Immortal enough, p.2
Immortal Enough, page 2
“Luck is a thing for me.”
“I’ll text you,” he said as he walked out the door.
I sat there with my coffee with another couple of minutes, still trying to churn what he’d told me through my brain. Also was I in the mood to go back and deal with the loud music and crowded space of Siracha? Not really. I sent Carolyn a text.
Did my1 drink. Heading home. You staying?
I dawdled for a bit waiting for a reply and eventually got one.
Yeah. Gonna dance a while.
~
I had forgotten to grab my mail out of the box in the foyer earlier today, so I did it on my way back up to my apartment. Bills, bills, junk and one letter. My address was printed and there was no return address label. The postmark was from Rishikesh in India. Ah, I knew who was probably from.
Upstairs in my fifth-floor apartment, I flopped down on the sofa and carefully tore open the letter. The single sheet of paper inside had just a few lines written in Damayanti’s handwriting in Hindi.
Em
Rumors are being dropped that a ceremonial magician is digging into Helena B’s history to decipher her connections to A. Bailey and ultimately Djual Khul, which make me wonder what that shit spewing old goat is trying to pull off now. Be careful.
Damayanti
I read the letter a second time. It had been a calculated gamble to send me a physical letter. Dama had internet access and could just as easily have sent me an email. We corresponded that way occasionally, occasionally translating to about once or twice a year. This made me think she was laying off the grid somewhere and had either cruised through Rishikesh to mail the letter or paid someone to.
Was I in danger? Was she in danger? She was older than me by a few centuries. Being a vampire did that for you. It also gave her time to master a hell of a lot of magick. I’d made my way to India in the 1930’s, between the first and second world wars. By that time I’d come to the realization that I was unkillable, immortal or however you wanted to spin it. I’d also found out I could do some things regular humans shouldn’t be able to. The trip to India had been a search for a teacher. Over a couple years of wandering and poking my nose into danger and mysticism and magick, I’d ended up becoming a snack for Dama.
If I’d been mortal, that would have been the end of the story. I wasn’t and it wasn’t. In fact we evolved into teacher and student, briefly into lovers and later into friends. I’d spent thirteen years in India and left to go to Europe post WWII.
I knew that Dama had met Helen Blavatsky briefly sometime before I was born. She’d also met Alice Bailey in 1905 or 1906. Somewhere in that era Djual Kuhl had been sticking his fingers in various pies of the occult world with mixed success. I had encountered him in 1931 when he’d had a go at ritually sacrificing me to cement his alliance with Byakhee Cabal. Since I didn’t die well, the whole scenario had been a disaster, and Djual had barely escaped to … I didn’t know where. Every twenty to thirty years I’d hear a rumor he was siphoning life force from some other victim to prolong his own.
Returning to thoughts about the letter, I wondered just exactly what level of careful she thought was needed. Set stronger wards on my apartment? Carry weapons? Ditch my current identity and pull my back up out of the lockbox? I really hoped it wasn’t that last one. I was planning on living as Sophie Makara for another eight to ten years minimum.
For the moment I would take the warning somewhat literally. I tucked the letter into a cubby on my desk and walked into the bedroom. Stripping off my club clothes, I noticed that the socks I’d chosen to wear under my boots were a shade of red that matched the curl of ink at my ankle. My tattoo that wasn’t actually a tattoo. The elaborate dragon covered most of my back, with the wings extended onto part of my upper arms. The tail wound down my right hip, around my thigh and calf, ending in a delicate point at my ankle. Vibrant shades of red and gold and black decorated my skin. I had woken up with it after my death.
Chapter 2
Fitz
Siracha closed at 1 a.m. from Sunday to Thursday. I suppose that was a little early for a club, but the crowds always dwindled after midnight during the week. I only did security duty for them one or two nights in a week. Considering I had daytime responsibilities, that was about all I could handle. I sank down into the seat of my car and enjoyed the silence. It would only take me half an hour to get home at this time of night. And yet I sat there gazing at the wall of the parking deck, keys dangling in the ignition, thinking about the woman. Sophie.
She was easy on the eye. Her dark hair curled a little where it brushed her shoulders. She was comfortably proportioned with obvious hips and an average bustline, not a skinny waif that made you wonder how fragile she was. And wonder of wonders she actually had a slight clue about quantum mechanics. I didn’t do social interaction all that well outside of the academic environment. My brain usually wandered off into Grand Unification Theory and linear accelerator data too easily and invariably so did my mouth. I guess that’s why working security was as good a fit as any for a second job, because I usually didn’t have to do much talking.
