Broken Wings: Genesis (3 page)

He waved me over to where he was
sitting. The woman with him had her back to me. I held up a finger and gave him
a look that said first things first, and turned to the girl at the counter.

“Triple mocha with a shot of
hazelnut.”

Hey––I make no excuses for my
beverage choice comprising over ten times the daily recommended intake of
toxic, refined sugar dissolved in a triple dose of concentrated caffeine.
Things are the way they are and that’s the way I like it. If you think that’s
bad, I was only getting started. If things held true to form, I’d probably have
another before I left.

While the girl took time to make
my order, I took the time to check out the woman sitting with Chaz. She had
strawberry blonde hair that fell forward in a semi-messy curtain around her
head and shoulders. Her arms were crossed in front of her out of my sight, with
her shoulders slumped in toward her body. The body language told me she was
feeling vulnerable, defeated and closed off. She was feeling the need to
protect herself from outside influences. Yeah, no kidding. If Chaz was right,
she should definitely be feeling a little of all the above. I opened my
secondary senses and probed a little further.

The backlash was instant. It was
as though I had stuck my hand into a slightly opened door and had it slammed on
my fingers. The woman turned and glared at me, the heat of her gaze sparking a
warning in her green eyes. Fair enough. I deserved that.

Sometimes I forget. Most people I
come across––okay, most people,
period
––are unaware of the metaphysical
side of reality. There are a few out there that not only sense it, but have a
pretty fair handle on it. She was one of those select few. And she was strong.
I’ll give her that. Better yet, she wasn’t going to take invasion of her
personal space lightly. It gave me hope.

Number one, if a dream stalker
was
at the root of this woman’s problem, she was far from broken. Two, she still
had a lot of fight left in her. These were both powerful points in my favor.
They were factors that would make my job a lot easier. It also meant I had to
start out our “getting to know you dance” with apologies on my side. Not the
best position to begin from, but I could deal with it.

“Whipped cream?” The girl behind
the counter had the pressurized canister poised above my waiting cup of
pick-me-up.

“Of course,” I smiled and laid
eight bucks on the counter. The coffee would come to about six. “Keep the
change.”

I was feeling generous this
morning. She handed me the coffee with my receipt, which I stuffed into my
pocket. I had an expense account with the church. Father David and I had argued
over “frivolous” expenses. He didn’t agree with my patient explanation of
coffee as a necessity, until I pointed out that the bottle of scotch he kept
hidden in the lower left-hand drawer of his desk probably wasn’t, either. I get
paid for my coffee––but he rarely offers me any of his personal stash any more.
It was a trade-off I could live with.

Armed with coffee in hand, I
headed over to the table, taking my time. The woman was urgently whispering to
Chaz. She didn’t seem happy. I fought the urge to sigh and sucked in a mouthful
of whipped cream with my first taste of heaven for the morning. This was going
to be a rougher start than I had hoped.

Chaz stood up to offer me the
interior position at the table. I looked at him with patience over the top of
my cup. The heat flushed his face and he sat back down, moving to the seat he
had offered to me. I didn’t like to be blocked in by anybody. It was a force of
habit. Ms. Green-eyes was watching my every move from across the table, her
wariness emphasized with sullen resentment.

“Pietra, this is the woman I’ve
been telling you about.” Chaz tried to break through the wall of tension
permeating the air around us. She wasn’t budging.

“Yesh,” Chaz tried again. He had
the audacity to give me a chastising look, the little snot. “This is Pietra
Wells. Pietra, this is Yeshua Star.”

I winced. I hated the
pretentiousness of my name. My father had given it to me. It wasn’t his
surname, but he had made it mine. In this case, it helped. A ghost of a smile
crossed Pietra’s face. She was satisfied with my discomfort.

“Pietra,” I nodded my head with
politeness and assumed my best look of sincerity. “I will start right off with
an apology for––”

“Miss Star––”

“Yeshua.”

