Scribbler Guardian 2: Seven Sons of Zion Read online

  The Scribbler Guardian 2

  Seven Sons of Zion

  By Lucian Bane

  © 2016 by Lucian Bane

  All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Lucian Bane or his legal representative.

  To all the readers, fans, and or reader’s clubs. Thank you for supporting my work. I’d also like to ask nicely that you please not Pirate my work. That basically means don’t give it away just because you bought it. If you know of anybody that can’t afford a copy, just send them to my librarywhere I loan out copies for free.

  Also, if you need a different format, please contact me, the author.

  Dedication

  To My Wife. With All My Love.

  Chapter One

  The third time Poe woke he couldn’t shake the feeling. Something was wrong. The first two times he’d opened his eyes, the need to sleep had greatly outweighed anything else, but now…

  He fought to get the covers off of him only to realize there were none. And he wasn’t in his bed at all. He lifted his head and looked around, blinking away the remnants of the strange fog in his brain. He was on the floor. He jerked his gaze all about then. The floor of his room.

  He sat there, mentally grasping to identify the huge thing present in his being. It had no name, but there was surely no mistaking that it most assuredly had an identity. What on Earth was it?

  He froze. Earth!

  Panic blasted through Poe and stole his breath. Huffing with terror, he fought to stand but only his legs moved, scissoring along the floor like they were the only part connected to his brain. He managed to find purchase with his knees as flashes of events in some unknown past filled him. Light… pulling… death.

  He froze again. Contessant… Contessant holding on to him. The portal, Kane. Divinities! The story Scribbler had written with the Sound Scribbler’s pen!

  “Contessant,” he gasped, fighting to make his mouth work as he stumbled to his feet.

  You are a new being. The first of your kind. Protect Kane.

  Who had spoken that? Somebody he knew. A fresh wave of panic hit him. Kane!

  And whatever you do… do not let the Paranormal Guardian find your Scribbler.

  Find… find his Scribbler?

  Poe lurched for the doorway— His Scribbler! Contessant Juliet was there. She was on Octava!

  Two steps out of his room, Poe heard a sound. Heart slamming his chest, he slowly moved toward the kitchen. Was it Kane? Visions of his Scribbler at his sink nearly sent him flying to see, but the blasted caution the same woman had knit his bones together with, slowed him to a painful, creeping pace.

  Poe’s body and breath froze at hearing humming. He’d never mistake that voice, and the beautiful sound he thought he’d never hear again melted the caution from his bones and shot him to the kitchen. “Contessant!” he gasped.

  A man spun to face him and Poe’s eyes darted around the tiny space. “Where is she? Who are you? I heard her here!”

  “Poe?”

  Poe’s gaze flashed to the man and he pointed at him. “What did you just say?”

  The man’s face became immensely troubled. “Poe? Are you okay? You don’t look well.”

  Poe took a step back, his eyes locked on him. Divnities! The Paranormal Guardian had already been there and taken his Contessant. “What are you? W-what province are you from?” Poe realized how stupid that sounded. But truly, he wasn’t sure. The man appeared to be in his twenties, of an intellectual era judging by the perfectly trimmed mustache and finely etched chin-strap. Poe’s eyes raced over his attire—shiny black shoes, pinstriped suit and vest, frilly white collar. And where a top hat should be found, wet looking ebony hair was perfectly combed with a strict part to the severe right of his head.

  The man’s expression fell more. “Poe, it’s me.”

  And that! The voice of his Scribbler pouring from his overly thin lips with concern bubbling in chocolate brown eyes. “My Scribbler…” Poe went dead still then angled his head. “My Scribbler is not…” The words jumbled around in his mind as he pointed at the individual. “You’re… Dearest of all Divinities,” he realized. “You’re… J. P. Howe, you’re a man!”

  “What?” the man cried, confused and scared looking. “Scribbler? J.P. Who? A man!?”

  Poe jerked back. “You don’t know you are a man? Or my Scribbler?”

