Disclaimer & Story summary: see Perspective Part 1. This story is #3 in the 
“Telempathy” Series.

NB – apologies, the caption at the end of Perspective Part 4 should have read 
‘to be continued’, not ‘concluded’. This caption is right, though, honest!
  

PERSPECTIVE PART 5


Moving quickly, Daryl unlocked the door of Apartment 307, 852 Prospect 
Avenue, stepped in and closed it straight behind him as he heard the rapidly 
approaching tic-tac of claws on wood. Hanging up his coat on the hook and 
placing his duffle bag and the empty briefcase on the counter top, he crouched 
down as Muttley, with Dastardly riding on the dog’s back, came hurrying up to 
him, tail wagging furiously.

Both puppy and kitten inhaled the treats from his hand and then followed as 
Daryl straightened and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on, as flying 
always left the mouth dry. Their fur shone with health and Daryl had no doubt 
his soon-to-be stepsister Ellie McKinley had spoilt them rotten; she’d let slip 
once that pets had been an impossibility during her biological father’s 12-year 
persecution of her mother after a couple of puppies Leonie had bought her had 
mysteriously ‘run away’ on each occasion. When pressed by Daryl who sensed 
an underlying issue Ellie had admitted that in the second instance, she’d been 
looking out of the bedroom window of her then house and spotted her mom, 
crying, burying a mangled, unrecognisable but very small something in the back 
yard. 

Since the second puppy had been securely chained inside a kennel run when it 
had supposedly ‘escaped’ Ellie had hardly needed to be a genius to do the 
math; she’d never asked for any sort of pet again and neither her two brothers 
nor her mother were aware of her knowledge, she had sternly told Daryl. He 
had managed not to let his anger show, but Daryl was privately vindictively 
happy that Andrew McKinley was going to spend many years in jail rather than 
under the care of some meddling psychobabbler he’d twist round his finger at a 
mental hospital – thanks largely to Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg, who at the 
trial had shattered McKinley’s belated defence ‘unsound mind’ by 
demonstrating his years of calculation and cunning. As the judge had said in his 
summing up, McKinley had acted with far too much ‘meticulous guile’ for too 
long for the ‘I’m nuts’ claim to hold water. 

Thinking of Ellie reminded him that he needed to invest in a good quality cell 
phone, as she had been trying to get hold of him all day a couple of days ago, 
before he returned to the dorm in time to catch her most recent attempt. With 
his dorm room straight and all his paperwork present and correct thanks to 
Captain Finkelman, Daryl had moved on to his next priority, clothing, which 
had taken a big chunk out of the money given to him by various relatives. Going 
into a high-end tailor’s in the District he’d had himself measured for four more 
double-breasted suits, deciding on another Navy, a black, a white pinstripe-
navy and a charcoal grey, rejecting a silver grey in place of the second Navy as 
it reminded him too much of Evil Jim, as he thought of Captain of Internal 
Affairs, Vincent Hunter. There’d also been the accessories of matching ties, 
pocket handkerchiefs and socks – silk, naturally. 

He grinned as he recalled the look on the tailor’s face when Daryl had 
discreetly explained he required the jackets to be designed to hide a gun 
holster, but showing his ID and an explanation that he ‘worked with Captain 
Finkelman’ of the District Homicide Division had soothed their alarm, though 
he’d carefully left out any mention of being a volunteer civilian. The tailor had 
assured Daryl that as long as he kept his receipts, the jackets would be able to 
be altered to accommodate and more importantly greatly disguise that he was 
carrying a weapon. 

Even more incredibly, they had offered him a deal on footwear as they 
watched him flex his aching feet after removing his shoes so he could be 
measured for new shoes. They would provide the range from loafers, brogues, 
lace-ups, sneakers and boots at a third-off deal that Daryl had instantly 
accepted. The cost was heart-stopping but Daryl knew that in the long-term he 
would save more than it was costing, not just in genuine leather footwear that 
would last for years but in future medical problems caused by his abused feet.

Coming back to the dormitory after the hefty whack to his wallet, Daryl had 
picked up the phone call from Ellie, who’d asked him what firm he’d used to 
ship his stuff from Washington State to Georgetown. Surprised, he’d responded 
honestly that he’d just lugged most of it himself and asked what was going on?

Ellie had explained that it had all been arranged to move her things to her 
dorm room on the East Wing of Village C in two ‘batches’, and her room-mate 
would accept delivery on her behalf on both occasions. At half-past-nine, she’d 
received a call to say that the firm had lost three trucks in a warehouse fire 
and in order to meet all its commitments, was going to have to just dump all 
her belongings in one go at Georgetown. Ringing to let her in-residence room-
mate know the situation, Ellie’s call had in fact been picked up by one of the 
cleaners who’d explained that the girl had been rushed into hospital the night 
before with suspected appendicitis. 

Ellie had no intention of going anywhere near her mother with the problem, as 
Leonie was apparently always in a state of near-hysteria at the moment. Nor 
were either of her brothers currently able to come and help out. Daryl liked his 
imminent stepbrothers, but he wasn’t stupid. Dad had told him that Kyler had 
attended Harvard Law and Callum had gone to Cornell followed by Caltech, and 
Daryl had expected to meet a smooth, aristocratic but icy legal-eagle type 
focussed on his next Porsche and a brilliant but nerdy computer-genius 
uninterested in anything that didn’t involve gigabytes of RAM or recombinant 
DNA molecules. 

In the event of meeting them for the first time at Blair’s housewarming party 
when Kyler had flown up from LA and Callum down from Seattle, it was clear 
both men, like Ellie, had taken after their mother in looks, though a good five 
inches taller in both cases. Daryl had found it a relief to see their matching 
honey-brown curly hair, twin pairs of warm hazel eyes and ready smiles, unsure 
within himself of how he’d have felt had either one resembled their biological 
father. 

Their attire of casual jeans and T-shirts had shown that they’d also possessed 
physiques much closer to Jim Ellison than desk-warmer types usually did. 
They’d been urbane and affable and good humoured, but what they actually 
did had somehow never quite been explained. Daryl had garnered that they 
were both in some way contented to law enforcement agencies or the military 
– or both. 

He didn’t need it spelling out for him, certainly not in post 9/11 America, as to 
the probable reasons Kyler and Callum McKinley were often unavailable or non-
contactable at short notice. Like his dad, Daryl had long ago figured out that 
Jim Ellison’s ‘departure’ from Special Ops was, at best, a flexible situation, 
and was astute enough to pick up similar vibes emanating from his stepbrothers 
underneath that amiable but subtly deflecting diffidence. Daryl had no doubt 
that Ellie had been as equally astute and observant and had been keeping her 
own counsel about what her brothers did as long as Daryl had been protecting 
the secret of Jim’s Sentinel abilities – it was what he would have done. 

Which meant that when, rather than if, Simon Banks had to tell Leonie about 
Jim’s situation, things could get interesting; would Leonie be capable of 
keeping the knowledge from her three clever, observant children? Would she 
be willing to, in the face of the secret that her stepson was in on but her own 
children weren’t?

The solution to Ellie’s immediate problem had been easy enough, however. He 
had sorted everything out at Georgetown and with Captain Finkelman to start 
as a police volunteer at the beginning of the semester, so had just told Ellie 
they would do a swap; Daryl came back to resume pet-sitting duties whilst Ellie 
flew out to oversee things in D.C. A quick phone call to the Lorelei Hotel in 
Witt’s End had left a message notifying Jim and Blair of what was happening, 
and he’d left a note for Xan that he was going back to Cascade until after his 
dad’s wedding. He’d called his dad’s office at Cascade Central from the arrival 
lounge of the airport to tell him of his arrival.

In which case, Daryl acknowledged, he’d better get out of this suit pronto. The 
suit had been an experiment that would be his first essay for his Psychology 
class, and it had worked. Putting the essentials in a duffle bag and grabbing the 
so-far unused briefcase his mother had given him for ‘show’, Daryl had donned 
his Navy suit and made bets with himself how much it would speed his 
progress. The answer had been ‘quite a bit’. The check-in clerk, forty if she 
was a day, had been positively flirtatious and had clearly never registered his 
date of birth from the passport. On the plane the stewards had been attentive 
and respectful, and on landing at Cascade he’d not even had to raise his arm 
for a taxi, the driver of which had even tried to instigate a ‘fishing’ dialogue 
about investments and stock markets.

Daryl had been hard-pressed to hide his amusement when he’d alighted at 852 
Prospect, and had given the cabbie a healthy tip as he’d learned from his aunt 
Yolanda. She had belonged to an evangelical Christian group and no matter the 
provocation always left the person with an attitude of dignity and 
respectfulness. She’d largely admitted the primary motivation was not to give 
them the satisfaction, but had also pointed out that she was thinking, not of 
herself, but for all those who came after her. It was a small way to ease the 
path of black men that followed him in turn, but it still counted. 

However, up to his neck in wedding prep and FBI types or not, Simon Banks 
would only need to take one look at his son voluntarily wearing a suit to know 
something seriously fishy was going on. 

* * *

Jim looked at his partner, the epiphany having struck almost instantly. “The 
fire people.”

“What?” Blair muttered, confused.

“That kid, Lisa, who jumped off the dam when she OD’d on Golden. She was a 
teenage girl, a child who hadn’t even begun to live, so her visions were born of 
her innocence: a fairytale castle and a golden bridge,” Jim said softly. “In the 
garage, when you were dosed with Golden, you said there were people that 
looked like ash and they were on fire. The lab said that Golden affected each 
individual differently. You’ve always suffered from survivor guilt because you 
couldn’t save all the soldiers you picked up in the helo, so the Golden caused 
you to relive the crash.” That there had been a crash was something Jim didn’t 
need telling; any time the words “helicopter” and “auto-rotated” appeared in 
the same sentence, you knew there was no happy ending.

Blair eyes where sapphire whirlpools of remembered grief, “The helo caught 
fire when I landed it, some of the guys were burned.”

Jim didn’t need a detailed account; auto-rotating was incredibly difficult and 
more often than not resulted in the death of the pilot – his own pilot had 
sacrificed himself in that way in Peru, to give his comrades a better chance of 
survival. It had worked too, for Jim hadn’t been the only one with survivable 
injuries, or rather would have worked had his men not been smart enough to 
work out in about a second flat that their own CO had screwed them over and 
radioing for help was tantamount to suicide. 

“Right now I need all I need to know,” he told Blair, “we have more pressing 
priorities, because Voldemort’s out there and you’re no Harry Potter.”

“Take a vision quest with me.” 

Blair looked at Joe. “What?”

“Go with me on a vision quest, now,” Joe urged. “I understand your doubts and 
fears, but I believe it will give you answers.”

Blair considered it for a moment. “Okay. Jim?”

“Sure –”

“This is not for you, Sentinel of the Great City.”

“Excuse me?” Jim retorted dangerously.

“Are you saying that Jim can’t come?” Blair asked.

“Yes,” Joe said, and smiled. “Consider the module in Cryptic to be covered. 
The Sentinel is not welcome.”

Blair could practically see the alert above Jim’s head going from Def Con 5 to 4 
as the Sentinel bristled. “But this is one of the Temples, surely –”

Joe raised a hand to silence him, “The temples of Guides and the Temples of 
Sentinels may look greatly the same, but were constructed and intended for 
different purposes.”

“Blair had no trouble in Sierra Verde, but the Temple of Guides is meant to 
repel Sentinels?” Jim growled hostilely.

