Night of Endless Portals

Whinny’s words sounded in my mind: “don’t leave Tia behind,” as I roused the others before the fireplace.

“Harriet? What’s wrong?” I could have kissed Malia when she used my proper name without a moment’s hesitation.

Tia rubbed sleep out of her eyes and said, “is there a man running outside our window”

I twitched in surprise at her guess, but restrained any further physical reactions. “We need to go save someone. Get dressed real quick and come with me.”

“What about Alaric?” Tia pointed to his sleeping form. For the first time since he’d lost his arm, he looked healthy. I could have been wrong, but it looked like he might have started to recover.

“We’re gonna come back for him, don’t worry.”

Malia didn’t question me further, she just threw on her snowsuit and boots. We had to help Tia dress, but we only lost a minute or so in the process.

It struck me as odd that none of the shots from the man outside’s pistols rang out to our sanctum. But that didn’t matter at the time, what mattered was saving the man outside. Or at least trying.

No snow blocked the front door, so it swung open freely once we unlocked it. I would have preferred to lock the door, but we lacked a key and besides, no one else wandered in the snows that evening. If they had, I would have expected to come upon them earlier.

We snaked out and around the right side of the house and through the wire fence. At least a foot of snow impeded our progress, so I had to carry Tia. Though I had gone barefoot, the snow didn’t bother me or even chill my toes. I could feel the slick wetness of the snow as it melted against the heat of my skin, but not even a fraction of the cold reached me.

A fancy wooden swing set, complete with a little hut at the top sat in the backyard of this house. A neighbor had owned something like this when I was a kid, but his had a blue tarp roof instead of the wood shingles this particular set supported. We skirted around the swing set and moved to the back of the fence.

Bare feet made climbing the wire fence in the back yard of the hour almost too easy. I handed Tia over to Malia and got to the top of the fence. Setting my legs over the edge, I jumped into the snow on the other side. Once down, Malia and I helped Tia climb up and I caught her before she fell over my side. Malia struggled with her heavy boots to climb the fence, tearing her coat in the process. But we still managed.

Out here in the open, the occasional pops of the man’s pistols made him sound like he fled from his pursuers a great distance away. If I hadn’t seen the man running, I would not have been able to pinpoint him. Judging from the direction he’d been running, I led Malia and Tia off toward where I expected him to be now. My goal was to head him off and meet him, and I had an idea of where to do that based on my glimpse of the outside of our little neighborhood.

We’d only been here for a night and I already thought of the house and those nearby as ours. It was then that I decided we should check the other houses in the area to see if we could gather more supplies.

But I had a different goal in the moment: save this stranger and his kid.

Malia matched my pace, but I took Tia from her so the seven-year old didn’t have to try to keep up with us. She didn’t slow me down or even strain my body as I dashed through the snows. Malia huffed out great gasps as she struggled to keep pace.

The spot I’d chosen for our meeting loomed up quick. It was a large house, like two ranch homes stacked atop each other and slathered with adobe. There was probably a better name for architecture like that, but I wasn’t going to let it bother me in the moment. Taking cover beneath an awning, we diverted around the edge of the house. Small pops from the man’s guns provided a way to track his approach now. I still couldn’t pick out his exact direction from the shots, but they grew louder, which I took to be enough.

“Over there!” Tia pointed to the man as he flew between a pair of distant houses. I’d missed his destination by a few houses. My heart sank to see the man’s companion nowhere near by; I’d failed him.

Undaunted, I shouted at the man and charged toward him. At the same time he glanced up a blue and white bolt of frost zoomed by the man and missed him by a foot. It exploded a few yards away on the street and spread ice in a ring around the impact.

The man looked back over his shoulder and then at me, made his decision and turned. His trench coat flapped in the breeze as he sped by me. A small trio of little furry men rolled out from between the buildings and into the street, sliding across the snow as if they played a game.

Oversized feet flapped against the snow-covered pavement as the three creatures oriented themselves on us.

“Get behind me!” I wasn’t sure my magic shield, or whatever it was, would work, but the man and Malia both took cover as I shouted.

Three bolts wavered through the air like arrows from bows and struck the front of my blue sphere with the sound of shattering glass. No icy explosion resulted and, as far as I could tell, the temperature didn’t drop a bit.

