Shielded

Everyone was acting like Ray was this powerful untouchable being that would leave the second we got too close. But they were wrong. They were wrong about Ray. She wouldn’t just abandon us because she knew what it felt like to be abandoned. Connor and Max thought that she was going to disappear with the first royal that walked through our door to collect her, but I knew better. Ray was a good judge of character and most of the royals I knew were little whiny bitches. No, I think that when push comes to shove, Ray is going to pick us. I am willing to bet my heart on it.

--Blake

After all of the upheaval at the police station, the Garcia family wanted to go home where they felt safer. Considering that Valentine’s sister had died the day before, I didn’t exactly blame them. Maria gave me another hug, but I could tell that she didn’t fully understand the situation. I squeezed her small body to mine and sent her all of the love that I felt towards her. Every little girl needed to feel loved. Then I let her go and watched her walk away hand-in-hand with Valentine and Hugo.

Elijah told me that he had to do some work at the station but would drop me back off at the clan house first. I thought about it for a moment but eventually, I told him that I was okay. The station was on the city bus route and I really needed to get back home. It had been a crazy couple of days and I had a paper on Hamlet due tomorrow. I refused to let all of this stuff interfere with my ability to get good grades and hopefully get a scholarship. I could tell that Elijah didn’t want me going back alone and he offered to drive me, but I had taken up enough of his time.

“Okay, then how about coming over for dinner tomorrow?” Elijah asked and I wondered why he was so hell-bent on getting me to spend more time at their house. I still had this nagging feeling that Elijah expected something from me.

“Why are you being so nice and generous to me?” I asked point-blank and turned my truth-seeking abilities on full blast. “I once asked what you wanted from me and you lied to me. I will ask again, what is in it for you?”

Elijah let out a breath and rubbed his forehead while he presumably thought through his answer. “I have never had direct interaction with someone with a Truth Gift before so I only know details through second-hand accounts, but from what I have heard the ability to detect lies doesn’t allow for nuance. When I told you that all I wanted to do was make sure you were safe, I wasn’t lying but I was only expressing one part of my truth.”

I waited for the buzz in my brain to tell me that Elijah was once again lying to me, but it never came. “In our society, female Valkyries hold a lot of power. At the time, I thought that you were a royal who was in trouble. I figured that if we were able to help you, it could only end up benefiting our clan. I know that sounds selfish and like I was taking advantage of the situation, but please know that while I might be politically aware of my actions, I really do want to help you in any way that I can. All of us feel the same way.”

By the end of his little speech, Elijah seemed like he was pleading with me to understand what he was saying. And I did understand. His explanation actually did a lot to reassure me. This whole week the kindness and automatic acceptance I kept getting from the guys has been unsettling. Knowing that they have an ulterior motive takes some of the pressure off. Makes the whole situation make more sense. And I didn’t begrudge the guys getting a step up in the world.

“Now that I understand a little more about your situation, things have changed,” Elijah continued. “Somehow you were separated from our society, Ray. And then unspeakable things happened to you. Valkyries are meant to live and exist with each other. You have been isolated with the humans for entirely too long. I invited you to dinner because you belong with your own kind. It will always be your choice of who you decide to affiliate with, but I am hoping that until you find somewhere you would rather be, that you will honor us with your presence.”

Well, that was quite a speech. I thought back to how the twins explained that Valkyrie were healthier, happier, and stronger when they were around each other. I thought about the warm fuzzy feeling I felt whenever I touched one of the guys. I thought about how Blake told me that they punished Valkyrie by banishing them from Val society. I thought about how I have felt more powerful and happier this last week. Maybe it was time for me to stop punishing myself for the things that my father compelled me to do. Maybe it was time to finally feel what it was like to be a Valkyrie.

“Dinner sounds nice,” I told Elijah and he gave me a soft simile. Then I hitched my backpack higher on my shoulder and left the police station. I looked for Derik on the way out, but he must be busy handling the guys on drugs because he was nowhere to be seen. The bus ride was uneventful and by the time I trudged up to my bus, I was exhausted. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours and my body was demanding that I give it a little more rest. The second I got home I crawled into my top bunk and took a nap.

