Chain Me

Unexpected Guest

     Lost's voice trickles into my ears as I wait for all the papers to slide out of the fax machine. She's on the deck, talking to and feeding her damned birds. All I'm thinking is that she better tell them not to use our SUV as a toilet anymore. But then I think how truly strange my life has become.
     The fax machine spits out its final piece of information and I put it in its rightful place in the stack I've made. Deanna sent over a list of magical creatures for Lost to look over. Deanna wants Lost to check if the council has their information correct, and to take out or add anything if necessary.
     "Lost, when are you going to do this?" I call as I stand, taking the stack with me. Deanna didn't give me a date to turn the papers in but I assume she wants them sooner than later.
     Coming back inside from the deck Lost pops a leftover grape half in her mouth. "When do I have to finish it?"
     I hand her the stack then brush a stray, probably diseased, feather off her shoulder. "As soon as you can. I'll give them back to her when you're done."
     Grunting, Lost plops down on the couch and studies the paper on top of the stack. "This is tedious."
     "It's important, apparently. You probably know tons of things they don't."
     "I know I do," she mumbles.
     Walking to the kitchen I shoot her a look. "See? You're important." I open the fridge and study our groceries, not yet sure what I want but knowing I want something.
     I hear Lost sigh and the pen I left on the coffee table click. I'm actually not sure of the extent her knowledge runs but by the way she acted with Lessa and the others, I'd say she knows her business. A twinkle of... something burbles in me and I grab a yogurt to eat my feelings away. If Lost is so important to Deanna and Leon, if she understands that world, she, or they, won't need me around. Lost could go on her own to fetch werewolves or vampires or whatever. The independence she's gained with me only makes me more sure of it. I'll be left alone at home. I'll be left alone, and I don't want to be. I know I shouldn't want Lost to be dependent on me but... Well... If it keeps her around...
     Strong arms engulf me from behind and I yelp, startled, and drop my yogurt. Lost catches it deftly to leave it hovering before my belly. "You felt as though you needed... reassurance," she whispers into my ear. "What's wrong?"
     I let her cradle me for a moment before reclaiming my yogurt and pushing out of her grip. "Nothing. I was just... nothing."
     "You cannot hide what you feel from me."
     "Can't I have anything to myself?" I snap without thinking. It was stupid and I immediately regret it. Pushing Lost away with my scared feelings because I'm afraid she'll leave me makes absolutely no sense. "I'm sorry," I sigh.
     Her expression turns sympathetic but she doesn't try to get close to me like she usually does when I'm not feeling okay. "Should I leave?"
     "No!" I say quickly. That's the opposite of what I want. "No, don't do that. Come here, okay? Come here." I put down my yogurt and bring Lost into a close hug. She rubs my back soothingly, whispering softly to me in another language.
"Don't worry when I feel like this- that, okay? It's just something I need to work through on my own."
     Lost pulls back to look me in the eye. "But it hurts."
     "Like I said, I need to work through it."
     She nods slowly. "I'll respect your decision."
     "Thank you." I peck her on the cheek then pat her chest, hitting her amulet. "Try to get as much of Deanna's papers finished as you can."
     "If I finish them before tomorrow can we go to Hakeem's baseball game?"
     "We'd go anyway. Nothing has come up yet."
     Lost takes that in then returns to the living room and to Deanna's stack of papers. I'm tempted to join her just to see what kind of creatures exist that I'm not aware of, but I don't want to disturb her. I'm sure she'd be happy to introduce me deeper into her world, though. Maybe next time.

                                     ---------------------

     My ears twitch as someone knocks on the front door, and I hold back an agitated growl. Kahlan is asleep beside me, my silk sheets curled around her half naked body, her breaths coming soft and slow. I slip out of bed and pad out to the living room before the next knock can come.
     Pigeons coo on the deck as I open the front door and I scowl at the late night visitor. "What?" I snap in a whisper, not wanting to wake Kahlan. She had been feeling funny all day and she needs the rest.
     "Are you Lost?"
     My eyes narrow and I sniff. "Who are you?"
     The visitor pulls back their hood and gazes at me with frazzled, desperate eyes. His hair is wet with excess magic. "Joanne said you would help us."
     So the she wolf requires my services. "That's true. But I know where to go thanks to Leon. Do you know who that is? He didn't give me anything concerning Joanne."
     "Yes, but the proper channels will take too long, they don't care. Please. This is an emergency."
     Running a hand through my hair, I turn to look back into the apartment. I don't want to wake Kahlan up but I don't want to simply leave, either. Then again, Kahlan expects me to do things on my own, make my own decisions. I've done that a lot lately and this isn't as hard to decide. Growling to myself I turn back to the visitor.
