Chapter 5

A Hidden Location in the Nantahala Forest

Carick the Steward woke like a shot, his eyes opening wide in the dark, the stale smell of centuries-old air assaulting his nostrils. His body woke more slowly than his mind had, muscles screaming with tension and disuse as he craned his neck to see around the cave.

Something wrong. No Keeper at his side, smiling solicitously, attending to any needs, and bursting with news? That had never happened before in a thousand years of Keeper/Steward duties.

Indeed, his resting place was empty, save him.

So very wrong. He had to get to the surface immediately! An image of worldwide holy war, of glowing females flanked by males more animal than human, marched through his mind. In his vision, the couples were clashing with a bloodthirsty army at the floor of the valley beyond his cave. Was it happening now? Or had it already?

The question agitated him to new heights. He lurched to a sitting position on the edge of his rough bed too early. Nausea. His head swam, his vision blurred. He groped for the precious chain around his neck. Still there.

He stilled, elbows cocked on knees, head lowered, hand on chain and cross, deliberately sending out emotional feelers. The rough magicks of his protections sparkled, invisible to any but him, patting his cheeks and ruffling his hair with the care of a mother’s kiss, soothing him.

What had woken him if there was no Keeper there? Had he woken too early? Too late? The thoughts made adrenaline rush through his system, feeding the urgency in his body, swirling it into a lead ball in his belly.

Stumbling to his feet, Carick rolled his shoulders and blinked his eyes repeatedly, urging his tear ducts to work. He patted down his torso. What was this? He was naked. No clothes at all. He'd gone to his rest in a simple tunic and loose breeches, but now he wore nothing.

The everweft spell placed by his switches had degraded, but how? An everweft spell didn’t last forever, but the ones his eldest daughter had woven lasted a hundred years. Her voice rang in his head as a memory, admonishing the younger switches to never create a spell without an endpoint. “One hundred years is perfect for all but love spells and hairdos,” she would say, whenever anyone mentioned a spell that lasted forever.

He couldn’t possibly have been resting for longer than one hundred years, could he have? The Well save and keep him. He had to get out of the cave and discover the year!

He managed to hold himself upright, his strength returning with each moment. He urged himself into motion and shot toward the mouth of the cave in his bare feet. His body was hearty and did not require footwear or clothing. He had only ever worn it to escape attention.

Although he sprinted, the journey up to the top of the narrow, dry, rock corridor still took him hours, the sound of his feet scrambling over stone his only company. When he finally reached the opening of the cave he’d been secreted in, Carick staggered under the ever-present exquisiteness of the night sky. The grace of The Well keeps it ever so. Stars twinkled as if to say ‘hello,’ while thick, warm air sparkled his cheeks with humidity.

He slid to a stop and pulled fresh air into his lungs, trying to decide if he still enjoyed this earth. The full moon hung too big and orange, so low it nearly touched the horizon. A thin thread of cool breeze caressed his cheek, winging away the last of the magicks that had stuck with him.

Carick let his head hang back, reading the stars for direction, scenting the air because he was helpless not to. The stars told him it was late summer, while the air told him things were different. Terrifyingly different.

He turned his face toward a harsh, unnatural scent and urged his feet to move, climbing down the rocky outcropping then aiming his steps southeast, to the forest.

Hours passed as he jogged through the dense growth, naked, his urgency still there, but muted by the passage of time. Yellow wood sorrel and nodding ladies’ tresses dressed the night as he passed, while branches and thorns scratched at him, none marking his skin. Owls and bats watched him silently. Mice and voles and an occasional fox ran with him for short distances. A bobcat fell in step with him to the west for many miles. Carick could sense it, hear it, but not see it. He did not stop, did not reach out to it with his mind, not having time to make friends. His switches could be dying.

He crested a rise and stared down on the lights of the town below. Not candle light. Not torchlight. Even from how far away he was, he could tell these lights were stronger, different somehow, like lightning contained in a bottle. The thought stirred excitement in him, while the lead ball of his earlier urgency turned to dismay.

For the first time, he wondered how he would fare in the present day. He’d always thought there would be a time he woke to machinery so complicated he could no longer grasp how to use it. That would be a sad time for him, indeed. He’d loved the steam locomotives and the electro-magnetic self rotors that had just begun coming into widespread use the last time he’d gone to his rest, even used the new technology to power a boat across Cove Springs, which had meandered in front of the last cabin his switches had procured for him during his few months awake. He’d lived long enough to see clever humans create something from nothing again and again, devising machinery to take over tasks that only horses and people had done for millennia.

Perhaps in the time he’d been away, humankind had learned to fly with more than hot air and silks. What a sight that would be!

He pulled his attention back to the town below. When he’d gone to his rest, this exact spot was where Five Hills had been. It looked quiet, peaceful, no war raging. So why had no one greeted him?

Carick picked his way down the cliff to the town, reeling in his emotions with a defined yank. It would not do to lose his head.