The man shouted, “nice work girl,” as he aimed over my shoulder. His gun fired twice, catching one of the beasts in the chests as they roared with a sound that belied their stature and rushed us. Two more shots brought down a third furred monster as the last one reached my shield.

I wrapped my body around Tia and braced myself for pain as I heard Malia shout. When I peeked through my slitted eyes, I found the third critter dead in the snow. Malia stood over it, her boot covered with a thin sheen of ice. She shivered as she put her fists on her hips and raised her head.

“Good job everyone! What now?”

“We get the hell away from here before the others come looking for their kin.” The man in the western hat eyed the group of us and shrugged. “Where did you three come from?”

I pointed up to our shelter. “That house over there.”

“Ugh, that eyesore? I mean, I hope it’s not really yours… but that’s as ugly as a hairless pussy.” The man took out his knife and proceeded to stab it into the nearest little monster. As the blue blood flowed out of its skin, I grew woozy.

Malia grabbed my shoulder and helped Tia into her arms. “Are you okay, Harriet?”

I turned away from the sight of the newcomer butchering the kills, but the sound of metal tearing meat and the sewer-rank smell of freezer burn and punctured intestines forced remnants of the cake I’d eaten up and out.

We waited a short distance off while the man efficiently sliced up the kills. When he retuned, I couldn’t tell that he’d taken any parts of the corpses, but nausea kept me from checking out the bodies to see what remained.

The stranger eyed me with a raised eyebrow and said, “I’m ready. Let’s head out.”

We picked a different path through the snow, following the streets as we returned to our winter home. The stranger never introduced himself and the way he jumped at sounds and scanned the houses with a cautious gaze discouraged us from speaking.

When we rounded the turn back to our house, I found myself holding my breath. At our departure I’d been sanguine about leaving Alaric alone in the house, but upon our return my fears caused a surge in my blood. I spotted our stoop and breathed easy. The only tracks leading from the house belonged to us. One pair of bare foot prints and one booted. If anyone else had invaded our house, they would have had to break windows or fly. Not that I could place odds on either option anymore. The door wasn’t locked, so that soothed the last of my worries.

The inside of the house remained as we’d left it, with a fire blazing in the hearth and Alaric sleeping nearby.

Tia scrambled out of my arms and walked backwards as she spoke. “Now that we’re inside, what’s your name, mister?”

I shut the door and the stranger removed his hat. His hair bunched up on the top of his head in a version of a topknot. “Name’s Kain, missy. What’s your name?”

“I’m Tia, and this is Alaric!” Racing to him as she spoke, Tia laid her hand on him. “And the lady with no clothes on is Harriet and her friend is Malia.”

“Howdy ladies. Thank you kindly for the rescue.” Kain held his hat to his chest as he bowed to us. As he did, his sleeves pulled back revealing a mass of tattoos on his skin in black ink. “Is there a room where I might refresh myself?”

“Um, upstairs…” As I started to speak, Malia laid a hand on my arm.

“Let me go up and check the place out first. When we know the coast is clear, I’ll come back.”

“Surely. Thank you again for the consideration.” Kain’s skin was dark and weathered by the sun with lines as deep as the oldest person in the Hospice. I studied his clean-shaven face while Malia ran upstairs to check out the other rooms.

“If you’ll forgive my presumption, it’s not often I see a priestess dressed in such… unusual clothing, ma’am.” Kain didn’t look at me when he said it, as if he were afraid to see if he offended me. Or he was too engaged in searching the wall near the door. I didn’t say anything as I watched him, I wasn’t really sure I was a priestess as such. Upon finding the closet, Kain opened the door and smiled. He hung his hat on a hook on the door and the tension in his shoulders faded. Then he turned to look at me as he shut the door. “You are a priestess, aren’t you?”

I squirmed at his question. “I… suppose.” In truth I wasn’t sure what I was. Haunted, possessed, or just the victim of odd circumstance. Whatever it was, I had powers and could heal. Priestess was as close as anything.

“Who are you?”

“Kain, but I mentioned that already. Former parson, cattle rancher… uh, I was a deputy once. Now I s’pose you’d call me a bounty hunter.”

