Chapter Twenty-Six

only love can save us now,
all these riddles that you burn
all come runnin' back to you,
all these rhythms that you hide
only love can save us now
I Alone
Live

One moment Calla was blissfully asleep in Daniel’s arms happily worn out from her very successful day of physical therapy with Nicholas and then next she was sitting up and screaming at the top of her lungs.  Her small heart raced inside her chest as she broke out in a heavy bead of sweat.  Disoriented in the dark and unable to fully control her flailing right arm she clocked Daniel on the jaw when he reached for her.  His teeth rattled and gnashed together as they bit into his lower lip drawing a good trickle of Ichor.  “Ow, damn.” He muttered as his hand instinctively went to the wounded area to inspect it for a moment. Taking half a second to decide that he wasn’t going to lose any teeth, Daniel turned on the lamp by the bed and looked over at her.

“Dee…Dee…Deee…..Deeeee-MAN!” Calla shouted and grabbed the collar of his pajama top with so much force that she easily hauled him to her. Her shortened fingernails sunk into the flesh of his chest before she could get a full hold on the silky material.  “DE-MAN! DE-MAN!”  Breath hitched in her chest as she started to shake him. “Kkkkk….kkkk…ka…kajo! KAJO! DE-MAN!”

Daniel had no idea what had upset her so much but she looked like she was half out of her mind.  Whatever it was she was trying so desperately to tell him it looked like it was very important. “Ok, Kitty, ok.” He soothed and pried her gnarled fingers from the material. “Ok, the D man, what about the D man?”

“DEE-MAN!” She shouted as though she were trying to correct him. “KAJO!” With her good hand she threw off the covers and tried to stumble out of the bed but Daniel caught her.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He asked as he hauled her back.  “Calm down, Kitty.  You’re safe; you’re here in our bedroom.  It was just a dream, a bad dream, that’s all.”

Dream?  Was he out of his mind? It was no dream!  “DEEEEEEEEE-MAN!” She shouted in his face but his blank eyes told her she wasn’t getting through.  Her faulty brain-wiring was in the way.  “KAJO!”

In his mind he fumbled for the answer as she wriggled and he tried to hold on to her.  Kajo? What was that? Greek? Celtic? Was it even a different language?  Who the hell was the D Man?  “Please, Kitty, just take a breath and calm down.” Daniel begged.

Calm down? Calm down?  How could she be calm at a time like this?  “O-shun, no! Horse, no!”

Ocean? Horse? What the hell was she babbling about?  Suddenly he became terrified that she was having another stroke.  Certainly she would if she didn’t calm down soon.  “Ok, no ocean and no horse. Fine, you got it.”

Calla threw up both hands and started throwing her head back slamming it against the headboard.

The noise startled damn near everyone but David was the closest to them and he dashed into the bedroom to see Calla wildly throwing herself backward and Danny trying to restrain her while she kept shouting about d-men and kajos.  “What is going on?” He demanded as he dashed across the room to get a hold of her.

“I don’t know. Just help me!” Daniel cried.  “Come on, Kitty stop that!” He ordered as David took a seat on the bed and scrambled to get a better hold of her.

Calla looked up at him through one good eye and one droopy eye. “Ni-kee gay-tor, doc.” She said quietly and started to cry. “Nik-kee gay-tor….De-Man! Kajo!”

Nick? Was something wrong with Nick? If it was how could she know it?  Calla’s magick was as faulty as her brain at the moment.  “I’ll call for Nick,” Daniel said softly but kept one hand on her bad shoulder as he reached for the phone. He’d use his mind but he was so wired at the moment he was afraid he’d get in touch with the wrong person or something.  The telephone wasn’t necessary before he could dial it Nick, Annie and Ares were in the doorway all demanding to know what was happening.

Calla heard Nick’s voice and began to wail. “Nik-keegaytor! Nik-keegaytor!”  She pushed, wriggled and shoved against the twins holding her down.

“Let her up!” Nick ordered and pushed his Uncle out of his way. “I’m right here, Mom. I’m right here.” Calla threw her arms around his neck and started to sob.  Not knowing what the fuck was going on Nick rocked her and stroked her gray hair.  She curled up on him just like his daughter, Colleen, used to when she was very small almost as though she were trying to crawl inside him where it would be safe and warm.  “It’s ok, I’m here, it’s ok.”

