The Celestial Rose BoxSet

by Annalee Adams

  “Eve,” he said.

  One word, that’s all it took to bring about my silence. My mind entered a universe of recollection. My body trembled as the word echoed through the room. The air felt stuffy as sweat creased my brow. Holding my legs tightly, I continued to be a cocoon. It couldn’t be? I couldn’t be? I remembered him offering his hand before, we’ve been here before, lived this moment many times. How many lives have I had? I was still Taylor, no matter what anyone said, but now I was Eve, too. It explained the powers, the emotional hold on the world, but what it didn’t explain is what I was doing here, doing there? If I was the daughter of God himself, then why was I living as a mortal on Earth? It didn’t make sense.

  Closing my eyes tightly, I searched for answers, pleaded for memories to come flooding back, any idea of who and what this Eve was. I knew the stories, the scriptures, but which of those were true? Searching deep within, I became interlocked in a cavern of time. My mind entered a library of books, each shelved with different memories, different timestamps. Above the shelves were tall windows with dust shimmering in the sunlight. Everything I needed to know about who I was sat right there for the taking. But was I ready? Could I let go of Taylor Lane and live without my family, my lover? I couldn’t. They were mine and I was theirs. It wasn’t right to remove them from my lifeline. I loved them.

  I knew who he was; if I was Eve, then he would be Adam. The thoughts of the scriptures made me want to gag. He was my brother and nothing more, no matter which memory I looked at. I had no desire to want anything more from him. Why would they write about incest so freely? I shuddered. I needed some answers, even if I wasn’t prepared to change. I had to adapt to who I was now, and this Eve, she was a part of me whether I liked it or not.

  Stepping forward to a book on the base of an old oak shelf, I reached out to one I felt drawn to. The red leather book stood out from all the rest, willing me to take it, pick it up, and open it. In my hands it felt rough and heavy, cracked with crumbling corners, dried with age. Did I dare to open it? Dare to look through the eyes of my former self? Of course I did, what else was there to lose? Clasping the edges, I breathed in the musky smell of an old book, ripe with memories. There was no title, no author, no blurb on the back. It was blank so I had no idea what force I’d unleash by opening it. But I did anyway. As the book opened, the pages lay stained but empty. It couldn’t be. There had to be something there, anything to help me resolve the pain inside of me. Flicking through confirmed there was nothing written, no long-lost memories. My life’s story was empty, as barren as my soul.

  That’s when I felt it, right in my hands, a gentle vibration, a subtle humming. My nerves ignited, sparks flew, and the book emanated light from every surface. It began to shake, quivering itself open, trembling in my hands as it urged to get away. Did I really want this memory? Whatever this was? Gripping the book for its dear life, the pages began to crumble, the humming became rumbling as the book tremored and shot out an intense beam of light that hit my temple. I fell.

  The book floated gradually down beside me, coming to rest as my eyes shut and I drifted into an unconscious state. I entered another realm within my mind's own library. I awoke in the body of an infant, no, a toddler of two, maybe three years. I was running through the garden and into a field of floral delights. I laughed, giggling to myself as he pulled me along quicker. The hand that met my own was that of a boy, dressed in cream and white old-fashioned attire with chestnut brown hair. He didn’t seem to be laughing nor giggling. I thought it was just a game, our new version of hide and seek.

  “Quickly, Eve,” he urged as I ran as fast as my little legs could carry me.

  “Am doing, Adam,” I responded in a quaint little voice. He kept tugging me along. I couldn’t keep up, this didn’t seem like fun anymore. The stems scratched against my bare legs as we entered the rose garden on the other side. “Can’t Adam, stop.” I just couldn’t keep up. My legs hurt. I didn’t like this game anymore. Salty tears cushioned my lips as I sat down, adamant I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Don’t cry, Eve, please don’t cry,” he begged, rubbing my poorly legs better. “We need to hide, father is coming.” I didn’t like the sound of that; the idea of father coming struck a deep-rooted fear within me. “Come on, just a little further. Remember our game?” he asked as I nodded. “Okay, jump on my back and we’ll run as fast as we can.” He smiled. “Close those eyes. Remember?” And I did. I always did everything my big brother told me. I was only little, I couldn’t say boo to a goose. There was no fight built within me yet. I wasn’t strong, I felt fear and cried a lot, as I just didn’t understand what was happening. But one thing I knew was that I always felt safe by my brother’s side.