“Yeshua,” she hesitated with a
small frown. There was indecision in her face. She wanted to reprimand me
without offering offense. That was okay with me. I could sense her need to
exert a modicum of control into unfamiliar territory, so I waited with what I
hoped appeared to be patient expectance.

“What you just did is wrong by my
beliefs.”

Her words were carefully chosen. I
was betting Wiccan of some variety.

“Such things should not be done
without permission.”

I nodded acceptance of her
statement. It was my turn now.

“Pietra, I apologize for causing
you any level of discomfort. It was not my intention. However, you should be
aware that with the nature of the things I am often called upon to deal with
being as they are, permission is not a nicety I often have the time to deal
with. This is especially true in the early stages of determining what is going
on. An invitation at that point is a flashing neon sign that screams
trap
. While I apologize for your
distress, I won’t apologize for the action itself.”

The first stages of introduction
aside, I’m not going to dance around political correctness with fear of
stepping on the toes of someone else’s beliefs. I come from an acceptance of
all manner of beliefs. That courtesy is not often returned. If someone needs
the kind of help I may be able to give them, I don’t have time to worry about
giving them the warm fuzzies. In the end, they’re probably not going to be
happy about how I do things, regardless. I do whatever is necessary to bring
the bad guy down. And let’s face the real facts. If it could’ve been handled in
a way that made the person involved comfortable, then they wouldn’t have needed
me in the first place.

Pietra nodded recognition of my
words, although I could tell she wasn’t happy about it. There was a visible
struggle going on within her to put together a politic response. I avoided any
indication of the impatience I was feeling and took some time to absorb myself
in the cup of coffee cradled between my hands. Chaz took his cue from me and
looked out the window to count cars in the parking lot.

“Miss Star,” she hesitated with a
frown. “Yeshua. From what your friend has intimated, you may well be one of the
few people in the world who can help me with––my problem.”

A slight exaggeration on his part,
but okay. This was the hardest part to get past––the admission, not only to
herself, but also to other people, that there was a real problem.

“My abruptness with you stems from
my own feelings of vulnerability to outside influences tapping into me without
permission.” The tears created a bright shine across her eyes, which to her
credit went unshed. “Make no mistake––I am passing no judgment. I am in full
approval of doing whatever it takes to stop this monster from continuing what
he is doing.”

Good girl. The hardness of her
voice on the last gave me free reign to move forward. In consideration of the
delicate nature of her problem, I took another sip of coffee to give her time
to absorb what she had just said before jumping in.

Looking at her a little more
closely now, I could see she was somewhere in her mid to late thirties, about
the same age I was. She had a spray of freckles dusting her nose. Combined with
her fair complexion, it told me her hair color was probably real and not some
dye-job. She was well rounded in form, perhaps a little overweight, but she
carried it well and in all the right places. Her overall appearance was very
attractive, but slightly unkempt, probably due to the stress she was under. As
though she had heard that last thought, nervous fingers went to push her hair
back behind an ear and then stopped to let it fall forward again. My hand came
halfway across the table, but I held back at the last minute and looked at her
with question.

“May I?”

She faltered. A look of panic
flashed in her eyes, quickly shifting to pain and then resignation. Her fingers
moved her hair back again to better display what she knew I was asking to see.
Just above the neckline of her shirt a deep, blackened bruise surrounded a set
of teeth marks.

My hand dropped to the table, the
fingers curling into a fist that I pulled back to drop in my lap. I wanted to
touch it, probe it––but I already knew what I’d find. It took everything I had
to keep a reign on the outraged anger that I was feeling on behalf of this
woman and what she was being subjected to. I could probably even give her some
relief from the pain and disconnect her from her torturer, but it would’ve only
been a temporary fix that could alert the dream stalker to my presence. I
needed for him to
not
know about me yet. Pietra sensed my inner struggle
and dropped her hand to let her hair fall forward again.