“Indeed,” Joe agreed with no contrition detectable in his tone. “The sacred 
duty of the Sentinel is to protect his people, defend the tribe. The sacred duty 
of the Guide is to protect and defend the Sentinel…”

“Quisnam servo curator,” Blair suddenly quoted the Latin phrase. “Who guards 
the guardian? Who’s looking after the Guide while the Guide is looking after 
the Sentinel – and by extension everyone else?”

“Precisely,” Joe concurred. “Think of the Temple of Guides as a spiritual spa 
resort if you will. It was wholly designed so that all empaths, but particularly 
those of Guide-strength ability, could come and be refreshed and revitalised 
without having to look after anyone else’s needs for a change.”

“The prehistoric version of giving the Guide some quality ‘me’ time?” Jim 
suggested sardonically.

“Just so,” Joe agreed. “Everyone needs their own space from time to time, 
particularly males, and the telepathic and empathic bond between Alpha 
Sentinel and Guide pairings meant that often it was impossible to even escape 
inside your own head as it were.”

“It’s okay, Jim,” Blair made his decision, “this place has been safe for 
thousands of years, not even the Sandburg Zone can do that much damage in 
this amount of time. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at the hotel later.” <I’m only a 
thought away, Jim.>

“As long as you’re sure,” Jim said softly, before pinning Joe with a look that 
could have melted steel; he didn’t need to verbalise the threat. <Be careful, 
Blair.>

Blair stood next to Joe as he watched Jim walk slowly away, trying to ignore his 
own nerves. He had no real desire to go on a vision quest, but his sense of 
responsibility had already acknowledged that he was doomed to become a 
shaman regardless of his own desire to avoid it. Besides, maybe a vision quest 
would help him more quickly towards a way stopping the man terrorising Witt’s 
End and St. Mary Vale? He was glad Jim was leaving in that regard, for he 
strongly suspected that Joe’s vision quest would be a traditional thing involving 
certain herbal substances that would push every ‘cop’ button Jim had.

* * *

Daryl twisted the pasta expertly round his fork using his spoon and popped it 
discreetly into his mouth. Perfection – Angelo’s made the best pasta in 
Cascade. He smiled as his dad did the same, only a lot more slowly. One of the 
‘extra-curricular’ things taught by Daryl’s old school St. Thomas Aquinas had 
been ‘food etiquette’, designed to help those students whose careers might 
take them into high-powered business or diplomatic arenas where style was 
everything. Daryl could elegantly and discreetly eat spaghetti, snails, lobster, 
soup, and a whole host of other ‘tricky’ foods that often had the nervous 
newcomer in a sweat, like that scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts 
flirted her lunch onto another table!

“How are Jim and Blair doing?” he asked, eyeing up the last slice of garlic 
bread.

“Jim said they’d got a strong lead on the Murderer Presumptive.” Simon 
gestured for his son to eat the bread while he concentrated on the pasta. 
“They hope to be back by the weekend, though I’m half-expecting them to find 
some excuse to stay on a bit longer!”

“They wouldn’t do that, dad,” Daryl reassured. “I would, but not them.”

“Ha-ha,” Simon retorted, but without heat, pleased to have his son back if only 
for a short while; Daryl looked happy and enthusiastic, and in some indefinable 
way, taller and older than he had before he’d moved into his Georgetown 
dorm.

Daryl meanwhile looked at his dad approvingly. Simon Banks had never been 
the thin and ethereal type, but there was a roundness of face and a bounce to 
his step that had been lacking for far too many years. ‘Content’, that was the 
word, Daryl thought to himself. Dad looked contented for the first time in 
years. He was familiar with the look, having seen mom exude it when she’d 
married Frederick Heyer. 

Daryl made a mental note to drop his stepfather a line in the near future and, 
obliquely, thank him. Daryl was sure that Frederick had taken the US 
Ambassador to Egypt position as much to help Daryl out by giving him breathing 
space from his micro-managing mother as to further his own already 
established and distinguished career. Daryl loved his mom, but Joan Kendala 
Banks-now-Heyer was the last person he had wanted around at this juncture, 
aware she would have been busily organising not just his entire sojourn at 
Georgetown but the next fifty years of his life with no thought to Daryl’s 
viewpoint. Joan loved every second of her life in Egypt and was fully and 
gainfully occupied as the Ambassador’s wife. 

“I’m just not sure that I’m making any headway in persuading the FBI to desist 
from their plan to set up shop next door,” Simon admitted. “At least if Jim and 
Blair are delayed getting back from Witt’s End, only having time to attend the 
wedding will distract them for a while.”

Daryl agreed, before discreetly checking the time again until his dad had to go 
back to that rather important Chief of Police job. He judged it was right for his 
divert & distract plan to be initiated. Any second now his father was going to 
start asking him about Georgetown and Washington D.C. Short, airy and evasive 
answers in the manner of “fine” would have the paternal radar pinging, and 
the only other alternative would be tell his dad bald-face lies, which was not 
acceptable. On the other hand, dad would go ballistic if Daryl was forced to 
admit at this juncture that he was a police volunteer with, quote, ‘America’s 
most dangerous PD’, unquote. He wanted dad relaxed and basking in the 
afterglow of joyous matrimony before that revelation came out.  

“Dad, can I ask you a question?” Daryl asked seriously.

Alert as ever to the nuances, Simon immediately focussed his attention on his 
son when he took in Daryl’s vaguely anxious visage, “Of course?”

“Do you know what Callum and Kyler work as?” Daryl enquired.

“Not specifically…” Simon admitted “…but I can guess. I trust I don’t need to 
emphasise their right to privacy or that, seeing as they are both adults, it’s 
none of our business unless and until they wish to tell us?”

“No, actually that’s kinda my point.” Daryl explained. “You love Leonie, Dad, 
and she thinks you’re great. You two were made for each other, and I don’t 
want anything to come between you, which is why I’m concerned about the 
elephant in the corner.”

Simon folded his napkin, and took a sip of his mineral water, having eschewed 
coffee and alcohol; Blair was going to go ape when he came back and found out 
how much caffeine Simon was ingesting daily right now. “Ah, that elephant; 
yes, I’ve thought about it. Jim told me, by the way, that you’ve known since 
Kincaid attacked the precinct when you were twelve and how you understood 
the need for discretion. I’m very proud of you, Daryl.”

Grateful that nobody could see black men blush, Daryl gave an embarrassed 
shrug, “No big, dad - I’m only eighteen, but I am old enough to know that 
keeping secrets from those closest to you has a nasty habit of coming back to 
bite your ass further down the line. What I’m saying is that Ellie figured out 
what her brothers do for a living back when she was about 12 just like I did 
with…our current issue…and so did Leonie. Leonie is hot -”

“Ahem!” Simon glowered at his son at this less than elegant description.

“- She’s also waaaay smarter than us. Like Sandburg smart,” Daryl ploughed on, 
“and she has three equally bright offspring. What I’m trying to ask is, what’s 
our M.O. if something comes up which clues them in on the fact that Banks & 
Banks are obviously deep in on some major secret?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Simon confessed with concern, though he felt another 
surge of pride at his only child’s obvious emotional maturity, but then, how 
many 12-year-olds could have kept their mouths shut for half a decade about 
something most of their peers would have been bursting at the seams to let 
slip? 
“I know Leonie might say that she understands if you say it’s not your decision, 
and she might even try to convince herself of that,” Daryl pointed out, “but 
she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t start wondering what other secrets you 
have that you aren’t telling her. Plus Kyler and Callum and Ellie’s primary 
concern is and should be their mother’s welfare. Considering the nightmare of 
their life with may-he-rot-in-jail Andrew McKinley…”

Simon nodded sharply at this unwelcome reminder of Leonie’s first husband; 
enduring his persecution and mental torture for over a decade had honed 
Leonie and Ellie’s instincts for both bullshit and paranoia to a fine edge. To his 
regret, Simon hadn’t been able to prevent Leonie and her children learning 
that Andrew McKinley had been plotting the murder of his wife and daughter 
when he’d made the mistake of going after Ellison and Sandburg. Though her 
biological father was a complete and hostile stranger to her, Ellie had 
nevertheless been obviously distressed by the revelation, though she wore a 
brave face for her brothers. 

Easily following his father’s unhappy thought processes, Daryl finished, “If 
Kyle, Cal and Ellie notice Leonie’s unease they might start digging to find out 
what’s going on so they can put her mind at ease, and like Blair said, there’s 
just too much evidence floating around out there that proves the elephant in 
the corner is really there.”

“Especially with the resources Kyler and Callum doubtless have available to 
them in the mode of Lee Brackett. I know; I feel like a hypocrite,” Simon 
sighed deeply. “I would hate it if I discovered that Leonie had some major 
thing that she wasn’t telling me, but I’m guilty of exactly that. A sin of 
omission is a sin still. But for the moment, I’ve decided to say nothing unless 
absolutely necessary and I expect that to hold true for you with Ellie.”

“Sure, already my game plan,” Daryl assured him. “Maybe it would be an idea 
to have a word with Jim and Blair when they get back? Maybe they’d pre-
emptively grant permission to let Leonie in on the basic details if necessary?”

“Good idea,” praised Simon as he spotted the time and raised his hand for the 
check. “Forewarned is forearmed, I suppose.”

Daryl lingered over his coffee as his dad left the restaurant to go back to work, 
relaxing slightly with relief. His dad had been successfully distracted from 
enquiries about D.C., and Daryl was sure that with the rapidly evaporating time 
between now and the wedding, he would be too busy to think about it. Nor had 
Daryl been scaremongering just as a distraction tool; Leonie and her children 
were bright enough to figure out something was going on under the right 
circumstances, and it would be a disaster if they blundered into the Sentinel 
thing unintentionally.

* * *

Jim walked slowly through the forest leading away from the cliff face and its 
hidden entrance, as there was nothing resembling a path. A path would lead 
people to the cliff, and that was not desired.

Unless of course they were Guides; with a serious effort of will, Jim refrained 
from kicking a loose stone with his boot, because that would have been just too 
much like a sulking schoolboy. He was an Ellison and Ellisons did not sulk. The 
very gene had been bred out of them centuries ago. He would admit, however, 
to feeling…piqued. Yes, that was a word of sufficient sophistication: not sulking 
or miffed or God forbid, in a ‘snit’, but piqued.

Alternately, Jim examined his feelings and his memories of six years spent in 
the Sandburg Zone, and acknowledged that he wasn’t exactly stunned by the 
‘revelation’ either. It had actually been his musings on how Blair would fare as 
a Shaman that had led Jim to draw certain conclusions. 

Right from when he first started seriously thinking about it, Jim had been 
certain that Blair would definitely not be weak in the shamanistic role just as 
he hadn’t been in his Police Observer period; Jim remembered all too well 
their brief neighbour, the drug-baroness Iris. When Sandburg had popped the 
trunk of his car to reveal a fuming Iris, Jim and Simon had been amazed and 
amused, but as Sandburg laughed too Jim had subconsciously noted how the 
mirth never reached those cool blue eyes peering over his shades, and how 
Blair’s demeanour had, for a few seconds, reminded Jim with uncomfortable 
sharpness of one Lee Brackett. 

