Jesus in a Uniform
A wave of energy knocked him to the ground. Raven stumbled to his feet. A second wave of energy slammed into him before he could reach the opening of the tunnel. Before he could get back to his feet again, a third wave washed over him, blue and gray and silver. Like smoke in the wind.
Someone deep inside the darkness screamed, low enough to be a man’s voice but at the same time, not quite human. From inside the narrow tunnel, against the bright sunlight outside, he would have been a silhouette and easy to pick off with the right weapon, so he hung back. The sounds of a scuffle echoed from inside. Another wave of energy hit him and forced him backward a step or two.
Five against one was hardly a fair fight. He could even the odds.
Raven blinked into the darkness. Even from just inside the tunnel, his eyes couldn’t adjust quickly enough. He hunkered over and took a few more steps. His topknot skimmed the hewn-out ceiling of the tunnel.
A bright flash from the side of the tunnel ahead lit up the narrow corridor. In that split second, he glimpsed four bodies on the floor. The manmade cave stretched beyond his sight, forking into two pathways at the end and more than one opening in the side walls of the tunnel.
Another flash of light, another scream, and a man crawled backward out of what might have been a room ahead on the right. With a thud and a fatal crunch of bones, the last of the five slumped to the dirt floor. Raven held his breath as his eyes adjusted. The tunnel smelled of feces and blood. Except for the high-pitched whine in his ears, he heard nothing. Only a pale glow from the opening nearest him, pulsing in gray and silver light, warned of any sign of danger.
Trying to remember exactly where the five bodies had fallen, Raven felt his way along the wall. He didn’t sense anyone behind him, but the life force ahead, he recognized. Two life forces. And one was Lilah.
He edged toward the opening. For a moment, he checked himself. He didn’t feel the tug in his gut back across time.
“Lilah,” he called out. “Lilah Burns!”
A whimper answered him.
“Lilah Burns, I’m here to help you.” He stepped over the bodies, one by one, almost crawling over them where they had doubled up where two had fallen close together. It made sense now. At least here in the dark, she could pick her assailants off one by one. Outside, she couldn’t outrun them.
He could feel the tension in the space ahead of him. Scared. Desperate. Distrustful. Whether it was Lilah’s handiwork or the demon’s, Raven didn’t want to be the next victim. Only one thing could assure her that he meant her no harm.
“Cill Stuifin,” he called out. The legendary lost city off the coast of Ireland. Her favorite bedtime story as a child before Aubrey had vanished in Europe, and something he’d learned about her through his friendlier years with the priesthood. “Cill Stuifin,” he called out, louder. “Look ye upon it and die.”
The tension in the air deflated like a leaking balloon. She’d heard him.
The room was larger than he’d expected and tall enough he could stand at full height, even though one corner was stacked from floor to ceiling with half a dozen wooden crates and another, lid off, on the floor. A beautifully illustrated Persian lithograph peeked out. Astrology, maybe astronomy. Something about angels in Babylon. He could see only the top two books.
Is this some kind of Daeganean library? Or are these artifacts stolen from one of the Order’s secret stashes?
Lilah stood as he gingerly navigated another body and stepped into the room. She leaned against one of the crates and then slowly slid all the way to the dirt floor. Her loose hair caught on some of the splinters and hung down from above her like a vine. Empathically, he could not sense any emotion from her at all, not even fear. She stared ahead almost as if she could see through him.
Raven kicked at the dust on the floor. His booted footprint was there. Good. Still corporeal.
“Lilah?”
He dropped to his knees beside her. She didn’t seem to be critically injured but not unscathed either. A deep cut on the side of her forehead, half-hidden by hair. A busted bottom lip. Left eye swollen almost shut. All abuses from before the past hour. If he were honest with himself, he was surprised it wasn’t worse. But maybe that was the demon’s fault she was still alive.
She blinked at him. Her lips moved but nothing came out.
“Lilah? Can you hear me?”
She nodded, winced in pain, nodded again. “Jesus in a uniform?”
Raven stifled a laugh. There was absolutely nothing funny about the situation except seeing himself through her eyes. His long hair, his topknot held in place by two Daeganean hair-daggers, and an Air Force uniform remarkably similar to hers. Except when he had been here, he had had a beard and his hair had not been quite as long as now.
“No, I’m just a friend here to help you.”
“You’re here to transport the books? I thought you’d never come.”
Transport the books. What the hell? Who sent her here and why?
“Where is that light coming from?” She glanced behind her and overhead, then behind her again.
“From inside you, Lilah.” Normally, others could not see the aura of possession. Even only a tenth of priests and priestesses could see it. He told himself he was one of the lucky ones.
