Thea Harrison: Rising Darkness

She cocked her head. Using senses and skills alien to the elderly human female she appeared to be, she attuned to the patterns of energy swirling around her. Then she started down the path in the woods toward the small bay where Lake Michigan lapped at a pebbled shore.

She stood waiting at the pier when a battered, sturdy motorboat chugged into view and coasted to a gentle stop. The boat carried two dark-haired occupants who bore a clear family resemblance to each other, their indigenous ancestry revealed in the strong, broad angles of their faces.

A handsome, slim boy-man sat at the motor’s helm. A much older man hunched on the floor of the boat, his dark, graying hair pulled into an unruly ponytail. He leaned against the young man’s legs, wrapped in blankets against the slicing wind.

The old woman studied the pair, her wrinkled face impassive. A miasma of intense grief hung over the pair. She had never seen the boy before. Usually the older man piloted the boat, his eyes squinting against the smoke of a cigarette that hung perpetually from one corner of his mouth.

Now the older man huddled under his blankets, his normal rich copper skin a pallid gray. His lips were a cyanotic shade of blue.

“Jerry,” she said in greeting.

“Grandmother,” the older man whispered. It was a title of respect, not ancestry.

Aside from Michael, Jerry and Jerry’s son Nicholas, no one else knew how to find her home. Clearly Jerry should be in a hospital, but instead he had risked his life to come here, so the news he had brought was urgent and important enough to warrant such a sacrifice.

She jerked her chin toward his companion. “He one of your boys?”

“Grandson,” Jerry gasped. “Name’s Jamie. Figured it was past time I showed him how to get here.”

She studied Jamie. He wore his hair long and pulled back in a ponytail, and leather and silver bracelets on each wrist. His hair gleamed black like a raven’s wing, and he had the same rich copper skin as his grandfather, along with the same strong, proud features, only his were molded with a sensuality that Jerry’s did not have. Those large, dark eyes and full, shaped lips must have come from his mother. He was older than he appeared at first glance, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three. Tall and rangy, his body had yet to finish filling out the promise of power in those wide shoulders.

Jerry had to have had good reasons to teach Jamie the way to her home. That meant he trusted his grandson. It also meant he would have given the boy other sacred teachings as well, old, secret ways that were passed down to only a select few. Jerry was grooming Jamie to take his place when he died. But just because he trusted his grandson, that didn’t mean that she would without questioning. Jamie would have to pass her own scrutiny before she would let him leave this place with the knowledge of how to return.

As she considered the boy, he held a bundle out to her, the whites of his wide eyes gleaming. His grandfather Jerry’s skin carried an unhealthy pallor, but the boy’s face was whitened underneath the copper hue, and smudged with tears. The package he offered was wrapped in a length of protective red cotton cloth and tied with undyed twine.

The old woman looked at it for a long moment. She knew what was wrapped inside. The packet was a traditional petition to a native elder for help. It would hold tobacco, and white sage, and whatever cash they could afford to scrape together. If she took it, she undertook a sacred obligation.

She did not take it. Instead, she asked the boy, “Can you carry him up the path to the cabin?”

Jamie nodded. His outstretched hand, and mouth, visibly shook.

She steeled herself against the heartbreak in that mute entreaty. “Then help him up.” She looked at her old friend Jerry, who was an elder himself in a nearby Ojibwa community. “You know I can’t make you any promises, but of course I’ll do what I can.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

She pulled herself up the path’s incline toward her cabin as the boy gathered his grandfather up in his arms and followed. Behind her, Jerry gave Jamie hoarse-voiced instructions. “After you get me up to the house, you’ll give thanks for our safe trip, down by the boat. Do it proper. Offer tobacco.”

The boy’s voice was deeper than she expected and raw with emotion. “Yes, sir.”

She had held off asking for as long as she could. When she could no longer wait, she asked without turning, “Who died?”

Stricken silence fell. In the end it was the boy who answered. His voice choked with tears, he said, “My uncle Nicholas.”

Oh no. No.

The news bowed her at the waist. She had known before the boy had said it. She hadn’t wanted to. She had hoped otherwise until it was said.

Jerry’s hoarse whisper: “Put me down. Go to her.”

She put up one age-bruised gnarled hand. “No,” she said. “Leave me be.”

More silence. After a moment she could straighten and stand upright. She continued up the path. They followed.

Inside, the boy laid his grandfather on the couch in front of the empty fireplace and helped him out of a worn flannel-lined jean jacket. At her order, the boy set a fire to warm the room. She grunted as she sat down on the sturdy cedar coffee table in front of Jerry. Their gazes met, grim and grieving at the implications unfolding from their loss.

“You don’t talk,” she told him, sticking a crooked forefinger under his nose. As firelight began to dance in the room, she said over her shoulder to the boy, “Tell me what happened.”

The boy came to kneel on the floor beside his grandfather’s head. He stroked Jerry’s hair, his head bowed as he told her what they knew.

They didn’t know much at this early stage, but they knew enough.

Nicholas Crow, a former Green Beret and the head of the Secret Security detail assigned to guard the President of the United States, had been killed in an apparent robbery late last night while off-duty outside a restaurant. He had been stabbed multiple times, and his throat cut. Given his abilities and his position, Nicholas’s murder would get an aggressive investigation conducted at the highest level, while White House security had rocketed to red alert. The President had chosen to remove to Camp David for the week. None of it had been in the news.

“He was the only one we had among our people who was even close to being in the right position,” Jerry whispered. “My fine brave boy. There is no one else.”

“I told you, hush,” she said. Her own voice was clogged with tears she did not have time to shed.

She didn’t ally with very many humans anymore, and Nicholas had been one of the most important human allies she had ever had. She and Jerry had personally seen to his training, since he was a young boy. Losing him now was a terrible blow, not only for the sake of the strong, bright man Nicholas had been, but also for what it said about their enemy’s knowledge and intentions.

Setting that aside for the moment, she rested a hand on Jerry’s chest and concentrated. Grief and stress, along with too many years of heavy smoking, meant that his heart was in serious trouble.

A cold, quiet part of her mind assessed the damage. She had a limited capacity for healing. Over the years, she had done what she could to boost Jerry’s heart, but time and aging had taken an inevitable toll.

She could do it again. She could heal him. It was, just barely, within her ability. But it would take a prodigious amount of energy that she didn’t dare expend on him. Not right now. She could not afford it.

Her friendship with Jerry had spanned decades. He knew secrets few other humans had ever been entrusted with, and still her answer must be no.

She withdrew her hand. She told both him and the boy, “I have a tincture that will help this.”