Blair might look, and 99.9% of the time, act like he’d left Woodstock ten 
minutes ago, but he was perfectly capable of kicking ass and taking names if he 
chose. Amidst the general awe and kudos over an untrained, unarmed civilian 
taking out two terrorists with a vending machine and a john door before pulling 
off an Oscar-winning performance as a hard-bitten Narcotics Lieutenant and 
terrorising a chopper pilot into landing for the nice waiting policemen, nobody 
had noticed – not even Jim until much later – that Blair had never evinced any 
remorse for his actions or gone into the usual hippie peace-and-love self-doubt 
anxiety meltdown. He had acted coldly, calmly and effectively and clearly 
accepted that he had done what was necessary without second-guessing 
himself. 

Similar things had happened throughout those first four fraught years of their 
partnership, as Jim had catalogued when he thought back. For instance when 
Enrique Guzman had them trapped in Rucker’s coast guard station, Jim had 
shown Blair once at great speed under duress how to operate the second M60, 
yet in the ensuing fire-fight Blair had handled himself with an aptitude that 
indicated he was only unfamiliar with that type of gun, not firearms in general. 
Likewise when Yuri had them pinned down in Mulrooney’s Delta Station “unsafe 
house”; Blair had remained calm and in control and had acted decisively to get 
Micki away from the place when it appeared Yuri was closing in. Though Blair 
was unyielding in his arguments for greater gun control laws, it certainly wasn’t 
because he was incompetent or an amateur in their use.             

Of course, that still didn’t answer the question of how the poster-boy for 
pacifism Blair Sandburg ended up as a military pilot but then Jim was in no 
position to cast the first stone. Much of his own Special Forces career would 
still be classified in ‘it-never-happened’ territory a century from now. In fact, 
it had been another thing that should have clued him in, Jim realised. Blair was 
usually obsessive about every facet of his Sentinel’s existence, as it was 
minutiae that enabled him to protect Jim from potentially harmful 
environments. But apart from some generalised questions, Blair had never 
asked Jim about his military career, and if Jim had rebuffed any question, he 
had never continued to push with the misinterpreting indignation that many 
civilians evinced. That attitude made much more sense if you assumed 
Sandburg had a personal understanding that certain things were classified and 
‘need-to-know’. 

About to head back to Witt’s End, Jim paused and his eyes narrowed as a much 
more recent memory popped up before his Mind’s Eye: Rick Valenti, telling 
them about the loss of his swim buddy, Kyle, and others during Desert Storm 
when that jackass two-star let slip Allied landing plans on CNN. Jim 
remembered Blair’s unaccustomed brusqueness as the younger man mentally 
‘said’ that he remembered the incident that had caused furore stateside. 

Desert Storm had been ’91, and Jim had been in the thick of it with the Army 
Rangers; in fact Baghdad had been the mission before Peru; but the landing 
disaster had happened on the coast, miles from where Jim and his team were 
on the ground. Sandburg had been born in ’69…in ’91 he would have been 22-
years-old. Jim was suddenly certain that one of the choppers that had got men 
out under heavy Iraqi fire had been piloted by one Blair Jacob Sandburg; in all 
probability, that must have been when Sandburg’s chopper went down.

Decisively, Jim moved through the woods at a fast pace, seeming to almost 
flow over the ground. This was a Sentinel’s natural environment, and though he 
didn’t consciously realise the fact, it took Jim much less effort to negotiate his 
way through a dense forest packed with lions and bears and maybe the odd 
tiger than it did an urban environment. Coming to the small clearing, he went 
over to the tree stump and gave it a kick to attract attention. “Saxon Ware, I 
need to talk to him!” He added, “It’s important, please!” to head off one of 
Blair’s politeness lectures before he recalled that his Guide wasn’t where he 
should be, but was in fact vision questing back at the ‘No Sentinels Spiritual 
Health Spa’ – my ass…

His train of though was broken as he felt faint vibrations and heard metal 
moving against metal. He took a few steps back and waited until the ‘stump’ 
opened up to reveal a metal hatch. Saxon Ware climbed out and gave Jim an 
unhappy, steely glare. 

Not in the slightest bit intimidated, Jim said as if he knew all about it, “I need 
you to get me the info on Sandburg’s helo crash. I need it small, concealable 
and easy to destroy.”

“His crash?” Saxon repeated.

“Desert Storm,” snapped Jim, gambling on his guess being accurate, “and 
Sandburg mustn’t know about it.”

Saxon raised both eyebrows. “The incident is pertinent?”

Jim shrugged, “Possibly, but then again…anyway, certain…aspects…of this case 
are upsetting him. Memories he’s tried to put behind him. I want to make sure 
that I can deal with any issues.”

“When for?”

“An hour,” Jim had no idea how long Blair was going to be, but wanted to have 
time to read and ponder the incident.

“Of course, and in a format that’s small, concealable, easy to destroy and 
undetectable to Sandburg,” Ware said with just a soupçon of sarcasm.

“Exactly,” Jim smirked. “You know our room number.”

Saxon watched the tall detective walk away, experiencing again that faint 
prickling sensation that had disconcerted him before. Ellison was annoying, in 
an interesting kind of way. Climbing back down the tube after ensuring he had 
sealed the hatch fully, Saxon thoughtfully wondered the concrete tunnels of 
the subterranean complex until he passed a small office where one of the lab 
techs was working on a computer; they were the most populous of the 
complex’s personnel and were handy for roping in as jack-of-all-trade gophers-
cum-dogsbodies. 

Making a ‘whit’ whistle sound to attract the man’s attention, Saxon iterated 
what he required and then added an extra order, “I also want complete files on 
both James Ellison and Blair Sandburg, on my desk by the end of today; from 
cradle to – yesterday…Medical; psychological; life history; the works.” Not 
waiting for a response, he strode off, his keen mind focussing on the next task 
even as he mused on Ellison and Sandburg.

In his office, the lab technician activated his computer and rapidly dispensed 
with the report on Blair Sandburg’s near-fatal helicopter crash. He touched the 
sheets detailing the other man’s injuries with almost tender fingertips before 
returning to the other job. Keir bit his lip and glanced at the clock; producing a 
‘complete’ report that was in fact meticulously and seamlessly – and above all 
untraceably – edited to protect Blair and James Ellison’s secrets was going to 
take time. It would be a close-run thing. Nevertheless, Keir Robards began to 
work with a focussed diligence. He owed Blair everything; he’d gone to one of 
Blair’s ‘sensitivity’ testing days at Rainier University as a last ditch resort 
before he ended his own life, grasping at the feeble straw of ‘food allergies’ to 
explain his problem. 

Even though the vibrant young man practically bouncing about the lecture hall 
was interested in those with heightened senses, he’d still noticed the youth 
without any enhanced senses crushed by having no food problems. Keir had no 
idea what instinct had made Blair decide to follow him, he’d certainly been 
unaware of his follower as he headed despairingly for the 5th Street highway 
overpass, and started to haul himself over the guardrail. Blair had freaked and 
Keir had been treated to a ten-minute rant after being grabbed 
unceremoniously by the scruff of his neck and yanked back to safety. Blair 
hated heights. 

Eventually Keir had been persuaded to talk about it and once the floodgates 
had been opened, Keir had found that he couldn’t stop it all pouring out. High-
ranking military officer father who defined the term ‘overbearing’, with no 
emotional support from a mother wearied by her husband’s bombast and being 
treated like a subordinate officer rather than a wife…until she’d gotten tired 
enough to divorce him when Keir was ten, the ‘best thing she’d ever done’. 
Keir was the youngest child and also youngest son following three ‘perfect’ 
elder brothers; the weakling, the failure, the one who never got ‘with the 
program’ or conformed to the World According To General Robards. 

He’d always been a deeply sensitive child, able to empathise immensely with 
others; his school teachers had recommended a career in psychiatry or the 
clergy as ideal for his nature, but General Robards had no time for wishy-washy 
touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo, or a son who needed to toughen up and get his 
head out of the clouds. When Keir hit puberty and realised he was not just 
empathetic but empathic, his life had gone down the toilet. Desperate to get 
away from a father whose disappointment and disapproval and forceful bullish 
personality constantly battered at his mind like an unceasing gale, he had 
managed to get through college and then drifted around from low-paid job to 
low-paid job, not putting his degree in archaeology to practical use for fear 
that if he stayed in one place too long, which many archaeological positions 
required, his father would find the time to jump on the next plane to harangue 
and browbeat him into enlisting.

Back at that time, Blair’s Sentinel ideas were just theory, and he had no more 
clue about empaths than anyone else. But that hadn’t mattered to Blair; to 
Keir’s astonishment and gratitude the other man had jumped right into Keir’s 
problem, inventing all sorts of tests on the spot to help try and calibrate the 
acuity of Keir’s sensitivity and find solutions. Alcohol in considerable quantities 
lowered Keir’s ability to block a great deal, as did a lot of stimulants such as 
coca-cola or caffeine, so these became a much more moderate part of his diet. 

Blair had suggested that Keir envisage his mind having mental ‘barriers’ – like 
Star Trek shields if he needed a visualisation - that that were like muscles; 
they would strengthen with practice and exercise. It had been a left-field 
theory that had worked stupendously well. Above all, Blair had asked if he 
could compromise. Could he get a fairly minor position in the military for so 
long that would pay the bills and appease his father without interfering too 
much in his great love – archaeology?

Keir had managed it. These ‘laboratory technician’ positions, a catchall title 
that covered a wide variety of work, were civilian attachments to the military. 
Reasonably paid, with on-base quarters and flexible shift patterns plus a 
tendency to be posted in many different places meant that Keir could devote a 
lot of his off-duty time to expanding his archaeology resume, whilst having a 
secure income and above all, keeping his father at bay with the military 
connection.

Saxon Ware wasn’t evil, but he was just another cold-hearted, ice-water 
veined ‘for the greater good’ amoral type that the shadow-government seemed 
to churn out on a conveyor belt these days. Blair didn’t deserve the hassle, nor 
did James Ellison. You couldn’t be in Sandburg’s company for longer than a 
minute and not hear all about his Holy Grail. Though Keir and Blair had stayed 
only in sporadic contact over the years, it didn’t take rocket science to put two 
and two together. It was time he repaid the debt.

* * *

As Blair had expected, Joe lived in one of the cliff-face caves near the temple. 
Although ‘cave’ was a misnomer in that it conjured images of cold, dark, 
dankness complicated by possible bear/cougar/snake/skunk/bat issues. The 
natural cave had been extended with a dry rock floor covered in brightly hued 
intricately woven mats. Shelves and niches had been hewn into the rock for a 
variety of utensils and near the entrance of the cave was a deep fire pit with a 
cooking pot and kettle suspended over it.

Sitting down in the customary cross-legged position, Blair was surprised when 
Joe prepared them both a cup of nothing more exotic than camomile tea.

Answering his unspoken question, Joe said, “At this time, clear understanding 
is more important than reaching the spirit plane as quickly as possible. So for 
now, close your eyes, centre your breathing, and concentrate on the smell of 
tea, the sound of the grass outside.”

Blair did so quickly, having absorbed meditative techniques from the cradle. He 
focussed on the faint rustle of the breeze moving through the meadow crass 
and the faint scent of the camomile plant wafting up from the tea and Joe’s 
low, sonorous voice as he told him to relax, to breathe, to imagine…

So he wasn’t entirely surprised to look up and find himself in a sub-tropical 
jungle, although this one wasn’t overlaid by that weird blue lighting. It 
appeared to be your average every day jungle. He looked down at himself to 
see that he was still wearing his clothing and boots that he had donned that 
morning. So he wasn’t a wolf or decked out in nothing other than a loincloth 
which, hey, much relief.

