Between His Hands
We walked down a narrow hallway. The rooms were open, and I saw that one had a single bed inside and another one had a sleeper sofa opened all the way, covered in sheets and pillows, big enough that it took up almost all the space in the small room. Other than that, there was only a small bureau against the wall with a lamp on it. The bulb was dim but still bright enough that I could see the blackout shade over the window.
Nike gestured for me to follow her across the hallway to a small dining area. I smelled the Irish stew before I stepped into the room. Someone had put a fresh, large pot in the center of the table. Silverware enough for three or four people had been bundled with a pile of paper napkins and a stack of black plastic bowls. Two pitchers of water were on either side of the pot of stew.
“Sit,” Nike ordered. “Eat something. Then you’ll feel better, and we can talk more.”
I sat in a straight-backed chair as she spooned beef, carrots, and potatoes into a bowl for me.
“You want company?” she asked. “Or would you rather be alone?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Alone then.” She smiled at me. “It was a rhetorical question, love. You’re an empath, but I have gifts of my own.” Then she winked. “Sleep well.”
She left me then, alone in the room that smelled of Irish stew and walls of windows covered in shades too heavy for light to escape. She was right.
I took the first spoonful of stew in my mouth, lost myself in its flavor, and began to sob in a way that I never would have in the presence of another living soul.
When I was done with the stew and all my tears seemed to be used up, I pushed the bowl aside and leaned my head on the table, cushioned by my forearms. I may have fallen asleep.
Sleep well.
After a while, I heard voices in the hallway. I raised my head, blinking. Two other black plastic bowls were on the table as well now, both dirty. I scanned the small room. The pot of Irish stew was gone. Half of the cutlery was missing. The pitchers of water were empty and half empty.
How long had I been asleep? And was I sure that I was asleep and not poisoned? I turned behind me to look at the wall for a clock, but there was none.
“Did you have a good nap?” Nike strolled into the room, followed by Illyria and then the bartender from downstairs, who quickly gathered up the remaining dirty dishes, trash, and clean cutlery onto a large, circular tray.
Once the bartender was gone, Illyria sighed in Nike’s ear. “Do not tease her. You know she is exhausted.”
Nike shrugged. “You’re right, love. I thought a sleep suggestion might benefit her, but she needs far more than that.” She stood behind my chair, both palms on my shoulders. I could almost feel strength surging back through me.
“Better?” she whispered.
I nodded. I knew that passing energy as well as draining energy were gifts of most any Daeganean priestess but to my knowledge I had not experienced it firsthand before.
“Good.” She patted my right shoulder. “You’ve had a little rest and gotten your belly full. Now we can get down to work.”
“How long was I asleep?”
She laughed. “Four hours. And how you managed to sleep through the two of us chattering away over dinner! My enchantment skills must be raging tonight. Not even a Daeganean earthquake could have roused you.”
“Daeganean earthquake?”
She chuckled. “It happens. Study the history of Ireland, and you’ll understand better what I mean. It’s never intentional though. Sometimes we work with great energy, and it has to go somewhere, and it’s safest to put it in the ground.”
I frowned at her but said nothing. I had heard Emry talk about how as a witch and a Morrigan priestess, she occasionally pushed negative energy into the ground rather than throw it up into the sky. Emry always said she had to either get rid of it or ground it, and that at least with whatever esoteric work she did, the earth was big enough to take it.
I looked at the empty table, devoid now of cutlery, napkins, and bowls for the stew. The only hint that dinner had been served was the water rings left by the pitchers.
“Did Raven eat with us?”
I hadn’t seen him here yet, and I wanted to. I liked both of the blondes, and they’d both been incredibly supportive in the past day, but for some reason I trusted Raven most. I wasn’t sure how or why I trusted him. It wasn’t like I trusted many people these days. But for some reason, he was easy to trust. Then again, for all I knew, it was another magical trick designed to persuade me to be someplace that maybe I shouldn’t be. Or even becoming allies with someone I shouldn’t. I just didn’t know anymore. I needed to trust someone, and I supposed that if Dru trusted him, her judgment was better than mine. After all, I had trusted Charlie. Then again, so had she.
