Pulse of Heroes (64 page)

“I want you to know that I missed you every
day I was away from you. I didn’t plan on walking away like that,
and I know now that I should have handled things differently. But
my first thought was to put as much distance as I could between you
and anything dangerous. I made a mistake, I’m only…”

“Human?” Michelle mocked him. “You’re not
human, not even close.” Elliot felt as if she had twisted a knife
in his heart. She would never look at him the same. He had lost
her.

“I still love you very much. I don’t care
what you want to believe. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Michelle
hadn’t had a chance to think about that. Elliot was there, after
all. She felt even more confused. How could she trust him? Maybe he
was only saying that he loved her now that he thought someone else
might have her attention.

“I will tell you all about
The Pulse
,
I promise, but please take this.” Elliot fidgeted with his boot and
pulled out the spring-loaded spear. He placed it in Michelle’s hand
and moved her fingers along the handle, showing her where the lever
for the spring was. He used her finger to pull at it and the blade
jumped into its groove. He told Michelle to carefully measure the
thing with her fingers and try to imagine what it looked like. “I
don’t plan to die here, but if something does happen to me I will
do my best to pass this to you. When you get a chance, when his
defenses are down, you thrust the blade as deep into his body as
you can. Then run. This will kill him. It is made out of
Nizabar
.” Michelle couldn’t in her wildest dreams imagine
plunging a blade into anyone. Elliot told her that Hadeno was
carrying his sword, the one that had been stolen in China.

“So he did kill your friends?” she asked,
disappointed.

“He or one of his men.” Michelle told Elliot
about Adi, and he didn’t put it past Hadeno to arrange his killing
too.

“There was blood on the sword, and he said it
wasn’t his. Who’s out there, Elliot? Someone is hurt!” Elliot
swallowed hard; that sword was toxic. Had he lost one of his best
friends? He told her that everyone except for Kahl was up there,
and Michelle couldn’t believe that they were all out there, risking
their lives for the both of them. Elliot told her that they were
his only family. Michelle felt bad for him.

“Please tell me about
The Pulse
,” she
asked him, finally taking his hand.

The ‘Pulse’ was the word used to describe a
genetic marker that was carried from one of them to their human
descendants. It sometimes skipped generations but there was no
discernible pattern. It just appeared randomly.
The Pulse
,
depending on how diluted the blood was with that of ordinary
humans, gave the carriers something Elliot described as a stronger
life spark, and emerged in different ways: talent, leadership,
entrepreneurship, intellect, physical strength, health and beauty.
It showed up in both sexes, but in females it manifested itself in
an additional way. They were more intuitive, and attuned to nature
and the subtleties of the soul. Some were even clairvoyant. Many of
these women were what history had called medicine women, even
witches, and many of them traveled like gypsies bringing their
gifts to all people. They didn’t make magic potions in the classic
storybook sense, but they could feel where an illness festered and
knew which medicine would counteract it. Michelle asked Elliot what
he meant about them being clairvoyant, and he explained that many
received flashes of images that they couldn’t make sense of unless
they investigated further. These visions sometimes came as a déjà
vu, or in the form of nighttime dreams or even sometimes through
daydreams. Michelle confessed to him that Eranka had told her that
she was part gypsy. And she told him about the strange dream she
had after she almost died in a car accident on Halloween night.

“But how did you guys know I have it?”
Michelle was very curious. Elliot told her that they were able to
sense it. “Is that why you liked me? If I didn’t have it then…”

“At first I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t until we
got closer that I became convinced. But Rion said he suspected it
since the first day he met you and Francesca at the church on
Easter.” Elliot stopped talking after saying Francesca’s name. The
poor lady was dead, and if Michelle knew she would be crushed.
There was no use in making a bleak situation even worse; he’d tell
her later. He continued, telling her that when Rion saw her wearing
the bracelet that her aunt gave her, everything fell into place.
Michelle jingled the bracelet to show Elliot that she was still
wearing it.

