Almost Heaven on Earth
Ehwaz timeline, total lunar eclipse
Three of Cups Compound, somewhere in what was once the State of Virginia
Raven felt sick to his stomach. Fighting the nausea, he held his breath and kept his eyes closed.
He felt himself slowing down, almost drifting. His ears popped, like a change in pressure. He smelled fruit trees and green grass as the ground beneath him became solid. He opened the eye that wasn’t pressed hard against blades of grass and cool stone.
The labyrinth of stone and grass blurred and sharpened as he lifted his head. He remembered this place as clearly as he remembered the other courtyard, the one with charred grass, the angel-human chimera, the soldiers, Jakin, and Lilah… dead. Both competed for space in his memories: one full of noise and horror and the other, this one, quiet and still smelling of rabbit roasted over a spit and a summer squash baked in the edge of a fire pit. Two timelines, one fading, and a choice of which to be permanent and which to let go.
His legs. He glanced over his shoulder, down the faded camouflage uniform of some less significant war, to his boots. He wiggled his toes inside the worn leather, then flexed his feet. Relief washed over him. In this timeline, he at least had his legs back.
But Lilah?
He pushed to his elbows and scanned the courtyard for signs of her. The bonfires burned at opposite ends of the compound, which was fully intact, undisturbed by super-soldiers or corrupt priests or an angry Angelseed. Still a safe place. They’d been here, in this location for the last two years, he and Lilah. The memories of her flooded back in a rush.
His best friend, his lover, his partner, his wife.
They’d been together for six years, on the run from The Shift even before it happened, then on the run from After The Shift, the bands of survivors out for themselves… and the factions that Aoife sent after them. On the run from Jakin, too.
Jakin had been the last of the priests and bound for the glory he wanted as an ascended god, not so that he could lead the dregs of humanity into a new era but for the sheer power. He craved the power—both for its euphoria and for how he might use it to bring back to him the love he’d lost. He’d tried to sacrifice Lilah on the altar of resurrection in the past Raven now remembered, but it hadn’t worked.
In the other timeline that warred with this one, Jakin didn’t need her anymore for his plans, and that had made her disposable. She’d been nothing more than a deterrent to killing Raven when he’d been at his weakest. What Jakin wanted was to be the Last Priest and heir to the power of Lord Daegan, but to be the Last Priest meant all the priests who’d been initiated after him had to die.
“Did you find her?”
He jerked his head up to see Lilah perched on the boulder above him, in the center of the labyrinth with the glow of firelight on her cheeks. Not a naked and scarred Lilah, not an overly traumatized Lilah, but Lilah with her hair in a long braid and a uniform similar to his, necessary for utility more than camaraderie. She relaxed on the big rock and swung her booted feet.
“Um, who?” It was harder than he’d imagined, keeping one foot—figuratively speaking—in each timeline. It was almost like seeing the present with both eyes, but each seeing a different landscape and both playing out in double vision of the same instant.
She slid down the rock to sit beside him. “The Angelseed. Did you find her?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she said, “Hey, are you okay, sweetie?”
Rolling onto his back, Raven stared up at the blood moon and a spark of light at one edge. He bolted upright. The eclipse was still ongoing but already the moon was moving out of Earth’s shadow. Soon, the door to the past would close for another eclipse cycle. It could be the last time in his current life and even in future incarnations if he didn’t choose the right timeline.
He scrambled for The Book of Time on the ground beside him. The sigil on parchment, some kind of tower like at Florida University, was already starting to fade. He patted the ground where he’d last seen the hair-dagger, at first gently and then frantically.
“Hey!” She cupped a loving hand over his shoulder. “What are you looking for?”
“My hair-daggers!” He patted the ground between them, looked under his own body, and skimmed the ground around them. Nothing. No matter what might be wrong that he did not yet know in this timeline, he had Lilah and he had his legs. The sigil was barely visible now in the firelight.
“Raven. Raven, they’re in your hair.”
Yes. Yes, he was confusing all the timelines now. The human mind, even that of a priest of Daegan, wasn’t intended to remember more than one timeline for long. It’s why humans didn’t remember all their dreams. Too confusing. Too burdensome. Madness.
He pulled a dagger from his topknot and sank the tiny blade into the skin above his wrist, just above a scar of a sword embraced by a poppy. He etched the sigil of a tower into his skin and watched it heal into a scar that looked as if it had been there his entire life, then collapsed on the ground. He’d done it. He’d kept at bay the future where Jakin had murdered Lilah and taken him captive.
“Dude.” Lilah stifled a laugh. “Really?”
