Where The Numinous Awaits

Ch. 19: Nixie's Dive

August 30 | Day

Dex recounted the rest of her vision to us: "He took me deeper into the woods where the landscape had changed from smoke and flames, to cold and snow. The world was a blinding white, both above and below, and the tree trunks were so tall that they vanished into the sky and into the ground in a disorienting mirror. The ancestors gathered behind me."

White myrtle flowers swirled like snowflakes around Abuela Maya, Dex, Legend, and me in the azure night as her story took shape in my mind. We clustered around a small campfire in the backyard. The lights from the cottage where Fitz was sleeping faded away. The lapping of the waves of the pond behind us ushered me into a world of imagination, and I could see Dex's vision as if I had been there with her.

"The stranger and I went through a floating door that opened onto a dark and depressing memory...the night that I found out my father was dead." Dex paused, overcome with emotion, and Legend placed a supportive hand on her knee, eager to hear more of what she had to say. "All at once, the stranger transformed into a bear and wrestled me to the ground.

"We fought until I was drained, until I had no choice but to surrender." She smiled to herself. "Once he was done kicking my ass, he told me that I would never live a fulfilling life if I continued to cling to my fears of the future and regrets from the past. The wolf of foresight and the bear of memory would continue to cloud my instincts with the expectation of suffering."

"Yes, accept that life hurts." Abuela Maya said with a dry chuckle. "The experience of pain is amplified by resistance."

Legend and I studied each other introspectively. Dex and her grandmother had been gone for a few days. The once logic-driven secret agent had returned with a new air of spiritual enlightenment.

I studied the hawk feather braided into Dex's hair as Abuela Maya explained that when we resist or repress our emotions, we hold onto distress and make it worse. Allowing ourselves to feel, she told us, allowed us to move through distress more quickly. It sounded like sage advice, but easier said than done.

I thought of Edwina and the family I had lost. I thought of lonely, sleepless nights, grieving in private, and the crushing weight of being the last of my kind. My eyes stung as I looked away. Could I let go of the suffering? Left on my own in the world, what would await me after we completed this mission? I wanted it to be Dex and Legend, but that didn't seem to be in the cards for us.

"Going up against Darcy Cyprian and the smugglers, its prudent to remember there's always something positive on the other side of pain, whether healing, growth, or a new understanding," Dex said.

"Sounds like rough times ahead. What did the river tell you?" I asked.

"What we need to do to progress with the mission." She reached into a pouch at her waist and tossed a dusty gray powder into the fire.

The popping and crackling grew louder as the flames leaped higher. The heat intensified, and, in the billowy smoke rising into the sky, images began to take shape. Legend's dragon crawled from his chest into his lap and peered into the fire with curious orange eyes. I leaned in with interest.

"The only being old enough to be admitted into the City of Immortals is submerged in the deepest part of the Mississippi River. To get to the Gates of Mortality, we must find her," Dex narrated. I saw a coffin. The shadowy figure of a woman encircled by three others with burning eyes. "Her name is Delilah Claibourne, and she is a vampire like no other."

Echoes of screams raised goosebumps along my skin. Red glowing chains of power wrapped around the captive as she was shoved into a black box. The tableau seemed to take place on a boat, and in the background stood a man, watching dispassionately. With a nod of his head, the imprisoned woman was dumped into the swift-moving river, and the four figures stood by while she sank.