Chapter 3: New York, New York

Two weeks after asking Big George to cash in their accounts and close up their rented apartment, प्रातः सूर्य (Morning Sun) and दिनं प्रभात इति (Day Dawning), also known as Bella and Gigi Stark, but carrying ID that named them Beyoncé and Solange Bonhomme, walked out of the Marriott in downtown Boston. They expected to walk to the bus station and buy tickets to travel to New York. As such, they’d dressed in their black leathers and knee-high, soft leather boots.

“Morning, Bella, Gigi,” Brandon said, leaning against his Mercedes. “Your chariot awaits!”

“Brandon!” Morning and Day squealed as they ran to hug their erstwhile bodyguard/driver. “What are you doing here?” Morning added.

“George sold me the car at cost,” Brandon said. Which, of course, didn’t answer their question at all.

“Meaning?” Day asked.

“Meaning, I thought you might need a driver/bodyguard in New York.”

Day and Morning exchanged glances. They turned to Brandon, and Day asked, “You want to move with us to New York?”

“If you’ll have me,” Brandon replied.

Morning took her mother’s arm and dragged her aside. “Too dangerous,” she whispered. Day looked at her wonderingly, so Morning added, “Not for us, him. There’s no way he can stand up against a slaver.”

Day nodded and said, “The less contact we have with anyone from our lives here, the better. I trust Daddy George, Eloise, and Antoinette, of course, but George is smart enough not to risk their lives if the slavers find and question them. He’ll prevaricate and say that all he knows is that we left for New York, but he won’t deny he knows and was involved with us. If they push, he’ll admit he gave us the phone number of his contemporary there.”

“And that won’t matter because we won’t look anything like we did here.”

“But if Brandon’s with us, they might figure it out. Especially if they push George hard enough and he admits he procured new IDs for us and what our names now are,” Day added, completing their thoughts.

“Unless I change him, too, as well as changing us again.”

“You would trust him with that knowledge?”

“Yes,” Morning said, turning to face Brandon. “There’s something about him. Something familiar. Like he’s...”

“Family,” Day completed. “Maybe he’s descended from one of our Jarawa tribe members somewhere back in his history.”

“Maybe,” Morning replied. “I think we accept. We can always dump him when we get to New York. Besides, it might be best not to stay with our latest disguises for too long even if the slavers don’t find and question Big Daddy George. With Brandon as our driver, we can probably set up our own agency and freelance rather than relying on others.”

“Meaning you can chop and change our appearance to suit our client’s needs,” Day completed.

They turned back to Brandon, who was looking at them hopefully. Morning thought carefully about the muscular young man who’d been their constant companion since they’d started working for George. She turned back to her mother, “He’s in love with you,” Morning stated. “That’s why he wants to come with us.”

“Me?” Day asked. “Don’t you mean you? I’m nearly twenty years older than you.”

Morning asked dryly, “Which, over a three-and-a-half thousand-year lifetime, means exactly what, Mother?”

Day blushed, “You’re right, of course. I forget he knows me as a twenty-nine-year-old Gigi Hadid lookalike.”

Making a decision, Day turned to Brandon and said, “We’ll accept your lift to New York, Brandon. But when we get there, we have many things to discuss before we can agree that you can stay.”

“Some chance is better than no chance,” Brandon agreed. “George has booked you into a double suite at The Marriott in downtown New York. He’s paid for two weeks upfront but authorised another two if you need it.”

“Why a double suite?” Morning asked curiously.

“In case you agreed that I could stay,” Brandon replied, trying not to blush.

“Did you want to come, Brandon,” Day asked. “Or did Big George ask you to?”

“I wanted to come,” Brandon confessed. “But I would never have asked George to let me. I owe him too much to do that to him. Oh, not money, but for everything he’s done for me. So, when George asked if I’d stay with you and be your bodyguard, I jumped at the chance. I have an introduction to Madame Sweet in my pocket. Along with the one for you two.”

“Gawd, I love that man,” Morning stated as tears sprung from her eyes. “I’m tempted to go back to the agency and fuck him unconscious one more time.”

“Once we know it’s safe,” her mother replied. “We’ll get him up to New York and spend a whole week trying to fuck him to death.”

Brandon opened the car’s trunk and took Day’s and Morning’s luggage from them. They hadn’t packed much because they expected to travel by bus. Plus, their skin colour, faces and body shape would dramatically change when Morning used her shapeshifting power to alter their appearance, so there was little point in keeping too many clothes. Most of their luggage’s weight was the two antique weapons, Day’s Talwar sword and Morning’s Parashu battle-axe, that they had carefully wrapped to disguise what they were.

Satisfied they were ready, Day and Morning got in the backseat and buckled up. Brandon glanced at Day in the rearview mirror, disappointed she hadn’t got in beside him. Morning nudged her mother and nodded at Brandon. Day looked at her in surprise before turning to examine Brandon. Realising the muscular young man was disappointed she’d sat in the back, Day unbuckled again and moved to the front seat.