The memories of this timeline solidified, and the others shifted into some far-off corner of his mind like a nightmare he could only just recall. The memories that blazed to life were of Lilah and all the nights they’d huddled together on the run and made love in safer moments. He’d never kissed her, though, so he’d never broken the spell and let the old traumas cloud her mind and heart. The demon was still a part of her, buried in her crown chakra and occasionally feeding on her old grief, but still subdued enough that it didn’t control her. If anything, it protected her, but it was no longer visible by its swirling auras and his ears rarely rang. Raven could take that pain away from her with one more journey through time. He was sure of it.
But for now, her laughter tasted sweet in the moment. He made a gesture, asking what she meant by her burst of giggles.
“I think I understand how The Book of Time works, but I also think it’s playing a joke on you.” She pointed at his newest scar. “You have a few minutes with each journey to decide whether to keep it, and if you do, you cut the design into your body. Physical for physical. A form of sacrifice because an exchange of energy is required. But a scar shaped like a phallic symbol?”
Raven pressed his lips into a pout. “It’s… it’s a tower. I went back to the time you were working on your graduate degree. Before you joined the Air Force. There’s a tower there. A couple of them. On the campus.”
“If you say so.” Like she didn’t know there were multiple towers. “This must be a really fun timeline we’re in now.”
“It’s a tower.”
“Dude. It’s a dick.”
He frowned at the lines of his scar. Maybe it was. Maybe it represented the boyfriend who’d traumatized her. The one she’d killed. Or rather, the demon had. He wasn’t going to remind her of that pain though. He loved this lightness about her. She could remember the periphery of the event, but not the blood on her hands or bodies on the floor.
He found himself smiling at her now instead. The memories were fresh, warm. Some hot. The memory of her snuggled up against him in the ground-level shipping container where they slept at night in an internal row of redesigned containers that doubled as apartments. Eating fruit off the trees in the courtyard. Lilah using a solar battery to recharge an old electric toothbrush so she could touch it to the tomato plants to force them to pollinate in the absence of a satisfactory count of bees. Lilah later singing to a small hive of bees to coax their blessings on her garden. The two of them together, building a magical labyrinth they both remembered from a book they’d rescued for the St. Augustine Special Collections Library, The Book of Labyrinths, to tell them how to stay safe here. Reading their secret stash of ancient manuscripts and centuries-old books in their downsized library of works curated by the priesthood, plus a couple from a tunnel hideaway in the mountains of Afghanistan. The two of them sitting in front of the fire pits at night and searching for other survivors during the day. Using their combined magical energies to confuse the drones that flew above. The occasional small group of people they’d met on the run, though there were fewer people every season.
Were it not for the fact that he was the Last Priest and there was so little of humanity left to save, he could spend the rest of his days happy with Lilah and charming smiles from her as often as possible.
He couldn’t shirk his responsibility though. And who knew if Jakin was still alive and greedy in this timeline?
It’s one thing if I’m the one who ascends, but if it were left to Jakin to take that role, Daegan help us all.
Raven knew he himself could be a good Last Priest and a satisfactory host to a resurrected god. He had the moral fortitude to set in motion all the things that humanity needed to survive, a legacy that would last long after his physical body was used up and maybe after the last of his incarnations as Lord Aryx. Maybe after the end of the priesthood itself. The survival of his name and his short span on Earth didn’t matter so much as what would come after, and he went into it knowing that he would likely never see the full extent of what he was building. Nor did he have to. He wasn’t building a new world for himself or for Lilah but for the next evolution of mankind.
Jakin, on the other hand, would use his power for himself and to bring the things into his life that had eluded him. Aoife would not be pleased, and when the High Priestess wasn’t happy, everyone felt her misery. Whether Jakin and Aoife teamed up or declared war on one another, neither would be good for the next generation, either of new souls or of those reincarnated through the priesthood’s resurrection rituals.
Still, Jakin Crutchfield didn’t have the two things required for him to ascend: an angel and an empath.
The Angelseed. Pleasant thoughts of Lilah had distracted him, but that was who she was thinking of when he’d returned from his journey.
“I didn’t encounter her. At all.”
Not since the other timeline where she’d stormed the compound. And once long ago before she left Aoife’s laboratory where she’d been injected with DNA found in an ancient Chaldean city that had been home to Archangel Michael.
In this timeline, the purpose of their time journeys together had been to locate Mika, the Angelseed who’d escaped from an underground facility in Slovenia. There had been other angel chimera, but most had not survived their transformations. Most had died of hideous metamorphoses. Humans weren’t meant to have wings—though needed in this new age of Earth to provide three-dimensional defense against enemies and faster transportation of goods and messages—and they certainly weren’t meant to take on other qualities of the fusion of DNA, like becoming a blob of flesh with a thousand eyes. All it took was one of the experiments to work on the right recipient of angel DNA, and the chimera would be both a path to ascension for the Last Priest and a weapon against any warring faction.
“Then you have to try again to find her.” Lilah stared up at the slightly curved crescent of light against the ruddy color of the earth’s shadow on the full moon. “We don’t have much time. You can almost see how fast the window is closing.”
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