“Bounty hunter?”

“Yup, I hunt demons, monsters, anything that might spring from one of the End Portals.”

“End Portals? What do you mean?” As I asked, my memory finally dredged up some useful information. “You’re the cowboy from the portal in the school, holy shit!”

“Language, Harriet!” Tia shouted at me from the living room couch where she’d torn off most of her snow clothing and wrapped herself in a heap of blankets.

My words had caught Kain’s attention. I could tell from the way his foot twitched. “You were there when the portal opened and I fell through?”

“Yeah, there was a… demon thing chasing you back then.” At the mention of the demon chasing him, I realized no one had mentioned Kain’s companion. Should I have brought it up? I didn’t know one way or the other.

“Demon? Oh, you mean Reggie.” Kain snorted. “He wasn’t chasing me, he was trailing behind and doing his job. I’ll recall him in the morning. ” Kain yawned and looked around and spotted our used cake pot. “You folks have any food? Or better yet a pot and a half of coffee?” Kain licked his lips when he mentioned the latter.

“I think we do. Let me check.”

I walked over to the pantry and Kain followed. “So what happened to your knickers, girl? You look like a kick girl in a review.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I rubbed my shawl between my fingers. “Roo here is all of the clothing I need.” Kain opened his mouth to ask another question, but I waved him off. “I’m just messing with you, cowboy. But these are my clothes. I don’t need any others and you can’t see anything I care about.”

Kain’s hand reached up and slid over his neck. “I guess so, not that I’m sure I agree on that point.”

He eyed my backside and I flushed for a moment. “I’m flattered, but my face is up here, cowboy.”

His face turned the same dark shade mine had and I felt a little less like a piece of meat under glass. And to his credit, Kain dropped it after that, though that might have had more to do with the can of coffee I produced.

“This is what you’re looking for, right?” Kain’s eyes widened at the sight of the huge can.

“Indeed, ma’am. Now if we could just scare up a pot, I’ll get to brewing us a cup.”

I showed Kain where the pots and pans were and he set to work with vigor trying to find a suitable vessel. He picked out a metal carafe and whistled a jaunty tune as he all but skipped over to the fire. When he reached the spot just short of standing between the hearth and Tia, he bowed to her and said, “may I interpose myself, ma’am?”

Tia giggle and waved him off like royalty. “Thou mayest! Oooh!”

I had no idea what she was going for, but Kain nodded to her and sat down on the hearth. He picked up one of the iron pokers and, still whistling, craned his coffee pot over into the fire. I’d missed him filling it with water or coffee, but suspected he knew what he was doing better than me. Once he had the pot in the flames where he wanted he wiped his hands off on his jeans and cleared his throat. “Now to the matter of food. I don’t mind eating wendigo, but the meat can be a little rough on the palette. You folks have a spot of bread or something I could whip a stew up with?”

“I… I’ll be honest you’re free to take what you want from this place, Kain. Just don’t try anything funny with the four of us and we’ll get along fine.”

He put his hand on his chest and said, “I won’t harm a hair on the heads of anyone under this roof, word to God.” Kicking his foot up, he whistled his way over to the kitchen. “And thank you kindly for letting me rifle through the dry goods.”

Malia had returned from the upstairs so I said, “Did you find anything bad?”

She winked. “Oh yeah, a whole pack of hoodlums and scoundrels to match the one we just picked up.”

“Sounds good, tell them to keep the noise down while we sleep.”

As comfortable as I found myself with Kain, I wasn’t sleeping while he was the only person awake in the house. Malia apparently felt the same way as she stood with her legs pressed against the back of the couch. Tia lacked any compunction against sleeping with Kain in the room. After their brief, formal exchange, she drifted back off with her head supported by the mass of blankets she’d gathered about herself.

Malia started pacing, and I waved her over. “I’ll keep watch tonight if you want to sleep, promise.”

Arms folded, she nodded toward Kain. “If he tries something, just start screaming.”

From the yawning and the bags under her eyes, I could see that Malia needed to get some rest. I helped her curl under the covers next to Tia. Like the seven-year old, Malia drifted off in moments, snoring away as if she’d been sleep walking until then.

