//------------------------------// // There Is Power In The Blood // Story: Twilight In Plain Sight // by Mitch H //------------------------------// Dusk Shine and Skyla spent Friday afternoon and evening hanging around the local library, as Dusk did some research on the public-access computers, and Skyla amused herself by going through the children's section shelf by shelf, all the ones she could reach. Dusk had given Skyla a secret mission, and it had sparked a certain twisted enthusiasm in her little girl. The secret mission tied into the assignment she'd handed out to her class during literature studies. All the children were supposed to go to the library, and just pick out a book that interested them. Not any particular book, and Dusk hadn't given them reading lists – just a book. They would read it, and write her a one-page summary. She wanted to see what they produced, absent any further guidance. But Dusk Shine also wanted to see when her students went to pick up their books. Who were the grinds who would get everything done as soon as the assignment was given? Who were the 'do it at the last moment' sorts who cruised on natural talent or adrenaline cramming sessions? Were there any actual enthusiasts hidden among the herd? And so, Skyla was lurking about, stalking any children of the right age that came into the library, to see who went into the children's shelves, mostly, but also to see if anyone was reading ahead of the curve. Dusk kept a list of names beside her borrowed computer, and as Skyla came by to point out this child or that, Dusk checked off their names. By the end of the evening, when the library was ready to close, she had about a dozen out of fifty-four names checked. So much for her job. Meanwhile, Dusk Shine was fiddling around online, looking for evidence of the dead man. For a brutal outlaw biker, Stormbringer hadn't really left much of a trace in the online world. Dusk guessed that bikers weren't big on social media? The same mostly went for the biker girls, although Dusk had half-guessed that the names they were currently using weren't the ones their families had given them. Blitz was an exception. Dusk had found a good number of tagged photos of the flamboyant, nominally lesbian biker and her pretty boyfriend. Soarin had been strikingly handsome, and he had glowed like sunshine for the camera. Most of the photos came up in association with various biker events in and around Austin, Dallas and Plano. The two of them had gotten around in the last year and a half, and everywhere they went, people took pictures. Dusk found herself laughing at the biker clown photos. Soarin had looked good in a dress. Texas media was full of the latest skirmishes in the 'Great Salvaje War', as the papers and bloggers were calling it. Soarin's death-notices were already fading away in the wash of other arrests, woundings, and shootouts. Central and North Texas was basically a war-zone. The Rangers dealing with the mess were all over the newspaper front pages. A random Salvaje body showing up in a Virginia hill-town wouldn't even rate the back of the A sections, Dusk suspected. Wind Rider, on the other hand, was a mainstay of the police blotter for Dashville and the surrounding region, going back decades. No actual deaths were revealed by Dusk's admittedly non-expert research methods, but she found plenty of violent crimes and associated wickedness. By her back-of-the-envelope estimate, Wind Rider must have spent more than half of Soarin's childhood behind bars. Dusk Shine thought about the curl of grey hair she'd gotten into an old pill-bottle she kept in the Beetle, which was waiting on her preparations. She'd started charging the relevant stones before she and Skyla had left for the library, but these things take time. It wasn't exactly something grand mère Clair would have approved of, this particular ritual. But once Twilight had put together some of what she'd learned from her grand mère with some of Sombra's more aggressive ideas… It had worked in the past, when they hadn't been able to get recordings. And it had worked when Twilight had finally put together the clues about what Sombra had been doing with the information she had dug up for her mentor. Twilight refused to feel guilty about using dark magic to expose worse – the things she'd learned about her mentor had been so abhorrent, so monstrous – well, it was worth the blood it cost her to know the truth. But had it been worth the consequences that followed from those discoveries? The terrible consequences of Sombra's subsequent wrath... on most days, Twilight was successful in wrestling down the guilt and the self-loathing... would she have been happier if she'd never come to know exactly what her mentor had been, was doing, was making of her gifts and her complicity? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Sombra had been escalating all the time Twilight had known him, mostly when Twilight hadn't been there to witness his sins, but more and more often in her presence. A break had been coming, whether knowing and prepared, or in some hypothetical, catastrophic collision Twilight couldn't even imagine... The cost in the event had been almost more than she had been able to bear. Sombra's demonic rage had broken upon the whole family, had broken the family like a half-rotted stick. In the end, on the run with Flurry Heart in her train, Twilight found the mountain of mundane research – needed to generate the parallel construction justifications and proper evidence that she could bring to the authorities – a welcome distraction from the screaming horrors and overwhelming regrets. Well, Twilight's regrets could live with Twilight. In the light of day, Dusk Shine was in the driver's