Turning Point #3
He was coming in too hard, too fast. Or maybe he wasn’t even moving.
Everything around him but a spot of light far below was dark. He had nothing to gauge the distance, nothing to gauge his descent. He focused hard on slowing down and on his intention to connect with another turning point in Lilah’s life, one where he would take away more of the trauma that had shaped her disconnections with the world around her and fed her demon well. One that would mean she would be alive and more at peace when The Book of Time called him back to the courtyard under the blood moon.
The landscape below began to take shape. A small city. A football stadium but no floodlights. Brighter lights around what appeared to be a college campus. Some taller buildings, maybe eight or ten stories each. A few buildings that looked like they had towers at either end. Beyond the density of lights from the Florida University campus unfurled a few streets, all well-lit but not well traveled. Large oak trees, a few stores, and rows of small houses and apartment buildings. He was coming down somewhere off campus, through the oaks. From this height, he could still see the setting sun in the far distance.
As he dropped through the trees toward the house below, his ears started ringing. The house itself seemed to be enveloped in a sphere of orange and silver. It pulsed and withdrew beneath the roof beneath him.
Momentary panic set in. He was still incorporeal, but what if he took physical form as he plummeted through the structure of the house? Would he be trapped midway through the roof? Impaled by the rafters in the attic? This wasn’t wide open space. Nor was it anything he could control. He surrendered himself to the enchantments of The Book of Time and found himself floating near the ceiling of a bedroom, though it was difficult to tell that it was any particular kind of room, except for the bed in the middle.
The bodies…
He counted six of them. One was Lilah, sprawling naked and propping herself against the wall nearest the bed. Another was a man a few feet away. His aura was a thick black. He was already dead, even if he still breathed. Just a matter of minutes from becoming like all of his naked brethren.
Raven settled into position against the wall next to Lilah. He became corporeal almost the moment his feet—yes! feet!—touched the floor. That was the connection, he realized. Not roof, not mid-air, but touching the ground or touching a floor that touched the ground. He had to have a connection to Mother Earth for his energy to manifest as matter on these journeys through time.
The room itself was decorated green, but so much of it was covered in blood that he couldn’t tell where one body ended and another began. Except for Lilah.
Hair wet with blood, she let her head droop against his shoulder. She was covered in blood, but none appeared to be her own. Her thoughts were dull and lost, as if she’d been drugged. She didn’t seem to know that he was there, or even that she was there. Shaking uncontrollably, she clutched a pair of bloody scissors in her fist and made a whimpering sound as she lifted the blade to her own throat.
“Don’t!” Raven leaned in and wrested the scissors from her, prying her fingers away gently, one by one. She sighed at his touch, seemed to return to her body, and released the blades to him.
She fixed her eyes on his bind rune, breaking her concentration only to glance at the algiz and hagalaz runes carved into her own wrists. They had been there since shortly after her tenth birthday, reminders of her childhood attempt to take her own life.
For a second, she gathered all her strength, just enough to lift her chin to look at him. Her eyes grew wide as if she recognized him, but Raven knew she didn’t. The recognition was more at soul level, as if they’d known each other in the void before this incarnation. She settled in against him and the safety his presence offered.
Raven skimmed the room and found what he was looking for hanging over the dresser’s edge next to him. He pulled her pre-massacre clothing down and covered her bare, bloody skin. Immediately, blood soaked through the tiny flowers of her pretty dress. She snuggled against him, her body quivering. Empathically, he knew what she wanted and hugged her tightly. She started to speak but couldn’t make the words come out.
“Hush. Hush now. I’m here with you. I’ll always be here with you. Bonded for life, okay? For all eternity.”
Something he’d said stirred a deep chord in her. She stared into his eyes, searching.
“J-Jesus?”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t the first timeline where she’d made that assumption, but other than his long hair, he couldn’t understand why. Then she seemed to see something a little truer.
“You’re an angel. Archangel Michael?”
Raven took a deep breath. “Not exactly. I’m Lord Aryx, the Last Priest of a god called Daegan. But one day, you’ll know me as Raven.”
“R-Raven?”
“Here’s the thing, Lilah. If you do this—” He pitched the scissors across the room and watched them bounce against the wall. “If you do this, you’ll never know the difference you will make in other people’s lives. Mine included.”
She whimpered and nothing more.
“I know this is hard, Lilah. And it’s going to get harder, much harder. You have a long journey ahead of you and most of the time, you’re going to think that you’re alone. It’s going to be a bitter cup.”
She groaned loudly. He understood. She’d had a traumatic life, and he’d just told her it was going to get worse.
“Yes, an even bitterer cup. It will be a while, but you’ll find your purpose. You just have to keep pushing through when times get hard. I’ll find you first and then, later, you’ll find me, at your lowest of lows, and you’ll see that everything happens in its own time. Then one day, the world will have a fighting chance because of what you can do. Meanwhile, all you have to do is survive. One day at a time. One hour at a time.”