Her gaze moved from his face to the bodies behind him in the corridor. “Take me out of here. Please? I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m a monster. I don’t want to hurt people anymore.”
“I can help you with that.” He leaned forward and chanted into her ear a hymn of forgetfulness.
Her eyelashes fluttered, and her breathing slowed.
“Lilah, I’m going to take away your memories of what happened here today.”
Her gaze found his again. “And the people I’ve hurt since I’ve been here? Can you take that memory away too?”
Raven nodded. “I’ll take the memories away.” Whatever memories traumatized her, he could banish.
“For forever?” She grabbed his arm and squeezed.
“Not for forever, but until you can face them. You won’t remember me either, or that I was ever here, until the time is right.” He brushed the hair from her eyes, away from her forehead and the cut that had not quite stopped bleeding. “Lilah…? I don’t understand what you are doing here. It isn’t safe for you to be here.”
Hollow laughter erupted from her throat. “If only you knew—” Her face went blank again. “My colonel— What were we talking about?”
Already the chants of forgetfulness were taking effect. The ringing in his ears rose in crescendo and fell. Spheres of silver and blue circled her head. In one of them he could see not only the demon’s sigils, runes, and symbols, but he could also see a memory. A colonel with short-cropped dark hair and white at his temples. Telling her to suck it up and not question him. An odd shade of pink lit the sphere around that memory. He knew that energy signature well. Whatever the colonel had ordered her to do and for whatever reason she was in this place at this time, it had been orchestrated by Aoife Jung, the ranking High Priestess of the Order of Daegan. Aoife, like her mother, had been using her global political position yet again to plunder ancient sites and secret caches of dangerous books, except this time, she was using Lilah to acquire what she wanted.
He felt a backwards tug in his solar plexus. Uh-oh.
“Come on, Lilah! You’ve got to get out of here.” What if urging her to leave or to go get in the Jeep or to walk out of here or anything else at all changed the future? What if just leaving her changed the future? He didn’t have much time. “Lilah, if I weren’t here, what would you do next?”
“I-I would get out of here. Hide and wait. Someone is coming back for me. I-I can’t remember who. Is it you?”
Raven helped her up and into the narrow tunnel. He almost dragged her behind him because it wasn’t wide enough that he could hold her close or tall enough that he could carry her out. He stumbled over bodies yet lugged her with him into the blinding sunlight. For a moment, he couldn’t see, but he knew the sound of rotary blades coming closer. He let go of her.
Blinking hard, Raven stared down at the dirt under his feet. He couldn’t see his feet anymore, only the outline where his boots had been.
An American soldier in heavy gear ran towards them. “Ma’am! Ma’am!” He shouted again over the noise of the helicopter. “Are you okay? What happened to the guy who was with you?”
Raven tumbled backwards, spinning, moving through time as if someone had yanked the cord from The Book of Time to his solar plexus and sent him flying home.
⁂
Gebo timeline, total lunar eclipse
Three of Cups Compound, somewhere in what was once the State of Virginia
Raven landed hard in his body this time. He jerked his head up, praying it wasn’t an insane Lilah or the demon in front of him. Instead, Lilah frowned back at him, pain in her eyes but not madness. His ears rang, but not deafening. The spheres moved around her but much paler than before. She crouched beside the boulder, not naked and self-mutilating but in some type of camouflage uniform. Memories of this timeline flooded in to crowd out the others.
The sigil on the page began to fade. He glanced overhead at the full moon, now fully red. Half the eclipse—half of his chance to save Lilah—gone that quickly. He took a deep breath and reached out empathically. Yes, Lilah was there, not one hundred percent whole, but she was there. So was the demon, but more subdued. This was good enough. He could go back in time again and again and remove more of her pain, but at least he was on the right track. Whatever had happened in Afghanistan had been a blow that had driven her mad.
Raven still clenched the hair-dagger, ready to make this Lilah permanent. An explosion rocked the compound. One of the shipping containers at the far end of the compound collapsed.
“Stay where you are,” Lilah shouted at him. “Just stay down. I’ll get you out of there.”
Raven almost rolled his eyes. He was the one who did the saving. All he needed to do was carve the sigil into his forearm to make this timeline real, grab The Book of Time, and take cover next to her.
“No, you stay there. I’ll get you to safety.” He grabbed The Book of Time under one arm and started etching the symbol into his flesh. Instead of standing, he tumbled forward onto his face.
“What the—”
Raven looked down at where his feet had been and instead saw two wrapped stumps just above his knees.
You’re reading Sleeping with Demons free, right here in the Library. Want a copy to keep on your Kindle or e-reader? Buy the e-book direct from me →
© 2020 Lorna Tedder. All rights reserved. Free to read here — please don’t repost elsewhere.