The Last Supper
Raven and I sat around a battered oak table in Drusilla’s austere dining room, joined by Drusilla, Jakin, and Samantha. The space was spartan but defensible—a single doorway, windows covered with blackout curtains nailed firmly in place. Mismatched oil lamps cast spooky shadows across the walls. Their light reflected dully off the scratched metal plates before us. The smell of kerosene choked the air.
Some kind of magical force field settled over the space like a protective bubble, shielding us from detection as if the drones and eyes in the sky couldn’t register our presence here.
I ran my fingers over the table’s scarred surface, tracing what looked like knife marks and old bloodstains. This place had seen violence. Recently. I picked up a tarnished spoon, trying to catch my reflection, but the metal was too distorted, reducing my face to a warped blur.
At least I hoped it was a blur and not really how I looked in this reality.
The dinner included a few fresh vegetables, a scrawny chicken, and some prepper rations.
“Not much to look at.” Drusilla sliced the chicken with quick, practiced strokes. “But fresh protein is rare these days.”
This woman was so different from the Dru I knew. I couldn’t help but think of her as Drusilla. Maybe even as Professor, but I wasn’t sure that was fitting in this reality.
“Where did you get it?” I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen any livestock since we arrived.
“Jakin trades for them.” She passed the plate. “Don’t ask what with.” She added with dry humor, “A feast for the return of the prodigal daughter.”
Samantha kept staring at the plate in front of Raven, though she couldn’t see anyone sitting there. She watched the food disappear from thin air.
“This is seriously freaking me out,” Samantha muttered, her eyes tracking a chicken wing as it seemingly floated from Raven’s plate to mid-air. She flinched at the floating chicken and watched it disappear bite by bite. “Is he… is he really there?”
Unlike the gothic, rebellious Samantha I knew, this version was rail-thin with limp hair and tattoos that looked less like fashion statements and more like protection sigils. Her eyes darted constantly, rarely settling on one spot for long.
“Shit, he’s as real as you or me,” Jakin assured her, though his own gaze betrayed lingering disbelief. “Just… from elsewhen. ‘Last’ means a fucking one of a kind, and there sure as hell can’t be two lasts, but here we are.” He grinned wryly. “Universe’s got a fucking sense of humor, apparently.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.” Drusilla shook her head at the vanishing food. “How can two realities exist in one place?”
“Reality is subjective,” Raven answered, reaching for his water. “What we’re experiencing is a bubble of one timeline overlapping with another and—” He stopped, realizing she couldn’t hear him.
“But you’re the only ones who can see him,” Drusilla said to me. She grimaced as she searched for the words. “If he’s really here, why can only you and Jakin perceive him?”
“Probably no other priest could,” Raven explained. “But since the Last Priest is host to the slumbering God until he ascends after the apocalypse, we host the same God in different timelines. That’s probably why only a Last Priest can recognize a Last Priest—because of sharing the God.”
I repeated his words for Drusilla and Samantha.
“You reminded me of all the strange things we saw at the library,” I said to Dru.
“I haven’t worked at the library in over three years, not too long after I moved here because you needed me, and because I needed to be close enough to help you however I could.” Her voice grew distant. “I’ve mostly been trying to stay off the grid so Aoife doesn’t find me. I’m glad, for once, that Aoife has bigger things on her mind than tormenting a former Medieval Literature professor.”
“Lilah,” she continued, “the last time I stepped foot in that building was to collect my personal effects before Aoife’s men converted the whole campus to a processing center.” Her voice faltered slightly. “They gave me fifteen minutes to gather years of my life.”
Outside, we heard the distant thunder of bombs.
“How have all of you managed to avoid detection for so long?”
The walls vibrated with each explosion, dust drifting down from the ceiling like snow. No one at the table reacted—these sounds were clearly part of daily life now.
“The wards help,” Drusilla said, glancing toward the windows as another blast lit up the edges of the blackout curtains. “But they can only do so much against technology.”
