the consequences for your guide and the guardian could be dire."

Jim paled. "Dire, how?"

"The council has shown you a life with a Guardian and Guide, and now you are being given a glimpse of what it could be like without them." Incacha's voice became serious. "If you continue to ignore, that glimpse will soon become a reality."

"Reality ... a reality, how?" Ellison asked, not really sure if he wanted to know the answer.

"They will be removed."

"No!" Jim surged to his feet. "This council of yours ... they can't do that. I won't let them."

"Yes, I'm afraid they can." Incacha reached out and laid his hand upon Jim's shoulder. "Unless you stop them."

"Stop them how?"

Incacha pointed to the river. "The way you entered holds no way back." He swept his hand downstream to where the water started to churn. "The way forward represents only death." He turned around and held his hands up in the air, almost as if praying to the smooth granite cliff face that not only surrounded them but also kept the sentinel trapped. "The secret lies within these walls. Find that and you'll find your way out."

"This is a test, isn't it?" Ellison's 'obvious' penny had just dropped. "Wilder, Lucas's father, the camping trip ... it's all been a god damn, fucking test." He pinched the bridge of his nose, briefly. "Okay, I'll play your little spiritual Mensa puzzle. I can do this," he said, still as angry as hell, but resigning himself to the fact that playing along might very well be his only chance to save his sons. "All I have to do is find a way out of Willy Wonka's maze here and everything will be hunky dory, back to normal." He glared at Incacha. "I'm assuming that's how it works?"

"The test is twofold, Enqueri."

Jim slapped his hand against his thigh. "Of course it is. Why would I have expected anything less? What's the catch?" he spat.

"As your son grows, he has the potential to be a very powerful guide, perhaps even a shaman. There are many who believe that sending someone so young to protect him was a mistake. There are many who believe the guardian should be removed."

"Incacha," Ellison growled. "If you or any one of your transparent buddies do anything to–"

The warrior held up his hand, silencing the sentinel. "He is, at this very moment, fighting for your guide's life with his own. He is strong, but his quarry is stronger. He needs you, Enqueri. To survive the battle, he will need you by his side." Incacha turned and walked back down to the river. "Look beyond to find your way out."

"Beyond what?" Ellison shouted. Lucas and Blair had been left in the hands of a psychotic lunatic and Incacha was playing twenty questions.

"Beyond what is in front of your eyes."

Jim smacked the face of the wall with his hand. "I hate to tell you, Yoda, but these walls are solid rock, there is nothing beyond."

Incacha turned one more time to address his sentinel. "If there is nothing beyond, Enqueri, then you will see no further." As the shadows of dusk disappeared and gave the earth back to the night sky, so did Incacha. If his sentinel did not walk alone now, then walking alone could very well be the path he would follow until his death.

Alone and abandoned, Jim ran his hand over his short-cropped hair. "And they wonder why I don't get involved in their world," he muttered. Black and white, point A to point B ... X marks the spot. That was the kind of guy he was. He wanted no 'seek and thou shalt find', no 'double, double, toil and trouble', no mystical bloody mumbo jumbo. Just facts, straight facts which were based on solid evidence that could be correlated and linked back to reveal a chain of events and solve a problem.

Looking up at the cliff face and knowing he had to get it together, Jim tried to push his analytic detective brain to the background. "Beyond," he muttered as he surveyed the wall. "Look beyond."

~oOo~