by A. Catherine
His brows narrowed. “I can’t see what’s going on.”
“What does that mean?” Iaoel asked.
“It means I’m going to have to shove my way in. Whatever she’s seeing is blocking control of her own consciousness,” Kale explained.
He pulled up a chair and sat next to the table, gripping Heather’s hand. Iaoel gripped his shoulder, he looked up at the Angel of Sight.
“Wait a minute. Remember the last time, we should wait until Gabriel comes back. He doesn’t want anyone going into her head again,” Iaoel said.
“That isn’t his choice to make.”
“He is her Guardian. When she is unable to make a choice, he’s the one to make it.”
Kale grunted. “Even if I agreed—which I don’t—he could take hours, days even. I need to go in and figure out what’s going on now. We can’t risk whatever is in there ripping the fabric of her mind apart,” he argued.
Iaoel hesitated, looking around the quiet warehouse. Gabriel gave specific orders to the angels following the last incident. No one was to go walking through Heather’s consciousness without his permission or without him being present.
If the other angels arrived before the demons did, they would be hostile. Iaoel had seen it in a vision. This wasn’t going to be pretty, but Kale was right. Waiting could be the worst thing for Heather.
Iaoel’s hand was still on his shoulder. “Remove your hand, angel. I won’t tell you twice,” he warned.
They nodded and retreated back.
Kale turned again to the human, with his hand in hers he closed his eyes and focused on the entryway into her mind. Where the wooden gate should have been there was a huge stone wall. With not a single crack in sight.
Kale pressed a hand against it. He felt rumbles. She was behind it along with whatever else was causing this.
Kale opened his eyes and looked at both Seere and Iaoel, who were watching them intently.
“I’m going to have to throw all my energy into this to break past it. Do not, I repeat, do not interrupt.” He locked his gaze on Seere in warning. “My physical power is going to be on auto-pilot. Including the barriers that keep it under control,” he instructed.
His expression was grave.
“If you see the signs, you know what to do."
Seere nodded in understanding. Iaoel was curious but didn’t question it.
Seere flicked her gaze to Iaoel. “If the others get here before Gabriel…”
“Do whatever you have to. I’ll try to be quick,” Kale ordered. Seere and even Iaoel agreed.
He closed his eyes again and began the slow process of breaking through the wall that now bordered Heather’s mind.
Seere sighed and went to the weapons now scattered on the floor and started clicking some in place on any free sheaths and buckles she had on her leathers. Iaoel turned and watched her.
“You really think you’ll need those?” they asked.
Seere shrugged. “If it’s me against angels who are ten times more powerful than I am, I’ll need all the help I can get.”
“You say that like you’re alone.”
Seere gave them a pointed look. “Are you willing to go against your own friends, your brothers and sisters? Even if the fight gets bloody?” she asked.
“I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.”
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare for it to. And I will do what I have to. I don’t expect you fight,” Seere said. Her focus completely on tightening and locking in all her weapons and straps to ensure stealth.
“Maybe Kale will finish before anyone shows.”
“Have you not seen this then? Have you seen where this goes? Cause that advantage will help a lot,” Seere suddenly asked.
Iaoel shook their head, peering back at Kale and Heather, now both deep in her consciousness, unaware of the world around them. Iaoel had seen a lot of things, some of them couldn’t be shared with anyone. Or it risk their futures changing to something worse.
“I will do my best to persuade them against violence,” Iaoel stated simply.
Seere chuckled darkly. “That’s comforting, love.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Kale
THE WALL WAS THICK, whatever erected it—it wasn’t Heather’s doing.
She was still too new, untested in mental capabilities to achieve something this strong unintentionally. What the hell was Seere thinking taking Heather along? Especially without telling me. The moment I had known they were gone I began communicating with Seere.
But she assured me that everything was fine and that there was no danger. So why was Heather now locked inside her own mind?
I pressed both my palms against the stone and pushed, but it didn’t budge. I could feel the rumbling behind it vibrate my skin.
I sighed, pressing my forehead against it.
“Heather? If you’re in there, I need you to help me get in.” I said into the stone.
Even with a wall, it was her mind—she should be able to hear me.
“Wherever you are, whatever you’re seeing, focus on the sound of my voice and come to it,” I instructed.
I felt a stirring that was different than the rumbling, something smaller. It must be her.
“Come on Heather. Follow my voice.”
“Kale?” a soft voice asked, muffled behind the wall.
“Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”
The rumbling was smaller, like it was farther away. “How are you here?” she asked.
