Chapter Six

Limousines and sycophants,
Don't leave me now,
Cause I'm afraid what you've done to me.
Is now the wolf.
In my bed,
In my head.
The challenges, we took were hard enough.
They get harder now.
Even when we think that we've had enough.
Don't feel alone,
Cause it's I you understand.
I'm your sedative,
Take a piece of me whenever you can.
Don't cry.... you're not alone.
...don't be so hard on yourself...
Don't cry.... tonight my baby
...Those tears are for.....someone else...
Don’t Cry
Seal

Under the cover of darkness Nicholas and Daniel appeared in the back yard of 1313 Mockingbird Lane. The house was completely dark. “She’s not here,” Nick said.

“See the car?” Daniel nodded off across the way at the hatchback in the driveway. “If the house is empty, who’s that belong to?” Quickly making his way up to the sun porch he saw the busted glass in the door and turned the knob, the same went for the inner door. The glass there has also been broken from the outside and the door unlocked to gain entry. Once upon a time, when he still lived here, that wouldn’t have been so easy but who kept paying the alarm bill on an empty house? Out of curiosity he flicked the switch nope they weren’t paying the electric bill on the place either. “You smell smoke?”

Nick sniffed the air. “Yeah and incense.” Then he started looking around the kitchen in the dim light of the half-moon. Being back in the old house was creepy especially with it being so empty and hollow. “Mom?”

“Shh,” Daniel hissed. “I know where she is and if she hears you she’ll be scared.” The basement door was closed but it opened easily enough and the smell of smoke and incense was strongly inhaled. The soft sound of music came to their ears. Bruce Springsteen—The Boss—one of Callas’ all-time favorites.

Oh, Kitty, don’t this to me. Don’t do it to us. Daniel thought as he stood at the top of the old basement steps. “You pushed her too far!”

“Who are ya talkin’ to, Dad?”

“Myself.” Yeah, for all he knew at this moment, this whole time Davy’s voice was nothing more than his own inner voice and he’d been talking and planning with no one other than himself all these months.

There was little to no light and Daniel found himself trying to remember how many stairs there were. Suddenly from behind him a fire lit up he turned around to see his Son holding a fireball in the palm of his hand and lighting the way. Looking up at the still innocent face of his son Daniel felt his heart drop. “Nick, this isn’t going to be good. If you want to stay here…”

“No way,” Nick interrupted, “I’m goin’ with you.”

“Nick…”

“Get moving, Dad.”

On legs which felt as though he’d been riding a roller coaster or other carnival thrill ride for days on end, legs where the knees didn’t want to bend and the calves didn’t want to hold his weight, and the muscles in his thighs were shaky and twitching, Daniel made his way down the steps and tried not to cry. His Son was behind him he couldn’t let Nick watch his Father break down yet again.

At the bottom of the stairs the music and the smells became more prominent, Daniel turned left. The door to that old room was open and he saw candles burning inside. Maybe he wasn’t too late. “Kitty?” He called out in a soft voice as the two of them neared the door. “Kitty, honey, it’s me...Daniel.” There was no answer. Only the soft sounds of Bruce Springsteen singing about a Meeting Across the River;

And the soft glow of candle light.

There was only one reason Kitty was here at all and it wasn’t because she bought the place. Kitty came here when she felt lost or scared or alone, Daniel often her sitting in her car outside just staring at the house. Kitty came here to end it all and she chose that damn room to do it in.

Finding the courage to do more than just look into the room from the outside, Daniel Jackson walked inside and the first thing he noticed was the flood of candle light streaming through the darkness. There were at least a dozen and a half of them silently burning by the mirror against the far wall. More than enough to light to see the blood on the floor and the other items she’d so neatly placed around and in front of the old bathroom mirror.

Off in the far corner in front of him was a dark spot. There were a few candles burning there but no more than three or four, walking unsteadily into the room and then across it, Daniel held his hand in front of him reaching out to the darkness. “Kitty?” Daniel whispered hoping for a response. Just the CD telling him about that meeting across the river;

Bruce was so desperate to get across the river because even though that meeting was dangerous it would set everything right again between him and his lover. All he needed was Eddie to give him a ride.