Maybe Raven was easy to trust because of the bond he’d established when he had pressed his bind rune to my scar and had shown me flashes of truth. Emry had told me once that witches knew that energy was a two-way street. If she used her gifts to peer into someone’s secrets, she had to open that window to peer in—and that meant the other party could see Emry’s secrets through the same window. There was no way to peer through a closed window. Maybe the sharing of psychic gifts like Raven’s—and Nike and Illyria’s—allowed me to know them as well as they knew me. I was certainly more comfortable with Nike and Illyria than I should have been after knowing them for only hours.
“Raven,” Illyria answered in her heavy Greek accent, “will not eat until morning. He has been fasting for three days in preparation for the ritual tonight.”
“And I get to… watch this ritual?” At this point, I wasn’t sure if I was to be the main sacrifice.
The two blondes looked at each other, then back at me. Illyria spoke first.
“It is not exactly a ritual. It is more of a working, if you will.”
Nike continued to rub my shoulder but bent forward to whisper in my ear again. “But nothing for you to be concerned about.”
Suddenly, I understood. Nike was reading my worries now, just as she had done earlier in the day and even in the car. She was psychic, maybe empathic, despite what she’d claimed.
Almost as quickly, I also understood what it must be like for Charlie all the time with me around, stealing glimpses of his feelings and his inner conflicts without knowing the exact nature of what drove his emotions. It was disconcerting to be on this side of the gift. Just as empathing the emotions of someone else in distress can sometimes feel like a curse, maybe my gift for experiencing someone else’s feelings firsthand was equally upsetting for the person who couldn’t guard against the intrusion of my knowing.
I’d never thought of it that way before. I’d seen it only from my side, both how wonderful and how horrible being an empath could be. Yet I’d never thought about how it was for the people around me, whether they loved me or hated me knowing that I was inadvertently spying on their deepest emotions and that I was a living, breathing lie detector who needed only to be in their presence, and sometimes not even that much.
Nike patted my right shoulder again. “Stop worrying, okay? You have no reason to fear either us or your abilities. There is no place more understanding of who and what you are than the people in this safe house.”
I swiveled my shoulder out from under her touch. “I didn’t think anyone was allowed to witness a Daeganean ritual.”
I had though. Three times with Jakin. Twice as preparatory rituals and the third with the intent of wiping my existence from the planet.
Hah. And people wonder why I have trust issues.
Illyria seemed to read my mind. Probably Nike, too, but she was out of my line of sight. Psychic ability wasn’t the same thing as empathy. Empaths blindly felt what others felt without any explanation or reason why. But psychics and intuitives saw flashes of the truth or simply instantly knew without necessarily experiencing the emotion that came with what they saw.
“How much do you know about the Order of Daegan?”
“Not much.” I shrugged. “Enough.”
I knew, for example, that at least one High Priest of Daegan had tried to exorcise my soul for the sake of the love of another woman. I knew that they were affiliated somehow with the Historical Society and that they had both real librarians and protectors like me. I knew that some seemed to have sinister intentions, while others were altruistic. I knew they didn’t differentiate between witch and priest but preferred the latter term. And I knew that they were a secret society dedicated to a god who had walked the Earth long before Jesus, a winged god who’d been a powerful Chaldean prince, and a god whom it was said would return when the Earth was destroyed and made anew. All religions have their mythologies, but outside of the priesthood, almost no one knew which mythology surrounded Daegan, the god of the spark of life and the god of destruction all in one.
“I will tell you, Lilah, things that no one outside the priesthood knows.” Behind me, Nike gasped, but Illyria held up a hand to calm her. “We have our rituals, yes, and though you have been a part of one, that ritual was not purely Daeganean. Instead, it was a ritual that could have been performed with the tools and beliefs of any religion— Christianity, Wicca, Daeganity, even believers in the law of attraction. I would say atheists could have, but only if they believe in any type of afterlife, given that it was a resurrection ritual you participated in. In addition, the priest who involved you has his own agenda that is not for the good of the priesthood or humanity. Especially not for your good, Lilah. You see, you should not equate what you have experienced in the past with our typical ritual. Sex magic is not the foundation of our manifestations. What you will see tonight will be neither a typical, solitary or group ritual, nor anything resembling what you have experienced with Jakin Crutchfield.”