“We’re in your mind, Heather. Your body is safe in the warehouse. I need you to bring down this wall for me,” I instructed.
Even with a wall between us I could sense her when she touched it.
“This isn’t real?” she whispered.
“It’s real, it’s just happening in your mind. The wall,” I pushed.
“I don’t know how to bring it down.”
I sighed and looked over the stone once more.
“We’ll have to do it together. Heather, I’m going to throw some of my power into it. What I need you to do is focus your mind on creating a crack in it. Whatever built it still lives under the rules of your own mind, if you focus hard enough you should be able to break it. Okay? Can you do that?” I asked.
“I—I’ll try.” she replied in a small voice.
I nodded. “Okay, when I say so, start visualizing cracking the wall.”
I closed my eyes and retreated deep into myself. Going deeper and deeper until I was staring at the liquid, molten core that churned and boiled.
In here, this power was also mostly just my mind. My inner core a visualization that manifested my abilities through my consciousness instead of my real fingers. But whatever I did in here would affect my physical body, which was why I needed Seere to keep an eye on me. In-case my outer shell was compromised.
I reached into the core and pulled out not one but two threads of it. Leading them out through my veins, up my shoulders and down my arms until the two strings pooled into my palm. Only the thin barrier of my skin keeping its heat at bay, but I was going to have to let it come through.
I took three deep breaths as I allowed the magma to melt through the flesh and touch the stone. The rumbling returned stronger underneath my fingers, sensing the threat. I pressed my palms hard into the wall and the threads of core started doing their job. I could feel the stone underneath beginning to shudder and break under the intense heat and pressure.
“Now, Heather,” I gritted out. Stealing away just a moment of focus to instruct her.
Bits of sand and stone started to crumble and fall at my feet. The balls of core spread out further, the stone beneath it began to crack and tremble.
“It’s working.” I heard Heather say, her voice a lot closer and less muffled than before.
I just needed it to open enough for me to slip through. The distant rumbling was getting deeper, nearing us. Bigger pieces of stone broke off and dropped to the ground, and then the crack was opening. I grunted against it
and began retreating the threads before they could break all the way through. If they accidentally hit Heather…I couldn’t let it happen—even in her mind.
Once the threads of core were once again deep inside, I pushed my hands against the growing crack, using blunt force to break through. As soon as I saw a glimmer of Heather’s golden-brown hair, I flung myself through the opening.
I collided with Heather, throwing us both to the ground. She yelped and then sat up quickly. Behind me the crack shuddered and then closed again. We’d have to find another way out. Taking care of whatever was in here might do the trick.
I panted and locked eyes with the scared mortal. She looked terrified, and the space of her subconscious was darkened, the ground beneath us brown dirt.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded. I looked around, the rumbling now beneath us.
“Do you have any idea what’s in here?”
She shook her head. “It’s been changing forms. The first time it looked like liquid tentacles, the second time it looked like that vetala but not. I haven’t seen it since, but I’ve felt it coming,” she explained. “All this time I thought I was still in the Library. That that wall was—"
I nodded, surveying our surroundings. “Iaoel and Seere found you in the passages after hearing you scream for help, you were practically comatose. They brought you back to the warehouse so I could help you.”
“I don’t even know when I passed out. But I guess that explains why that feeling went away.”
“What feeling?”
“I was so scared in the Library. The fear was eating away at me. But not long after I saw the first form of whatever this is I stopped feeling that terror. I mean, I’m still scared. But it’s not as overpowering as it was before,” Heather explained.
“The Library apparently has old wards on it. Your fear might’ve been the way your limited angel grace reacted to them. But wards usually mean something important, maybe whatever is terrorizing your mind right now was being contained in the Library somehow,” I stated.
I stood from the ground and held my hand out to help her up.
“Like a primordial?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
Then I started walking in the direction of the rumbling.
“Where are you going?”
“We have to find this thing and take care of it if we want any chance of getting out of here,” I replied.
“We can’t get out the way you came in?” she asked.
“That wall is strong, and my physical body could hurt others around it, including you if I spend too much of my power in here,” I explained. “So, this is the next best solution.”
She sighed, “Okay.”
Heather rushed to catch up to me and grabbed my arm—clinging to me. I looked down at her. She scowled.
“I know you’re still mad at me, but deal with it.”
I chuckled. “I’m not mad at you.”
The space around us wasn’t empty, just dark. When my eyes began to adjust, I could see that it was a field—a dead field. A structure was in the distance but was still too far away to see. That seemed like the best direction at this point.
