Enid woke again. There were no fever dreams this time, just blackness. The boy drinking from her chest. She had a roughly blanket over her feet. She recognized the patchwork of randomly dyed linen. It was the only blanket she’d ever owned as a child. She quirked her head to the side and realized it was what Hazel had been sewing under Cela’s guidance. She shifted and regrated it immediately as pain shot through her. Her body still wasn’t healing as rapidly as it usually did even as a mortal. Cela was cooking something over the fire. Hazel was leaning on the bed beside Enid. She looked to Cela and spoke.

“Sword of Light?”

“Yes, it is one of the treasures of the Tuatha de Danann. It is said to be able to cut through darkness, and slay anything.”

Hazel was touching something in her lap and looked back at her mother. Enid still had her eyes closed, it hurt less that way though when she heard the distinct sound of a sword being pulled form its sheath she opened them to see Lucius’s blade gleaming in the fire light. Cela gasped.

“Is that the blade of legend?”

“I do not think so, my mother forged it when I was ten. My sister and I watched her.”

“It looks likes made of liquid. And the etchings. Your mother made this thing? And you pull it out of thin air. Surely she is one of the Tuatha de Danann!”

Hazel slid the blade back into its sheath and Lucius vanished from site concealed by the holo-web.

“She also wields a spear of light. She pulled it out of a barrier in her a temple dedicated to her.”

“So many stories you have child.”

“She once fought a giant two-headed wolf that breathed a green cloud that destroyed all life it touched. He bit into her arm and her leg green poison oozed from the wounds and she still slew him.”

“Where you at her side then?”

“No, the gods told me that I was not to join the battle until she defeated the wolf. We slew many monsters that day and celebrated… and she once killed an entire cave of Formorai while mortal. Shattered… shattered stone for as far as the eye could see and tore a… craft of the Gods in half in a rage when my…”

Cela stirred the pot. Enid remembered the smell well, venison stew. Cela had her own recipe that she promised to share with Enid one day but it never came to be… Cela looked to Hazel.

“Finish the story child, don’t leave an old woman hanging.”

Hazel shook her head wiping away the beginnings of tears.

“Why does this story break your heart child?”

“Because the gods killed my sister, and my mother hasn’t been herself since. She went into a rage… hunting them all down. Draining their essences from their body, now she sits here trapped between life and death, and I am not sure she wants to live. She has… been careless since it happened, pushing everyone who loves her away.”

“Oh Hazel, the loss of a child, it weighs on a mother’s soul like no other loss. She needs time, but I would guess she is growing stronger.”

The old woman’s kind gray eyes met Enid’s.

“Are you hungry, Sarah?”

Enid nodded, in truth she was both hungry and thirsty. Hazel took the boy who had fallen to sleep and put him in the bassinet that one of the other woman had delivered. Hazel helped her mother sit up right. Enid could feel her dress clinging to her frame. She felt weak and lighter. Cela put the broth into a craved bowl and passed it to her. Enid slowly tipped the bowl and felt the warm fill her. She looked at her daughter.

“He hasn’t touched you has he?”

“No, mom, he’s been gone since the last time… he and some allies and most of the men went raiding.”

Enid nodded and finished her broth. She was about to ask for a second when a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen rushed in. Enid recognized her as Maggs, though she’d never seen her this young.

“Cela, Cela, Bridget is bleeding.”

Cela let the ladle fall to the edge of the pot and looked at Hazel.

“Come girl, I trust your mother taught you the ways of birthing?”

Hazel nodded, discarding her own bowl and spoon she looked at Enid.

“I’ll be back mom.”

Enid nodded.

*****

“She was doing fine. Cela, but she took a turn, I was only gone for a bit to…”

Cela put her hand on the girls elbow.

“You cannot be watchful all hours of all days child.”

Cela looked at Hazel and shook her head. Hazel nodded. She’d been present at enough births to know this wasn’t going well. All eyes turned when they saw the leather of the doorway shift out of the way and Enid leaning heavily on a pole to keep her upright. She shuffled to be bed and felt around Hazel and lifted the flap to her pack and pulled out her tablet and looked through it at her mother’s abdomen.

“She’s not in labor, its false but she is near term. She’s… taken mother’s kiss.”

Cela gasped. Hazel looked between the two.

