I spent the day happy. 

 The Callens had reconciled, and Mrs. Callen who was heading for the loony-bin due to her out of control fears had taken a sudden u-turn to get back on the road to Sanity.  She still had a ways to go, but she was driving fast on a path she knew to a good place.

Josh and Sarah were doing the young love thing, and although Josh was bitter about almost being murdered by his ‘idol’, he now saw things clearer.  And I could tell that Sarah was trying to convince him to give over his anger about it, and leave the fiasco that was Dale behind.

Miguel was with Mr. Callen, putting a downpayment on a farm that he would spend the next twenty years paying off, and being a solid citizen and finding a woman who was interested in having seven children.  Considering how kind and generous his soul was, I thought he would have no difficulty finding his dreamgirl.

James and Lydia and J.J. were reunited, and I’m pretty sure, all back home.

Of course, this left me as the only person doing the farm chores that day.  Its been said ‘no good deed goes unpunished’, and I was seemingly proving it as I ran about chasing chickens, and milking cows, and tossing bales of hay twenty feet high into the hay mow.  I was running about like a chicken with my head cut off, and all the while, I had Lisa Callen, seven-years-old, and cuter than a squirming puppy, and more full of questions than an SAT test, and also endowed with more calmly stated opinions and frequently unsupported opinions than a college student trying to fake his way through an essay test.

I had not had much to do with her since Miguel had been her favorite, but he was gone, and so I would do.  And her mother had chased her out of the house, so she caught me tossing bales.

"You’re very strong. I think you’re stronger than Reggie McCoy." She observed solemnly. Reggie McCoy was the local fullback on the Evansdale Warriors football team.  "Are you stronger than the Mighty Morton on the Massive Muscle Fest on TV?"

I just smiled, and sadly began to toss the hay bales up to the edge of the loft instead of twenty feet deep into the loft.  And then I clambered up, and she followed me as I restacked them properly.

All this was made slower by her questions, and by her tendency to say "Hey watch me." as she did something insane like try to balance on a rafter she had climbed to forty feet above the floor.

My good mood was evaporating.

She chased me around, and ran ahead of me, and into probably trouble, and so I had to go rescue her.  And then when I moved fast, she complained her legs weren’t as long as mine, and asked to be carried.  I was less than happy by this time, so I pointed out that exercise was good for her, and maybe, we could hope that it would tire her out.

"You’re mean." She replied, and ran out to play with a ball in the huge front yard guarded by the fence we had fixed, but yesterday.

Relieved, I let her go, and while taking an occasional glance I went about my extensive work much faster.  I had finished pulling a nail from a lawnmower tire, and was taking the tire from the axle with one hand holding up the lawnmower, and the other twisting the bolts in the yellow center of the wheel, when I heard a voice.

I looked up.

"Excuse me, Tadeusz. Were you supposed to have oil leaking from the car out front?"  It was the old man with bright blue eyes from the roadhouse the other night.  He had supplied a vital bit of information that enabled me to save Josh’s life.  And just like then, he had snuck up on me without a sound.

I looked out, and saw the remaining family car was spurting oil from a broken line, and that its tires were flat.  Feeling like the blue sky above was about to open and rain down meteors on my skull, I looked about for Lisa.

No where to be found.

I spun to face the old man with the willingness to do murder or torture as it was required by the situation.  He was not there. I flipped through the air backwards over the lawnmower, grabbed a foot-long stainless steel crescent wrench, and started to hunt for him.

The first spot I checked was the barn doorway where he had been standing.  And there in the mud were my earlier footprints, and Lisa’s, but not the old man’s.  A simple rewinding of events in my memory, and taking a freeze frame of my own thought yielded a distinct image of him standing here.

And yet there was no sign.

I wondered.

And then I wondered again as I checked the house, and saw an unconscious Mrs. Callen.  She seemed to be fine, but stuffed under her head was a note.

"Dear Callens, you naughty, naughty people. Now you will pay."  Holding that sheet of horror, I felt the same crushing load of evil coming, and that crystallized my thoughts.

I had assumed this was a world with low magic.  After all, it had high technology, and there were no wizards running about, but still, that did not mean no magic.  It was a good indicator, but not conclusive.

The fact that perhaps a hundred years ago, a group of desperate slaves had conjured a five-limbed demon from the Pit was stronger evidence.  There had to be magic here, and I was going to use it.

