Called Home
The Tarask fell. This had never happened before. End over end it tumbled to the ground, roaring as confusion turned to rage. There it was! It must get the Halo! The massive creature tried to right itself but the tumbling continued. Suddenly—pain! Pain like nothing it had experienced before in its long life—splitting it in half as it crashed into the ground. But it was still alive. The Halo Bearer landed before it, the Halo held in her hand; a level of control not seen by a human. The Tarask lurched, trying to reach for the Halo, but it could not move properly. Slowly she approached and it looked her in the eye. It had never been this close to a Bearer before—curious. Strength flowed from this one. It could feel it as she imposed her will on the Halo, stopping it from calling out again to its brethren. Perhaps…
Then abruptly the fires of the portal ignited around its broken body, calling it home.
Ava found herself standing alone in the middle of the highway. A line of cars stopped dead on the road. She could see the shocked and horrified looks on their faces, many of them would not believe what they had just seen. Many more, she knew, would never forget it. She caught eyes with some of people sitting in their cars. She gave them a brief nod and then phased through the road.
She landed in a heap on the ground beneath the overpass after falling about five meters. Luckily, the Halo was not yet spent and had already begun healing her as she put it away. Ava took in her surroundings, looking for potential threats and signs of her location. She was well out of the fight at this point; Lilith had done her job well. Angry tears began to stream down her face as she worried for her sister warriors. She thought of Bea and the sisters that they had left at the warehouse, which only made the tears come faster as she began to sob.
Fuck.
Ava hated being on the sidelines and it was even worse knowing that she had done it to herself. She would much rather be out there defending her sisters. It’s what she did. She was a fighter.
She sat on the ground against a support for the road above her, hearing the sirens as they began to approach. She allowed herself another thirty seconds to wallow and shed the rest of her tears and then she was up and moving. The last thing she wanted was to be caught now. She needed to get her bearings. She needed to find her way to the rendezvous. She needed to hide the goddamn sword she had strapped to her back.
Having wrapped herself in a shoddy blanket she found underneath the overpass, Ava made her way out onto the streets. She was suddenly very happy that Bea made her study all those maps of Rome on their trip over from Cat’s Cradle as she was quickly able find herself. It was time to make her way to the first safe house.
“What do you mean they’re missing, Cam? Where are they?” Ava raised her voice as she looked around the room of nuns. The eight that left with her were all there; as were eight of the ten that had stayed with Bea and Dora. She looked to that group. “What happened?” she demanded.
“She and Sister Dora ordered us to leave when the Swiss Guard had gotten close,” answered one of the nuns timidly, clearly worried about Ava’s reaction. “She was concerned about accidently starting a fight with them in the confusion. The two of them stayed behind to cover our escape and protect the divinium.”
Ava ran her hands through her hair. “Of course she did,” she whispered to herself under her breath. She inhaled deeply and closing her eyes, slowly exhaled through her nose, trying to keep herself calm. She couldn’t focus on Bea right now. The room waited for her silently. “And what about Rosemary and Eileen?” she asked.
“No one really knows,” answered Camila. Ava’s eyes shot open. She turned her head so fast to look at Camila she tweaked her neck. “No one has seen them since we left.”
“How is that possible?” asked the Warrior Nun. “Where could they be?”
“They didn’t come with us,” continued Cam, “and none of the girls remembers seeing them fighting at the warehouse.” She looked at the other women in the room. “There also seems to be some confusion as to how many vans were in the warehouse.”
“Three,” responded Ava quickly. Camila nodded in agreement.
“We took the last two vans when we left,” said one of the nuns.
Ava closed her eyes again, thinking back to the last time she saw the two rookies. They were talking with Bea, after she had come back inside from her perimeter sweep, her face far too calm for what she had discovered.
“Please, just trust that I know what I’m doing…”
It was time for Ava to confirm her suspicions. “Where’s the divinium?” she asked, opening her eyes and looking again at Camila.