Since I’d asked Sophie out to dinner, I’d have to decide where I wanted to take her. And that meant I’d have to make a decision how much I was willing to spend. My stipend covered my bills just barely, with very little room to spare, hence my part-time extra job so that I had some wiggle room for either emergencies or discretionary expenses.
She knew I was a grad student and all, so fingers crossed, she wouldn’t be expecting a ridiculously high dollar dinner. I knew a couple of places, that weren’t chains, with good food and sane prices.
I finally got around to starting my car and drove home. I had a one-bedroom apartment in an okay neighborhood. One of the metro stops was a couple of blocks away, which made getting back and forth to campus easy, without the hassle of trying to find parking.
I sat down at my desk and popped open my laptop. It would take me at least an hour before my brain settled down enough to sleep. I may as well check on the status of the item I was trying to sell. My dad had inherited a shipping crate of antique items from his family. He wasn’t attached to them enough to display them but had never actively tried to sell them either. Having been imported from China in the early 1900’s, when import and antiquities rules were less defined, their provenance was a little iffy. Dad had recently told me I could choose an item and attempt to sell it. A long litany of cautions about researching what it was actual worth was and the fluidity of the antique market had accompanied that permission.
A number of the items from the crate were cinnabar, or at least appeared to be, so I had chosen a vase that stood about nine inches high and had elaborated carved flowers and temples on it. I’d scoured the internet trying to educate myself on how to tell real and valuable pieces from cheap and or recent imitations. Apparently, there were a lots of plastic knock offs around. I’d emailed photos and consulted a handful of people willing to talk about value and salability. It was beginning to look like I could reasonably ask a price between four and six hundred dollars, which would put a decent dent in a month’s rent. I’d set the price at $580 and assumed that I might have to accept less, but four hundred was the dead lowest I was willing to go. Not that the auction site I was using needed to know that. I was also using a site that didn’t require me to set a time limit. So far, the piece had only been active for a couple of weeks, and I had one bid for a hundred bucks.
Chapter 3
Sophie
I don’t know if I desperately wanted him to message me or if seeing him again was going to send my brain down all sorts of rabbit holes. I’d googled him, searched social media and public records. Everything I found hinted that he was a descendant of “my Fitz.” Was there something skeevy about feeling an attraction to him? I was a century older than anyone I’d been on a date with this decade, not that there had been many, and a good handful of those were one-time hookups.
I hadn’t seen him on the metro this morning. That wasn’t unusual. Typically, I only noticed him about once a week. Less than ten minutes of difference in a morning routine could put commuters on different trains and there were generally eight to ten cars on one train anyway.
On a bathroom break, away from my desk at work, I checked my phone. No message. Geez, it’d been less than twenty-four hours since our cup of coffee last night. I needed to stop obsessing and focus on my job. Or maybe I should transfer my spinning thoughts to the vague warning from Dama. I’d double checked the magical wards around the perimeter of my apartment and the building. It helped that I actually owned the whole building, not that anyone knew that since it was done through a shell company and four other layers of obscure investment diversions.
As I was coming out of the bathroom, Carolyn flagged me down.
“So, did you get lucky?” she asked.
“Define lucky.”
“Horizontal bop?”
“No.”
“God, I thought for sure the two of you had chemistry,” she lamented.
“He claims he wants to take me to dinner,” I said.
“But he’s ghosting you.”
“It hasn’t even been one day yet.”
“Enh… okay, true,” she admitted.
“And although I’m not opposed to a no strings physical encounter, I spent a while talking to him at the coffee shop and I’m leaning old school here. I’d like a date. Even if it’s just coffee again without him having to constantly check the time because he has to get straight back to work.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky this time.”
I smiled.
~
I was just about ready to leave work for the day when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Was it going to be Carolyn? Nope. It was a message from Fitz.
Can we do tomorrow night at 7? Any objections to Salvadoran/ Tex-Mex?