seat. She took Skyla home after the library closed, and they had a nice, uneventful evening before going to sleep at a reasonable hour. It was almost homey, and Twilight Sparkle did her best to enjoy a simple night at home with her Flurry Heart. She'd need her rest for what she had to do in the morning. Twilight Sparkle woke an hour earlier than usual, and made sure that Flurry Heart was safely asleep and showing no signs of disturbed rest or restlessness. She didn't want Flurry walking in on this. Twilight went back into the dining room, and took out the crystals which had been soaking in vinegar. She set the stones out to air-dry, and got out the other materials, and the pill-bottle with the old reprobate's hair. Twilight found the package she'd bought at a Walmart a few weeks ago and left in one of the top shelves in the kitchenette. She opened up the box, and took out the sealed syringe and broke the seal, setting it aside while she waited for the stones to dry. Twilight began to coax the grey hair into a weave built out of Crystal Fireline Jewelry Thread and simple twine she'd rubbed river-mud into, while she kept watch over one of Skyla's visits to her little bit of secret forest down in Metternich Park. As each stone she'd set aside was sufficiently dry, she threaded them into their prepared portion of the web of twine, crystal-fireline and the biker's strand of hair. So far, Twilight hadn't done anything reprehensible or wrong, not by the standards by which she'd been taught, by either of her teachers. Twilight picked up the syringe, and searched for the vein in the pit of her left arm. She missed the vein on the first try, and had to pull it out and try again before she got the blood-vessel. She pulled back the plunger, and filled it to two-thirds with her hot blood. After she pulled the syringe out, she dabbed at the little wound with a bit of paper towel soaked in rubbing alcohol, and then covered it up with a band-aid. Then Twilight took her syringe and depressed the plunger, slowly dripped her blood over each stone in the device, muttering the right words. She watched the crystals turn red, one by one. The one thing upon which both of Twilight Sparkle's mentors in magic had been in agreement, was that there was power in the blood. Clair Voyant had been a cautious and taciturn old woman, more interested in the esoteric meaning of her weavings and her patterns than the effects of either. She'd hand-stained her threads and her yarns – and yes, one of the stains she'd used, while her wide-eyed petite fille had watched, had been her own veins'-blood. She'd emphasized that one always, always used your own blood – using the blood of any other living being was damnable, intolerable. True witchcraft, hated by man and God alike. Sombra had done more than use others' blood in his experiments. And this ritual was how Twilight had uncovered that fact. Twilight Sparkle centered herself over the completed device, thinking of what it was she wanted to learn. Then she remembered one of the minor consequences, and found a pencil to bite down on. And she pulled the blood-magic fetish over her right forearm. He always hated the smell of disinfectant. The pain that summoned that smell, he could take or leave. He wasn't a masochist, after all. But the pain just meant he'd accomplished something. Beat down a rival. Survived a crash, or a wipeout. A rough time with an enthusiastic lady. All part of the life, and fine enough, even when he came down with the clap or broke an arm or a hand or, once, nearly got his throat cut. It was a hard life, and pain meant that he was still living it. But he hated the smell that came with emergency rooms, and the surgeries, and the doctors' offices. They smelled of death. "…the tests are definite, and conclusive. Your bloodwork is just full of metastatic cells. We did the procedure to check the last most likely place we could biopsy. It's definitely your pancreas. Now, we used to call this Stage III, but practice is now to assign g-levels. This is at least G3, and may very well be G4. It should have shown itself in additional symptoms before this; pancreatic cancer is infamously secretive, but not to this extent…" The doctor was still going on as if any of his jabber mattered worth a damn. He'd heard the death sentence already. This – the rest of this was just legalities, boilerplate. The bullshit that he had to say, the boxes he had to check. Speaking of checking boxes… "Doc, shut the fuck up. There isn't any cure? No radiation, no chemo?" "Ah, uh, well. If we'd caught it earlier, then maybe. But's pancreatic, everybody knows about pancreatic. Pancreatic hides until it's too late, until it's thoroughly metastatic. I don't understand why you're not in debilitating pain. These numbers are very high. I can prescribe a course of pain medication, but radiation or chemotherapy? It would kill you before it killed the cancer. 