Kain’s whistling had lose its voice and turned into something breathy and faint. He grinned and the corners of his eyes wrinkled as he tossed ingredients into a large stock pot. Meandering over to watch him, I found a slab of meat before him being chopped up along with a variety of spices and canned foods.

“You look like you know what you’re doing here.” I pointed to the mounds of foodstuffs he’d gathered on the island.

“Oh, this ain’t my first campfire cookout, darlin’.” He squinted as his grin grew wider. The knife in his hand flew through the air with a steady rhythm. “Don’t hurt that I enjoy it too.”

“You look like you’re in your element.”

The knife hovered over a small pile of canned tomatoes. “That’s almost exactly right.” He pointed to the ceiling and around him with the knife. “Don’t usually get such a nice kitchen, or nice tools. Might bring take a knife or two away with me.”

“You came from the other side of the portal.” I’d skated around my real question for long enough. “Where did you come from?”

Kain’s smile faded and he shrugged. “If’n I told you it was the other side of the portal, you’d keep pressing, right?” I nodded at him. “Then how about we leave it at this: I come from another world, a lot like this one, only the portals showed up in my world a long time ago.”

“Bounty hunter?”

Snorting, Kain shook his head. “You’re not gonna give up, then, are you?”

“I’d be lying if I said I would.” I dipped my hands in our water basin and said, “Why don’t I help you and you tell me what happened to you?”

Kain took up cutting his way through ingredients. “There’s not all that much to tell. Like I said, the portals showed up in my world a good time ago. Been hopping between portals in the meantime trying to find my way to somewhere with a lot fewer monsters and preferably no demons. Well, as little of the buggers as possible.”

“Demons?”

Kain licked his lips. “You’re a priestess, right? You should feel the presence of the wrong kinds of monsters like bugs crawling over your skin. When you turn your sight upon them, they’ll either cower away or you’ll piss em off right good.”

I shook my head. “No demons so far then. Just a titan thing, a manticore and a tentacle monster.”

“Tentacle monster?” Kain’s knife didn’t miss a beat, but he slid his gaze to the left to look at me. I described the monster back at the school. It had come from the same portal Kain had, so I thought they might have been from the same place. “That, I’m afraid to say, is a damn sight worse than a demon. That’s a Beyonder.”

“Beyonder?”

For a second, Kain’s chopping pattern stopped. He twirled the knife in his hands and cracked his neck. “Beyonders are like the demons’ demon. Some of them are tiny, smaller than a gnat. Some are huge, bigger in every way than a titan. Best course with a Beyonder is to haul ass away from them. You don’t wanna mess with a Beyonder. They don’t give one damn about the light.” He resumed chopping, though the skin on his hand had prickled as if he’d caught a chill.

“But it’s okay to mess with demons?”

“Eh. Demons are magical and stronger than us on the balance. But folks like you have a leg up on them, they can’t stand people who can channel the light.”

I didn’t try to correct him, didn’t try to explain that I could no more channel “light” than I could do a headstand. And that might have been because I saw how much of a lie it would have been before I spoke. As far as I could tell, all of the powers I’d used since the Collapse had something to do with light. “Do you know anything about channeling the light?”

Kain had finished chopping the meat into thin slices. Without the blood and the horrible sounds, I could stand the sight no problem. He scooped the meat up with the blade and tossed it all into a pot next to him. He dredged his hands in our basin and dried them off with a towel on the countertop. With that bit of preparation done, he folded his arms and shook his head. “Not the least, to be honest. I was a parson, not a priest. And back then, God didn’t answer a one of my prayers, except the ones about whiskey.” He shifted his body to lean against the island. “Now how is it you can channel the light without knowing what you are or how you go about it?”

I shrank back under his gaze. Earlier, when he’s studied me, I’d felt like he was checking me out in a sexual or semi-sexual sense. But now his expression looked doubtful. The crinkle had faded from the corner of his eyes and his lips had turned down slightly. “Man, I don’t have the first idea. I just… I don’t know, woke up like this?”

It was more or less true. I didn’t know what happened to me, and though the change had been random at first, now it seemed permanent. At least that seemed like what happened after Whinny made me choose a new name. Kain acted like a nice guy, gave me information, and prepped food. I still wasn’t going to say one word about my encounter with Whinny. I hadn’t said anything about that to Malia, and I really liked her.