  “Poe, you’re scaring me,” the man said again, his face looking very pale.

  Poe remembered the mirror in his bathroom and ran for it. He nearly ran over the J.P. Howe individual upon his return.

  “Stop this!” the young man ordered. The manner in which he flailed his hands and carried the emotional unpleasantries on his face said female, but everything else didn’t.

  Poe shot the mirror at him and the man yanked it up, peering into it. “What do you want me to see, Poe? What are you seeing?”

  Poe stared at the man. “Don’t you see it?”

  “I see me, Contessant Juliet.” The man touched his arm and Poe nearly drew away except, in that second, Contessant Juliet appeared, right there before him.

  Poe’s breath blasted out of him, then filled his lungs just as harshly. “Contessant,” he whispered.

  Her beautiful blue eyes filled with tears as her brow furrowed with worry. She wiped them from her face, and J.P. Howe appeared again, making Poe recoil. Heavens, he realized. It was… the touch.

  He touched her shoulder and Contessant appeared again. “I touch you and you’re real. But when I don’t, you’re… J. P. Howe.”

  “You’re serious,” she cried. “Poe, what is wrong with you?”

  “Not me, you.” He gave a gasp of joy at seeing her, standing there.

  A vicious magnetism erupted between them and slammed their bodies together tightly. Poe didn’t think, he just acted, crushing his mouth to hers in a desperate kiss. He lifted her off the floor, his back hitting the wall as his Scribbler cried out right in his mouth, breathing her life into him, right into his fictional soul. Or was it fictional?

  “Oh God, Poe,” she said.

  Alarm filled him at sensing it; the power swirling around them. “Contessant,” he rasped, his mouth leaving hers only to move along her face. “I can’t stop, I can’t.”

  “It hurts, Poe, it hurts,” she cried.

  The sound of her pain filled him with panic and he shoved her off of him. She hit the wall five feet across the room and he ran to see about her—now J.P. Howe. Poe stopped two feet short at feeling that magnetism return.

  “I can’t… I can’t touch you!” he nearly yelled in frustration. How could that be? “Are you okay, are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” the young man said, slowly standing, eyeingPoe with a look of fear and confusion.

  “What’s happened?” Poe asked more himself than her, or him. “What’s happened to you? To me? To us?”

  “I don’t know,” the man mumbled, looking and sounding terrified.

  “And you’re J. P. Howe. Again,” Poe felt the need to notate aloud.

  The man stared, his face crimped in perplexity. “Who is… J.P. Howe?”

  Poe felt drained suddenly and looked around. Spying one of the familiar tree chairs, he nearly fell into it. “You don’t remember anything,” he muttered, fighting to right his mind.

  “You look ill, Poe.”

  “I feel suddenly weak. Tired,” he mumbled, fighting to catch his breath. And dizzy he wanted to add. But his tongue felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Poe managed to shake his head and open his eyes at feeli
ng that magnetism returning. “Too close.”

  “I feel it,” the man said, sounding astonished. Poe watched him slowly back up and take a seat across the room, staring intently at Poe as if he were a freak of nature. He supposed that’s exactly what he was. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, don’t you worry.”

  “Where are we?” Poe thought to ask, wondering what she, or he, did know.

  “Home,” he answered, like that was all there ever was.

  “Where is that?”

  As though the question itself stumped him, jumbled words tumbled out of the man’s mouth. Poe watched him struggle to come up with an answer. “Home,” he finally answered in light frustration. “It’s called… Happily Ever After.”

  Poe stared, struck by those words. They were familiar. He sat forward abruptly then. Her story. She’d written a story when they’d passed through the portal, that’s what she was remembering. Terror filled him suddenly, a force coming from outside his home.

  “It’s not safe,” Poe mumbled. “The Minister of Sound was the one that had warned him, he remembered. “I can’t let them find you.”

  “Let who?”

  “The Paranormal Guardian.”

  “Poe… what language are you speaking?”

