Chapter Six

A week passed and then another and still no Teseen. No hawk. I even resorted to visiting my parents to spend some time out of my deathly quiet apartment. But they were just more concerned about me when they saw how down I looked. My mother naturally invited me to come with her to church, which I politely declined. In the home of guilt and judgement, called the Catholic Church, I would either have harmed myself or many others at that point, I fantasized.

Five minutes after I’d returned from visiting them the buzzer rang. Had someone been watching me, I wondered. I hopped over to the viewer next to the door.

“Miss Bradshaw, I know it’s late -”

It was him again. Teseen said he was dangerous and I shouldn’t let him in, but I liked to make up my own mind about things. I knew what I had seen in my mind the last time he was there, but I had questions that Teseen wasn’t around to answer. In the weeks of his absence I had been having my strange dreams more frequently.

After the last one I had woken up with sweat dripping off my body. I had seen some kind of war that took place a long time ago. The sound of stamping feet surrounded me. Even my feet could not refrain from stamping on the clay ground in time to the beat of a drum which resonated through our bodies and the whole valley. I was dressed in leather, was bare foot and had an amulet around my wrist. The stone set in the center of the bracelet was an Agate. I was surrounded by other men and women dressed the same as I was. We had streaks of red and white painted on our faces and dark-skinned limbs. I could feel the group I was with were more than human. And I was too. Energy waves pulses between us and gave us great power as a collective. It was a war of magic, and magic our opponents possessed too, just different from ours. Theirs was dark and ours was light.

There was another major difference between them and us. While our feet stamped on the ground, they hovered above it. They did not have a corporeal form. They looked like a white, gray mist which changed constantly. There were distinguishable individual forms, if you stared long enough at the hazy mass, but staring at them too long was dangerous and brought a madness to the mind.

I could smell the strong scent of perspiration and herbs as the energy began to pulse stronger through our group of about one hundred men and women. The energy began to draw together and focus. Some of our people began to change, to channel more power in their natural form. I saw a bear, a tiger, a hawk, and a fox among the human forms.

Just as I saw the red fox, my conscious mind began to pull me out of the dream again. I clawed to stay and see what would happen next, who those other ethereal beings were, but I was yanked out into an awake state.

Now as I looked through the viewer at Nesu, I felt a mixture of fear and another emotion which I didn’t recognize immediately. Then I realized what it was I was feeling, he didn’t feel like a stranger. I buzzed the complex’s security door open and let the other curious, handsome man up to my apartment.

~*~

He stepped through the door and as he did, I knew what he was going to do just before he did it, but could do nothing to stop him. He grabbed me by the throat and pushed me against the wall.

I reached up to try and break his grip, but his knee smashed into my chest and my body collapsed. He put both hands around my neck and started to grip tighter and tighter. Panic closed in on me and my mind rushed at amphetamine speed. My throat was closed off and I could not get in any air. I felt small and weak as he began to throttle the life out of me. All I saw were his narrowed green eyes as I struggled against my complete helplessness.

A crashing sound made him loosen his grip for a second and my world grew a fraction larger. Then a sudden motion rammed him off me and onto the floor. I stumbled to the side, collapsed onto my knees and sucked in as much air as I could in one breath.

“I knew you’d come for her, you bastard!”

The tall naked man swung his fist. It landed with a thwack on his opponent, making him trip over the armchair. My heart pounded like the drum in my dream, faster and faster. My body felt rigid and icy with fear. I couldn’t move as I watched the two men pound each other.

Nesu threw Teseen into the bookcase, sending it crashing down on top of them. Books, trinkets and candles cluttered to the floor.

“Teseen!” I cried out.

“I told you I would take out your kind!” Nesu shouted at him.

Teseen brought his leg up swiftly, turned and pounded it into Nesu’s stomach. Nesu folded over and staggered backward. He turned his head and looked at me.

“But I thought I’d first kill the one thing you love,” he added and winked at me.

Teseen had a piece of the bookshelf in his hands. He lifted it over his head and swung it down onto Nesu’s head. Nesu’s body collapsed to the floor.

“You leave her alone!” Teseen shouted back, “She’s got nothing to do with this!”

I pushed myself up and clung onto the kitchen counter.

Nesu got on his hands and knees and brought his leg up, sending Teseen flying backward into the coffee table.

“She has everything to do with it!” Nesu exclaimed, lunging for him.

He dived on top of Teseen and punched him in the face. He raised his hand to strike Teseen again.

“Aargh!” Nesu cried out.

I staggered closer, holding on to the top of the sofa.

Nesu lay completely still on top of Teseen.

“Teseen!” I wailed.

Then Nesu’s body flopped off the table and landed with a thud on the floor revealing Teseen’s naked heaving chest.

“You’re-”

“It’s not my blood, Layla,” he said.

Then I noticed the knife in his hand, dripping red.

Nesu’s body began to vibrate. The air around it became hazy and then his body was gone. In its place was a red fox.

~*~

Teseen pulled me into his arms.

“Thank god, you’re okay, Layla!”

I had so many questions, but they could wait. I stood up on the tips of my toes, tilted my head up and kissed his lips.

He didn’t move at first, then pulled me right up against him. He pushed his tongue into my mouth and tangled it up with mine. As he kissed me, if felt right. Multiple doorways of emotion suddenly opened. I felt such a strong connection with Teseen, it was as though we had known each before, known a deep, long-lasting love.

His voice channeled in my head.

“You know I can’t live without you!”

“I knew you would find me again,” I replied.

His eyebrows raised up suddenly and he grinned. I frowned. Then I realized my reply to him did not come out of my mouth. None of this made any sense, but it felt like it was meant to be and I wanted more of him, all of him. An urgency possessed me which I couldn’t stop. It was greater than just me, Layla.

He yanked my long sleeve dress up over my head and pulled me down on top of him on the sofa. I felt the pounding of his heart through my skin. As his lips touched mine I remembered a hundred other kisses going back over the eons. Under a cactus as a sand storm rose up in the distance, hiding away under the floor boards of a house as bombs exploded over our heads, after dancing around a roaring bonfire naked, holding a new born baby in my arms, a man just changed from being a hawk.

He rolled on top of me, yanked my underwear down over my toes, and crept up my thigh with soft kisses. As they reached the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, the throbbing inside me pulsed hard like the war drum. I groaned into his chest as he pressed my thighs gently apart with his muscular leg.

The memories and passion of our transcendental love washed through my mind and body, compounding my feelings further with every memory. I had never wanted a man to possess me as much as I did right at that moment. I had waited since who knew how many life time’s ago to be with him again.

He teased my entrance, which was more moist than it had ever been in my life. As his hips thrust slowly upward our bodies joined and our energies flow together and harmonized. Time seemed to both freeze and expand forward and backward simultaneously.

I could feel him deep inside me. My pelvis curved up to meet his desire. His dark eyes stared into mine. I recognized his woody scent which grew stronger the faster he thrust inside me. I breathed it in deeply, grabbed his ass and sunk my fingers in. He groaned and breathed faster as he made us one.

As the pleasure rippled through my body, I had another vision. I saw myself as a young woman with long blond hair. I came out of the cottage in the valley, carrying a candle. I placed it on the ground in a circle of other burning candles and stepped in the middle. I incanted words to the night sky. Then I looked up and waited. I held out my arm. It had a leather covering laced tightly around it. I heard a flapping sound and suddenly felt pressure on my arm. The hawk gripped tightly and looked at me. Then it hopped down to the ground and turned into a naked man. He came towards me. The moon light reflected off the pendant around my neck. Then his arms were around me and his lips against mine. And it felt right.