Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves (53 page)

“
Could you take one of the
Band-Aids off please?” asked Hyun in a level tone.

“
Hyun, I’m not going to
risk you getting sick,” was Anthony’s immediately response. Some of
the authority he wore so casual on his shoulders came to
bear.

“
Please… will
you…?”

Anthony looked at Sophie,
who shrugged her shoulders, holding up her hands in surrender. His
gaze shifted to Joaquin who nodded once more. “Drew, could you
bring the First Aid kit just in case I have to patch her back up in
a hurry?”

Kimberly, in spite of her
usual negative disposition on such matters, felt her heart warm at
the thought of Anthony’s brotherly concern.
He is a nice boy, just like Shawn
,
she concluded of a sudden, without thinking. Then, she was
wondering what it would be like to have someone as caring and open
- and real- in her arms.

Wait, what?

Andrew nodded and trotted
to the large mountain of supplies they had gathered off the left.
He rummaged around for a second or two, and then came back with the
white, metal box with a large red cross stenciled upon it. It was
the world-wide symbol for First Aid. He put it on the table near
Anthony just as Anthony bent back toward Hyun and began to peel at
the topmost bandage on her back.

The Korean teen arched her
back, so Anthony could have better access. She muttered a few
silent “ouches” when the adhesive from the bandages stuck to her
skin. He was pulling the tiny translucent hairs growing there.
Anthony had to pull on it harder to separate it from her
skin.

Kimberly stood, her body
moving of its’ own volition. Her curiosity peeked.

From every direction,
bodies, heads and eyes moved closer.

Anthony tugged some more.
Then, he stepped back with an outraged jerk, as if he had seen
something vile writhing within the flesh of the girl before
him.

“
What
the hell!
” he exclaimed.

“
What?” said a scared
Sophie.

The others rushed forward
crowding around Hyun.

Kimberly
included.

“
There is no fucken wound,
no cut, not even a scratch. It’s like she was never hurt at all!”
continued Anthony unbelieving, completely ignoring everyone else
around him. “What the hell is going on?”

Kimberly could see his
outburst had stupefied his sisters. They stood with their eyes
bulging, their hands clasped into fists at either side. It was
obvious to Kimberly, they were not accustomed to hearing their
brother cuss.

The entire group froze in
their shoes. They looked from Hyun to one another and back to Hyun,
only to repeat the entire process again.

The silence was as
thunderous as a freight train.

“
What does it mean, Tony?”
questioned Mikalah. It was a shy inquiry as if she were afraid he
might get angry.

Joaquin answered for him
though. “Louis has healed her. He is the Apithükri, the Hands of
Health, the one who was born to heal every kind of ailment – mind,
body and soul.”

As one, they turned to
face Louis, looks of wonder and amazement washed over the boy from
all directions.

But, it was Elena who
spoke first: “Oh my god, Louis! That would makes you the greatest
doctor of all time!”

Then, Jason spoke next:
“Someone, catch him! He’s gonna pass out!”

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

~ 31 ~

Construction

Day Four, Sunday, 6:13
pm…

He had searching for more
than half the day. He'd been skip- and jump-phasing from one place
to another. He had covered more ground than he had the previous
three days combined until at last, he found them. It had taken
longer than he had anticipated, because they had hid in the most
unexpected place. At least this was the case from his perspective.
It was a place long venerated, decreed by many Angelinos from all
walks of life as hallowed ground.

Chavez Ravine. It was the
home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dodger Stadium
itself.

Well shit man, not no
more
, he thought as he gazed down at the
broad vista before him.
There are no
Doyers in this pinché place.

All about him, the storm
screamed. The wind sent the snow near-horizontal, fierce and
stinging. It hit him from all directions as huge eddies of air
pushed even larger volumes of the precipitation one way for a few
moments. Then they sent it right back in the opposite direction in
the next.

He knew the air was well
below freezing, but like the Gail force winds and the blizzard
driving it, he did not feel it. He stood there, his clothes more
tattered and worn than before. They weren't garments anymore. They
resembled rags more than anything. He had not brushed at his hair
or his teeth. He had not gleaned any of the grim and filth that had
accumulated over his body since his arrival upon the Melded World.
He had not eaten either. He had not gone to the bathroom, which was
baffling. For some reason – at which he could only guess – there
was no need. Somehow, in some unknown fashion, everything around
him was providing him with what he needed. It sustained him when he
should have been writhing on the ground dying of starvation or
curled in an icy ball, dead from exposure.

He was not
though.

In fact, he felt the
precise opposite. It was as though he was drawing energy and
nourishment from the world around him. And, he sent back the wasted
by-products he manufactured from inside his body. It was an
unexplainable transaction. He could not tell someone how he
accomplished this. He doubted he had the words to describe it even
if he could. In some way, drawn into the corner of his mind, he
knew this to be true, but with so much else going on around him, he
was content to leave it at that.

If he could, he would have
sworn to anyone, right then, right there, he was getting stronger
by the hour. Underneath his shredded garments, he was beginning to
notice the effect. Already, he could tell he had lost a few inches
from his waistline. His gait had improved at a steady rate. By some
miracle, the biting arthritis he had felt for years in his hips
seemed to clip away. Like a dentist attacking the stubborn plaque
of a neglected tooth, it disappeared. It sloughed off piece by
piece, a methodical, but thorough approach. He felt taller was
well, as though the fat about his waist transferred to his
skeleton. It allowed him to look upon this new world around him
from a loftier perch.

