Guise, p.24
Guise, page 24
Yoki propped herself up on her elbows and glared at Patience.
“Planning on trying to finish the job you started yesterday Patience Anastasia Isis Niazi,” growled the Herald.
“Hardly,” replied Patience, taking a position between the Herald and Darwin. “I am certain you have taken precautions to make that course of action extremely undesirable right here and now.”
“Too true,” said the Herald, sitting up and starting to fix Yoki’s clothes.
“I will just take captain hormone here with me, and we can finish this another day.”
“You know that the boy will willing give himself to me,” said the Herald. “He will do anything to save his precious Yoki Benally.”
“Let’s go,” said Patience to Darwin, maneuvering him to the door.
“Ask her why she is so intent on letting you only hear her side of things!” shouted the Herald after Darwin. “And then ask yourself how she knew where you were.”
Patience grabbed a hold of Darwin’s arm and walked him to the elevator. Darwin allowed himself to be dragged along, still somewhat dazed by his encounter.
As they rode the elevator down, his head cleared, and he stood straighter. Patience released her hold on his arm. When they reached the ground floor Darwin stormed angrily from the elevator.
“Why did you go there?” asked Patience. “Didn’t we agree that you were going to head straight to your place? They could have taken you.”
“Well, they didn’t,” snapped Darwin.
“That’s not the point,” began Patience.
“How did you know where I was?” asked Darwin, storming over to his Jeep.
“What?” asked Patience, caught off guard by the question.
“How did you know where I was?” asked Darwin again, slowly and deliberately.
“I’m supposed to be guarding you,” answered Patience. “I figured you might try something like this.”
“No,” said Darwin, turning to confront Patience. “You took off. I watched. So how did you know where I was?”
“I circled the block after I left and drove back to make certain you didn’t do exactly what you did.”
“No,” said Darwin again, shaking his head. “I doubt it, but even if that were true, how did you know where I was inside the building?”
“Once I saw your Jeep parked out front it wasn’t difficult to figure out where you had gone. Once there, I just went to Yoki’s office as the most logical point to start looking for you.”
“Bzzzt,” said Darwin angrily. “Try again. She just got assigned to that office. There is no nameplate. So how did you find me?”
“Look,” said Patience. “You’re suffering some backlash from the effects of the empathy projection. Emotionally, you’ll try and balance things out, so right now, you are artificially angry.”
“No!” shouted Darwin. “I am genuinely, 100%, all Darwin-inspired, pissed off right now. You know what I think? I think you are tracking me. You’ve got me lo-jacked somehow and you used that to find me.”
“How long have you been doing that? How long have you been spying on my every move? Were you watching? Did you wait to barge in until it got good? Did you not want the competition?”
“You need to calm down,” said Patience.
“I don’t think I do,” said Darwin, backing away from her. “In fact, I don’t think I need to do anything you say. What I think I need to do is get away from you, and them, and all of this madness.”
“So, here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cell phone. “Take your little voyeur machine and leave me alone!”
He tossed the cell phone at Patience with a flick of his hand. She let is bounce off her and fall to the ground. He stormed into his Jeep and roared out of the parking space. With a squeal of tires, he raced from the parking lot.
“Shit,” said Patience.
CHAPTER 33
Darwin walked through the front doors of the library and immediately felt better. There was something about a library that always made him feel good. Being there calmed him. Maybe it had to do with his love of books. Whenever he was feeling particularly stressed or overwhelmed, he would retreat to the library. It was his sanctuary.
He casually strolled through the familiar stacks, winding his way deeper into the building. He was headed for a small table wedged into the back corner of the reference area. It was hidden away and almost always unoccupied. Today was no exception.
He quietly pulled the well-worn, wooden chair out and sat down. He scrubbed his face with his hands and leaned back, closing his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he breathed out his anger.
He didn’t know why he had flown into such a rage at Patience. It wasn’t like him. Not at all. but then, a lot of things weren’t like him lately.
Like, doing it in the office?
Yeah, he had strong feelings for Yoki, but to try and have sex with her in her office? No. He had never been one for that kind of thing. Doing it in public. Heck, if he was honest with himself, he was fairly prudish in regards to his sex life.
Well, with one notable exception.
Hadn’t she worked in the library at college? How come he couldn’t recall her name? Or any details about her now that he thought of it. Although, he was pretty certain she wore glasses, elongated narrow octagons in black frames. As he concentrated, he started to get a kaleidoscope of erotic impressions attached to memory fragments. A particularly strong one involved an encounter is the periodicals section.
Darwin jerked in his seat, eyes snapping open.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “That is not helping. How about I get something to read before I end up falling asleep, or worse, embarrassing myself.”
Darwin rose and hunted through the stacks. None of the usual topics he turned to were appealing to him today. He wandered down an aisle and stopped. At eye level, was a book with the title, “The Comprehensive Codex of Psychic Phenomenon”.
