The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy) (33 page)

I sat with my eyes closed and tried to relax, reach out with my mind, and sense the photons whizzing around me. Theoretically, once I did that, it would be a simple matter to alter their course. Instead, it just made me very aware of the air-conditioning blowing on my head and the pulsing song of the Caduceus. The stiller I got, the louder and more insistent it got. Spring tried to be helpful, but ended up less so than I might have wished.

Dave sat a couple of seats from me. Colette rested next to him with her eyes closed. “How the hell are you supposed to sense photons around you?” he complained. “How can that even be physically possible? If you can sense a photon that hasn’t hit you, doesn’t that imply FTL information transfer?”

I shook my head. “Maybe, but I still maintain nothing in physics says information can’t travel faster than the speed of light.”

“Jim’s the physicist and he doesn’t agree, and in any event, that doesn’t help.”

I had to agree with that last statement. It was frustrating.

“I’m thinking body armor would be a better choice here,” I said—that and an automatic with an illegally large clip.

“That and a big gun wouldn’t hurt,” he said in reflection of my thoughts. Yes, we’d hung around together a lot.

We struggled for the rest of the flight with no better results.

The hour layover in Detroit wasn’t as long as it sounded. After all the running around, we had about fifteen minutes to spare. Dave and I filled that time with McDonald’s.

When we came down the concourse with our bags of greasy goodness, Colette looked at both of us with a scowl. “They will feed us on the plane.”

“No thank you, sister,” said Dave. “I’ve had airplane food. It’s always terrible.”

“It is better than that junk you call food.”

“To each his own.”

The boarding went without incident. Jen and I sat together at one of the business class double seats, and Colette and Dave sat at another. Dave and I took the aisle seats across from each other.

Our luxurious surroundings impressed me. The seats felt like real leather, and they were roomy and well padded. Maybe an eight-hour flight to Paris wouldn’t be so bad after all. This was definitely not the baggage class I was used to.

Dave leaned into the aisle. “So, how do you think your dad’s going to do it?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Kill you when you get back.” We’d both ended up texting our parents that we would be gone for a few days and not to worry. We didn’t tell them where we were going in case they called the Feds and tried to stop us. I really sucked as a son.

I gave Dave’s question some thought. “I think he will probably just rip my arm off and beat me with it. You?”

“Either he’s going to dig a deep pit, fill it with vipers, and drop me in, or he’s going to lock me in the basement with my sisters and tell them to use their imagination.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “Pit sounds cleaner, less traumatic.”

“You don’t know the half of it, bro.”

I looked across Dave at Colette. “We’re not doing so well with this light-bending stuff. Is there something easier we can do, like throw silverware at them with our minds?”

“If you spent more time concentrating and less time talking, you would make more progress.”

I scowled at her. Apparently unconcerned with my scowl, she added, “Nearly all the gifts of God start with a deep understanding of the world around us. Without this, you will not know how to ask.”

“Great.”

“Finn, don’t try so hard, just relax into it and trust your senses,” Jen said.

Dave said, “Do or do not. There is no try, young Skywalker.”

I snorted. “Shut up, Chewbacca.”

“Watch it, Jar-Jar, or I’ll rip off your eye stalks and stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine.”

The familiar banter made me feel better for a few moments, but the memories of Smith’s labs soon had me panicking again. I re-lived the despair of knowing I was going to die and the horror of Jen’s blood-drenched body. New images welled up from the depths: Spring drenched in blood. Gregg dead on the ground, broken. Daniel dead at my feet.

Oh God, I can’t do it again.

Dude, you’re psyching yourself out. Just relax. Take a deep breath.

I did.

Let it out slowly...

After a few breaths, the panic receded and I stepped back from the abyss.

Sorry
,
Spring, but it’s hard. I guess I’m PTSD-ing.

Hey, I tried to help with that, but you yelled at me.

Well, I don’t know that suppressing those memories was really a good idea. Who knows where they might squirt out.

How about I just give you a little break? Get a few endorphins going to calm you down.

Better living through chemistry, huh?