  “The Sound Minister.” He moved his way to the edge of his seat. “I need to find him.”

  “Who is that? What is that?”

  “Kane,” Poe said, trying to stand. “He’s in trouble.”

  “Kane?” The man scrubbed his face, pacing at a distance. “Why do I not know anything you’re saying? Who is Kane? Poe, you’re really, really, scaring me right now.”

  Poe’s head jerked to the man. “You don’t remember Kane?”

  The man shook his head, a slow, cautious movement.

  “He came to Earth with me,” Poe said.

  “To what with you?” the man barely whispered, like the words were all so foreign.

  “Divinities,” Poe barely muttered in shock. “You don’t remember anything at all.”

  “I remember everything,” the man cried, wringing his hands, his face crimped in stifled sobs. “We have a whole life of memories,” the man went on, tears streaming down his face.

  They both fell silent at the sudden knock on the door. “Wait!” Poe hissed when the man got up to go answer it without caution.

  “What?” He turned with sniffles, wiping his face with the back of his hands. “It’s probably my family. They’re due for a visit today.” He seemed to try and regain some of the joy that had brought him before Poe woke and shattered the dream.

  But Poe highly doubted her parents were outside that door and hurried to check. Peering through the quark shaped peephole, fear pumped through him. “Quarks and hadrons,” he mumbled through ragged breaths. “Unless you have a family of two hundred, that’s certainly not them.”

  “What?” Poe grabbed the man’s arm as he went for the curtain, yanking him to the door. The contact brought his Contessant as well as that violent power and need for her. She gasped, her eyes heated as she fought the same law of painful attraction exploding around them.

  Poe growled and yanked his touch from her, the wind blasting out of his lungs at the disconnect while his beautiful Contessant stared at him with a lust filled gaze. As a man.

  The awkwardness served to help dispel the power’s hold on him but seemed to do nothing for the young man who eyed him with bated breath and pain filled brow.

  “You look at me with so much disgust,” he whispered, chin trembling.

  Poe fought to right his emotions, closing his eyes to dispel the strange illusion. “We have bigger problems, Contessant.” He hoped using her name would calm him. Her. He still wasn’t convinced all of this wasn’t a trick or spell of some sort.

  Another knock, louder this time made the young man jump. He peered into the peep hole and his jaw dropped.

  “Not your family, I take it?”

  “No,” he said, astonished. “Who are all those people?” Keeping his eye on the peephole, the J.P Howe person moved his head left then right, more astonishing gasps following. “What do you think they want?” he whispered, turning fearful confused eyes to Poe.

  “You stay in here, and I’ll find out.” Poe grabbed the door handle and looked at the young man. “The second I’m through the door, you lock it. You do not open it unless I tell you to. Understood?”

  The look of horror on the man’s handsome face might have been comical if it weren’t for the real fear hitting Poe’s mind. The real danger.

  Poe exited the house and shut the door. His breath released at hearing the door’s bolt slide home behind him. “Might I help you,” Poe said to the crowd at the foot of his porch. A wave of responses came and Poe couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.

  Poe eyed a giant of a man who met Poe on the porch. There were not many characters on Octava that Poe had to look up to, but this one, with the menacing scar pitting the entire right side of his face, was the exception.

  “Our Scribbler’s in there,” the giant mumbled with a lethal tone.

  Poe’s gaze shot out to the crowd. Divinities! They were her family. Her very own creation! Poe struggled for an acceptable response, but judging by the look on the man’s face, there would be no lying his way out of this. “She was expecting all of you, I do believe.”

  The harsh tension in the air nearly disappeared with the outbreak of anger and hostility. But why? He remembered she was a Horror writer and wondered.

  “I’ll let her know you’re all here. She’ll… want to speak to you all, I’m very sure.” Poe thought of the rear exit. They could run out of there and head into the forest.

  The giant man next to him sniffed as though he smelled the idea he’d just had. “How about you just call him out.”

