Evanescence 5.

Part 5

“OMGdss! Shit!, shit, shit, shit!” I repeat over and over as I rush through the trailer hopping into a colder than I like shower and get f-ing shampoo in my eyes and then drying off and running into my room and start to delve through my meager closet.

Of COURSE, SHE is there and with every choice I make she’s going.
“Nope, I don’t think so, too flirty, too dowdy, too butch….”

She is having waaay too much FUN with this.

I’m getting frustrated and I’m already nervous as hell because I think I just might have a thing for my best friend. “You’re not fucking helping you know that!” I bitch at her with my hands on my hips.

“You want my help?”

“YES!”

“You’re taking your motorbike?”

She rummages through my clothes and tosses me a push up bra and nice panties and then a pair of tight faded jeans and grabs one of my old boy t-shirts my old Led Zeppelin one with the album cover of houses of the holy on it. She takes a pair of shears to the bottom of it making it a loose belly shirt.

“Ooh, very biker chic.” I smile as I’m squeezing myself into the jeans. I have to jump up and down twice before they slide into place. They’ll stretch thankfully. I look at that shirt… “I can’t wear that it’s just too redneck.” I grab one of my favorites a soft pink cashmere sweater and pull it over my body and adjust it right.

SHE smiles at me. “Good girl, that’s the spirit.” I stick my tongue out at her then put on a…No, no make up right now. I put a few things into my purse and stuff my purse into my backpack. I put on my gloves and leather jacket and head out the door and turn my bike over and drive out of the trailer park and head through town towards Shaun’s house. I stop at the grocery store and get a bunch of junk food and a bouquet of flowers for his mom.

I pull up to Shaun’s house and smile but I’m so nervous. The house is nice but really old and nearly three stories and is a old farm that his parents moved to leaving California for here when Shaun was like five years old. Hell we’ve known each other since primary school. His parents are really different but in a cool way. His Mum’s an organic farmer and grows her own vegetables in these raised beds made from recycled/re-purposed lumber and compost. There are two greenhouses and several fields of weird heirloom varieties of things. She sell a lot of stuff to the grocery stores but mostly she sells milk crates of organic grocery orders that she delivers to clients like the milkmen used to.

I think I’m going to like her more and more than I used to. THE Goddess is very up to date and a really green goddess. I see charms tied to fence posts and blessing charms tied to the sticks saying what’s planted where. Shaun’s mom’s a wiccan? I take a second look, They’re a different manifestation face charms, all made out to Gaia the Earth Mother. That’s just another face for HER.

Shaun’s Dad is an engineer you can tell by the garage full of recycled junk that he’s always turning into something else. If not that then the solar panels in banks on the roof of the garage and the house and the windmill set up just out of the way.

I see the cars of the guys and his parents in the big gravel driveway. I park the bike and slowly get off. It’s the longest thirty feet of my life walking up to the screen door at their porch. I know everyone here. They knew me and I’m scared, shaking just a little bit.

I take a breath and another…~Goddess?, Please Give me strength!~

I’m suddenly not there on the walk, I’m back to earlier Kissing Shaun and him kissing me and reliving how much I loved that. How much about the new me I discovered then. The comment about the guys and having a girl there in the group.

Yeah, yeah…I’m a girl, I’m a decent looking girl (If I do say so myself.) and these guys aren’t used to that!, I can do this. Yeah I can do this.

I walk up and ring the doorbell. You don’t usually do that here. You just go in but I do want to make a good impression. His mum comes to the door looking puzzled. “Hello? Can I help you miss?”

“Uhm, Hello Mrs. Quinn it’s me Raine.”

“Raine?….oh my, Raine…”

I can’t help it I’m nerved up and scared and this isn’t the guys it’s being judged by another woman. I lower my eyes. My shoulders kind of hunch from my old habit as a guy, and from my slave life.

She comes outside and hugs me. “I’m sorry honey, I mean we heard things and Shaun told me when he got home this morning but I’d never guess you’d be this pretty. Come on in the house Raine, you’re welcome here anytime. You might be different but that’ll never change. This is still practically your home too.” I sniffle and smile at her.

“I’m sorry for the EMO but I was really nervous and Y’know hormones and stuff.”

“I know honey but never admit to that in front of the boys, they’ll use it to justify all sorts of shit.”

As soon as she says “shit” I know everything’s going to be fine. Mandy Quinn isn’t the type of person to swear in front of strangers. Me, I’m different I’m family….It feels good to have that weight off of me. It feels good to be back.