Although it is around a four-and-a-half to five-hour trip to New York, most of that time is spent getting out of Boston and into New York. Traffic was about average for their journey, and just within five hours, Brandon and his passengers pulled up at the drop-off point for the New York Marriott. Morning had taken the opportunity provided by the extra space to lie down and meditate during the trip. In her mind’s eye, she saw five slavers sent by their clan chief boarding a private jet in Shannon, Ireland, on their way to Boston to investigate the lost emanations from the five slavers she and Day had exterminated. These five resembled the humans they passed amongst more closely than any slaver Morning had seen before.

After checking in, Day and Morning allowed Brandon to carry their bags up to the twelfth-floor suite Big George had gotten for them. As soon as they were in the door, Day pounced on Brandon and dragged him into the second bedroom. The suite was quickly filled with the sounds of two people fucking.

Unperturbed by the sounds, Morning lay on the bed in the other room and turned her mind inwards. She needed to learn more about how to fight these slavers. For millennia, Morning and her mother had fought to escape, fled, and re-established themselves elsewhere, only to be rediscovered and forced to run again. In this modern era, even when they had found somewhere they could safely stay, they were forced to move within twenty years lest their friends, co-workers, and neighbours realise the two women never aged or changed.

Now, the time had come to stop running and fight. Morning knew how to kill the slavers permanently—knowledge that had come to her during their time at the YMCA in Boston. The slavers had a glass-like crystal embedded in their foreheads. This crystal gave the slavers the power to regenerate and recuperate from any injury, including lost limbs. If the slaver died before the crystal was removed, they, along with an exact replica, were reborn at sunrise the following morning, thereby doubling their number.

Morning was deep into her meditation when she began hearing a voice. Even though it seemed distant and echoey, it was insistent. Turning her concentration to the voice, Morning heard, “प्रातः सूर्य, त्वं मम समीपम् अवश्यम् आगच्छसि! (Morning Sun, you must come to me!)” Morning concentrated harder, uncertain what the voice was. It repeated, “प्रातः सूर्य, त्वं मम समीपम् अवश्यम् आगच्छसि!”

“जले प्रकाशः स्फुरति (Light on the Water), is that you?” Morning asked. When she said that name, Morning saw a distant vision coalesce and fly toward her. It rushed up to her before stopping and expanding. When it stopped expanding, Morning saw her tribe’s Medicine Man sitting cross-legged on a mat before her.

“उप- विश् (Sit),” Light said. “अस्माकं बहु चर्चा कर्तव्या अस्ति।. (We have much to discuss).”

With the power of dreams, Morning told her subconscious to automatically translate her ... father, Morning remembered ... her father’s words into the English she was more accustomed to. She wasn’t aware if she answered Light in English or Sanskrit, but it didn’t matter because Light understood her anyway.

“Day has told you who your true father is?” Light asked. Morning nodded, and Light added, “That’s why the latent abilities in you have sprung to life. Knowing who you are was the key to enlightenment I planted in you upon your creation.”

Morning examined the man before her. Light was ancient before Morning’s mother had lain with him, creating her, she realised. She remembered hushed discussions about how old Light actually was. Some of the elders, hundreds of years old themselves, spoke of Light being the tribe’s medicine man when their fathers’ fathers were young.

Morning recalled the morning Light and her husband were slaughtered by the invading Gaelic Slavers. The shouts from Light’s hut on his island had brought the warriors from their tents. Because the Jangil clan of the Jarawa people had lived peacefully in this valley for more than three hundred years, they’d gotten lax in their security. That laxity meant the slavers were on them before the warriors could react.

Two of the slavers held Light between them as the third shouted, summoning the rest of the clan from their tents. As the warriors, led by Morning’s husband and mate, गरुड स्वूपिंग (Eagle Swooping), charged for Light’s hut, the third slaver gutted the medicine man as if he were a pig at the slaughter. Morning, mated for less than a year when Light died, howled in despair as Light’s bright blue eyes held hers before flickering and turning opaque. Morning believed she saw Light’s spirit standing whole and very much alive above his butchered body before it streaked in a flash of light towards the heavens. Morning kept that vision to herself because she felt Light didn’t want it known.

The Jangil Clan of the Jarawa tribe warriors fought bravely but were outnumbered and outmuscled by the larger, stronger Gaelic Slavers. More than half of the warriors were dead in the first skirmish. Eagle Swooping recalled his fighters briefly before forming the phalanx they knew was their only chance against the slavers. Eagle, the clan chief, stood at the point of the phalanx.

Morning, as the chief’s wife and mate, along with her mother, Day, gathered the women and children in the centre of the village as the older men, warriors past fighting age, and younger men, those not old enough to have undergone their coming-of-age ceremonies, encircled them, ready to fight to the death in a last stand to protect them.