With a deep sigh, she closed her eyes. Her body relaxed against his, but he had to do everything he could to give her hope. He knew despair, and he hated that she did, too.
“You’re going to have to dig deep, Lilah. It’s not going to be easy. You can’t give in to your death wish. The death wish is just because of survivor’s guilt. Because you don’t think you’re worthy and something inside of you that thrives on your pain keeps pushing you to make bad choices.” He paused, the smell of death stinging his nostrils. “All of this here today, this is only a symptom. You keep finding men who are bad for you.”
She fought back tears and pressed her cheek even harder against his chest. There was so much she seemed to want to say but couldn’t. He shushed her instead.
“Most people either figure it out and move into a new cycle or they keep repeating the same patterns. You’ll figure it out, Lilah, but it will take a few iterations. You’re going to be lost for a while, but that’s okay. It’s while you’re lost that you’ll figure out who you are and what your purpose is. But it will happen, Lilah.”
She blinked back at him as if they didn’t speak the same language, but she’d stopped shivering.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” He sighed. “You won’t remember any of this. It’s for your own good that you don’t. And every other time. The memories of everyone you’ve ever killed, and everyone you will ever kill, I call upon Lord Daegan to take those memories from you so that you will never feel that pain.”
Not comprehending, she blinked at him. Suddenly, the realization of what she’d done to the five men who had tried to rape her dawned. Even worse, the destruction all around her. “Can you help me?” Panic in her voice.
“This, no. But you won’t have to worry about it. And I can’t stop you from making the bad decisions that you’re going to make. For a while, bad decisions are what you need to undo your past.”
The invisible cord at his solar plexus twinged.
Her eyes widened again as if she could see all the way across time. Her mind wandered back to her earlier question. “You’re an angel?”
“You can see that? Then you should know. I carry an angel inside my seventh chakra, inside the energy center in the top of my head. If you’re gifted, you might see it as a halo. I’m the Last Priest of Daegan, a god who was known also as Archangel Michael. There’s a space in my etheric body where I carry him until he is ready to use my body for his human form, but we are joined. Just as you are joined with…”
She brightened. “I’ve got an angel inside me, too?”
He smiled sadly at her. “No, Lilah. When you were a little girl, the only way you could cope with your torture was to allow your soul to leave your body and go elsewhere, and when you did, you left a space in your seventh chakra for something stronger than you to come in and walk your path with you. You wouldn’t have survived otherwise. You have a dark force attached to you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m a monster. Like the man who kidnapped me when I was a kid.”
“Not a monster. A demon had attached to his soul. It moved from him to you in those last days because there was empty space in your etheric body. You’re not a monster, and the demon doesn’t harm you. He feeds off the pain you live with, just like he fed off the pain that your kidnapper inflicted. You’re an empath and that’s the perfect host for such a being who loves pain.”
“Get rid of it!”
“I can’t, but when you no longer hurt yourself, it will leave you.” That’s what Raven believed, at least. If he could take away her past trauma and she could stop listening to the demon’s whispers that led her to new trauma, she could heal and be whole.
With trembling fingertips, she touched his jaw. “How do I find you?”
“You won’t for a while. You won’t even remember me until the time is right.” He smiled. “Until I do this again.”
He could have sung to her or chanted Chaldean lullabies. He could have employed a dozen methods to enchant her memories, tuck them away, but instead, he chose a kiss. Not deep or famished or a prelude to cold sex. No, tender. Sweet. Something he doubted she’d had much of. She needed to feel wanted in the tenderest of ways, not for someone’s entertainment but for who she was.
She made a little noise in the back of her throat. The sound felt like relief, like safety, like home.
Raven knew the instant that the work he had set out to do in the past had been accomplished.
It started with the tiniest of tugs, like a slender thread attached to his solar plexus and pulling him backward. From there it grew into a string, and then a cord, silver, yanking him backward toward his body and The Book of Time. His body seemed to fold in on itself, imploding at his solar plexus and dragging him backward across the years.
Focus, he told himself.
He had to stay alert. Time was both of the essence and the essence of his problems when he returned. If he changed life for the better for Lilah, even the smallest bit, it was better than the future he had left where she had died at the hands of Jakin. Whatever temporary future he created for her as well as for himself, it was imperative that he etch the sigil into his flesh as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the future he returned to was one where Lilah was dead and Jakin was hauling him back to Aoife for whatever punishment she had planned.
Jakin had always wanted to be the Last Priest so that he could ascend and usher Earth into a new age. He wanted it for the power though. Aoife had denied him that, initiating a string of male priests closer to that role than Jakin, the last of which and the only one surviving being Raven himself. If Raven died before ascension, then the mantel would fall to Jakin Crutchfield. Even if he returned to this new future to find himself limbless and Lilah with three heads, it would be a better future than the one he had left.
He had to act fast, even if he didn’t know what he was choosing behind door number three. He only knew it had to be better than what was behind the previous two doors of time.
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