As soon as we’re inside the smell hits me along with the warmed air from cooking and I’m shoved into experiences from my Slave self again…Gumbo, good gumbo from the smell of it too. I can smell greens and cornbread too. I can’t help but slip verbally as I take off my shoes.

“Dat Shaune, he’s done cooked us up some tres bonnes food non?” I see Mrs. Quinn look at me quizzically but amused.

“Yeah…Shaun’s learned a lot since he was gone. He left here a teenager and came back a young man to us. It’s really nice actually he helps a lot more with the farm chores and he’s into it. You’ve changed too Raine, Nice accent. Are you getting into drama?”

It was the comment on my accent that made me slip out of it.

“Uhm, no It’s just something I’ve picked up.”

“Well you do it perfectly, I’m from Georgia originally so I’ve been to most of the south as a kid and you just had a real mouthful of cotton there.”

“Mouthful of cotton? Did I mumble?” I ask.

“No, no it’s slang down home it’s an old saying really it just sounds like you were born down in the Bayou.”

“Oh, cool uhm thanks Mrs. Quinn. Oh these are for you.” I pass her the small bouquet of flowers.

She smiles as she takes them. “Sunshine Daisies (Gerberas), You didn’t have to Raine.”

“Well it’s good manners to bring something, and I couldn’t bring a bottle of wine so…I though you’d like them for the table.”

She smells them as she guides me into their kitchen. I love her kitchen because it’s huge with that farmhouse country kitchen with the old cupboards and that really long counter top. They don’t build houses like these any more. She takes then and puts them into an old pickle jar of water and arranges them out to look fuller before setting them on the table.

Then I see Shaun.

Tanned and lean yet with muscle clearly showing and him wearing this thin white muscle shirt…(I’m not calling it a wife beater, I hate that term.)…He’s just got denim  ¾ cut off like you see wrestlers like Stone Cold Steve Austin wear. It’s not like he’s a redneck, he’s not. It’s just comfortable probably.

Those pants…really show off his really cute ass.

He turns and smiles at me. “Hey the guys are downstairs watching Avatar on DVD until the food’s ready if you want to go down?”

“Uhm, I think I’ll wait until supper up here okay? That smells awesome.”

“Thanks, Gumbo is something that I can cook.”

I take off my leather jacket and go over to watch and peek curious from my southern life. I lean against the counter and he smiles at me. “Lemonade? Or Iced tea?” He offers.

“I’ll have an Iced tea thanks.”

He goes and gets the drink for me in a mason/jelly jar here that his family uses for cups I take a sip and smile. I missed this. Lots of lemon in it and earl grey tea with the bergamot too brewed hot and then sweetened just right with honey. These are flavors I’m used too, these are flavors my other selves have had.

“Mmm, I missed this.”

I watch him cook or finishing actually he’s adding just a few things to the gumbo just before he’s going to serve it. I see him taking out a tray of BBQ chicken thighs and he cuts them in two halves before adding them to the big pot of liquid. There’s some bits that come free and I sneak those and he slaps at my fingers each time I try with a “Hey!” he does peel the crispy skin off and feeds/or teases and taunts me with it before feeding me it.

Mmmn, It’s his dad’s recipe. Just some Jack Daniels BBQ sauce on the chicken and then it’s rolled in regular shake and bake. It’s a bit overdone and dry as we share the thigh meat but after some time in the gumbo it’ll soften and still be perfect. He adds in a bowl of shrimps in something called Seracha? And Old bay spice.

It doesn’t take long before he’s calling the guys up for Supper and his folks too. The guys stare at me. “Raine?”

“Yeah, Hey guys it’s me?’

“Jesus!, yer a babe!”

I manage too blush, but grin at them. We sit to eat and it’s awkward for awhile with me being so different. Until Shaun comes to my rescue by asking me what kind of character I’m going to take. I say that I’m not sure because I don’t know the new edition rules or changes and stuff. Jamie is our game master and has an OCD amount of books in about ten different game systems, that’s not counting stuff like Palladium’s Games or White Wolf stuff that publish multiple product lines. We don’t play D&D anymore we refuse to. There’s been too many editions and they stop producing the stuff you have or liked. Money grubbing arses. I’m sorry It’s a personal rant of mine. And like the time I’ve written in this paragraph we’re gone lost in the conversation of blissful geekdom. I’m soon just Raine again, I’m a girl because, They still kind of treat me like one, but like a sister whose not their sister. They watch some of what’s said because I’m a girl but they say stuff that they’d never get to say in a normal situation.