“That’s the one. Those charms are ancient.
They came from Rion’s own treasure trove from when he was King in
Georgia. They belonged to his queen wife. After he made a decision
to leave Georgia and the political life he undid the long necklaces
and divided the gold between his daughters, granddaughters, nieces,
and in-laws. The fact that your great aunt told you the charms have
been in your family for generations is just another clue. Most of
Rion’s descendants were devout Christians, as he is still, so when
the forced conversions to Islam were taking place in Georgia they
dispersed all around the Danube. They settled in Hungary, Belarus
and other surrounding countries.” Elliot told her that when Rion
arrived in Georgia a few weeks earlier he actually did some
research into Michelle’s ancestry. He found some convincing
evidence to confirm his suspicions. “Now that I think about it,
Rion has always been oddly drawn to you.” Maybe that’s what Elliot
had picked up on whenever he saw the two of them interacting. He
always felt somehow jealous, even left-out. Michelle opened her
mouth in awe and although Elliot couldn’t see her, he could only
imagine the look of shock on her face. He could tell that it made
her happy.

“You mean we’re family?” she asked,
astounded.

“Well, I wouldn’t use the term ‘family’ too
loosely, because you are many times removed from him, but if that’s
what you want to call it then I guess so.” Michelle wished she
could hug Rion. She had always liked him and he had always been
very kind to her. Michelle felt like a fool for the way she had
treated him at the concert, not to mention how she had handled
herself with Haden. What if the blood splatters on Haden’s sword
were his? What if Rion was injured or dead? She became overcome
with worry.

“What if Haden hurt him?” she asked Elliot in
fear. All Elliot could do was to reassure her that Rion was the
best swordsman that he had ever seen, even better then himself.
Elliot wanted to hug her, but when he came close she stepped away
from him again. “What does me having this
Pulse
have to do
with having children? And what did he mean by the ‘curse’?”

“Michelle, I really don’t want to discuss
this right now. I need you to trust me when I tell you that this is
neither the time nor place to delve into this. I was planning to
tell you. I just haven’t found the right opportunity. I didn’t want
you to be troubled with such things. Because at the end of the day,
it doesn’t concern you at all. It never will. How about we worry
about getting out of here first? Discussions, we’ll leave for
another time.”

“I’m really scared, Elliot. I just want to go
home.”

“I know,” he said, wishing that she’d let him
hold her. “ I’ll get you out of here.”

Elliot used his fingers to search the wall
for sharp edges. The wall was made out of the same stones as the
first room he had been locked in. The plan was to chip off a small
piece to jam into the lock when Hadeno opened it again. That way
when it was engaged it would only appear locked. While Elliot
traced the cold walls Michelle did the same on the floor. There had
to be something there she kept telling herself as her hands gently
traced back and forth across the flat floor stones. Michelle had
noticed that Haden’s bedroom floor had the same flat stonework, and
remembered him telling her that he incorporated many elements of
the castle into his newer dwelling.

“Do they have scorpions here?” she asked
Elliot, knowing full well how wimpy she sounded but she couldn’t
help herself. She feared scorpions and hated spiders, with their
double-jointed legs and their grayish bodies that looked like
little clumps of clay. And the hairy ones, she didn’t even want to
think about those disgusting creatures. Elliot tried to make a joke
of it, telling her that spiders were the least of their concern.
They needed to worry about crazed Hadenos instead.

Earlier, Elliot had been utterly perplexed by
Hadeno’s erratic ramblings, as his words sounded no different than
those of the lunatics locked up in the prisons that were called
hospitals for the mentally ill. Hubris and delusions were not
uncommon amongst certain ones of their kind, just as among regular
men. There were always the same excuses they gave for their
relentlessness, as if their pursuit for power was somehow valid and
varied from the regular, ‘I have the answer to humanity’s woes’, or
‘God sent me here to save the world’. The fact that these maniacs
were running most of the world politics didn’t help matters at all.
But what did any of this have to do with him, he wondered? For
Hadeno to talk about him as being some sort of sacrificial lamb
made no sense whatsoever. The scary thing was that Hadeno clearly
believed in the truth of everything he was saying. It was always
the madman that knew not that he was.

