Willow's Lament

2.

I swung the sword upward, switching to a two-handed grip.

A throaty chuckle followed as I squared my stance. "Little girl with a big sword. Do you think that will change anything? Do you think that will even the odds-- turn the tables in your favor?" The voice had a cultured British accent, like that of a chivalrous Englishman from the 1800's, but I knew there was nothing gentlemanly about what it was or its intentions.

Though it scarcely seemed possible, save for in a movie scene, his jagged teeth seemed to glow white in the darkness.

"What do you want lyche? Why have you invaded this home?" I demanded.

I could feel Tommy shifting his weight from one foot to the other behind me. I had the better eyesight so I could sense his discomfort with having to strain to see the creature ahead.

Lyches were one of the inhuman beings I hunted-- an ancient lineage of people believed to be literally born of sin and destruction and have continued for millennia to terrorize the worlds of both mortals and immortals.

Fortunately for both sides of the aisle, I was one of the last of a dying race of guardians who were the only things standing between lyches and the complete domination of all worlds. For whatever reason, be it the cliched role of the evil half of this world's paradigm or unadulterated, inexcusable greed, I had only ever known and been told that these creatures had an insatiable desire for power. I did what I could to stop them.

But right at this moment, I was most concerned with getting between it and Tommy.

It hissed in the darkness, the sickening crack of bones and spinal vertebrate realigning and stretching to grotesque proportions as it shifted to reveal its true form to the shadows around us. The faint clicking of keratinized talons scraping against each other seemed to encircle us.

"Tell me where it is little girl. Tell me where they have hidden it." The thing's voice had lost its sense of cultured civility and now cracked and croaked like dried cricket wings.

I didn't understand what he was asking for. "What are you talking about lyche? I won't ask a third time?"

It threw its head back and laughed boisterously, a painful sounding cackle that seemed to make even the air in the room shudder with disgust.

It reminded me of the cliched maniacal laughter of a cartoon villain, drunk on arrogance and beside himself with the splendor of what he viewed to be a well orchestrated evil plot.

I reached behind me for Tommy and found his forearm as the thing continued to shriek. "Move as I move," I spoke lowly. I refused to tear my eyes away from the creature so I settled for trusting that he would do as I asked.

And Tommy didn't prove me wrong.

I didn't speak but as I took a step forward, so did he, staying closer to my body than even my shadow. I could feel his quickened breathing on the back of my neck but I chose to ignore it.

Buckled over as the lyche was in its fit of insane laughter, it continued its indictment as to my inferiority.

"Are you commanding me child? Under whose authority? Who commissioned and delivered dominion over me, into your fragile hands? Mine ears have yet to hear something so hilariously absurd."

I eyed the hallway to my left with each step both Tommy and I took forward. One step and a cautious look toward the corridor. Two steps and then another look.

I counted five more steps as I responded to the beast. "The High Court of Gaelae has given me authorization as if I even needed to be verbally reminded of your place and mine in the hierarchy of life. Does the fish question what right the shark has to devour it? Does the antelope question the encroaching lion in a similar fashion? Do the demons beseech the angels for a place in heaven beside them? You are vermin," I spat, watching the lyche's pasty, grey tinged skin for the reaction I was hoping for.

"No better than a cockroach between my boot."

The creature was fuming, muscles twitching with rage. I grinned for good measure and he did just as I expected; he made the move that I was anticipating that he would make.

He lunged for me, talons raised and reaching for my throat and three things seem to happen simultaneously -- far too quickly for Tommy to process them and that was in fact the reason it was executed so well.

One (1): I forfeited the grip I had on the blade, removing one hand from the hilt to grab Tommy by the shoulder and shove him into the hallway. I was drawing up a translucent shield before his body had even hit the ground, throwing up a hand to cast a shimmering blockade at the mouth of the hallway.

Two (2): The lyche's claws made contact with the black cotton of my turtleneck, wrenching downward to tear a hole from the left side of my neck to just above my collarbone and taking some of my skin with them.

And Three (3): I cut him the exact millisecond he tore my flesh, swinging the blade to slice down from his neck, black liquid oozing from the abrasion and onto my blade.

I kicked his feet from under him and he fell, through the moment that seemed suspended in time and on his back in the center of the carpet between the sofas and against one wall and the entertainment center against the other.

"Some inferiority complex you've got there," I chided.

He had to stare up at me, from the blade of my sword, the wound singing and emanating foul smoke as it oozed on his neck. The shiny viscous fluid was nearly invisible against his clothing of a similar shade.