“Wards?” In my reality, Samantha knew hexes, not wards. And Jakin was transactional about doing anything for anyone.
Drusilla pointed to Jakin, gesturing as he held up his right wrist to show his bind rune tattoo, the mark of the Priesthood of Daegan.
He tapped his wrist with a crooked smile. “Wards. Fancy magic stuff. Keeps the bad guys confused about where we are.”
The symbol was familiar—identical to the one Raven bore—but somehow rawer, the edges less refined. It seemed to pulse faintly in the dim light, as if responding to the bombing outside.
“Last of my kind,” Jakin said quietly. “At least, from this fucking timeline.”
I stared at Raven’s wrist. “But you’re still a Daeganean priest too, aren’t you?”
Raven nodded. “At least in the reality we’re from, I am. In that one, I’m still the Last Priest.”
His expression remained neutral, giving nothing away, but I could see the weight of that title in his eyes—the responsibility he carried, the loneliness of being the final steward of ancient knowledge.
“Raven is an amazing Last Priest and a true hero,” I said, emotion thickening my voice unexpectedly. “Someone who would’ve been in The Book of Heroes if he’d been old enough when it was written.”
Drusilla both shrugged and nodded, but I was confident she would have understood if she could only see Raven beside me and hear the explanations from him instead of my clumsy relay.
“You don’t know half of what he’s done,” I continued. “When I was at my lowest—after that mission in Dublin when everything went wrong—I was broken, completely shattered inside. He promised me then that he’d do everything in his power to make me whole.”
I realized I was saying things to this Jakin I’d never said to the one in my reality.
Raven shifted uncomfortably beside me but remained silent. I pressed on.
“He brought me into a sacred circle and swore a blood oath that he would spend the rest of his days, if that’s what it took, to help me find myself again.” I swallowed hard, blinking back sudden tears. “He was the only one who saw me—really saw me—when I couldn’t even see myself.”
And now I might lose him forever when the spell ends tomorrow. The thought made my chest tighten with panic.
Raven cleared his throat softly. “You would have done the same for me,” he said, his voice low. “You have done the same.”
“Probably a good thing I wasn’t old enough for The Book of Heroes,” Raven chuckled, “or I would’ve disappeared several shifts ago, maybe even at the beginning.”
I repeated this for the others, then squinted at him. “So in this reality… you never existed. All our adventures together—gone.”
Raven only nodded.
“Hard to imagine,” I murmured, more to myself than the others. “A world without you in it.”
Something flickered across his face—a vulnerability I rarely saw—before he masked it with his usual stoicism.
“Wow. This Raven guy must’ve been some kind of hero.” Samantha watched me talk to an empty chair. “What about Jakin here?”
Raven and I cleared our throats at the same time, but said nothing. I didn’t want to mention that the Jakin from my reality was a lousy lover and an all-around-terrible person.
Samantha’s eyes narrowed at my silence. “That bad, huh?”
“It’s… complicated,” I hedged. Studying my plate, I tried to find a small piece of meat especially interesting, but not enough to change the subject.
Jakin leaned forward, shaking his head with a rueful grin. “Seriously, guys. I couldn’t have been that fucking bad. What’d I do, kick puppies? Come on, my brother—show me.”
Raven’s fork paused halfway to his mouth. He tensed beside me. “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said carefully.
“Don’t,” I warned, reaching out as if to physically stop what was about to happen. “Jakin, you don’t know what you’re asking for.”
This Jakin seemed like an entirely different guy—friendly, caring.
Before Raven could stop him, Jakin grabbed his wrist so their tattoos touched. The moment they made contact, both reacted like lightning had struck them.
A flash of blue-white energy crackled between them, brief but blindingly bright. Raven’s entire body went rigid, his jaw clenched in pain or shock, while Jakin jerked back as if burned, knocking over his cup of water.
