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"The Players are always the last ones to realize the Game has changed."
- Lindsey Ducaine
The Blood of Ancients
Part Three: Journeys
Chapter Two: Missing Piece
The wind was blowing fiercely, sending spirals and whirlwinds of snow flitting across the ground. The tree branches swayed back and forth, sending the white powder that covered their branches drifting to the ground.
James Blake walked slowly, hands buried in his pockets, head tucked against his chest to shield his face from the wind. He wore only a light jacket over his jeans and t-shirt, and a pair of Hi-Teks covering his feet; woefully unprotected against the elements. He didn't mind the biting cold that turned his cheeks a bright red; on the contrary, he enjoyed it. It numbed him, made it easier for him to think.
Why had he come back here?
James sighed and winced slightly as the wind blew a flurry of cold snow into his face. It was almost as cold as his thoughts.
Ahead, the moonlight reflected off the ice-covered snow, creating a brief shimmer of light that caught James' eye. He watched it for a moment before it faded away and he continued walking. He'd barely taken a single step before he stopped dead in his tracks.
The moon wasn't out tonight.
He tipped his head back, staring at the sky through slitted eyes. A thick cover of dark clouds covered the sky, growing ominously darker the longer he stayed out. It looked like a blizzard could be expected before morning. At best. An ice storm at worst. One thing was for sure: that hadn't been moonlight.
He hesitated for a moment. Odds were it was a flashlight or something. No way a campfire would last long in this weather, and the area wasn't open for camping at this time of year anyway. He wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of running into anyone - wandering around the woods, alone and unarmed, in the middle of night, without anyone knowing where he was, was not the safest position to be in - but he also wasn't willing to ignore what may be someone in trouble. His hesitation lasted another moment before he cursed beneath his breath and started in the direction the light had come from.
It took him off his usual path by almost fifty feet, making him slightly nervous. Late night jaunts into the woods were something he had been indulging himself in ever since he was a kid, when he'd learned it was far easier to talk to trees than people. He was familiar with the entire area, probably more so than most of the outdoor guides and forest rangers living nearby, but he still didn't take any chances. It was remarkably easy to die in the Maine woods under the best of circumstances, and wandering around looking for a strange person on an unfamiliar path in the middle of the night during a snowstorm that was about three minutes away from becoming a blizzard was not the best of circumstances by any stretch of the imagination.
Still, if he was going to look for the idiot out there wandering around, he might as well hurry up and do it so he could get back to the house before the worst of it started to hit.
The snow was deeper here, without his nightly walks to pack it down like on his path, and he kicked his way through snow that reached up to his knees and soaked the legs of his jeans. He kept his eyes open, not dropping into the musings and daydreams that usually occupied most of his midnight walks. There, just a few yards away... was that a flash of color?
He squinted before shaking his head. There was almost no light to speak of, and while his eyes were adjusted enough to let him make his way, there was no way he could make out colors in this mess. But nonetheless, something had caught his eyes. He carefully made his way over, keeping eyes and ears out for whoever had been fooling around with the flashlight.
His heart nearly froze in his chest when he spotted the two still figures lying against the snow, unmoving except for the wind tugging at their clothes and hair. James hurried closer and was horrified to see that their skin was almost as white as the snow they lay in. God, how long had they been out there? Abandoning his earlier caution he rushed closer.
One of them started to move as he came closer and raised his/her? head to look up at him. Longish blond hair fell around thin shoulders and framed a pale face, hollowed with exhaustion. James opened his mouth to tell him/his not to move when he saw the beak placed where the mouth should have been.
As the person collapsed back against the snow, all James could do was stare. This had to be a bad dream, or a really contrived practical joke. "Melissa?" he called. "Mark? Guys? If this is a joke it really isn't funny!" No answer came. He hadn't expected one. "Missa doesn't have the imagination to come up with something like this anyway," he said aloud, more to hear himself say the words. "And Mark wouldn't come out on a night like this to save his life..." he drifted off, painfully aware that there was no one to hear him.
Except the two still forms laying in the snow, obviously hurt, and obviously unable to help themselves.