I was amused. Definitely not ghosting me as Carolyn had teased. I texted him back
Sounds great? Where are we meeting? I didn’t want to make assumptions that he would pick me up. I actually didn’t even know if he had a car. After I sent the text, I second guessed myself, because I wondered if it sounded like I was dubious about him knowing where I lived. Okay, fair enough, not an uncommon worry in the twenty-first century. Not that it worried me. Immortality kind of blunted my self-preservation instincts.
He sent me the address of a restaurant on the edge of Silver Spring.
~
Dinner was delicious, and not ridiculously expensive. Win and win. We spent part of the meal talking about his grad student studies. I’d read enough Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, and Penrose to follow the basics of quantum theory even if my math knowledge dead-ended at the beginnings of calculus. We also touched on a handful of other non-controversial topics. As we walked out of the restaurant, he paused on the sidewalk. “Would you like to come back to my apartment and have a drink?” He looked uncertain as he posed the request. “It can be coffee or soda or something non-alcoholic. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get you drunk enough to…” He left the sentence dangling.
I’d had a single beer with dinner. I was attracted, and still intensely obsessively curious about this whole synchronistic scenario of the two of us meeting. “I don’t have to be drunk to be interested.” Oh my, he blushed enough for me to notice it even in the harsh uneven lighting on the sidewalk.
He took my hand. “I’m parked over behind the Target.”
We walked to his car. It was a Nissan, more than a decade old. For a geeky grad student working on a PhD, it seemed fitting.
He unlocked it and opened the door for me. I paused, looking up at him. Memory mixed with modern streetlights behind him. I rose up on my toes and placed a kiss on his lips. His arms bracketed me on the side of the car, and he returned the kiss, his body pressing lightly against mine. I was tempted to crook a leg around him and haul him closer, but I suspected he might not be the public exhibition type.
He eased back a half step and glanced up at the dark sky. “I…We should probably … um … head back to my place.”
~
It took about twenty minutes to get to the building he lived in. As he opened the apartment door and flicked on the light, I saw movement through an interior doorway. About the same time, I noticed cabinets were hanging open, books were toppled onto the floor, and furniture askew.
Fitz stood there, open-mouthed, for a full second.
A dark clothed figure charged at us from the other doorway. There was a gun in his hand. I also caught a glimpse of thick silvery ring he wore embossed with an image of three winding squiggles projected from a center post.
I shoved Fitz to one side and lunged in the direction of a scattered stack of free weights and a bench, trusting my luck to guide my hand to the curl bar that leaned against the wall. The gunman turned toward me. My hand closed around the bar and a few decades of Tai chi sword training made sure it impacted his raised arm. He let out a grunt of pain and the gun skittered from his hand.
He headed toward the still half open apartment door, stretching his opposite hand back in the direction of the gun on the floor. It sailed up from the floor and into his hand.
I allowed myself a single utterance of “Fuck” and as he escaped through the door, I drew static electricity from the air around me. I cast a small lightning bolt at his fleeing back and had the pleasure of seeing him stumble in pain before he vanished from view down a stairwell.
Chapter 4
Fitz
My apartment was trashed. The burglar had still been there. He’d been armed and the woman I’d brought home with the possible hope of at least a little making out… had moves like a ninja. And the gun… the gun… the burglar guy had made the gun fly through the air. No, that couldn’t be true. It had to be a trick. But the lightning… My brain was tying itself in a knot. Sophie had done something with her hand and there had been a lightning bolt. Was it all a hallucination?
Sophie bent down and examined the locks on my apartment door, setting the curl bar on the floor. “He was a pro. He didn’t force the lock.”
“Jesus… I should call the police.” I tried to organize my scattered thoughts. I could man-handle an out of control drunk out the door of the club, but having someone with a gun break into my apartment? Not so much. And my brain twisted itself back to trying to understand exactly what had happened.
She shut the door and turned to face me. “You could… but maybe you should check to see if he took anything first.”
That was an odd suggestion, wasn’t it? Someone breaks in. You call the police. Especially since the guy had still been there when Sophie and I had walked in the door. “Okay, I guess.” I began to look around, picking some of the books off the floor. My laptop was still on the desk. My gaming console was still sitting on the cheap press-board shelving and the couple of dozen games too. I didn’t really have much else that a thief might want. I didn’t have jewelry or art. My walls had a few posters, and a couple of photos. The one antique I was trying to sell was back in my parents’ storage unit.
Sophie put the cushions back on the sofa and stacked things she picked up off the floor on the coffee table.
“I don’t see anything that’s obviously missing.”
