Chapter 8
A New Kind of Darkness
∞
There were a lot of things that Whitney couldn’t see happen after Tommy left and she withdrew from him. She couldn’t see the flowers and the grass wilting around her as she absorbed the life that they contained. She couldn’t see the birds dropping from their nests, or the squirrels keeling over as she stole the simplistic souls that they possessed. She couldn’t see or hear Decker as he began to issue commands to his cronies, ordering them to begin their assault on her, pointing his finger first to them, and then to positions that surrounded her. She couldn’t hear the feet of Riley as she ran through the rest of the woods, or the feet of Jacob and Jessica as they trailed after. She couldn’t see or hear Tommy as he pursued them, nor could she feel his guilt about leaving her behind.
But she didn’t need to see or hear any of those things in order to do what she needed to do.
Whitney had her shadows and she had her awareness. And even though she couldn’t see what was happening with some of the lesser forms of life around her she could feel the surge of energy that sapping those life forms provided her.
Whitney unclipped her seeing cane from her belt and thumbed the button that actuated the inner pistons, releasing a shot of carbon dioxide, and forcing those pistons to extend outward, lengthening her cane to its full extension. It wasn’t designed to be a weapon, but she would start with it until she could take one of theirs.
“What’s this,” she didn’t hear Decker ask. “The blind and deaf girl is going to fight back with her cane?” he finished with a laugh, but he wouldn’t be laughing for long.
Whitney was happy to see that Mr. Simple (Cree to those that knew his name) was the first to make a move. His move was simple, taking his Escrima in both hands, attempting to swing it like a baseball bat, aiming for Whitney’s gut, in a wide and sweeping arc, Whitney blocked the move easily with her cane, spun, presenting her back to him momentarily, and thrust the butt of her cane into the crick of Cree’s throat. He fell backwards, bringing both hands to his injured neck, letting go of his staff in the process, and allowing Whitney to replace her cane with his weapon before it touched the ground.
Whitney didn’t need her sight to accomplish any of this. Her newly discovered awareness told her that the neurons in her mind and the nerve endings beneath the surface of her skin weren’t limited to just touch. They were so receptors that she could sense even the slightest vibrations in the air, similar to the way a spider can feel the vibrations in a web, but without the need for an actual web.
Whitney didn’t hear that Decker stopped laughing, but she still knew that he had done just that.
The raging crony did come next. He lifted his staff over his head with the intent of hammering it down onto Whitney’s head. His attempt was nothing more than an exercise in futility. Whitney dodged to the side, leapt onto his back as his forward momentum carried him into a hunched position, using her staff to hold herself onto his back; she choked him with it by lifting it over his head, with her hands on either side of his neck, and yanking backward. He choked out and fell to the ground.
But Decker wouldn’t be so easy and she knew that. The shadows of the other three cronies backed away from her as she suspected they would, but Decker didn’t back away. His shadow began to advance on her. She could feel his staff whirring around his body and she readied herself, stepping away from her previously conscious attacker, positioning herself in a place where she would have ample freedom of movement, and waiting for Decker’s first act of aggression.
∞
Decker didn’t come at her with discretion. His attack wasn’t a single brown leaf twisting in the breeze, a carrier pigeon carrying a one line message, or a widow with one cat to keep her company. Decker immediately saw that the ‘deaf and blind girl’ was a worthy adversary that wasn’t to be taken lightly and he attacked her as such. His attacks on her were fast and furious, desperately trying to bring her down quickly, like speeding bullets shot from an uzi, his staff whirring as it split the air, targeting her face, her neck, her waist, and her legs. Decker’s adversary was faster than anything he’d dealt with, however, and no matter how fast he pelted her with strikes and jabs, she blocked and dodged them. He had been training himself to fight with hand to hand weapons for as long as he could remember and he had taught some of his friends to do the same, often pitting himself against as many as three or four of them at a time just for the challenge, and never losing against any of them. But this girl was giving him a run for his money and he couldn’t understand it because she was just a tiny little girl to his eyes.
But she didn’t fight like one. That was for sure.
What she did fight like was a warrior, but not just any warrior. The girl fought like a younger version of the very warrior that had taught him to fight, the warrior that kept violating his nights, intruding into his dreams like a spear piercing an Elk. That warrior told him tales that chilled him, forcing him to believe the tales, by showing him things in his dreams that couldn’t be true, and proving to him that they were--or would be.
This warrior was a young woman who looked a lot like the girl that he was facing, but that couldn’t be, because the woman in his dreams wasn’t actually real. At least he didn’t think she could be real because the things that she could accomplish with a sword were impossible. The speed in which that warrior could move was unattainable, and her eyes were as shiny as a proof quarter.
