Dark Forces Follow You Both
Tessa held up her index finger, then she mouthed, “One moment.” She walked quickly over to the old couple perusing the ancient history section of not-so-rare books. She whispered something—“family emergency” was all he could hear. They nodded and put the books away. She followed them to the door and locked it behind them before she flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED.
Tessa was beautiful. He didn’t remember her this way, young, light of heart even though she may not have seemed like it on the outside. He knew her as older, with more gray in her hair than brown. Her accent was heavier now than when he had known her, but other than that, he knew almost everything about her. What he could remember, at least. This was the priestess who had taken him in after his parents’ death, and he had loved her like his mother until—
“I don’t know who you are,” Tessa began as she backed away a few more steps, “but neither of you should be here. Dark forces follow you both.” She frowned. “Not even the same dark forces.”
He held up his right hand and pulled up his sleeve to show her the bind rune tattoo that he had melded to the sigil in The Book of Time. It was explanation enough for any priest or priestess to honor his request, even if they were adversaries within the Order of Daegan or did not yet know if they were friend or foe. No priest or priestess would ever deny the asylum it represented.
Tessa nodded slowly and extended her own wrist to show the markings he already knew were there. “And her?”
Aubrey checked her own wrists, one at a time as if she expected to find a bind rune tattoo of her own to show as the price for admission to their club.
Raven laughed, deep in his throat with a smile that touched his eyes. He and Tessa used to giggle and tease to relieve tense moments, and he hadn’t laughed like that in a long, long time. “Just me.”
Tessa cut her laughter short. “I’d know that sound anywhere. Stewart? Or a twin? Your energy isn’t quite the same as— Oh, my word!”
Raven stopped laughing. Stewart was his father. He and Raven’s mother, Erica, had been close friends with Tessa, all of them initiated into the priesthood at the same time.
Tessa plopped down in the chair behind her. “No. No, no, no. You have your father’s laugh. And his eyes. I would know those eyes anywhere. You look like Stewart, but with your mother’s nose, her smile. Only… you don’t exist.”
“I exist, just not yet.”
Shaking her head enough to muss her hair, Tessa stared at him. “You are like… you are like looking at a ghost. Your energy is split. Not bilocation. Split between times. Places, too. I can almost see through you. You’re traveling through time from somewhere that is… in the “After” time. But her—” She waved a trembling hand at Aubrey.
“She exists in your present. And with your help, Tessa, she will continue to exist in the future.”
Tessa ran her fingers through her hair. She studied Aubrey as Aubrey snuggled up close to her one security. “I see them. The men who were following her. There are more of them. They won’t stop unless she’s under the protection of a priest.”
“It can’t be me. I can’t stay here.”
He could choose the sacred gift of omnipresence and see across the distance to the future when he chose to, but not here, not now. Not when he was time-hopping. Unlike the demon, Raven couldn’t hold onto “all time is now” across multiple timelines.
“The girl’s not safe.”
Aubrey whimpered. “Why are they after me? I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“You are an empath, child. You are of the line of…” She stared at some imaginary image above Aubrey’s head. “You are of the line of Joan of Arc. They wouldn’t kill you. It was all a ruse to get you to give up your secrets more readily. Like a good cop, bad cop game to break you psychologically. Their job was to deliver you to someone who would put you into a lifetime of servitude. You would lose everything. You would give up your baby.”
“I-I don’t have a baby.”
“You will.”
Raven softened his voice so she wouldn’t be scared. “A daughter. A very important daughter.” He turned quickly to Tessa. “So I haven’t messed up the timeline. She will still have a daughter?”
“Yes, she will still have a daughter. And yes, you have messed up the timeline.”
How? Was it killing the “bad cop” Ginger and putting the “good cop” Green Eyes out of commission? Was it hauling Audrey out of harm’s way, fleeing to a roof top, and using his belt over a cable to zip-line down to safety? Or something less dramatic, like coming here to Tessa? Given a chance to do it all over again, he would. For all he knew, it was as simple as the elderly shoppers in the bookstore talking to the wrong people about Tessa’s “family emergency.”