“Jesus,” Samantha gasped, scrambling back from the table.
Even Drusilla flinched. Instinctively, she reached for the knife at her belt.
Jakin pulled back his hand and sat speechless for a long moment. Finally, he said, “Holy shit. Okay. I can see why I wasn’t in The Book of Heroes.” He ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know what to say, guys. I apologize for whatever version of me you knew—both of you. Lilah, especially you. That was… Christ, that was fucked up.”
“What did you see?” Samantha asked.
Jakin struggled to speak, his face ashen, his eyes wide with horror at whatever he’d glimpsed. “I saw… fragments. Myself over an altar, attempting a fucking sacrifice.” He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing, and looked directly at me. “It was you, Lilah. Holy hell. I was trying to sacrifice you for power over someone else.”
Continuing, he rans his fingers through his hair. Flecks of dirt from earlier in the day fell to his chest. “And Aoife—God, the things I said to her. The other… me… thought I turned her mean, but she wasn’t… she wasn’t as ruthless in your reality as she is now.”
He glanced at Samantha and added, “And to you as well. I’m so sorry.”
“What about me?” Samantha’s voice was small. “For what?”
Jakin hesitated, then simply shook his head, refusing to elaborate. “Nothing you need to carry.”
I swallowed. I wished I didn’t have to carry the knowledge of what my Jakin had tried to do to me. “We’re starting to realize… you don’t always know how much influence someone has on your life—or how a single moment can redirect everything. Like make you a whole different person.”
Jakin was quiet for a while, and we ate in silence.
The quiet stretched on, broken only by the clink of utensils against plates and the occasional distant explosion. I watched Jakin struggling to reconcile the person he was with the person he’d glimpsed—a version of himself capable of terrible things.
“I wonder who else still exists,” Raven mused, breaking the silence. “Illyria? Who else?”
I repeated his question.
“Don’t know Illyria.”
“Nike?” Raven suggested. “Harlan?”
“They’ve both been erased,” I reminded him. “But you’re right—we don’t know if someone gone might be in a different timeline for different reasons.”
Neither of us wanted to mention Emry.
“Never heard of Nike or Harlan either.”
“Who else are you close to in this reality?” Raven asked.
I repeated the question to the table.
“Samara?” Jakin added.
“Who?” I didn’t recognize the name.
Jakin glanced at Drusilla, then back to me, and backtracked. “Never mind.”
I felt a pang of grief for all those I hadn’t seen in several reality shifts—the Dru I’d known, Nike’s wisdom, Illyria’s fierce loyalty, Veronica’s vision for a better future under her leadership. And Emry… lost twice over.
“Dru’s still here,” I said. “That means both Aoife and Terre still exist.”
“Yes. Though I haven’t seen Terre in some time. There are rumors he’s being held somewhere.”
Raven reacted to hearing that Terre may be alive, but Dru didn’t hear him. Jakin did, though.
“My brother, I’m trying to get information. I’m still on Aoife’s good side, if there is one—which is saying something since her good side makes most people’s bad side look like a fucking tea party. Hopefully I’ll have news soon.”
Raven nodded his thanks as the other Last Priest continued.
“And if Drusilla’s still here, that means you, Lilah, also exist in this reality. Her being your real mother and all.”
I jerked my head up and looked at Drusilla.
A heavy silence fell over the table. The oil lamps flickered, casting strange shadows across Drusilla’s face as she stared at Jakin with a warning in her eyes.
“Mother?” I repeated. The word felt foreign on my tongue. What was it she’d said when we’d met in this reality a few hours ago?
“But why are you calling me Dru? No one calls me that. You’ve always called me Mother.”
Because she’d fancied herself as my mother? Because she was the leader of this compound and therefore “Mother” to everyone? Or because in this timeline, she was my biological kin?
Then I laughed. “That’s kind of sweet, you know? That she’s my mother in this reality. She’s been like a mother to me since my own mom died when I was a kid.”
