When the lunar eclipse was in its darkest phase, and the hills around Jaylon's small house became inky black like the sky, Jaylon's silhouette faced the two young women as he spoke to them.

"We must get Michelle back to Santa Fe. Now, where she can check in again on Cody. She herself is in no danger from those French messengers of the Light."

Simi had never heard her tormentors labeled as such before, but now it made sense to her.

"They only wanted to silence her man," Jason continued, motioning them off the porch. "This they have done for now, one way or another. And hopefully he will survive and the two of you, Michelle, will go back safely to Los Angeles."

Jason paused and reached out to gently touched the young woman's shoulder. "There is no place for either of you here in the Southwest these next several days and nights. The coast of California will be much safer."

"But how are we going to . . ." Michelle interjected.

"I will take you back to the hospital on my bike. Simi will remain here and wait for me to return."

Simi felt her pulse quicken as he said this and she looked up at the lonely house.

"You'll be perfectly safe here, Simi." He told her, moving his hand now from Michelle's shoulder to Simi's face, affectionately. "I will return in no longer than an hour. All will be fine. We'll then go back to Madrid so your parents won't worry about you."

Simi was somehow not thinking of her parents or Madrid. She felt she had been placed in a much larger world now, and with a greater agenda than merely family or school—or any of the former routines of her young life. The long night had transformed her somehow with meaning and purpose. And it carried with it an undercurrent of emotion she still felt—now her strongest feelings of love for Jaylon.

He handed Simi the keys to the house and didn't need to tell her to lock herself in. He then led the still perplexed and anxiously fraught Michelle off the porch by the hand to the driveway where his bike was parked. Simi heard the Harley Davidson explode into its throaty rumble and saw the headlight switch on, as Jaylon secured the young woman behind him on the seat and ferried her on his motorcycle down the dirt road with a roar.

As she entered the well-lit house alone, Simi felt strangely safe considering the isolation of where she was—so singular now in the mountains and on a night where the universe seemed to seethe with rarefied atmospheric changes. Curiously she began to walk into the several rooms of the place, with an irresistible interest which only craved to know more of this mysterious young man whom had become so much a part of her.

Moving from the barren living room where the Native American rug seemed to be the only point of reference, she passed down a dim and narrow hallway to a bedroom where, again, it was stripped of the trappings one would find in any domicile where people lived full time. The fact that Jaylon was not a person who might ever live somewhere full time, she understood the simple mattress on the floor and single dresser with a small coat closet next to it.

What she found in the next room, ostensibly intended as another bedroom, was a surprise to her. The perimeter of the cubical room, devoid of furniture, save for a single wooden chair by the window, was embellished from floor to ceiling with rows of book shelves, running up each wall and all stocked with multi-colored texts—some looking quite old, while others shiny in their unmolested dusk jackets and appearing very recent.

Reading the spines of several of the books, Simi discovered they all pertained to religions of the world in some way, representing all the belief systems she had ever heard of, and many delineating titles which suggested archaeological or anthropological studies of faith. Treatises on ancient Greek gods and goddesses, astrology, Egyptian mythology, Celtic lore, and philosophical works on consciousness and the concept of Mind. There was a whole wall devoted to witchcraft and the ages of religious persecution, the Spanish Inquisition, the witch trials in the Americas. Shamanism, voodoo, Tantric Vedas, and the phenomenon of angels, past and present--all graced the walls of Jaylon's personal library. It was truly a sanctuary where one could explore the human preoccupation with light and dark. Good and Evil.

She discovered adjacent to this room, an equally Spartan bathroom—the simple toilet and an iron bathtub with Victorian lion paws for feet. There was a mirror cabinet on the wall above the sink with nothing but shaving cream, razor blades, and a toothbrush stocked sparsely inside. There was a small bottle of Bay Rum aftershave lotion, which upon smelling it, reminded her of Jaylon and the scent she relished on her pillow in the morning after being with him the evening before.

Moving into Jaylon's kitchen, she found it strangely empty. There was no food in the pantry. Nothing in the refrigerator. The stove seemed unused and even the sink seemed dry and out of use. On the small table was a knife, looking to be a large hunting knife, fastened into a leather sheath and left there at the center of the house as a means of protection only.

Taking further stock of the place, she found no television, no phone, no radio, computer, or paintings on the walls. No furniture. It was a total mystery to her how anyone could call this house a "home." Walking out the back door cautiously, as the dim starlight reflected a small yard overgrown with weeds, she felt the cool breeze come down from the mountain top and heard the screech of an owl or possibly some other predator bird at home there in the wilds.

Locking the back door upon reentering the house, Simi went back into Jaylon's bedroom and got down with some difficulty to lay upon his simple floor-mattress covered by a dark blue quilt. Laying back with her head upon his pillow, she tried to imagine spending the night there with him, or more luridly still as a fantasy, making love with him there on this bed in the darkness—or in the midday when the sunlight would stream through a nearby curtain-less window, illuminating their naked bodies.

After sometime of reclining and letting the strange house and its eerie character seep into her, Simi felt comfortable enough to dose off into a light sleep. It wasn't long afterward that she heard the roar of Jaylon's bike, coming up the dirt road to take her back to Madrid as planned.

She could hear the bike so close that it seemed just outside the window and then Jaylon's knock on the front door brought her to her feet. She ran from the bedroom to the front door to let him in.

She greeted him with a smile and an embrace, which Jaylon seemed surprised by. He returned the gesture with a comforting kiss on her cheek and a somewhat nervous smile back.

"So how did you find my humble house," he asked her, seemingly assured she would have by now perused it while he was gone.

"It's very . . . well, you, Jaylon," she said smiling again. "It could definitely use a woman's touch in a few places, though."

He smiled back. "No need for that here. It just suits what I need for now."

"So have you always lived so . . . simply, Jaylon. So . . . temporarily?"

"Actually. I have."

"But you will one day want to live . . . better. I mean . . . more permanently, right?"

Jaylon looked at her with a serious almost sad look.

"Sure. Someday, I suppose."

"Well you really deserve to do that for yourself, you know."

He placed his hand against her face as he had done earlier. Simi was hoping this would be a prelude to much more touching, kisses, and the involved affection she had looked forward to for some time with him.

"We have to get you back to Madrid now," he said, disappointingly.

"Do we really have to?" She asked in a flirtatious voice.

"I think it will be best for what I saw happening in Santa Fe."

"What? What did you see?"

"The streets are crowding up with traffic and pedestrians. Right now. In the middle of the night. It's a mixed crowd . . . people of the Light and of the Dark. They have begun to come in. The balance is unstable still. A lot of randomness in the air out there. I worry a little for how things are over in Madrid. We must go see."

Suddenly Simi was convinced he was right. There would be a randomness even there in her small town. And her presence was needed for the balance. She looked back at the interior of the house as Jaylon locked it, and they walked out into the brighter night with the eclipse long past to get onto Jaylon's bike.

There would be no time for love-making this night at Jaylon's home, as she had imagined and fantasized about it there on his bed. There was much more critical things still to investigate and attend to.

* * *