  So we ran as fast as the wind would allow us. I knew we were running away from father, running towards our mother and sister, I just didn’t understand why. The trees whipped across Adam's body as he shot through them like a bullet from a gun. There was no stopping him. He’d come back for me, come back to save me just as he always did, just as he always would.

  It was a new world, one father had created with love and peace. However, when he and mother escaped the tragedy of their own corporal existence, they arrived as two star-crossed lovers on this plane. Mother had told me they had lived in harmony for years, creating Eden, a land of tranquillity and adoration. But as life took a wrong turn, they came to realise something had followed them there. The serpent that destroyed the light on their home planet had hitched a ride and sat waiting, creeping amongst their hopes and dreams, belittling their curiosity as father slowly succumbed to its darkness, destroying his light in the process. They realised they had created a universe of problems; the darkness enslaved the light there just as it did on their home world. To keep the balance, the watchtowers were created to protect a neutral area in between Heaven and Hell.

  After their creation, mother bore her three children; the twins, Adam and Lilith, and I, Eve, the youngest. The darkness had bided its time, waited an eternity and played its role well when it came to daddy dearest. I remembered my father as a loving and compassionate man, able to forgive and forget. He became known as the Almighty. But the darkness took over, threatened his existence and warped his mind. He trusted it, and because of that, we all paid the price.

  The first day we paid for its corruption was on this day, this memory. The day Adam and I ran. We ran to the arms of our mother, only to be beaten there by the Almighty himself. He rose tall, like the Beast from Taylor's life, striking down our beloved mother as she stood protecting her three children with all her might. She had been trying to save us, trying to banish the darkness in him in hopes of getting her loved one back. But she wasn’t quick enough. The serpent had warned him and when he arrived, he caught her and beat her to within an inch of her immortal life. Banishing our mother before our eyes, throwing her soul into the obsidian mirror, a portal that transported her to another realm. He locked her in sadness, crying the tears of a broken mother unable to save her children from the beatings, the torture, and the torment. Something that my father didn’t foresee was that when he banished my mother, he also banished part of himself, weakening his soul as they were connected through their own spirituality.

  Lilith, on the other hand, wouldn’t bow. Mythology got that right. She was older than me, but she wouldn’t bow to him, and why should she? They were equals. Adam agreed. He couldn’t see his sister as anything less than himself, so God banished her to the wasteland called Earth, a place where the promised lands rubbish fell down to lay. But that wasn’t enough. When Lilith started making a life for herself, God sent down the Angels to kill one hundred of her first-born children, thus waging an eternal war between light and dark. Lilith wasn’t the evil one in this war though, God was.

  So all that was left was Adam and I. He protected me all my life, kept me hidden, kept me sane. When I became older, father wanted to banish me to the abyss, living an eternity in the Cosmos, frozen forever more. But Adam got to me before he d
id, taking his blade and kissing my forehead before he murdered my body to protect my soul, sending it into that of a newborn baby girl on Earth.

  When Adam saved me, he gave me the chance to live a normal human life with a loving family. But whenever I reached the age of sixteen, I would become aware of my alternate life and therefore became a beacon to the supernatural, to Lilith and to God, himself. This had gone on for centuries; Adam forever sending me away to keep me safe. Father would scour the Earth in search of me, in search of anything angelic to corrupt and keep as his own, and when he’d finish, he’d banish it into the molten pits of Earth’s core to burn forever more. Why did he see me as such a threat? Did he know something I didn’t? Mother had given her life to save us, perhaps we were the future whereas they were the past. Maybe this life was foreseen, when they walked countless universes as corporal beings, as powerful as creation itself, living in one moment, able to see the existence of infinite timelines before them. Choosing to walk the linear path must have been difficult, knowing what they had to give up. But after such purity turned to such darkness, their only option was escape and so the story was told, with a new future beckoning.