Kain’s eyebrow quirked. “I’d almost trade my hat for your thoughts, darlin’.” He looked over his shoulder back at Malia and Tia. “And with those two depending on you, you need to figure yourself out quick like.”

“Can you tell me about the other priests you’ve met then?”

“You really don’t know anything about this?” He waved his hands at me as Kain’s eyes narrowed as he unfolded his arms. “That’s not real common among your lot.” Kain turned back to the island and the meal he prepared and resumed sorting through ingredients.

I looked over at Malia and shook my head. “It just sorta happened. When someone tries to hurt me or people around me, a blue light comes out.”

“You hear anything when it happens, like the chanting of angels or such?” This time he didn’t shift his eyes or body to look at me.

“No.”

“That strip of cotton part of the effect?”

“Yeah, it is.”

Kain lowered the knife he used to chop through canned veggies. “I can tell you this much: those are part of your Vestments of Office. I’ve seen robes, a habit, and heck even armor. Ain’t never seen a little piece of muslin like that.”

“Do you have any idea what I can do?”

Kain’s whistling had ended when we started talking. But then it started up again, or so I thought. Then he raised his hand and covered his eyes. He laughing with a “Sss, sss” sound and shaking his head. He managed to calm down enough to speak again and wiped his face with a kerchief from his back pocket. “Ramona would be rolling in her grave if she heard you ask that question. I s’pose I can give you a few ideas.” He turned to face me as he picked himself up onto a stool and motioned for me to sit.

“You see, priests and priestesses dip into something I’ve always called the light. It’s not the proper term, Ramona would say it’s faith. But I know she’s wrong for a fact. Carlos was a priest utterly without faith. Crazy ol’ man didn’t believe in nothing. Light came to his hands as easy as a pistol to my own. Faster if’n I’m being honest.” Kain pantomimed pulling a pistol from his belt. “But I ain’t never seen a priest or priestess use the light as a weapon, only to protect, heal, or provide. Ramona could summon… she called it mana from heaven. Tasted like proper cooked fish, but chewed like lettuce. And a few bites a day would keep a man walking till the sun set. Carlos could draw a circle in the dirt and nothing, and I mean nothing could get through that circle till he decided. Both of them could heal the sick, injuries, and even draw out snake bites if needed.”

“Huh.” My profundities had no limit.

Kain snorted. “You really don’t know what’s going on then. Damnation.”

“What happened to those two?”

Hand going to the back of his neck, Kain was already shaking his head before I finished speaking. “They…” he sniffed, smacked his lips together and blew out a breath. “They both died, girl.”

“How?” The moment I spoke I wished I hadn’t.

Kain’s eyes shined with unspilt tears. “Ugly. And that’s enough said about that for a lifetime.”

“Sorry.”

Waving me off, Kain said, “I told you to ask, ain’t nothing you did wrong, so ain’t nothing you need to be sorry about. They were good folk, better than most if I’m being honest, but they’re both dead now. Nothin’ doin’ there.”

“So what’re you going to do next, cowboy?”

Kain rubbed his nose and snickered at me. “I don’t mind you calling me that. And I don’t rightly know yet. Chase down some more portals and bring Reggie back. Little bugger owes me a shave and a shoeshine. He’s a better cook than me too.”

“What do you mean, bring him back?”

Kain glanced back toward Malia and Tia and his shoulders bobbed from side to side. “It’s just something I can do. But it has to wait until morning.” With that semi-answer, Kain swiveled on his stool and turned back to his cutting board.

I stood there watching him work for a few seconds. Inspiration struck me so I let my eyes narrow and lose their focus as I looked at him. After a few breaths, I entered the dark void. Only Kain sat there on his stool with me.

A dozen dozen figures swirled over Kain, each of them with their hands or feet bound with his skin. Most of them resembled humans, though each of them bore some clear disfiguration, like the woman who floated over his head with her foot on the base of his neck. Where her eyes were supposed to be, two large horns jutted out like those of a bull. She wore a wedding dress and pointed toward me as she hovered.