And the storm was getting worse. James could almost feel the ferocity of the weather around him increasing with each passing moment.
Beaks, or no, he couldn't live with himself if he left someone out here to face what would surely be death.
"Oh, what the hell," he decided, throwing his hands up in the air as he closed the remaining distance between him and the two strangers. "I bet when they wake up they'll have one heck of a story to tell."
Dragging two prone bodies through a foot of snow was not easy under normal circumstances, and when you were facing the beginnings of a nasty storm, things got even worse. Stumbling, James dragged the two strangers through the woods, back toward his house, trying to avoid the branches and tree stumps and hoping he didn't end up doing them more harm than good. Finally he saw the lights of the house ahead and put on an extra burst of speed, pulling them both up to the steps of the deck before releasing his hold on them. Pausing a moment to take a few deep breaths, he then leaned over and pulled the biggest one into a fireman's carry. He grimaced a little under the weight, but it was better than he'd expected. For such a big person, the weight was probably equal to his own.
Carefully, he negotiated his way up the stairs of the deck, pausing at the sliding glass door that led into the house. His right hand held the man steady over his shoulder as his left pulled the door open. He almost stumbled, but caught himself and hurried inside. He didn't bother closing the door, instead hurrying up the stairs to his room. He opened his door and slipped inside, closing it behind his quietly, then crossing the room to drop the man on his bed. He left him there, and rushed back down to get the other one. This one was smaller than the first, and even lighter and gave him even less trouble getting inside. He closed and locked the door behind him, struggling a bit, then hurried upstairs. Once again he slipped into his room, negotiating the room in the dark, and dropped this one onto the bed next to the other one.
Stepping back he leaned against the wall for a moment, bending forward and bracing his hands on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. They may not have been all that heavy, but carrying them up the stairs had taken a bit out of him.
A sound in the hallway, like a door being quietly shut, caught his attention and he hurriedly straightened and rushed to his door, intending to close it before anyone noticed. The last thing he needed was his uncle seeing... whatever the heck they were, but before he could close it all the way, a hand caught the edge and pushed it back toward him slightly. For an irrational instant he considered slamming it shut anyway, only the knowledge that his uncle would skin him alive preventing him from doing so. Then a second later he was glad he hadn't as a soft, feminine voice whispered, "Jimmy?"
"Jas?" Stepping back, he opened the door slightly and peered out. His sister's face, pale in the dark hallway, gazed back at him. "What are you doing up so late?"
She made a face at him and he realized how ridiculous that sounded, coming from him of all people. After all, someone with a habit of going to sleep when the sun started to come up shouldn't be one to talk about other people staying up. "I was waiting for you," she replied anyway, keeping her voice a soft hush so it wouldn't carry down the all to their uncle's room. "You've been gone for hours!"
"Sorry," he said, knowing she had been worried. "I needed to get out for a while."
"Three hours?" she hissed. "In this weather?"
He glared back at her. "It's been a rough week, all right? Jasmine, go back to bed."
She frowned at him, her glance flickering toward the door he was still holding mostly shut, and back to him as he blocked the rest of the doorway. "What's going on?"
"huh?'
"Why are you making me stand in the hallway like this?" she asked. "And you won't even let me see inside your room. I know it's a mess, Jimmy, but it's not that bad."
James sighed. "Jas, I'm tired. I want to be able to go to sleep before I'm supposed to wake up, and that window of opportunity is rapidly closing. I just walked myself half to death and it was freezing out there. Do you mind just letting me sleep?" He mentally crossed his fingers, hoping she'd buy it. Jasmine could be stubborn when she set her mind to it, and he didn't want her to see the two strangers until he'd had the chance to figure out what was going on. "You can yell at me in the morning, all right?"
She sighed at him, looking exasperated. "Sure, Jimmy." She flipped a strand of bright red hair away from her face as she turned to go. "Just make sure you clean all that snow off the carpet in the stairway before Uncle Bryan gets up or he'll throw a fit. You're not supposed to be out that late."
