Rise of the Death Walkers (The Circle of Heritage Saga) (13 page)

I looked up and noticed that darkness had closed around me. I reached out for the storm. To calm the fury I had unleashed. It must have taken me several hours to regain control and when I finally did there was close to a foot of snow around me. I walked back with my grandfather to the house and entered the kitchen. Once inside I spotted Mimi but no sign of Katie. "Where is Katie? Mimi?"

"That was one angry girl at being dragged back the way she was Jason. What were you thinking?" My grandmother asked me.

"I was thinking of her safety Mimi." I replied. "You still haven't told me where she is."

"She insisted on driving home and I sent Jared with her to make sure she would get there safely." Mimi sighed at me.

I glanced at the clock on the wall and noticed for the first time it was close to two am. "I better go out there in the morning and apologize. I sank down on a chair near the table and asked. "Is there anything warm to drink Mimi?"

The phone on the wall rang and interrupted Mimi’s reply. She answered it. She listened for a bit. "No she left from here several hours ago." There was a pause and she continued "What do you mean she isn't there yet?"

I looked up alarmed. "What?" My grandmother interrupted me with a stern look cutting off my question.

"We will head out from our direction now. You start from there." She hung up the phone and told me. "Katie never arrived home." I was out the door before she finished.

"Jason take a coat with you." I dimly heard her say but I was too wrapped up in my own concerns to pay any notice.

I ran straight from the house to the main road ignoring the fact, in my state, that a car may have been better. The roads were not well maintained on the reservation and there was about five inches of snow on the surface. I ran with no concern on my mind but the safety of the girl I loved. After twenty minutes I slowed and scanned the road ahead on both sides. I found Jared first. He lay on the side of the road. It looked as if some giant animal had torn his chest out. I stopped long enough the ascertain that he was dead before moving forward. Terror seized me as I searched further up the road. I wandered for hours up and down, searching for her, but did not find her. My mind was as if it was frozen in solid ice. I had lost her I had lost the half of my life that meant so much to me. One side of my mind was tormenting in it thoughts the other was grasping for hope.

I continued on into the night and my agitation at not finding the woman I loved grew and influenced the environment around me. Snow began falling again and whipping my with a savage frenzy seldom seen in this part of the world. The wind carried the light snow into drifts higher than a man and I was constantly struggling to break through them to continue the search. The temperature dropped like a stone from the side of a high mountain and soon I had ice forming on my chin from the warmth of my exhaled breath. My own body was showing the signs of hyperthermia but my raging mind force me to go well beyond the limited of my body. I struggled in my efforts to find Katie.

Finally several hours later I sank to my knees at the side of the road completely unaware of where I was. The feeling of total and complete loss filled my heart to the breaking point and the last thought I had before darkness over took me was a sense of failure in losing the woman I loved.

It was somewhere in the middle of the morning they found me kneeling on the side of the road looking up to the skies. My heart lay in broken pieces within my chest. I had failed to do what I had promised my family and the spirits. I had not protected my Katie and now she was gone.

Tears had frozen to my face and where I had brushed them away there were great gashes. My own condition did not worry me for without Katie I had no desire to live. I was calmly waiting for my own death.

They transported me back to the hospital where I had lay so long before. I was dimly aware of ice water bathes and waves of the most intense pain I had ever experienced before. Nothing phased me, my mind was locked in eternal agony because I had lost my Katie. When they has finally unfrozen me enough where I could close my eyes I did so and prayed to the ancient spirits to take me to the final home. I dimly heard Katie's voice in the distance and turned in that direction. I was going to the final resting place to be with my Katie.

Chapter 13 - The Mind-slip

I opened my eyes and I was lost. I had lost all orientation that I once had. The familiar pull of the very magnetic field of the Earth was misplaced for me. It seemed I was off center completely. There was a surreal emanation of light that came from every direction. I reached out with my mind and nothing I felt was real to me. Was this what it was like to be dead? Is this the afterlife?

"No Pasche you are not dead. You are quite alive indeed. You are now experiencing your disorientation because you have reached a time in your development where no one in your people, your tribe as you call it, can help you." The voice seemed to be within my mind.

I sat up in alarm and a wave of dizziness swept over me like a giant waterfall lunging from a great distance above. "Katie." I whispered.

The voice in my mind continued. "Your Katie is fine. During the time you were looking for her she was actually at her cousins house to ride out the storm you had created."

Relief swept through me. "Who are you and where am I?"

Now that I knew my Katie was safe, I had to determine just what my own present situation was.

An opening appeared in the walls a distance away and a unfamiliar figure glided toward me.

"You are currently on Denastis or what your people call The Origan. You are the first of your kind with the ability to travel in the way that you have. My name is Moevin and I am your Mind Mentor." The figure came to a stop in front of me and waved it’s hand. What appeared to be a chair like object lifted up from the seemingly solid floor next to Moevin and it placed itself in it."

"How am I able to do this? That last thing I remembered I was freezing to death on the side of the road." I sat up on the side of the platform and faced the creature. While I waited for a response I observed the creature taking in all that was displayed before me. What I saw could only be described as pure beauty. Its skin was pale pink but had some sort of crystalline appearance to it and the eyes were violet and spaced at a similar distance to a normal human. It had a snow white mane of hair that cascaded down what would pass for its back. The form was slender with what I would have called a very female appearance. When it held up its hands it had six digits on one hand and seven on the other.

"This is a method of travel we call a mind-slip. Your people have been unable to use this method of travel because their minds are not as developed as ours.”