That’s exactly what Calla thought when she came down here. If she crossed the River, not the Hudson or the Jersey Rivers but the River Styx that everything would be all right again. She’d be gone and Daniel would have everything he wanted—except her—he’d be free to do whatever he pleased until the end of time and not have her as a ball and chain around his neck. She couldn’t get more wrong.

“Nick bring that light in h…..” Daniel’s foot gave way beneath him as he stepped on something squishy and slippery. He hit the cement floor hard on his ass and like anyone else in that predicament looked around for the thing which caused him to lose his footing. A few feet away from him was a round object. Nicholas walked into the room with his magickal ball of light.

There were two round objects both covered with blood and filled with silicone. “Oh no.” He whispered in shocked horror.

“Dad?”

“Kitty!” Daniel scrambled to his feet, slipped on the bloody floor and regained his footing once more before running for the dark spot with Nicholas behind him. There was a lump in the darkness. “No, my beautiful wife, no.” Daniel turned her over, she was so incredibly pale and her skin was growing colder by the second. In his arms her stiff body rasped for breath and convulsed violently but she didn’t wake. “I’m sorry! Kitty! Please I’m so sorry!” Daniel kissed her blood stained face and rocked her blood covered body in his arms. He tried to pull her closer but she wouldn’t come. It was then he realized her hand was pinned to the mattress by the blade of a knife. “I forgive you. I love you. Kitty, please, please, please, I’m sorry.” Daniel wrenched the blade free of her palm and tossed it to the floor. He kissed the bloody hand and held it to his cheek and wrapped her limp arms around his neck as he brought her to sit in his lap. Pulling her up and closer to him, the blanket fell away from her and exposed the deep gouges on either side of her body where she’d conducted the self-extraction of the breast implants Hartley liked so much. Blood, Ichor, dripped down her flanks but not before it covered her chest.

He looked over at the mirror and noticed just how meticulously everything had been arranged there. True to her Cat Nature and feeling as though she were Mortally Wounded Kitty did what any Cat would do, she found a comfortable and familiar place, made a nice soft bed and laid down to die.

How low did she get before she ended up here? How fucking lonely and desperate must she have been as she sat there, listening to Bruce, taking pills and sniffing cocaine and mutilating her New & Improved body. He gazed back down at her ashen face and brushed the short strands of strawberry blonde hair away from it though it was caked to her forehead with her blood. “Don’t go, don’t go, Kitty, stay with me.” Daniel saw the photograph and the woman missing from it. “I can’t be too late, I love you.” The needle was still in her arm. “Only you, my beautiful wife.”

“Mom.” Nick whispered and fell to his knees. He reached out to touch her. “Mom.” Nicholas pulled the needle out of her flesh. “Oh please Momma come back.” The light in his hand went out as the young man wept over the bloody body of his dying Mother. “Momma I love you.”

It was no good Kitty couldn’t hear either of them anymore. She was still breathing or rather she was desperately hitching for breath out of whatever was left of her survival instinct. Her body shuddered and tightened but her eyes didn’t open. Kitty reached the end of her rope and didn’t see another way out. She knew all about Antoinette and thought there were plenty more where she came from. Kitty signed that goddamn contract with Andrew Fucking Hartley which in effect had given him control over entire life for a period of five years and she thought that was five years too many.

“I told you we could work it out,” he cried. “Why did you do this?” The answer was dancing in his head and he didn’t want to look at it but there it was. Plain as day—or rather as plain as the scars on her back and the blood dried to her inner thighs. In his mind Daniel saw her and Hartley and the other two walking into the sex club. Guess it didn’t go as well as any of them had hoped. “What did he do, huh, baby, what’d he do to my Pretty Kitty?” Hartley must have been enraged when he saw Daniel and then when she told him that he wanted to work things out. What did Hartley say to that? Nothing good to be sure. Hartley probably twisted it around to make it look like Daniel had an angle. What happened next? Did she fight him? Did she argue? Daniel didn’t know but he’d bet his last dollar that whatever came next wasn’t good either. Before the end of the night Hartley and Calla found out whether or not sexual intercourse was something she’d be engaging in and enjoying at any point in the near future. It wasn’t. With that gone Calla didn’t see a reason to come back to Daniel even if he did still love her. She didn’t want to come back to him as half a woman. Kitty loved to make love and so did he…with her.