“What is that?”

“Its what you take when you want to… avoid having a child. Dangerous if you take too much. She was too far along for it to do anything besides endanger her life. The boy…the boy is already dead. The girl still lives.”

“She is with twins?”

Enid nodded she put the tablet on the bed and reached into her pack, pulling out a box of vials and the injector. She tired to put the vial in but her hands were shaking too much from the pain.

“We need to induce, Hazel…I need you.”

Hazel wrapped her large hands around her mothers and took the injector and vial, putting them together she pressed it against Bridget’s skin and with a hiss the vial was emptied. Enid motioned to the pack Hazel returned everything to it. Enid reached into the pack and pulled out one of her 21st century emergency surgery kits and lowered herself beside her mother.

“Now we wait… hopefully we can get the boy out so the girl can be born.”

Enid blinked slowly as she waited for the induction medication she used to take effect. It was the 29th century variety and so was very effective at what it was meant to do. Her mother screamed as the first violent contraction rippled through her. Enid with her shaking hands put one on her mother’s abdomen where the boy was and reached the other inside. The boy was already dead so she had little concern about harming him. Even with her hands shaking she managed to arrange the boy so after several more contractions he came out. She started coughing violently and collapsed against the bed for several minutes. Enid felt her eye lids getting heavy and then she felt her whole body start to vibrate.

*****

When Enid awoke next, she stood at a shimmering barrier. She tried to walk through but was pushed back into the nothingness around her. She had been calm through most of this ordeal, or fearful, but behind all of that she was growing more and more angry. Her eyes flared purple, then blue, then green, then black. She felt the old fire welling up inside her. Why should she let her father live? She wanted to crush him with her bare hands watch the life drain out of his eyes. This was the second time she had been robbed of the catharsis of vengeance. Why was innocent, beautiful and kind little Miko dead and her vile sadistic father alive? She took all pain, the anger, the rage, the betrayal and she channeled into a scream. A wave of energy pulsed out from her, and the barrier shattered. She had to shield her eyes from the flash. The barrier had shattered like glass beyond it was white nothingness. She walked through. She felt a presence around her.

“Hello?”

She wasn’t expecting a reply. But it came it was more of a feeling then words. The engulfed her and dragged her into them. They were all encompassing her calmness returned instantly. The voice was not his but she recognized the speaker.

“Why have you come here daughter?”

“I hate you! I hate the injustice! I want to kill you! How dare you hurt Miko to get to me!”

She let her rage push past the calmness God was trying to push on her. She would not be denied her righteous anger. She screamed again and the entire white void shook. There was silence for what seemed to be an eternity. Then his words slipped into her mind bringing the calm again.

“I did not do this thing, my daughter. I would not cause you such pain.”

“You didn’t do anything to stop it!”

“I cannot deny free will to anyone.”

“Except me! I built a new life, I fell in love, I had a beautiful daughter and you let it get taken from me! You wanted it to happen! You wanted me back here suffering in the mud being raped again and again by my father!”

“I am not doing these things daughter. I will never take away someone’s free will.”

“Am I truly your daughter? If I was, you’d never let this happen to me!”

“All beings in creation are my children daughter.”

“That is not an answer!”

“It is the only answer I can give.”

“It is cosmologically impossible for you to give anyone a straight answer, isn’t it?”

“You seek truths you are not prepared for, or you would not need to ask.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means, my dearest daughter.”

“Why am I here?”

“I do not know, daughter, it is not your time. And no souls have passed here since my first creation’s passing.”

“I’m dead?”

“There is no other reason for it, you were stuck in between, my true children are unable to enter the land of the dead. Yet you shattered the barrier holding you out… something impossible, yet here you. Should you remain…you will abandon my grandchild with your earthly father.”

“I want answers!”

“I have none to give you right now, my daughter, when next we speak I sense you will have grown to accept who you are then we can speak like parent and child. Go quickly the barrier seals itself.”

Enid felt herself ejected violently out of the white void she had found herself in and back into her body. Her eyes opened and she felt two baby’s suckling. She looked down and one was wrapped in the blanket Hazel had made the other, the older of the two wrapped in his own blanket. She looked around in the round house and saw Hazel tending the fire looking lost in despair. Enid tried to speak but her voice cracked. The noise alerted her daughter. Hazel rush to her side and quickly offered water. Enid sipped it slowly.