About twenty feet away there was movement and a large wolf trotted out of 
the foliage, coming to the bank of the wide, shallow river to drink. I’m the 
wolf, usually, so the wolf is…me. I’m watching me? Okay, metaphysical 
enough…

Just in case he hadn’t caught the clue bus, another animal came out of the 
undergrowth – a large black panther. It sauntered up to the wolf and butted its 
shoulder with its massive head, purring. The wolf nuzzled it back but then 
suddenly bounded away as if heading back into the jungle. The panther sprang 
after it and bowled it over with massive velvet paws whose claws never 
unsheathed before starting to lick at the wolf’s fur with its tongue. The wolf 
yipped and wriggled almost as if ticklish and Blair stood and watched grinning 
as the two animals played tag with each other like a puppy and a kitten not 
full-grown animals.

Finally, however the pair began to move away, along the grassy expanse of the 
riverbank, periodically touching noses or rubbing shoulders against each other. 
Unsure of what to do, Blair followed behind by about a dozen yards, only to 
stop and wince as all of a sudden he realised how noisy it was, as if someone 
had removed an invisible pair of earmuffs from his head; yee-ouch! Unlike 
previous spiritual experiences, this jungle was packed with birds and animals 
seemingly everywhere and the din was incredible. As he hurried along 
after…himself…and panther-Jim, however, Blair noted how the wolf and the 
panther seemed oblivious to the din and the other animals that twittered and 
chirped and appeared and disappeared. 

Quite clearly Blair heard loud, sibilant hissing. To the left, about ten feet away 
from where the panther and the wolf ambled by the river bank, was a medium 
sized sapling upon which’s lower branches were perched two raptors – an 
American Eagle, and some sort of hawk/falcon bird. Unusually the two raptors 
were quite close together and they stroked each other’s heads with their beaks 
and preened each others wing feathers and generally seemed to be getting on 
spiffily. Directly below their branch was a small mammal that vaguely 
resembled a fox except that it was smaller and completely white-furred bar 
the tip of its tail, which was jet black.

Suddenly the hissing noises proved to be snakes – several of them – boiling out 
of the undergrowth. The largest undulated up opening a cavernous mouth but 
as it lunged up towards the birds the white miniature fox knocked it aside 
mauled it before turning and snapping at one of the other snakes with equal 
success. But another snake darted in and sank its fangs into the white ‘fox’s’ 
shoulder.

“Hey!” Blair yelled, looking around for a stick or stone he could use to hurl at 
the snakes.

There was none, but when he looked again the snakes had gone. The two birds 
continued to perch on the branch, preening each other and the white fox sat 
underneath, lying down as it rested. Now he could look properly and Blair could 
see the outline of its ribs, and myriad old marks of scars. The animal let the 
wound on its shoulder bleed with indifference and the birds seemed not to 
notice the animal’s presence or that it had saved them and apparently had 
been doing so for quite some time. 

“What…?” Blair looked up and saw that the panther and the wolf were now a 
good thirty yards ahead, still ambling along the river bank having not slowed an 
iota or shown any indication they were aware of the two birds and their 
unlikely protector.

Confused as to why the hawks were ignoring the white fox and why the wolf 
and the panther had not come to its aid against the snakes, Blair hurried to 
catch up. Again, just as he did so, he heard loud, coarse shrieks. Up ahead was 
a huge ape of a species completely unfamiliar to Blair – a good eight feet in 
height with off-white coloured hair yet not an albino, and features closer to an 
orang-utan than a gorilla or chimp. The ape creature was seated, eating the 
fruit of some large trees with every indication of enjoyment.

But the ape incredibly didn’t seem to notice that circling around it, at 
impossibly low altitudes for creatures of their body mass, were vulture like 
birds that kept swooping in attack. However, the ape had a protector. A huge 
black hound vaguely resembling a super-sized Rottweiler constantly also circled 
the ape, leaping up and catching the vultures in its powerful jaws or simply 
inserting its body in the way of a cruel beak and slashing talon. Around and 
around and around the dog ceaselessly guarded, while the ape continued to 
stuff its face as if unaware of the dog’s presence or of how the animal worked 
tirelessly to protect it despite a dozen wounds. 

“Hey…!” Blair protested in astonishment as the wolf and panther trotted 
blithely past the scene. “Hey…over there…don’t you see them?” He hesitated, 
unwilling to just abandon the dog but not wanting to lose the duo, but they did 
not slow down or stop.

Getting angry now and not interested in the pretty scenery any more, Blair 
marched after the errant panther and wolf. Further ahead he saw something 
that infuriated him – what appeared to be a Maine Moon Cat was pinned under 
some sort of hunter’s trap, whimpering piteously. Blair rushed forward and 
tried to get hold of the trap, but his hand passed right through it as though he 
weren’t there. So, he was strictly an observer, was he? He peered at the trap – 
the cat wasn’t in it, but rather held down under it. All it needed was something 
to drag the weight off so the cat could move. Blair looked around, but the 
panther and the wolf were already – incredibly – disappearing around the bend 
in the river’s edge. 

“You have got to be kidding me?” Blair fumed. “Hang about – hey, here, hey 
kitty, kitty!” He called as a cougar large enough to drag the trap away from the 
smaller cat strolled out of the undergrowth – but without even a glance padded 
straight past to drink from the river.

“What is with you?!” Blair yelled to the jungle at large and at the disappearing 
backs of the panther and the wolf. “You need to help them!”

And abruptly he was back in the cave, opening his eyes to find Joe gazing at 
him solemnly. 

“They didn’t help the others…I didn’t help them,” Blair said slowly, grasping 
the message.

Joe inclined his head. “There are certain periods in the ages of man when 
heroes are needed – and needed to be known as such – more than others. Your 
Sentinel knows the narrowness by which he avoided the fate of Alexandra 
Barnes, but the world is full of sentinels who have no Blair Sandburg to explain 
what’s really going on. The world is full of empaths who have no James Ellison 
to shield their minds from the constant battering of six billion psyches.”

“Because right now nobody is helping them,” Blair said with wry resignation. 
“There’s nobody ready to teach them what they need to survive.”

Joe smiled. “The great lords of England had wealth and power, and also a 
creed: noblesse oblige – power brings responsibility. You and your Sentinel have 
been blessed with great gifts, but those gifts carry a moral obligation to help 
out those who were not as lucky as you both were to be in the right places at 
the right times; Alexandra Barnes was not born evil, nor did she simply wake up 
one morning transformed into a conscienceless murderess.”

“In short, there but for the grace of god,” Blair summarised. 

“If you like; Blair, you are a good teacher, but while many can take up the 
challenge of lecturing at a community college, those persons are completely 
unqualified to teach those with enhanced senses and empathic abilities to 
survive in a world not designed to cater for their needs. There are many 
volunteers who can help out at soup kitchens and homeless shelters, but those 
volunteers do not have the ability to use the power of a shaman to fight evil.”

Blair sighed, seeing Joe’s point. 

Joe looked at him shrewdly. “Blair, becoming a shaman is not about you losing 
more of what you are, it is about you gaining what you need to become 
something else. Mohammed Ali said that a man who views the world at 50 the 
same as he did at 20 – ”

“Has wasted 30 years of his life, yeah,” Blair finished the quote.

“Just so. You were a good and decent man, a fine scholar and a natural-born 
teacher before you met James Ellison, but you have grown and developed and 
matured in so many profound ways over the past years. This is not stunting 
Blair Sandburg or pushing you down, this is the next step in helping you grow 
even further,” Joe said. “A wise Sherpa once said to young man, this is not 
about you, and it in a way it isn’t. This is about finding someone to teach and 
guide and protect and help all those that are following behind you.”

For a long moment there was silence and then Blair slowly exhaled, consciously 
trying to let go of his resentment and pique. “Alright, I understand…me and 
Jim…the Sentinel & Guide version of Meriweather & Clarke, the pathfinders. So 
when do I start my training?”

“Return first thing tomorrow, but now you are needed, for desperation has 
made our enemy rash.”

“What do you mean?” With a jolt, Blair automatically glanced at his watch and 
realised that most of the afternoon had passed by and it was approaching five 
o’clock. 

“You will be needed in Witt’s End by your Sentinel very soon.” Joe did not 
elaborate. “There is no need to hurry, but take a direct route back.”

Blair scrambled to his feet and rapidly made his way up the walkway to the 
tunnel.

* * *
Going back to the Lorelei Hotel, Jim found that the only messages were from 
Simon requesting an update and an explanatory message from Daryl regarding 
the situation with Ellie McKinley and her room-mate, which there was no 
problem with. At a loose end, he ended up in the hotel’s front lounge with a 
Cafétiere of very good coffee called Sumatran Tiger and the local daily paper. 
True to his cousin’s promise, Andrew Winterbourne had managed to get the 
editors of both the Witty Chronicle and the Lifted Vale to tone down the 
rhetoric and inflammatory op-ed pieces – at least for now. 

The hairs on his arms prickled and he casually lowered the paper as a tall man 
in jeans and a shirt sat down in the next chair. The attire was typical of any of 
the tourists and vacationers also in the lounge or strolling along the waterside 
out front, but Saxon Ware couldn’t quite pull off the attitude. He looked 
slightly too intent, too focussed – and way too neatly coiffed – to be a relaxing 
businessman getting away from it all for a fishing weekend. It was slightly too 
easy to believe just by looking that this guy did save the world – or attempt to 
destroy it - at least once a week. 

Ostensibly looking at the pamphlets and booklets on the table advertising 
various local stores and trips and sports, Saxon picked a few up and put them 
down again, depositing an extra ‘brochure’ in the process. “Everything on the 
crash,” Ware claimed without apparently moving his lips.

Jim casually folded his paper and picked up the thin file as if it had caught his 
interest, not looking at the other man. “Disguised as an activities 
brochure…ingenious…and in an hour no less; is your lab boys’ day job with 
Industrial Light & Magic?”

“Customer satisfaction guaranteed, and you ain’t seen nothing yet. For your 
complete, easily destructible so partner doesn’t find out needs…the whole 
thing’s edible.”  With a  smirk, Ware casually stood up and strolled away.

Edible? Oh joy. Ignoring the twisted sense of humour for the time being, Jim 
opened the ‘brochure’ which even had a disguising depiction of a skier on the 
front to underpin the trick. There was more than he thought there would be, 
for the slimness of the booklet had been achieved by very small type, but he 
read with avid fascination.

Having only ever ‘attended’ college as a night-class thing during his Army 
career, it had never occurred to Jim to wonder at the oddity of the time-lag 
involved with Blair’s academic progress. Blair had admitted that he had 
actually started at Rainer at thirteen on the ‘Gifted children’ program 
following which he had enrolled properly at sixteen. The file recounted the 
progress of Rainier’s wunderkind in detail and Jim raised his eyebrows at the 
amount of money generated. Dean Marcia Edwards had made out that Blair was 
some sort of slacker, leeching off the goodwill of the university, but the truth 
was from the age of thirteen to eighteen, Blair had earned Rainier over six 
times everything he might ever have cost them, courtesy of his ‘child prodigy’ 
and ‘boy genius’ tags.

