Past Be Damned

by Rebecca Royce

  Thaddeus cleared his throat. “I can assure you it went both ways. What’s going on, sweetness? Why are you scared and reminiscing?”

  “I fell asleep a little while ago.”

  Aidan glared at Brody. “You should have called one of us down. She’s supposed to have two energies when she’s asleep.”

  Brody winced. “Honestly, I forgot. I’m sorry. That’s right. Two of us at all times when she sleeps. Won’t happen again. I’m sorry, Teagan.”

  I waved my hand. “I don’t think it would have mattered. I had a vision. I was near a fire. I’ve been there before, a lot. I went there almost every night when I was alone.”

  “We’re familiar with that fire,” Noah added. “We never saw you there.”

  “Well, we were being kept apart. I spoke to Daniella, and the spirits. The bottom line is that in some other place, some other time, I’ve agreed to die. For all of us. That’s probably where we’re headed now.”

  The world went silent. The raven dove in the air around us, but other than that, nothing seemed to move. It was like the air stopped circulating and all noise ceased to exist. I stood and waited. My guards were like statues. I blinked. I’d seen them that way in a vision before. Only, now I was wide-awake and not seeing things.

  Eric spoke first, his gaze dipping to the ground then back to me. “Who told you that you had to die? Daniella or the spirits?”

  “The spirits. Daniella told me some other things I didn’t really understand. Something about saying yes when I wanted to say no.”

  He very slowly shook his head. “You’re not dying.” He pounded on his chest. “If that’s what we’re headed to do then we will stop this journey and go live somewhere quietly for the rest of our days. We’ll go north. The Deadlands get really sketchy up there. No one will come searching. Even Anne will understand.”

  “Eric, I don’t think that’s exactly an option. I’m a Sister. The demons are going to know where I am at all times. We’d never be safe. Death would come anyway. And then there’d be no… what is the word I’m trying to find… honor to it. I agreed to this.”

  Thaddeus shook his head. “Then I die with you. You either stay alive or I’m coming along. That’s how it is. End of story.”

  I pointed at him. “You can’t make proclamations like that. I can’t have anything happen to you.”

  Noah threw his hands in the air. “Really? Screw the spirits. Where have they been? For years they left you there, kept us from you, didn’t go around giving us directions like Anne and Daniella’s guards got. I could have built a house then come and found you in a year. They let us think you were dead.”

  The raven cawed and I ignored the sound. He could wait. I wasn’t going to be able to make this okay for them, but they at least got to have a moment.

  Brody took my hand in his. “You’re not dying, Teagan. I won’t allow it. None of us will. And Thaddeus is right. If this is the end, then it’s for all of us. There is no life I want without you. Not one I’m going to accept. I die saving you, that’s fine. But there’s no way I walk away from a fight where you don’t.”

  “Brody.” I wasn’t sure even what to say. “We don’t know when whatever this is that I’ve agreed to is going to happen. We have no choice. But to keep going toward it.”

  Thaddeus squinted up at the raven. “Maybe I could kill it.”

  I didn’t follow him. “What?”

  “If he’s not here to trail after then there is no saying we have to be anywhere.”

  Noah shook his head. “That’s lunacy.”

  “Is it?” Aidan stared at Thaddeus. “I actually agree with One. Let’s kill it.”

  “Stop.” I had to make myself very clear. “I don’t know who or what that bird is. Maybe it’s just a bird that is being used somehow. But we are not killing that bird. We aren’t killing anything that doesn’t try to kill us first. Anyone makes any moves toward that creature and they’ll have to deal with me.”

  Eric scrunched up his face. “You have a real affection for the raven?”

  We had to be done with this. “Is there somewhere to spend the night? We can stay here or find someplace else. I’m not going into the orphanage in the middle of the night. I will figure out fate in the daylight, thanks.”