“Mom…you’re alive!”

Enid shook her head and made a shhing noise.

“The babies look almost asleep.”

“Why am I…why is… she nursing from me and not my mother? Did she die in childbirth?”

“No, no she lived but she’s crazed mom, she says you’re not her daughter. She says the Sidhe killed her daughter and left you in her place.”

“How long?”

“Two weeks, you didn’t wake up. You kept getting worse. I was giving you IV bags late at night to keep you from starving, but you kept getting worse. I kept dosing you with antibiotics, I even gave you a T-cell enhancer. You woke up briefly and injected a vial from a red box I… wasn’t sure what it was.”

Enid blinked slowly.

“Aborts a fetus.”

“You can do that?”

Enid nodded.

“You’ve never done it before?”

“I’ve never wanted to drown my own child before…I must have… it doesn’t matter. My mother will not nurse me?”

“No, she tried to drown you when Magg’s got distracted.”

“Cela was pretty sure… pretty sure this would be the last you could feed the boy and you. Your heart stopped mom. You stopped breathing, but you still had milk so… so I let them keep drinking. I would have used the ritual if I had too, but mom you were dead.”

Enid closed her eyes.

“That explains some things. They’re asleep, could you put them to bed?”

Hazel nodded and picked up the babies moving them to their bassinets. Hazel rejoined her mother and helped her up. Hazel helped her drink another glass of water. Enid was shivering in her sweat soaked dress. Hazel held her mother close and wrapped a blanket of furs around them. Wolf-born ran hot, so Enid quickly felt the cold that had leeched into her bones evaporate.

“I was so worried mom.”

“You should have been, if you’d had the beacons Maria could have rescued us.”

Hazel looked at the floor and nodded.

“I didn’t mean it like that hon. I just mean… you might have been trapped here if I’d died. Next time I ask you to stay behind, please stay behind.”

Enid leaned her sweat soaked hair against her daughter.

“I… I understand mom. You are just trying to protect me. But mom, I… I want to protect you.”

“Oh Hazel, it is my job to protect you, not the other way around.”

“No, its like Eyre says, its our job to protect each other.”

Enid Snuggled closer to her warm daughter.

“What else did she tell you?”

“Not to let you push me around. To push back.”

Enid started to laugh, and then coughed her whole body shaking.

“Of course, she did. The brat.”

Hazel laughed and pulled her mother deeper into the furs. The mother and daughter were interrupted by Cela. The woman looked shocked to see Enid.

“You live?”

Enid nodded.

“That is good, but Bridget is… she is refusing to give up the boy and has got her hands on a knife. Hazel, we could use someone of skill with a soft touch.”

Hazel nodded and stood, wrapping the furs around her mother tightly.

“I’ll be back mom, don’t die.”

Enid nodded, though she was still shivering under the furs. She watched her daughter leave.

Hazel and Cela rushed to the chieftain’s round house. Hazel saw her grandmother swiping a rough iron knife towards Maggs and another woman from the village. Hazel approached her slowly.

“Grandmother give me the knife.”

Bridget’s gray eyes calm and reasoning stared at Hazel.

“You… you are… how?”

Hazel held out her hand.

“Please grandmother, the knife, I will sit with you and tell you whatever you want to know.”

Whatever moment of lucidness Bridget had been experiencing vanished and the madness returned to her.

“No, you’re hers, the one who replaced my baby girl! I won’t let you get my boy!”

She lashed out with the knife. Hazel due to her two years of training in various Japanese martial arts easily grabbed her wrist and twisted it. The knife fell to the earthen floor of the round house. She pulled her grandmother into a hold. The woman who seemed frail fought with more strength than Hazel would have guess she possessed but Hazel was stronger.

“Stop grandmother, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Hazel looked at Cela and Maggs.

“Quickly grab the boy and the knife!”

Bridget smashed her head against Hazel’s jaw when Cela with for the still born baby. She screamed.

“My boy you can’t take my boy!”

Hazel held her fast, the bleeding lip she now possessed not even phasing her.

“He’s gone grandmother.”

Her grandmother lashed out with her head again, but Hazel was read this time and she met the head bash with her own. Her grandmother lost consciousness. Hazel quickly tied her down with Cela’s aid.