Blair had earned his BA (Hons) at eighteen, but by that point he had problems. 
He was no longer a pre-adolescent ‘child prodigy’ novelty attracting scholarship 
and sponsorship offers nor was he generating the media interest he once was. 
According to the file, shortly after his eighteenth birthday, Blair had 
accompanied another Rainier kid to an Army recruitment office to look out for 
his interests and found out about the military’s scholarship programs. 
Especially after they found out about his IQ, and his Bachelor of Arts Degree, 
the military would bankroll his MA in return for four years’ service. 

At that point Blair had also thought to mention he was a qualified light plane 
and helicopter pilot, courtesy of the period when he was eleven and he and his 
mother had lived with a ‘trader’ in Belize who operated both a helicopter and 
a small biplane and taught his paramour’s son to fly both. So Blair had joined 
the Army Guard. 

The ‘brochure’ even had a photograph of him and Jim stared in astonishment 
at the shorn ‘to the wood’ image of his long-haired hippie friend. The file also 
mentioned Blair’s ‘identifying’ feature of a large, extremely lifelike tattoo on 
what the file euphemistically termed his ‘groin’. So Blair had had the tattoo 
before the age of eighteen when he joined the Army Guard.

Despite his attitude towards militarism, Blair had been both popular and 
respected – a combination not always found together. However, his superior 
officers had almost immediately noted how, despite achieving excellent scores 
with various firearms, Sandburg had remained almost pathologically reluctant 
to use them. In various exercises Blair had utilised a variety of cunning and 
outside-the-box type methods to help his team win, which had only emphasised 
his aversion to using guns. Fortunately for probably all concerned, it wasn’t an 
issue because Blair proved to be an excellent and eager pilot. He’d earned his 
MA at 21, and was in the last year of his four year enlistment when the whole 
Desert Storm situation unfolded, in which Blair had earned promotions and 
medals in the field. 

Blair’s helicopter crash was detailed in bold type on the final page of the 
‘brochure’. As Jim had guessed, it was the nightmare caused by that idiot 
Naylor. Although an Army Ranger, he had met Admiral Naylor a few years 
before Desert Storm at some Washington D.C. soiree he’d been hauled to just 
after making Captain – he couldn’t even remember why he’d had to go now. 
Phillip Naylor had only just been above the regulation height for Navy 
personnel and it was rapidly apparent that this was one three-star who hadn’t 
worked his way up the ranks; rather he had probably been a mediocre graduate 
from the Naval Academy who used his family’s money and influence to move up 
the ranks. He had schmoozed his way up the promotion ladder, but unlike 
others at the party – notably Admirals Percy Fitzwallace1 and Jake Robinson2 
and Air Force General Joe McKenzie3 – Naylor was in no way the Real Deal. 

Giving some self-important interview during Operation Desert Storm, Naylor’s 
pathological need to appear to be the centre of all things led him to let slip on 
live TV far too-specific details of Allied Forces movements the following 
morning, and the terrorist guerrillas had been quick to wreak what havoc they 
could (Jim knew one of the fatalities had been Rick Valenti’s swim buddy, 
Kyle). According to the report, Blair Sandburg had demonstrated exemplary 
heroism under fire by repeatedly returning to the area to evacuate personnel. 
It wasn’t realised until later that he had made his final three trips with a bullet 
wound in his thigh. 

On what would be his final trip, the helicopter had taken severe hits and only 
by virtue of extraordinary flying skill had Blair been able to nurse the 
sputtering, shuddering aircraft back to safety. Forced to auto-rotate it down on 
the landing pad, he had been unable to prevent the helicopter bursting into 
flames on impact. Officially three soldiers had been killed though there was 
strong opinion that two had actually been DOA from their serious wounds 
already when the helicopter crash-landed. Suffering from burns, smoke 
inhalation and his bullet wound, Blair had been in Bethesda military hospital 
for three months, leaving with an Honourable Discharge on medical grounds, a 
Purple Heart, the Distinguished Flying Cross – and a brand new phobia about 
heights that would kick in big-style a few years later on a rope bridge over a 
jungle chasm. 

Jim ordered another pot of coffee and making sure he was unobserved, slowly 
shredded the brochure into his cup, where to his relief it seemed to dissolve. 
The coffee certainly tasted interesting, but it was a lot less conspicuous than 
sitting there and eating the paper ‘neat’. Blair had returned to Rainier at the 
age of 24 and taken up a TA position offered by the then Dean, who would 
retire a year later to be followed by Marcia Edwards, in order to work towards 
his Doctorate. His progress on that had been slowed down considerably by some 
hefty medical bills in the early years from the crash and…malaria relapses?!

Triggered by the trauma of the helicopter crash according to medical opinion, 
though luckily for him Blair had one of the less vicious strains of the illness, 
Plasmodium Vivax. Jim scowled – how could he not know! But of course, when 
Jim had first met Blair Sandburg, he had been a man on the edge. He had 
already determined his only option was suicide and the impostor Dr McCoy had 
been a finally grasped straw before he went home and ate his gun. 

During those tempestuous and tenuous early days, Jim had not been aware he 
was subconsciously using Blair as a baseline. At the time, he had just logged 
everything about Blair as ‘normal’, and even as his abilities increased, Blair’s 
standard vital signs had been so much a part of the background ‘white noise’ 
that he had never noticed any anomaly, like you never noticed the sky was blue 
until a sudden summer storm rolled in and it clouded over far more rapidly 
than usual. In that way, Jim had never ‘logged’ the displayed symptoms – such 
as Blair always being cold, or wearing more layers than an onion on days most 
would consider to be pleasantly warm; his tendency to get ‘aches’ and ‘fevers’, 
where others got sore throats and sniffles.

It also explained Blair’s perpetual health food crusade – amongst other 
unpleasantness, malaria could cause Vitamin B12 deficiency, which in turn 
could cause pernicious anaemia, which if untreated could lead to nerve 
damage and spinal damage. Where and when had Blair contracted malaria? The 
file seemed to indicate the disease had been dormant until the crash trauma 
brought it out and he’d started at Rainier initially at 13, in a city hardly 
conducive to malaria-bearing mosquito populations. In all likelihood Blair had 
contracted the illness in childhood.      

Once upon a time, such a realisation would have caused a major anxiety 
session for Jim, but now he realised that Blair had not deliberately kept such 
things a secret out of malice. He had certainly never talked to Blair in detail 
about his helicopter crash in Peru and wouldn’t even if it hadn’t been part of a 
classified mission, simply because the incident was deeply painful. He was sure 
Blair could relate. As for the malaria, Blair had been ‘managing’ his condition 
for so long he doubtless did it on auto-pilot and sometimes nearly forgot 
himself; besides, it wasn’t the sort of thing that would crop up in casual 
conversation. Indeed, Blair might well believe that Jim knew about his malaria, 
probably assuming that his Sentinel senses had detected it early on.  

Jim fought the urge to rub his eyes wearily despite the inordinate amount of 
coffee he’d consumed – which had taken the expressway to his bladder, it 
seemed – as he stood up from the chair in the lounge and weaved his way 
through the tables to the men’s room. As he took care of business he thought 
that at least this assignment was having runaway success in one area, his self-
imposed investigation into the Life & Times of Blair Jacob Sandburg. 

In the short time they’d been here he’d learned more about Blair’s past, his 
psychology and what made him tick than nigh-on six years of sharing the same 
apartment and being together 24/7. Although, true, he’d spent nearly the first 
four years of that time being a bull-headed macho idiot unwilling to listen half 
the time…not that he was ever going to ’fess up to that, of course. There were 
still plenty of Big Questions outstanding (such as when and where had Blair 
gotten that tattoo?) and much of Blair’s childhood was still a mystery that 
would doubtless make unpleasant reading in many places, but Jim was a lot 
more clued up than he had been when they’d come, and amazingly he’d not 
really had to try all that hard.

Prudently realising that a man staring vacantly into a mirror in a men’s room 
whilst standing in front of a urinal with his fly open could lead to all sorts of 
embarrassing interpretations, Jim washed and dried his hands and left the 
hotel, fighting the urge to go back up to the temple. His return journey to 
Witt’s End was nothing more than an afternoon stroll, but haring back up into 
the woods for the second time today, just as it was starting to go dusk as well, 
would attract notice.

He decided to take a stroll along the marina waterfront, even though he was 
aware he wouldn’t really relax until Blair was where he belonged – standing 
next to him. Jim did have to admit that he did feel less anxious than he would 
have done back in Cascade, but was rapidly coming to appreciate that was the 
Witt’s End effect. For all his wariness around ‘mystic’ stuff, Jim considered 
that maybe there was just something in the air around here. He’d spent years 
knowing what amounted to diddly squat about the person he should have been 
closest to in the world, and managed to gain more insight into the man in the 
space of a week here. 

Witt’s End was one of those places that shouldn’t have worked, but did. There 
was no way a no-nonsense, feet-on-the-ground US Navy SEAL should have gelled 
with a bunch of neo-hippie storekeepers in the boondocks, yet Valenti 
somehow was an integral part of the scenery. Witt’s End’s medical contingent 
should have been more snake-oil salesman than surgeon, yet they rejoiced in 
Bert Martin. 

People that shouldn’t fit in here did, and people that couldn’t fit anywhere 
else seemed made for the place, like the Bettencourt family. You couldn’t 
move without tripping over ‘characters’, and that was even before you 
factored in the twin secrets of a millennia-old temple and a spy base in the 
woods. It was Twin Peaks combined with Roswell, but after giving the matter 
thought and empathically aware of Blair’s reluctance on the issue, Jim had 
decided against running a make on all the citizens. The MP wasn’t a criminal in 
the typical sphere of human understanding and wouldn’t be caught by 
something as literal as looking for rap sheet M.O. matches. Invading the privacy 
of these people knowing that would amount to nothing more than voyeurism, 
besides which Jim strongly suspected that those secrets most of interest were 
secrets exactly like his own – deeply scarring, profoundly painful and very 
dangerous, and hence best left alone.

But still – in a few days Julia Bettencourt’s family would arrive along with dad 
and Steve, and Jim did not want the MP running around loose in the vicinity. 
Fortunately he had the best weapon at his disposal – Blair Sandburg. ‘Quick 
study’ didn’t come into it; a two-day crash course from their new best buddy 
‘Joe’ and Blair would be more capable than someone who’d studied this 
mumbo-jumbo stuff for a year –

“Ellison!!”

It was not so much the yell but the clear panic that made Jim spin around at 
the cry to see Bert Martin as the man stumbled to a halt panting and beetroot-
faced, having clearly run full pelt for a distance. 

“Dr Martin?”

“Ri-Rick V-V-Va’enti sent me,” Bert gasped frantically between winded 
breaths.

“Easy, easy,” Jim tried to reassure, worriedly risking turning up the dials to 
monitor the man’s heart and lungs. They sounded reassuringly rhythmic and 
clear but still Bert was old for sudden sprints. “Take your time!”

“There isn’t any!” From somewhere Bert managed to catch his wind and 
pointed across the lake. “Lance Ducharme just tried to stab Sadie Bettencourt 
and now he’s about to jump off Lover’s Leap!”

“What?!”

“Go, go!”

Jim went, his loping stride and tip-top physical fitness covering the ground 
easily as he ran around the lake edge to where could see a crowd of people. 
Even as he ran his mind churned furiously; under any other circumstances it 
might have been comical – Sandburg had only been gone a few hours, but Jim 
didn’t even think about laughing. What the hell had gone down? 