“You’re not?” she asked.
“You said you were sorry,” I said plainly.
She huffed. “I know. I just thought—you seemed like you needed more time to forgive me.”
“Oh, I haven’t forgiven you yet. I’m just tired of being mad about it,” I clarified.
A large rumble sounded, causing us to pause. I scanned all around us but after a moment of silence and no sign of anything I got our feet moving again.
“You know, what I said wasn’t even that bad. One second I was expressing how I felt, then next you were yelling at me. I’ve apologized and I’m trying to be more open minded, but in all fairness, you weren’t the only one to jump to conclusions. So why you’re taking your time forgiving me is beyond me,” Heather argued.
I resisted the urge to laugh in her face, instead I only smiled—keeping my eyes on lookout for any threats.
“That’s the thing about forgiveness, honey-eyes, it’s not up to you when I decide to bestow it. I could hold-out for eternity if I wanted to. You’ve done your part, now let me do mine in peace.”
“Are you going to make me wait for eternity?” she asked.
I looked at her then. “If you don’t leave it alone, then yes.”
She huffed. “You can be a real hardhead. I make one mistake—a misunderstanding really—and you hold it over my head?”
“Who said I was holding it over your head?”
“You! You still avoid looking directly at me, acting like I’ve insulted your ancestors and shit on your bed!” she gasped and frantically looked around when she realized how loud her voice was raised.
I chuckled when she eventually looked back at me for a response.
“You humans are so petty.”
“Petty?”
“Just because you feel bad about your actions, you think the only way you can feel better about yourselves is by having your feelings validated. When you have yet to realize that really, princess, this isn’t about you,” I explained, crossing my arms.
Her honey-brown eyes glinted when they stared at mine.
“I just want—” she stopped herself and looked away distantly. “Never mind. You’re right. It’s not fair of me to expect you to just smile and move on like what I said didn’t hurt you in any way.”
“See, now that’s your problem, right there,” I snapped, backing away from her a step.
Her brows narrowed and her nose scrunched in confusion.
“You think that you’ve deeply wounded me, but it’s in that thought process that you’re assuming you know who I am and what I feel. I don’t care that you think; I might be an evil son-of-a-bitch. I’ve lived with people assuming the worst of me for a lot longer than you’ve been alive. If I were ‘hurt’ every time that happened, I would be one fragile-as-fuck immortal, don’t you think?”
We had stopped walking, even when I could now see the outline of a rotted gazebo a hundred yards away.
“You’re acting pretty fragile right now.”
“I’m not mad that you reacted the way you did, finding out what I was. That comes with the territory. I was mad because you automatically dismissed all of my actions that contradicted that view of me. You caught onto the idea that I was a monster before actually considering everything else.”
She backed away another step, no longer clinging close to me.
I groaned, the inner part of me still unable to convey what it was that was bothering me.
“Now, however, I’m mad that after all of that, you’re now acting like you’ve deeply wounded me and need to tip-toe around my feelings. Pick a stance, Heather. Stop swinging back and forth,” I finished with a gruff. So many more things still left unsaid.
Heather glared at me and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.
“What do you want from me, Kale? Do you want me to see you as a creature of evil or as someone who feels pain?”
“Fucking hell, Heather. Do you hear yourself? I’m not some tortured soul that only you can piece back together, okay? This isn’t like your books, okay? No one is just one thing. We’re all complex. That’s the real world, full of real monsters right in front of you.”
Why am I like this?
“So even you think you’re a monster? Yet you hated me for thinking it?” she asked pointedly.
I suppressed a low growl. “We’re all monsters in our own way, princess. The only difference is those who pretend they’re not and those who savor it.”
She scoffed, “Do all you have such a dark and twisty way of looking at things? You say you’re not a tortured soul, and yet with everything you just said I would beg to differ. You wanna know what everyone is seeing, what even the angels see? They see people with great power and strength who grew up in literal hell and decided that the only way to survive was to be broody and perverse about everyt
hing. It’s juvenile, is what it is. Even humans go through a loner phase, Kale, but at least most of us get over it.”
I wanted to agree with her. I did. But I didn’t know how to let that wall down.
Heather continued, “You’re just stuck in it. You’ve settled yourself with the idea that this is as good as it gets. That the only way to endure your eternity is to pretend like you love being a spawn of Satan. You tease and you play. And then you get mad when others don’t immediately dismiss it as fiction.”