I walked out into the yard planning my strategy as my feet beat quick on the porch, and the gravel driveway, and then muffled and slowed on the grass lawn on the far side.  I need Tracking, Speed, Healing, and Power.

I looked about, and saw a saddle sitting on the top of the pigs corral fence.  The Callens owned a horse, but the old nag was not suited to what I wanted.

At a run, I took the saddle, and spun about to find a patch of clear grass across from the ruined car.  I placed it down facing due West by the compass I retrieved when I gathered up my duffel bag of many, many implements of destruction.

Then I took from my bag my Roman gladius, and raised it high toward the Sun.

"Oh Lord in Heaven, make of me thy tool, and grant me a clean weapon to clear my way."  The gladius jerked slightly in my hand, and as it came down, I kissed it.  It gleamed bright and pure, and free of baneful influences and random magical fluctuations.  It was the magical equivalent of a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil.

"Grant that I do your will, Most High." I said as I began the Calling of the Archangels.  I bowed as do the judokan to the East and spoke the name "Michael", and to the West and said "Raphael", and to the South, and spoke "Gabriel", and then to the last, the Dread North, the Death Angel, I said "Uriel". 

A glimmer of light in the grass, out of the corners of my eyes rewarded my courteous calling.  I, as a creature, do not bow to show worship, but to show respect. Worship is reserved for God.

I knew several different versions, okay, eleven to be exact of this spell, or miracle.  Some placed the angels elsewhere for different effects.  And this was a simple enough spell that I could have done it with a snap of my fingers, and a few quick words, but it was my foundation. 

I wanted my foundation solid.  My holy circle of protection stood firm.

"Angelus…" I began in Latin, and requested that they lend me not only their attention, but the shadow of their presence, and that they use it to purify the ground. A sudden sting of ozone in the air was followed by a breeze pine-scented, and then a clear blue light glimmered over the ground outlining each blade of grass, and then finally a chilling certainty filled the defined space.

All creatures die.

I bent my knee, and thanked God, and reminded Him of his promises to send a deliverer, and quickly, and asked that I be that deliverer.

"Give me sight to see." I murmured, and then looked up.

The veil of time faded slightly, and I saw a car drive up.  A man in a suit get out, and he held an amulet in his right hand.  It swayed, gold, and red, sticky red.  Lisa stared at it, and threw up her arms, and the man pointed a finger at her, and spoke a harsh word.  She fell.

In the space between breaths, he walked into the house, and sapped Mrs. Callen, and with a smirk, left the note.  He looked at me, and laughed as I stood between one moment and the next with the lawnmower held up by my arms.

He then drove off, and I saw he headed toward town in bright, cream sedan.  It should be easy to find.

I bowed my head, gave thanks in a quick rush, and considered my problem.  He might not have seen my holding up the lawnmower, but he might have, and still disdained me.  In any case, he had enough mojo to at a minimum, enchant a whole farm with an amulet that used blood magic.  Worse case scenario, he had made himself an amulet that literally stopped time, and he was a world-class sorcerer, and I would be exceedingly hard pressed to just kill him.

And the door to the porch opened even as I opened a carefully folded wax paper containing a few slivers of pegasus hair, a bit of leather from a whip used by a Derby triple-crown winner for which I had paid exorbitantly, a bald eagle feather (from a world where they were not almost extinct, thank you very much), and the whole was tied together by a miniature leather string lariat.  I put this on the ground, and regrettfully noted that I heard a screech from the porch.

I looked up.  Mrs. Callen looked in a bad way. 

"He..lp." She was trying to mumble. "Li, lisa." My heart went out to her, and practically ripped itself out of its chest, and yet, I had no time to talk to her, and no words to make it okay.

"Stay there. I’m working on something." I ordered a bit tentatively.

"My Lisa, what tomfoolery are you doing?" She insisted on an explanation, and I could not have her leave, nor did I have the time to explain and convince her that I was a powerful magician and miracleworker.  Her outrage at my cavalier behavior had brought her back part of the way, but if she got much more furious with me, she would end up stomping over here, and getting into the midsts of my magic.

So I pulled out a horse pistol from my duffel bag, and loaded it with its twin.  Then I fired the first one into the porch near her feet.

"Stay." I ordered. "Or I will shoot you."  The complete certainty in my head that I would froze her. 

It was not the time for my transportation spell, but instead my weapon spell was called for because it had interesting side effects.

