catch a beer at Pauly’s?”
Jackson shook his head in the negative, even though part of him was wondering why he was no longer interested in going to have a beer with the guys. He used to like doing that. A lot. And from the look crossing Manheim’s face, he was wondering what was up with him just as much as Jackson was. That wasn’t good. He was supposed to be keeping a low profile, so that no one questioned him about any differences in his character. He understood why, of course. During the Blending process he and Menes were extremely weak and extremely vulnerable, even despite Menes’s great powers. So it was best to remain inconspicuous until it was complete. As it was, and as he had been made to understand it, the huge display of power he’d shown moments after waking up with Menes inside of him had done damage to the Blending process, slowing it down considerably. It had taken his sister Docia only a week, maybe two, to fully Blend with her Bodywalker. That was not the case with him. Although Menes was apparently doing some of this on purpose so Jackson could maintain life in the sun for a little while longer. Or so he thought. The former and present pharaoh was not exactly a wordsmith. Which was good, Jackson supposed. It would suck to spend the rest of his life chained up with a chatterbox.
He walked away from the field after a wave of acknowledgment to Manheim and some of the officers who’d been watching at the edge of the arena. He’d practiced in full uniform, as usual. It helped define for the dog the difference between friendly combatants in a situation and unfriendly ones.
It was peculiar, really, Jackson thought for the hundredth time know how much he means tovg. as he looked down at his dog in bewilderment. Until recently Sargent wanted to obey him just about as often as a rabbit wanted to jump into a roasting pan of its own free will. Then it had been like someone had flipped on a switch inside the little bugger and now he was doing everything and anything in his doggy power to do all that Jackson asked of him. Eventually Jackson had to concede that perhaps Sargent hadn’t been the problem. Animals were very intuitive. In all probability Sargent had been able to tell right off that Jackson hadn’t wanted anything to do with him. Not through any fault of his own, but because Jackson hadn’t been over Chico just yet.
Funny how that all felt so distant now. As though it had been another lifetime. He had been so consumed with the strange experience of having to share his consciousness with someone else … someone very dominant and very powerful, that he hadn’t had time for wallowing. He had moved on with his life. Or rather, his post-near-death. He supposed that was the most sobering thing about all of this. If not for Menes’s interference and selection of him for host, he would be dead. He would have left his sister all alone in the world. No parents. No siblings. No …
Well, there was Ram, he conceded reluctantly. And because Docia was host to another Bodywalker, named Tameri, he supposed she would never be alone again for the rest of her life. But outsiders were one thing, and family quite another. He for one didn’t know what he would do without Docia. She was the only family he had left … outside of Leo. But the badass mercenary wasn’t blood. He was more like a brother of the soul. The two of them had raised Docia together and Leo had been there for him through some of the toughest times of his life.
He had been avoiding his best friend ever since the scene of his “death.” He didn’t know what Leo had made of what he had seen, and he had seen a lot. He had also killed Odjit, the vicious leader of the Templars, a sect of the Bodywalkers that was actively carrying on a civil war against the Politic, the lawful part of the Bodywalkers of whom Menes was the ruler. But Leo, as well as Marissa, had been made to believe everything they had experienced in that moment was nothing but a dream. So neither had any idea that Jackson had died and that Odjit had been killed.
But Menes had assured Jackson that like a hydra, the Templars would grow a