      "Fine," I grumble. "Give me a minute." I shut the door just so the apartment won't be violated and make my quiet way back to my room. Kahlan is still asleep, her tank top hiked up to just under her breasts, and her gorgeous red locks splayed out all around her head. The sheets hide her legs from me but I can see them crooked at comfortable angles.
     Silent, I put on more appropriate clothes for a night out. My shoes make virtually no noise as I walk around the bed to give Kahlan's slumbering form a soft kiss on the forehead. She exhales softly without moving.
     I close my bedroom door as an extra safety precaution then return to the living room. The visitor is still waiting in the hall when I open the front door.
     "Alright," I say when the front door's shut. "Tell me exactly what you need help with."
     He scratches the side of his face, nervously. "Me- my friends... Joanne..."
     Frustrated, I grab his chin and force him to look me in the eye. I inhale his scent to figure out just what's happening here, and my nose wrinkles in disgust. "What have you been doing?"
     His pupils expand as they focus on me. "Partying. It caused everyone to go nuts. I need your help bringing them down."
     I grunt in disgust and push the boy back. "I am not made to wrangle teenagers high on who knows what."
     "Please. It was a bad batch. Have you ever seen pixies on modified dust?"
     Those stupid pixies. Addicts, the lot of them. They'll never learn to stop messing with what they were made with. They know they'll trip and lose it. "Why weren't you effected?"
     "Someone spiked the punch but I didn't have any. Mom's a goblin. I can't stand dust. Stayed far away from the drinks."
     "Where's the party?"
     "Joanne's."
     I start for the elevator. "Joanne parties with kids?"
     "We weren't all kids. It was a monster mash, you know?"
     Great. There's probably tons of different creatures unwillingly high on dust, and they all react differently to the substance. I hurry out of the apartment building with... "What's your name?"
     "Johnny. Come on. Joanne's is this way." He hops on his feet, ready to run. If he's got goblin in him, he's quick. I shift my feet to show him I'm ready then zoom off behind him. We avoid nightlife and light poles, garbage cans and garbage. Johnny is a bullet, jumping from here to there rather running. His goblin is truly dominant.
     I'm led into a run down suburb- the lawns not so great, the houses old, and the streets and sidewalks cracked. Deep, thumping music thrums through the night, but I'm sure the area can't hear it. I follow it instead of Johnny and end up at a dingy cream colored one story cottage.
     "They're in the basement," Johnny informs me, coming to a stop on the porch.
     "Did you lock them in?" I ask as I let myself inside the house.
     "Of course," Johnny says from behind me.
     I walk through the house, actually enjoying the cluttered but homey feel to it, and eventually find the basement door. The music is louder here and I can hear otherworldly commotion from below.
     Turning to Johnny, I place a hand on the basement door knob. "Stay up here and lock the door behind me, okay? Charm it?"
     Johnny nods and runs a hand through his magic coated hair, gathering what he needs to do as I want. Satisfied, I open the basement door and slip inside. I wait a moment to allow Johnny to lock the door twice over, then I start down the steps. The music down here is fast and deep in my ears and I recognize the notes laced with a little something extra. It's the perfect tone to make my people go wild.
     When I reach the bottom of the stairs I take a deep breath and catch scents from numerous creatures. There's sweat and puke and someone's urinated somewhere.
     The bodies moving around me don't register a new guest and I'm able to assess the situation without being bothered. There's a fight going on in the corner between two lizard creatures with a circle of spectators cheering them on. A girl nearby is sitting in the floor, rocking back and forth and swatting at things that aren't there. Flying things are zooming around the room in dizzying patterns, scaring the folk that are having a bad trip, and there's a half formed cat creature mewling in pain. A man near the back is crying and banging on the wall.
     I slowly manoeuvre myself around the room, avoiding everyone while looking for Joanne. Eventually I spot a wolf's tail underneath a food table and I squat down and lift the cloth to see if its who I'm looking for.
     It is.
     Joanne's face is part human, part wolf. Her hands are mostly fingers but there's bits of paw here and there. One of her legs is mid transformation. It's the most painful thing I've ever seen.
     "Help me," she sob-growls.
     I touch her hairy arm and feel the bone changing underneath. "How much did you take?"
     "I don't know."
     She's not dead so that's a good sign. But her form is worrying. She needs to be given an antidote or at least take something to combat the dust. I don't have any herbs, though. Unless I can find the pixie who started all this...