What she didn’t know what that Daniel would take her anyway he could get her. Sex, no sex, it didn’t matter. That lovely healing Blue Energy Daniel once raised so easily and healed her with wouldn’t come to him no matter how much he called upon it. Maybe Kitty knew it wouldn’t and that was part of the reason she refused to take the chance on coming back to him. Years ago when he first found her she was scared and battered inside and out. Right from the start, upon bringing her home, Daniel had the ability to raise that energy and heal any new wounds she happened to get. But not the old scars on her back and bones, he’d been able to ease them but it had been Eros who healed them. While Daniel had no doubt Eros tried his best he couldn’t heal the ones inside her, it had been Daniel—and her—who’d done that over the course of four or five years. Then Kanan came back and did it all over again to her. Still, that time, he had healed all of her wounds in one night. But not this time. What was wrong? Some part of him already knew, he was different now, he was Immortal. Did she know she was giving up her life line when she made her bargain with Ares? “Can’t you do something Nick?”

“What? I don’t know what to do, Dad.”

Hey Eddie, can you catch us a ride? Bruce asked and his voice faded away.

“If she’d let you come with me last year like I wanted,” Ares said as he made his entrance into the room, “you’d know if there was anything you could do…anything at all.”

“Help her,” Daniel pled.

“You, of all people, know that healing is outside my bounds.” Ares spat.

“Get the Red Ambrosia!” Daniel screamed.

“It won’t help her, she’s already Immortal.” Ares shot as his dark onyx eyes fell upon the only thing glittering in the candle light. Aphrodite’s anklet. Quickly he reached out to snatch it from his Daughter’s body. Too late. It disappeared from her skin before he could get to it. “Damn it!” Ares fell to his knees at her feet.

“Where’d it go?” Nick asked.

“She’s found something to pay the Ferryman with.” Ares growled. “Daughter!” He bellowed in a voice loud enough for those in the Underworld to hear his cry. “Don’t do it!”

The little CD player was putting “She’s the One” into the air around them and Daniel wondered, of all the albums in the world, why she had picked Born to Run for this dark task.

On the Other Side where Calla stood at the boat on the River Styx ready to make her crossing the cave shook and bits of rock and dirt cascaded down upon her, the Ferryman and Aphrodite who was waiting for her on the far bank. Ares screamed out as she laid the anklet in the skeletal hand, he wanted her to stop what she was doing. “Sorry Father.” The glittering pink, red and white jewels dropped into the Ferryman’s outstretched hand and Calla climbed into the leaky boat to make the crossing.

In Daniel Jackson’s arms his wife gave up the fight as she stopped breathing and shaking. “NO!” Daniel’s heart went with her as he sat holding her close and rocking her in the darkness. “Oh God! Kitty come back! You can’t die like this, you’re a Goddess, you’re Immortal.”

Ares let out a long sigh before he spoke. “She’s lost her will to live, Jackson and so yes, she can die this way.”

In the Under World, in his Palace and sitting on his Throne, Lord Hades picked up his hourglass just as Calla’s boat docked on the other shore. He turned it over and waited for the sand to run out.

“How much do you love her, Jackson?” Ares asked through thin lips.

“With everything I am.” Daniel replied as he looked up into the cold eyes of the man who’d help put this whole wicked scene into motion. “What? You know how to get her back, don’t you? What do I do?”

“Are you ready to die for her?”

“Dad! Don’t.” Nick gasped and looked up at his Grandfather with wide eyes. “Why don’t you go?”

“Do you know how many enemies I have in the Underworld?” Ares returned. “What do you say, Jackson?”

“You always did want to kill me, I guess this is your big chance.”

Ares smiled as his tears dripped down his rough cheeks thinking of how Hartley died at his feet. Ares would take that back and keep the bastard breathing if it would bring Callestah back to this world, he’d even give up this opportunity to blow Daniel Jackson away. He’d let her be happy with Jackson if that was what she wanted. “Listen to me, Jackson, listen hard. There are many people waiting for her on the Other Side.” Ares God of War brushed his tears away with his bloody hand but it didn’t stop new ones from falling.