“Good. I think he might have only been in here for a few minutes.”
I faced her. “You don’t seem to be wigged out in the slightest by this.”
“I’ve been through a lot in my life.”
“That includes the things that appear to violate the laws of physics? I’ve spent three years of my life trying to prove that a single particle can influence the behavior of another single particle at significant macroscopic distance. One single particle. I just watched a guy stick out his hand and the gun flew up off the floor and into his hand. And then you just waved your hand and an electrical discharge of some kind, shocked his ass when he was halfway out the door!” I turned in a circle, running my hands through my hair. “Am I losing my fucking mind?”
She stood there with a book in her hand. Her gaze fell to the floor. “It’s complicated.” Finally she looked at me. “But, no, you’re not going crazy.” She put the book on the stack and bent to pick up a couple more.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“I’m thinking. Anything I tell you may increase your danger. Although I’ll confess that if someone broke into my place they might have a reason, while having them break into yours… yeah, I haven’t got a clue at the moment.”
I laughed, not in the way where you think something is actually funny. “If you give me an explanation, you’ll have to kill me?”
Sophie’s mouth quirked. Well at least she was amused by this. “That sounds very KGB.”
“So being that we’re about ten miles from Washington D.C., does that mean there are different letters of the alphabet involved?”
She gave me a considered look. “No alphabet. No significant government involvement of any kind. It’s … There’s a great deal more to the universe than your understanding of the laws of physics covers.”
“So throw gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear theory out the window? And how does this tie into some dude with a gun breaking into my apartment and rifling through my stuff? Hell, I need a drink.” I went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Patron out of a cupboard. Damn, shit and fuck, every cupboard door in the kitchen was hanging open. I yanked the cork loose and chugged a good mouthful before setting it on the counter. I had a deep suspicion that when all the initial adrenalin of seeing the burglar and the gun and the everything else had finally burned its way through my nervous system, and I just might start shaking. And that thought made me want to punch something, like maybe the wall.
Sophie leaned on the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed. “The guy who broke in. He’s connected to some very bad people.”
“Drug dealers? Cartel stuff?”
“No, I know you aren’t likely to believe me but there is shit far more evil than drug lords, human trafficking, and money laundering.”
“I’ll text you,” he said as he walked out the door.
I sat there with my coffee with another couple of minutes, still trying to churn what he’d told me through my brain. Also was I in the mood to go back and deal with the loud music and crowded space of Siracha? Not really. I sent Carolyn a text.
Did my1 drink. Heading home. You staying?
I dawdled for a bit waiting for a reply and eventually got one.
Yeah. Gonna dance a while.
~
I had forgotten to grab my mail out of the box in the foyer earlier today, so I did it on my way back up to my apartment. Bills, bills, junk and one letter. My address was printed and there was no return address label. The postmark was from Rishikesh in India. Ah, I knew who was probably from.
Upstairs in my fifth-floor apartment, I flopped down on the sofa and carefully tore open the letter. The single sheet of paper inside had just a few lines written in Damayanti’s handwriting in Hindi.
Em
Rumors are being dropped that a ceremonial magician is digging into Helena B’s history to decipher her connections to A. Bailey and ultimately Djual Khul, which make me wonder what that shit spewing old goat is trying to pull off now. Be careful.
Damayanti
I read the letter a second time. It had been a calculated gamble to send me a physical letter. Dama had internet access and could just as easily have sent me an email. We corresponded that way occasionally, occasionally translating to about once or twice a year. This made me think she was laying off the grid somewhere and had either cruised through Rishikesh to mail the letter or paid someone to.
Was I in danger? Was she in danger? She was older than me by a few centuries. Being a vampire did that for you. It also gave her time to master a hell of a lot of magick. I’d made my way to India in the 1930’s, between the first and second world wars. By that time I’d come to the realization that I was unkillable, immortal or however you wanted to spin it. I’d also found out I could do some things regular humans shouldn’t be able to. The trip to India had been a search for a teacher. Over a couple years of wandering and poking my nose into danger and mysticism and magick, I’d ended up becoming a snack for Dama.
If I’d been mortal, that would have been the end of the story. I wasn’t and it wasn’t. In fact we evolved into teacher and student, briefly into lovers and later into friends. I’d spent thirteen years in India and left to go to Europe post WWII.