The memory surfaced unbidden—sitting cross-legged on the floor of Drusilla’s first small house near campus, sharing takeout Chinese food while she told me stories of medieval mystics. How she’d recognized something in the lost graduate student who’d lived across the street, something that reminded her of the tales my own mother had told me before disappearing on that research trip to study Joan of Arc.
How Drusilla had signed away her own freedom to Aoife in a deal to bring me home after I’d been held captive abroad. What would drive someone to make that sacrifice if not… motherhood?
“It makes a strange kind of sense,” I said softly, looking at Drusilla with new eyes.
“No, I mean—” Jakin said. Looking to Raven, he whispered, “Who put the enchantment on her? The one that prevents her from hearing the truth?”
Raven shrugged and mouthed, “Terre, but she’ll forget with the first distraction.” Ripping into a drumstick with his teeth, he looked up to see Drusilla glaring at Jakin.
“Has anything shifted since you’ve been here?” Drusilla asked.
I frowned. “Like, on the compound?”
Raven and I paused—like we were mentally checking for broken bones after a fall. I stood and walked to the mirror above the buffet cabinet. I saw myself as I was in this reality: short black hair, a rat-tail down my back, catching on my shoulder. I shook my head.
“No. Nothing’s changed. Not all afternoon.”
“Okay, then let’s work through this. Let’s figure out how to fucking get the two of you back home,” Jakin said. “That rune-to-rune touch between Raven and me showed me more than I want to know in a lifetime. I’d rather be here in a shit-hole world that’s worse for the wear with Sammi, being a damned good person, than have any of the fucking realities I saw in that sharing of history.” He paused, his expression growing solemn. “Sorry for your loss,” he added to both of us, clearly referring to Emry.
“Can Jakin and I go with you?” Samantha asked, holding her long blood-red hair out to one side and twirling it around her finger. “I want to leave this place too—but only if I can go with Jakin. I don’t want to become one of the Angel Seed chimeras—those who go insane, sprout wings, or grow hundreds of eyes. Or worse.”
“I’d rather be here with her,” Jakin said gently. “We’re better versions of ourselves in a worse place.”
“They’ve already injected me with Angelseed DNA,” Samantha revealed, her fingers trembling as she continued to twist her hair. “They said it was a ‘failed integration.’ My hair turned colors and I have floating, glowing sigils sometimes on my skin, but no wings and no powers. Jakin tattooed protective sigils on my skin to keep me from turning.”
My heart broke for her. To be used as an experiment, to live with that constant fear…
Jakin reached over to gently squeeze Samantha’s shoulder, his touch protective and reassuring.
“I wouldn’t mind being pumped full of nanites and turned into a fierce warrior,” she continued, “but Aoife only allows that for men. I’m afraid of what’s coming. I don’t want to stay here.”
“I guess I should be thankful that they see older women as invisible and not immediately useful,” Drusilla added grimly, “or they’d have pumped me full of angel DNA, too.”
“She’ll be okay with my magic,” Jakin assured her. “I’ve figured out how to help her, but it takes a lot of my life force and I can’t do that for everyone. But she won’t go mad, and she won’t sprout wings or more eyes.”
“Promise?” Samantha caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
“This reality is our home,” Jakin explained with a gentle smile toward Samantha. “We don’t belong in the one you came from. We already exist there—and we weren’t good people. Or at least, I sure as hell wasn’t.” He squeezed Samantha’s hand. “Here? We get to be the people we should’ve been all along.”
Samantha pulled her chair closer to his and snuggled against him. He left a quick kiss on her forehead and turned back to Raven.
“But let’s figure this thing out.” Jakin leaned forward with renewed energy. “The five of us. Because honestly? You two seem like good people, and good people are in fucking short supply these days.”
“Deal!” I glanced around the table from Drusilla to Samantha to Jakin, then Raven. “Should I get pen and paper?”