The people in the quaint little corner of Missouri all thought that Decker was the biggest nuisance on the entire planet. Everyone hated him and he knew that. Decker Albright was a thorn in many people’s side because he did things that most people considered to be so outrageous and so unthinkable that no normal person would consider them. In their minds Decker was an abused child who was only reacting to the cards he was dealt, living a life of a lost boy, a boy brought up in a cruel drunken world, a boy that was corrected with a stiff hand, and passed that correction onto everyone else around him. But that wasn’t his motivation.
His motivation was to prepare himself for what the warrior told him was coming. She said it was still far down the road, but the world was going to need a hero and that hero couldn’t be a merciful hero. That hero would have to be a ruthless and vigorous fighter, a deadly snake, filled with venom, and ready to strike at the slightest provocation. He was filling the role nicely.
Decker took a step back after everything he tried against the girl had failed. He needed to regroup. She had taken everything he had given her, earning his respect as an adversary, but also challenging him. He couldn’t let her win. He was a venomous viper, striking when provoked, like he was taught to do.
The girl before him showed him that she knew what she was doing. She stalked back and forth before him, matching him move for move as he did the same before her, slicing his staff through the air, twirling it back and forth, hand to hand, looking for another opportunity.
Then she stopped and squared off to him. She stood at the ready for a second, ready for another bout; her sunglasses still hung on her face, but did so awkwardly, slightly askew on her face. She reached up, pulled them off and tossed them aside as if they were no more important to her than an empty candy wrapper.
That’s when he knew for sure. The warrior in his dreams and the girl in front of him were the same person. Those silver eyes could only belong to one person.
∞
Adrenaline was coursing through Whitney like lava courses down the side of a volcano. It was hot inside of her, boiling like a fire stoked oven, and begging to be used. She needed this as much as she needed oxygen. Decker Albright was everything that she’d hoped he would be. Taking Decker down wouldn’t be nowhere near as easy as taking down the other two had been and that’s exactly how she wanted it to be. He was good and fast with his staff and fighting him was making fighting Tommy in the arena look like what it was … a game.
Whitney paced back and forth in front of Decker as her adversary seemed to contemplate a new strategy. She could tell that she had surprised him with her ability to match and block his every move and he seemed to be trying to figure out a new approach. She let him.
But that didn’t mean that she was always going to let him dictate how this fight went. She was toying with him. She could take him out any time she wanted to. She had an energy that she never had before, and using that energy, she could produce a speed he would never be able to match.
Whitney squared off in front of him, sweat forming on her brow, running down her cheeks, and lubricating the plastic of her sunglasses. That was fine. She didn’t need them. She reached up, took them off and tossed them to the side.
His reaction to that was strange. He stopped moving entirely, and he didn’t just stop moving. He dropped his staff to the ground as if taking off her glasses made him choose to surrender.
She didn’t want him to surrender. She didn’t want the fight to stop. Decker Albright had more coming to him and she wasn’t done delivering his lesson. She had barely even begun to teach him anything and, armed or not, she wasn’t going to stop there.
Whitney began to twirl her staff in her hands again. She started off slow and began to build up momentum. She was going to give him an opportunity to take up arms again. She had no qualms about beating him to a pulp while unarmed, if that’s the way it had to go down, but it wasn’t what she desired. The lava wanted to burn and it wanted to burn something in particular. It wanted to burn Decker Albright, but only after it cooked him first.
Several things happened almost simultaneously. The first thing that happened was that Decker reached up and removed the chain he was wearing from around his neck and tossed it to the ground next to him. Whitney couldn’t see him do that, but the receptors in her body told her that it was so. She could feel the air moving in that way and she could feel the vibrations of the stone as it hit the ground. The next thing that happened was Mr. Simple seemed to know that Whitney wasn’t done. He had recovered enough from the wound Whitney had delivered to rejoin the fight if he needed to. Up until that point he hadn’t needed to, but he had re-armed himself with the weapon of one of the other cronies. Whitney had realized this back when it happened, but as long as he remained on the sidelines it wasn’t an issue. He wasn’t remaining on the sidelines anymore, however, he charged as Whitney twirled her staff. He charged her in a flat out run, weapon poised over his head like a spear, and Whitney reacted without thinking. Mr. Simple hadn’t just meant to hit her, or knock her down, or tackle her. Mr. Simple had meant to drive that staff right through her. She felt his anger and she returned it.
Instead of him driving his staff through her she drove hers through him, using both hands firmly gripped around the staff, she drove the staff through his chest cavity, piercing his bottom edge of his heart, and exiting through his back.
His heart stopped before he hit the ground.