“She’s stronger than she looks.”

Hazel looked around but saw no sign of either Maggs or the other woman. Cela looked at Hazel.

“Why did you call her grandmother.”

Hazel swore under her breath in English.

“You cannot tell anyone, but the baby girl? That is my mother when she was still mortal.”

“She knew you spoke the truth, she is a truth seer.”

“Like my mother.”

“Oh, I see.”

“But you cannot tell anyone, if you do everything will die. My mother… she fought a great evil and saved everything in the distant future, so all that happened to her, must happen. She came because a new evil seeks to undo everything again, and it has… made changes. I think she knew her baby self would starve… I would have been so lost if she died Cela.”

Cela patted the teenager on the back.

“She seems like she is getting better. She was just in the dark night of her soul, she was measured by the Tuatha de Danann and she was found worthy again.”

“Probably something like that.”

Cela hugged the teenager close. Hazel had tears in her eyes when she looked at her grandmother.

“She knew me. I saw it in her eyes.”

Cela nodded.

“Let us sit child and watch over her until the other women come back.”

Hazel sat on a stone that had been hauled into the room. Cela joined her. Hazel looked down at the older woman.

“You know, you told my mother stories, and she told all of her children the same stories, and they told their children, even my sisters who live a long time from now, so many seasons you could not count them, know your stories. You are remembered.”

Cela patted Hazel’s hand.

“I was wrong. Your mother raised the perfect daughter. No woman in this village could have disarmed Bridget so easily, nor subdued her. I fear you will have a swore lip for a few days.”

Hazel shook her head.

“Do you want to see what I am? The gift my mother gave me?”

Cela nodded, Hazel shifted into her silver furred wolf form. Cela jumped then realized the ice blue eyes looking at her from the wolves face were the same as the teenager she’d come to care for. Hazel shifted back and the fat lip and bruise that was forming on her head were gone.

“Heal faster in wolf form.”

Cela shifted on the stone bench and smiled at Hazel.

“The freedom you must know running as a wolf.”

“I could tell you so many stories of hunts my mother and I went on. Her fur is red.”

“She is like you?”

Hazel shook her head.

“No, she is an Empress, a goddess. Where we come from great stone buildings rise up into the sky and inside, they speak of my mother. They tell the story of her life here, and her great battles.”

Cela smiled.

“Then truly our people are remembered.”

“Yes, my sister, Eyre remembers the stories well too.”

“Eyre?”

“Yes.”

“She’s named after one of the Tuatha.”

“She lives up to that name. She’s wonderful, she is so smart and so beautiful. It makes me wonder what Miko would have grown up to be like.”

“Your baby sister.”

Hazel nodded.

“Perhaps the Gods needed her service?”

“Mom thinks she was taken from her as punishment.”

Cela nodded and looked up as one of the other women from the village appeared to relieve them.

*****

When next Enid woke up, she felt like her old self. She had sat up and gasped for breath, her fangs extended. Much like she had as freshly turned vampire. She could feel the power of the blood flowing through her. She stood and cracked her neck and stretched. Her younger self and the still unnamed boy were sleeping soundly. She clinched her fists and closed her eyes thanking everyone but God for the return of her true self. Hazel was rushing in and she grabbed for something on the floor. She didn’t even notice Enid was standing up.

Enid heard a rush of footsteps and then Cullen burst through the door of their barrowed accommodations. He had not been expecting Hazel to clothesline him. He fell on his back sword going one way, shield the other. Hazel had drawn Lucius and his gleaming blade was drawing the slightest bit of blood from Cullen. Cullen shifted suddenly and kicked Hazel in the knee. He didn’t do much damage, but it was enough to escape and grab his sword. The fight was about to start in earnest when both Cullen and Hazel found themselves on their backs, both of the swords pointed at Cullen’s throat with Enid holding the hilts. Hazel looked up at her mother who was now wearing her real face.

“Jesus’s mom, how did you move so fast?”

“Never mind that, why are you fighting this waste of skin?”

“He was coming to drag you to the chief.”

Enid tossed Cullen’s blade into the earthen floor the blade sunk in a foot. She kneeled down.

“Pitiful little lacky. He yells fetch and you fetch. Where is your leash?”