  But my life as Taylor had been different. I’d not only met the supernatural, but absorbed the powers of my sisters’ creations as she succumbed to the darkness centuries before. However, for father, when it came to the ability to wield both light and dark together, it sent him mad. He couldn’t handle the clash of power. Hell, it sent me mad when I screamed, murdering everyone I ever loved. I could never forgive what I did, but part of this mayhem made sense. I couldn’t help what I was. I was a sponge to all power and both the light and the dark had their claws in me. Understanding what I was, what I am, and what I could be was the first step. I needed to end this once and for all; no more hiding, no more running. I had to take the fight back to him. Too many people had suffered at my father’s hand and it wasn’t right. He was God; millions of people across the world looked up to him, and instead of looking after them, he’d let in the darkness and destroyed humanity piece by piece. But what he didn’t realise was that I, too, had the darkness within, but I had a reason to keep fighting, a reason to keep going and one of those reasons stood right over me offering his hand.

  “Adam,” I spoke, wiping my eyes, taking his hand and then he pulled me close. Charmeine covered me over with a robe as Adam pulled me in for one of the biggest brotherly hugs any man could muster.

  “I’ve missed you, sister,” he said, smiling, ruffling my hair.

  CHAPTER 29: LUCIAN

  The emptiness of my immortal existence pained me. She was the reason I smiled in the morning. I had breathed the air with a sigh of relief when she entered my life. She meant something to all of us, especially to me. How could I let her go? How could I abandon her soul? Where was she now? Trapped forever in torment in Hell’s own graveyard, most likely. I had to help her, save her, find a way to release her from the clutches of death itself. I knew an hour here lasted years down there, where tortured souls begged for mercy. I couldn’t do that to my beloved, couldn’t bear to think of her living in such sorrow. A broken Angel, fallen from grace, filled with darkness and grief, living with her pain through endless persecution.

  How was I able to live when she died? She lay cold in my arms, with blackened veins creeping through her skin. Did it reach her soul, her spirit? Did it take all of her? Lawrence thought it did. Did her death end her powers, end her reach on all of us? He said her powers took over, consumed her soul, and that she was lost forever. But I refused to believe that. Not my Taylor. She was a fighter, strong in mind, body, and spirit; nothing could destroy her. I had to believe that, needed to believe it, otherwise the only way out of the sorrow was true death. It was something I’d considered when I’d first opened my eyes and saw her battered corpse lying beside me.

  But even true death was hard to come by. There was apparently a blade that could kill a Disciple, the Reaper's blade. Not his scythe. but a special dagger he wielded when he took the life of an immortal Disciple. It was not one I’d seen in a millennium, but one I hoped to source as a way out if my girl was truly lost. The only way I could enter the depths of Hell was to plead Lilith’s forgiveness. She had surely heard our fight against her minions. We were meant to be the hunters of those that escaped Enoch, not the murderers of her favourite pet beast and henchman, Seine. She was bound to have a little resentment lying in wait for my demise should I ever cross paths with her. And now, now I needed to cross paths. I had to speak with her. She was the only goddess I knew, the daughter of God himself, surely she could get me in to Hell alright. If she knew the reason, as she was going to ask it, would she allow me to save Taylor's dammed soul? The price was sure to be high, it always was. Then again, what else could she take from me? I had nothing without my girl, and I couldn’t cope with the human emotions anymore. Biting Taylor had given me back my humanity. I was still a darkened Disciple, but I had my human emotions back in check, which meant an impounding grief resounding in my non-beating heart. I couldn’t cope with the struggle to get through one more day, to find a reason to bring life back to my rotten lungs, breathe in the substance of life once again. But what was the point? I didn’t have to breathe, so why should I try and look human again, there was no point without her. But I wanted to feel the air in my necrotic lungs, feel the warmth of her touch penetrating my steel-cold heart. She was the life to my death, the light to my darkness, and I’d lost her.

