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  She didn’t dare press her luck by trying to stand up just yet.

  The vibration calmed from jack hammer to cell phone status and her teeth stopped chattering. Her body cooled down to slightly above its normal temperature and she took a deep breath, smiling at her small triumph.

  Her trembling legs made her proud as they lifted her from the floor. She held on to the top of the dresser to steady herself for a moment before she walked over to the bed, more confident after a few deep breaths. Wanting to prove that she was in control, she needed to keep it on as long as possible.

  Kaiser shifted his weight as she lie down on the bed and climbed under the blankets. Her body was calming down and her temperature was back to normal. She rolled over and got comfortable, facing away from Kaizer and his light snore.

  A moment before she felt herself be pulled under the welcome blanket of sleep, Kaiser stretched and put a paw in her back.

  Her temperature spiked and she felt that terrifying pinch in her sternum right before she was sucked into a dark vacuum.

  Her last thought was, Not again.

  He was almost halfway to Nauvoo and the second piece of the puzzle when he felt the familiar tug at his naval. It never failed to cause even the Chaos inside of him to calm in reverence and fear. It was like having the ice in his veins turn to glaciers in an instant.

  He willed himself to completely drop his physical form and allowed the tug to pull him through the veil to the other side. The darkness inside of him was completely at home in this environment. It sprawled out and anchored itself to the dark stones that were strewn about.

  As the power started to pour into him, he settled in and focused his mind. He kept telling himself that he couldn’t be there for a bad reason. He hadn’t been out there long enough to get into enough trouble to warrant a summons. His master very rarely had anything to say to anyone, or anything for that matter.

  For the life of him he could not think of anything he had done to make the boss angry enough to warrant a lashing.

  Stop your worrying you sniveling little worm.

  The voice inside his mind was like ants inside of his head.

  You’re not here for punishment yet. You can rest easy. I just want an update on your progress.

  “Of course. I have retrieved the first of the Bloodline. You received the information that was contained within it I imagine, so there is no need to relay it. The power inside of me was leading me to the next orb when you called me. I answered your summons immediately.”

  Wise choice. Return to your mission.

  He withdrew the tentacles from their anchor points and prepared to continue his journey on the other side. As he was crossing over, his master tacked on a final statement to the command, adding an extra sense of urgency to his already urgent task.

  Chaos, you’re doing well, but pick up the pace. I have a deadline.

  Chaos completed the shift back to the physical realm. Instead of joining part of himself to the plane, he stayed entirely ethereal and willed himself along the highway. Staying in his natural form on the physical plane was a huge tax on his energy, but it allowed him to travel more quickly.

  The landscape blurred past him so fast that his constantly searching tentacles didn’t even have time to pick up the usual snippets of energy. He flew past cities with barely even a whisper of thought from the residents nestled inside the buildings.

  It was an odd sensation to be flying deaf and blind.

  Letting his blood take complete control, the landscape quickly blurred as he rushed by and then finally vanished all together. The blurred lights were swallowed by the darkness that he was moving through as fast as his thoughts would allow.

  He felt his energy levels suddenly drop like a diabetic’s blood sugar and decided that he needed to shift over to his physical form before he had to stop and refuel. He preferred the pure energy that came from his own plane over the diluted energy that coursed through the life stream on Earth. It never failed that if he had to pull energy into himself while in a physical form, it made him feel heavy and slow. He preferred to wait as long as he could before resorting to that.

  The next town he came to was a place called Champaign, Illinois. Moving at the slower pace required him to to pull his feelers in so that he wasn’t picking up on every little thought in the whole city. He drew them in so that they only stuck out a few feet from his body in every direction. It cut his reception down to about a three block radius. That was manageable and gave him the drop that he needed if anything was out of the ordinary.

  He was like a walking, breathing police scanner. Without the static.

  Everything seemed calm as he meandered east through the town. It was nothing more than another middle-of-nowhere town in another middle-of-nowhere state. There was nothing here for him and his beast was raging inside of him, urging him to hurry. It wanted to be the one doing the leading and it wanted to be doing it at a much faster pace.

  He could barely contain the darkness that was thrashing about inside of him. The last words from his master had both his brain and his instincts screaming for him to kick it into high gear.

  I have a deadline.

  He started jogging down the street and the beast went from a tempest to a tropical storm. The thing was still irritated with the conventional, slow, means of travel, but he reasoned with it as he labored on down the street step by laborious, mundane step.

  There needed to be some energy left when they arrived at their destination, just in case it was anything like the last one. He wasn’t looking forward to another onslaught. That had been too close for comfort. He needed to be better prepared for the next one.

  He caught a thought as he passed by one of the residents of this pathetic dot on a map, Jogging in a three piece suit, that’s not something you see every day!