Oh BTW in my opinion TSR only made three good products. The first edition Advanced D&D, The Dragonlance hardcover rulebook to go with those amazing books and modules and advanced Marvel super heroes. They killed the love I had for it when they started changing too much and I Hate Wizards of the Coast for ruining it more.

I’m having a very good time. The gumbo’s spicy, really spicy and it’s weird My Spaniard likes the heat and yet the flavors are new, my southern self knows and loves this but she’s pissed because there’s stuff in this we/I don’t recognize in both taste and textures. She loves Okra that’s in it and I’ve never had it before or have really eaten spicy food like this. I mean we’re in Michigan.

The greens are different, I like collard greens and he’s done the pork fat bit right with the bacon but there’s diced hot pepper…of somekind in it. It takes me a few tastes before I like them.

His cornbread definitely needs a lot of work. Way to dry, according to the southern me. Myself, the me that’s always been me, been Raine is just all impressed as hell that Shaun can cook. Desert is awesome but simple Hot baked chocolate pudding with a spoonful of vanilla ice cream in the middle of it. Mmm, I suck on my spoon. I girl such on the spoon and happily go off to my chocolate place. I know the guys are all staring at me as I do that and Yes I’m doing it on purpose. (giggle)

It kinda makes me feel flirty in that good way. It makes me love being a girl now.

We do the dishes as a group and then head down stairs to start gaming and making characters. We listen to tunes and Benji is as funny as ever and Chris is still a goof. The only thing different is Mike not being here with us. When I’m not making my character I’m dancing to the tunes instead of plopping my but in front of the X-box. It takes hours to get things ready for our first session to get underway.

I’m playing a Mage-type of character naturally that is a bit of a shaman but a white girl who’s a blonde girl with dreadlocks and I use my slave self’s knowledge to role-play out her accent perfectly. I have a blast as we settle in for an All-nighter as a way to welcome me home. I call home to let Mom know where I’m going to be.

***

Athena:

I’m sound asleep after a bad night and an even worse break up with Nate. I found him cheating on me and he wasn’t really all that upset about it. “What did you really expect huh? You’re fucking driven to be some kind of super agent Andy you just don’t know to say when and come home do you?”

Well that led to a fight, and a screaming match. I’m so sick of people not getting me but I’m cursed. Literally cursed so there’s no guy who will ever get me. I’m more than driven to be the best FBI agent I can be.

I’m a Goddess, No I’m serious. My real self is the Greek goddess Athena. I’m immortal and was born right on Olympia. Why am I here, on Earth? I want a life, I want a life worth living and that wasn’t happening as things were. See we fell out of favor when the Romans switched to their one god. Faith equals mana, it creates the very power structure that we use to perform our majiks and use our powers. Without it we winnow away and are forced to leave the world of mankind and live our days in exile in the divine realms.

If you set foot on earth without enough power there’s ancient laws of power there that render you next to powerless or really close to mortal unless you’re in the power so strong you’re still very much a god or goddess. The Hindu gods are that powerful still.

I guess it’s kind of like money. If you’re ultra rich you get to go through life by different rules than if you’re broke. Power wise I’m broke.

I could have stayed home. But I’m not one to be like that. After a few thousand years the living with the arrogant useless people/gods/demi gods of home where driving me crazy. I’m a war goddess, I’m supposed to be a goddess of justice and wisdom. I just couldn’t stay there watching as people tore themselves apart while the things that went bump in the night still hunted and bumped in the night.

So I left home and came here. I’m so close to human, I need to eat and to sleep just not as much as humans do. I can boost myself and what I can do by using mana as well as use the majiks I do know. I can be killed and the body I’m in will die but I’m dumped back home to Olympia. There has to be a year and a day before I can return to earth. Each time I do it takes Essence from me in a permanent way. So each time I die I lose power forever from my true god self. Most gods are power hungry idiots who’d never risk reducing themselves since we are living on such low power. Existing really I don’t call it living.

But Nate left me for the girl he’d been sleeping with. My fourth trashed relationship. What I am doesn’t spare my feelings. I still went to bed more drunk than was wise and bawled my eyes out over being so lonely.

My radio kicks in blaring up the song by Evanescence “Bring me to life.” and there’s a feeling settling on me I haven’t felt in ages. I was in power then…Amazonian majik? Moving in the world again. There hasn’t been one of them…No. It’s her, It has to be.

The Evanescence of The Goddess has returned?

Why?

How? The bloodline was destroyed with the very last one being killed in Salem.

Confused yet? If I’m Athena then I’m Not The Goddess?

