Century Traveler

The man had broad shoulders but a narrow waist and slim legs. John couldn't tell how tall he was while seated, but he guessed he would be slightly more than six feet. He was dressed in a black silk shirt, slacks, and leather shoes. John wished he had come dressed completely in white just to complete the picture. As it was, his white shirt was stained with sweat, grass stains, blood, and who knows what else, and his grey slacks had bicycle chain ring tattoos on the right leg.

"You have the honor of meeting Kenneth Prescott. The name probably means nothing to you, as it shouldn't. I've spent a great deal of effort to remain in the shadows throughout my exceptionally long and prosperous life, and you and that cunt Kelly almost derailed all of my efforts."

John sat back on his heels. "I don't understand. What did I do to you?"

Kenneth's face froze, and John could see his jaw clenching. "What did you do?" the man forced out between his teeth. "Have you possibly forgotten how you MURDERED MY KATERINA?" he screamed, spittle flying from his lips.

"She attacked me, and I didn't kill her!" John yelled back.

Kenneth's eyes went black and cold. His voice became quiet and clipped. "You say you had nothing to do with her death? You say she just suddenly abandoned fifteen CENTURIES of discretion and controlled behavior and attacked you like an irrational animal? Like a human?"

"She lured me into the stockroom--" John began.

"To get the tablet!" Kenneth finished.

"...and she said I smelled good. She said she was acting impulsively, but she couldn't help it. She needed to taste me. When I pushed her away, she lost her shit and threw me across the room like I weighed nothing. I tried getting away, but she threw me into the alley, and I was busted up. She followed and attacked a friend of mine in the alley who pulled a gun and killed her. He died of his wounds."

Kenneth surged to his feet but stopped at the top step. "You lie!"

"There's video proof!" John yelled back. "The stockroom camera was running. The police have the footage. I swear I'm not making this up. If you hadn't tried hacking in, Kelly wouldn't have had to defend us and trace you."

Kenneth's face went still again, and the cold was back. "So, it was all a misunderstanding? I've done you a grave injustice. I did promise you that if you came to me, I would set Ms. Singh free, didn't I? That would be the least I could do to compensate you for this." He turned his head to look behind the throne.

John got a seriously bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Dear? Come out here, please. You have a friend who'd like to see you. You don't want me to come back there and get you, do you?" Kenneth said in a clear, calm voice.

John's unease grew as he heard whimpers from behind the throne. Then shuffling feet as a hunched figure lurched into view.

"That's it, dear. Pick up the pace, please. We don't have all night," Kenneth's smooth voice said.

Melanie came into view, and John gasped. There wasn't a surface that wasn't covered with bruises, scratches, blood, scabs, or dirt. She had obviously lost control of her bowels during her beating, which also clung to her. She tried covering her breasts with an arm, but the swollen elbow wouldn't bend that high, so she only hid one. The other breast was badly chewed. She had undoubtedly been raped. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and her wonderful lips were swollen and split. Through her good eye, she gazed at John, and tears flowed, but she made no sounds other than choked sobs.

John's heart went out to her, and he felt drawn to her, but it wasn't safe to move yet.

"Melanie, you are free to go. John has promised to stay in your place, but you have to go. It's been fun!" Kenneth gestured for her to descend from the dais.

Melanie shuffled forward in obvious pain and watched Kenneth the entire way to the top step when she looked at John. As she took her first step down, Kenneth surged forward and pushed her shoulders with a mighty shove. She crashed like a rag doll down the short flight of stairs to land in a broken lump at the bottom.

John screamed her name and tried to rush to her side, but Kenneth leaped from the top step and came crashing down on top of him. He was knocked onto his back with Kenneth kneeling over him, the man's hands wrapped around his throat.

"YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO BLAME ME FOR THIS?" Kenneth screamed in his face. John couldn't breathe, so he let his mind slip inside to speak with the wolf and the darkness. He showed the dark entity what he wanted it to do and asked the wolf to assist as it could. He resurfaced to see Kenneth's confused expression.

"What... what is that scent?" the man murmured into John's face as he inhaled deeply.

John tried to say something, and a distracted Kenneth lightened up on his grip.

