“Ah, Ma’m? Have you ever heard of a Damnedthing before?” I asked before she left.
“Yes Christian, I have. From what little I know they are elemental animal spirits tortured into obedience by demonkind. They are enormously powerful and quite insane. Can you describe it?” She stood up as she answered me.
“Well, kind of like a cross between a very long legged Kodiak brown bear with a smushed in face and the Devil’s own Rottweiler. About a ton or so when solid, and fifteen or sixteen feet tall on his back legs. His aura is red, green and purple. And I think he projects his thoughts in pictures.”
She was staring at me in outright astonishment.
“Well, Christian, you have succeeded in surprising me today! Several times! How delightful. Your Damnedthing sounds like its base spirit is that of a short faced bear. They were the largest of the bears to walk our planet and they died out over ten thousand years ago. So he’s a very old being as well. How such a creature landed in the hands of the demons is a troubling question, and now it is freely roaming about. Be careful, Christian. I would be very put out if you let anything happen to yourself. Goodbye.” And she slipped away through the tables and people like a wraith. A wraith with a really great tush.
Chapter 15
Determined to accomplish at least one of my goals, I headed into the park and found a table in the warm October sun, near the little kid’s playground, which was busy. I sat, drank my coffee and ate my bear claw, while staring off into the autumn dressed maple and elm trees that edged the playground. A group of nannies and Au pares were glancing in my direction, maybe nervous to have a potentially dangerous man near their charges. I took off my jacket so that my badge, cuff case and gun showed, figuring it would reassure them, then resumed my thoughts.
Senka was very convincing, but then so had Lydia been. I took a bite of bear claw and chewed while thinking the whole thing through. Why would they lie? What reason would they have to want me near Tatiana? I was just working through this line of inquiry when something tugged at my attention. A burst of wind had blown up a swirling column of colorful leaves among the trees.
Then I realized that there was no wind, at least near me or anywhere else that I could see. I looked closer and noticed that the leaves on the trees were all pushed away from each other, like a large object, about the size of a draft horse, was in the middle of them.
An image flashed through my mind, of a small child running toward a man sitting at a picnic table with his back to the child. The child was chasing a ball and the man was wearing the same clothes as I was. I whipped around and found a sturdy little toddler running in my general direction, his feet were inadvertently kicking the ball every time he went to pick it up and he was in danger of heading into the trees where the strange wind had been blowing. I was over to him and stopping the ball before I could think and the young au pare chasing him came to a sudden stop at my motion. Too quick. I gotta work on keeping to a slower speed around people, but I couldn’t chance him heading into the wooded area and encountering what I suspected lurked there.
The girl came up to me to retrieve her charge, her face lighting up in a big smile. She was really quite pretty and as she bent over to collect the young boy, her shirt billowed open in a way that invited my eyes to follow. When she looked up and kept smiling, I realized the view had not been an accident. Uh oh! I was wearing sunglasses and so I took the next step to scare her off, by removing them.
Taking off your sunglasses to show your eyes is a friendly gesture, unless you are possessed of violet eyes. Then, it has been my experience, that people beat a hasty retreat. She didn’t. In fact, her face flushed and she gulped and smiled even more, if possible. What the hell! When I need to scare someone away to safety, of course, it somehow backfires.
I took the direct approach.
“Ah Miss, there is a dangerous felon loose around here. You and your friends might want to move to a different part of the park, at least until we catch him.” I lied.
Her eyes rounded with astonishment. “Oh, then I am very glad that you are here to protect us.” Her accent was Slavic. She wasn’t acting very alarmed, even though she clutched my arm. Gently, I disengaged her grip and tried again. “Well, I’ll keep my eye on all of you, but I really need you to go back over with the others.”
“As long as you keep an eye on me, then okay.” Reluctantly, she headed back to the group of caretakers, all of whom were watching our byplay avidly. I settled back at the table only to get another vision. This one was of two bears doing the wild thing.
I spoke softly to the space in the woods.
“Ah Sparky, what was that about?” This time I got a vision of the girl clutching my arm and then the horny bears in the woods again.
“Ah, no, she’s not my mate,” I guessed. This time all I got was a sense of puzzlement.
“Well she is technically a potential mate and it does appear that for some reason she is interested, but I can’t.” Another puzzled thought.
“Well, the demons would kill her if I…er…took her as my ah mate.” I pictured several of the Hellbourne I had banished. An angry woof sounded, and the trees suddenly shook two stories up.
“Whoa, there Sparky, they’re not around now, but they would kill her if I went near her.”
It didn’t take a UN interpreter to realize that he carried a really big grudge for the Hellbourne. Another flash of thought came, this time of two rocks striking each other and sparking combined with a negative feeling. That one took a second to figure out.
“Oh, you don’t like me calling you Sparky?” Agreement.
“Well what do I call you?” Puzzlement this time.
I thought of the Mohawk word for bear, which made up about one quarter of my entire Mohawk vocabulary.
“How about Okwari?” I asked.
After a moment, a feeling of agreement came.
“Okay, Okwari it is.”
Pronounced correctly, it sounds like oh-kwah-lee.
A flash of me and Lydia arguing and then a quick flash of me protecting her from danger.
“Ah, that’s Lydia. She’s my friend. Sometimes we argue, but we will always protect each other. It’s what friends do.”
I got an image of myself tearing off Okwari’s hell collar. Then he woofed again, but softer and the leaves swirled up and up, and then the wind was gone. I watched the floating leaves return to earth. All feeling of his presence had disappeared.
I spent the rest of the morning soaking up the sun, which felt amazing after all the night hours I had been logging. I grabbed lunch at a pizza joint, then drove to One Police Plaza.
Roma’s squad was housed in a sublevel under the Special Operations Headquarters. There were no signs indicating ‘Special Situations’, just a block of offices behind a door numbered 2L117. A young blonde receptionist looked up when I came through after following the directions I had been given by the Desk sergeant upstairs. She gave me her full attention and asked, “May I help you?”
“Ah, I’m looking for Inspector Roma?”
“And you are?”
“Chris Gordon. I have an appointment.”
She nodded and finally smiled, “Yes, we’ve been expecting you, Officer Gordon. You can hang your jacket on the coat rack and I’ll just tell the Inspector that you’re here. I’m Olivia by the way.”
“Ah, nice to meet you Olivia, please call me Chris.” I hung up my jacket and turned back to find a seat in the tiny waiting area. Olivia was speaking into the phone while continuing to watch me. She smiled again as she hung up. “He’ll be with you shortly. Can I get you some coffee?”