by K. C. RILEY
Sister Clara was still up translating scrolls. “I see the girls told you about the door in your room. That didn’t take long. Well, are you going to just stand there or come in?”
So it was Cassie who slid the note under my door.
Busted, I moused over to the table.
Sister Clara sat her pen down, took off her glasses, and sighed. “I can only imagine what you’ve been through. And I’m sorry. I wish I could have told you about all of this prior, but The Society has only survived this long because of those who keep its secrets.”
Secrets. There were still things about me I hadn’t told Aunt Vye, things I hadn’t told Jake, and even things I hadn’t told Cassie. Not that I could trust her anymore.
“So, who’s in charge anyway? You or Mrs. Ellington?”
Sister Clara raised an eyebrow. She then sighed again. “Wynona. She means well, but how we approach the world and its problems are quite different. I know she was the one that brought Norah back. I found out after the fact. I also know she made a pact with Norah to bring Reginald back. A big mistake. One should never bring back the dead.” She paused. “We’re all connected, Miss Maverick, like a thread in a very large tapestry. One pull and the whole thing can unravel. I don’t condone what she did. It’s not our way at The Society.” Sister Clara glanced around the room. “Unfortunately, magic is dying. And we’re all, in our own way, trying to figure out why. Wynona had no idea you existed. None of us did. Your Aunt Norah used Wynona as much as Wynona used her. Reginald was a great scholar of the library. One of the best. I can only imagine she tried to bring him back to save us all.”
“Well did she? Bring him back?”
“I can’t say.”
“You mean you won’t say,” I said.
“I mean some things are better left unsaid and unspoken. Time has a way of revealing all the things we keep buried in the dark at exactly the right moment.”
So it was back to secrets and her being some kind of Yoda Jedi.
“There’s something I need to know. My mom, Uncle Jonas, and Aunt Norah, were they all a part of The Society?”
“Yes. For a short time. Although, Jonas has recently come back to us. I suspect to keep an eye on you.”
And how could he do that from South America? I still hadn’t heard a peep from him.
“Ezra was a Grand Master in The Society, sharp, intelligent, and way ahead of his time. He came head to head with the High Council, a way to save magic that was strictly forbidden. The High Council would have nothing to do with it and Ezra refused to bend. So he started his own following and built the village at Lake Shadowick. It was terrible, what happened. And yes, 483 was your mother’s room.”
Wow. Mom a part of a Secret Society, let alone a witch? It all still seemed surreal, like I was trapped in a bad dream, destined to never wake up. “What exactly was Ezra up to?”
“I don’t know. What I can say is that Ezra loved his family more than life itself. However, he was a complicated man, both burdened and very private. He never discussed his work with me, and The High Council decreed whatever he was working on as blasphemy. Unnatural. It was never repeated by anyone on The High Council again.”
“You said magic is dying.” It sure didn’t seem that way to me. If anything it was more like I was drowning it. “What’s wrong with it?”
Sister Clara stood up from her seat with the grace of a swan. “Walk with me.”
I still wasn’t sure whose side she was on.
I followed her, anyway, her white pumps clacking against the floor. There were so many doorways to this place, it was like one big maze. I had already forgotten the way back to my room.
Sister Clara led me into a hall of frescos. Paintings of angels falling from Heaven, humans in gardens, demons with fangs and black feathered wings, and large giants at war. Heaven, hell, and everything in between unfolded all over the ceiling and walls.
Sister Clara stopped and opened a silver vial that hung from her neck. She placed a drop of the tar-like elixir in her mouth. When she was done her eyes had turned completely black.
“Fallen venom.” My heart thumped in my throat.
“Yes. It’s what gives us the ability to decipher magic, spells, and angelic incantations.”
Zander, Josie’s so-called boyfriend, might have been crazy and creepy, but the vampire was right. The venom turns you into a witch. “Is it Jake’s?”
“No.” Sister Clara politely smiled. “Mr. Patrilo is not a member of The Society. Neither was Riley.”
“What about Meghan?”
“Ah yes, Meghan. That was a poor judgment in feeding and character, on both Jake and Riley’s part. No, none of them are members of The Society. Angelic feeding is strictly forbidden. Drinking human blood never turns out well for either the host or the angel. The desire for more eventually consumes one, the other, or both. Angels can be...quite addictive. Especially, the Fallen.”