I knew that Dama had met Helen Blavatsky briefly sometime before I was born. She’d also met Alice Bailey in 1905 or 1906. Somewhere in that era Djual Kuhl had been sticking his fingers in various pies of the occult world with mixed success. I had encountered him in 1931 when he’d had a go at ritually sacrificing me to cement his alliance with Byakhee Cabal. Since I didn’t die well, the whole scenario had been a disaster, and Djual had barely escaped to … I didn’t know where. Every twenty to thirty years I’d hear a rumor he was siphoning life force from some other victim to prolong his own.
Returning to thoughts about the letter, I wondered just exactly what level of careful she thought was needed. Set stronger wards on my apartment? Carry weapons? Ditch my current identity and pull my back up out of the lockbox? I really hoped it wasn’t that last one. I was planning on living as Sophie Makara for another eight to ten years minimum.
For the moment I would take the warning somewhat literally. I tucked the letter into a cubby on my desk and walked into the bedroom. Stripping off my club clothes, I noticed that the socks I’d chosen to wear under my boots were a shade of red that matched the curl of ink at my ankle. My tattoo that wasn’t actually a tattoo. The elaborate dragon covered most of my back, with the wings extended onto part of my upper arms. The tail wound down my right hip, around my thigh and calf, ending in a delicate point at my ankle. Vibrant shades of red and gold and black decorated my skin. I had woken up with it after my death.
Chapter 2
Fitz
Siracha closed at 1 a.m. from Sunday to Thursday. I suppose that was a little early for a club, but the crowds always dwindled after midnight during the week. I only did security duty for them one or two nights in a week. Considering I had daytime responsibilities, that was about all I could handle. I sank down into the seat of my car and enjoyed the silence. It would only take me half an hour to get home at this time of night. And yet I sat there gazing at the wall of the parking deck, keys dangling in the ignition, thinking about the woman. Sophie.
She was easy on the eye. Her dark hair curled a little where it brushed her shoulders. She was comfortably proportioned with obvious hips and an average bustline, not a skinny waif that made you wonder how fragile she was. And wonder of wonders she actually had a slight clue about quantum mechanics. I didn’t do social interaction all that well outside of the academic environment. My brain usually wandered off into Grand Unification Theory and linear accelerator data too easily and invariably so did my mouth. I guess that’s why working security was as good a fit as any for a second job, because I usually didn’t have to do much talking.
Since I’d asked Sophie out to dinner, I’d have to decide where I wanted to take her. And that meant I’d have to make a decision how much I was willing to spend. My stipend covered my bills just barely, with very little room to spare, hence my part-time extra job so that I had some wiggle room for either emergencies or discretionary expenses.
She knew I was a grad student and all, so fingers crossed, she wouldn’t be expecting a ridiculously high dollar dinner. I knew a couple of places, that weren’t chains, with good food and sane prices.
I finally got around to starting my car and drove home. I had a one-bedroom apartment in an okay neighborhood. One of the metro stops was a couple of blocks away, which made getting back and forth to campus easy, without the hassle of trying to find parking.
I sat down at my desk and popped open my laptop. It would take me at least an hour before my brain settled down enough to sleep. I may as well check on the status of the item I was trying to sell. My dad had inherited a shipping crate of antique items from his family. He wasn’t attached to them enough to display them but had never actively tried to sell them either. Having been imported from China in the early 1900’s, when import and antiquities rules were less defined, their provenance was a little iffy. Dad had recently told me I could choose an item and attempt to sell it. A long litany of cautions about researching what it was actual worth was and the fluidity of the antique market had accompanied that permission.
A number of the items from the crate were cinnabar, or at least appeared to be, so I had chosen a vase that stood about nine inches high and had elaborated carved flowers and temples on it. I’d scoured the internet trying to educate myself on how to tell real and valuable pieces from cheap and or recent imitations. Apparently, there were a lots of plastic knock offs around. I’d emailed photos and consulted a handful of people willing to talk about value and salability. It was beginning to look like I could reasonably ask a price between four and six hundred dollars, which would put a decent dent in a month’s rent. I’d set the price at $580 and assumed that I might have to accept less, but four hundred was the dead lowest I was willing to go. Not that the auction site I was using needed to know that. I was also using a site that didn’t require me to set a time limit. So far, the piece had only been active for a couple of weeks, and I had one bid for a hundred bucks.