He pulled the book from the shelf, and quickly thumbed through it. It had illustrations, definitions, explanations and what appeared to be historical accounts for various psychic abilities. All alphabetically arranged.
“Maybe I should do a little research,” he said. “Find out what is out there. If nothing else, I may pick up some terminology. Maybe even some pointers on dealing with all of this stuff.”
Tucking the book under his arm, he scanned the area before him. He grabbed a few other promising volumes and took his finds back to his table. He neatly stacked the books off in one corner and fumbled in his pocket for the small notebook he always tried to keep with him to record ideas. As he did, he came across the envelopes he had picked up.
“Perhaps I should see what is in these bad boys,” he said.
He looked the two envelopes over. One was a plain white envelope with his name typed neatly in the center. There were no other markings. The other was a small brown envelope sent to him care of WeirdWorks. It was sealed with a button string closure. There was no return address. The stamps were faded green line drawings of a crane and had some kind of Asian characters on them. The cancellation stamp was a dull red with blurry Arabic script.
Leaving the more intriguing brown envelope for second, Darwin turned the white envelope over. It wasn’t sealed. Inside was a single piece of white typing paper. A brief message was typed in the center of the page:
Time is running out.
Guard yourself against her.
Ask, and help is yours.
Succubus
“As if my life wasn’t complicated enough,” muttered Darwin disgustedly.
Who was this Succubus that kept sending him cryptic notes? How did they know about Yoki and the Herald’s deadline? What exactly were they going to help him with and how?
More importantly, was this yet another person who was watching him? Following him? Why was he so interesting to all of these people? And why didn’t he notice what seemed to be a growing mob of individuals observing his every move?
“You know, I thought popular authors were supposed to get legions of adoring fans. Do I? Nope, but designate me as the psychic second coming, and suddenly I have people cropping up out of nowhere to help me deal with it.”
Darwin folded the paper and stuffed it in a pocket.
Let’s see what’s behind door number two.
Darwin picked up the brown envelope and turned it over. He undid the string and opened the envelope flap, looking inside. He tilted it up and held his hand over the opening. A small object wrapped in yellow tissue paper fell into his palm.
Whatever it was, it weighed almost nothing. Darwin set the tissue wrapped object on the table and made certain there was nothing else in the envelope. There wasn’t.
He unwrapped the tissue paper, revealing a ring. It looked to be about two inches in diameter. It was made of some kind of opalescent ceramic. As he turned it in his fingers, there appeared to be faint tracery just under the surface on one side. It was oddly warm to the touch. As he examined it further, he realized that it wasn’t a circle, so much as a cog with barely noticeable teeth. Twelve of them.
“Okay,” he said. “Now I have a mystery person sending me an unidentified doodad. At least Succubus signs her notes,” he groused.
He tapped the ring on the table. The sound was dull as if muffled. He gave it a spin. It twirled around some before falling over. He shrugged and pushed it aside.
Darwin picked up the envelope and examined it. The address appeared to have been handwritten. It was almost calligraphy. Peering closer at the stamp and cancellation revealed nothing new. He didn’t know either of the writings. He stuffed the envelope in a pocket and turned to his books.
He decided to start with the codex.
After the last few days, and Patience’s casual use of terms he had only vaguely heard of, he figured it was well past time that he got a better understanding of what was happening. He found the term, ‘cryomancy’. According to the book, it was the ability to freeze things. Basically, you pulled the heat out of something with your mind. Nodding his appreciation of the accuracy of the term, he began looking up other terms he remembered Patience using.
His initial curiosity sated, Darwin turned to the book’s index and traced a finger down the line of entries. There were far more than he had expected. Picking interesting sounding ones at random, Darwin started his research.
After a couple of hours, Darwin stopped and stretched. He got up and took a walk around to get the cricks out of his limbs and back. He headed back to the section he had been in before to pick up a few more books.
A cute girl with short black hair, pale white skin and bright, pink lipstick stood in that section, running a small hand with nails painted the same color as her lips across the titles. She selected a book and headed towards him. She wore a tight, white, periodic table t-shirt that showed off an impressive chest. She gave him a polite smile as they passed.
Darwin turned to check her out after they had passed, only to see her doing the same. He spun around, blushing in embarrassment.
Really Darwin? As if you don’t have enough women to deal with, you’re looking to add another one?
He quickly pulled some more books from the shelves and retreated to his table. He shuffled books around, making a stack on the left of the ones he had finished with. He pulled open one of the books he had just gotten and started thumbing through it. While he did, he picked up the ring he had received and fidgeted with it as he had been doing all day.
A scribbled piece of paper on the table showed the number eleven, indicating the number of times he had dropped the ring to the floor.
Distracted by his encounter, Darwin didn’t really see the pages before him. Instead, his mind wandered back to the girl he had just seen. She had been very cute, and his place wasn’t that far from here. He imagined how she would feel pressed against him.