Cullen stared at Enid’s true form. He was starting to shake.

“Take your sword and your shield and tell your leash holder I’ll be there soon, we have…much to discuss him and I.”

Cullen took his weapon and his shield and scrambled away. Enid offered her hand to her daughter and pulled her up.

“I thought…”

“I need to erase some memories, but I have a gift for my father a gift… something to remember me by. You make sure we leave nothing from the future behind. Put the trash in the pack I’ll be back.”

Enid pushed the leather curtain aside and walked outside. Cullen and the men of the village were waiting for her. Cullen shifted backward slightly. Two men tried to ambush her from the side and she did a jumping back kick and sent one flying several feet crushing the small plates that his armor consisted of. The other one she did a double punch to his chest, and he flew several feet and skidded along the ground. The men who had gathered readjusted their stance. They had obviously thought Cullen was exaggerating. Cullen motioned them forward Enid pulled them out of time and slowed them down. She went on to punch and kick her way through the twenty men. They were all tossed into the air some way. The moment she let time resume its normal flow they would all go flying and be worse for the anger and frustration Enid let loose of them standing by for her entire childhood and for the indignities she’d suffered for the last month. She had Cullen held by his brigandine chest armor and had her fist back about to break several bones in his face when she heard a voice she hadn’t heard in almost century. Suddenly she was ten and Morag was pulling her off of one of the village boys who been teasing her and she had beaten him bloody.

“That is enough little Cuachag!”

Enid was so shocked by the verbal rebuke from the first woman she’d called mother that time resumed its natural flow and every single one of her father’s men was on the ground writhing in pain from her brutal beatings. Cullen’s eyes were wide in terror as he looked up at the small woman who could smash shield and dent armor with no effort. Enid released her hold on his armor.

“You’re lucky.”

“Little Cuachag, you should not be here.”

Enid turned to Lilith and hung her shoulders nodding. Once again her emotions had won over her good sense. She sighed and one by one she forced her will on each man present and made him forget the fight and replaced it with a brawl over some ale.

“Fixed.”

Enid heard Hazel approaching. Lilith looked past Enid to the tall broad-shouldered teenager.

“And who is this, Enid?”

“My daughter, Hazel.”

“I should have known she has the same look you had when you would sneak around some place you should not.”

Hazel gave a small shy wave.

“Usually, I can’t shut her up.”

“Funny how children are.”

“I came here because I need to… go on, but we found a child that needs caring for.”

Lilith approached Enid put her hands on the younger appearing woman’s face. Enid felt like a child again as she looked up at her first mother’s face.

“Child, you have risk much for one life. I taught you better than this.”

“I…I know. I will fix it, I promise.”

Lilith pulled Enid close.

“I see the love in your eyes and I expected only hatred. How much must have changed, you must have succeeded then, in your task?”

Enid nodded blood tears started to drip down her cheeks.

“It wasn’t without… sacrifice.”

“We won child. That is what matters. I have never truly had a child of my own but you look to me as if I birthed you from my womb.”

“You are my mother.”

Lilith hugged Enid to herself. Enid felt a set of eyes on them that did not belong to her daughter. She looked and it was her father. He looked like he recognized her. She realized he was seeing his own eyes.

“Mother I need to go. I will say goodbye before we leave. Hazel says your goodbyes to Cela.”

Enid extricated herself from her Lilith’s embrace. She walked to her father who grabbed for his sword, but Enid flicked her wrist and the sword flew to her hand and she threw it into the dirt at her feet.

“You won’t need that father.”

He stumbled backwards and tried to flee deeper into the house. Enid reached him and shoved him to the ground. She picked up the brand and put the business end into the fire. She could feel the rage burning inside her again. The rage she thought long gone after her counseling sessions but there it was again. It was easy to forget the harm this man had caused her when he was broken and pathetic, wanting to die. But this one had yet to be broken. She felt a burning pain in her back and spun it was her mother.

“You! You are the false daughter who stole my children!”

Enid blocked the next blow and grabbed her mother’s wrist and twisted it until the knife fell. Enid caught it and her mother, who was in a blind rage leaped at her and the knife pieced her chest. Enid saw clarity in Bridget’s madness filled eyes at the end as she looked at her child for the first time without the blindness of insanity. Enid had blood tears dripping down her cheeks again. She had killed her mother, but not in childbirth. Blood started to come out of her mother’s lips. Enid started chanting the spell to transfer the wounds to herself.