  We all got back on top of the roof of the carriage. Tension replaced any earlier ease. They were mad at me, that much was clear. The constant battering of their emotions against mine finally made me erect another emotional wall. This time it wasn’t for privacy, it was to make the pain stop. I could understand that they wanted me to fix this—I loved that they didn’t want me dead. Only, they hadn’t seen the spirit tell me that I had to die and say it in such a way that I was given no choice in the matter. They didn’t know the darkness that had always known this was coming, that had known I hadn’t been made for the long road. I was… wrong, somehow.

  I wasn’t going to be given another choice. I’d made one I couldn’t remember, which of course begged the question about it all being a lie. It would be easy to tell someone they’d promised to do something if they couldn’t ever remember if they’d said they had done it or not. The only problem with that nefarious theory was that Brody had a memory deep inside of him of our time before when we’d made these choices. I’d seen it when we co-joined. I’d clearly promised the divinity something he hadn’t liked. This was probably it.

  I sighed. Thaddeus eyed me sideways. “You don’t get to shut down the link anytime you don’t like what we’re feeling.”

  “I do when it’s practically an assault on my emotions. I get it. You’re all angry. I’m not exactly rolling around with glee myself. Of course, if these are my last hours, I’m really going to love running off to the great beyond with all of you mad at me.”

  Eric shook his head. “You’re beyond that kind of emotional blackmail. If we want to be mad, we get to be mad.”

  “Fine.” I didn’t want to have a good sulk. I had just gotten them back and now I was going to lose them. I sought the darkness, but it was nowhere to be found in that moment. Why wasn’t it whipping me? “I apologize for the immaturity of my statement.”

  Noah rocked forward, covering his eyes with his hands. “All of you stop. Just stop. Okay?”

  I scooted over, trying not to fall off the moving carriage, and put my arm on his back. He lifted his head to regard me. “I’m not going to let you die.”

  I put my head on his shoulder. We could always change our fate. That was why things had gone so askew with the Sisterhood. Maybe it didn’t matter, maybe I had to die. Or perhaps there was something to be done about it. I put my head on his shoulder. “Okay.”

  He sucked in his breath. “You believe me?”

  “I’m choosing to. Yes. For now. Can that be good enough?”

  He nodded once. “Absolutely.” Noah fell quiet for a few moments. “Can you let me back in? I feel sort of empty without following your link. I mean, I know why you may shut it down on occasion. I get that. I didn’t want to be there with you and Brody. But now? Let me back.”

  I wasn’t sure if I could allow Noah back in without flooding myself with all the guys all at once. I’d managed to cut them all out except Brody earlier, but when I’d opened the gate, they’d all rushed in. I needed to learn exactly how this worked. By divinity, I probably deserved the onslaught. Being connected to them in any capacity was better than none at all. I opened our link.

  Sure enough, with the exception of Noah, the uncomfortable heat of their various degrees of anger burned into my consciousness. Noah wasn’t exactly free from it himself, it had simply cooled off and might go away soon. I put my head on his shoulder. “Tired.”

  He kissed my cheek. “You okay?”

  “Hard when you’re all feeling like you do. It kind of overwhelms the links. Hurts. I might just shut down. I don’t know. I’m new to this, and it never dawned on me to ask Anne how to manage this. I don’t think they get angry at her the way you all do with me.”

  He stroked t
he side of my face. “We’re almost never mad at you. We’re only upset now because you aren’t fighting hard enough to live.”

  “What should I do to avoid it?”

  Eric scooted over next to me. He placed his hand on my leg and squeezed my knee. “We love you. So I’m going to need you to forgive me for what is about to happen.”

  I sat straight up. “What?”

  Something pinched my thigh. It was then I realized that Eric held a needle between his fingers. Had he dosed me with something?

  Noah kissed my cheek. “It’s just going to make you sleep. When you wake up, you’ll be far from here and whatever this thing you agreed to do. That bird can go shove its prophecy or destiny somewhere the sun can’t reach.”

  The world tilted, and instead of feeling sleepy, my heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my ears. I grabbed my throat. Why did my tongue feel so thick? What was happening?

  Eric got to his knees. “Teagan? You okay?”