Carick reached the first houses, huge, fancy things, covered with bright colors and dotted with so many windows! Mansions, by his last waking’s standards. The sun began to spread light across the sky, urging him on. He trotted along empty streets made from a material he didn’t recognize, looking everywhere at once, calling upon his adaptiveness to keep him from staring. Intuition told him he would do well not to behave like a stranger.

Better find some clothes, and quickly. He ducked into the strange meadow behind a house, hoping to find clothes drying outside, but who would leave their clothes out overnight? No one. He jogged back out to the main throughway to get a better look at the homes. Dare he enter one and take what he needed?

The large, inanimate, metal contraptions he somehow knew had taken the place of streetcars and simple carriages were the first to tell him these times were more than he ever could have imagined. He read the word on back of one. Kia. The kia were everywhere. He prodded one that sat slumbering on the roadside with a hand. Heavy.

A roaring sound startled him but he held his ground, forcing himself to move at the same measured pace as he had been. One of the kia passed him at a smooth speed a horse could only dream of. The unnatural smell he’d noticed as soon as he had left the cave thickened, swirling around him, making him retch. He did so silently, tucking his face into his arm so none could see. Kia were smelly.

A man walked past Carick on the other side of the street, his head down, a contraption held in front of his face, but Carick could not scent him with the smell of the kia flooding his nostrils.

He needed allies, and he needed garments to cover his ass. But not in that order, unless it could not be helped.

A woman turned a corner in front of him and headed his way, her eyes on a contraption similar to the one the man had. Carick already wanted one; he didn’t know why, had no idea what it was. The woman was wearing black breeches which stopped above her knee, so that he could see the skin of her knees and calves, but more alarmingly, he could see the V where her legs met, and the curve of her waist to hips. His eyes crawled over her form, wondering what fabric could possibly be so tight! His switches had sometimes worn pantaloons to an Undoing, but never anything like this. Even her midriff was revealed, the tightly toned muscles rippling as she walked.

Before he could duck behind a bush, she noticed him. Carick changed tactics and strode down the sidewalk like he owned it. Her reactions would tell him much about the state of the constabulary in this time. Would she start screaming? Would people open windows and throw things at him? Would a constable run to them, or would they come in a kia? The constables of his last waking knew of him, had let him go about his duties. The ones in this age might not.

The woman grew close to him, and still she did not scream. Instead, she watched him boldly, her eyes scanning him from top to bottom, stopping at his nether regions, her eyes growing wide. She was almost abreast of him when she reached into a sack around her waist and removed a small piece of glossy black paper, handing it to Carick. “Get a haircut and then come see me at the gym,” she said to him as she passed. He felt her eyes on his backside. When he turned, she was ogling him. “I’ve got a position for you, and you’re already wearing the uniform,” she said with a saucy wink, then turned away from him like naked men were something she saw every day.

Carick blushed, a first for him. Bold, the women of this time. Not scared at all. She’d probably had a weapon in that bag around her waist, that would best someone bigger than her. He’d always been bigger than most humans and had never met anyone who exceeded his height of seven feet tall, although a few shifters and switches from bone coven had come close over the years.

He looked down at the paper he held. Similar to the calling cards he’d known in times past, but instead of crisp linen stationery this was stiff and black, with a shiny finish and far more writing. And an illustration as well, in purple and black, of a muscled arm being flexed. Below that, Carick focused on the vaguely familiar characters until they became letters he recognized, until they made sense and he could read them: Nalani Calypso, Owner, Cut To The Bone Gym. Below that were two strings of digits and another line with more letters, some of them the same as above, but with symbols he didn’t recognize mixed in as well.

Carick laughed out loud. So clever, these humans were. To take the average calling card and embellish it with such personality that even the unlearned would have some idea of a person’s role in life. He palmed the little card, excited to have his first taste of modern interaction. Even if the woman had told him to get his hair cut.

Carick touched a hand to his head, trying to determine the state of his hair. Long. Shaggy. Unkempt. But it didn’t feel dirty. Clothes. Allies. Haircut.

As he rounded a corner, he saw more of the enclosed lightning flickering in a window of a building. He tensed, realizing it was a flat display of a familiar horror, moving across an impossible rectangle. He didn’t stop to figure out how such a thing could be possible. Red eyes belied his breed, while intact skin and a normal face told him the beast was young. He snarled in the morning air, then let loose a battle cry and sprinted forward. “Vampire! Death to them all! Fie!”

He did not know this vampire personally, but he could still separate head from neck.

Visceral hatred made Carick move quickly, openly, but the cursed creature didn’t acknowledge him, didn’t look at him or run from him, nor turn to attack. Could he even see Carick?

Carick drew within a few feet of his enemy, forced to stop by a pane of glass between him and the vampire. He focused on his enemy, preparing to strike, but now the bloodsucker in the box seemed to be speaking to someone behind Carick. Carick whirled around in a crouch, but didn’t see anyone there. Long tooth bastard.

“Your bloodshame swims in your eyes,” he grated, in a voice that should have pulled the vampire’s attention to him. But the male didn’t react at all. Was Carick even there? Was he dreaming? He pulled back his fist and slammed it into the glass, turning his head as the window shattered and rained down onto the pavement at his feet.