The young nun hesitated and it was Yasmine who answered for her. “We didn’t get it. It wasn’t in either truck. No one knows what could have happened to it.”
Ava nodded, fully expecting that answer. Letting out a sigh, she started checking her gear and picked up the Cruciform Sword.
The room became a flurry of activity as all of the sister warriors, upon seeing the Warrior Nun prep for battle began to do the same. Camila rushed to her side. “Ava, what are you doing?” she asked quietly.
“I’m going after them,” she said simply.
“Where, Ava? How?” Camila shook her head and looked at the Halo Bearer sadly. “The Vatican will be crawling with Swiss Guard for the next several days and the police are going to be on high alert all throughout Rome after what we did.” Ava stubbornly continued getting herself ready.
“Look, Ava” advised Camila, raising her voice so the whole room could hear, “by now one of three things has happened. One— they escaped and have gone to ground and we will never be able to find them. Two…” The Warrior Nun made her way toward the door and Camila moved to cut her off, trying to block her way out. “Two— they were captured, either by FBC or the Vatican, in which case we don’t know where they are. Or three…” She trailed off at the angry look that Ava gave her. “There would be no point in going to look for them,” she finished quietly.
“Get out of my way Cam,” Ava warned. The young nun did not budge. She stared defiantly into Ava's eyes.
“Ava, please listen to me,” Camila continued quietly so that only Ava could hear. Her desperation to get Ava under control was apparent. “There are no two women in the world more capable than Dora and Beatrice. And if Eileen and Rosemary are with them…”
“They’re not,” Ava interrupted with a sigh. She knew Camila was right. They could barely find Bea in the Cat’s Cradle when she didn’t want to be found. There was no chance when she had all of Rome open to her. But sitting around and waiting was going to be torture. She could never be comfortable simply waiting and hoping, not while Bea was out there. Allowing herself to engage in this conversation with Camila was the closest she could come to admitting that she should stay put.
“I saw Bea talking to them just before she came over to warn us about the FBC,” she said quietly to Camila and Yasmine, who had just come closer to join them. Ava gently rubbed at her temples. “If I had to guess, Bea had them pull a switch and they are both with the divinium. I can’t imagine that either of them would have willingly run from a fight otherwise.”
Yasmine looked shocked. Camila looked hurt. “Why would she do that without telling us?”
“I don’t know,” replied Ava, shaking her head. “Something spooked her and she wouldn’t tell me what it was. She just asked me to trust her.” She sighed again and nodded. “And I do.” She looked directly at Camila. “And I trust you too, Cam. If you say we need to stay and hide, we stay and hide; even if I fucking hate it.”
“Language,” responded Camila, breathing a little more easily now. “Yasmine, would you tell the girls?”
The sister warriors had settled back into the safe house as night was falling over Rome. It was a little crowded but Ava supposed there wasn’t much to be done about that. Dinner was little more than some cold rations that they had brought with them but it was better than nothing. And it was all better than being caught. The Halo Bearer stood with her arms folded, leaning easily against the side of a window on the second floor looking out into the night. Camila had come to join her as she was taking the first watch. Ava observed the exhausted young nun as she took a seat in the chair next to her.
“You should try and get some sleep, Ava,” she said to her friend. “We’re going to be up and moving before sunrise.”
“I’m alright, Camila,” responded the Warrior Nun. “Besides,” she said teasingly, “I think you might need me here to keep you awake for your watch.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. It’s only an hour. There are a lot of us here—it means short shifts.” She smiled up at her. “I won’t say no to the company though.”
They waited together, the Warrior Nun and her best friend, each silently wondering what had become of the four women who were still out there, particularly what had become of the woman who meant so much to both of them.
“Where do you think they are right now?” asked Ava.
Camila shrugged. “Bea has worked a lot in Rome. I’m sure she has hidey-holes all over the city. I don’t think they were captured. The Vatican would have told Father Vincent immediately and Mother Superion would have sent out the call.”
“When can we contact Mother?”