  Thaddeus was suddenly right there. “How much did you give her?”

  “Lowest dose. As we discussed.” Eric seemed pale. I might have focused more on that if I could breathe. But I couldn’t. I reached forward—for what I didn’t know—and I tried to get air. None came.

  “This shouldn’t be happening.” Aidan was shouting. “It’s perfectly safe.”

  Brody’s voice was the last I heard. “They tricked us. By the divinity, we’ve just killed her.”

  The raven swept down in front of me, its call a mournful sound. Everything went black like the bird in front of me—with its one white feather.

  There was an irony to things. I could see that from the vantage point of rebirth. I was in a box. Or at least that was what it felt like. There were voices around me, millions of them. I couldn’t make out any single one, but each of them seemed to be calling to me. They needed help. Moreover, they needed hope. They had none.

  A glimmer of it had started. Somewhere in the Deadlands, Anne and Daniella would do what they could. They would help.

  If things went as I hoped they would, I could return to them.

  Eventually.

  First, I had to finish dying. But that darn irony. The guys had wanted to deny fate, they’d wished to take me away, and instead of succeeding, they’d brought on my death. They would never forgive themselves.

  The raven appeared before me, only he at last wore his human form. Maybe he always had and we’d been unable to see him. That would change now. When I returned to life, I’d be able to see what was and what might be.

  Not every Sister could readily see this man. He belonged to the Guards. I didn’t think Anne had ever seen him. My job as the Prophet made things more complicated for me. Brother Raven was as important as our true Sister Superior. On Earth, Anne was our leader, our Sister Superior and Katrina pretended to be. But here in the other place the true Sister Superior led the fight against darkness, and Brother Raven helped her, when he could.

  “Brother Raven.” I nodded to him. He tapped on my box, and the walls came down.

  He touched my shoulder. “Sister Teagan. I think it’s about time you called me Reed, don’t you?” He was always trying to get us who could see him, who knew him, to call him Reed. Almost none of us did. Something seemed off calling a being that could speak for divinity by his first name.

  I pointed toward the vast darkness. I knew how to look through it. My own darkness had gifted me with so many things. It was different from Katrina’s. I just hadn’t understood it. “I’ll call you whatever you want, maybe, if you stop those that are mine from destroying themselves.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Perhaps they deserve to. Kill the bird. I heard that. Noah has ignored me for half a decade.”

  “If they didn’t do as they should have, perhaps it was their instruction that was lacking.” I winced as the true Sister Superior’s words flowed over us. She was the true leader—the speaker for the divine—and she chose one of us, in this case Anne, to represent her on earth. But even Anne would acknowledge she was not anything compared to the woman talking now. I’d seen the true Sister Superior on and off since returning for this rebirth. She and Brother Raven had been fighting with words for millennium. They both loved and hated each other. In the end, they trained us to battle evil and saw our future loves, and they matched our souls. They asked us to make serious choices, like dying and being reborn the Prophet.

  He whirled around to speak to Sister Superior. “She doesn’t need you now. You can’t do this for her. Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

  She sighed. “Bothersome man, she might like company.”

  I threw my hands in the air. “My cells are changing. I can hear the calls, and soon, I’m sure, I’ll be able to see even more vile things in the universe than I ever could before. What I need is for one of you to stop them from destroying themselves over this. They’ve already taken years of punishment with me so I could do this. They might just be done with the trouble.”

  Reed snapped his fingers and disappeared. When it came down to it, he loved the guards. They were his Ravens. All of them. He found the strongest souls and asked the impossible from them. And somehow, because they loved us, they found the resolve to hold onto their Sisters when life made it near impossible to find the goodness to love.

  I would not fear for myself. I’d agreed to do this. So had they. Maybe it was better none of us had ever remembered.

  “Sister, how long will I be dead?”

  She smiled, a small resolved grin. “For them it will be minutes.”

  “And for me?”

