Encounter on a Rainy Night

                                     

                             

A Josie Gray Story

For days now, Josie had been watching the  young  man in the thick glasses over the top of her copy of Gloestner's "Dimensional Physics and Quantum Relativity". He also seemed to be interested in temporal physics from the books and papers around him, but every time their eyes met, he blushed and looked away. He always came into the Great Library alone, stayed for hours, and left alone. There was something about him-

Josie was not aware of any maternal instinct for children, but she certainly felt something like it for the young Jewish lad. Being a woman, the idea that it was none of her business never occurred to her.Being Josie, the solution involved direct action.

Walking with a crutch, and carrying books, it was not difficult for her to blunder into him and drop them all.

"Oh,I'm sorry-"

"N-n-o, quite all right. L-let me help you p-pick them up."

After he had done that, she thrust out a hand," Thanks, cully. The name's Josie Gray,superhero,Guardian of the Realm, and totally hot babe."

He looked at the hand as though it was poisoned."m-my father says not to touch a woman,"

"Why?"

"He's a rabbi. V-very orthodox."

"Tell  you what," she suggested, grabbing his limp hand,"Let's not tell him." She met his scared gaze unflinchingly, and was rewarded with a boyish smile.

"I-Isaac Quentin Thackeray. Everyone calls me IQ, through my" – he gestured helplessly at the books.

"Studies?"

"Uh-huh." 

Josie grasped his shoulder and leaned over,"Temporal physics eh? Me too.Tough stuff,eh?"

"St-st-st-"

"Stimulating?"

He nodded. He began to talk, but Josie was no longer listening. She had felt the bruising and scarring on the boy's shoulder, and now she clearly saw in his aura the marks of recent violence. Her green eyes hardened.

She  was glad she had planted  the bug out of curiosity, nosiness to be honest: now it had a purpose.

"Ikester," she said firmly."Too much study and no play,yada yada. Come and have a coffee." She bore him protestingly  to the small refreshment area, No one resisted Josie in full flight, and soon he was telling her the story of his life.

The library closed at six thirty and Ike went out into the driving rain of a chill November night, Josie trailing just out of range.

The old Jewish  Quarter, she remembered.  Red tiled roofs, oriental arches,  synagogues three  centuries old, and narrow streets suggestive more of Eastern Europe than East Anglia. Josie watched Ike enter a door marked by a lamp.

She wore a broad brimmed hat and a black poncho, both covered with a special rain proof sheen,and she was well accustomed to night observations. Nevertheless. the damp and shadows, the moaning wind and the strange emptiness of the cobbled street made her shiver a little,reminding her of tales of golems from her girlhood.

"I will fear no evil,"  she intoned. She screwed in the oculus determinedly and tuned it to the micro scanner. The tiny bug , an invention of her own, had released several almost invisible  nano-sensors to pick up sound and vision from IQ's surroundings.

Her eyes had blurred with fatigue when shouting began in the yellow vision-circle the oculus showed to her eye. A tall, bearded man, hook nosed. Threatening, shouting and dragging Ike down to what looked like the cellar. Josie's blood froze as she heard the rattle of chains and saw a  knobbled,bloodstained stick waved in Isaac's whimpering face. Her green eyes, normally so friendly, blazed with fury. Then she looked more closely at the rabbi's aura.

"Krell!"

She leapt at the door, hammering madly and shouting. It was opened by a slim, attractive middle aged woman with scared dark eyes.

"Guardians!" Josie shouted,flourishing her luminous badge."Where's the cellar?"

The woman gestured mutely. Josie almost fell down the steep stairs and burst the door with a gesture.

"Stop this abomination!"

The rabbi was as she had expected, limmed with spirit flame, his eyes points of darkness, doubly bright.

"Don't interfere,"  he hissed in a thick Polish accent."Witch!"

"Demon!" she shouted, waving her techno wand,"Come out of  him!"

The  thing sneered."If you use that, you will kill the kindly old rabbi. I,on the other hand, have no compunction about beating his only son to death." His voice was gloating.

Josie produced a pistol and shot him. The rabbi laughed incredulously."A water pistol? You stupid-" He paused.And screamed. Red sparks  trailed in streams over his body.

"Holy water," Josie  clipped. She sprang forward, her crutch morphing into a complex cross shaped device with a central white vril stone which she pressed to his forehead in a burst of white light.

"In the name of  the Maker of Universes, come out of him!"

A shattering, non-human scream erupted from the rabbi's mouth and he fell. A red haze burst from his body and lunged at Josie, but she  dispersed it with a peremptory word in an unknown language, and it fell away, mumbling curses, into the earth.

Josie turned to I Q and released his bonds with two taps of her wand.

"You all right?"

He yammered incoherently. He was bruised and bloody, but Josie felt there was no serious injury. Still-

"I'll call the medics to see to both of you." The rabbi was stirring.."He should be all right now."

"Who-who-who-"

"Who?"

"Who are you?"

"Josie Gray,  superhero," she curtsied prettily."Want  to know how I got this way? Be at the library, 10 am, Monday."

She patted his shoulder."He wasn't himself, Ike. Demon."

"D-d-"

"Fear no evil,Ike. Fear no evil."

Upstairs  she found Ike's mother crying on the sofa.

"I'm calling a clean up crew," she told her."They'll  treat any medical problems and cleanse the place."

"Cleanse?"

"What’s your name?"

"Sophia,"

"Well, Sophia, what was your husband doing that got him in that state?"

Sophia gestured at a leather bound book on the sideboard."The Black Zohar. Forbidden knowledge.Theurgy. Our law prohibits it."

"You  knew? You knew about that, and what he was doing?"

Sophia could not look at her, but Josie thrust her face angrily inches from the other."You're a disgrace as parents," she snarled."But know this-Ike has me on his side now,and if he comes to any harm, I’ll be in your faces six ways from shabbat!"

Outside the door, she leaned on it, breathing heavily,fighting for calm.  Her bad leg screamed at her, but she overrode the pain, her mind focussing inwardly,her breath calming.

"Great Krell," she murmured,"I'm so totally good at this."

While she waited on the porch,she decided to do a careful little Jewish dance in the rain, to mark another successful mission.

She began to chant the Litany of the Guardians

"Little by little,  I drive the darkness  back…"