Jim didn’t slow but didn’t need to push through. Unlike most places, the 
gathered people were standing well back at the base of the crag without being 
restrained and had moved aside to form a passage for him as they saw him 
approach. A good half of Witt’s End and it seemed St. Mary Vale too was there, 
intermingled with curious tourists and Jim spotted Saxon Ware and several 
other slightly-too-stiff-to-be-tourist types inconspicuously in the background. 

Tad and Julia Bettencourt were at the forefront, with all their children. Sadie 
Bettencourt was sporting a large fresh bandage around her upper arm and was 
gesticulating with the other as she argued with her parents and Judith Martin. 
Nearby were an obviously wealthy couple who looked as if their whole world 
had just exploded in their faces – Jim had seen that look too often not to 
instantly realise that they had to be Lance Ducharme’s parents; Mr Ducharme 
resembled William Ellison – tall, patrician, Old Blue Chip stock. Mrs Ducharme 
was a beautiful brunette in her mid forties with high cheekbones plus duskiness 
to her skin that hinted at Asian or Amerindian blood. They clung to each other 
in a way that intimated a deeply close relationship, and the name clicked in 
Jim’s head – Lance Ducharme was the St. Mary Vale kid that Kyle Valenti had 
had that fight with over the rumours that Rick Valenti had murdered his wife.

A boy, who, according to Kyle’s description to Jim and Blair, was a rational, 
level-headed and popular student. Right now, he was clearly a basket-case. Jim 
focussed his sight and saw just how close the boy was standing to the edge of 
the outcropping as Rick Valenti, hands held out and away from his body in a 
conciliatory gesture, tried to talk him down. The tension in Valenti’s body and 
the flicker of relief in the glance that he spared Jim showed it wasn’t going 
well, but without Blair, Jim dared not dial up his hearing as well as his sight in 
an attempt to follow what was going on. The last thing he wanted to do was 
zone in front of this lot – especially with the acutely perceptive Saxon Ware 
standing a dozen yards away. 

Lance Ducharme was a tall youth with the physique of an athlete rather than a 
football player and, courtesy of his mother, what under normal circumstances 
would be killer looks: high cheekbones, perma-tanned skin, sculpted chin, gold-
green eyes and artfully tousled honey-brown hair packaged in discreetly 
expensive made-to-measure Armani, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana et cetera. Right 
now his clothing was rumpled and spotted with blood stains - doubtless those 
from Sadie Bettencourt’s arm wound - and his face was a puffy, blotchy mess 
as he sobbed. 

Jim kept his face impassive as he edged closer to where Rick Valenti was and 
deliberately didn’t look at the drop. Tad Bettencourt had filled Blair in on the 
local ‘history’ and ‘tourist fictions’. Like the Lorelei Hotel, Lover’s Leap was 
deceptive nomenclature. It was a visual impressive promontory that jutted out 
into the lake from the forest on the opposite side to Witt’s End and had been 
given the entirely spurious name with its connotations of romantic tragedy 
solely for reasons of tourism. From this side of the lake it sloped up a steep 
grassy incline to a flat top and was completely unremarkable, as well as the 
fact that it was clearly visible from several directions making it a non-starter as 
far as teenage ‘courting’ couples were likely to go. 

What wasn’t fiction unfortunately was the drop. Lover’s Leap wasn’t as high as 
some more genuinely named crags, but it didn’t have to be. Instead of a sheer 
plunge to water, at the bottom of the crag protruding out for a few feet was a 
solid, flat rock ‘lip’ that would splatter anything that was dropped from the top 
like a rotten tomato. Sure the crag could be used to jump into the lake, but it 
would take a properly trained and skilled person to make the leap so as to 
‘clear’ the lip. 

Neither Jim nor Valenti were close enough to risk making a lunge to grab 
Ducharme, who was working himself into an increasing state of hysteria. Jim 
could smell the anxiety coming off Valenti in waves as the sheriff knew he 
wasn’t getting through to the distraught boy.

“I KNEW IT! Lance Ducharme! Can’t even kill himself without grandstanding!”

The words were loud, angry and scornful; even Jim jumped slightly as the 
denunciation echoed in the shocked cessation of noise. 

Kyle Valenti was somehow at the forefront of the crowd, apparently 
unconcerned about being the cynosure of all eyes. His mouth twisted into a 
classic ‘Billy Idol’ type sneer, he folded his arms across his chest and glared at 
Lance Ducharme as everyone stared at him.

“Kyle –” clearly thrown by his son’s arrival and attitude, Rick Valenti began to 
speak softly.

“What a complete prick you are!” Kyle ignored his father’s attempt to speak, 
instead glowering at Ducharme.

Mr & Mrs Ducharme stiffened, reacting to this attack on their child. Mrs 
Ducharme began, “We are Lance’s parents –”

“Whoa,” Kyle declared in mock-shock, pressing his left hand palm flat against 
his chest in a melodramatic wow gesture. “Congratulations on noticing through 
the haze of Prozac, lady, and this must be Mr D., actually taking time out from 
doing your secretary for junior loser’s meltdown. Gee, how heart warming.”

Rick Valenti’s jaw dropped and Jim fully understood the feeling. He was seized 
by the impulse to hurry off and look for the pod while Evil Kyle mouthed off. 

“Hey!” Lance Ducharme had stopped crying and was also doing the bug-eyes 
and slack-jaw thing, clearly astonished at this demonstration from the other 
boy.

Apparently however, Kyle was on a roll, lowering his voice and speaking in a 
cheesy ‘game show host’ manner. “And now we have the tragic death scene of 
our hero! Lights, camera, action!” Reverting to his normal voice Kyle derided, 
“Of course, you’re rich, you want to be famous, and you think you’re a 
celebrity. So do you do us all a favour by borrowing from daddy’s gun collection 
quietly blowing your brains out in the nice quiet woodshed? Nooooo, you 
inconvenience those of us with actual lives by splattering yourself on a big rock 
that will take us a month to clean up. Thanks for nothing!”

“Shut up!” yelled Ducharme furiously and a tiny inkling of The Plan began to 
whisper in Jim’s mind to the extent that he eased himself slightly back from 
Ducharme’s path down from the top of the slope.

“Or what, you’ll snivel me to death?” Kyle jeered. “Couldn’t cope with mom 
and dad finding out about your druggie habit?”

“What? I don’t use, man! You know that!” The ruddiness of Lance Ducharme’s 
face now came from apoplexy rather than distress.

“Yeah…” drawled Kyle, “hey, is your dad your dealer?” He turned to Mr 
Ducharme as if oblivious to the pole-axed look on the man’s face. “Mr Senna-
tar-sir, you go to D.C. and bring back a few eight-balls of blow for your boy 
here, I bet. Don’t worry though, Mr D., I bet the boys at Sing-Sing will just 
lurve you to death -”

He got no further; in speechless fury Lance Ducharme suddenly hurtled straight 
down at him and bowled him over, the pair of them rolling over and over for 
several yards as people scrambled desperately to avoid trampling on either 
boy. Ducharme was flailing with fists and feet, whereas Valenti junior’s 
methodology seemed to be a giant cuddle – he wrapped him himself around the 
other boy like an octopus and was just hanging for grim death.

Not slow on the uptake, Jim sprang forward to assist as Rick Valenti also moved 
rapidly, hauling Lance Ducharme off Kyle, who paused in the act of sitting up 
and wincing as he tentatively touched his speedily swelling-shut left eye, 
twice-cut lip, and wiped the trickle of blood seeping from his left nostril. 
Valenti senior didn’t use his cuffs but nothing short of C4 would loosen his hold 
on Lance Ducharme.

“That was very quick thinking, Kyle.”

Jim had never been so glad to hear the new voice, his ears rejoicing in those 
familiar tones. 

Blair was somehow front and centre, his features friendly and open and only 
Jim knew him well enough to see how the expression didn’t reach his eyes, 
which were sharp and watchful. 

But Blair was finishing, “…though I think you have something to say?”

“Uh, yeah,” clambering to his feet and gingerly touching his jaw, “impressive 
right you got there, Ducharme…’course, I was letting you win... Ahem, Mr & 
Mrs Ducharme, I’d like to apologise right now for causing you any offence, but I 
needed to do what it took to get your boy here focussing on me and not that 
stupid-assed thing about jumping.”

Jim relaxed inwardly as he saw the way the anger wiped away from the 
Ducharmes’ faces as the penny dropped, but for anyone who still hadn’t caught 
the clue bus, Blair provided the cliff notes in a clear and subtly soothing tone 
that Jim alone recognised as his ‘Guide’ voice, “An angry mind exists only for 
itself. It was very astute of you, Kyle.”

“I’m afraid it wasn’t that thought-out,” Kyle blushed. “I just knew if I got 
Lance mad enough to attack me, he would be too far from the top to jump…” 
his tone suddenly became genuinely angry, “…and what were you thinking, 
Ducharme? You don’t use any recreational stimulants – you give me hell for 
smoking and all of a sudden you’re Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds about to 
deep-six yourself off a cliff?”  

Rick cleared his throat. “I’m sorry but Lance, you’re going to have to –”

“NO!” Everyone jumped again as this time Sadie Bettencourt went off at the 
deep end. “No, I don’t want to press any charges.”

Tad cleared his throat, “Honey…”

“It wasn’t him!” Sadie waved her uninjured arm wildly at Ducharme. “He’s not 
a crack head or a psycho. Maybe it was exam stress or something or the root 
beer was bad and tipped him over the edge. I know you, Lance, you’re as dumb 
as most of the boys in this burg but you’re not the next Ted Bundy.”

“This was more than a bad hair day,” a black girl who Jim recognised as 
‘Nebula’s’ daughter, Latifah, jumped in, “the dude went Norman Bates!” she 
glared at Lance.

Who seemed to crumple in on himself, “I swear I didn’t mean to do anything!” 
he appealed to the throng in general. “It was…like I was standing there 
watching myself do it...I remember sitting in the diner and the next thing I’m 
standing there with a knife in my hand and everybody’s freaking out and saying 
I stabbed Sadie – I don’t know what happened…”

“I’m afraid I think I do,” Blair interjected smoothly, not shouting, but his voice 
was somehow perfectly pitched for complete audibility and was peculiarly 
compelling. 

For an instant Jim glimpsed a road not taken, the awesome and horrific 
implications of a Blair who used his abilities against instead of for, and for a 
moment Jim couldn’t prevent a faint shiver as he acknowledged that the most 
dangerous thing for twenty miles in any direction was standing right in front of 
him. 

Blair was continuing, “Lance, when you and your friends bought your drinks, 
were you sat outside on the veranda next to the road? Did you leave your drink 
unattended for at least a minute?”

“I…” Lance and the other kids who’d been with him hesitated and looked 
uncertainly around at each other as they tried to remember who had done 
what. 

“Yes!” It was Sadie Bettencourt who responded. “We sat outside overlooking 
the waterfront because it was such a nice day - Lance, your chair was right 
next to the veranda railing.”

“Yeah, and we all left our drinks for a couple of minutes,” Sadie’s friend 
Latifah chimed in, before addressing Blair directly, “Karen Verhöewe, the 
diner’s main waitress, is four months pregnant with her second baby – she had 
a miscarriage last year. She dropped a tray on the floor so we all got around 
and picked things up so she wouldn’t have to bend down.”

“That’s right,” another boy who looked vaguely familiar to Jim put in, “all of 
us left the table.” 