James frowned as Jasmine's door shut firmly behind her, then ventured out of his room to take a look at the stairs. Sure enough, there was a large amount of melted snow, rapidly making a large mess on the plush tan carpet. James sighed and resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall as he walked down the hall to the bathroom and grabbed a towel to soak up the mess. He wanted nothing more than to return to his room, lock the door, and collapse on the floor with a pillow and blanket until he had to rise the next morning, but Jasmine had a point.
Despite the fact that James had recently turned 20, his uncle, Bryan Mason, had a large amount of difficulty seeing his nephew as anything other than the eleven year old who had first come to life with him almost nine years ago. James itched under restrictions that most of his friends had outgrown upon entering high school. James, who was entering his junior year of college, still had a curfew, was not allowed phone calls after nine at night and was expected to ask permission before leaving the house. It drove him nuts. It was also the reason he usually didn't come home during school breaks.
But it's Christmas, he mocked himself. Gotta be with family on Christmas. You'll only be here a month until the spring semester starts and who knows, maybe the old man'll have loosened up some. Yeah right. He sighed as he mopped up the last of the melted snow and carried the wet towel back to the bathroom, dropping it in the hamper. Should've gone to Barbados with Kim and Mike and Danny.
Jasmine, for her part, seemed to deal with the restrictions placed upon her by their uncle much better. While Bryan - old-fashioned coot that he was - handed her a much earlier curfew, stricter restrictions on going out, and forbid her phone calls from boys he hadn't met, Jasmine never seemed to loose her temper with the old man in the way that James almost always did. Of course, Jasmine had her own way of dealing with the old man. While James kicked and fought, Jas would just nod and smile and call him "Uncle Bry" then proceed to do exactly as she pleased while making sure her uncle never learned about it. By their sophomore year of college, Jas had become something of an expert at sneaking out of the house. Jimmy wasn't too bad at it himself, but he got caught a lot more than she did.
James shook his head and slammed the hamper lid shut. Here's a good question about getting caught, Jim, he thought. How are you going to keep Uncle Bryan from finding out about the two duck-men on your bed? Knowing Bryan, he'd either declare it duck hunting season, or call in the National Guard. Neither of which James anticipated having a happy ending.
Well, I'll just have to keep them in my room, and Bryan out, he decided. Not like he goes in my room much anyway - says it's a health hazard. Jasmine would help him. She wasn't the sort to leave anyone in the lurch - not unless there was a sale down at the Limited or something - and she'd probably enjoy the opportunity to pull one over on Bryan.
Well then. Nothing was exactly settled, but at this point, he could care less. He opened the door to his room and regarded the two still figures on his bed, covered with his comforter. Nothing for it but to wait till the morning. Maybe something could be settled then. Maybe they'd wake up by then.
He grabbed a pillow and an extra blanket from his closet and changed quickly into shorts and a t-shirt. Stretching out on the floor by the door, he only had enough time to think, absurdly, of a hockey team logo. Before his tired mind could grasp the significance of the thought, he was asleep.
You're alive?
Nosedive inhaled the acrid scent of smoke, tinged with the cloying presence of blood. The back of his throat burned.
Wildwing was gone.
He'd been there. Dive knew it in the way you know fire is bad and breathing is good. Instinctual. True on a level so deep he didn't think he could purge himself of the knowledge even if he'd wanted to. He'd been there for just a few moments, sharing the same dream that now toyed with Dive's memories. He flexed his fingers, remembering how Wing had reached for him, the solid feel of his brother's hand. He'd been there. They'd Dreamwalked, and their minds had reached out to each other.
It was the smoke making his eyes water as he watched the four intruders tear Karek and Jaeden from their home, and it was sorrow that made him look away as their parents were killed as they lay unconscious. But it was the look in Wildwing's eyes that was making his heart pound against his chest like a frightened bird trapped in a cage.
You're alive?
Wildwing thought he was dead. Not surprising. Dive had expected to die when he'd confronted the High Lord. Waking up alive and mostly well in Limbo had been the last thing he'd expected. Of course Wildwing would think he was dead. Dive shook his head, banishing the images of death around him. Wildwing had disappeared after the first explosion, and Dive's interest in his surroundings had faded with his brother's presence. The dream was intense and vivid, but that was all it was. Nightmares were something Dive had long experience in dealing with, but the desperation in Wildwing's eyes was something else entirely. He'd never seen that look in Wing's eyes before. Not when the McDrakes - their parents - were killed, not when the Saurians had separated them, not when Canard had died.
