Something's coming...

We went after the White light we saw in our shared vision when we stepped off the Lost Highway. Buried in the remains of the Dixie Pig was a turtle, of course. Just a little figurine, but something important all the same. Important enough to burry there, important enough to guard, and powerful enough that they couldn’t touch it and just destroy it.

We fought hard and well, no less than I expect from my deadly new friends. We came close to it though, and there were moments when I thought I felt the chill of ka-shume settle over us. There wasn’t time to stop and make sure, though, not when a wrecking ball was arcing towards your head. So we just fought and we triumphed.

I’m worried about Eden though, because she doesn’t seem worried about us. It makes sense if you know Eden like we do, as close as khef. She’s always worrying about us, asking us what’s wrong practically before we know that we’ve got a problem most of the time. Part of it’s because she’s telepathic, but the worrying, the caring is all Eden.

But lately she’d been quieter, more withdrawn. I wasn’t sure what was going on yet, though Carrie tried to get it out of her. Eden kept her lips pressed tightly together and her eyes weren’t giving anything away. I probably have the hardest time reading her, and I pick so little up from her mind through khef, maybe because she’s psychic and she can block herself when she wants. I didn’t want to drive her off though. Most times you can ask someone a hundred times and they won’t answer you, then one day they’ll just start talking when you haven’t even opened your mouth. She’ll come to it in her own time, but it’d better be soon. Things aren’t winding down, they ramping up and if our dinh can’t get it together, we’re in for some real hurting.

I surprised myself with how close I came to doing some hurting myself. Carrie mentioned that Ashleigh had taken an interest in Penny’s schooling. Nothing bad about that, though so far he’d only contributed to educating her in the world of Marvel Comics. But she mentioned that she’d chided him about hacking into the tutors database and looking up her grades, downloading her lessons, and reading the tutors comments. About Penny, and about me.

It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that the tutor wanted to bring me up on charges of negligence with Child Protective Services, she misses a damned lot of school after all and we don’t get much time to catch up. But I was enraged that Ashleigh would do that. Go behind my back and interfere in her education. He talked to Penny about her school and told her she could skip grades.

She’s the smartest kid I ever knew, brighter than I was at her age for damned sure. But I don’t want her to end up like me, so fixed on succeeding that she…that she forgets the face of her father…

…I went to Ashleigh’s, the wonderful evening I’d had with Carrie nearly forgotten. I felt like he was trying to take care of Penny, like he thought I wasn’t doing good enough. It’s a damned good thing I didn’t have my guns with me. I wouldn’t have shot him…god help me I’ll never play the betrayer again, but the conversation would have gone a lot worse with one of those hand cannons pointed in his face. Not that it went well anyways.

“You’re not her father!” I screamed at him. “I…”

I was going to say that I was. It was on the tip of my tongue, the tip of my heart. I can’t even tell Penny how much I love her in words, how the hell was I going to make Ashleigh understand? But he knew what I couldn’t say.

“You’re not her father either!” He threw back. He might as well have taken one of his knives and run me through the heart. I haven’t been hurt like that since the thinny, and I don’t know which was worse. It stripped away all of my arguments, all of my reason and jerked the raw, naked truth out of me…

“She’s all I have!”

There. It was out of my mouth, not just hinted at in the waters of khef, but echoing in his shabby apartment and shaking the windows. Everything after that was like talking underwater or something. I didn’t really hear him and he didn’t really hear me. We talked about it the next day, which I think was pretty brave of Ashleigh. I think they all think that I’d do anything for Penny, even kill them.

He fucked up. I overreacted. But the bottom line is that we both want what’s best for Penny. I got him to agree to include me in talking to her about what that means. I think we’ll be okay.

And we’re going to need to stick together. Two other things went on in that short week between returning to New York and the shootout at the Dixie Pig. One was good, and one was bad. Maybe even very bad.

I’d taken Carrie out to dinner. When she got back to New York (her first time in the Big Apple with a clear head), she realized she’d turned twenty a while ago. She told me she isn’t sure of the day, since her mom didn’t know (a prisoner of the needle more than Carrie ever was). I wasn’t sure what to get her, so I asked her what she wanted. Dinner out just to chat and relax, not to talk about Penny. I had to blush a bit… Carrie wasn’t the only one who’d been living for someone else.

“Okay,” I said. “Deal.”

I was looking forward to it, probably more than I let on. I’d been feeling…lonely. Which was funny if you thought about it, because for the first time in more than a decade I had real friends and I had Penny. Aside from Lex, I’d pretty much kept to myself. The best I can figure, and I’m not a deep thinker, is that Penny…all my friends… sorta reminded me of what life is supposed to be like and I started to feel the absence of the things I still didn’t have.

I went out to some Goth club, not one I’d hunted at before, but somewhere where people dressed all in black was the norm. I invited the guys, but Ashleigh begged off. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He was probably thinking of Carrie, and I figured she was thinking about him again now that she was clean. Alistair surprised me by being up for it, though. First karaoke, now clubbing.