  He probed the next person he passed looking for an image of what a jogger would normally wear. He found the information easily and shifted the suit into a lightweight outfit that moved with his body much better than the suit had. The dark sweats and t shirt flowed around his flesh and allowed him to cover more ground with each stride. He picked up the pace and felt the beast relax a little bit.

  His instincts weren’t the only part of him that was calming down. The clothing change had reminded him that he had a job to do in the here and now. Being reminded that he needed to blend in as well as he could gave him something else to focus on while his body did all the work. He followed his blood and let his feet take control.

  Before much longer, he was moving at a full sprint and breathing heavily. The downfall of being limited to the physical plane was following the rules that came along with it. This running thing wasn’t moving him fast enough and the strain on his energy from moving around in his natural form wasn’t worth the risk. Getting to the next temple and having to fight his way through another barrier with no energy to do so was not only dangerous, but stupid as well.

  He stopped moving and stretched his energy further out into the city to find a different mode of transportation that would suit him without making him stand out like a sore thumb. He hit the jackpot on the third try in the form of a man straddling a two-wheeled vehicle.

  He brought the machine into existence with ease in the same fashion and at the same time as his new outfit. Black leather formed itself to his body and the weight of the jet black helmet settled under his arm and a sleek street bike materialized in front of him. He was pretty sure the machine in front of him was called a Yamaha R6. Well, close to it anyway. He had made a few tweaks to the body to suit him better.

  “This is more like it.”

  He probed the man’s mind one more time for operational guidance before mounting the steel frame and turning the ignition key to the on position. The bike roared to life between his legs. The low rumble sounded like a horde of demons had been unleashed from hell and were climbing out of the tail pipe. It caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up and the beast inside of him went wild with pleasure
. It appeared he had found something that suited both of their tastes.

  He roared out of town, heading northwest on Interstate 74. The numbers next to the name of a place called Peoria kept getting smaller and smaller. He assumed that was where he was headed. At least for the time being. His instincts told him that when he got there, he would be heading west on yet another highway—the miles of blacktop would slowly, ploddingly lead him to his prize.

  As the tires ate up the pavement, his icy blue eyes scanned the road ahead of him. Much like killing people in the streets, vanishing in order to avoid a head on collision was not at the top of his list of things to do to keep his presence quiet. While not exactly obeying the speed limit, he was as safe as he could be otherwise. Always careful not to let his mind wander too far.

  Small towns came and went off to either side of the road. He was still moving slow enough that he had to keep his feelers in check so as not to be treated like a travelling antenna. There was nothing out there that he needed to know, so he kept himself, mostly, locked down tight. Not wanting the distraction of several hundred other peoples’ thoughts to cause him to slip up.

  Peoria came and went, and as he had expected, the compass built into his body led him to the west on a smaller highway. As the towns flew by faster and faster due to them getting smaller and smaller, he relaxed a little. Less people nearby meant less thoughts being broadcast for him to pick up on.

  He probed ahead of him in search of anyone that could cause him problems, mainly police officers, in hopes of catching them before they could catch him. Every time he passed one, he made sure to phase into his natural form a fraction of a second before coming into sight of the radar gun, and back to the physical as soon as he was out of range. It didn’t take more than a half a second, and guaranteed that he wouldn’t have to toast a cop.

  He came to the top of a small rise a short while later and felt his blood ignite in anticipation. Nestled up against the river that separated Illinois from Iowa stood a tall white building. On top of that tall white building stood a large golden statue of an angel with a horn.

  The building was illuminated with so many spotlights that he could see it all the way from his side of the town. It was much more modern than the last one. More elegant. Cold stone and clean lines instead of the rough stones and wood of the building that he had reduced to ash back in Kirkland.

  He slowed his progress to a prowl and let the bike slowly carry him toward the monolith that had been built along an otherwise picturesque river. The thought process that lead people to believe that they needed these big, grand buildings to house deities escaped him. Why didn’t they just go out and commune with each other and the world around them? They were, after all, the most amazing creation the universe had thus far produced. At least that’s what they had been telling themselves for centuries.

  Maybe it was because he was Chaos incarnate and had a bit of an advantage when it came to understanding the way the universe worked. He couldn’t wrap his head around how illogical they all became when it came to religion. They had managed to produce more negativity and conflict in the name of religion than they had good. Wars, hatred, protests, and a group of psychotic Baptists were some of the more entertaining results he had seen.

  Having learned his lesson the last time, he came to a stop a couple of blocks from the Nauvoo temple.

  Rushing in blind would be a bad idea.

  He didn’t like surprises, and he really didn’t like life threatening surprises. After his last stop, he had a feeling that he could expect a surprise or two, and he didn’t have much faith that they were going to be friendly.