The screeching of the bus door opening jolted me awake and I rolled out of the lofted bed while calling a hunting knife. “Someday you are going to have to teach that move to me,” Jack called and I took a moment to remember what day it was. I pretended to put my knife away and then rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. It was still light out, so I couldn’t have slept for too long.

“It’s all about muscle memory. Do something enough times and your muscles will do it without conscious thought,” I told him and was caught by surprise when he pulled me in for a hug. It felt good to be within his arms. Not as good as hugging a Valkyrie, but good in the sense that it made me feel a little less alone in this world.

“Jesus Ray. I hear about a shooting at Polly’s and then I don’t hear or see from you except for one ten-second phone call. Camilla said that you were hauled off in an ambulance covered head to toe in blood. You told me you had a cut from some glass. Not that you were rushed to the ER.” Wow, Jack was actually mad. At me. Jack was never mad at me.

I held up my gauze-wrapped hand and explained, “it was just a cut from some glass. I fell on broken glass and a shard went through my hand. It bled a lot and made a real mess, but I am fine.” Jack gently inspected the bulky gauze, like he could see the damage through the white material. The trick was that I was completely healed. I was going to have to be careful to keep my hand bandaged for a good month.

“Promise not to scare me like that again, Ray! Amy and I were worried sick about you last night and today. Where have you been?” Hmm, how to explain this in a way that didn’t make me look crazy.

“There was a police officer at Polly’s during the shooting. He is actually the person that took down the shooter. Well, he lives in the same house as the Berg twins and Max. Max’s brother lives with them too. Long story short, during the shooting I protected this little girl named Maria whose mother was the shooter. Because social services were still looking for Maria’s next of kin, the police officer, Derik, volunteered to watch Maria for the night. But I was feeling protective and didn’t want to leave her, so I stayed at their house too.” When I said the whole thing out loud, it didn’t seem very plausible.

Jack just looked at me for a moment like I was going to start laughing and tell him that the whole thing had been a joke. “You’re serious,” Jack asked with disbelief heavy in his voice. “You slept over at the Berg twin's house. And Max Nilsen and his brother and some other police officer were there too?”

“Nothing happened, Jack. They took Maria and me home from the hospital and we slept. In the morning we ate breakfast, the twins brought me here to get a change of clothes, and then we took Maria to the police station so that her aunt could take her. End of story,” I said defensively.

“Ray, I know that you are still new around here but I also know you aren’t blind. Those boys go through girls like it is some sort of game to them. Hell, the Berg twins actually pass one girl in between them until they get bored with her. From every piece of gossip I have ever heard, not a single girl out of the dozens that they have been with has ever been to their actual house. I believe you that nothing happened, but no one else will. If it gets out that you spent the night at their house, every single person at Skyline High will be talking about you. And not in a good way.” Jack was now pacing up and down the aisle of the bus. I had no idea my reputation meant so much to him.

“It’s not like that between us. I think that we are friends,” I told him and prayed that it was true. Yes, they might be considering the political advantages of being friends with a female Val, but that didn’t mean the friendship wasn’t real.

“The Berg twins don’t have friends that are girls,” Jack hissed and I felt like he had slapped me. What if Jack was right. What if the twins just were playing some sort of sick game with me, like they were with the rest of the girls at our school. They were going to reel me in, make me care, use me, and then drop me when they got bored. But I wasn’t just some high school girl. I was a Valkyrie.

“Well, they do now. Why are you acting this way? You were the one that told me to open up to new people and make friends with them to begin with,” I demanded allowing my voice to rise in volume. That got Jack to pause and he took a deep breath and let it out before continuing.

“I am just worried about you. So much has happened this week. Amy is still having nightmares and the gossip at school isn’t helping. I was scared that you were going to have to go through something similar. I am overreacting. Sorry, Ray.” Crap, with my panic attack on Monday and then the whole getting shot at thing I had totally forgotten about Amy and what going back to school, must have been like for her. I was such a horrible friend.