Clearing his throat, John was able to speak. "Hungry? Me too!" he croaked, and his darkness erupted from his chest directly into Kenneth's. John threw all of his will behind the attack, and the wolf pushed as well. The shadow dug deeply into the man's torso, and John felt it ripping, tearing, and consuming Kenneth's darkness as quickly as it could. Kenneth thrashed in agony and tried to escape, but John tenaciously clung to his wrists. When John's darkness weakened from the effort of tearing the dense mass from Kenneth, the man finally managed to tug himself away to roll a distance from John. He screamed as he clutched at his chest.

"Now!" John summoned his wolf. Its moment had come as he ripped off his pants. John released his control over his body. The wolf's energy shot forth from his core to reach the outer edge, and he transformed. Maybe it was because it was only his second time, or perhaps it was because of the dangerous haste, but John's mind was battered by agony. Still, the wolf was there ten seconds after Kenneth pulled free. It growled deep in its throat and leaped at the prone man.

With superhuman speed, Kenneth wrenched away and tried to leap into the shadows above. His foot slipped on the sand, and the wolf took advantage, sinking its teeth into his trailing leg, dragging him back down to the cavern floor. The jaws clenched, and bone snapped. Kenneth screamed again, twisted, and flung his damaged darkness at the wolf, but it was already moving and lunging.

Kenneth barely got his arm up to protect his neck when the wolf's jaws snapped down, splintering his bones.

As Kenneth screamed once more, he slammed his other hand against the wolf's broad chest, launching a spike of darkness straight through the beast.

The wolf cried out and thrashed away from Kenneth, but the spike remained lodged in its body. As the wolf started to weaken, John surged up, and the wolf released his control in their desperate tag team.

The switch back was twice as painful, and John dragged his lethargic darkness along to consume the spike. Agony ripped through his torso as the invader broke free and John's body bent and twisted back into his human form. He lay panting naked on the ground as his muscles protested the efforts they'd been forced to do today. Shaky, he pushed himself to his knees and looked over at Kenneth, who was sitting up with a giddy grin on his face.

John watched as the protruding bones in the man's arm sank back into the flesh, and the wound closed. Kenneth hissed and jolted as the bones knit, but his joy was evident.

"Did I mention you missed the party by one night?" Kenneth gloated. "Oh yes, I had my little ceremony last night, followed the rituals described on the tablets, and voila! It seems to have worked quite nicely. I suppose I should thank you for helping me confirm it worked. I was rather hesitant to cause myself bodily harm. You get a little sensitive to putting yourself in harm's way once you've been around for fifteen centuries." He hissed especially loud as his tibia ground back together, but afterward, his wicked grin sent a chill down John's spine.

"You're full of surprises, John! A Sedu! I haven't seen one of those beasts in centuries. I thought they'd died out. And I'm not sure how you got a Shedimna, but it's taken something from me, John. I'm going to get it back." At John's uncomprehending look, the madman continued. "A Shedimna is an abomination... a blank. A soulless Shedim, a shadow hunter, that which hunts but has no spirit," he sneered.

Then his face went white. "Katerina," he whispered in shock, but his face quickly reddened with rage. "YOU TOOK MY BELOVED AND TURNED HER INTO A BLANK?" he bellowed.

Kenneth reached out with a huge hand composed of his Shedim and grabbed John. The cold bit into his naked flesh, and he hissed in agony. The pressure mounted as Kenneth reeled him in close, and John began to see spots in front of his eyes.

"I'm going to peel you like an onion John. I'm going to do it slowly, so I get to enjoy every morsel of your pain and despair." He slammed John against the ground and then picked him up again. John's head rocked back, and he spat blood in Kenneth's eye. Enraged, the man threw John against the steps of the dais.

John felt something pop in his back then he slid down the stairs to land next to Melanie.

"You're going to pay for that, John! You're going to pay for killing my Katerina!" Kenneth growled.

A bullet tore through his chest, and he spun around.

"Hey, asshole, I killed that skinny bitch, so maybe you'd like to talk to me?" Mr. Sass said and put two more slugs through Kenneth before the man roared and shot forward in a streak of black. Michael flew to the left and vanished into the shadows. Kenneth followed.

John felt a tingle on his spine, and sensation below his waist returned along with all the pain. He turned his head and saw Melanie was looking at him with her open eye. She blinked slowly, so he knew she was still alive.

