Night Blind (The Technicians #11)

Chapter 1 - Train

Crisp air, fresh, swept past dry cheeks, kissed by the dampness of the early morning.

The same dampness married the chill in the air, creating infantile ice chips that floated by, touching gently all they came in contact with during the waking of the day.

At her feet, leaves, dry from the night before, crunched as she walked.

The early morning hours, just before the sun broke over the horizon, had become her favorite thing to take part in to get the day going.

The world as she knew it was no more, and this was a new life, a life which didn’t agree with her because the surrounding calmness didn’t match the anger clamoring for release inside her soul.

Behind her, she heard heavy footfalls, intentionally alerting her to the approach of a person who more than likely, she didn’t feel like being troubled by, who also more than likely would expect cordiality, which she also didn’t feel like being troubled doing.

Instead of being angry about that as well, she stared at her feet.

Boots, leather, slightly discolored at the toes from the early morning dew, were surrounded by leaves that may have fallen yesterday.

These were no longer the crunchy leaves, the ones cast down from the tree yesterday, like unwanted tears.

The leaves on the top, damp from the morning’s perspiration at trying to come awake, didn’t understand the awareness of being cast aside to make room for the newer, greener foliage.

Trees, tall, elegant, and regal, no longer had a use for their protectiveness and tossed them to the ground to protect their roots as branches, round and dense, continued to grow and flourish.

Leaves, composted like piles of manure, would feed the grand oaks, being of no further use, and in the Spring, new leaves would grow—green, vibrant, and lovely—while the brown ones withered.

It was how she felt, now living on the outside of her cousin Cherry’s life.

She was the leaves, no longer attached to the tree but pushed into the yard to wither and die.

Babysitting was the one thing that kept Cherry and her attached, as she’d been an integral part of Naomi’s life in helping to raise the child.

Now, Cherry was married to a man who was hands-on in raising his daughter, and she would get invited into the home to share the table or a meal, but she lived outside in the yard.

True, her yard had a three-bedroom home that her cousin’s husband had graciously given for her to live and for which she was grateful, but there needed to be more.

No matter how hard she tried to be appreciative, each night, as she was alone, the night enclosing the room made her feel like the leaves, lying in waste, rotting away.

It created an unspoken anger inside of her soul; an unspoken anger that craved to be heard.

The anger needed to get fed. She needed to work off the anger. The anger needed a home. The anger needed to be targeted. The anger was becoming a silent rage.

“I can hear you walking up,” she mumbled as the footsteps grew nearer.

“I intentionally made a great deal of noise so you would hear me,” the voice said, startling her. It wasn’t Cherry’s husband, Mr. Slow. This was an entirely different animal, and she didn’t like it.

“And what do I owe the honor of a personal visit from…what was your thing…ah yeah, the Archangel?” She said with tight lips. She’d overheard Cherry and Mustang speak of the man after her rescue. This was another man, showing up in her life, planning to give her rules of what she could and could not do. She had no need of him or his handsome face.

“Coffee, conversation, and a thought or two shared between friends,” Gabriel Neary said, watching her eyes.

“We aren’t friends,” Shenita said, facing him. “You gave me a new name Helen McDaniel and an envelope with a few bucks. My life, as I knew, ended abruptly, and I have to start over. Therefore, I find nothing friendly in any of that, kind Sir.”

Gabriel stood his ground, understanding better than most the intricacies of life.

He knew death like the back of his hand.

He also understood anger and the need to train the emotion to be useful.

The Archangel was his handle with the Conclave of Angels, which handled the Southeast Crew of Directions.

The Directions all had the operating handles of street signs, whereas the Great Lakes Technicians held the handles of bitter fruits, the Northeast were The Trees, the Midwest had handles of The Storms, and the Western crew was The Horses.

Technically, Cherry didn’t belong to him.

Cherry was a Fruit, who now belonged to his cousin Michael, who belonged to Cherry as her husband.

The woman standing before him was a byproduct of a misfortunate circumstance that needed to be handled before it turned into a force of nature no one could control.

He gave a slight smile and said, “What if I disagree with how wrong you are?”

Shenita, now newly named Helen, felt her anger rising; she wanted to unleash it on him and beat his handsome face until his outer appearance matched the ugliness clamoring inside of her soul. This man had no idea how she felt. This man had no clue what she’d been through, and he had the audacity to stand in front of her and call himself her friend.