“How many of these do you have on
your body?” I was finally able to ask, but not without a lot of tightness in my
voice. Her eyes dropped away from me in shame. My anger deepened.

“Several––in various areas. That’s
the only one with teeth marks.” The hesitation was back and she almost choked
on her words. “There are more––ones like finger marks––but just as dark––they
are on my thighs.” The tears welled up again. “He––it––and there are others––”

“Other marks, or––?”

“No––other women. From my coven.”

“Let me guess––ten others?”

She nodded.

My dreams rarely led me wrong.
They actually helped clue me into upcoming things. But, as usual, they had left
out a few important details. I couldn’t wait to see what else was going to come
to light.

“A coven.”

“Yesh––”

“Shit, Chaz––do you have any idea
what this means?”

The confusion in his eyes told me
that he didn’t.

“Is there a problem?” Pietra
looked up at me, her voice rising with the levels of her anxiety.

“Yes and no.”

Both Chaz and Pietra were waiting
for me to elaborate. I wasn’t sure how to proceed so I bought time by emptying
my coffee.

“Who brought him into contact with
the coven?”

The waves of shame that rolled
from Pietra were so strong that she didn’t have to answer, but she did, in a
very low voice.

“I did.”

“And your High Priestess––?”

“Is me.”

Damn and double damn. So much for
being easy.

“Let me guess––he has done ritual
with your group as a twelfth member to raise the power level of your works?”

A nod this time.

“Oh, shit.” Chaz had finally
caught on.

“And where is this man staying––or
do I need to ask?”

Her lack of response was my
answer.

“How aware are the other women of
what is happening?”

“Peripherally, Yesh. That’s how
Pietra figured out something was up.”

I blew out a long, slow breath.

“When is your next coven gathering
for ritual?” I already knew the answer, but I needed time to think and Pietra
needed to engage herself fully into the task of getting rid of this guy.

“Tonight––but we were going to cancel.
Some of the girls have already called off.”

Just as I figured. Tonight was the
full moon. Pretty much a standard for most rituals. I needed time to think
about this and plan out my next move. That wasn’t an option, so I did the next
best thing. I jumped in with both feet. The details could be sorted out later.

“Okay.” I firmly set the empty
coffee cup at the center of the table and waited for Pietra’s eyes to meet
mine. I captured her gaze with the seriousness of my tone and I wouldn’t let
go. No allowances for uncertainty––I needed her undivided attention.

“When you leave here, take Chaz
with you. Go and visit the members of your coven and tell them––tell them a
watered down version of what’s going on. Explain to them that they
will
be at ritual tonight––no exceptions. Let them know you are taking back the
night. But you need to make them aware that it probably won’t go down tonight.
Under no circumstances are you to mention my involvement at the level that it
is. For now, that is your knowledge alone, and even you need to pretty much
forget the same thing in your conscious mind. Can you do that?”

“Yes.” The High Priestess in her
actually responded with strength. Good. “But how––?”

“That information I am not going
to give to you.” She didn’t need to know that I hadn’t figured it all out yet.
“What you don’t know, you can’t give up to him. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but he is expecting me
back––”

“When you go home, you will
explain to him that you have taken time today to meet with a twelfth potential
for the coven, bringing your number to thirteen. That should mollify him. You
need to let the other ladies know that, too––but nothing about the truth of
what I am really there to do.”

Her relief at knowing that I would
be there was evident.

“Yesh, no––you can’t––”

“Yes, Chaz. I can.” The gaze that
I turned on him was firm. There was no other way––not if I wanted to get this
over with. Which I did.

“But, Yesh–”

“Chaz, you will be with Pietra
when she goes to meet with each lady of her coven. She needs to give them
reassurances without backing her words up. Do you understand?”

Chaz nodded. He wasn’t happy about
it, but neither was I. High Priestesses needed to be strength for their coven.
But I couldn’t afford to have her let my part in this slip out just to bolster
the courage of her girls. Chaz would keep her on the right path. I trusted him.