I turned to Raphael and slightly bowed with one hand clearly on a pistol.  Now I saw Raphael in my Second Vision as a translucent being of almost undescribable, no, lets just go with undescribably majesty.  If he had fully materialized, he would have evaporated Evansdale which was many miles away.  Mrs. Callen saw me bowing to the air, but more importantly she saw my gun, and so she did not flee.  I truly feared for her sanity if she fled.

Visualizing the fogs of San Francisco where a certain young girl had explained to me ‘the rudimentaries of High Magick’, I blew out a warm breath toward Raphael, and imitating me, he blew as well.  Fog began to fill our space, and this was the moment of danger.  I raised my gun, and pointed it dead at Mrs. Callen while keeping my eyes and mind focused on Raphael. 

The angel took in a deep breath, and blew.  Suddenly billows of fog sprang up all over the yard.  Another breath, and it was chest high, and almost pea soup.  We were past danger now.  What had been done here was clearly not a smoking fire.  Another breath, and another, and we were totally socked in.  But by now, Mrs. Callen would know something strange was going on, and so I spoke.

"I work miracles on occasion, ma’am.  I’m going to try to get your daughter back, safe and sound.  But I need a little time, and first I need you to wait on the porch where you are, and look toward me."

"Ah, okay." She said sounding shaken, and very tentative.

I raised my gladius, and closed my eyes as tightly as I could, and bent my head to my chest, and prayed for mercy before I prayed again.

"May I have the Glory." I said. "The Shekinah Glory."  And suddenly, I felt light fall around me, so intense I could see the red veins in my eyelids despite the protecting hand I put in front of my face.  It felt like warm silk bathing me, taking away my pain, healing sores, and making me want to laugh for joy.  I…really wanted to open my eyes.  Because then I would be staring into the Face of God, but then I would die, and so would Lisa.

"Mercy." I cried when the pressure, the need for me to open my eyes got to great. And suddenly the almost unbearable joy was gone, replaced by calm, and a sense of loss.  I could hear Mrs. Callen weeping, and I cried a bit too.  But her tears had a healthy, sane sound to them, and my tears I ignored as I pressed on.

At this point, I glowed like a 200 watt lightbulb, and so I cast a shadow of terror about me as a Shaman had taught me.  It was a quick gesture like I was clasping an invisible cloak, and suddenly darkness, and fear shrouded my form.

I dropped to the ground, and with a spoken word, Ignitio!, and a snap of my fingers, I lit the lariat which began to consume quickly as it raced down to the flammables held within the inch wide hoop.  Raising the saddle to over my head took a little doing as I felt more tired than one would expect.

I whistled, a long ‘come here, horse’ whistle.  And then I spoke in a language known as Sioux.  An answering whinny came back, and up out of the fog rode my spirit horse.  I think its a ghost of a dead warrior’s horse, but I’m not sure.  In any case, it settled itself down under the saddle, and suffered itself to be properly tightened.  Granted, you could look right through it, but the important thing was they were fast.

The gladius went skyward, and sampled of the fog, and I bore some of the fog on my blade to Uriel who breathed on it so that the fog drifted into the blade.  And then very cautiously, I slipped the blade into its sheathe for whomever the blade touched next would die.

I clambered up into the saddle with my duffel bag, and reached in for a small flask of penicillin.  This was a very delicate spell, and perhaps I should have done it before I cast the Spirit Horse, and got me a paint ghost, but it should be okay.

I began to write in the air the basic equation that described a healthy human being in the year 2214 A. D..  I used the super-penicillin injector pen as my marker for the air-writing, and soon enough I felt resistance accumulating in my mind as I struggled to remember the math.  It was a part of the spell, and so I pushed on, not alarmed.  The letters and symbols started crackling with all the energy I had flowing to them.

I felt like I could not do it, but the knowledge of the stakes pushed me on with a fury.  And then like a pop, the pressure was gone, and the letters faded.

Now, I held the power of healing at will for some pretty significant injuries.

I dispacted the fog, and road over on my ghost horse to Mrs. Callen who was just now, standing up.  She boggled a bit at a nearly invisible horse, but then she straightened up.

"Go rescue my daugther Tadeusz."

I bowed, and agreed that I would if I could.

And then I spun about the horse, and galloped down the lane and onto the main highway at a speed a normal horse could not match on his best day.