“If I weren’t a lady, I probably would say ‘Fuck you and fuck off,’ but now I’m curious about how you feel you and me are friends?” she asked.

“Because Helen, I’m the reason you were found,” he said. “I’m the reason your cousin could get to you as quickly as she did; granted, I wish it could have been faster, but she got there. Second, the life you led before wasn’t much of a life, so don’t look at me as if I took you or The Collector stole you away from your luxurious home, overflowing social calendar, and the man who was about to ask for your hand in marriage.”

“Oh, nice. That's really nice, Mr. Handsome Life Fixer! How gentlemanly of you to strike a bitch when she’s down,” Shenita said, tightening her lips.

“You’re angry, and you have every right to be, but anger needs a home. Your anger is homeless and on the verge of becoming violent. I’m here to offer an opportunity to train that anger and give it purpose,” Gabriel said. “Also, easy on the foul language. You’re too lovely of a woman to spew such words.”

“Yeah, whatever. What do you mean by purpose?”

“Yes, Helen, you need purpose,” he said. “You also made a promise to those other women that you were coming back for them. You promised to rescue them from that perverted fool who held you all captive. You can’t do that, standing here angry at the world. You need skills. You need to be taught how to maneuver through the anger and put it to use.”

“Train me as what?”

“Train the anger, Helen,” he said, staring into her eyes.

The intensity of the stare sent an icy shiver down her back. The handsome face was a ruse. The man himself, while wrapped in shiny paper under the holiday tree, appeared to be a gift, when in fact he was something else entirely. His eyes were observant and present, yet distant. His gaze was focused, yet dark and warm in the same blinking of an eye. He was a great deal like Mr. Slow, his cousin. They were both closeted sociopaths.

“I’m intrigued,” she said, watching him. “Would you care for a cup of coffee?”

“Coffee works,” he replied, waiting for her next move.

She turned, walking up the stairs to the modular home where she lived alone. The wide decking for the front porch held two chairs with a small table between the Adirondack seats. Occasionally, her cousin Cherry would come to sit a spell, and they would chat here about nothing. The last conversation between them was about making applesauce from the apples on the tree in the yard. Neither of them liked applesauce, but it was easier than trying to speak about what had happened to Shenita in those few days with The Collector. Her hand waved to Gabriel Neary to join her on the porch and to take the extra seat.

Over her shoulder, she asked, “Cream and sugar?”

“Both please,” he said, as she disappeared into the home, returned a moment later with a tray laden with two mugs of steaming hot coffee and two sweet buns. “Thank you.”

“No, I need to thank you, Archangel, for saving my life,” she said. “I need to thank you for giving me an opportunity to live differently, I guess, but I’m lost. I have a part-time job to keep my lights on and to have a bit of food for my table, but the truck I drive is your Uncle Mark’s, which he loaned me, and I’m on the outside, alone.”

“Again, I disagree,” Gabriel replied, “because we are never truly alone. Before, you didn’t work outside of the home; your role was simply to take care of Naomi and Cherry and look after your family. You currently have a job as the bookkeeper for not only Detour’s beauty salon but also Naomi’s dance school. In a couple of days, new classes will begin at the Junior College should you want to get a degree in accounting and maybe a few certifications to make it a permanent career path.”

“True, or I could be trained to kill the bastard who kidnapped me,” she said, looking him in the eye.

“You don’t need to be trained to point a weapon and pull a trigger,” he explained. “Any Yahoo with a working index finger can do that. I’m talking about something more. Are you interested in being something more, Helen?”

“Am I interested in being an accountant?”

“The books must be kept in balance, Helen,” Gabriel said gently. “There is a system of checks and balances in order for the ledgers to remain healthy.”

Shenita looked at him. She was seeing the man in a new light. Gabriel Neary was a predator, a handsome-faced snake oil salesman who showed up when a person was at their lowest, crying in a dark corner, and needing to lash out at something. She wanted to lash out at the world in retaliation for what The Collector had done to her, and this man knew it. He was here with a bag of balms to soothe her aches and damn it, she wanted what he was offering, if for no other reason than to temporarily ease her suffering.

