Statera - The Balanced One

Chapter Nineteen

I was in a dark place when I finally slept, tossing and turning as I traveled through the alternate world my mind had conjured while I dreamt. Senka was chasing me through the dank, dark caves she dwelled in. I needed to distance myself just a little more to gain the advantage. Senka's wrought was strong but unable to immobilize me while in Pure Form. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. I mentally changed direction by forcing the dream version of myself to stop running and face my foe.

Senka surged toward the opportunity she saw as I stood my ground defiantly. My sudden confidence had Senka stopping in her tracks.

"Your core is going to be mine," Senka started in a deadly tone. "I have waited months to get you exactly where you are now. There is nowhere left for you to run. All your friends and family, your entire pack, are dead!"

Allowing my mind's eye to reach, it panned out and raced down the tunnel's twists and turns. When it stopped, I saw Keitan and everyone else I loved sprawled on the cave floor, lifeless and dismantled in a heap of body parts.

My disembodied vision was yanked back through the tunnels and slammed into my body. I stood where I'd stopped as the cave's walls closed on me.

When I had but inches to spare before the walls crushed me, I heard Senka's evil voice speaking to me one last time.

"You will come to me, stalk me, hunt me, a fearless predator. But when you finally find me, your prey, I will become your predator and devour you whole!"

I woke to a pounding heart and harried emotions. My mouth felt like cotton, and the sheets were drenched.

I hate being closed in. Why did it have to be caves and caverns?

Pushing the unsettled feeling aside, I got up for the day.

****

"Well, now we know, relatively speaking, where Senka is. The question is, when will we go after her and get Shannon back? How many caves and caverns can there be in the Branson area?" Eric asked.

The answer was three. There were two caverns and one cave. All were tourist attractions, so the likelihood of any of those caves being where Senka is holed up was highly doubtful. Owen explained those were the most popular of many that littered the area. We would need a means of tracking Senka or, better yet, Shannon. The problem was we had no one with that specific trait. We needed someone who could pick up her scent from miles away.

Noah was gone, so Owen decided maybe we needed to call on extended family.

"Who did you have in mind?" Keitan asked his father that night.

"I think my brother, Art, will be the best one to recruit. He will want to spend Thanksgiving with his family, so I'll ask him to come down from Kansas on Friday," Owen said.

"You have a brother?" I asked, rather surprised.

Owen laughed his full belly laugh.

"Yes, my dear, Art is my twin brother, less than four minutes older than me, and he never lets me forget it. I also have three sisters, two older, one younger."

I wasn't the only one blindsided by this new knowledge. Dahlia seemed just as shocked.

Owen chuckled at the expressions on our faces. "It isn't a big deal, ladies."

Cara glanced around the room at the different conversations taking place. She knew the long and short of what was going on. So the rest of us weren't worried about her sitting in as we determined when to head up to Missouri and how we would go about it.