I winced at the name. Nike sputtered something unintelligible behind me.
So I was right. Illyria had at least some psychic ability. Either that or somewhere there was a very thick dossier on me. As far as I knew, no one knew what had happened between Jakin and me, except for Jakin.
“Tonight, we prepare sacred space for Raven Darbyshire, Lord Aryx of Daegan, the last and final priest of a dead god, to apply his gifts in a sacred circle while we bear witness and offer protection so that he will not be disturbed, nor will he wander from his path. Come now. Bear witness to the authentication of The Lost Teachings.”
With that, Illyria hiked her chin and strode out of the room. I noticed for the first time that she was barefoot. So was Nike.
Nike gestured for me to rise and remove my shoes. Barefoot, we followed Illyria to the end of the corridor to a large room lit only in candles. Not just candles, but circles of candles, like a giant spiral, or a labyrinth. There was nothing else in the room, except that in the very center—in the smallest, innermost circle—shimmered the real Lost Teachings of Dead Monks, wrapped in a single, cotton cloth on the polished wood floor that caught the light.
Illyria turned and put one slim finger to her lips. She took my hand and led me in a clockwise circle around the room. I couldn’t tell if she stopped me in the North, East, South, or West; I had no idea of which direction the pub faced or even where I was on the map other than being nine kilometers from the Cliffs of Moher, somewhere amid road signs in Gaelic with the English name of the town, Doolin.
Illyria dropped my hand, turned toward the center of the room, and extended hands, palms up. She said a single word in a loud voice, but for all the languages I have known, this one I didn’t recognize. It sounded vaguely like one of the words from a chant I had heard from Jakin’s lips during the ritual in which he had tried to remove my soul.
Nike then walked twice clockwise around the room on the outside of the spiral of candles, and at a point that was obviously preordained, she stopped, turned toward the center of the circle, and extended both palms. She called out a different word in a voice so loud, it hurt my ears as it echoed throughout the room.
Illyria walked behind me then and circled the room three times. The third time around the room, she stopped at a spot sixty degrees to my right, the same distance as Nike to my left. Illyria extended her palms to the center of the circle and cried out a third word from whatever lost language she spoke.
I understood, then, we were not representing the four corners of the Earth, but sea, sky, and land, the three parts of the world.
Both blondes lowered their arms, still palms up, in front of them. They opened their arms, hands at their sides, palms facing the inner circle as if to absorb all of the firelight in the room.
Nike nodded at me, and I imitated their motions, suddenly feeling the strong tingle of energy in my own palms, just as I had when standing near the altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The rush of energy in my fingertips climbed through my wrists, up into my forearms, into my shoulders. The two separate influxes crawled down my shoulders, into my chest, and met in its center. From there, the heat and light inside me burst at my heart’s chakra. The energy rushed upward, into my head and out my crown at the same time it rushed downward, out each foot and into the wood beneath my bare feet.
I couldn’t see the energy, though I suspected both of the blondes could. But I could feel it, the way it entered my palms and flowed out both my crown and feet and interlaced with Nike and Illyria’s energies to form a net within the room. I felt the same sense of euphoria, the same ecstasy I imagined that ancient saints had felt at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and probably ancient peoples who had made pilgrimages there long before. Here I was, lost in this energy, not able to move, not wanting to move, just soaking it up, being a part of something greater.
Damn, I thought, if this is what it’s like to be a Daeganean priestess, I might take the oaths myself.
Illyria must have known what I was thinking because she glanced in my direction and winked. The room felt as if it were the inside of some secret vault with invisible laser beams crisscrossing and weaving all around us. Then the energy wavered and changed.
In my peripheral vision, a tall shadow appeared in the doorway. Raven.
I couldn’t turn my head to look at him, but the first thing I saw was his bare feet, then bare legs, strong muscles in his calves and thighs. Then the scars, gleaming in the candlelight. Above his knees, more stripes on one side than the other. Unreal, as if they were tattooed into his legs or had never been as deep as they looked now.
What was it Nike had told me about Raven not wanting to be a priest at first, but Aoife had healed his broken body to entice him to take his vows?