The old woman who had once been so beautiful and vital but now was decrepit and crumbling looked up at him with those haunting green eyes. “No o-shun. No horse.” She whispered to him. “De-man. Kajo.”

Sitting there in his bed looking at his Wife and his Son any lingering doubts Daniel may have had disappeared.  Nick was the fourth man in the equation.  No wonder she was so goddamn upset last night, she’d rather burn in hell than sleep with her Son to save herself.  Out of the corner of his blue eyes he saw Annie coming forward with a needle which she slipped into Calla’s arm. Calla winced and tried to pull away but Annie’s grip was firm and she pushed the plunger injecting a sedative into the frail frenzied woman.

“What did you do that for?” Nick grumbled as he held his Mother.  Just when he thought it was starting to make some sense to him Annie went and knocked her out.

“She has to sleep, Nick.” Annie said gently.  “I don’t know what’s going on what she was babbling about but…”

“I do,” Ares interjected as Calla closed her eyes and he walked fully into the room.  Up until now he’d hung back as his presence seemed to upset Calla most days.  He’d noticed if they were alone she was all right but if one of the other three in this odd puzzle were present then she was not as likely to be receptive to him.

“Care to share?” David shot. 

“You know who the d-man is?” Daniel asked and pulled the blanket around her shoulders while Nick held her close.

“Not a d-man, you twit…a demon.” Ares corrected in a huff.  “Demon.” He said it again slowly.

The hairs on the back of Daniel’s neck stood up and suddenly it was very cold in this warmest of rooms. “Kajo?”

Now Ares pursed his lips in disgust and crossed the bedroom to the far corner. Daniel thought he was going to the armoire but Ares went, instead, to the bookcase where he paused for a moment thumbing through Calla’s collection.  His fingers fell upon the book he was looking for and he threw it to Daniel without warning. “Kajo.”

Daniel caught the slim hard cover and turned it over to the see the muzzle of a rabid dog staring back at him.  Cujo by Stephen King said the cover.

“No ocean. No horse.” Nick muttered as he ran his hand over the book and looked up at his Grandfather.

“None whatsoever.” Ares said through gritted teeth.  “No calm blue ocean, for you Nicholas. No wild white horse this time.  I would say your wayward son has come of age, he’s looking for you and her.”  Ares scanned the room to take in all the perplexed and worried faces. “I’d dare say he’s coming for all of us.”

Daniel kept staring at the frightening cover of the book with the dog’s bloody lips pulled back revealing it’s bloody sharp teeth dripping with rabid saliva. 

Cujo.

Wolfgar.

The need for Daniel to find the answer to his puzzle just got a little more urgent. “What else do you know?” Daniel said in an accusatory tone.  “What are you holding back?” Ares didn’t answer him he just stood there looking stoic.  “Come on you old bastard, tell us.”

“Tell you what?”

“All of the things that Hades won’t.” Daniel said with a harsh shake of his head and climbed out of the bed.  “You’ve been here for all of it so out with it.”

Yes, he had been here for all of it. He was the only one of the four who could consciously recall the lifetimes he’d spent with her.  It hadn’t always been that way but only as of late that the information came flooding through to the front of his mind as though a great dam had broken.  He didn’t understand why he hadn’t seen it or understood it before now, after all it, it seemed so simple, so apparent and self-evident in hindsight.  Yet, Ares was quite disturbed to understand that he’d known and loved this woman more than fifty times over the course of his immortal life.  It was only this one lifetime that he loved her and known her as a Father.  Usually he was her Lover for a time and usually it ended badly. Ares didn’t want to get into the thick of it but he would have to admit to something.  Every one knew what Daniel said was true and Ares had only been waiting for him to make this demand.  “Gay-Lord,” he said sternly as he looked at Nick. “That was your name, Gaylord, not Gator.”  He turned his stare to David who had, to the best of Ares’ estimation, been Calla’s Husband three times before this lifetime where he’d been relegated to Lover.  This helped explain David’s constant unhappiness with his situation.  Ares went on and turned to David. “Does the name John Holliday mean anything to do?”

David was no history buff and it took him half a second but then his eyes widened. “As in Doc Holliday?”

“One in the same,” Ares intoned.

Daniel almost laughed. That fit David to the proverbial T. An old gun totin’ gamblin’ roughneck with a fatal disease.  Then a thought struck him. “Was I there?”

Now it was Ares who held back the laugh. “You, well you, were on the other side.”

“Ha!” David let out a sharp laugh. “You were a Clanton.”