The youth frowned and Jim instantly placed the look as one he had sometimes 
seen on Stevie’s face – the kid had to be one of cousin Andrew Winterbourne’s 
three sons – considering his age either the first boy Brandon or the second 
Kelly, both of whom were in the thirteen to seventeen age bracket by now. 
Having so recently and tentatively achieved rapprochement with his father and 
brother, Jim had was still leery of ‘reaching out’ to his wider relatives. Even 
though he’d always got on best with Aunt Isabelle’s three children of his 
paternal cousins, he’d never made any attempt to maintain contact and had 
had no idea Andrew was the Mayor of St. Mary Vale, for a start.  It was strange 
to realise that his cousin Andrew, of a very similar age to himself, was the 
father of teenagers – a twenty-something in fact, as Jim remembered that 
Andrew and…and…Diana? – no Diandra! – had an older child who would be in the 
early twenties by now…a girl with a name like her mother’s…Di-
something?…yes, Diantha or something along those lines. 

Jim tuned back in abruptly as Senator Ducharme barked at Blair, “A prank!”

Blair nodded, racheting up the soothe factor of his voice. “Yes sir, probably 
some tourist kid deciding to have fun with a local. I’m afraid it was a common 
frat-house prank at Rainier. You slip something into a guy’s coffee or whatever 
– Lance’s root beer was enough to disguise any taste – nothing nasty, just 
enough to chill them out, then sit back and laugh as they go all giggly and 
floaty and try to flirt with a rosebush or something. All fun and games and a big 
laugh until Simon Brown tried to tap dance down the steps of Hargrove Hall and 
broke his leg.”

Taking his cue from the fictitious name, Jim suggested, “Senator, Mrs 
Ducharme – it’s practically dusk. Unless you and your son have to return to St. 
Mary Vale why not take a room at the Lorelei tonight and head back tomorrow? 
I’m sure Dr Martin can test Lance’s glass for a substance – if it hasn’t been 
cleared away?”

“No, I’ve got it.” Zinnia Seddon, bless her.

“Yes, I think we will.” Senator Ducharme’s face and that of his wife finally 
began to lose that expression of haggard horror, and Lance was clearly 
emotionally drained.

To his credit, the boy apologised once again, “Mr Bettencourt, I’m so sorry, I-”

Jim’s estimation of the man having some Guide sensitivity increased further as 
Tad reacted with magnanimity, “It’s alright Lance. This was something done to 
you not by you…I’m celiac, so in a way I know the effects of unwittingly eating 
crap dumped in your food. Let’s all just go home.”

Senator Ducharme asked the Sheriff, “Is there any chance of catching…?”

Rick Valenti shook his head. “It’s doubtful – there are a lot of tourists around, 
plus the day trippers have already gone home. The kid may not have actually 
touched the glass itself when he slipped in the Mickey, and I doubt anyone will 
come forward to confess – right now I bet they’re terrified out of their minds at 
the way their ‘joke’ went pear-shaped.”

Blair cleared his throat. “Right now there’s nothing good about it this but there 
is one faint positive – after what’s happened this afternoon, I seriously doubt 
that Witt’s End will suffer any kind of youth drug problem any time in the near 
future.”

With this, the crowd gradually began to disperse; Blair and Jim started to head 
back to the hotel after checking that Rick Valenti didn’t need them to stick 
around. Bert Martin assured them that he’d have the analysis results of Lance 
Ducharme’s root beer glass by first thing tomorrow. They stopped briefly to 
talk to Sadie and her parents so Jim could use his senses to double-check the 
girl’s arm injury was the minor flesh wound it appeared to be. Blair made their 
excuses after Jim telepathically confirmed her arm was okay, and they made it 
back to their hotel room, where Blair headed straight out on the balcony and 
leaned on the balustrade. Jim went to stand next to his friend. 

Not taking the chance that the MP was a great lip-reader with binoculars or was 
aiming any sort of audio surveillance equipment in their direction such as a 
parabolic mike, Jim confined himself to telepathic communication.

<What really happened to the Ducharme kid? I am right in assuming that 
drugged drink line you fed the crowd was classic BS BS?>

<Oh yeah…oh, Bert Martin will find some residue – chemical, herbal or maybe 
both. But it wouldn’t have been anything to make Lance Ducharme freak out. 
It was designed to make him vulnerable, something to make him sedated and 
disoriented, so the MP could jump in the driving seat of his body – like a 
joyrider in a stolen car.>

<Sandburg, the fact that you’ve just uttered that sentence with the calmness 
of a guy giving the weather report freaks me out,> Jim admitted. <What I 
can’t figure is what did the MP accomplish – and why Lance Ducharme?>

<He accomplished nothing – because he’s not as powerful as he thinks he is and 
he’s already proven to be no great shakes in the brains department despite his 
ego. What he was trying to accomplish was mayhem, to give himself breathing 
room and entangle our time and effort in something else. Think about it – rich 
white senator’s druggie son brutally hacks sweet, pretty and much poorer 13 
year old girl to death...>

<This place would be a media feeding frenzy within an hour of it happening,> 
Jim conceded in disgust. <Especially with Senator Ducharme being a Senator; 
FBI, US Marshals, probably even Homeland Security because I think the 
senator’s a golfing buddy of President Monteith as well – the whole lot of ’em 
would be here like flies on the proverbial. With that many strangers around 
the MP could slaughter most of both towns right under our noses and those of 
Saxon Ware and his shadow-warrior buddies and get clean away with it. And 
both of us would be right in the eye of the storm.>

<Exactly. Adult humans are genetically programmed to protect their children – 
and children in general; that’s why most of the adults around here will be 
traumatised by what happened this afternoon at Lover Leap’s long after the 
kids have bounced back – a child was going to do itself harm. If the MP’s plan 
had worked…us trying to convince the community of a murdered child that the 
real danger is metaphysical in nature and catching a libeller is more important 
than sending Lance Ducharme to the electric chair would get us lynched.>

<Can you explain what happened, Chief? How did the MP take over Lance 
Ducharme, and why didn’t he kill Sadie Bettencourt once he had?>
   
<Arrogance and stupidity, man, bad combo.> Blair shrugged as he stared out at 
the gathering dusk. <I don’t want you to get all wound up about this but… 
meditation can be very dangerous.>

<Uh-huh.> Jim tried not to let his scepticism show; after five years of sharing 
an apartment with Blair, as far as he could tell, the only potential issue was in 
accidentally burning a place down around you with a candle.

<See, for instance, the Bible instructs its followers to meditate but then 
proscribes certain types of meditation. In the bible, meditation isn’t about all 
that chanting and ‘ohm’ stuff but about thinking deeply over serious issues 
and meaning-of-life pondering. That’s ok. The problem with all that ‘emptying 
your mind’ deal is that nature abhors a vacuum – and there are lots of 
varyingly unpleasant and down right diabolical things out there in the cosmic 
ether more than happy to jump into that nice warm home you’ve so  
conveniently vacated for them.>

<Like a joyrider in a stolen car…> Jim mentally repeated Blair’s analogy.

<Pretty much.>

<Come on, Chief,> Jim didn’t bother to keep the incredulity out of his mental 
tone. <Are you saying every whack-job serial killer or guy who went postal and 
took a machete to his family and then claimed to have no memory of the 
crime was really an innocent victim himself who was really demon possessed?>

<Of course not…but yes, some probably were.> Blair sighed deeply. <Someone 
once said that demons have no choice to be evil because they have no souls, 
but humans have free will – it’s our greatest blessing and our most terrible 
curse. Joan Baez said we get to choose nothing in life except whether to be 
good or evil. Some of those murderers aren’t possessed by anything; they’re 
just evil, wicked people who got off on hurting innocent other people. 
Unfortunately, it’s usually impossible to tell until after the fact which 
category is which – human perpetrator or demon’s patsy.>

<So what? The evil thing just jumps in, makes the guy grab an MP5 room broom 
and let loose, then departs for another des res. after the massacre to let the 
poor sap take the rap?>

<Sometimes, that’s all it is. It’s not just certain types of meditation that make 
it easier for a human to be invaded by an unwelcome supernatural 
hitchhiker.> Blair flinched and looked down at his hands. <Extreme emotions 
also make you very vulnerable.>

For several moments Jim didn’t get Blair’s angst but then it dawned. <Such as 
panic attacks?>

<Yep – why do you think me and mom spend so much of our time trying to 
maintain our emotional equilibrium? Even more exposure comes from extreme 
emotions such as rage, fear, panic – particularly negative emotions like those 
and greed or lust, uncontrolled anger and aggression, egotism and an over-
inflated sense of self-worth. All that Eastern mystic emphasis on serenity and 
keeping your cool is as much a defence mechanism as it is a route to ultimate 
enlightenment.> Blair shot Jim a sidelong look. <It’s also why I don’t do illegal 
narcotics, Detective Ellison.>

<I’m never going to live ‘neo-hippie witch-doctor punk’ down, am I?>

<Not appreciably, no… but again, it’s about vulnerability. The Bible forbids 
meditation combined with alcohol or narcotics precisely because they alter 
your mental state - the same reason why the bible also allows the drinking of 
alcohol but forbids drunkenness. It’s precisely why so many other cultures use 
psychotropic and hallucinogen drugs to facilitate access to the wider planes of 
existence and the spirit realm. That works, but leaves you open to everything 
that’s out there, not just what you’re looking for. Basically, anything that 
weakens your command over your own mind makes you vulnerable to being…

<Mentally carjacked?> Jim continued the vehicular analogy.

<Yeah, exactly. Drunkenness, drug abuse and extreme emotions are the big 
three that the Big Bads look for when they want a new pad. You might get 
away with it once or twice, but…>

<Law of averages,> mused Jim, <someone who lives in a low-crime area but 
leaves their car on their drive every night with the keys in the ignition is 
statistically still  more likely to have it stolen than the guy who parks it in a 
locked garage in a higher-crime district.>     

Blair nodded. <One wild weekend isn’t much of a problem, but any person who 
regularly fails to exercise self-control over their boozing, their recreational 
stimulants and/or their anger management issues might as well put up a sign, 
BODY FOR RENT – One Not Very Careful Owner.>

Jim considered Blair’s face in profile as the younger man stared out into the 
darkness. For his discomfort with anything not solidly tangible, he was taking 
this very seriously, not least because as Blair had been explaining, he had 
suddenly grasped how seriously Blair was not only taking it, but had been for 
most of his life. It went a long way to explaining Blair’s obsession about what 
he put in his body, and also his moderate alcohol intake. Not that Jim wanted 
his friend to be drinking others under the table, but Blair rarely had more than 
one beer and only rarely imbibed spirits even though he was perfectly able to 
‘hold his liquor’ as macho idiots would put it – as if that was the true measure 
of any man. A propensity for panic attacks plus his presumed malaria 
medication were enough for any sensible person, without adding being 
regularly drunk or high to the mix. He came back out of his thoughts as Blair 
continued to ‘speak’.

<In the Western world we’ve lost our spirituality. We live in an ethos of 
‘modern relativism’, where nothing is either right or wrong. That’s a crock, 
because there are things that are immutably right and wrong and there always 
will be. But these days, people in the United States and Europe and Britain 
and so on don’t and won’t exert self-control or self-discipline – and well, self-
denial is practically an obscenity. People who don’t control what they ingest 
or their anger and their aggression are very vulnerable; they leave themselves 
wide open to possession. They excuse their own lack of willpower by bleating 
about that ‘red haze’ coming down and one day…>

<They find themselves standing over the body of a murdered loved one with a 
kitchen knife or a tyre iron and no memory of what happened.> Jim found 
himself accepting of the idea, even as it sent a shiver down his spine. 