No, for one she is a primal force. Way older than myself. None of my Sister Goddesses are her or even manifestations of her. There’s a few ancient terms for her Like Gaia and Mother Earth and others, a lot of the goddesses of women and stuff are just copy cats and knock offs trying to horn in on her power. The Primals are forces not real Gods.

No.

They’re bigger, older around since the Old Ones.

Our interaction not much, most gods won’t go to something like HER, won’t ask her for help or teaching. Atemis did when she lost Orion. Atemis started the Amazons after that point. They recruited me as a agent of justice. We wanted to find a way then to change the world. To bring peace to the world and care for all under our care. My sister and I both gave our blood to the first Amazons to work the majik. My menstrual blood forever gone. The amazons would be my daughters. The dark forces that fed off of evil and conflict made sure they were crushed and gone. How dare we seek to change the world.

The Evanescence scared them. The great majik wielders of the Amazonians took the innate power of our blood and created a separate bloodline within their own bound by being users of mana. This was the power to have who and what they were as people passed down to the next generation through their majik. The fully realized Evanescence would rival us gods and more importantly rival them…So another reason they were obliterated and those that didn’t help destroy them…did nothing to save them either.

I’m still pissed about that betrayal. I’ll never be able to bear children. Not as a Goddess or here on earth. I’m still broke by that a little. I feel alone so much during times like these and not even human…I’m not, not really but It hurts…I feel like the biggest fake there is sometimes.

But this? Is it real? Am I feeling this? Is she here? Or am I just wishfully thinking?

My cell-phone rings and I flip it open lying in bed.

“Yeah?”

“DiMaggio?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“We got a murder for you, It looks like something you’re following.’

“Alright, give me a bit and I’ll be there. Give me the address.”

I get up and shower and get dressed and ponytail my hair back out of my face and pull it through the space in the back of my hat. I stick to my Victoria secret stuff under my dress pants and black bureau issued v-necked T-shirt. I pull on my thin Kevlar shaped vest under that though before I go out. I’m used to wearing armor. I might be a goddess but I’m not in a hurry to dies another mortal death or lose anymore power. Beside’s what I felt just changed things.

I put my back up in my ankle holster and my Berreta in my shoulder sling. I get guff from the guys at using it. It’s heavy and not as flash as the Glocks that everyone seems to like. I’m Greek and Roman both so I split the difference in this life and I’m Italian American.

I grab a Redbull out of my fridge on the way out and get in my Dodge Charger and head to the call.

Stucky’s is a cheap assed little strip joint on the edge of Little Havana. The Miami-PD are there and the CSI guys too. There’s some press and looky loos about but behind the tape. I see Jason Garret one of the office local agents and walk over to where he is with his partner Eddie Stone. Jason passes me a much needed coffee. “Morning Andy.” Eddie chips in with an “Andrea…this looks like your kind of freakshow kind of thing.” As he lights a smoke. I sip my coffee but my middle finger’s sticking out at him from around the cup as I do. “It’s Miami How can you tell?”

Jason looks at me. “C’mon.” and he heads inside.

The reek of Brimstone and Ichor fills my other-human senses. I see the tell tale signs of a murder but also of a demonic sending. A powerful dark demon was calling home for instructions. I look at the mirror over the sink full of now tainted blood. He smashed the victims face into it and I can see the fractal pattern in it left from the energy burn of the soul or the essence of the victim being burned away. It broke the mirror into a three armed spiral when the guy died. You won’t really see it unless you really know what to look for. I use some mana and a mild charm to pull their attention away from it.

The guy, the vic in question is folded in half and tied into a reverse fetal position…Yeah folded back to front. It’s really sick and twisted and a mockery of the form of a baby, of life of humankind. Demons like shit like that.

This is why I’m on the FBI’s serial killer task force and homicide investigation team. A good 20% of the serial killings that happen in the world are done by things that go bump in the night.

I go through the crime scene talking it up like the thing that did this really is a human who thinks he’s the thing that actually did this.

I track back the thing to where it came through. It was still hot as it were. It’s demonic power staining the earth like a radioactive finger print. I fake a hunch and a search as we narrow it down to the tenement where it came out of. The scent of death fills the place as dozens of strays were killed in sacrifice on a makeshift altar. The bodies were just tossed to rot in the Miami heat so the place id full of decomp smells and flies and maggots. I direct them around to get everything logged and bagged as I look at the writing on the wall over and over in the blood of animals.

Rapture, The Demon Rapture is walking the earth once more…If murder had a saint…

He’s here, He’s going to go after the girl. I have to find her before he does….