Brothers, they could be in their 80s and still turn even the most serious situations into a joke.  “So that makes her Katie Elder?”

“Old Doc’s longtime common law wife.” Ares agreed.  It almost felt good to get these thoughts out of his head and off his chest but he wasn’t at all sure he was doing the right thing.  Ares had meant to talk to Hades about all of this first but when Hades refused to help Daniel last night while simultaneously confirming Daniel’s suspicions regarding Arthur and Guinevere Ares began to have a change of heart.  It may be against the rules for the God of Death to let people know who they’d been in a previous life but there were no such constraints on Ares who’d been here to witness and relay all of it.

“Would someone care to clue me in here?” Nick asked and finally let go of the sleeping woman in his arms. He laid her down on the bed and made sure she was covered all snug and warm before he got up.  “Who the hell is….was….Gaylord?  How come he gets to be Doc Holliday?”

“You never told him.” Ares accused as he glared at Daniel.

“Told me what? That stupid chart thing you were working on? Is that it? Am I part of it?”

“It would appear so.” Annie said from behind him.  “I think I’ll leave now you four obviously have a lot to discuss.”

“Annie wait.” Nick reached out for her but she stepped away from him.

“No, I think that’s enough.  If you need me, if she needs me, come get me I’ll be down at the house.” Annie, with her head hanging low, walked out of the bedroom.

After Annie left Daniel just couldn’t resist. “Ok, so I gotta know…Bear?”

“Umm…Bear.” Ares intoned and curled his upper lip.  “It’s got nothing to do with Arthur, all right?”

“What? No that’s not all right.” Daniel returned. “Who is it?”

“He was no one special he was just an ordinary man.She called you Bear her big…”

“Old Bear.” Daniel finished.  He marveled at how easily that slipped into his mind and then out of his mouth. How long ago was that? One hundred, two hundred, three hundred years?  The image in his mind wasn’t clear enough to tell just yet but the feelings around it suggested that she had not been his Wife or his Lover.  “ Her Big Old Bear. She was my sister.” He said with something that sounded like happiness but which quickly faded. “She died.” Daniel whispered. “She’s been remembering, since the stroke I mean, she’s been remembering on her own.  That’s why we all got those strange nicknames.”

“Yes.” Ares agreed.  When she did remember it all and could voice it he was sure to be in more hot water than he could ever stand.  After all, Ares had killed each and every one of them….some of them several times…in his own quest to keep hold of the woman who kept eluding him.  Holliday, of course, had died of natural causes but Ares could not say the same about Gaylord and the man everyone once called Bear because his sister did. Indeed Ares found it hard to believe that his noble, loyal, strong and respectable Grandson had once been that charlatan though he could see Bear in Daniel now that it was brought to the light.

“Stoke?” David asked.

The one nickname which remained from Camelot.  “Guinevere often said that I was like a fire that had been stoked too high,” he looked down at the floor and his own bare feet only now to realize he was standing here in nothing more than his underwear having been so rudely awaken from a sound sleep.  “She said I stoked other things too.”  Now he grinned to himself.  “Often she called me that.”   Ares raised his head and his eyes to speak again. “This changes nothing.” He announced.  “Our problem now is the demon Wolfgar.”

The other three men didn’t feel that nothing had been changed most especially Nick. “Who was Gaylord?”

Ares didn’t hesitate but he didn’t look at Nick either. “Her Lover. My Sister’s Lover.” Yes, once and only once he had been her Brother.  Once and only once her Father.  Once and only once and for so brief a time, her Husband.  The rest of them were intertwined more intimately with her each of them having been either Father, Husband, Lover or Brother to her several times since Time began.  Standing there he found he was quite jealous of that fact.  “I see the wheels turning in your head, my King.” Ares said as he looked over at Daniel.  “What are you going to do with this new information?”

“I don’t know yet but you’re right.” He looked down at Calla who was now sleeping peacefully.  “If it was Wolfgar chances are he’s after all of us and he must be closer than we think.”

What did they do about that? How did one fight a soulless entity that also happened to be either your Son, Grandson, Great-Grandson or Grand-Nephew?  How did they prepare for this battle?  Every Greek Tragedy Daniel ever read went through his head and almost all of them ended with Son killing Father.  Definitely not a good omen of things to come.

End of Chapter Twenty-Six of
Golden Years
by Moon Mistress
a/k/a Lisa Beth Darling
Go to
Chapter Twenty-Seven