The girls came to me, like the always do. I tried to talk up Alistair – I had no idea if he wanted any action, but I wasn’t going to leave him high and dry – but I don’t think he got much attention until I left. We chatted about jobs, the music, politics, all the usual small talk.

I’d already picked out the one I wanted to leave with, a pretty little brunette goth. Short, thin, no tits to speak of. She was about as far from my old long-legged, double-dee, blonde bimbo as you can get. She was wearing a black lace corset and these black wings tied to her back with ribbons. A little over the top. I was doing magic tricks, making my coin disappear and reappear, folding napkins into paper roses and pulling them out of seemingly nowhere. I brushed her cheek as I pulled my coin from behind her ear. I brushed her chest as I took the paper rose out of her scant cleavage.

Her black-painted lips were parted just slightly, her eyes half closed every time I leaned close to speak over the music. She wrapped her arms around my bicep and clung to me at the bar, her hard nipples grazing my shoulder.

I tried about fifteen times to suggest we leave, but I’d have had to fight my way out of the circle of girls surrounding me and Alistair. In the end I showed them another trick. I rolled my coin over my fingers, fast and faster. The strobe lights winked off of the old silver, flashing light into their painted faces. I took the girl’s arm and pulled her out of the circle while everyone was just staring, rapt.

I shook her a little to wake her up. “Hey, you wan to get out of here?” She nodded breathlessly and we called a cab, already kissing and fooling around.

He roommate glared at us sleepily as we came back to her place, but we closed the bedroom door on her and forgot about her instantly. There was something about her that caught hold of me, but I couldn’t place it. I didn’t realize as I undressed her, didn’t realize as I held my hands on her girlish hips and guided her over me, and not when we finally fell exhausted and sweating into the sheets to sleep.

It was when I woke in the morning. I sat up and saw her pale back stretched out next to me, dark hair spilling over her slender shoulders. My penis stiffend so quickly it ached and I was ready for another round. I leaned over and kissed her head and said “Good morning…” and I almost called her Carrie. After a second I remembered that her name was something like Sarah or Sandra or Sasha, but she looked an awful lot like Carrie. My erection went limp like a flag when the wind up and dies. Not because the thought turned me off, but because I realized that’s what had turned me on so much. I got dressed and told her I’d maybe see her later, but I didn’t think I was ever going back to the club again.

So when I picked up Carrie the next night, watched her coming down her front steps in a clinging, strapless dress, my heart started to beat faster. Dinner was nice. The ice-skating was nicer. On the ride back to her place I felt like we were speeding towards something. Or maybe more like we were two spheres of plutonium moving slowly together, nearing the point of reaching critical mass and exploding into…what…?

And then she brought up Ashleigh and the needle moved away from the danger zone, the sexual radiation returned to elevated, but safe, levels. Maybe it was for the best, maybe she’s not ready and maybe I’m not. But I had to wonder if we were ever going to stop fucking up, dancing around, if something was going to happen.

Maybe it’s better that nothing happen. When ka and love get in the same cart it’s a wild ride. You seem love harder than anyone else, but you hurt more too. I’m not sure it’s worth it. But the damned thing is, if ka and love go hand in hand, you have no choice. Ka like a wind.

And I could feel it blowing. Then there was the second thing, the bad thing.

Carrie’d been looking forward to pushing the boundaries of the powers she never knew she had, but she needed help. Help from Bryce. We all knew there was going to be trouble over it, but we weren’t prepared for what happened.

He saw us down at the shooting range. Penny was putting rounds into the center ring at ten yards and Carrie was learning how to handle the shotgun she borrowed back in Mid-World. I didn’t feel the need to get it back now that I had real guns, and Carrie could use a little heavier firepower.

Bryce comes up to us, about to burst into flames, and starts screaming at me when he sees the sandalwoods. I’ve been through that, though. Moses Carver put them into my hands and I rescued them from Jericho Hill. That battle was as much a trial as Cort’s test… and if I haven’t earned them yet, I will.

So, as he’s spewing his bile at us, Carrie asks him how he is. She’d foretold his wounding and we could all see the limp he was sporting. But I wasn’t prepared for the ring of greasy blue light around his neck. He’d been bitten, and recently.

I wish Carrie’d seen the whole story, I might have been more prepared. His tet went out and their mission failed when a tet of harriers got in the way. Apparently…well, it seemed that I was there. Some James, some other me. A vampire. A regulator. He…I…mowed down his friend and put a bullet in his leg. And I was the one that bit him. God, if he never wanted to kill me before, he did then…

I was surprised that he didn’t have a go for it, or at least deck me. Maybe he would have, but I didn’t want to give him the chance. I left as soon as possible, and I almost didn’t show up for Carries training. I kept my damned mouth shut, though. We saw him walk off the next day, leaving the tower with that bloodsucker’s collar around his neck and he was alone. Which is a damned good way to get bitten again. We gave a report to Alice on that and she said she’d handle it.

But I think it’s going to come back to us. Ka is a wheel and I feel it coming around. Things are picking up speed, gaining momentum. Something’s coming…