“How is she?” I asked and sank down onto my makeshift couch.

“She is strong. She is going to pull through. But fuck, highschool girls can be brutal,” Jack admitted as he plopped down next to me. I laid my head on his shoulder and we spent the next couple of hours just talking. It felt good. A piece of normal in a world that was rife with upheaval and uncertainty.

When dinner time rolled around Jack and I walked over to the truck stop to grab some food and brought it back to Jack’s trailer. Amy was there and after we finished dinner the three of us sat around doing homework. At around eleven Jack and Amy’s mom, Cherry came stumbling into the trailer and I knew that was my signal to leave. That woman really didn’t like me and tended to go on yelling rants when I stuck around too long.

I walked back to my bus and plugged in the Christmas lights, turned on the camping lanterns, and retrieved Max’s book on Valkyrie Gifts from the void. I turned to the chapter on Compulsion where I had left off reading. Compulsion was the ability to impose your will on other people. It worked best on humans, but the stronger Valkyrie could compel other supernatural beings including Valkyrie. The Compulsion would stay in effect until either the task was complete or the Valkyrie doing the compelling let the power go. A Valkyrie didn’t need a physical touch to compel, but it did make the connection stronger and would increase the potency of the command. Most Valkyries with this gift could control if they compelled one individual person, or blanketed an entire crowd with a directive. The book noted the Compulsion was one of the most valued Valkyrie Gifts because of its usefulness in keeping peace and discovering the truth.

Even reading about compulsion made my skin crawl and I quickly moved on to the next chapter before I got swept down on a current of bad memories. Healing was the ability to speed up the body’s natural timeline for healing wounds or illness. This meant that unless the Valkyrie was exceptionally strong, one could only heal things that a being would eventually overcome if given enough time. Max was able to heal my cuts because eventually, they would have faded to scars on their own. He was just able to do it quicker and better than my body would have without his help. It listed that illness like the flu or an infection could be healed, but disease such as Cancer and Alzheimers was not something a Valkyrie with this gift couldn’t heal because the body could never naturally recover from those things.

Telepathy was the ability to read other people’s minds. It was a pretty straightforward gift that seemed to only differ in the range of the individual Valkyrie, with the strongest being able to read thoughts about fifteen feet away. The book did describe that this was one of the only Gifts that could not be turned off. So when Elijah told me that he couldn’t help that he read my mind, he was telling me the truth. Now I kind of felt bad for snapping at him. No known strategy for blocking a telepath was known, according to the book. But the author of this book didn’t know about cloaking.

Energy seemed to be just as Elijah had explained earlier today. Electrical energy that could be manipulated by the Valkyrie with the Energy Gift. The chapter detailed precision offensive hits that manifested like lightning bolts originating from the Valkyrie’s hands. It could also be sent out in a lower energy burst and fry any electrical devices in its range. The book made a note that this Gift was a signature of the Collins’ Royal line.

Communication was a Gift that I had never heard about before, but the chapter on it described the ability to understand and be able to talk in any spoken or written language. It was fascinating because the Valkyrie didn’t know all of these languages and could only trigger the ability when someone around them was trying to communicate in a different language. The book made a note that if this Gift manifests that the clan should contact one of the royal lines because Valkyries with Communication were always employed by the royals as interpreters and translators.

The chapter on Telekinesis described the ability to move objects and even people with their minds. The strength of the Gift determined how heavy of an object that the Valkyrie could move, how far they could move it, and how many individual objects could be moved at one time. At the end of the chapter, there were two personal accounts of Valkyries with a Telekinesis Gift. The first wrote about the ability to move up to four medium objects at one time and have them fly across the room with deadly accuracy. He specifically trained so that he could move different blades that he materialized and he had used this skill to save his life and defend his clan on more than one occasion. The heaviest thing this Valkyrie was ever able to move with his mind was a three hundred pound boulder and he once lifted seven small pebbles at the same time. The second passage detailed a gift that was substantially less potent than the first. This Valkyrie could only ever move one thing at a time and struggled with precision. The heaviest thing he described lifting was a fifty-pound sack of flour.