“I have an idea,” Michelle said, taking off
her bracelet. She searched with her fingers for the little gold
duck and slid it off the string. “Why don’t we use this,” she said,
placing it into Elliot’s hand. “It’s perfect.” Elliot applauded her
quick thinking while Michelle handed him the rest of the charms to
hold because she didn’t have a pocket. “Elliot, I know that all
this is really happening, but it doesn’t feel like it. I don’t know
why…” she said, hoping that he could help. But all he could do was
tell her that everything was as real as day, and that their lives
depended on their effective responses. He apologized to her again
about having dragged her into something so dark.

Despite knowing that he truly loved her,
Elliot had still wondered if it would have been better if the two
of them had never met. But after she shared with him the details of
her dream, it was hard to think that way. The fact that she was
collecting shells from the seashore could have been a coincidence
because the girls were throwing seashells and plastic pearls out
the car window. That he had seen for himself. But it could also
have been a warning about the imminent danger lurking at Fort
Bragg. The empty armchair symbolized an unexpected, unknown
visitor. The starfish, a good luck symbol, signified hope and
happiness. And the pulsar obviously foretold of upcoming
extraordinary events. Michelle had also told Elliot how
disappointed she felt when she opened the shells and found them to
be empty. Did the shells reflect her life journey? Could it be that
Michelle’s curious personality would lead her to search for many
things? Elliot was at a loss about the broken arrow. But at the end
of the dream she did find that pearl on the chair’s cushion. That
was easily explained as a pearl of wisdom; knowledge, secret
knowledge that’s as precious as the sought-after treasure. Was it
his task to be Michelle’s guide? He certainly felt as if he was
constantly feeding her vast curiosity. And when he gave her the
black pearls, was that a completion of one of her journeys?

There was a sound at the top of the stairs
and Elliot handed the gold duck back to Michelle. He squeezed her
hand and told her that he had faith in her. When and if Hadeno
opened the gate, he would distract him and it would be her job to
jam the thing into the lock mechanism. Michelle felt her legs
growing weak with fear, and the adrenaline surging through her body
flushed her skin and sped up her heart. Elliot gave her a small
kiss on the head before they separated and took up their planned
positions.

Haden switched on the electricity and Elliot
recognized the same caged ceiling lamps from his earlier
confinement. Michelle squinted her eyes, as it took a few seconds
for them to adjust from complete darkness. Elliot didn’t have that
problem, and was standing taut and ready. At this point, he could
only hope that Michelle could go through with the strategy and not
freeze up when it came time to do her part. When Haden appeared in
front of them, Michelle could hardly recognize him because of the
diabolical expression on his face. She had seen him angry before,
but this was completely different. His eyes glowed so brightly that
she couldn’t look at them for more than a couple of seconds.

“You son-of-a-bitch had my two best friends
killed. So I took some of yours,” he said, raising the
blood-drenched sword for Elliot to see. Michelle looked back at
Elliot with worry but he didn’t even flinch. His eyes were as
bright as Haden’s. Haden told Michelle that he wanted her out of
there, but she told him that she wasn’t going anywhere with him
because he scared her.

“Then you die here with him. Is that what you
want?” Hadeno used a large key to unlock the gate and the heavy
dead bolt screeched and scratched the metal as it retracted. He
held his sword out towards Elliot in warning, and Elliot knew that
the second he tried anything Hadeno would grab Michelle at
lightning speed; he couldn’t take that chance. Haden grabbed
Michelle from the back of her dress and pulled her towards the open
gate. But Michelle wrapped her hands around the bars and held on as
tight as she could.

“I don’t want to go! I won’t!” she shrieked,
and Elliot did all he could to remain calm. If he moved an inch
that sword would plunge straight into her.

“Elliot knows I can rip you to shreds with
one hand. I’m being very gentle with you, but I don’t have to be.
Isn’t that true?” He pulled Michelle away with one tug and she was
in his arms. But not before she had inserted the small charm into
the lock. She had succeeded. She then tried to kick Haden and when
that failed she tried to scratch him, but he held her tightly and
she couldn’t reach him. Elliot couldn’t take seeing the way
Michelle was being handled and prepared himself to charge. But
Hadeno read his intentions and immediately turned the sword to
point at Michelle.