A Warrior's Return (12 page)

Titus started to leave.

“What do I do with these when I’m done?” I
asked quickly.

He turned back, “Day’ze yours now Missy.
I’ll show you how to clean them later. Number one rule of having a
gun Miss Eva, don’t you ever let nobody and I mean nobody take it
away from you without a fight! Do you hear me?”

I nodded my head humbled that these fine
weapons were now mine. Where I came from, guns and the security
they offered, were illegal.

I had never felt more free than I did now,
when I felt the bulk of them in my hands and the percussions of
them in my ears. It was like the sound of freedom.

“One more thing Miss Eva.”

I looked back up at Titus.

“Cut miss Cat a little slack. She don’t have
it all figured out inside or better way of putting it is she can’t
handle what’s inside. Makes her act all mean, because she’s afraid
someone will see how fragile inside she is.”

I nodded having already arrived at pretty
much the same conclusion of the girl, which is why I had given her
so much slack already, letting her walk all over me.

Titus made his way back toward the plane and
the shade that it offered. Glancing up he saw Sparky had set two
chairs in the shade. Sparky was elegantly lounging in one chair
with a chilled glass of wine in his hand.

Titus grinned big when he saw the three ice
cold bottles of beer stuck into the sand beside the empty chair.
Titus sank into the chair, which sank into the sand slightly under
his bulk and gave a sigh of relief.

Plucking one of the bottles from the sand he
twisted the top off and then reached out to clink it off Sparky’s
glass of wine in a silent toast to themselves.

“What do you think of her Titus? Will she
do?” Sparky asked speculatively, as he watched Eva switch back to
the shotgun in the distance.

Titus finished the first beer off and tossed
the bottle off to the side before grabbing another. He considered
the question for a moment as he too, watched Eva.

He glanced over at Sparky, “Dat girl was
born to pull the trigger. She just never had anything to pull the
trigger of before. But now! Woowee! That girl ready for trouble and
loaded for bear! Captain done well for himself to land the likes of
her as a mate!”

Sparky nodded slightly and took a sip of his
chilled wine. That had been pretty much his conclusion as well. Eva
started packing up her newfound possessions in the cases.

Titus’s face creased into a frown, “What do
you think it all means? This ain’t no ordinary mission we’re on. I
can feel it. I feel it in my bones. What do yeah think the captains
up to?”

Sparky looked at the horizon shimmering in
the distance.

“End of the road my friend and perhaps a new
beginning for some, not for us though I think.”

Titus nodded, “It’s been a long time in
coming, but I ain’t going out quiet like! No sir, not me!”

A moment of silence passed, as they watched
Eva walk back toward them.

“They’ze going to make mighty fine looking
children together they is!”

“Indeed.” Sparky quietly intoned, as he set
his still half full glass of wine down on the chair arm. He rose,
as Eva drew close to them.

I was excited, but I was also sweating and I
was looking forward to laying down for a while in the shade. As I
approached the plane I studied the odd couple sitting in the sand,
who seemed to be likewise studying me. Titus with his beer and
Sparky with his, no doubt expensive, glass of wine.

It hadn’t been so long ago that I had
finally encountered a truly good man, but these two men before me I
had quickly added to the growing list. Both of them were older men
and they had adopted a fatherly attitude towards me during the long
flight and I appreciated both of them greatly.

Sparky stood up as I neared them. Sparky was
such an odd name for him, as there appeared to be nothing even
remotely sparky about him.

He was the picture of elegant reserve,
slipping around quietly almost imperceptible in his existence. He
was a hard man to read and most of the time I felt like he could
read my every thought even before I did. It was a surprise when I
drew near to them that he started to clap softly.

“Superb my dear! Very well done!”

I blushed at his praise of me, because I
knew he wasn’t the sort to give out praise lightly.

“Now that my friend here has given you
teeth, with which to leave a nasty bite, please allow me to
complete your ensemble by providing the claws you will need to rend
the enemy and the finesse with which to use them properly with the
greatest effect. Follow me and we shall unveil the tigress within.
I have a feeling that you will be one of my greatest creations
yet!”

The little man disappeared into the darkened
plane and I looked at Titus in consternation, as to what to do. I
didn’t know what to make of the little man’s words.

Unveil the tigress within?

Titus gave me a big wink and a head nod
indicating that I should follow Sparky, “Don’t you be letting his
big words and fancy way of speaking scare you. You be in good hands
there. He’s going to give you claws baby girl!” Titus said half
laughing to himself.

I stepped into the plane not at all sure I
liked the idea of claws being added to me, but if the guns were
teeth then perhaps the claws would be useful too.

“Over here my dear.” I heard Sparky’s voice
come from behind a curtained off part of the plane’s fuselage.

Cautiously I peeked around a blanket and
then stepped into the enclosure. There were lots of trunks and
boxes. Computers were everywhere, along with other gadgets.

There were two stools of which Sparky was
sitting on one and he gestured for me to sit on the other. The
stools were a little closer than I cared for, but I complied with
the request more than curious, as to what the little man had in
store for me. All right, so I was very curious.

“All right my dear let us start with the
essentials. You are a very beautiful woman and yet you do nothing
to showcase it. Why is that?”

My mouth was dry and I struggled for lack of
an adequate response to his question. I didn’t want to reveal my
past to him.

He cocked his head to the side slightly and
asked softly, “Is it because of your past as a lady of the night so
to speak?”

In shocked hurt I asked, “Talaric told
you!”

He shook his head no, “I happened to be in
Columbia several years back and the nature of my business was such
that it was conducted in a place that you happened to be performing
in. I forget very little of anything I see in life. I recognized
you almost instantly.”