Beedie eyes in shallow sockets with dilated pupils assessed me for all I was worth with a hint of an emotion that I was delighted to see: fear.

It flowed like ice in his veins and immobilized him to his place on the floor at my feet, hissing and snapping as he was like a cornered animal that was more frightened of its attacker that it was with actually trying to be menacing. "What are you?" he barked. "How do you know what I am?"

"Why are you here? Who sent you?" I pressed, asking a third time despite the fact that I said I wouldn't. I pressed the blade into the skin below his chin.

I could hear Tommy beating on the shield, his fist colliding with the wall of energy sounded like steel against steel. He was shouting my name but it was like listening to voices underwater.

"I am the second lieutenant to the Dark Master, rightful leader of all worlds-- a King Without Borders. He answers to no one and neither shall I." The lyche smirked.

I returned the crazy smile and brought my foot down on his right knee, the bone crumbled like dry wheat under my heel. The creature screamed.

"I will crush you. You will not leave this room alive whether you cooperate with me or not. Make the last few moments of your existence count for something. Tell me what you know."

"I was sent for the branch," he huffed. "I was instructed that The Willow would be here."

"What branch? What is this Willow you speak of?"

"I don't know," he hissed, trying to clutch the knee that I still held captive under my boot. I imagined that the pain was a little more than uncomfortable.

"I have never seen it and I cannot return to my Lord without it."

"And you shall not," I replied, without ant inflection. I retreated into that part of myself that knew how to kill. "I am a woman of my word. I, Sera Carlisle, daughter and descendant of Caiphus the first Defender and I, the last of the living guardians of the city of Gaelae, hereby banish you-- the seed of the Serpent , from this world and all those worlds existing above and below it."

His eyes widened, as if realization had suddenly hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had heard the name before; I had earned myself a bit of a reputation. I raised the blade.

"I return your soul to the one who created you," I continued. "And your body to the earth from which you were formed. I sentence you to death."

I had done this so many times that I could almost envision it happening as if I were looking through the walls of his thoracic cavity. As if my own hands were extensions of blade, sliding between wet muscle and bone and swiftly piercing his heart. I could feel his body convulsing around the blade's edge.

I felt the cardiac muscles contract for the last time and told the lyche what was killing him. "Its an alloy, extremely durable-- made of metals nearly impossible to combine and forge: silver, obsidian, cobalt and your favorite, iron."

It wheezed its last breath and in that moment, I thought I felt pity for the creature. Pity that his existence seemed to be worthless save for the fulfillment of errands that were of little significance to him. He was a cog in a wheel-- a cog at the mercy of a larger wheel, no matter what semblance of freedom from bondage the large wheel promised. The thing still had to refer to someone as 'master.'

I felt pity that he died without me ever knowing his name because even as I thought of him, I referred to him as 'it'-- a creature but never as someone who deserved to be remembered. Someone who didn't deserve to die here alone without someone to come to his defense.

But I knew that I couldn't feel sorry for this creature. I had been trained and taught that they were all evil; that order in the world was only maintained when lyches existed in much fewer numbers. To feel any differently about them was to question everything I knew to be true about myself and my world but yet... I still felt differently.

I felt guilt and shame despite knowing what they were capable of. Despite knowing what it would have done to Tommy had he met it here alone. I still felt like a monster even as I watched its body burst into flames.

I had reduced a creature to ash virtually in self defense and yet, I still felt like more of a monster than I was comfortable with.

With the wave of a hand, I gathered the pile of smoking embers and chased it out the door with whatever unseen force in my possession allowed me to be a telekinetic, among other things. Once I had closed the front door again, turning the lock on the lowest bolt, I walked over to Tommy and dropped the shield. It shimmered and dissolved, the energy I had expended to maintain it returning to me in a cool rush of power.

Tommy was getting up from his knees. "Open a window," I told him as I brushed past, turning on the lights in the hall without lifting so much as a finger to flip a switch. I carried my stained sword with me. "I'll be in your room."

Tommy's bedroom was the first room on the left. It was small, and a twin sized bed with a mattress sandwiched between a sea of pale blue quilts and comforters was pushed against the farthest wall. At the foot of the bed, adjacent to a small desk with a computer and a closet furthest to the right of that, there was a window sitting beneath a huge oak tree.

All the walls were painted a pale shade of grey and so was the plush carpet. His mother was always so excited when it came to me staying at her home because just knowing that I would be coming over, usually without proper forewarning, persuaded Tommy to keep his room tidy.