He strolled into the room at the opening of the spiral of candles. He said something in the unknown language, and then in a quiet voice, translated: “This is sacred space. Sea, sky, and land converge here between the worlds. What is known must be known. I invite this coning of power to show us the secrets of what has gone before. We are safe here, in the name of Lord Daegan.”
Raven took another step into the room, and I saw his entire body against the candlelight. He was naked, from bare feet to the top of his head, and all the muscles and scars in between.
My breath caught in my throat. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a man more beautiful and perfect. His long, brown hair hung loosely on his shoulders, halfway down his back and his chest. His skin shone in the candlelight. Though I momentarily caught his gaze, I couldn’t help but glance downward to his dangling penis. When I raised my eyes, I realized I’d been caught. My cheeks burned, but he only smiled.
Raven moved forward, and the energy in the room shifted. He walked slowly, following the clockwise spiral as he circled the artifact. He kept his eye on the path in front of him, not looking up at any one of us as he passed us—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times.
The spiral of candles ushered him straight into the inner circle, which was still probably ten feet in diameter. He stood for a moment, said something that sounded like a prayer of gratitude or maybe a request for clarity, and knelt on the floor in front of The Lost Teachings. Carefully, he unwrapped the cloth. Eyes closed, he tilted his head backward and opened both palms on either side of his thighs.
The energy in the room shifted once again, balancing feminine and masculine as well as sea, sky, and land against the power in the middle of the room. As the energy ebbed and flowed and swirled around us, he brought his hands together, fingertip to fingertip, and then palm to palm.
Raven opened his eyes and then slowly looked down at the book. He placed both hands on top.
Instantly, his brow knitted. He looked up at me, startled.
“You’ve read the book,” he said quietly as if it were a personal translation of this “working’.”
How could I not feel ashamed? I’d promised the senator I wouldn’t read it, and I’d broken that promise. I hadn’t told Raven or the priestesses that I had seen it either, except for what Raven had shown me in the Scholar’s Library. I might have known that there would be no secrets here. With gifts like Nike and Illyria’s, true secrets were nearly impossible, and I had yet to figure out exactly what gifts Raven possessed.
He lifted his hands off the book, rubbed them together, and pressed them again against the decorated cover. The expression on his face changed to dazed, as if he had just been struck in the head with a bat. He let out a tormented sound.
“Charlie’s read it, too.” His voice was hoarse, pained. He looked at me from his inner circle. “Both you and Charlie have used this book, and you’ve changed your futures.” He shook his head. “Not for the better, either of you.”
I stared at him. I wanted to ask how he knew, but that much was obvious. I had expected that Raven’s offer to authenticate The Lost Teachings had been based on some expertise in rare books and that he would spend hours or days checking the pigment of the paintings that resembles the Book of Kells or comparing the script to other books of that era. I had envisioned him studying each page under a magnifying glass with white gloves and little wands that helped him to turn each page gently. But I had been wrong.
I understood now what one of Raven’s gifts was. The fasting and three days of meditation must have amplified it because now, in this sacred setting, he could touch an object and know its history: everything that had touched it, everyone who had touched it, all of the intentions of everyone who had touched it. Everything that artifact had witnessed, Raven knew it, and he knew it all.
But Charlie, Charlie had used the law of attraction artifact as well. I couldn’t have guessed. Charlie had tried to change his future. Why? Had he tried to change his destiny into something with Rune? And if he had, had he changed it into his highest hopes or his deepest fears?
Had I changed mine, too? Had I brought about my fear of losing Charlie? Had I manifested everything I had worried most about?
Illyria glared at me, a warning to stop and watch. On the other side of me, Nike sighed, no doubt feeling my pain as I had felt Charlie’s distance over the last few months.
Whatever Raven saw and felt, he shook it off, placed his palms together again, and then opened the book. He didn’t bother to read the script or wordings beneath his fingers. He simply splayed both hands across the contents of the book.
He kneeled like that for what must have been five minutes, took a deep, visible breath, and then turned the page. Page after page of beautiful mazes, and he laid his hands on each one.
Hours must have passed. Under normal circumstances, my feet and back would have hurt from standing in such a rigid position for so long, but the energy seemed to caress my body, absorb any pain, and shoot the very essence of life through my veins. I couldn’t imagine how he was able to kneel in that position for so long. After he lifted his hands from the last page, he closed the cover and rewrapped it in linen. When he looked up at me, then Illyria, then Nike, tears streamed down his face.
