Demicore

Chapter 27

At first it was just each other’s eyes. A missed block here or there, thinking they saw something that couldn’t have been. “Look,” Katlin said, “it’s just the stress of not knowing what’s going on down there with Erik that has us seeing things. We are projecting our fears onto one another thinking we see animalistic traits. We have to do what is going to be the best for everyone and try to stay focused so that when he comes out of this we can do whatever it is we need to do…”

Then, sometime in the second week, things got a little more serious. During sparring, Elizabeth lashed out with a strike that slashed through Katlin’s sleeve and into her arm – or at least it felt that way. Her arm went limp, she could feel the blood soaking her sleeve. She clasped her hand over the wound immediately and ran into the house where medical supplies were kept with Sonya and Elizabeth on her heels. When she removed her hand, however, there was no wound. Blood soaked sleeve right were she felt the s***h, but no bleeding, no scab, no scar, not a centimeter of injury on her arm.

“How is this possible?” Katlin asked, looking at Sonya who was the more experienced scientist.

“Up until now, I would tell you it isn’t,” Sonya replied, “even seeing it with my own eyes – watching it happen – I’m not sure it did…” her voice trailed off. “I think it’s time to get some of our blood over to Steve at the lab. Maybe she can tell us more. I’d suggest us going ourselves, but I don’t want to leave Erik or Kaya-Sar or whoever he is right now without knowing when this meditative state is going to come to and end and what he will be like when it does.”

She proceeded to take a couple of blood samples from each of them, carefully labeled them and sent them by proxy to the lab with some very careful instructions.

“Are you four in some kind of trouble?” Michael asked when he gingerly took the package from Sonya, “Because you have people who will help out no matter what is going on…”

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” she replied with a weak smile, “we just need to stay isolated until after we can run these tests. We just took a quick trip to Africa and want to make sure we’re not exposing anyone to anything.”

He looked straight at her, “I might believe that a little more if we weren’t standing here with not so much as a mask over our mouths and if your eyes weren’t flickering. Just remember what I said about people standing beside you.” Then he left without giving her the chance to reply.

She stepped back inside, frustrated that Michael had seen more of what was going on than she was comfortable with and that she hadn’t thought ahead enough to know that he was going to ask what was wrong. Of course he would. They hadn’t been to the range in… she wasn’t sure how long, really, she’d lost track of time. Why would he think they were in trouble? Well, they were, weren’t they? Didn’t this count as trouble of some sort?

They felt caged, waiting for him to come out of this ‘meditation’ and not leaving because in all honesty, it could be any minute. Time seemed to drag on. Elizabeth’s dreams were progressing. That night she dreamt of Andrea, but not the ethereal presence that had travelled with them searching for Erik. She saw Andy when the girl was alive. They sat and talked. Again, Andy gave words of comfort. She told Elizabeth that this stage of the journey really would be over soon. She warned, though, that the next stage would be more trying than anything yet.

When she told Sonya and Katlin about this latest dream, they both lost some of the color in their faces. “What do you mean ‘more trying’?” Katlin asked, hoping beyond hope that Elizabeth was somehow wrong.

“I wish I knew,” Elizabeth replied, “I’m not even entirely sure these dreams I’ve been having are completely connected to what’s going on. It may just be my subconscious filling things in… right?”

“It could be…” Katlin said, more full of doubt than hope.

“But it isn’t,” Erik broke in to their conversation.

Immediately he was tackled by three very enthusiastic hugs followed by several versions of “What do you mean ‘it isn’t’?” and “What happened?”

“Alright, alright, calm down there is a lot for us to talk about…” still in his composite form and barely fitting into the kitchen, he motioned for them to sit to the table. When they had all taken their seats, he did something that would have taken from them their ability to stand.

He shape-shifted back into his normal human form. Once he was back down to a size that actually fit in the allotted space, he sat down to the table. “Now,” he had a captive audience, his only worry was whether or not they were actually going to comprehend what he was about to tell them, “I know you all have a lot of questions, but there are a few things I need to get out into the open before that happens. It just may answer some of them and bring up others.

“The first and most important thing I need to tell you is that we need to start training as soon as possible. We are about to fight the Battle of Armageddon.”

Silence. He waited for them to respond. Time seemed to drag on for a few minutes… Then Katlin c****d her head side ways.

“You’re telling us that we - the four of us – have to fight the Battle of Armageddon? And you are going to be in what shape when we do this?”

“I am telling you that we need to start training to fight the battle and we are going to recruit more of the Demicore to train and fight with us. I myself will duel with Lucifer and hope to avoid the rest of it. However, he is bigger, stronger, and has had more time to prepare for this.” He stated matter of factly.

“Back up and tell us what’s going on,” Elizabeth told him, knowing that he was missing some very key points of details for them to understand. So he did. He went back through creation, Kaya, Lucifer, God, Adam, Mim-Cri and his many human lives.

“You expect us to believe you’ve been around since the beginning of time?” Sonya asked when he was done.

“Why not?” Elizabeth broke in, “we have gone along with everything else up to this point. There isn’t any good reason to stop now he just might be right.”

“Not exactly the enthusiastic ‘when do we start’ that I was hoping for, but it will do,” he teased, letting them know that he was at least mostly back to himself.

“No offense, but we have been listening to Mom prod you for the ‘highlights’ of what happened in your many lives for days breaking only to sleep, eat, and do a little martial arts so that our joints don’t freeze up. And you’re hoping for us to be enthusiastic?” Katlin replied before Sonya could even open her mouth.

“If you are a Demicore and you have three ‘parts’,” Elizabeth asked, dragging her brain out of shock to try to put a few pieces together, “and there are more like you out there then what are they? You said Lucifer – the devil? - is one like you? What is he?”

“Slow down, I can only answer one at a time!” he chuckled and the laughter lit up his eyes as though he were truly and very happy that she was curious. “Lucifer is who you know as the devil. He wasn’t always like this…” his voice trailed off for just a moment, “he was my best friend at one time. He is a very good-looking man (according to many accounts, including my sister), a red bull, and a black dragon. The only mythic we have among us, though it is speculated that another could eventually be born. We do not often have children.”

He paused to think of Keeli and Kylie. Twins born to his sister. His nieces. He was definitely looking forward to seeing them again. How his heart ached thinking he had missed millennia with them. “It seems that when Tolkien wrote the Elven lore he knew something of Demicore for children among us are as rare as they are for the Elves.”

Then he paused to look at his own children. They were so very old for humans and so very young in his eyes… Somehow they looked different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Until Sonya’s eyes went from human to canine to avian back to human. He looked harder at her, making her just a little nervous.

“Erik, what are you doing?” she asked in an attempt to break whatever thought was going on in his head or at least get him to share it with the group.

“Smile for me.”

“What? No. There is no good reason at the moment,” but she did comply to a point, giving him a forced and nervous smile.

“How?”

“How what?” Katlin asked, “Would you mind telling us what’s going on? As it is we have lost three weeks of research to figure it out for ourselves and you’re still not being all that helpful…”