Raven sighed. “Probably pointless because whatever you write down won’t look the same to them as to us, like happened with tech screens back at Emry’s—”
I nodded. He didn’t have to say more, especially not about Emry.
“The Book of Heroes was last seen in the library.” Jakin summarized the key points from what I’d told the group earlier in the day. “The one who took it was a mundane artifact thief who didn’t understand what she had. She’s likely selling the pages one at a time for money on the black market.”
“Right. But the Dru in my reality had been instructed by Aoife to keep an eye on them. Our Aoife thought they might have been working with a rival priesthood and might lead Dru and Raven back to them.”
Jakin smiled. “That’s weird that you have rival priesthoods. We have only one because Aoife wiped out all the others or assimilated them where possible.”
“Yeah? That’s weird to me that you don’t have a Rune and Charlie. Not that I want to bring either of them back, but how do we fix this timeline?”
“There’s nothing we can do to change each of these realities,” Jakin said. “In a multiverse, they all exist. Realities where people never existed. Or have totally different lives. Like your Rune and Charlie. Or… Sammi and me. That’s not the point. The point is—how do you two get back to your own?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but we have less than a day before the protection spell runs out.”
“What spell book?” Drusilla asked. “I’ve never heard of The Book of Heroes.”
Neither had Jakin. When Raven asked a question, I repeated it so both Drusilla and Samantha had the full conversation.
“My acquisitions for the library were halted years ago,” Drusilla explained, “when Aoife decided she had enough knowledge to shape the future of the priesthood. Instead, she put her resources into enhancing the human body—either with Angelseed DNA or nanotechnology—so at least some of humanity could survive the upcoming pole shift.”
Jakin and Samantha exchanged grim looks at this.
“Tell me about the protection spell book,” Jakin requested.
I explained it was a three-day spell to protect us from anyone else’s magic.
I didn’t mention that I’d jokingly left one of Raven’s hairs in the book as a bookmark—or that the final words of the spell, “You are my anchor,” replaced the original incantation.
“Then there’s got to be a way to return to that moment in time—when you cast the spell,” Jakin said. “If you can’t, you’ll be stuck in whatever reality you’re in when the three days end.”
I protested. “That’s tomorrow afternoon.”
“It’s already dusk.”
“We need to find a way back to the library,” Raven said. “Back to where this all started.”
I repeated it for the others.
“That’s suicide,” Drusilla countered. “Aoife’s forces control the entire campus.”
“We don’t have a choice,” I insisted. “If we don’t—”
And then—both Jakin and Samantha vanished.
The air seemed to ripple, colors bleeding at the edges of my vision. The room shuddered, walls shifting subtly like fabric caught in a breeze. A nearby bomb had detonated. The candles flickered violently, nearly extinguishing before flaring back to life.
My stomach lurched as if the floor had dropped beneath me. A wave of vertigo washed over me, and I gripped the edge of the table to steady myself.
Raven’s hand reached out instinctively toward where Jakin had been sitting and passed through empty air. The chair remained, but its occupant was gone as if he’d never existed.
The room moved—like the bouncing of an earthquake, though more about the nausea-inducing shifting of everything in sight than an actual movement of the ground.
“—then we’ll both die,” I finished saying what I’d been saying when the shift happened.
The space around us changed—not dramatically, but in a hundred small ways. The table seemed older, more worn. The blackout curtains were a different color. The chicken on my plate was now half-eaten, though I couldn’t remember taking more than a few bites.
Drusilla looked up from the rations on her plate. Her hair was even grayer now. Her eyes more wary.
A long, heavy silence gaped between us. Drusilla’s bruised hand reached slowly across the table to cover mine—gently, cautiously, her touch light as if afraid I might shatter.
When she finally spoke, her voice shook with something between fear and heartbreak:
“Lilah… please tell me you haven’t gone mad. Who are you talking to?”
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