“It’s real,” he said. “All of it. It’s authentic.”
I wondered if Dru would have envied him this ability. I watched often as she authenticated rare books and laughed at fakes, even good fakes. Not that I could imagine Dru kneeling naked on a candlelit floor.
He sat back on his heels, face to the ceiling, and I realized for the first time that the tall, domed shape of the room was covered in a skylight, and I could see stars above. He closed his eyes, but I had the feeling he could see the stars anyway. He prayed, lips moving, words barely audible. Even if they had been audible, they would not have been decipherable. I had never heard anything like the language. At times I thought I caught a hint of Latin, but tones were softer. I strained to hear him. It seemed for a moment that he was singing, but there was no music—only the rich cadence of his prayers.
I wish he’d pray for me, I thought. I wish someone would. I wish someone had the power to help me.
The euphoria of the energy eased my sadness over Charlie and bolstered my desire to be a healed and whole person again, as whole as I had been as a very small child, before everything in my life had gone wrong.
Raven’s eyes popped open, looking directly at me. “As you wish it, so mote it be.”
Startled, I stumbled backward and almost lost my balance.
“You’ve asked for help,” he said. “I am required to give it if you ask. It is one of the tenets of our faith. Come.” He beckoned, but I didn’t move.
Illyria nodded, then Nike.
“Go,” they both urged, “but follow the path to the inner circle.”
In some other time and place, it might have seemed like a dream, this idea of walking to the center of a candlelit spiral where a gorgeous, naked man waited for me, beckoning. But in this space, it seemed completely natural, fated almost. I walked the spiral, seven times around, the giddiness of the energy affecting my entire body more and more the closer I got to the center of the room.
Still kneeling, he beckoned for me to come closer, then helped me kneel in front of him. He placed his hand on my cheek, more tenderly than any lover, and ran his fingers through my hair, pulling me forward so that he could kiss my forehead.
“You are loved,” he whispered. “All this turbulence you bring to you, it comes to you because you have a gift that draws to you those that seek it, even if they are monsters. But I can help you. Come be my student. Commit yourself to this path. Become a priestess of Daegan. Be immortal with us.”
“Immortal?”
“Immortality isn’t to be had in any one body. Immortality is multiple lifetimes for the same soul. I can teach you that so that you will be here to tend the new Earth when it comes. Let your destiny intertwine with ours.”
I wanted to tell him I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he sounded so convincing. He took my wrist in his hands and placed each thumb on the scars on my wrists. If I had had any doubts, they were gone.
I saw it all. Purpose in life. Purpose even beyond being the protector of the world’s most dangerous books. He rubbed his thumbs in clockwise circles over the scars, and I saw it all: the importance of continuing the human race, of repopulating the Earth one day, after everything around us was gone. I caught just enough of a glimpse to know that what he was saying was true. Then he stopped rubbing clockwise circles and switched to counterclockwise, and all of it faded away in that instant.
“Show me who you are,” he whispered. “Show me who you are so I can help you heal. Help me to destroy everything in your past so that you can feel the god spark again. Walk with lightning in your being.”
I wanted to remind him that not all members of the priesthood were healed or whole, and surely, I could point to Jakin as an example of that.
Raven shook his head. “Not all priests and priestesses define ‘whole’ the same way. For some, wholeness is bringing back someone they lost whom they felt completed them. For you, it’s having back that part of yourself that you lost as a child. Come, lie here naked in front of me.”
I touched my shirt, but he shook his head.
“Not that kind of naked. I meant, emotionally and spiritually naked in front of me. Clothes don’t matter. Energy can go through walls, across miles, across time. A cotton or denim sheath? That means nothing. Lie here.”
He tapped the floor in front of him. I sprawled awkwardly on the floor next to him. He rolled me over to face the other way, bent my legs under me, and positioned my head forward. Then, he bent over me, one palm on the top of my head and his other hand encasing my bare feet.
“All that you are,” he whispered. “All that you are, I will work to make whole again. This I swear to you, and this I swear to the gods. Everything between my hands, I shall spend my life to make whole again.”
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