"Stars." Dive turned away from the devastated living room. Wing thought he was dead. Had thought it for - how long? Dive had no idea how long he'd been in Limbo, or where he was now. He thought he was back on Earth but when? Stars how long had Wildwing been living with the idea that his brother was dead?
"I have to find him." The dream might not have been enough. Wildwing could be disgustingly practical at times, and he wouldn't allow a dream to influence him under the best of circumstances. Even this dream, where Dive could taste the smoke and feel the heat of the flames, might not be enough to convince Wildwing of anything. Especially something as important as this. Dive doubted a lot of things in his life, but not this. He had no illusions about how his brother cared for him. If Wildwing thought Dive was dead, it was probably tearing him apart. If I was in his place it'd kill me.
Issue settled. He had to get back to Anaheim and Wing. Preferably before the Saurians got there.
He cast his thoughts toward his brother, finding him without hesitation. The bond between them was faded, fuzzy, compared to what it had been before he left Earth but it was still there. For him at least. He frowned, concentrating. Had he even noticed the bond while in Limbo? He must have. He knew he'd notice if the bond was broken - hell, the shock of tearing such a deeply formed bond probably would have killed him and Wing both, or left them drooling vegetables. But... He couldn't actually remember feeling the bond at all while he was in Limbo.
That just couldn't be right.
A familiar presence was beginning to make itself known at the edge of his awareness. Dive's eyes narrowed and his hands clenched. "All right, Canard," he growled. "Answers. Now."
The destruction faded, and he was awake.
“You had no right!”
James awoke with a start, and found himself irrevocably entangled in his blanket. He kicked at it, and tossed it to the side.
“I had no choice.”
“No choice? You little son of a-"
"You would've been distracted."
"No shit! He thinks I'm dead, Canard!"
"I know. It couldn't be helped.
James stumbled to his feet and stared at the two... people facing each other down from opposite sides of his bed. The larger of the two, who was also older from the looks of it, was nothing if not irritated. The smaller one just looked pissed. "umm... excuse me?"
They both turned to face him, neither one even slightly surprised to see him there. "Sorry to wake you," the older one said.
The smaller one nodded reluctantly. "Yeah. Did you bring us here?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I found you guys out in the woods last night," James ran a hand through his hair. "It was gonna bliz any second and you didn't look like you were in too good a shape. Being out in weather like that isn't too bright, you know."
The younger one smirked and tipped his head to the side, shoulder length blond hair falling across his face. "So that's why you were out there?"
He grinned back at him. "Pretty much, yeah. My name is James, by the way. James Blake. This is my uncle's house and he wouldn't be real happy to find out I'm hiding umm... strangers in my room, so let's keep it down, okay?"
"Strangers? That's one way of putting it." The smaller one turned his attention back to the older, ignoring James for the present moment. "Explanation. Now, Canard."
"What more is there to explain?" Canard responded. "I told you - you would've been distracted, maybe fatally so. I did what I had to in order to prevent that."
"How long would you have gone on lying like that?" the other one demanded. "Stars Canard... If I hadn't dreamwalked-"
James blinked. Dreamwalked?
"You would've found out eventually anyway, Dive," Canard explained. "As soon as we got back to Earth-"
What?
"-the bond would have begun repairing itself. It was only while you were in Limbo that you were blocked from him."
Limbo?
"I'm confused," James interrupted.
They ignored him.
"You should have told me! You had no right to mess around with my head - to take that away from me!"
"The link was blocked!" Canard snapped. "You would've felt nothing but pain. It would have weakened you and the distraction could've gotten us both killed."
Dive snapped a hand out in front of him, palm down. James blinked, but Canard froze in place, watching him warily. "I am going to making myself perfectly clear to you," Dive hissed, pure anger bleeding into every word. "You are never, never to enter my thoughts without my permission again. Not in the slightest way. If I catch you in my head again, I'll tear your mind to shreds that you'll need decades to heal. Understood?"