"I'm so sorry, Melanie. This should never have happened to you!" he whispered. Tortuously, he pushed himself to a seated position next to her and reached out to brush her hair back from her eye.

It wasn't right. He should have protected her. He should protect her. It was something he was born to do. That felt... right. He gently reached down and collected her up against his chest. Then he reached for strength deep within himself. He felt the wolf watching him descend deeper than he'd gone before. The darkness, bloated with its stolen mass and lethargic with the effort to digest it, watched him sink deeper still. He reached into his very core and felt a warmth and light contained in his very center. He called upon it, asking for its help, not for himself but for the woman clutched against his chest.

It answered.

-=-

Michael was running out of dirty tricks. He was badly overmatched by Kenneth, but Michael sprung another surprise each time the man got a grip on him. The ground was littered with the debris of their battle; knives, spent magazines, shell casings, a wire garrotte, empty guns, and a broken bottle that contained acid. Kenneth's face was still recovering from that. Michael was getting desperate. He'd hit him with every lethal weapon he had, but his body just regenerated, again and again.

Michael saw Kenneth was protecting his chest and suspected John had sprung a snatch and grab with his own darkness to rip some mass from Kenneth's, but the madman had centuries of growth to build his density. He had energy to spare. Michael looked away.

That moment of distraction was all Kenneth needed, and he was on Michael. They tumbled together across the floor, a short distance from John, who was on his knees clutching Melanie to his chest. Michael grabbed a knife from the floor as they rolled, jammed it between Kenneth's ribs, and twisted it. As Kenneth slapped the knife and hand away, Michael sent his own darkness stabbing upwards at the now exposed chest. He ripped and tore at the shredded surface of Kenneth's darkness absorbing the chunks as quickly as he could. Kenneth roared in agony and repeatedly slammed Michael against the floor until Michael's chest collapsed.

Kenneth dripped blood from his lips onto Michael's face even as his knife wound sealed up and his punctured lung re-inflated. He grinned in victory as the man under his hands rolled his head up and to the right to look at John.

"That's my boy," he whispered proudly as tears spilled from his eyes.

Kenneth looked over just as there was a brilliant flash of white. He blinked away the afterimage and saw two huge wings of white light flowing out of John's back. The wings curled in and surrounded the man and woman completely.

"A Seraph? No... they're extinct. There are no more!" he whispered in wonder and fear, his darkness pulling back from the proximity to the white light.

Steeling himself for his last play, Michael jammed his right hand deep down the front of Kenneth's pants.

Kenneth yanked the arm up, dislocating the shoulder. Michael just chuckled. "Hold that for me, will ya?"

Kenneth's eyes widened as he suddenly felt something cold and metallic jammed in his pant leg next to his balls. He frantically rolled away onto his back to get his own hands down into his pants.

The mini-grenade ignited, shredding Kenneth's legs, the lower half of his right arm, and left hand. The blast wave tossed Michael's body off the side of a pillar to spin off into the darkness. It was only a mild ripple over the surface of the white glow.

Inside the cocoon of white light, John gently passed wave after wave of his light over Melanie's body. Bones knit, swollen tissues healed, swelling dissipated, hair and scalp regrew, bruises faded, torn ligaments, muscles, and tissues grew back together. Her splintered nails reformed and scar tissue dissolved with new growth. Melanie's skin smoothed out and shone with an inner glow. John purified her inside and out of all contaminates with one final pass, including Kenneth's attempts to impregnate her. He returned her to a state as close to physical perfection as her body could be.

He had no distinct awareness of how he was doing this. His consciousness of the... wrongness was vastly heightened, perhaps at the molecular level. It very much felt like the first time he gave himself over to the wolf's perceptions. The expansion of his ability to absorb the previously invisible information all around him exploded almost beyond comprehension. But it wasn't his intellect that processed the new input. He felt it. Fixing the wrong done to Melanie was more the perception of broken patterns needing to be reordered, a rebalancing of that which didn't belong to return balance, and a deep cleansing until every cell in her body was humming in beautiful harmony. Doing this brought him the most profound joy and a feeling of contentment like he'd never experienced before. This was... right.

