The Malavide - Complete Audio

If you were competent.

There were the four women and six men in the room. That left two of the predators that she did not have eyesight on. But the women were already strapped to chairs or beds -- 2 of each. The room where the women were strapped down was about 30 x 30 feet -- maybe a break room or a locker room. The chairs and tables had been brought in, two of each. Avolin slipped down the hallway, out of sight of the women being strapped into the chairs and tables.

This was simply a training mission, she told herself.

Training to protect the Way.

She left her bag in the last crossing hallway, and gripping the slim walking stick she glided back up the hall, twirling the stick she held twice to find the best grip. She could hear terrified whimpers, and idle chat from the predators. One of them laughed.

She felt emotion drain away from her, felt her heart speed up and breathed out a long, low breath - then she rounded the corner and stepped into the room.

Section 10

Dr. H. Walpole was a stuffy individual; he was bald and wore round glasses, and although he was tall (maybe 6'1", Pedderse thought) he was shaped like a short, rather plump person. He was also the smartest of the three psychiatrists who regularly saw him. Pedderse had so far rebuked their 'sessions', no matter which of the three doctors were sitting across the desk from him. The trick would be to seem to open up in a natural way.

Pedderse quit thinking about what had happened in the room where he had shot the agents and lawyers -- rather, he thought wryly, former agents and lawyers.

He began thinking quite a bit about what was going to happen in the room where he was being analyzed instead.

BREAK

Thonos slipped after the shadowy figure in the alley-way -- he could barely think of the person as anything else, though from the size and the way the person moved they were probably in their late teens or early twenty's. He had been prepared to follow his targets through the front door, but when he realized the shadow in the alley was the same person from 12 blocks ago he realized he was not the only person stalking this group of demons.

To be so young, whoever it was was good -- almost too good, but she was not of the Malavide. She was quick and observant. He could slip through the front door directly after the small group of demons, and never be seen or detected. She obviously could not, but she had skirted the building and gained entrance in less than two minutes, and not long after had located the kill room.

Thonos watched dispassionately as she did a quick head count of the enemy and got the layout of the room and the targets, then glided back up the corridor to the next hallway. The soldier -- Thonos could think of the figure as nothing else now -- dropped the shoulder bag and shrugged off the coat and cloak.

Thonos was aghast -- it was merely a slip of a young girl! She did not look over 17!

But she picked up the staff, and as she walked back to the room she spun it in one hand, then in the other.

A dreadful calm overcame Thonos, and he followed the young woman back up the hallway to the kill room. Did she expect to take on 6 demons? Well, 5 demons and one just bad human, he thought to himself. The twirling of the staff, or of the sword or spear or any other weapon could serve two purposes. One was a mere showboat -- look what I can do with this thing!

The other was not -- it was about finding the perfect grip of the weapon. On any handheld weapon there is a very slight variation in the way the grip is patterned -- there is a perfect way to hold it.

Thonos was right behind the slip of a girl -- she could not have weighed over 110 pounds, he thought to himself.

Thonos was paying close attention; her gait altered about thirty feet before the doorway into the kill room; it became -- smoother, somehow. Thonos recognized it; it was a common factor in most martial combat philosophies. Walk on the toes and the balls of the feet; the end result was a sort of gliding walk, similar to the moonwalk perfected by Michael Jackson, but this gait could be done in any direction.

Her staff had become absolutely still as she slipped the last 15 feet up the hallway, and then she flowed effortlessly into the room; Thonos was no more than three feet behind her.

As Avolin approached the room, she breathed out a deep breath and then hyperventilated for the last ten steps. She entered the room in the form of Rose at Sunrise, which placed the enemy in a line stretching away from her in a lateral fashion -- she would be hidden by the first person she would kill, which was a simple thrust of the staff to the surprised man's neck.

She slipped the gun out of his lax hand into her left hand; her staff flashed in a complicated X pattern that broke the second man's wrists, then killed him with a thrust of the staff to the sternum.