As disturbing as the figures were, I felt nothing threatening from them. For all I knew, the woman was trying to warn me off from Kain, though I didn’t exactly believe that either. The impression I received was that they were bound to Kain both against his will and theirs.

An ephemeral version of Kain turned to regard me. His sallow skin sunk close to his face and he mouthed prayers of forgiveness toward me as the figure wove in and out of Kain’s body. When it caught my eyes, I heard it’s voice in my head: “Can’t ever rest, never pay the cost of Heron’s Nest.”

Its message delivered, the figured rejoined Kain and the intense feeling of sorrow sank into my heart. Kain was dangerous, I knew it as surely as I knew I had ten toes and ten fingers. But as long as we didn’t threaten him, he wouldn’t threaten us. Certainty filled me until it threw me out of the void and back into the world. I stumbled forward and Kain spun like a gunslinger in a Western.

He caught me on the tops of my shoulders and took a half step back, as if he were afraid to touch me in an untoward manner. The moment his skin touched mine, I fell back out of my body again.

A baby wailed in the tiny cradle before me. It was barely fit for the name cradle, it was more of a shoebox. The grey faded wood contrasted with the infant’s stark black hair. I poked her in the tummy, as soft as I could manage and her wailing subsided. She reached own, failing about her her hands until she grabbed my finger and pulled on it hard. I blinked and the same little girl walked beside me wearing a white floral lace dress. Flowers, dried and fresh, crowned her head as she clutched my finger still. We processed across a wooden floor toward an altar with a crucifix on the top. With a blink, she stood before me wearing a black habit. She bowed her head and clutched a rosary before her as she prayed. Her words held back a maelstrom of gibbering, fanged mouths as I unloaded every bullet in my gun into them. When my gun ran out of bullets, the horde still raged on, but from a touch at my right, my gun reloaded itself with shining silver ammunition. I turned to the figure as I fired into the crowd and my heart swelled with pride and joy.

Another blink and a handsome young man wearing a thin ribbon-like tie walked toward me with a tiny lock of oiled black hair sticking over his forehead. His tanned skin and gentle eyes pulled me in, but his fresh red lips, plump and always grinning stuck with me decades later. Blink and we stood facing each other around the back of the local saloon. He worked there as croupier, so he somehow managed to look even more dapper than the first time I saw him. A thin mustache framed his lips and made them even more alluring. I faced him, my heart stampeding through my chest like wild cattle. It was he who made the first move, who grabbed my hand and pulled me into him. And it was he who kissed me first. Blink and we stood beneath a pecan tree just in sight of town. The parson, a man I’d apprenticed myself to, stood on my right and my lover’s left. He bound our hands together while I wept like a maiden on her wedding night. I’d never forget the first time we kissed as husbands.

“Enough!” A voice pulled me out of the vision, tore me away from the next blink.

I shook myself as I stood back. Kain pressed his hands agains the side of the countertop, his eyes wild and wet from tears. The flesh on his neck trembled as he spoke again. “Please don’t do that again…”

“Ramona was your sister. Carlos was your… husband?”

Kain sniffed and cleared his throat. “Now I’d half like to know how you did that and half like to slap you for doin’ it.” Rather than take the smallest hostile step, his whole body trembled. “But the same way you sifted through my mind, I think I sifted through yours…” He didn’t speak for a moment and cleared his throat. “You’re like a warped reflection of Carlos. God almighty, I didn’t expect to meet someone like you here.” Kain wiped his hands down the front of his pants. “And you were bein’ honest when you said you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“I am so sorry, Kain.”

“Like I said, weren’t on purpose. But let’s not do that again.”

I scooted back away from him and pondered the deeper mystery that was Kain… Morgan. I knew his last name now. Kain and Carlos Morgan. It was almost too cute for words. Carlos smoked cigarets, which Ramona hated, and I could still smell the stale-sweet scent of his preferred brand on my lips.

Rather than risk a repeat of that experience, I walked around to the opposite side of the couch and nodded to him. “I’m going to go check on the others. If you need me, I’ll be up.”

Kain flicked his finger up and away from his forehead as if he were tipping his hat. Neither of us spoke again until morning, even when he moved the soup pot over to the fire and set it to cook. He didn’t sleep a moment that night and neither did I.