Chapter 3
Sophie
I don’t know if I desperately wanted him to message me or if seeing him again was going to send my brain down all sorts of rabbit holes. I’d googled him, searched social media and public records. Everything I found hinted that he was a descendant of “my Fitz.” Was there something skeevy about feeling an attraction to him? I was a century older than anyone I’d been on a date with this decade, not that there had been many, and a good handful of those were one-time hookups.
I hadn’t seen him on the metro this morning. That wasn’t unusual. Typically, I only noticed him about once a week. Less than ten minutes of difference in a morning routine could put commuters on different trains and there were generally eight to ten cars on one train anyway.
On a bathroom break, away from my desk at work, I checked my phone. No message. Geez, it’d been less than twenty-four hours since our cup of coffee last night. I needed to stop obsessing and focus on my job. Or maybe I should transfer my spinning thoughts to the vague warning from Dama. I’d double checked the magical wards around the perimeter of my apartment and the building. It helped that I actually owned the whole building, not that anyone knew that since it was done through a shell company and four other layers of obscure investment diversions.
As I was coming out of the bathroom, Carolyn flagged me down.
“So, did you get lucky?” she asked.
“Define lucky.”
“Horizontal bop?”
“No.”
“God, I thought for sure the two of you had chemistry,” she lamented.
“He claims he wants to take me to dinner,” I said.
“But he’s ghosting you.”
“It hasn’t even been one day yet.”
“Enh… okay, true,” she admitted.
“And although I’m not opposed to a no strings physical encounter, I spent a while talking to him at the coffee shop and I’m leaning old school here. I’d like a date. Even if it’s just coffee again without him having to constantly check the time because he has to get straight back to work.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky this time.”
I smiled.
~
I was just about ready to leave work for the day when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Was it going to be Carolyn? Nope. It was a message from Fitz.
Can we do tomorrow night at 7? Any objections to Salvadoran/ Tex-Mex?
I was amused. Definitely not ghosting me as Carolyn had teased. I texted him back
Sounds great? Where are we meeting? I didn’t want to make assumptions that he would pick me up. I actually didn’t even know if he had a car. After I sent the text, I second guessed myself, because I wondered if it sounded like I was dubious about him knowing where I lived. Okay, fair enough, not an uncommon worry in the twenty-first century. Not that it worried me. Immortality kind of blunted my self-preservation instincts.
He sent me the address of a restaurant on the edge of Silver Spring.
~
Dinner was delicious, and not ridiculously expensive. Win and win. We spent part of the meal talking about his grad student studies. I’d read enough Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, and Penrose to follow the basics of quantum theory even if my math knowledge dead-ended at the beginnings of calculus. We also touched on a handful of other non-controversial topics. As we walked out of the restaurant, he paused on the sidewalk. “Would you like to come back to my apartment and have a drink?” He looked uncertain as he posed the request. “It can be coffee or soda or something non-alcoholic. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get you drunk enough to…” He left the sentence dangling.
I’d had a single beer with dinner. I was attracted, and still intensely obsessively curious about this whole synchronistic scenario of the two of us meeting. “I don’t have to be drunk to be interested.” Oh my, he blushed enough for me to notice it even in the harsh uneven lighting on the sidewalk.
He took my hand. “I’m parked over behind the Target.”
We walked to his car. It was a Nissan, more than a decade old. For a geeky grad student working on a PhD, it seemed fitting.
He unlocked it and opened the door for me. I paused, looking up at him. Memory mixed with modern streetlights behind him. I rose up on my toes and placed a kiss on his lips. His arms bracketed me on the side of the car, and he returned the kiss, his body pressing lightly against mine. I was tempted to crook a leg around him and haul him closer, but I suspected he might not be the public exhibition type.
He eased back a half step and glanced up at the dark sky. “I…We should probably … um … head back to my place.”
~
It took about twenty minutes to get to the building he lived in. As he opened the apartment door and flicked on the light, I saw movement through an interior doorway. About the same time, I noticed cabinets were hanging open, books were toppled onto the floor, and furniture askew.
Fitz stood there, open-mouthed, for a full second.
A dark clothed figure charged at us from the other doorway. There was a gun in his hand. I also caught a glimpse of thick silvery ring he wore embossed with an image of three winding squiggles projected from a center post.