I had only managed to take a seat on the edge of the bed before Tommy came in behind me.

"Here," he handed me a damp cloth and sat down beside me, throwing his backpack to the ground and trying to get his shoes off one foot at a time but without the aid of his hands.

I started wiping the dark blood, which had now congealed, from the edge of the blade with the cloth in an attempt to return it to its former, shiny self.

"What was that you were telling him?" Tommy asked me, his socks and boots now in a pile on the carpet. I realized that Tommy had always preferred to use specific pronouns-- saying 'he' or 'she' to refer to lyches as opposed to my use of the word 'it'. Even when I spoke of them, he seemed interested in knowing whether my most recent victims had been male or female, as if somehow that made it easier to understand what I was recounting. His encounter with them about a year back in the abandoned building in Harlem had cemented their destructive potential in his mine. Yet, still they were almost human in his referencing-- still almost human from his perspective.

I wasn't sure if that made him more naive or me the less humane of the two of us. I wasn't sure that the answer to that question would make a difference.

"What do you mean?" I looked up to him from the sword and his curls were a disheveled mess, falling into his eyes.

Tommy took the now filthy cloth from my hands and chucked across the room. "You said something to him before you killed him; something about sentencing him to die."

I shrugged, recalling the exaggerated speech. "Where I'm from, its called The Verdict. Hyperbolas and corny at best but its supposed to make the death seem final--a formal declaration that the creature has met its end. My ancestors, the first soldiers thought that an honorable death constituted three things: a frontal assault, preferably a blow to the heart or head but never from the back, (2) the sight of your killer's face so the first and second are one and the same and (3) your killer's name. They believed that the most troubled souls in the next life were those who had either no one to avenge their memory or no memory of the identity of the person whom revenge should be taken against for their death. So I guess, having that be the last thing they see and hear affords them some kind of peace."

"Do you think it helps?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I answered truthfully. "The only fault to that logical is that Defender's like me are not required to get the names of those we kill. It's not like we have to write a formal ledger after each confrontation. Sometimes I wonder if that's just as damning. I can remember the face of every person whose life I've ever taken but sometimes I think that what will haunt me most-- that what already haunts me is the fact that the faces are all nameless."

I could remember declaring the same Verdict to the two lyches I had chased from an abandoned farmhouse in Alabama to the hood of that couple's sedan and realized that I had always hunted alone and of course, he wouldn't know any of this-- perhaps he was familiar in hindsight from word of mouth but he had never seen in person until now.

"I'm sorry," I told him, "Sometimes I forget that you've never actually seen me do it. I'm sorry that you had to experience that. I never should have let that happen."

I usually tried my best to shelter him from all of what I did; sparing him most of the gory details. Others like me and others before me-- Defenders such as myself-- had sacrificed much to operate in secrecy and they told themselves that their sacrifice was for the greater good all men. I never had anything valuable to sacrifice-- I didn't have a home to lose, I was short one parent and the other preferred not to be associated with me. Before there was nothing that I was risking and that had always been better for me; more convenient and still worse at the same time.

But now there was him-- a human boy who thought he knew me but really only understood as much about me as I understood of myself and I didn't consider that to be much to brag of. I maintained distance because confrontation was harder. A part of me killed because living was harder. I was stranger to those I was familiar with and that, surprisingly, meant that I was even a stranger to myself.

"Sera," Tommy held onto one of my hands and stared at me as if searching for something; as if he could see a more fragile version of myself swimming--no drowning, right below the surface of what he could see externally. "Why wouldn't you let me help you?"

"Because this has nothing to do with you, Tommy." I gave his larger hand a little squeezed and released it. I was weary of meeting his burning eyes not because of what I might see in them but because of what that might allow him to see in me.

"Is that so?" he asked rhetorically, looking me dead in the eyes. "That lyche didn't know who you were until you told him. Yet, he knew to come here; to my house. My home was the target, Sera. Not you. This has a lot to do with me."

His voice was condescending and though I knew it was petty, it made me angry. I re-sheathed the blade. "Well you don't have to sound so smug about it."

"I'm not smug about anything. I just think its stupid-- you pretending that I'm not involved when I really am. You trying to protect me and determining what I can and cannot be involved with; as if I'm some child."

"Why would you want to be??!!" I shouted, a lot louder than I had meant to and a whole lot harsher too. Tommy recoiled as if I had hit him across the face.

This is what I do, Tommy. Its why I exist-- to hunt, to eliminate the things that pose a threat to people like you. All I am; all I know is death. Why would you ever want to be apart of that?"

