Jack gave a soft gasp of surprise. There was someone sitting on her couch. It was a small, very well dressed man in a crisp white linen suit. There was an incongruous wide brimmed straw hat upon his head and travel worn sandals on his feet. His almost Roman features, a hawkish nose, the prominent cheekbones, were the brown of tanned leather, and his dark, deeply set eyes were enmeshed in a webwork of wrinkles, laugh lines at the corners. The face was friendly, his posture nonthreatening, but even so, Jack's first response was one of fear. Fear came so naturally to her these days. Rather than search for a weapon her hands protectively folded over the pronounced curve of her belly. It dismayed Jack a little, made her wonder if it was a response inherent to this new female form. Or was it merely a temporary instinct brought on by pregnancy? And if that were the case why did this tiny old man bring it out so strongly?
"W-who are you?" Jack winced at the catch in her voice, hated the weakness it betrayed, and tried to end more firmly, "What are you doing in my place? You better get out before I call the cops!"
"You have my many apologies, young lady," the head and its giant hat gave a curt nod, "But I have no patience for courtesies nor formalities."
Jack detected a hispanic accent to the voice, but it was hard to be certain. Her career as an archaeologist had ended what seemed a lifetime ago and, though she could no longer unerringly name a speaker's native tongue, there was something off in his speech patterns, something not quite right.
Something ancient.
Jack backed away, tears starting at the corners of her eyes. The old man wasn't some Mexican gangbanger come for rape and robbery. This small town she had sought to hide herself in was too quiet for big city crimes like that. Also the stranger was far too old, his bearing too dignified, his speech too precise, his suit too expensive for this to be some common home invasion. This had something to do with the stone.
"Please, come to sit next to me," the old man casually waved his crow claw of a hand toward the empty spot on the sofa beside him, "We have not much time, but very much to be done."
She had it now! The old man was Incan, probably from somewhere up in the higher ranges to judge by his acccent. His heritage was written in his features, pure and undiluted by foreign blood. He could easily pass for a king from the heyday of the empire. There was a strange vitality radiating from his compact form, an intimidating intensity almost pouring from the dark liquid eyes. Jack tried to disobey him. The old man seemed disinclined to rise from the sofa and she told herself it would be easy to just turn and walk back out the door.
Except she couldn't. Some force in his gaze, some hidden power in his words, made disobedience an impossibility. Smoothing the checkered dress down over her hips and flipping the braided pigtails back over her shoulders, Jack waddled her way over to the couch. It took her a moment to turn and position herself properly for the half crouch, half fall necessary to sit on couch. All the while the old man watched her, a trace of amusement in his eyes, never once offering to help. With a soft "oof!" Jack tipped back into her seat. The old man chuckled and she shot him a venomous look, which seemed to only increase his amusement. Even in the midst of a full blown panic attack, and Jack was afraid she was on the verge of one, a pregnant woman, especially one as far along as herself, hated for anyone, but especially any man, to laugh at her daily trials and tribulations.
Jack briefly considered screaming for help. A nosy old busybody like Mrs. Hudgins needed only the barest excuse to call the police. She had gladly called once before when a burglar tried to break into the garage apartment. Of course, the burglar had turned out to be a former tennant trying to sneak in and recover some stuff that the old woman had kept in lieu of last month's rent. Still, screaming was an option, but it was hard to gather the breath necessary. Jack discovered she was nearly paralyzed, either by fright or by the old man's unspecified, yet all too real powers, perhaps both. It was in the dark of night when DeMorrell and his men had come to make use of her, dark, lonely nights like this one. For the first few evenings she had screamed herself hoarse before finally accepting no help would come in the dungeons beneath DeMorrell's lair. Eventually, she had learned to submit in silence, her breathing ragged and painful, tears in her eyes, teeth biting her lip, much as she was doing right now. The old man's hands reached for her, just as DeMorrell had once reached for her. One hand came to rest on Jack's shoulder, the other upon her thigh. He lifted up the hem of her work dress, folding it back to expose the massive dome of flesh distending her waist. The hand returned to settle low in the lee of Jack's massive belly, intimately close, nearly brushing the wispy blonde thatch of her pubic hair. Jack would have screamed if she could. Instead, the young mother-to-be started hyperventilating.