She heard shots being fired, felt tugs at her clothing and a minor wound on her left upper arm as she went to the floor. She shot the third man in the lower legs, shot the fourth in the head. One of the outer guards rushed into the room; she twisted the staff slightly and flung part of it towards the man rushing in; that exposed a slim, narrow blade about three and a half feet long.

The blade was a high carbon layered blade that had been made specifically for her, and which was presented to her on her nameday as a warrior of the Way. She performed the Hummingbird Floats on the Updraft form, and the man fell into two pieces, cut through the torso just above the hips, and the head spinning into the corner as her blade completed a complicated figure eight pattern.

The man she had flung the lower part of the walking staff at was shooting wildly; he had been hit in the face and was still dazed. She covered two long, gliding paces, thrust her slim sword through his heart, and then she turned and threw the blade just past Thonos -- a seventh man had come from the hallway behind him. The thrown blade took him through the heart, and he collapsed to the ground as though a switch had been cut off.

She walked over to the man she had shot in the legs and broke his neck.

Then she slumped down onto the floor -- he now noticed her loose, dark clothes had blood stains on them. She had been wounded worse than he imagined, and he started to think about stepping forward when she looked him in the eye. "It was a dick move not to help me, man. How about cutting the girls loose?"

For the first time in two thousand years, Thonos' mouth drooped open in complete surprise; then he stepped across the room to the terrified women and quickly released them.

BREAK

Dr. H Walpole hated wasting his time -- the patient had been uncooperative from the first, but he had laid out a timetable to himself at the beginning of this ordeal, and he would stick to it.

That was what men of science did -- make a plan and stick to it.

And, he had to admit, for the past two weeks Pedderse had changed. At first, for a long time, he had simply sat motionless, not speaking at all, not answering any questions. But the last two weeks he had actually seemed to be listening to what Walpole was saying.

And he had been looking increasingly haggard; that was a good sign to Walpole, but he still had serious doubts. And then Pedderse arrived for today's session and he looked even worse, as though he had not slept for a week. Or slept but had constant nightmares. Walpole and the others had tried to enter Pedderse' dreams -- it had always been one of the best ways to weaken humans so that they would do the proper thing or make the correct 'wrong' decision.

But Pedderse' dreams had proven to be unassailable. None of the Cogi knew why; as their most experienced Dream Master said, Humans can be very strange.

Pedderse thought that one was a fool, but could not say so.

But it looked like Pedderse had been having nightmares all on his own -- he looked like he was about to pass out, but there was still some sort of manic energy; energy that was denying him sleep, or sleep of any quality. For the first time in months, Walpole leaned forward with interest.

"I -- I am just not sure what happened. I have thought about it for months, but I can barely remember the day at all. It was as though -- I don't know, as though someone had taken control over me. Everything I remember about that day is like a dream I can't quite remember." Pedderse sat forward, burying his face in his hands, and said in a genuinely shaking, sincere voice, "I still don't know what happened -- I wish there was some way I could prod those memories . . ."

Dr. H Walpole sat extremely still, almost not believing what he was hearing -- Pedderse was opening himself up in a way that almost had him salivating, and he had just the asset to take advantage of this!

"There have been some therapies involving hypnosis to recover lost memories," he said in an offhand way, and when Pedderse leaned forward, he raised his hand in a stopping motion -- "These therapies are far from proven, and they only work in a minority of cases. A small percentage of people have suffered more severe side effects. But have no doubt, I would be there with you, at every step of the procedure.

"There are other avenues we could take -- in fact, perhaps we should try to approach this problem in a number of different ways before we try this approach."

"I have been through all this in my own thinking," Pedderse said, voice ragged, hands still cradling his head as he looked at his shoes. "If you think this thing can help, I am willing to try it. I feel like I am at the last of my rope, Dr. Walpole!"

"Don't worry, Jon," Dr. H Walpole said, sitting forward, patting Pedderse' shoulder. Pedderse shuddered at the use of his Given name in the mouth of this creature. "I am here for you, and I know a very accomplished psychotherapist who is well versed in Hypnotherapy."