  He willed the bike to vaporize and drew the energy back into himself before slowly approaching the temple. His senses were tuned to any changes in the energy around him and his muscles were tensed, ready to react as soon as anything changed.

  It was quiet and nothing seemed out of place or threatening. He didn’t trust it.

  It proved to be a wise decision.

  He had taken one step onto the temple grounds when, out of nowhere, something slammed into his chest. The only warning he had gotten was the hair on the back of his neck standing on end a nanosecond before the attack. With no time to react and not knowing what to expect, he had taken the blow head on and hadn’t even had time to completely solidify his shield.

  The blow not only rocked his world and made him see stars, it also broke his physical form and he had to fight to not be forced all the way back to the astral plane. He reigned in his scattered energies and willed himself to materialize across the street.

  Large green vines of energy had shot up out of the ground and were waving around menacingly. All around the grounds, these sentinels stood guard. It was going to take some creative thinking mixed with brute force and a lot of energy to get through the formidable wall.

  The strike had sapped a good portion of his energy, leaving him feeling a little woozy and weak. Pushing some of the darkness inside of him to the outside he formed a shell around his body. Drawing his aura in tight, he assessed his tactics and considered his options, which were few.

  Rushing in, guns blazing, like he had last time was not an option. There was no shield to puncture, and no visible concentration of energy to drain away from the vines. The druids responsible had known what they were doing. Short of fighting individual tentacles, he could see no other way to tear them down. The only problem with that plan was the fact that there was not enough of him to go around. If he were to rush in there and battle it out, they’d drain him and have him crawling his way back to the astral plane one molecule at a time. That wasn’t how his next meeting with the boss had played out in his head.

  His first order of business was to test the perimeter, so he slowly poked and prodded his way around the outside edge of the property. Close enough to provoke a response, but not close enough to end up taking any blows. He couldn’t afford to take any more hits like the first one. One more hit like that and he’d be sucking power out of charge stones for weeks to get back to being barely strong enough to have a physical form on this plane.

  The boss would not like the setback.

  He had screwed up once before and bore the brunt of the master’s anger. The weeks of recovery had been the least of his problems. The darkness inside of him had been shredded and scattered throughout the astral plane. The entire time his pieces were trying to find their way back to each other, it was like every single ounce of his being was floating around in a vat of acid.

  Once they had found their way back together, they had the pleasure of re-establishing themselves into a form that resembled a sentient being. That hadn’t been the most fun he’d ever had either. After all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle had fallen into the right places, he had been allowed to attach himself to the large black stones and begin the process of consuming the power he would need to fully repair himself.

  He shuddered at the memory and put a little extra energy into his shield.

  He finished his lap around the grounds and retreated a safe distance to plan a new attack strategy. As he had gone around the property, the tentacles had only risen where he had gotten close to the property line and had sunk back into the ground as he proceeded around the building. There was never more than a twenty foot chunk active at a time. He wondered if it was out of necessity, or if it was due to the presence of only one threat. He needed to test the validity of his theory.

  As he stepped into the street, he created a shadow of himself forty feet to his left. The two of them approached the boundary slowly. The shadow would only be able to take one blow before being blasted apart and reabsorbed into the Universe, so he kept a larger than necessary gap between their bodies and the thrashing vines of energy. Better safe than sorry.

  Like he had hoped, tentacles rose in front of both him and the shadow, energy crackling in the air between them. Chaos and the shadow slowly moved further and further apart. The wall of death followed along, constantly lashing out towards them. They continu
ed all the way around the property and Chaos pulled the energy of the shadow back inside of him when they met up at the other end.

  The vines had followed them all the way around the property line. Not a single break in the defense. However, he had noticed that the amount of ground that they had covered had shrunk by a couple of feet. Instead of a single twenty foot chunk following him, there had been two fifteen foot sections. One following each of them around the perimeter.

  If he could gather enough energy to make four or five more shadows, he might be able to whittle each chunk down to a mere couple of feet. That would make fighting his way in considerably easier.

  It was a risky plan, considering he’d be controlling all of them and wasting vital energy that he would rather be using to keep himself in one piece. He was fairly confident that he could pull it off though. It would take a bit of luck and a whole lot of skill though.

  He searched the area for an energy source that he could tap into to replace what he had lost. Not finding anything in visual range, he reached out with his antennae in search of something a little further off. He found what he was looking for a couple blocks east from where he was standing. The Nauvoo State Park was both off the beaten path and jam packed with life—two key qualities that he looked for when considering a place to refill.

  He covered the half mile on foot and found a stand of trees tucked away from any of the major trails. It was hard to believe that there was so much life force flowing through the barren winter landscape. Right below the surface of the leafless trees and the brown grass was the vital energy that coursed through every living thing. The same energy that he needed to produce the full armada of his defenses.