"You're overreacting," Canard said softly. He didn't back down, but James noticed he didn't push the issue any further either. James eyes the smaller one warily. He was, to quote his sister "massively torqued" and James had the uncomfortable feeling that if he said he was going to hurt someone, he was, and in ways James couldn't quite imagine. A nagging voice at the back of his mind idly commented on how nice it was in Antarctica this time of year.
A frown twisted his mouth as the tense silence dragged out between them. He didn't pretend to understand exactly what was going on - dreamwalking? Back to Earth? Limbo? Tearing minds? It was all something out of one of Jasmine's fantasy novels. Of course, two anthropomorphic ducks weren't exactly standard-issue in daily life either, at least not where he was from.
Ducks... A flash of imagery in his mind, crossed hockey sticks, an arena, some idiot at school with a magazine ranting about the Stanley Cup... "Ducks!"
Neither one looked at him, but the smaller one nodded. "Mighty Ducks, yeah. You've heard of us I take it?"
"Well, not really..." James shrugged. "Uncle Bryan always said professional sports were violent and dishonest so he wouldn't let us watch on TV. But I've heard of the team before. My biology teacher loves you guys." He blinked. "I'm surprised I didn't think of it last night... I guess I never really thought much about it."
Well, that explained some of it. The Mighty Ducks were rumored to be aliens, though most people, including his biology teacher, insisted they were much more likely to be mutations caused by chemical waste. So, if they were talking about coming back to Earth then that's probably exactly what they had meant. Cool.
"Listen," James finally said. "It's almost noon. How about I get something to eat for everyone? You guys can clean up in the meantime."
Canard said nothing, his eyes questioning as he looked at Dive. Dive, nodded slowly. "That would be nice, actually," he agreed. "Thank you."
"Let me get dressed real quick and I'll go make some sandwiches and stuff." James grabbed some jeans and socks out of the dresser and quickly changed, leaving on the t-shirt he'd slept in. "There anything you guys don't like?" he asked suddenly. "Like, you vegetarians or anything?"
Dive smirked at him, a glint of humor shining in his eyes. "As long as it's not duck, I think we'll be fine."
James blinked, fighting back the urge to blush. "Um, yeah, right. Okay. I'll be right back." He gestured at the closet. "Grab some clean clothes if you want. I don't know about you Canard, but I'm sure I've got something Dive can borrow." He ducked out the door and hurried downstairs, wondering how on Earth he was going to get enough food for three people upstairs without his Uncle wanting to know what was going on.
"Nice kid," Dive commented idly.
Canard eyed the shirt Dive tossed him warily. "Seems so, yeah. He could have left us to freeze to death." He pulled the shirt over his head and reached for the pair of sweat pants Dive aimed at his head. "Where are we? This doesn't look like what I've seen of Anaheim."
"Nope. Not even close to it." Dive had already finished dressing and was now fussing over his hair in the mirror. He turned his back on Canard to look out the window. "For starters, it never snows like this in Anaheim."
"Where does it snow like this?" Canard asked.
Dive shrugged. "Up north. Washington State maybe. Or Canada. James doesn't have any kind of accent though, so most likely we're still in the States. As far as where, though, who knows?"
"Something must have happened to disrupt the teleport," Canard said grimly. "Not a good sign. It must have been the Saurians. They're trying to keep us from getting to the others."
"I dunno," Dive said slowly, watching the snow still falling outside the window. Easily four feet was piled on the ground by now, and Dive was feeling a bit homesick watching it. "If they went to all the trouble of distracting us, why not just kill us outright? Why send us here? We'll still get home eventually."
"We don't even know where we are," Canard snapped, "let alone how far we are from Anaheim."
Rolling his eyes, Dive turned to face his ex-teammate. "So we ask James. Duh."
"And then?" Canard prompted. "You may not feel it, but we're not strong enough to chance another teleport right now."