The next chapter was on another Gift that I had never heard about before, Tracking. I was starting to get tired so it took me a moment to realize what I was reading. Tracking was the ability to instinctually find another person, human or supernatural. The author described that when this Gift was triggered, the Valkyrie would just know exactly where their target was. No questions, no hesitation, no second-guessing. They would just know what direction to turn next to find their mark. The book mentioned that Tracking was a valuable Gift that the Hunters were always looking for, so if a Valkyrie manifested this ability they would have an important job available to them. Who or what in the world were Hunters?

My attention now caught by the words before me, I carefully read the single entry left by a Valkyrie who actually had this Gift. I didn’t even realize that I had Tracking until my brother got lost in the woods one day when I was fifteen. When the sun went down and he still hadn’t come home, our entire clan started to worry. I remember thinking that I had to find him and then all of sudden I felt this pulling within my chest and I just knew where to go. I walked into the forest and led my clan to the exact place my brother had fallen and broken his ankle. The very next day my clan leader called the Hunters and after running some basic tests to find hidden people around town, they welcomed me into their elite clan.

I can find anyone within a fifty-mile radius as long as I know the name and a face. If someone is out of my range or dead, I never feel the pulling sensation within my chest. My life with the Hunters has been one filled with purpose and honor. We work directly for the Collins’ Royal line capturing supernatural beings that have broken the Law. My Tracking Gift has allowed me to distinguish myself and bring pride to my Clan.

I reread the first paragraph three times while thinking back to the day last week when Amy was in danger and triggered my protective instincts. I was able to feel her fear and dread because I have claimed her as one of my protected, but that alone didn’t explain how I knew exactly where to find her within the maze of Skyline High. I had realized that it was Amy’s feelings crashing into my system and that I needed to find and help her. Then it was like my body just knew where to go. I hadn’t hesitated once. Just trusted my instincts and ran directly to the empty classroom where Mr. Parkings was trying to assault Amy. Was it possible that I had another Gift? That I had Tracking?

I laid back against my pillows and let my mind think over the possibility and the implications associated with such a thing. It would be amazing to be able to find anyone whenever I wanted. I would never have to worry about Jack, Amy, or Maria ever disappearing on me. And, just like what happened with Amy, if any of them were ever in trouble I wouldn’t have any trouble finding them so that I could help. Being a Tracker would definitely make the job of keeping my protected safe easier so that was a plus. But I don’t think I want to spend my entire life hunting down criminals that break the Law. I didn’t know much about the Hunters, but from the passage, it seemed like they were some kind of Valkyrie elite law enforcement that worked directly for the King and Queen. They were the royal pet dogs that would fetch whoever our rulers wanted to find and bring in. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but I did know that I wanted to spend it helping people. I didn’t know if bringing in fugitives fit that description.

Then there was the issue of the number of Gifts that I had manifested. If I really did have Tracking that meant that I had five Gifts. Weapons, Shield, Cloaking, Truth, and now Tracking. Max had said that a normal Valkyrie had two Gifts, usually Weapons and Shield, while the more powerful Valkyrie had three Gifts. Connor and Elijah both had three gifts and Max had said that other clans had tried to recruit Connor because of it. So what did it mean that I had five Gifts? And I couldn’t forget that my abilities with the Gifts I did have seemed to be different and more potent than the book described as normal. I could call three times as many blades as the average Valkyrie, I could materialize and hold multiple shields without physical contact, and according to Max, no one had ever even heard of Cloaking before. So I was the only known Valkyrie to have access to the void.

What did all of this mean? Why was I so different from the guys? Was it a good or a bad thing that I was so much more powerful than them? Would my extra Gifts allow me to better protect those I cared about or would they paint a target on me and everyone I associated with?