His attention shifted once he felt her physical patterns reach their optimal states. Now came the more delicate work. He looked into her mind and saw her spirit was badly twisted in pain. He followed the pain gently into her memories to the terrible moment she met Kenneth. John plucked those images and those that followed, allowing this corner of her mind to become available for future, hopefully happy memories. When he was done, he pulled back and saw her spirit was settled except for one remaining pain. He dipped back inside one more time and traced the pain back to its source. He saw the hallway outside Melanie's office with her pressed against his chest. He knew where the pain came from. Though it hurt him deeply to do it, he gently removed the memory of their kiss. As he pulled away, Melanie's mind was serene and healthy. He gently kissed her cheek and willed her to sleep deeply.

John eased the wings open and felt them ripple back but remain stretched out. It felt good and right, but he was exhausted. Every cell in his being felt depleted, and he wanted to sleep for a decade at least. But Melanie wasn't safe yet. He looked around and saw no sign of Michael, but Kenneth was propped up against a pillar next to the dais, his dismembered limbs a short distance away.

He gently rested Melanie on the sand and pushed to his feet. He staggered over to Kenneth, who peered at him with a crazed look in his eye. The pain of rebuilding both legs and arms must have been overwhelming.

"You've wasted your energy healing the bitch. Now that she's back, I'll just do it all over again once I'm restored," Kenneth warned.

"No... no, you won't," John said with weariness.

"Do you even know what you are?" Kenneth laughed. "You're a fucking Seraph! You have to protect the sheep, I mean, the humans! You're driven to do it! It's what your kind do, or did, for as long as Seraphim have been around, which is as long as the Shedim, the dark spirits, and Sedu, the protective spirits."

"Thanks for the history lesson, but your time is done," John said, taking another step forward.

Kenneth was giggling now through the agony of his knitting flesh and bones. "DO you- haven't you guessed... where my healing comes from?" He grinned up at John. "The tablet was very specific about the need to have your enemies captured as slaves. Humanity has always been my enemy. Taking these sheep captive is simple. I've been doing it for centuries. The ritual connected me to my slaves intimately. Their life force for my health."

Kenneth's right arm was still rebuilding, but his left was almost complete. The outer two fingers were still re-growing. He used that hand to pull out a phone and clumsily punched in a code. One by one, rows of lights came on from the far corners of the vast chamber. Exposing the horror. Cages of humans. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

John dropped to his knees as the scope of Kenneth's evil struck home.

The regenerating man giggled in glee at John's distress. "Are you going to try to heal them all, John? I doubt you could. If you try to hurt me, you just kill them. Delightful conundrum, yes?" he said, grinning maniacally.

John looked to his wolf. The beast walked up to him, and he smelled the damp decay of a forest floor, fallen trees, and mushrooms. Then a cool spring breeze and new growth. It was a simple equation for the wolf. He reached out and touched the protective spirit as Kenneth called him. It was appropriate. John looked to his own Shedimna and called for its help. He showed them what needed to be done, and the darkness shrank back. It was afraid. He reached for it, held it close, and assured it.

When John resurfaced, Kenneth's expression was not as cocky as it had been. Perhaps because John's face was calm and at peace.

"Your simple mind does understand that as a Seraph, you can't kill them, and you can't kill me without killing them," Kenneth said belligerently, looking anxiously down at his rebuilding legs which were approaching the knees. His right arm was past the elbow, and his left hand was complete.

"My... protective spirit has reminded me of something you've forgotten. Dying is a natural part of living. Besides, I'm not going to kill you." He struggled to his feet before the man and took several steps back.

Kenneth giggled anxiously. "What? You're going to heal me?"

"Just the bad parts."

John's wings stretched out and solidified. He held his arms out, and they sunk into the light. He flexed his hand and made fists, and the ends of the wings followed suit.

Kenneth's eyes widened, and he threw up a shield of darkness as the huge white fists crashed down on him. The energy wall immediately began to dissolve, and he screamed with the effort to keep it in place. The white light ate into the darkness.

John steadily increased the pressure on Kenneth's shield. He had to get the white light into the man's body to cleanse the darkness from within him. The effort was incredible, and Kenneth was still very powerful. John pleaded with his dark entity to help, but it was so frightened of the light. The wolf got frustrated with the darkness and left John's side to communicate with its co-inhabitant.