That thought started him thinking of the other women in his life - if you could characterize it that way.
If Yoki wasn’t possessed by some otherworldly entity, he was certain he would be trying to not ruin things with her. As it was, his brief encounter in her office was something he would very much have liked to have finished.
There was Bo. Obviously, there was something there, but what? He hadn’t lied when he said he didn’t know her. Still, wasn’t that the point of dating? To get to know someone you were attracted to?
Maybe that was part of the strong appeal with Yoki: not only was he attracted to her, but he already knew her.
Of course, there was Patience. Beautiful, strong, smart, and someone who had already stated, on more than one occasion, that she was attracted to him, but was that just part of her doing her job? She said it wasn’t, but how could he be certain? Especially since she had practically said that sleeping with him was the fastest way to get his powers activated and under control.
And now he was thinking of some stranger he had just met? Hadn’t even really met, but just seen? Was he really into anyone if he was thinking of everyone including random people he encountered?
Darwin shook his head.
Typically, he was a monogamous individual. He found one person he liked and pursued them exclusively. He didn’t not notice other women, he just didn’t sit there fantasizing about them in detail like he was doing with the brunette with the pink lipstick.
So why the change?
Darwin pondered that. If he was honest with himself, he would say it had started with his encounter with Patience. He hadn’t been seeing anyone in some time. Then, he met her and started thinking about it, and that same day, he met Yoki again who broached the idea which made him recall feelings he had for her in college. And then the next day he met Bo.
So, was this him just reaching a point where he wanted to date and he was narrowing the field? That sort of fit with his top choices all coming into his life within the last couple of days. However, that didn’t feel like it was all of it, and he had never gone through a phase like this before. There was something more.
Patience and Yoki were similar in physical appearance, but Bo, Bo was different. What about the kidnappers he had met? Sheryl had been cute, but April was definitely more his type, yet he wasn’t thinking about either of them like he was others. Veronica had mainstream good looks, but he never considered her, nor any of them really when he thought about it.
Why?
So, what did Yoki, Patience, and Bo have in common? And now pink lips because he was definitely still thinking about her.
What was it that Patience had said? Something about an emotional backlash as a result of the empathic projection? That would certainly explain his uncharacteristic anger.
He was going to have to apologize to Patience for that.
What if his power was reacting to the empathic projection and somehow transforming it into a - heightened state of horniness? That seemed farfetched even in his current hard-to-believe-science-fiction-meets-Skinemax existence. It didn’t explain why he was looking to hump everything. No, he was still missing something.
“Excuse me?”
Darwin looked up. It was the girl he had seen earlier.
“Yes?” he asked, looking into her bright green eyes.
She is even cuter up close.
“I was just wondering if you were done with that book?” she asked, pointing to one of the books he had stacked off to the left side of the table.
“Sure,” said Darwin, fishing the book out from under two others and handing it to her.
“Thanks,” she said cheerfully.
“No problem.”
She turned to go, but stopped and turned back.
“That’s really cool,” she said, pointing to the ring Darwin was playing with. “I’ve never seen one like that.”
“Really?” said Darwin in surprise. “You know what this is?”
“Can I? she asked, holding out a hand.
“Sure,” he said, depositing the ring into her palm.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s still warm.”
She gave Darwin a seductive knowing smile.
Darwin briefly revisited some thoughts from a few minutes ago.
“So, you know what it is?” he asked again.
“Oh yes,” she breathed, curling her fingers about the ring. She looked Darwin up and down. She licked her lips. Setting the book she had asked him for on the table, she crouched down, looking up at Darwin.
“My last boyfriend used to wear a plain steel one. I like this one so much better. Do you need some help putting it back on?” she asked hopefully, rubbing a hand on Darwin’s thigh and giving it a squeeze.
“Because, you know,” she continued, raising the ring to her mouth. “There’s more than one way to apply these.”
CHAPTER 34
Darwin pulled his Jeep into the overflow parking lot on the side of the building and parked. It looked like the Swartzes were having one of their parties. Normally he didn’t mind, but today it was an irritant. He sat there a moment, collecting his thoughts.
He was very aware of the ring in his pocket. He was still trying to believe his encounter in the library. Not so much that a thing like the ring existed, just because he had never heard of it didn’t really matter. It was more the fact that a stranger - a very appealing stranger - had wanted to help him put it on.
He wasn’t even certain why he was keeping it at this point.
“Time to head inside and deal with things,” he said to himself.
Darwin walked to his condo, lost in his swirling thoughts. He didn’t realize he wasn’t alone until he almost stepped on Patience. She was sitting next to his front door, waiting for him.
“Hi,” she said, looking up at him.
“Why are you sitting out here?” he asked, puzzled.
“It didn’t seem right going inside,” she answered, gracefully rising to her feet.