I shoved Fitz to one side and lunged in the direction of a scattered stack of free weights and a bench, trusting my luck to guide my hand to the curl bar that leaned against the wall. The gunman turned toward me. My hand closed around the bar and a few decades of Tai chi sword training made sure it impacted his raised arm. He let out a grunt of pain and the gun skittered from his hand.
He headed toward the still half open apartment door, stretching his opposite hand back in the direction of the gun on the floor. It sailed up from the floor and into his hand.
I allowed myself a single utterance of “Fuck” and as he escaped through the door, I drew static electricity from the air around me. I cast a small lightning bolt at his fleeing back and had the pleasure of seeing him stumble in pain before he vanished from view down a stairwell.
Chapter 4
Fitz
My apartment was trashed. The burglar had still been there. He’d been armed and the woman I’d brought home with the possible hope of at least a little making out… had moves like a ninja. And the gun… the gun… the burglar guy had made the gun fly through the air. No, that couldn’t be true. It had to be a trick. But the lightning… My brain was tying itself in a knot. Sophie had done something with her hand and there had been a lightning bolt. Was it all a hallucination?
Sophie bent down and examined the locks on my apartment door, setting the curl bar on the floor. “He was a pro. He didn’t force the lock.”
“Jesus… I should call the police.” I tried to organize my scattered thoughts. I could man-handle an out of control drunk out the door of the club, but having someone with a gun break into my apartment? Not so much. And my brain twisted itself back to trying to understand exactly what had happened.
She shut the door and turned to face me. “You could… but maybe you should check to see if he took anything first.”
That was an odd suggestion, wasn’t it? Someone breaks in. You call the police. Especially since the guy had still been there when Sophie and I had walked in the door. “Okay, I guess.” I began to look around, picking some of the books off the floor. My laptop was still on the desk. My gaming console was still sitting on the cheap press-board shelving and the couple of dozen games too. I didn’t really have much else that a thief might want. I didn’t have jewelry or art. My walls had a few posters, and a couple of photos. The one antique I was trying to sell was back in my parents’ storage unit.
Sophie put the cushions back on the sofa and stacked things she picked up off the floor on the coffee table.
“I don’t see anything that’s obviously missing.”
“Good. I think he might have only been in here for a few minutes.”
I faced her. “You don’t seem to be wigged out in the slightest by this.”
“I’ve been through a lot in my life.”
“That includes the things that appear to violate the laws of physics? I’ve spent three years of my life trying to prove that a single particle can influence the behavior of another single particle at significant macroscopic distance. One single particle. I just watched a guy stick out his hand and the gun flew up off the floor and into his hand. And then you just waved your hand and an electrical discharge of some kind, shocked his ass when he was halfway out the door!” I turned in a circle, running my hands through my hair. “Am I losing my fucking mind?”
She stood there with a book in her hand. Her gaze fell to the floor. “It’s complicated.” Finally she looked at me. “But, no, you’re not going crazy.” She put the book on the stack and bent to pick up a couple more.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“I’m thinking. Anything I tell you may increase your danger. Although I’ll confess that if someone broke into my place they might have a reason, while having them break into yours… yeah, I haven’t got a clue at the moment.”
I laughed, not in the way where you think something is actually funny. “If you give me an explanation, you’ll have to kill me?”
Sophie’s mouth quirked. Well at least she was amused by this. “That sounds very KGB.”
“So being that we’re about ten miles from Washington D.C., does that mean there are different letters of the alphabet involved?”
She gave me a considered look. “No alphabet. No significant government involvement of any kind. It’s … There’s a great deal more to the universe than your understanding of the laws of physics covers.”
“So throw gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear theory out the window? And how does this tie into some dude with a gun breaking into my apartment and rifling through my stuff? Hell, I need a drink.” I went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Patron out of a cupboard. Damn, shit and fuck, every cupboard door in the kitchen was hanging open. I yanked the cork loose and chugged a good mouthful before setting it on the counter. I had a deep suspicion that when all the initial adrenalin of seeing the burglar and the gun and the everything else had finally burned its way through my nervous system, and I just might start shaking. And that thought made me want to punch something, like maybe the wall.
Sophie leaned on the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed. “The guy who broke in. He’s connected to some very bad people.”
“Drug dealers? Cartel stuff?”
“No, I know you aren’t likely to believe me but there is shit far more evil than drug lords, human trafficking, and money laundering.”