It took him a moment to reclaim his composure but when he did, his boyishly handsome face was set in a hard, stony lines. "Because I care about you, Sera." He said it as if it was the only explanation anyone ever needed to justify any action.

I couldn't look at him. "Well, you've got to get you

a stronger sense of self preservation than that; at least one that will allow you to run away when you have to. Don't let your guilt be the reason you stay. I can handle things like this. Its what I was meant to do but, looking out for me will just get you killed."

He put a hand against the back of my neck, his thumb gently skating across my jawline. "I'm not running, Sera. Not ever. I don't need you to be my hero, I just need you; alive and here with me preferably. But the way you let that thing charge at you; I..."

Tommy stared at the small wound just above my collarbone that I had almost forgotten about. I could feel that it wasn't bleeding anymore but I would need a new shirt eventually.

"It will heal,"I reassured him.

His gentle face crumbled into angry lines as he fisted the quilt beneath him with the hand that wasn't touching me. "Sometimes I hate that you're always protecting someone-- strangers, me. Everyday you don't show up for class and I have explain away your absence and every minute that you're late for something we've planned. Every hour that passes before you finally call, I wonder-- no, I worry that its because you can't. Because somewhere, you're taking your last breath alone and I can't do anything to stop it.

But then you just show up, like you usually do and I've become accustomed to that-- to my life being like some never ending roller coaster ride since I met you. Living and treading through moments of crippling fear and worry about your condition, followed by the elation and relief of finding out that I was wrong-- not irrational for worrying but just wrong for the moment.

I worry that one day I'll be right for once, Sera and I hate that praying that it doesn't ever happen is all I can do about it."

"I don't want you to worry." It was all I could think to say. No one had ever come close to me because I made sure of it; not simply to prevent anyone from becoming potential hostages or bargaining chips that might be used against me but because I didn't have the right words to say to explain away the pain that I knew my job would cause.

Tommy scoffed. "How can I not when monsters are lunging at you right in front of me?"

"I wasn't going to let anything happen to you. I would never let anything happen to you." Maybe I cared for him as he cared for him or maybe it was just the principle of the matter that drove me, but I knew that I would do whatever I had to do to keep him safe; a lack of rational reasoning or even concern for my own safety didn't seem like proper justification to change that fact.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were in love with me, Ms. Carlisle." He spoke in a hushed tone as if it were a secret.

I smiled and turned away, "We'll finish that home-work tomorrow, okay. I promise."

I only looked back at him when I was certain that I wouldn't blush involuntarily; my skin was far too pale to avoid my embarrassment being painful obvious.

I caught him rolling his eyes as he flopped down on the bed, arms folded behind him and against the pillows to support the back of his head. I stood up to give him room to stretch out.

"There you go again, changing the subject," Tommy chided.

"I think you're tired," I told him.

"Are you? I don't think mom washed the sheets in the guest bedroom but you're welcome to sleep here. I can make room." He tugged the layers of quilts from under his body and scooted, as he lay on his side, until his hip was nearly over the edge of the mattress. Tommy gestured to the space beside him as he held the covers up to me; a space beneath his long arms where I suppose he thought would be large enough for me to curl up in. It would be a tight fit but I was sure he would have appreciated that.

I laughed and took the covers from him, pulling them up his chest. "I'm not staying, at least not tonight. There's something I need to take care of."

Tommy didn't pout but he looked concerned and suddenly a lot older than his eighteen years. "Where are you going?"

Reaching down, I brushed a few chocolate curls away, my thumb and index finger lingering there and caressing the smooth skin of his forehead in small circles. "Just to get some information. You're tired, Tommy." The last I said with real feeling, as if I were willing him to believe it.

The confusion was clear on his face as he tried to wrestle with my influence but eventually, his face went slack and his eyelids began to flutter close over his hazel eyes. "Don't go," he pleaded feebly.

"I'll be back in the morning," I reassured him, bending to kiss his forehead. He drifted off into unconsciousness and flipped the light switch off in his room as I left.

Tommy had opened the window above the small breakfast nook in the kitchen and closed it to keep the draft out. For some reason, I was concerned about him getting sick.

The key to his house I returned to the key rack on the table near the front door.

Home was where I would find the answers I needed and by home, I didn't mean the small apartment I rented where my fictional and very ill grandmother lived.

Home was a few worlds away and had become like more of a place origin in my mind than a place of refuge.

Home was the the coop from which I had flown. Home was a prison.