He was standing on a
narrow track, traversing the upper reaches of the southern ridge of
the bowl-shaped valley below. It was no more than a foot path,
sketched along what he remembered as Amador Street back home. If he
were there, he would be looking into the open end of the stadium
and facing its’ towering, multi-colored bleachers. Here, though,
there was no vast parking lot, no Union 76 gas station and no
buildings made by the hand of humans.

Instead, before him was a
sprawling camp, a
fortified
work stretching at least two thousand yards in
diameter. Three of the ageless baseball stadiums, in a triangular
configuration, would have fit within this vast circle.

Around this huge fort was
a stout redoubt. The construction topped a fifteen-foot wooden
wall. It followed the path where Elysian Park Avenue would have
encircled the stadium back home. The wall was two sided, planks
fitted between each set of timbers. Five feet from the top, this
extra timber formed a solid walkway from which armed guards could
patrol. They could also gaze out at the area beyond the encampment
or defend against a coordinated attack from below.

To him, it appeared like
any medieval sort of wall, crenulated and sturdy, only made of
wood. But it was not the only one. About fifty feet behind this
first wall stood an even taller one. It loomed into the turbulent
air an incredible sixty feet high. At first glance, it appeared
made of wood also. Only, Juan Ibarra had never seen wood of this
specific nature before. It was slate-gray and glossy, as if
polished to high sheen. The more he looked upon it, the more it
reminded him of iron. Even from his distant vantage, it looked
hard
. Maybe it was impervious to fire
also.
He could only speculate at best. As
with the first, this wall had its own palisade. He could see
hunched figures striding atop it, braving the elements despite
their deadly qualities.

He smiled in spite of
himself. While the cold of the storm affected them, it did not
touch him in the least.
Spooky.

Against the inner side of
this inner wall stood pens and lean-to’s of all sizes and shapes.
They sheltered the thousands of creatures and their handlers.
While, further within the encampment stood the homes of these
caretakers. The various buildings they required to form the basis
of civilization were there as well. He could see outhouses,
smoke-houses, laundries, tanneries and smithies of varying sorts.
He saw the edifices housing weaponers, armorers and masters of tack
and harness. There were also crude groceries, bakeries, butcheries
and cooking huts. A large number of other buildings were shops
which told him one thing. They were planning on staying for a long,
long time.

He saw apothecaries,
tailors, furriers, fletchers and bower’s. There were leather
workers, stone workers, carpenters, fishmongers and a multitude of
like establishments. They were primitive, but they were in evidence
all the same. These structures filled the entire space until they
abutted a third, even more formidable wall. This one was
tremendous, high and wide with stone and wood alike. It was a
structure so strong, it looked capable of repelling a platoon of
M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tanks..

Within the confines of
this forbidding stone construct stood was what he surmised were the
various offices of the administrative arm of this horde. He could
see officer’s quarters, sturdier mess halls and better-equipped
armories. He even saw practice fields, cleared and leveled, though
they were devoid of soldiers at the moment. There, other well-built
edifices stood, but Juan could only guess at the purpose they
served, other than to offer shelter. Still, he knew they had to be
places of great importance. They seemed crucial to the long-term
sustenance of the army billeted below.

Madré de Dios, there’s a
shit load of them!

His eyes strayed to the
largest structure once again. It was a large conglomeration of
stone circumvented by the final wall of stone. The more he peered
at it, gazing upon it through the driving snow, the more it
resembled a Scottish Tor. There were huge fires built up completely
surrounding it. There was light shining from each window or slit
into its’ stony towers.

There were three of towers
to be exact. One was round and two square, and they stood about an
enclosed central chamber that was no doubt the seat of power. It
was large and vaulted.

The tallest tower, the
rounded one, was well beyond two hundred feet in height, capped by
a cone-shaped roof, peaked. It bore a huge sanguine-colored
standard of a howling wolf of obsidian, mounted atop a small
mountain of corpses. The banner was near rigid in the harsh clutch
of the wind. It streamed outward from the pointed center of the
roof some thirty feet in length.

The two squared towers had
no such roof. They were wrought of stone, flat and broad with tall
crenulations at their edges. Upon the tops of these two towers were
three large ballistae each, surrounded by roaring bonfires. There
was a squad of armored guards as well, milling about, seeing if
there was anything amiss.

Of course, this was
ludicrous when one factored the weather. These two towers were
about fifty feet shorter than the rounded one. But still, they
stood above the central structure at about that same height. The
great hall from which each of the towers emerged was roughly
rectangular. It was a hundred feet tall, though the various
chambers within did deform it. Along one side, it curved, an
outward bulge that stretched from one end to the next. Juan guessed
this center construct to be one hundred yards square. It was much
too large for anyone to construct in only four days. It looked too
permanent as if it had been there for centuries.

He deemed they had brought
it whole from someplace else. They had brought it here at great
effort to whoever had the power to execute such monumental feats of
magic.
Yes magic, alright?
It was the only thing he could think of that
described everything going on around him. Even his own powers he
had categorized as such – magic.

From where he was
standing, the front entrance of the castle did not face him per se.
It angled to the left. Not so much so that he could not see the
massive double doors, iron bound and studded, towering a good ten
feet above the head of the average man. The portal was heavily
guarded by four massive ape-like creatures. He could not help but
linger upon them for a time, trying to understand the beasts he,
his son and the rest of children were up against.