Biochemistry
,
my Root, all-natural, certified organic. How can that be bad?

I struggled with the feeling that I was somehow cheating for a moment but finally agreed.

Quickly after that, I felt the panic wash away in a wave of mellow. The shaking stopped. Finn Morgenstern—addicted to his own endocrine system.

As the fear drained away, exhaustion took me and carried me off to sleep.

My dreams were dominated by a song. I stood on the podium conducting it. As I waved my batons in the air, the orchestra followed my lead perfectly. Then, I spread my arms wide, and the instruments swirled into the air around me, buoying me up, moving perfectly in time to the beat, creating ever more complex rhythms and harmonies. From where I stood on a cliff over the tempestuous ocean, I could see that the water also moved to my command. The waves did my bidding from the peak on which I stood. Lightning answered my call as my waves pounded against the black rocks. Thunder rumbled and crashed around me. I stood upon the earth, and the planets themselves moved to the song I commanded. Effortlessly, I pulled the moon from the sky and it swelled above me. But, I couldn’t stop it. It would crush me. The terrible forces on the moon cracked it in two and blood gushed from the fault lines. It poured out of wounds and headless necks, and I was swimming in a sea of blood. I was drowning in the blood. I was dying and I knew I couldn’t save Jen.

I awoke with a start, trembling and covered in sweat. It was night. I sat anchored in the dark warmth of the cabin, cocooned by the constant drone of the engines and the rushing air. The night was interrupted by isolated beams of reading lights and the occasional blue flicker of seat-back television screens.

Splattered blood and brains dripped from the cabin walls and ceiling.

I yelped and jumped against the belts holding me down, then the shadows were just shadows, and the flickering light fell on clean ceilings and dry leather seats.

“Finn, is everything okay?” Jen’s concerned voice threw me a lifeline to normality.

My heart was racing, and my head was covered in sweat. “Yeah, just having bad dreams.”

She leaned over and stroked my face with her hand. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Her caress warmed me straight to my heart. I smiled and said, “You just did.”

I leaned over the divider between our chairs to give her a kiss. She met me halfway and the gentle softness of her lips on mine melted the core of icy dread within me. She put both hands on my cheeks and gently pushed me a few inches away. When I met her gaze, she said, “You’ve been getting a lot of those haven’t you?”

I searched her face, “No, not really, this is the first I’ve had like this.”

“You had bad dreams last night, too.”

“I did?”

“You cried out several times.”

“Oh...I don’t remember that.”

“Good.” She smiled and kissed me again.

I wondered if suppressed terror was leaking out into my sleep, but something better caught my attention. I sniffed the air. Something smelled really good. I asked Jen, “Are they going to bring us dinner?”

“They already did.”

“Oh,” I said. Visions of comforting yumminess vanished with a poof. “Was it any good?”

“Oh yeah, it was some sort of grilled beef fillet with a salad, rosemary green beans and a chunk of French bread.”

“Really? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You were exhausted and needed some sleep. Besides, you already ate, and you told me how much you hated airplane food.”

“Well, I’ve never been fed airplane food like that.”

“I’ll make sure you’re awake on our return trip.”

If there was one
.
I sat back in my chair and stared up at the tan storage compartments overhead. I’d be useless if I didn’t find a way to master this whole “feel the force” routine. The familiar fear reignited its cold fire in my body. I tried to relax, and I cast about for other ideas. The approach that Colette recommended just wasn’t working fast enough. Maybe the whole thing was too abstract for me. I fished in my pockets and pulled out a quarter.

I closed my hand around the quarter and concentrated on it. In the dim light, I studied it carefully, looking at both sides and feeling its grooved edges. I gave it a few tosses and watched how it moved, how it felt when it hit my hand. After a time, I closed my fingers around it and tried to feel it with my mind. I’d learned early on how to move my mind through someone else’s body, so I tried variations on the theme. It didn’t work.

Maybe it only works that way with humans because of your auras?
asked Spring.

Makes sense I suppose, but it doesn’t help.

Yeah, well helpful answers cost more. And no, you can’t afford one.