People waiting for Calla? Who? That was an easy question to answer. Lots of them like Psyche and Eros and David—the real one. Maybe Kanan even hitched a ride to Hades world. So many of them waiting to greet her and make sure she stayed on the Other Side. “Yeah, lots of people.” Daniel agreed in a forced whisper.

“And Hartley is a new arrival in Hades’ world,” Ares whispered and held up his bloody hands for Daniel to see. “I found him on your door terrorizing my Granddaughter.”

Daniel didn’t have the time or presence of mind to be outrageously elated at the news. “Colleen…?”

“Is fine,” Ares told him and went on because time was short. “You must make sure she does not eat or drink of the Underworld before you get her back here. In the end she may not come with you.” Ares cautioned.

Nick tugged at his Father’s arm. “Don’t.” Nicholas warned. “Mom wouldn’t want you to do this, Dad.”

“She made me Immortal and gave me Forever. I don’t want to spend it without her.” Daniel laid one hand on his Son’s shoulder.

Yanking the black velvet pouch from his belt he tossed it to Daniel who caught it as he rose from the bed. Ares stood up. “For the Ferryman half when he gets you across and half when he gets you both back, not a dime in between or before.”

“Got it.” Daniel agreed and stuffed the coin pouch into his pocket.

“Wait!” Nicholas yelled and stood between his Father and Grandfather. “Just wait.” On the verge of losing both parents he kissed his Mother’s forehead and took the blanket that covered her, Nicholas ripped it into long strips.

“What are you doing?” Daniel asked quickly as he was faced with the sight of his wife’s ravaged body once more. “Leave that she’s gonna be cold!”

“No, she’s not, Dad.” Nicholas wrapped on end of a long strip of green blanket around his Father’s wrist and the other end around his Mother’s, just as Ares himself had done on the day they were married. “So you can find her. Just look for it and it’ll be there.” Nicholas told him while he grabbed another strip of ripped cloth and tied one end to his Father’s belt and the other to his own wrist. “So you can get back, Dad. OK?”

“Just look for it.” Daniel agreed and hugged his Son tightly.

“If you stay too long I’m gonna pull on this like you wouldn’t believe,” Nick shook his end of the strip of blanket. “I’ll yank you back here if I have to.”

“I love you, Nicky.” Daniel pushed his son away and stared into the cold fire eyes of his Father in-law. “What are you waiting for?”

Ares’ eyes closed as he breathed in a deep breath and a large ball of fire appeared in his hands. “Whatever you do, don’t listen to that bitch, she wants to keep my Daughter with her.”

“Wh….” Daniel didn’t have the time to finish asking the question. Ares chucked the fire ball at him just the way he’d always wanted to do. It hit Daniel Jackson square in the chest stopping his heart instantly.

Daniel’s body slumped over that of his wife.

“I still say you shoulda gone.” Nick shot at Lord Ares.

“You are just as insolent as your Mother.” Ares growled. “Help me get them upstairs.”

“Why?”

“Just bring the damn candles.” Ares snarled as he, Calla, Daniel, and the bed they were laying on disappeared from the cold basement room.

The strip of cloth was still attached to Nicholas’ hand which went straight up in the air as his parents were ushered to the upper floor. Standing there in the basement he felt like a little kid whose helium balloon was getting away from him as he hand stretched high above his head. “Thanks, Umpa.” The strip of cloth extended to and then through the ceiling above him. A few moments later Nicholas appeared in the living room of the old Jackson homestead and found his Grandfather had placed the bed and bodies of his parents by the fireplace in which there was now burning a roaring fire. Over both of them was a thick pile of animal hides.

“Put that out someone will see it,” Nick grumbled.

Lord Ares rolled his eyes and let out a huffed sigh. “No one will see us here tonight, put the candles around the room.” Ares sat down heavily upon the floor next to his Daughter and reached for her hand. Laying his forehead against hers the God of War whispered, “I love you.”

End Chapter Six
Tarnished Heroes:Something Happened on the way to Heaven
Continue to
Chapter Seven