“Not until tomorrow evening when we make the third safe house. That should put enough separation between us and the devastation we brought down on the city.”
“I still can’t believe this was all for nothing,” said Ava, shaking her head despairingly.
“Unless you’re right,” put in Camila, “if Eileen and Rosemary have the divinium and get it back to Cat's Cradle then the mission was a success.”
“At what cost? We were trying to be under the radar and avoid a war with the Vatican. I think they may have noticed what happened.” Ava kept the other cost she was worried about unspoken.
“Probably,” conceded Camila, not commenting on Ava’s omission. “But from what I heard it will be obvious that the FBC was at the warehouse. We can also pin any of the chaos on the roads on them as well. The Vatican will jump at the chance to publicly blame them for anything. Bea was probably right about that—defending the divinium probably bought us some goodwill.”
“And the Tarask that landed on the street?”
Camila smiled at her. “There’s no proof of that. You said it was pulled back through the portal before it died.”
Ava chuckled; a hollow sound with no mirth behind it. “Yeah no proof, just dozens of witnesses. How can you be so optimistic, Cam?”
“It’s a gift,” replied the nun. She gave her friend a concerned look. “You really should get some sleep, Ava.”
Ava sighed. Her next admission cost her something. “I haven’t slept without Bea since I came back.” Camila watched her silently, her face betraying nothing of her thoughts. Ava looked out the window and continued. “I wasn’t there long, I think two weeks but it could have been more. There wasn’t really night and day so I slept when I was tired, which was quite a lot early on. My dreams were—weird. It was like I was back—I could see, hear, smell, taste and feel almost everything around me.” She paused, taking in a broken breath and wiping her eyes. “I would hug someone and I could feel their clothes, feel the weight of their arms around me. If I would squeeze her when I hugged, she was solid—she was real.” Bright white moonlight splashed on half of Ava’s face as she turned to look back at Camila, making it glow and creating a sharp contrast with the shadows that hid the rest of her. It was eerie, as if Ava wasn’t entirely there. As if half of her had been pulled back into Reya's realm and the rest of her was threatening to follow the more she talked about it.
“But then I would go to touch her skin—hold her hand or her face—and there was nothing,” she said, voice breaking. “I don’t know if I even can fall asleep without touching her. But I can feel what will happen if I do.”
Camila listened to her friend intently, eyes glistening as she fought back tears, wanting to stay strong for Ava. Without saying a word, she stood and held the girl in a hug, allowing her to cry on her shoulder. After a minute, she whispered quietly in Ava’s ear. “She’s still alive. I know she is. We just have to have faith.”
A few hours later and the women were ready to move to their new safe house, this one a little further away from the heart of the city and from the Vatican. Ava had continued her vigil at the window long after Camila had gone to bed, chatting quietly with whichever nuns had continued the watch throughout the night. The morning glow was only just beginning off in the distance. The city streets were bathed in light grays and dark shadows. It was perfect for blending into the surroundings and with the early morning hour, no one should be awake to notice them.
They split into groups of twos and threes, winding their ways through different paths along the city. Some groups doubling back and others adding extra turns and detours. Individually, their pathways would appear random. Coupled with the skills of each woman involved, no one could hope to follow them or get even a vague idea of the destination. If able to be viewed as a group from above, the seventeen women would have resembled the organized chaos of a group of ants swarming through the tall grass to reach a child’s fallen lollipop.
They made it to the new house with no issues and settled in for a long day of boredom. “Are you sure this is the right thing, Cam?” Ava asked her once they had all safely arrived. “They’re not going to look for us at the old house?”
“They know the schedule,” explained Camila calmly. “They’ll try to meet us here; if they don’t think they’ll make it before this evening then they’ll try for the next safe house and meet or maybe even beat us there. It’s standard procedure.”
“And if they can’t meet us there before we have to leave that one?” Ava asked nervously.
“After that house we leave the city,” replied Camila. “We split up again to make our ways back to Cat’s Cradle.” Her voice became solemn. “If they don’t reach us before that then they’re on their own.”