“And enrolling in this Junior college, taking these classes, this will teach me where to place my anger? These classes will train me how to use my anger to track down the issues that are keeping me up at night?”

“Helen, I can almost guarantee you, that once you track down the issue and put it to bed, your sleep habits will not change that much,” he offered. “The peace you seek comes from purpose. A person needs a purpose in this world to fight off the demons who plague your rest.”

“You are scary,” she told him. “Your handsome face and fancy words are simply a disguise for recruitment into a cult.”

Gabriel Neary actually laughed. He burst into a gut-busting laugh that rang out through the trees. Across the yard, a door opened to the house where his cousin lived, bringing Mr. Slow into the doorway. Gabriel raised his cup in a morning salute. Slow nodded, closed the door, and returned to the inside of his home.

Shenita was looking at Gabriel again.

The crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled gave a gentle look to the eyes of a man who knew too much, had seen too much, and had felt too much.

He had shown up in person for her, and she was scared.

He’d shown up in person to recruit her into his crew of technical experts with the worst sales pitch she’d ever heard in her life, but she was hungry for a purpose.

The Archangel was offering her a resolution to balance the books for a much larger company.

She was excited but scared.

Her eyes asked a silent question, which he answered without prompting.

“My day job is to monitor cults and cult activities. The last thing I would ever want is to recruit for one,” he said, offering her a smile. “What I am offering is focus. I am asking for your trust. I am asking for you to allow me the opportunity to guide your anger, to train it to be of use, allowing you to rest well at night with no demons sitting at the foot of your bed.”

“I hear you, but are you replacing one demon with another?”

“The demon you feed, my dear, is the one who stays with you,” Gabriel said, watching her. “My request is simply to guide you towards the light. Will you allow me to guide you, Helen?”

She sat for a moment, staring into the breaking of the day. Gabriel Neary had arrived as the sun began to crest over the ridgeline. He sat on her porch having coffee and munching on a sweet roll as if it were something they did every day. From his back pocket, he removed a brochure for Sullivan University with a circle in red for accounting technology/Technician and bookkeeping. A glint came into his eyes as she accepted the paper, gaining a slight recognition of what she’d been handed. Her cousin Cherry, years ago, received a similar trifold document.

“Helen, the courses are paid in full for your two-year degree,” he said. “Complete the training. Do the work. Keep your head down and stay focused on the result. I will do the rest. Do you understand?”

“I think I do,” she said.

“If you have questions, now is the time to ask,” he stated, getting to his feet and looking down at her.

She held the brochure in her hand, looking at it closely. She knew what it all meant, but didn’t know how it would play out. What she knew and understood was the demon that sat on her bed each night and watched her toss in the little sleep she received. Maybe this training program and classes would make her so tired that when nightfall arrived, she’d have no choice but to sleep. If nothing else made sense, that simple part did.

“The demon I feed is the one that stays with me,” she repeated his words. “I don’t like my current one, so let us seek and feed a new monster.”

“I don’t make monsters, Helen,” he corrected. “I am a master monster hunter.”

“So says the monster standing before me. We create in our own image Archangel, and just because you’re handsome doesn’t disguise the monster that you are,” she said.

“Well, at least you think I’m handsome,” he replied, nodding as he left the porch. “I shall be in touch soon. Enjoy your classes.”

She watched him walk away, his back rigid, the wide shoulders, narrow waist and purposeful strides bringing back the shiver with a new realization. He was going to make her into a Technician. She was going to become a Technician; what kind she didn’t know and she didn’t care.

“Goodbye Shenita,” she said softly. “Hello, Helen. I have no idea what the fuck we just signed up to do, but it sure beats sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. Also, you made a promise to go back and get those women. It’s time to get started on moving your life forward.”

She looked down at the brochure, and next to the school’s website was another website in an abbreviated short link form. In red ink was a username and password. Quickly, she went inside and located the laptop Cherry had recently given her to do the bookkeeping tasks for the hair salon and dance studio. First, she typed in the name of the short link and waited.

The black screen opened to a splotching wave of mixed-in colors, and then a gradient image of what looked like a horse ran across a speckled black screen.

A vibrantly colored blue screen appeared with a white unicorn, confused as to his whereabouts, followed by a sign-in box, asking for a username and password.

She entered both and waited.