It didn’t matter. Aubrey was safe. If the prophecy from countless Daeganean books were true—and he believed it was—she’d give birth to an empath who would play a key role in the rebuilding of the human race. He would return to the courtyard, and the new version of Lilah Burns would be… not a lunatic. All because he’d changed some awful something her mother had lived through that had caused her to leave Lilah in danger as a child.
“If I messed up the timeline, then maybe I should tell you that—”
She waved him off. “No, no, don’t tell me! Anything you tell me now might influence the future in a way that would cause too much damage to the priesthood.”
He snorted but said nothing. If only Tessa knew what factions were to come within the priesthood and the petty fights for power between Aoife and Terre, Aoife and his parents, Aoife and, well, almost everyone, including him.
A growing feeling gnawed at his gut. He could feel the tug now. He had already been there for the crucial moment, whatever it was. Most likely keeping Aubrey from being kidnapped. He was being called back by The Book of Time.
“Tessa? In the name of Lord Daegan, I ask your aid. Not for myself, but for her.”
“Anything. Name it.”
“Terrence Vanderholt. You know him?”
What he meant to ask was, Is Terre the same man now that I will know later? Because Raven trusted that man with his life. And Aubrey’s. If Tessa had taken him in and had been like a mother to him, then Terre had been his surrogate father. Terre was a powerful High Priest in this era, almost as powerful as Aoife would become and possibly the only person in this time period who could protect Aubrey and her daughter. Tessa was no slouch at the dark arts, but Terre was like a king among their kind.
“Get her to Terre. Tonight. He’s at the Scholar’s Library in Dublin. If I have my history correct.”
“You do. Okay, I need to go home and pack a bag and—”
“No, Tessa. No time for that. When I leave here, I need you to take her then. Do you understand? She’s important to the next age.”
“Wow, the end days are really coming, aren’t they? Okay, then. I’ll put out the fire, and we’ll leave from here.” She hit a few buttons on the cash register, opened the drawer, and began taking out money. Raven knew it wasn’t necessary. All priestesses and their librarians had a go-bag hidden close by.
“I have one more request.”
“In the name of Daegan?”
“No.” He paused. “Hug me, please?”
Confused, she obliged. Maybe she with her intuitive powers could see into the past he remembered that hadn’t happened to her yet or maybe she simply took pity on him. He wrapped himself into her open arms and breathed deep that familiar scent from so long ago. Not the scent of dragon’s blood or the scent of the custom mix of rose oil and frankincense that most priestesses favored, but the warm, delicious aroma of fresh-baked cookies and hot chocolate with real marshmallow, adapted from the biscuits and cocoa recipes she’d brought with her to the States. No matter where he and Tessa lived in their years on the run together from the priesthood, warm cookies and hot chocolate had been the one constant. He let out a long sigh, feeling himself fading in Tessa’s arms.
“Swear to me one thing,” he choked out. His eyes were stinging.
Her body was stiff against his. This Tessa didn’t know him yet, and he regretted not hugging her more often when she became his mother and protector. Could she see into the future? How much she’d mean to him?
“Anything.”
His hair was caught in their hug. He pushed it out of his eyes, patting his head before remembering he’d left his hair-daggers in Ginger’s throat. He shoved the realization away in favor of being present with Tessa one last time.
“You’ll get a call one night that there is a woman on a bridge. Don’t go. It’s a trap. If you go… if you go, they’ll cut your throat and throw you in the river. It’s a trick. Just swear to me that—”
“I swear.”
Before he could register Aubrey’s loud gasp, Raven twisted backward, falling upward. The nausea sucked him backward as the room folded in around him.
When it unfolded, he was on the ground. His bind rune was still pressed into the sigil on the page of The Book of Time. His hair spread like a veil over the page, falling into the sooty, scorched grass.
In front of him stood the demon, and only the demon.
Lilah was gone. He couldn’t feel her anywhere. As if she’d never existed.
Spheres of energy swirled around the figure in front of Raven. Sigils in the air and on his skin. Silvery and full of fire as if he would crack open and scatter pulsating symbols across the planet, destroying everything in their wake.
“See, Lord Aryx? I told you, if you interfere with events, you will be disappointed.”
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