Oh, he felt it. The same way he felt back in the beginning when he'd first started using the Power. Drained, exhausted. "There are other ways of getting places. Planes, trains, buses, cars... I know my Visa number by heart, and the limit is more than enough to get us back to Anaheim. Hell, we could go first class and invite fifty of our best friends. We can get home, Canard. If they wanted to stop us, this was a stupid way to go about it."
"Maybe they only wanted us distracted while they attacked the others," Canard argued.
"Saurians don't work like that," Dive disagreed. "If they could have killed us they would have."
Canard didn't bother disagreeing with him this time. "All right. Let's say you're right. Then what? We're still stars know how far off our intended course."
Dive shrugged. "Miscalculation? Some of that infamous distraction you were ranting about?"
"It would have had to have been something pretty powerful to pull us off course," Canard mused. "A power source of some kind. Which leads us back to the Saurians."
There were footsteps outside and they both fell silent until they passed,
heading toward the stairs. They were heavy and forceful.
"There's something odd about those two," Canard murmured.
Dive glanced at him sideways. "How so?" He didn't bother asking which two. He knew.
"I can't say for sure." Canard fell silent and busied himself with the all-important task of reading the titles of the books on James' shelves. Dive shrugged. Whatever.
He leaned against the wall by the door and checked the room out. It was pretty typical, though at the moment, Canard was examining it like it was something he'd never seen before. Well, technically, he hadn't. Dive remembered how different everything on Earth had seemed to him just a year and a half ago when they'd arrived on the planet. For the most part, James' room was typical, if somewhat plain. The whole room was done in shades of blue, with a big double bed, desk and dresser. A shelf ran over the bed with a few pictures and knickknacks, and a larger shelf stood against the wall by the desk, filled with books. Dive smirked as he caught Canard examining a Return of the Jedi novelization. Yeah. All pretty typical.
It was a nice change. Not much going on lately that could accurately be called typical. Well, unless you considered the fact that weird shit was typical for him, but that was a train of thought that wasn't going anywhere but in circles.
He felt the music-light around James growing closer, like rising notes on a piano, then the door opened slowly, and James came in, carrying a dinner tray full of food. "You should've seen the look Uncle Bryan gave me when he saw this," he said dryly as he set the tray down on the desk and pushed the door shut behind him. "Probably thinks I'm binging. Or hiding a girl up he-"
The door clicked shut, and Canard lunged across the room, his hand snatching out to grab James' arm. His other hand came up to press against the side of James' head. James gasped, the color draining from his face, his eyes becoming frantic.
"Canard!" Dive took a step away from the wall. "What the hell-" Psychic assault. He saw the desperate look in James' eyes, the determined expression on Canard's face, and felt the thrum of psychic energy snapping back and forth between the two of them. Canard was forcing himself into James' mind, with much less patience and tact that he had used to get inside Dive's back in Limbo. And whatever reason Canard had for doing it, it was hurting James.
Without stopping to think about the possible consequences, Dive gripped Canard by the shoulders and pulled him back, slamming his hand into Canard's arm, forcing him to let go of James. And with a quick prayer that he didn't end up a drooling vegetable from the backlash, he threw himself headfirst into the stream of thought Canard had started.
It lasted less than a second before it snapped, dropping all three of them back into their own minds and bodies, undamaged and relatively unshaken. It was half-second of eternity and music, agelessness and melody. The music reached a crescendo as the assault abruptly ceased, and the presence Dive already knew as James faded, leaving Dive briefly alone with the weight of time surrounding him. Then even that was gone, and Dive found himself shaken and tense, back in his own mind, alone except for the distant silver shine of Wildwing.
James was on his feet, unsteady but moving, backing away from them both with fear and angry clouding his eyes. The music was still there, drumbeats and guitar chords, pulsing in time with the waves of emotion that practically rolled off James. Dive spared him a glance, making sure he was all right for now, making sure he wasn't going to freak out on them. Then he turned and found himself face to face with an unending wash of time. He swallowed, trying to get some moisture back in his mouth, felt his heart beat just a little quicker as he met suddenly unfamiliar eyes.
"Canard," he said hoarsely. "What the hell are you?"
to be continued in: Inner Demons
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