After that it was all formalities; a going over of the plan to move forward, the regular sound bytes that happen at the end of nearly any conversation, even ones that happened between lovers, or people who loved one another. Both men left the meeting feeling as though they had made progress, but they were not sure how much.

That night the Dream Master once again tried to invade Pedderse' dreams, and once again he was unable to penetrate them.

But the Dream Master would hypnotize Pedderse the next day -- with the man's permission of all things! And then they would have full access to the mind of Pedderse -- and the story they needed to be told. A confession would be had on the next day.

PART

Thonos was still not sure if he should simply disappear. They were no longer in the warehouse. He had killed three minor soldiers that Avolin had not noticed and had simply gone along, guided by the woman's directions into the structure that she had shown him. She had no problem taking command, and for some reason he just kept following her directions.

The building she led them to looked like a small, abandoned bodega with cracked linoleum floors. Weak light filtered through the poorly boarded up windows. At least the three other guards had helped him to regain his energy.

The woman was slumped against the wall, and Thonos sat cross legged about eight feet away. He had saved her life, quickly bandaged her wounds as best he could to stop the flow of blood. She had been hit twice, one in the flesh of the upper left arm, and another on the left side of the torso, around the tenth rib. Thonos had never studied a lot of medicine but he had picked up a decent knowledge of field medicine through the centuries, and he knew from where the wound was the biggest danger was that the bullet had pierced the liver -- until she was on the operating table it would be impossible to tell.

The arm wound seemed relatively minor, not quite a graze but not much worse.

After h helped her down she stared at him for several moment.

"We need to," he started to say and then broke off when she glared at him and pointed a finger at him. The effect was onl;y slightly spoiled by the fact that her finger was shaking. She finally fumbled a phone from her pocket. She squinted at it -- she was growing paler, and was mumbling softly. He thought it sounded like, 'I could have been in college' but wasn't sure.

She needed to be in a hospital, and instead they were sitting in an abandoned building while she slowly bled out, despite his bandages. It was the internal bleeding that had him concerned though. What had him concerned more was why he had not simply left her.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice slightly slurred from blood loss and pain.

For some reason, he answered truthfully: "I am Thonos -- I am hunting the same ones you were."

"Why didn't you help!" she said, and it was not a question. Her hands were shaking harder, and she was fumbling with the phone uselessly; her breath was now coming in ragged pants.

"You need to try to calm down," he said. "You need to go to a hospital."

"No hospital!" she cried, and actually pointed a finger at him again! "Why didn't you help?"

"Why did you help? I seek their leaders -- sacrifices have to be made. This is a war." There was a reason, he thought to himself in that instance, a reason he was being brutally honest with this young woman -- this young woman who had killed eight men and saved four women. He was watching her die -- he had nothing to fear.

"But you helped me!" she coughed, then groaned. Thonos watched her carefully, but no blood was on her lips from the cough. Her lungs had not been hit. She did let out a small sound from the spasm of the cough though.

"They were all dead by then; well, most of them -- there was nothing to learn. Why did you help them?"

The woman stared at him -- shaking and pale, barely able to hold the phone, and seeming to mutter to herself for a second. But her eyes were lit with an internal fire that Thonos could hardly believe. "They were going to kill them," she said in the end. The slim warrior fumbled at the phone for another second, then looked at him again -- one eye was wandering, and her voice was wavering as she slid the phone across the floor to him; "Speed dial 90 -- text them Redhawk 1," she said. "Do NOT call them -- text them," she was barely conscious as she finished saying that, her voice fading rapidly at the end of the sentence, and then she passed out.

It had been a little over an hour since then; Thonos had to admit that whoever she was working with knew how an operation should work. She had still not told him her name!

When they arrived, a man in his mid-thirties (if he guessed correctly) was in charge. He was not the first Thonos himself would have noticed; in fact he had not noticed him until he looked at the entire operation unfolding before him, after the woman was wheeled out of the abandoned bodega.