     "Stay here," I tell Joanne, dropping the cloth and standing. I move to the man banging on the wall and grab his hands so he'll stop hurting himself. He screams, his unnatural vocal chords making my ears bleed, and everyone else in the room goes into overdrive. The fighting lizards start attacking other people and a full on brawl fills the basement. I hug the screaming man to me and whisper into his ear, calming him with my words. He wails for another minute but does relax, but that doesn't stop the fighting around us. I take the sniffling man to the stairs and sit him near the top, then run back down and start separating people.
     A fiery genie slugs me in the stomach and I growl. I grab the scarf around his neck and use it to bind his wrists together. He struggles but I kick him on his butt and leave him to think about what he's done.
     As I turn to stop one of the lizards from devouring the terrified cat creature, a clawed hand strikes me in the side and tears my shirt. Three lines form on my skin and droplets of red bud from them. Pissed, I kick at the lizard to force his mouth shut then spin around to try to find the beast that struck me. That's when I hear the giggling. Only a devious pixie could muster ugly giggling like that.
     My eyes scan the room thoroughly and I search for the night's culprit. Amongst the flying things, way in the corner, hovers a grinning creature I immediately recognize as a pixie. I scowl and it buzzes a few inches higher.
     Someone lunges at my midsection and I fall back in surprise, eyes still on the pixie, who's now rolling in the air, having the time of their life. The person who knocked me down crawls up my body and shoves a pale face into mine, mouth open and salivating.
     A string of drool drips onto my nose as they say, "What are you? You smell like you taste good."
     I grimace and push off the intoxicated vampire, wiping the spit off my face. If it had gotten in my mouth I probably would be high, too. Flipping onto my hands and feet, I tense and flick my eyes over the ceiling, wanting that pixie. It's the only way I can get everyone sane again. They need a dose of cleansing dust to get rid of the modified crap flowing through their bodies.
     There, across the room, I find it, the pixie. With a determined growl I throw myself at it... but miss. My body crashes into the opposite wall with a heavy thud but I catch myself before I can crash to the ground face first. The pixie laughs at my blunder. I spin on my heel and try again, flying over the chaos of the basement to reach my prey, and just barely miss this time. The pixie hisses at me and throws powder at me in retaliation. The fine dust washes over my side even as I dodge as much of it as I can and immediately my skin begins to itch and turn an ugly red. The cuts on my side ooze puss, much to my irritation. Kahlan is not going to like any of this.
     I ignore the painful itchiness spreading over my body and jump into the air, a clawed hand extended. My fingers close around the pixie's leg and I tug, hard, bringing both of us to the ground. It screeches and scratches at me, fighting to get away. I crawl up on top of it and pin its arms down with my knees to leave my hands free to threaten if I so please.
     "Give me cleaner," I snap, yanking my fist back, fully prepared to throw it.
     The pixie wiggles and smiles with pointed teeth. "We're just having fun, man. Chill out."
     A bulking thing flies past my head, crying out in distress. That's just one piece of evidence that no one is having fun. "Give it," I say again. "Now. Or I'll tear off your wings and make sure they don't ever grow back."
     "Relax, dude. It was just a joke."
     I lean down and snarl. "You drugged these people without their consent for your own amusement. That's not a joke. Give. Me. Cleaner."
     The pixie stares at me, assessing the situation, then finally obeys. I lift a leg so it can move an arm and wait with a palm out for the cleaner. The pixie drops a cloth baggie in my hand then sulks like a child. I open the bag slightly and take a whiff to make sure it really is cleanser, then close it when I'm sure it is.
     "If you try something like this again and I get wind of it," I threaten as I stand, "I'll kill you. No bargaining."
     The pixie buzzes off to the stairs and slams into the basement door, unaware of the charm Johnny put on it. I zoom to the food table with Joanne underneath and lift the cloth. She's much worse off than before- her bones at odd angles and her skin stretched too far. Quickly, I reach into the pixie's bag and take a pinch of powder from it, then open Joanne's mouth and sprinkle the dust onto her pulsating tongue. She gurgles and convulses as the dust takes effect and I move back to give her room. Her wolf retreats back into her where it belongs, her human becoming more prominent. Eventually, she sucks in a gasping breath and all of her is human and she looks just as I remember her last.
     "Thank you," she half sobs, still regaining her composure.
I lift the table cloth higher so she can climb out from underneath, giving her a helping hand. She takes my offered palm and stands on wobbly legs. When I'm sure she won't fall I let her go and take my new bag of cleaner pixie dust to help out the others. Some are still fighting, most still crying and swatting at things that don't exist anywhere but in the mind, while others have moved on to staring blankly into space with drool coming from wide open mouths. I cure the fighters first, not wanting them to hurt themselves or others. With a firm hand and jutting elbow, I manage to force a sprinkle of dust into their mouths and make them swallow. As soon as they do the fight leaves them and they groan, shivering.