  My mentor, the leader of us all, shook her head. “Don’t ask questions you won’t like the answers to. We could make this stop. You could decide not to do this. You’ve been through enough. This could be the end. Do you want more pain, Teagan?”

  My cells burned: reshaping, changing. My stomach cramped, and blood gushed out of my nose. No, I didn’t want more pain. Hadn’t I had enough? How much suffering did one person have to go through to be the Prophet? My guys waited for me, and Daniella’s words rebounded in my brain. I was a woman who knew how to live in darkness and pain. There was always light bedded beneath. “Yes. As much as is necessary.”

  Sister nodded to me. “You never cease to amaze me.”

  Aidan

  No. No. No. I would not accept it. Teagan was not dead. We hadn’t just killed our love. Eric backed away from her until he hit a tree. His cry was one of pain, wrought from the deepest pit of his soul. He couldn’t have known any more than the rest of us that it wasn’t a sleeping dram in the needle. But he’d dosed her. Eric had killed her.

  She was wrapped in Thaddeus’ arms as he rocked her back and forth. Her face was pale, and her eyes open and unseeing. We hadn’t wanted her to die, and we’d killed her.

  Noah hadn’t moved. He was a statue of pain, and Brody turned away before he dropped to his knees.

  Tears flowed from my eyes. I couldn’t remember ever having wept before in my entire life. Not even the first time she died. I’d wanted to kill, to maim. This was different.

  She’d been a gust of wind on a constantly hot day. The first time I’d seen her smile, just for me, had been the best moment of my life. Whether or not she’d agreed to this, I knew in my heart we had not. Never. We couldn’t have said yes to killing her.

  The raven swooped down, landing on the ground. In a second, he changed, his wings expanding until he reshaped into the form of a man. His dark hair fell to his shoulders, and one streak of it was gray.

  He seemed… familiar.

  “Do you know me?” When he spoke, it was with low tones. His serious eyes matched the severity of his timbre.

  Thaddeus stopped rocking Teagan. “What are you?”

  “Then that would be a no.” The man rounded on Noah. “You should have been able to hear me, son. All this time. What is the matter with you?”

  My brother got to his feet, and I stormed over to this newcomer. No one threatened mine. These
men were my family, they always had been. I addressed the birdman. “Don’t go near him.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to, Aidan. I believe that many times in our long acquaintance you have wanted to cause me harm. That is one of your more endearing qualities; you charge into places where others would be afraid to go. Since you’ve all lost your memories from before, allow me to introduce myself. I am Reed. And once, many years ago, I pulled the five of you out of all the souls in the universe, and I gave you the chance to love Teagan. You were supposed to be strong enough to endure this. She’s going through hell to come back, and all she can do is worry about you.”

  Eric approached, leaving his tree. “What?”

  “First things first.” Reed swung at Noah, hitting him square in his left ear. “That’s what I thought. Blocked. A demon got his finger in there at some point. Probably when you were a baby.”

  Noah cried out, his hands coming to his ears. He fell back to his knees. What in the hell had this thing done to him? I launched myself at Reed the birdman and fell flat on my face like he’d never even been there at all.

  I hit the ground, hard.

  “You always did have to see things for yourself.”

  I was getting a little tired of him acting like he knew us. “I don’t know what you are, but I live in a world with all kinds of bad things. Teagan used to kill them.” I spit dirt out of my mouth.

  Reed laughed. “Are you calling me a demon, son?”

  “I’m not your son.” I’d never had a father, just a nearly dead, possessed asshole who’d taken off to do whatever it was he went to do. The people who ran the place used to tell me he’d killed my mother.

  The birdman raised his hands. “It’s the orphanage. They got to touch the five of you too much, too many close calls. Frankly, it’s amazing you made it as well as you did.”

  He clapped his hands together, and my world turned white.

  11

  I woke up, gasping for air. It took me a minute to realize where I was. This was where I had been fighting to return to while my body remade itself, achingly slow. The sun was setting in the sky, and Reed, The Raven, walked in a circle around my guards, all of whom were out cold on the ground.