I let my head fall towards the floor in
shame. Would I never escape the past?

His cool finger under my chin brought my
head back up to meet his eyes. There was no sign of condemning
judgment in them; instead all I saw was kindness and a deep
understanding.

“All of us here have done things in life
that we can be ashamed of, but if one has asked the Creator for
forgiveness then there is no more shame and what we were guilty of
is our cross to bear no more. The only shame we should have is
after knowing the truth, if we should do again that which shamed us
in the first place. Do you not agree?”

I nodded slightly, as several tears escaped
from my eyes, which he quickly dabbed away with a white
handkerchief.

“So then the question is why do you still
punish yourself for something you have been forgiven for?”

I stared wordlessly at him.

“Is it because God’s open and freely given
forgiveness seems to simple a thing to take at face value by you
and so you feel that you must somehow continue to expunge the
weaknesses of your past to wash away your sins on a daily personal
level.”

I nodded my head.

He’d nailed it on the head.

“Do you not see the faulty consciousness of
such reasoning? Continuing to punish yourself, and think less of
yourself than you should, and hold onto the things already forgiven
you is in effect to deny God’s sovereignty and the gift of freedom
that He has so graciously bestowed upon you by the grace brought on
by the death of His Son for you. You deny Him the honor that He
rightly deserves by holding onto your past sins my dear.”

I fell apart as his words destroyed the
fragile framework of control that I had been trying to construct
over the past week. He let me cry against his shoulder for a
while.

Rubbing my back softly he said, “You are a
new creation my dear. The old has passed away and a new life has
begun.”

He pushed me back and looking into my eyes
said, “It’s time for you to become the woman that God intended for
you to be from the beginning, yes?”

“Yes.” I said firmly, even as my voice still
had tears in it.

“God created women to be beautiful and
feminine; there is no shame in looking appealing. There is a fine
line admittedly between being overly appealing and modestly
appealing however, but I think we can find it, yes?”

“Yes.” I said loving the little man for his
kindness and his correcting spirit.

“There is another reason why you need to
change your current ways my dear. The relationship that I see
budding like a beautiful spring rose between you and my Captain is
a beautiful thing that I have no doubt will one day bloom into an
everlasting union between the two of you.”

He paused and took my hand and looked even
deeper into my eyes.

“For a long time my dear you have shared
your beauty with the world and what was created for a holier
purpose has been misused and abused. That time is over. You should
not give any less of yourself to the man who holds your heart than
you have already given to the world, in fact you should try to give
him more of yourself than you have ever given before. There is no
shame in what God created to be enjoyed between a man and a woman
bound together in holy matrimony, so do not attach any to it
despite whatever has taken place in your past. Do you agree?”

“Yes!” I said meaningfully.

“Good, now that we have that all out of the
way we can get down to business.”

He picked up a pile of clothing and handed
it to me and then gestured toward another curtained off area.

“Go wash and change and then come back and
we will see what can be done to fashion you a new look. The clothes
should fit. I made alterations to them last night. My father was a
tailor, howbeit one that worked for crooks and crime lords. Some of
his talents rubbed off on me, hopefully enough to do your beauty
justice.”

I made my way to the area he had pointed at.
I turned back to see him watching me.

“Thank you for everything!”

He shook his head, “Don’t thank me dear. I
enjoy and derive my satisfaction out of being part of a bigger
overall plan, whatever encouragement and help that I can give to
others in need along the way is a small thing for me to give in
comparison as to what I have already been given. If you would hear
any more advice from me it would be this, give to others as freely
as you have already been given. I would tell you to hurry so your
bathwater did not get cold, but in these insufferable conditions I
fear that even a cold bath would be a relief.”

I smiled and hurried into the screened off
enclosure. My fingers ached to put the soft and silky textured
clothes on after my bath.

The streets of the outskirts of Alexandria
were quiet in the early hours of the morning as Talaric and Ronan
made their way through the maze of mud brick dwellings headed
toward an even older quarter of the city.

Like most ancient cities that have suffered
damage and changed hands throughout the centuries from one empire
to another there is more than just meets the eye. As cities such as
Alexandria recover from past destruction the habit is to simply
build over top of what was before, often in-tombing complete
structures underneath the next generational shift of the city.

Layer after layer of the past is heaped up
on top of each other. The layers are often connected by narrow
passageways made through the layers by people who took advantage of
the forgotten underground realms.

It was a good place to hide or keep
something from being common knowledge and as a result their access
points of the surface were extremely hard-to-find and often guarded
by those protecting the secrets that had laid underground for
centuries.

Somewhere on the rooftops above them was
Eleanor, ghosting along in her usual gracefulness with a
high-powered sniper rifle on her back. She was the best there was
either flying or hitting her target whatever it may be.

It made Talaric feel better knowing that she
was up there covering them, but she wouldn’t be able to help them
once they were underground. Talaric had never been to their
destination before and he hadn’t really ever wanted to risk
venturing there, but now he had no choice. It was a race now to the
finish line, if what the self-styled Orlandian Medusa woman, had
said was true.

There would be others better equipped than
him and far more numerous in number on the trail of solving an
ancient pre-flood mystery. Hopefully they hadn’t come upon this
place yet. He had learned of it through his own research over the
past several years, as he had dug into the possible remnants of
history of his people’s time on Earth.

His research had focused specifically on
whether there was a way back home. When he had heard of this place
he had decided not to go there unless he absolutely had to and now
was that time.

On the lowest level there was a place that
dated back practically to the founding of the city over two
thousand years before. It was a collection or library if you will
of ancient knowledge. It was even rumored that some of the scrolls
had been saved from the fires that had consumed the library of
Alexandria one of the seven great wonders of the ancient past.