“My child…”

Enid looked down at a sword that had pierced her chest from behind cutting her spell short and she watched her mother cough up blood and she was gone. Enid was lost in her rage again. She could have saved her mother had he not attacked her. She spun and her hand grabbed onto her father’s neck and she lifted him up. Her fangs were out, and she wanted nothing more then to tear his throat and drain him of everything he was. It would be so easy to pop his head off. Then she heard Maria’s voice telling her she let her emotions rule her. She released him and reached back breaking the sword in half and pulled the blade out of the front. Her father was trying to use his arms to defend himself but when Enid lunged at him, he was no match for her vampiric strength. She slammed his head into the ground, staring into his eyes.

“I could have saved her! Must you rob me of everything!”

She leaned forward putting her hands on both sides of his head.

“I have a gift for you father, something I have carried for too long! Take it all, the pain and suffering, all of the lost hope, all of the shame, all of the broken relationships, everything you gave to me!”

She used the gift taught by the Watcher to transfer the memory of every brutal beating, every rape, dying in the snowbank, the pain of the brands, the betrayal of a daughter who only wanted love from her father. Then she showed him grief she felt from Miko’s death so he could see what it felt like to care about a child. He screamed as he relived two thousand years of pain he caused in seconds. He was twitching. She looked into his eyes again.

“You will forget me until you are tossed bound in silver chains into the ocean. Then you will remember this, you will remember the gift I gave you, and you will relive it every moment of every night and every day. Every night you will waken, and you will know that I could reach in and pluck you out, but I won’t. Every night will bring new hope, crushed, when the sun rises each day. You will plead with the Gods for release from your eternal torment but they will deny you because the only Goddess who can grant it is me and I hate you, I hate you with every fiber of my being. Nothing you can do will ever make up for the suffering you caused, no amount of torment can repay me. You killed my mother in a drunken rage, you will say she died in childbirth and will swiftly punish anyone who disagrees. When I pull you out of the depths one night far in the future you will know that I could have saved her but you stopped me. A woman came to your village with a child seeking shelter and you were so brutal with your beatings and brandings that she died. You feel guilt and will ensure the baby boy she brought is well cared for. Sleep and forget.”

Enid stood up she looked down at her mother’s blood that covered her hands than down at her mother’s dead body. She moved to her and pushed the woman’s red hair out of her face.

“I am so sorry mother, I do not know what drove you to madness, if it was our gift… it has done it to many before you. If I am indeed not your daughter because God has pulled one of his famous tricks, know that I will try my best to punish him for doing this to you and your children.”

Enid stood up and left her father and mother like that. Hazel stared at her mother in horror when she saw the blood on her hands. Enid shook her head.

“My mother…tried to attack him and myself, she, there was an accident and she landed on a knife. Father must have removed her bindings.”

Hazel hugged her mother tightly.

“I’m sorry mom.”

“I guess you’re a better daughter then me, you only gave me a black eye and a fat lip.”

Hazel buried her face in her mother’s red hair. Lilith looked at the pair.

“Enid, you must go, I will take the children.”

Enid nodded. She looked at Hazel.

“Hazel, go prep the ritual while I talk to Lilith.”

Enid washed her hands in with a moist towelette from her pack.

“Mother… mother I need to…”

“No, you can tell me when we see each other after the Black Son’s defeat. We can sit and drink a bottle of wine and you can fill me in on how you have a daughter who is one of the spirit-born. I see much of you in her, not the hair or eyes… but in her mannerisms.”

Enid nodded.

“Of course, mother. But mom, thank you, thank you for everything you did for me even if I don’t remember it right away, I will. You have always been a good mother. Even if you made some misguided choices because God screwed you over.”

Lilith pushed Enid’s hair out of her face.

“My little girl, I came here to turn you into a weapon, but it looks like I succeeded in finally having a child of my own.”

“I am a weapon, but it is because of you, I am a weapon with a conscience. That understands what love is.”

Enid stood on her toes and kissed Lilith’s cheek.

“Goodbye mother, until we meet again.”

Enid walked towards where Hazel was preparing the ritual.