100% certainty." "Gimme the damn pills. I like my hair right where it is." "Even with the most extreme regime of pain medication I can legally prescribe, you'll be in absolute agony fairly soon. Mr. Rider, this is very, very advanced." "Pain means I'm still here, Doc. Gimme the script. And triple it while you're at it. We're going to need an additional revenue stream for a while. Here, I've got that list of 'patients' for you." "I really think you ought to concentrate on your own care at this point, sir. Our 'arrangement' can – " "Shut the fuck up, write the scripts. The usual guy will be by to pick them up as always. You'll get your money, like you always do. The machine keeps on rolling, it don't care if the driver's got a hangover." "Advanced terminal pancreatic cancer is not a hangover! You need to be under care! A hospice! A homestay nurse! Something!" "Write the damn scripts." Twilight Sparkle awoke to herself, her mouth full of something - the pencil she'd bit down on to avoid making any noise. Or, rather, the splinters left behind after her spasm had broken it into a foul-tasting mess. Her jaw ached. Wind Rider's memories had hurt. An awful lot. Twilight stepped into the bathroom, and rinsed the taste of graphite and cheap wood-pulp from her mouth. Twilight looked down at the still-charged red baubles on her ritual-bracelet. She swallowed, dug a newly-purchased wooden-handled spoon out of a drawer in the kitchenette, sat down in the dining room, and bit down again. The boy wasn't listening. He tried again. "Just come home, Soarin. I need you here. The boys keep asking after you. Hell, those girls that were sweet on you keep asking after you." "Dad, I was a teenager! And half those 'girls' are ten years older than me. It was always skeevy as all hell. I've been talking with folk down here, they say those women took advantage. I mean, I don't really think I didn't get anything out of it, but it's kinda embarrassing in retrospect, you know? Nobody down here knows any of all that-" The boy wasn't taking the hint. Damn it. "I'm dying of cancer." "…and I've got this great girl who's got all these things going that- wait, what? What did you just say?" "Pancreatic cancer. I got maybe three months, maybe four, maybe five. But no more than nine according to that little faggot we have feeding the pill mill. I need you up here. I need you to stop fucking around in Texas, and come home." "I – I – fuck! Fuck, Dad! How do you just drop that on me? How long has this –" "Told me two months ago." "Two months? What the fuck!" "So I need you up here. I need to get the succession in place. Need you to be here long enough that the boys accept the transition." "I am not one of your Horsemen, I can't just show up and be the old man's boy, they'll never buy it!" "I'll make it work. Get up here, while I'm still strong." "Look, I have to take care of some things down here, I can't show up empty-handed. Let… let me figure some things out on my end. I'll be up as soon as I can get free down here." The boy never did listen. Oh, Harmony, that hurt like all perdition. But it was still not what Twilight was looking for. Even so, the more she looked into this man's life… Wind Rider was getting ready to die. He wasn't making deals with cultists. He wasn't going to war with cultists. Really, in the grand scheme of things, this awful old man had nothing at all to do with Twilight, and would only be a threat to Flurry Heart if she provoked him into something. Why was she poking at this? Twilight thought of the body arranged placidly upon her steps, his neck opened up like a half-gutted fish. She put the now-heavily-chewed spoon-handle back into her mouth to bite down onto, and dove into the hair and the blood one more time. The little rainbow twist was standing in the funeral home's parlor like she belonged there. She was alone, and furious, and ranting at him about god only knows what. He was so tired, he didn't have the energy to deal with this little bitch… "I can't believe you are what he was always talking about! You, you you – look at you! You're not even listening to me, are you, you old bastard! Soarin's dead, damnit! He was happy until you started picking at him!" "Fuck off, cunt. Get out of –" suddenly the funeral room parlor was eclipsed by a flash of white, and when it cleared, he was – where was he? That was the ceiling, wasn't it? Why was he looking up at a ceiling? There was a commotion over his head, where he couldn't see, and then he put together what must have happened. The little rainbow twat had hit him. He hadn't even felt it, let alone seen it coming. Still didn't feel it, really, not under all of the agony that was his daily, constant companion. There was yelling, but somehow he couldn't parse what they were yelling about. Then Silver Back was there, helping him up off the carpet. And the ringing in his ears died down enough that he could make out what was going on. And then the cops burst into the funeral home, and started grabbing everybody. Twilight Sparkle woke up to find herself curled around one of the legs of the dining room table, every last muscle in her body aching terribly. She spat out the ruined spoon-handle, and cursed, foully and comprehensively. She was out of time, and out of materials. That last vision had burnt away the last of the old bastard's hair, that was that. And that was all she'd get from Wind Rider. Not that you could pay Twilight to spend another agonizing minute in the sea of misery which was Wind Rider. And she'd swear on a stack of Blessed Amore's Crystallinum Continet Scriptura that Wind Rider hadn't had a damn thing to do with the death or disposal of the late Stormbringer. The blood-magic pulled at recent memories of strong emotions, especially those associated with violence. If Wind Rider had murdered someone, or ordered such a thing in a fury, it would have registered. On the other hand, he hadn't registered the news of his own son's death. Maybe he was too far gone to register normal emotional responses? Twilight looked at her phone on its charging-cord, and realized that Flurry Heart would be waking up any minute now. She started cleaning up her mess, putting especial effort into cleaning up any stray droplets of blood. Twilight pulled the now-grey crystalline stones out of their web of threads and twine, and dropped them back into the vinegar. She put the vinegar bath into one of the upper cabinets in the kitchenette, where Flurry couldn't get into it. She might need the ritual again. This wasn't over, all she'd done was eliminate a suspect. Sort of.