Her breath caught when the boxes disappeared, and her face showed up on the screen with bright white letters.

Welcome to the Unicorn Academy, Helen. Let us begin.

****

When Helen returned to the porch to collect the cups, a new fresh cup of coffee awaited her, along with Mr.

Slow, who sat in one chair, sipping his own morning eye opener.

In profile, she noticed the resemblance between him and the Archangel.

Questions zinged left and right, but with him, in the past month, she’d learned to say little and wait for him to open the conversation.

Unlike the Archangel, Slow didn’t speak in subdued terminology, which could be taken in several different directions of understanding.

He was a straight shooter, and she appreciated that about him.

“I logged on,” she said as she took a seat.

“I know. I received a notification for mentorship,” he replied.

“You’re going to be my trainer?” she asked as if it were unbelievable, and the one leaf clogging the drain would finally get noticed. “Well, this should be interesting.”

He sipped the coffee, taking his time as if he were collecting words for an anagram solver. He swallowed, then sipped again while looking at his home across the walk path. This would be a change for them all, a change that required him and Helen to spend a great deal of time together, and he knew in his heart, that she didn’t trust him. For the training to work and stick, that also needed to change.

Slow said, “First, I have to gain your trust.”

“What makes you think I don’t trust you?”

“Helen, you don’t trust any man,” he said softly. “However, for this to work, you need to trust me implicitly.”

“Hell, I don’t trust myself implicitly. I have four sweet rolls left in that pan on my counter. I don’t trust myself to not eat all four of them today with the excuse that tomorrow they may be stale. This is life, and we live it where we can,” she stated.

He said nothing. Slow simply sat sipping coffee as if he had all the time in the world to cross this bridge with her and stick a gun in her hand. Suddenly she thought of a knife, then an axe, or maybe even a Katana; a Katana would be kick-ass and she could use it to cut off dicks. Her eyebrows arched as she looked over at him with her eyes dancing.

“Too dark,” he told her and squinted his eyes.

“What? I didn’t say anything!”

“Your eyes said a lot,” he told her, then sipped again from the mug.

He paused briefly, then continued.

“When Rebecca went missing, I felt it before my mother called me and said go find her.

I knew my sister would fight with everything she had until I arrived because she knew I was coming.

When Cherry called and said you were missing, I made calls to ensure she had the resources to find you, and she did.

I don’t let down the women in my life and I don’t let down the women I love.”

She arched her eyebrows, inching her body away from him as if he’d farted and it was stinking up the air. “You love me?”

“Naomi loves you. Cherry loves you and you are a member of this family. You are a member of my family, and you took care of them until I could arrive. Therefore, yes,” he said. “I will not let you down.”

She turned in the seat to look him in the face. “Okay, but are you going to, at some point, try to fuck me?”

“You’re an attractive woman and any man would be interested in an evening in your arms, but you’re not for me,” he said, not hesitating on his answer, “and to be clear, no, I’m not. Cherry sees you as her sister, and by marriage, you have become my sister as well. My role in your life is to be the voice on the other side of this phone.”

He handed her a new device. The plastic was off the box as he passed it over. From his other pocket, he pulled out an additional phone, passing it to Helen as well.

“The first box is a work phone, pre-programmed with the needed phone numbers. Don’t use it until instructed to do so,” he said. “The second phone is an upgrade and you’ve been added to my family plan. We will begin tomorrow.”

“Oh, already?”

“Yes, the on-campus classes start next week, and you and I start tomorrow,” he said. “Keep in mind, this is a private life. No one knows, and it must stay that way. The ledger is large, we work in sections, and work is plenty. There are a lot of monsters hiding under beds and in closets. We root them out and vanquish the fiends.”

“Okay, but what is to stop me from becoming the monster I am hunting?”

“Me,” he said with no emotion in his voice. “As your mentor, my job is to monitor and guide you. If you become a problem, it will also be my job to put you down.”

“You could do that, Michael Isaac Neary? You could do that and sleep at night?”

His eyes bore into hers and the shiver of cold returned, making her physically shake. Mr. Slow didn’t hesitate with his wording as he maintained eye contact with Helen. The last shards of coffee in his mug had grown cold and he tossed the liquid onto the leaves.

“Without hesitation, and I will sleep well after,” he said with a nod, then left the porch.