"Ay, my child! Forgive me!" the old man murmurred upon noticing Jack's haunted eyes and panicky breathing, "Even after so long sometimes I forget the power of this voice. Calm yourself. Be at peace."
The stranger lazily waved his other hand in the air and suddenly it was so. Jack was at peace, she relaxed, but how? The stone, another part of her seemed to answer, he must have the stone! He wished for you to obey him and now you're his slave! It was her old voice, a rich male baritone that faded further with each passing day. The day she stopped hearing that voice, Jack fretted, was the day she would truly be Nora Volancourt, body and soul. However, such concerns seemed far away at the moment. She was peaceful and relaxed in a way she had never been since first occupying this beautiful female form. It reminded her of a trip to the opium dens of Vietnam from the old days, the days before DeMorrell and Nora and all the other troubles the stone had brought her. With the skill of a surgeon the old man began touching her belly, rubbing it in soothing circles, tapping here and poking there, but even that didn't bother her, and Jack absolutely HATED anyone touching her belly, especially the bigger she got.
"A boy and big too," the old man nodded, apparently pleased, "This is good. He is strong, but we must make him much, much stronger for the fight to come!"
"Fight? What fight?" Jack heard herself asking, though she didn't particularly care about the answer. There was this wonderful dreamy fuzz insulating her brain from all that she had suffered in the last nine months. The baby was moving in time to the touches of the ancient hand upon her belly. Wherever the old man laid his palm her unborn son landed a solid kick as if they were playing a game of tag.
"The idol has once more fallen into the hands of evil men. Soon he will make himself king," the old man's shadowy eyes seemed to grow darker still, looking into the pools of time itself.
"Who will make himself king? My baby?" Jack was certain she should know who the old man meant, but his hand on her belly was making the baby do a funny little dance inside her. Was the old man teaching her little boy before he was even born, she wondered.
"You know of whom I speak, the devil-man from across the waters," his eyes returned to hers, full of hidden meanings, "If a new god does not rise to stop him he will make this century a time of sickness and great storms."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Jack said, a trace of sulkiness in her voice, the pleasant mist that had enshrouded her mind was beginning to fade. She almost begged him to let it stay a little longer, but something inside her would not grovel. Instead she made excuses, "I can't fight. Women don't fight. I'm pregnant and I'm tired."
"You were once more than you are now, young woman," the amused smile returned, "Once you were a warrior such as might have fought the devil-man."
Jack gasped, fully awake now and horribly ashamed. A deep blush colored her face bright red, "You - - you know about - - oh my God, I'm so - - leave me alone!"
She made to push the old man's hand away, to lower the hem of her skirt, but he had suprising strength. She couldn't budge him and he laughed before removing his hand, "Of course, I know. Why else would I be here? And, yes, it is shameful. You who once carried the idol now carry only the child of your conqueror. But how can even the mightiest warrior stand against the idol? It is the weapon of weapons."
"Leave me alone! I just want to live whatever life I can!" Jack hugged herself and looked away. She was trembling slightly. Inside her womb, the baby turned left then right, left then right, over and over as if seaching for the hand the old man had removed from her belly. "I don't want to be part of this anymore!"
"But you are part of this," the bottomless dark eyes were sad, though whether in pity or from her refusal to help Jack couldn't be sure, "Your destiny is forever tied to the power of the idol now, but you will fight no more."
"Fight no more," Jack repeated angrily, "Then why are you here? I don't even know where your devil-man is anymore! He did something to my mind and now I can't remember. Just leave me alone!"
"I am here because you have a different sort of battle before you now," the old man pointedly stared at her belly, "It is a battle I am destined to help you with just as your son is destined to help me."
"My son? You mean my baby!" Jack was surprised by how concerned she sounded. Originally the baby had been an embarassment and a burden, a kind of carry-on torture DeMorrell had saddled her with. Now, with her due date so close she realized how much the child meant to her. Her baby might be the only good to come of all this evil.
"Yes," the old man nodded solemnly, "Your baby is the new god who must rise to stop the evil."
"But he's just a baby! He isn't even born yet!" Jack desperately seized the white lapels of the stranger's expensive suit and tried to shake him, "How can he stop it?"
"With this," the old man held up a hand and reached into the thin air. The empty space before them seemed to shimmer and his arm disappeared into it up to his elbow. The old man began to withdraw his arm and with it he was bring something from somewhere, perhaps even somewhen else!