Ha, ha.

Instead of reaching out to the coin, I tried to let it come to me. Maybe I could just feel what it had to show for itself. It didn’t work.

An hour later, growing more frustrated and panicked with each failed idea, I gave up the whole feely approach. Instead, I concentrated on creating a small sphere of force around the coin, the same way I would put up a barrier around me or a shadow. In this case, I created this sphere to be solid. Impervious to the coin. Once I was sure my sphere around the coin was solid, I moved it up off my hand. Suddenly, I could feel the coin with my mind.

I shouted in triumph and then moved the sphere up and away from my hand. The coin stirred in my hand, and I shouted again. I lost my connection, and it fell through my little shield. Crap.

Of course, then I had to deal with the concern of my friends and the flight attendant.

After reading me the “Good Citizens Don’t Yell on Airplanes” speech, the flight attendant added, “Thank you for your cooperation.”

When she left, I told Dave and Jen what had happened.

Jen was excited, but Dave was Dave. “That’ll be handy when you need to win a coin toss.”

I stuck out my tongue at Dave and tried again. I pulled up my shield and willed it into being.

“Holy crap, Finn! I can see it!”

“Me too!” exclaimed Jen.

“It is beautiful,” said Colette softly.

“My sphere? You guys can see the sphere?”

“Well,” added Dave. “I could before it disappeared.”

Of course, it had disappeared as soon as I took my mind off it.

Encouraged, I worked on it some more. I found that if I mimicked the movement I wanted with my hands, it was easier. Even so, the best I could do was move the coin about a foot into the air before my concentration failed.

Crap. Annoyed and disappointed, I swatted the coin with a golden paddle. It flew off my hand with a ringing ting, hit Dave in the head, and fell to the aisle.

Dave rubbed his temple and glared at me. “Ow! What the hell? Don’t take your failure out on me!”

“Dave, it worked!”

Dave reached down to pick up the coin, brought it up between his ring finger and thumb and flicked it at me. I flinched and tried to deflect it. I didn’t need to worry—it spun off to the front of the plane, smacked the ceiling, and was lost in the dark.

“Ow!” said a baritone voice. “What the...?”

I flinched. Uh oh.

A couple seats to the front, a man stood up holding a hand to his head and glared at us. His attention turned to me when Dave pointed his finger my direction.

***

Fifteen minutes later, Dave said, “Well, that was subtly handled.”

I glared at him. “You should be saying thank-you, you jerk. You were the one who threw it!”

He just grinned at me.

I’d had to hoodoo the angry passenger, the attendant, and several people who’d seen me do it. Happily, none of them seemed immune to my charm. Beside me, Jen was still giggling behind her hand. Colette had been far less amused. It left me tired and hungry.

I pulled another coin out of my pockets and practiced moving it about for a little while before I gave up. All the hoodoo had left me drained, and I fell back asleep.

We arrived in Paris without further incident. Once in the concourse, I tried the experiment I’d been too afraid to do on the plane. I smacked another quarter with a glowing ping pong paddle of my hoodoo.

The coin disappeared with a sping, and then I heard the sharp smack as it cracked one of the arrival/departure signs about twenty yards away. The display went black.

I ducked, hunched, and hurried after my friends.

Well, if we’re attacked by any signs, we’ve got it licked,
said Spring.

My laugh had an edge of crazy to it.
I bet I could take out a traffic light
,
too.

After navigating through the human-sized hamster tubes of the Paris international airport, we found our terminal and were soon boarding a new plane. Googly-eyed exhaustion gave the entire proceeding a surreal tinge. We picked up a half dozen ham and cheese baguettes from a cafe. Once we sat down, I devoured half of them before falling fast asleep. Fifteen minutes later, I woke up with a start again. No rest for the wicked.

A cloudy and gray morning greeted us in Toulouse. We disembarked into a nearly empty terminal. Except for the French signs, it looked much like any other airport to my exhaustion-hazed eyes.

Our official entry to France bore little resemblance to my mental image. A uniformed man greeted us, and took us to a separate room from the main customs area. Once inside,