“Currently you need to be in a coma like state to achieve the concentration needed to travel like this but with the continuing development of your mind you will be able achieve this state at any time of your choosing." The figure casually flipped a strand of hair out of its eye and looked at me.

"I hear you in my mind and not with my ears. And are you male or female because I think its rude to continue thinking of you as it." I asked. I was very calm. Not as panicked as I would have expected to be when encountering something as alien as this being obviously was.

A sound that sounded like the finger snapping on the rim of a fine crystal glass was emitted from what appeared to be its mouth.

"I am what you would consider the female of my species. I would be a mother but my calling is that of Mind Mentor. The first of my kind with the honor of training ‘The Chosen One’. I have trained for five hundred of your Earth years for this day." She looked at me with a peering gaze. "You are quite capable to mind-speak as I am. My race lacks the necessary organs to communicated the way you do."

I tried it out by thinking what I wanted to say. "You say you are a Mind Mentor. Have you done this with any other of my people?" I framed the question in what I hoped would be a polite mental tone."

"No, you are the first of your kind to achieve a state where this training I will be giving you is possible." She lifted her hands in an apologetic gesture. "I wish to say I am sorry at the loss of your Jerad. We agonized how to manipulate events so you would continue the search for your Katie for the time needed to force your body into the state needed to make this first trip."

I felt a stab of great sorrow cut through me but it was stopped by something I remembered that my grandfather had told me weeks before.

"Pasche," he had said. "In the war we are currently in you will face times of great sacrifice in the future and you cannot let yourself be immobilized by sorrow or grief."

"Your grandfather is a very wise man. You should feel honored that he is a part of your life," She projected to me.

"I am. Every minute I am with him I feel I am truly blessed by the spirits." I was captivated by the beauty of this strange creature. "How long will this training you speak of take and is my grandfather aware of what is going on?"

"The time of the training will pass very quickly here in this time frame but in your own, about three years will pass." I was shocked and wondered if Katie would wait that long for me. "Your grandfather knows the legends and will be able to convince your mate that what is happening is necessary. We foresee she will wait for you." She must have caught the concern that flashed in my mind about my school. "By the time you are finished here your learning will well exceed any knowledge you would have acquired in what you call 'High School'. Your mind will be developed in such a manner that the acquisition of knowledge will be very easy for you."

I suddenly remembered another thing my grandfather had told me. “Wait a minute. My Grandfather told me we were here twelve hundred years ago and we were a product of cross breeding between races. How is it that you look so different from us?”

“Our races are biologically compatible however all of the genes responsible for outward appearance are the dominant genes provided by your race, thus the interbreeding your tribe has been doing the past twelve hundred years has not resulted in one form who has our outward appearance.” Moevin informed me. “Shall we begin with the basic exercises needed for you to tap into your potential Pasche?”

I let relief show in my mind. "Then we should start on this training." I projected while rubbing my hands together.

The past three years had dragged by for me very slowly. After Jason's grandfather had convinced me that Jason was not gone completely but was going through something that was necessary for his development I was somewhat at ease. I visited Jason daily and took active part in the therapy required to keep his muscles developed the way they should be. In my mind I flashed back to the moment Jason had been brought to the hospital. They absolutely refused to let me be there for the initial emergency procedures. When they finally let me in to see him, I was horrified at the condition he was in. I was at his side without leaving for the first two weeks and then my father practically dragged me out of the hospital.

The conversation that followed between my parents and myself had been the most explosive argument I had ever had with them. That was when Grandfather Sam had finally managed to intervene and explain what was happening. At first I refused to believe and then something Jason's grandfather said convinced me beyond a doubt that what he said was true. I had personally experienced what typically happened to Jason's birthmark during the times he worked with his mind.

For the past three years I had been unable to even touch Jason's left hand. It was like grabbing a hold of a slab of metal that had been resting in a forge until it was white hot.

Jason was transferred to a clinic on the reservation and my father resigned his position at the hospital in Massena to take over the direction of the clinic. There was an entire special department whose only job was to care for Jason while he was away.

I recalled the lonely nights I had lay in my own bed wishing that Jason was with me so I could hear his voice. I used my efforts at school to distract my mind and received acceptable grades. I rushed through a life that was there not really solid for me.

I was going to refused to go to the Junior Prom but Mimi convinced me I should take part because it was an experience I should have. I had my cousin take me there to ward off the dozens of requests I received. My obsession with holding on to the love I felt for Jason was seen as an abnormal condition by my friends but I insisted that my Jason would return to me.

The one time I was challenged about my obsession with Jason had come from a totally unexpected direction. I hadn't even known Diane Kirsty at the time she approached me. She made some off the wall comment to me about the foolishness for being in love with a low classed vegetable who was better off if he was taken of the machines and left to die.

I knew that Jason’s comatose condition was only caused by the presence of his mind on another planet.

My own savagery in that fight surprised me and the ensuing three week suspension from school and repeated apologies to Diane who was in the hospital for the same amount of time.

Needless to say my parents were horrified at what I was capable of but understanding at the same time. How strange life can be Diane was one of my closest friends later but there were times where I was sure there were flicker of fear in her eyes when she looked at me. After her release from the hospital she had been terrified of me. Sometimes I scare myself with some of the moods I could get into.

I graduated from High school in the middle of the class in placement and had accepted a partial scholarship to Canton Community college. My father got me the Corvette he had promised me.

I was on my way back from class one night when my pager beeped. One look at the code my father sent me lifted my heart soaring to new heights. It was a code we had agreed on if Jason were to wake up. I punched down the gas and paid no attention to any speed limit. I ignored the police cars that were chasing me and headed straight for the reservation.