  Him? Poe wondered then how this was going to play out with all her characters in one spot. Would they all see the author they knew? As he did?

  “Waiting,” the man growled.

  Poe turned to the door. He could touch Contessant and use the power to… to something. But what? He knocked on the door. He bit his tongue on her name and instead called, “Scribbler. Your creations are here to see you. They said you called them?”

  “Are you asking me to open the door?” The voice of Contessant served to confound him in that second. He had to wonder what they were hearing.

  Instincts warred inside Poe. He looked over his shoulder, eyeing the herd. Probably the first time they’d ever been together in the same place. Poe remembered something in that second. “Yes, Scribbler, I’m asking you to open the door.”

  “Alright then. I’m opening the door.”

  Chapter Two

  Poe held his breath as the clank of the bolt vibrated doom in his blood. Unless that fleeting idea were to prove itself true. It was a farfetched chance, but what was there left?

  The door creaked slowly open and Poe nodded when the young man’s eyes locked on his. A low murmur of awe and that odd anger rolled through the air. The young man’s eyes turned to the crowd and Poe held his breath at seeing him pause.

  “Hello,” the young man said to the crowd, his voice barely carrying.

  The giant man on the porch slowly backed up, eyeing him, the snarl on his face barely improving. Fear began to tighten Poe’s muscles when the Scribbler didn’t stop but instead slowly descended the steps toward the crowd who seemed to take a step in reverse for every step he took forward.

  Scribbler finally stopped and turned to gaze in rapt confusion at all the people now encircling him. The young man slowly lifted his hands from his sides until they were extended toward them. Poe’s breath blasted out of him when they all rushed forward at once, angry voices roaring.

  “Scribbler!” Poe yelled, launching into the throng of people.

  It was Contessant’s scream that broke the air above everything else. The sound came with a blast of wind so hard, the wall of bodies staggered back then retreated in fear.

  Poe finally made
it to the edge of the crowd. His breath left him at seeing her. His love. His Contessant Juliet in her real form gazing all around, horror gripping her face, hand clamping her mouth as she spun left then right.

  “What’s wrong with him?” one whispered followed by clueless answers and more questions.

  Poe was right. They were seeing their Scribbler as they knew him or her.

  “Poe!” she shrieked, seeing him, her eyes wide and desperate. “I-I-I remember,” she gasped. “I remember everything, I remember everything.” She looked around her again, stumbling. Poe realized she wore the same violet colored dress from Earth, the one she’d worn at the Sound Scribbler’s performance, just before the portal to Octava was opened. “These… are my creations.”

  The murmur of confirmation from the throngs was one of little relief.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Why was she sorry? Poe hurried to her and took her hand, relieved that the magnetism was gone. “Why are they angry,” Poe whispered.

  As though they all heard the question, an outbreak of accusations flew at them, all with the words, she killed. Oh no. Poe eyed the hostile crowd. She’d killed so many. All people that meant something to them. That was bad. Very bad.

  “I can fix it,” she whispered, tears streaming down her face, the realness of her own fiction hitting her. “It may take time, but I can,” she nodded, looking up at Poe. “I can fix it, I can fix all of it.”

  The crowd eyed her with distrust and anger. But Poe was sure he spied a glimmer of hope there too.

  “I am Jeramiah Poe,” he called out loudly. “Muse Rider. I can ensure that she does what she says.”

  “Why should we trust you,” a man said from the side lines.

  “Oh my God,” Contessant whispered. “You’re Butch.”

  Poe spied the tall man she bobbed her finger at. His shiny bald head displayed a tattoo of a wolf climbing out the side of his skull. He nodded with a wicked looking grin that had never seen the likes of any kind of joy. Poe couldn’t imagine him mourning anything but the lack of a steady supply of fresh bodies to mutilate.

  “Listen to me,” Scribbler said, looking at all of them. “You mustn’t tell anybody about me being here. They seek to kill me. And if they know you are my creation…” She spun to Poe. “They would know, they would know this already!”