Most of the murderers he’d caught had no more been possessed than Jim 
Ellison was Denzel Washington, but a couple…he remembered one guy – a 
middle-management insurance executive who had been pretty much everything 
Blair had just described; self-important, intolerant and given to loud, angry 
outbursts. Jim had been the first in the guy’s house, and had cuffed him 
without resistance – Jim had wanted resistance, for the guy had just beaten his 
pretty young wife to death with a poker, but now Jim recalled the man’s eyes, 
and the total bewilderment in them. 

The guy had looked at his wife and at the poker on the floor with total 
confusion and dawning shock and Jim had known that the man had no idea of 
what he’d just done. The man had been sentenced to death for the brutality of 
the crime, and during his trial he had been a broken, bewildered shell whose 
only defence was that he had no memory of anything from about fifteen 
minutes before the murder until Jim handcuffed him. He remembered being 
furious because his new home PC system wouldn’t install some software 
properly…and that was it. 

Easily following the reminiscence, Blair waited for Jim to finish his reverie 
before he went on, <Exactly like that, Jim. This is the 21st century, nobody 
believes in demon possession anymore, yet at the same time many highly 
intelligent people in this country attend church, believe they’ve got their own 
personal guardian angel and accept the existence of ghosts and other 
supernatural phenomena.>

<But you can’t have your cake and eat it,> Jim acknowledged. <If you believe 
there are angels, you have to accept that demons exist as well. If you accept 
the existence of Him above, you’ve got to accept that the him below is equally 
as real.>

<Got it in one. A lot of the New Age stuff tries to ignore the Dark Side in 
favour of the scented candles and the wind chimes and the all-you-need-is-
love spiel, but ignoring something doesn’t make it not true, or make it go 
away.>

<So the MP managed to take control of Lance Ducharme – and luckily for us he 
screwed up big style?>

Blair nodded. <More or less – Kyle Valenti described Lance Ducharme as being 
naturally self-possessed…no pun intended…and not given to aggression and 
violence. So the MP had to use chemicals means to make him more malleable. 
It’s a bad news – good news deal.>

<Which would be…?>

<Taking control of an animal, like that snake, requires power – a certain level 
of talent. But fauna and flora have no sense of self and so are incapable of 
fighting back. Taking over a person is something that could only be achieved 
by a dark sorcerer of great power.>

<Wonderful.>

<Power isn’t the same as intelligence, Jim. An ICBM can obliterate everything 
in a several block radius but without a human mind to direct proceedings it’s 
about as lethal as candyfloss. Anyway, the good news is that unlike a demon, 
who once in can only be shifted with nothing less than practically divine 
intervention, a human magician can only seize control for a short period of 
time, regardless of whether they’re taking control for good or evil reasons.>

<How come?>

<It’s like the hypnotism thing – bark like a chicken, cluck like a dog, but you 
can’t hypnotise someone to commit murder for you, no matter how many TV 
movies use that plotline. Same with possession – the more you try to make 
your ‘puppet’ go against something that is quintessential to their nature, the 
less control you have and the more quickly they will manage to kick you out of 
their head in short order. Lance Ducharme isn’t an idiot and once the MP had 
his hand pick up that knife, every atom that was Lance Ducharme would have 
gone postal to wrest back control – and it worked, though admittedly not quite 
in time to save Sadie from a nasty cut. It’s extraordinarily exhausting as well. 
The MP expended a lot of energy today on a gamble that didn’t work.>

Jim straightened up from the balcony as it was now true night. The two men 
went back inside the warmer hotel room and began to freshen up ready to go 
to the restaurant for a meal. However, they continued their silent 
conversation.

<Can’t say I’m broken up over that. That frat-prank story you told the 
townspeople was quick thinking, Chief.>

Blair shrugged as he changed his shirt for a fresh one. <I had to come up with 
something, and they weren’t going to buy possession. Besides, blaming an 
outsider helped to bring both sides together even more. That’s likely another 
reason why the MP targeted Lance and Sadie – a Valer and a Witt’s End kid. 
Since you got Andrew Winterbourne to talk to the editors of the Lifted Vale 
and the Witty Chronicle, they’ve really toned down the rhetoric and started to 
feature conciliatory op-eds. Both towns have begun to re-merge and re-engage 
at the most crucial level - >

<The kids.>

<Right…besides Lance and Sadie, look at the cross-section of kids with them: 
Latifah Dessailie, Ender; Kelly Winterbourne, Valer ->

<So that’s who he was.>

<What?>

<Never mind. Go on.>

<As well, in most places there are clear demarcation lines between age groups 
– a lot of people are really surprised that you and I are such good friends with 
Daryl Banks.>

<Why?>

<Jim, he’s eighteen, I’m thirty-three and you’re practically a pensioner ->

<Hah, hah, Sandburg…laugh it up.>

<Avoiding my soapbox, in Western culture we denigrate our seniors and 
‘imbecilize’ our children, and I know that’s probably not a word. It’s rare in 
Western society for friendships to cross age boundaries, but here they’ve 
managed it. You’ve got kids from both ends of the teenage scale being part of 
the same social group and the older kids look out for the younger ones. It’s 
good, it’s all part of what a community is.>

<So what else?>

<What do you mean?>

Although he’d already checked once that he’d got his wallet and that his gun 
was secure at the back of his waistband, Jim did so again and fixed a 
benevolent eye upon his Guide as Blair slipped on his jacket. <Hello, human lie 
detector calling. What else has got your radar pinging?>

At this Blair sighed again and sat down dolefully on the bed, looking for a 
moment so much like Muttley when the puppy had been caught chewing Jim’s 
shoelaces that he had to bite back a chuckle, but Blair’s eyes were sapphire 
with reluctance and Jim realised it was probably serious.

<Kyle Valenti wasn’t buying it.>

<Buying what?> Jim went and sat on his own bed a couple of feet away facing 
Blair. <The frat-prank deal? I don’t think Rick Valenti was entirely embracing 
it either, Chief. We already know the kid’s perceptive.>

<You don’t understand; Rick Valenti may have doubts but he’ll accept the 
plausibility for convenience. It wasn’t that Kyle Valenti thought about it and 
saw the obfuscation, he knew it was a total crock from the second I opened my 
mouth.>

<How?>

<That question is the ‘something else’…and for that matter, where was he?>

<When?>

<When Lance did his Norman Bates skit. I’m an anthropologist; I observe social 
interaction and social groupings like I breathe. A group of a dozen or so 
teenagers are the rulers of Witt’s End and St. Mary Vale youth, and they 
usually hang out at the waterfront. So when all the others including Lance met 
up for a drink at Zinnia Seddon’s café, where was Kyle Valenti?>

<But surely not all the kids were there?> Jim played Devil’s Advocate, though 
he had no doubt of the accuracy of Blair’s words. <From what I could see there 
were only about half-a-dozen of the Leaders of the Pack at the bottom of 
Lover’s Leap including Lance Ducharme and Sadie Bettencourt. That means 
five of the remaining six including Kyle weren’t at the café either.>

<True, but how many of them are the son of the town sheriff? How many have 
already had a very public fight with Lance Ducharme because he accused their 
father of murdering their mother? >

<Point taken, Chief.> Jim blew out a big breath of air. He liked Rick Valenti as 
a fellow officer of the law and as a man…and Army Ranger or not he was not 
going to walk up to a US Navy SEAL and start casting aspersions against the 
man’s only child. 

But…<There would be few people more able to slip something into Lance 
Ducharme’s drink and be completely unnoticed doing it,> Jim admitted grimly. 

It was the serial-killer-next-door syndrome. Friendly, outgoing Bob who mowed 
his lawn every Saturday and who gave you tips on growing your gardenias – a 
normal, unremarkable and above all familiar face. 

Those killed by psychopaths and muggers were always splashed across the 
headlines, but the truth was that over 85% of murder victims were killed by 
someone they knew -  and knew well…oftentimes someone they let in to their 
home with no suspicion of intent to kill. It was why the cops’ initial suspect for 
the killing was always the spouse, partner, parent, child or sibling. Regardless 
of what a variety of Columbo or Monk or CSI episodes might tell, usually the 
cops’ suspicions were right, mostly because the killer had not intended to kill 
the victim and therefore had made a complete pig’s ear of covering their 
tracks once they realised what they’d just done and panicked. Loathsome 
creatures like Henry Greveson who’d been plotting for years to murder his 
unsuspecting wife were by far the exception rather than the rule.

<That was my take on it too,> Blair informed him. <That waitress, Karen, is on 
everybody’s radar because she lost her first baby, so everyone does the 
chivalry thing when she drops that tray. Sleight of hand – everyone’s looking 
over here while over there Kyle Valenti could have simply have walked by the 
veranda, dropped something in Lance Ducharme’s glass without anyone even 
noticing he was there never mind what he was doing because he was part of 
that group of kids and part of the background scenery. Hell, if you went and 
took witness statements from some of the people they’d all probably 
‘remember seeing’ that the entire dozen kids were at the café or name some 
of the six that weren’t and leave out some that were.>

Jim nodded at the valid point – how many of those witnesses would have stated 
that it was his cousin’s son Brandon rather than Kelly who was present – he was 
in no shape to cast the first stone considering he’d had no idea which boy was 
which. In fact, if someone had right now frogmarched him to the local high 
school gates and ordered him to pick out Andrew and Diandra Winterbourne’s 
two preadolescent children – they had a son, Zackary, who would be about ten 
or eleven, and a girl of about seven named Vivienne or similar – Jim would be 
completely unable to do so even with the advantage of Sentinel senses.

<You really think Kyle Valenti’s involved somewhere?> Jim asked reluctantly.

<When everyone was at Lover’s Leap, I guessed you wouldn’t be trying to scan 
anyone ->

<Hardly, there was no point. Everyone’s heart was hammering, everyone was 
breathing like a 60-a-day-smoker, everyone was sweating fear and excitement. 
The MP could have been stood at my elbow the entire time and I wouldn’t 
have known.>

Blair nodded. <Vital signs I can’t pick up, but emotions and intentions I can 
feel. Personally, I don’t think Kyle slipped whatever substance it was into 
Lance Ducharme’s drink and I hope he’s not deliberately involved with the MP, 
but trust me, he knows something he’s not telling about what happened to 
Lance Ducharme.>


To be concluded…

© 2006, C. D. Stewart


1 Character in the TV show, The West Wing
2 Character in authoress Suzanne Brockmann’s Navy SEALs books
3 Character in authoress Linda Howard’s MacKenzie books

Author’s Note: Blair’s immortal phrase, “I flew Apaches in Desert Storm” has 
caused some discussion in the fandom as to whether Blair might really have 
military experience or whether he was just obfuscating. Considering the 
subsequent competence with which Blair, despite his vociferous objections to 
firearms, handled guns in the series I tend to go towards the former idea in my 
fiction – e.g., the efficiency with which Blair handled the M60 during the fire 
fight at cousin Rucker’s lighthouse for one.  I’m sure there must be more, but 
two good stories on the Apache them are Shedoc’s Apache, Toshua’s When 
Secrets Fall From The Sky and Judy Seils Qualifying, all of which can be 
found at Cascade Library.

Please note – my BETA reader Shallan has kindly corrected all my mistakes 
pertaining to the U.S. Military, having previously been an officer thereof. All 
errors that remain are mine.