     The hallucinators are next. Some of them attempt to run from me, thinking I'm something I'm not, but the rest come nearer to me, their minds making me alluring. I give them each a dose of cleaner and their glazed eyes brighten with the real world. Half of them receive headaches with reality and the other half get the shakes and a belly ache. It's a small price to pay.
     Joanne goes around to make sure the cured are okay while I take care of the last poor souls effected by the modified dust- the starers. It's impossible to get them swallow or even register me so I stick the dust between their gums and lip and rub it in using their saliva. After a moment, it works, and each of them throw up as a reaction. I get a little spit up on my shirt as a result but I do dodge the majority of it. Honestly, I expected worse so I'm happy with the night's outcome.
     I jog up the basement steps and bang on the door, hollering for Johnny to uncharm it. After a moment he does, and Joanne gets people moving. The pixie zips out at head height before anyone can accuse and possibly maim it for what it's done. I let it go, if only because my death threat was for the next time we meet.
     "Thank you," Joanne tells me again. We're both standing at the top of the basement steps, comforting people as they come up.
     I squeeze the hand of what used to be the mewling cat creature and accept his sincere offer of a favor may I need one in the future. "It's no problem," I tell Joanne as the cat creature walks away.
     She gives the vampire that knocked me down a hug, an apparent close friend of hers. "I wasn't sure if you'd come," she says to me. The people leaving dwindle, and eventually everyone's gone, even Johnny. "Asking Johnny to get you was a desperate act." She invites me into the kitchen and offers me a drink. "I thought you'd tell him to go away, make a claim with the office."
     The office, I assume, is what they call Leon's people, his organization. "Johnny said that would take too long, that they wouldn't care."
     Joanne shrugs, crossing her arms over her chest. "Stuff like this has happened before. It's not at the top of the office's list. They have limited agents and use them for more life threatening situations."
     "I'm sorry."
     "It's not your fault. But I'm more than appreciative that you'd come help. I owe you one, more even. Josh would agree."
     I take a sip from the water Joanne gave me, and my throat stings when I swallow. I still haven't cured myself. "I'll help when I can. I'll try to get, uh, the office to take these things more seriously if I can, too."
     Joanne smiles. "You're one of the good ones." Then she noticed how I'm trying to discreetly scratch. "You should take some of that cleaner yourself."
     I chuckle. I thought I'd wait until Joanne wasn't looking. But I take a pinch of cleaner and sprinkle it into my mouth, rubbing it around with my tongue until it's all dissolved. Immediately my itch goes away and my sliced up side feels better. It won't puss anymore but I still have to deal with the wounds themselves.
     "Here," I say, handing over the rest of the cleaner. "You'll have more use of this than me. That pixie might come back, or another."
     Joanne takes the bag and rolls it around in her hand. "You're kind." Then she puts the bag down on the counter and struggles to say something. "You should probably get home, back to your mate and all."
     "Yeah. She's still sleeping. I was hoping to get back and have that be the case."
     Nodding, Joanne leads me to the front door. She takes my half empty cup of water and sloshes the liquid around. "Are you really happy with her, that human?"
     That was a question I didn't expect but I answer it honestly anyway. "Yes. My loyalties lie with her until she wants them no longer."
     "And if she does? Not want them anymore, I mean."
     "Then I'll leave without hesitation."
     Joanne takes that in with a twitch of her jaw. "She's human. She doesn't understand us."
     "But she tries, in her own way. What is your problem with humans?"
     "They pretend to want us with their movies and books, but when they get us they run away. Aren't you afraid she'll run away?"
     I study Joanne closely, and nod in understanding. "They're not all the same. I'm sorry they left you, but you have someone else now. So why dwell on the past?"
     "I just want to protect my people from my pain."
     "You make the pain worse by giving them doubts."
     There's a minute of silence, and Joanne gazes down into the cup of water. "Tell your mate, Kahlan, that I was wrong. I'll... I'll spread the word she's yours, if that's okay."
     Wrong? About what? But I don't ask to attempt to pry. "That's just fine. I should go now. If you have parties in the future-"
     "I'll invite you."
     "Thank you, but I was going to say that you should have someone bless everything, or have a mermaid watch for troubling pixies."
     Joanne chuckles in that charming way I'm sure Josh loves and says, "You got it. Goodnight."
     I wave and turn, but stop before Joanne can close the front door. "Hey," I call quickly, regaining her attention. "You know one of those favors you owe me?"
     Surprised, Joanne nods. "Yeah. You're cashing one in already?"
     I smirk. "How do you and your pack feel about baseball?"