The male in the black box didn’t even flinch. Carick read the label proclaiming the box the vampire was in to be a flat screen television. Carick could hear the vampire’s words now.

“I fully endorse Dominic Arcadia as candidate. He will revolutionize the standards of this country, returning it to its former greatness-”

Words of no consequence. Carick snarled and raised his fist again. He would snatch the vile beast out of the television to be destroyed, head kept separate from body until he could find a switch to kill it.

Smash! Carick’s fist slammed into the television. Light flashed across it, popping the vampire’s image into colored bars, then blackness. Carick snatched his hand back as the man disappeared. He scowled and climbed through the window, grabbing the television and slamming it to the floor. No vampire hid behind it.

He frowned. A trick of the time he could not explain. He lifted his head to scent the air as an otherworldly sound reached him, as loud and brash as howler monkeys during mating season. But as it increased in volume he could tell no living thing had ever sounded quite like that.

A kia galloped down the street, then another, blue and red lights twirling on top of both. Carick had no time to examine them. He turned back to the broken window and resumed his search for the bloodsucker who’d eluded him.

Sound exploded. It was a voice, but strangely, unnaturally contained. And loud. “This is Five Hills Police Department. Step out of the window with your hands on top of your head.”

Four men burst out of two vehicles, all of them wearing the same type of thick, blue clothing, three with short firearms pointed at him. They had the look of constables. The protectors of this town. Exactly what he needed right now. But wait. One of the constables was a woman! How could that be? He had never seen a woman constable in all of his long life. She wore breeches, of course.

He gathered himself and addressed the constables. “Good sirs...” He fumbled with his words, realizing he was not addressing the woman, an error a diplomat should never make. Movement on the dozens of televisions surrounding him caught his attention. The vampire still walked. He turned back to the peacekeepers. “Constables, I address you as the Steward of the Forest. The fate of your world is at stake. Can you not see-?”

One of the constables cut him off, his voice booming, but tinny. “Sir, for your safety, come out with your hands on your head.”

Carick roared in frustration, gesturing at the vampires he now realized were only images. Replicas. Which changed nothing. “Don’t you know what he is? What they are?”

“Listen, asshole!” A different voice spoke now, still with that tinny sound, but the speaker had more authority in his voice. More command. Carick searched the constables’ faces, trying to discern which was talking to him. The big one with the lean face. “Come out now, or we’re coming in. You won’t like it if that happens.”

“You do not listen!” Carick was fast losing his patience. The constables of his last waking would never think to keep him from a vampire. And being naked when all else were clothed didn’t help his temper.

Another kia arrived. More constables jumped out. One edged beside Carick as if to box him in.

Carick glanced back in the building. When he saw the vampire was no longer replicated on all the black boxes some of his anger leaked away. It would not do to fight with the peacekeepers of this time.

He took a deep breath. Somehow he would convince the constables that he was not dangerous.

But a constable had closed in on his flank while his back was turned. Carick snarled, his defenses shooting up again, eyeing the small contraption in the constable’s hand. It looked like a firearm, but none that Carick had seen before. The barrel was square, the material strange.

The constable waved his free hand out in front of him, like he was trying to soothe Carick, or call his attention elsewhere. “Hey buddy, come with me. I can help you find what you’re looking for.”

Carick heard the lie in his voice and contempt flared inside him. He responded in kind. “Truly? You can help me find the vampire who disappeared before mine very eyes?”

The constable seemed to hide a smile. Now his voice spoke with amusement that was disingenuous with his words. “If I can’t, I know someone who can. But you have to come this way.”

An impotent roar built up in Carick’s chest. He was being fleeced somehow, and he didn’t like it. “You know nothing! Charmed, are you?” Carick brushed his hands together, then stepped out of the window, throwing a killing glance at the constable, telling him without words that he would lose a if they fought. All seven of them would, even if they came at the same time, even with their weapons.

“Hands on your head!” the constable shouted, not scared at all. Carick ignored the order and kept walking.

The small shape in the man’s hand erupted, too fast to follow, but Carick could still sense tiny projectiles latching themselves onto his body. He went unexplainably rigid as pain exploded inside him and he fell. The hard surface of the ground rushed up to meet him, and though Carick wanted to put out his hands to break the fall his arms would not obey.  His brain short-circuited as agony convulsed through him. Thoughts sunk through his mind like stones, and he could make no sense of them.

The pain stopped abruptly and he could think again. Weak. Weapons stronger than you! What else will this time bring? Final death?

Would he welcome it? His head lolled on the hard ground and his chest heaved, trying to pull breathe into his lungs.

The constable closest to him spoke to one behind him, with a sneering tone that Carick despised. “Crazy fucker thinks Arcadia is a vampire.”

A knee landed in Carrick’s back, making breathing impossible. His arms were yanked behind him. The clank of manacles circled his wrists and he was rolled over, unable to fight. Indignity burned inside him with an intensity he hadn’t felt in thousands of years.

All Carick could do as the constables lifted him to his feet, one on each side, and carried him to the kia was remain silent and wait for whatever came next.