The first thing that had been done was securing the building -- no cars, no lights, just dark clad people flowing into the building. But they were not moving in a combat stance. Their weapons were lowered, and they were very calm. Calm in the way that lions were calm, a half of a heartbeat away from violence. There were four of them, and next came two medical techs carrying a field stretcher and supply kits.

They rushed immediately to the woman -- the warrior.

Thonos remained silent, sitting cross legged with his hands on his knees as more people entered the building, and now he saw the headlights of cars outside the window. The techs had already cut the shirts off the woman. "Good job on the bandages," one said, but did not look up or slow from his work. In minutes, they had her on the stretcher and were wheeling her from the building.

One of the techs was saying something about a wound below the clavicle on the left side, with a possible liver puncture or laceration. They were calm, but efficient. Thonos watched all this, and listened to what the others were saying as well. There were now eight soldiers in the room; there was no other way to describe them.

He sat there for five minutes while they swept the building, and during that time Thonos noticed the blocky man. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and for a long time he said not a word, just wandered around and listened to the other soldiers talking. He also had an earbud, at several times he stepped further away and had a private conversation. Every time he did this, he had his back turned to Thonos.

Thonos had been reading lips for over 2000 years.

The man who was nominally in charge was a giant -about 6' 6" or a bit taller, with huge shoulders and arms. He moved with a quiet grace, and his voice was surprisingly soft and gentle.

"Who sent the text?" he asked softly.

No weapon had been raised to him. Thonos could escape easily, but he doubted whether he could kill all the soldiers in the room. And, more importantly, none of them were Deamonia or of the Ourde in any way he could tell.

"She gave me the phone -- I sent the text," he said. He was thrumming with energy -- he could escape at any time, but he really wanted to see where this was going. The giant asked a series of questions. Thonos was not as honest as he had been with the warrior woman, but the man did not ask deeper questions, simply questions about what had happened. He did not ask why Thonos had not helped more, or his role in the fight at all.

The other soldiers were grouped against the far wall, directly across from Thonos. It was a subtle sign of respect to him. Even if weapons had not been raised, in a normal situation half of the squad would have been behind him.

Then the real man in charge stepped forward. "You can leave, but we would rather talk to you." The man looked at him for a long moment, as though weighing what else to say.

"If you want to do that, I promise you safe conduct and safe transport to wherever you would wish to go."

Moments later, Thonos was sitting in a large sedan.

They drove casually away from the bodega, and Thonos noticed several moving trucks next to the warehouse where the killings had taken place. He had only told them the location of the battle about seven minutes ago. These people were organized, and Thonos found himself glad that they were considering him at least an ally.

They swept through the city, and Thonos listened to the small talk of the men around him. They discussed nothing of importance but revealed themselves to him.

He found he was eager to see what would come next. It was a surprising emotion. He felt adrenaline pulsing through him and tried to contain the smile that was on his lips.

PART

Jon Pedderse looked like a ragged survivor of some calamity compared to the man that had been admitted to the Brookwood Estate (they had removed the part of the name that said 'for the Mentally Insane' sometime in the early 1970's).

He started the interview with Dr. H Walpole normally enough -- the first 10 -- 15 questions were always about how he was feeling at the moment, how he was getting along in the facility. He fielded these with ease; he had been trying variations of them to see which would please the doctor more over the last months.

The hypnotherapy had been completed earlier today, but Pedderse felt no different, and the tightlipped little man did not seem either satisfied or dissatisfied.

Still, Pedderse was out of sorts and slightly confused by the questions -- then came the real question.

"Do you remember what happened that day, Jon?" the Doctor asked in a soft voice -- the doc always spoke in soft voices.

That was the question Pedderse had been waiting for, and this time Pedderse replied differently than he had done in the past.

"It -- it seemed when I woke up in the morning, I had a mission. It is not one I wanted, but I felt that it was, umm -- true . . ."