  “Come on Lucian, we need to move her,” Elisha said, bending down and offering her hand. I couldn’t take it, couldn’t let Taylor's body go.

  “She wouldn’t want to be left out like this. We owe her a human burial,” she said offering her hand once again.

  She was right, I was being selfish. She had earned the right to be buried by the light of the moon, blessed by her God, beside her fallen family. They all deserved the right to a proper send off, a farewell to this world in the hopes that they would walk the realm of tranquillity, resting in peace. I knew Taylor didn’t have a chance at that, but she’d never forgive me if I didn’t at least try and bury her brother and father by her side. It had to be done, but I just couldn’t do it.

  Taking Elisha’s hand, I let go of Taylor, placing her gently down as I rose up to the land of the living.

  “I can’t do it, Elisha.”

  “Can’t do what?”

  “Bury her. She shouldn’t be placed in the ground, she should rise up to the Heavens.”

  “Okay, what would you like us to do?” she said, letting go of my hand and resting it on my shoulder.

  “What about an ice coffin?” Julian said “That would keep her body intact for longer. That way you can say your goodbyes and then when you’re ready, we can set her and her family alight. The ashes would lift to the Heavens, securing their place beside their God.”

  “That’s beautiful, Julian,” Elisha said, looking a little taken aback.

  “Yes, I think she would like that,” I said with salty tears. I knelt beside her fallen body and covered her over with my jacket, comforting her one last time.

  “I’ll get to it then,” Julian said as he walked outside the broken window and into the woods with a flurry of snowflakes and a trail of icicles following him.

  Watching Julian leave, I kissed the tip of her nose, caressed her mottled face with my forefingers, and wept into her cushioned breasts one last time before I left her to trail across the world and reach the city of Enoch to beg Lilith’s forgiveness to save my beloved's soul.

  CHAPTER 30: EVE

  So, as I said before, who would have thought I’d be sitting in Heaven sipping tea while the world emitted chaos down below. Not me, that was for sure. Well, I wasn’t quite there. I was still safe in the arms of my big brother as he squished me dry.

  “It’s so good to see you again, Eve. It’s been too long.”

  “I’m not used to Eve yet,” I said as he laughed.

  “Ah, yes. Taylor, I believe?”


  “That’s right.” I smiled. “How long have I been away this time?”

  “Well, it’s been much longer than ever before, nearly nineteen human years by my count. Granted, not so long up here, but it still feels like too long,” he said, pulling me in for another hug. “Do you remember much?”

  “No, not much. The only memory I could find was the day mother was beaten and banished. And how you hid me from father all these years. I can’t remember much else.”

  “That’s a good start,” he said, “they aren’t the best memories there are they?” He frowned.

  “There is still good in the darkness, Adam. I remember you running through the forest with me on your back, saving me,” I said as he smiled, pulling away and motioning for me to follow.

  We left the cosmic room and entered a bright white room.

  “Do you remember this room?”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “You created it.” He smiled as he offered me a seat. “Remember, sit, close your eyes, and think of your most perfect place.” And I did just that, taking his hand as I sat relaxed, closed my eyes, and remembered back to Lake Meed, the day with Lucian. A perfect day splashing in the lake of tranquillity. “Now open your eyes.”

  I did. I was sitting on the shore of Lake Meed. Both Adam and I sat in what looked like colourful deckchairs, listening to the sound of the birds tweeting overhead and the sun beamed down, warming my skin. Closing my eyes again, I took a deep breath. The air cradled my lungs as the scent of wild flowers relaxed every part of me. I let go and believed in the love of life once again. This was my relaxing place, my peace in life and heavenly death.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, smiling.

  “It is, and a good choice, too.”