No argument there. The thought of Jake’s beautiful blue eyes setting me aflame warmed me to the core, and then some. I had to admit, for one second, I wondered what it might be like to let him feed from my neck. Would it be more addictive than kissing his full lips or feeling the skin of his towering lean body against my own? Hmmm. According to Sister Clara, feeding was completely against the rules. I supposed we would see about that.
I tucked my hands into the pockets of his sweater as my chest fluttered at the thought of him giving up his life to save mine.
You don’t understand, I remembered him saying. From the first day I met you, it took everything I had to be near you. That’s why I avoided you like the plague. With you, the hunger is more than blood. It’s your soul. And it’s getting harder to control. I didn’t leave the hospital to hurt you. I left to protect you...from me. I’m damned. I always have been.
I was so mad that he left without a word for weeks. No phone call. No text. Nothing. Then, out of nowhere, the guy pops back up at Josie’s birthday party with my dress from the Homecoming Ball—the one Meghan shredded—completely restored in hand and a grin that melted the caps from my knees. Jake wasn’t the only one that was damned. In many ways, I wanted his soul—wanted him—as much as he wanted mine.
“What I can tell you is that the answers you’re looking for, Miss Maverick, lay within these halls. How to save Jake. Who you really are. The books, the art, study all of it. And remember, nothing is a coincidence.”
Now, she sounded like Kai. And then there was that. I still felt bad about how Aunt Norah had possessed his body. He was innocent in all of this. His forgetting all that happened was a good thing. I hoped.
“The Society is by no means easy. Only the true and dedicated are taken into its walls. Everything you went through, the death of your mother, surviving Norah’s magic, Jake, and even Wynona’s meddling. It was all a test from the Unnamed One.”
“The Unnamed One?”
“Yes. The Source of everything. We call such tests The Dark Trials. It’s hard to hear, I know. Mason, Boyd, Cassie, Josie, even myself, were all being tested at some level. Each trial you pass brings you closer to the knowledge and magic within these walls, and within yourself. What happened with Zander and Norah at the lake, as much as we wanted to help, we could not interfere. Wynona’s meddling had to play itself out. It was the only way to know if you really were the one.”
“I don’t understand. The one what?”
“I find the best place to start is always at the beginning.” Sister Clara walked further down bringing my attention to the fresco at her side.
Six angels, barely clothed in white clouds, stepped out of a bright light. One of them with eyes as blue as sapphires. “Jake.” The other with doe eyes and long dark flowing hair. I remembered the sketch of his sister from the drawing in his room. “Riley. How?”
“In the beginning was darkness. Empty space. The Unnamed One. The Source of all things. From that Source emerged The White Sun, The Light. The first born of that light were six seraphim. They were the first gods and goddesses. The cr
eators of worlds and universes.”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Oh?”
My face warmed red as I recalled the euphoria of kissing Jake, the electricity that flooded every part of my being as angels sang in a tunnel of light. “Jake told me the story.”
“I see. Well then, you know the first six seraphim were also the mind of the White Sun. The intelligence of the Light. As a collective, the six were called Elohim.”
So, maybe I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.
“Did he tell you his real name?” Sister Clara asked.
“I don’t understand.”
“His angelic name. Gadreel. He was no ordinary angel. And he was no lieutenant as described in your studies on the books of Enoch. Gadreel was the firstborn to the Elohim. Some called him the Angel King.”
Goosebumps ran up and down my arms. Jake a King? Something inside of me knew Sister Clara wasn’t lying. Jake was the first angel. I had seen it with my own eyes. It wasn’t just a vision. I was there. In many ways it made sense. The thought of locking lips with an Angel King caused my fingers to curl tighter into the heat of my hands.
Sister Clara continued as my mind drifted back to every moment Jake and I had kissed. There were times when I swore the White Sun had been trying to tell me something, some part of Jake’s mind he had been blocking me from seeing. Every time I had gotten close enough to it, Jake had broken the kiss.
Secrets had their own timing, Sister Clara had said. And maybe she was right, given nothing could have prepared me for what I saw next.
A naked woman with a red rose in her hand stood next to a naked man in a garden. Embarrassment snaked from my lower back and neck, and up into my head. There was nowhere to hide the flames that engulfed my cheeks. The woman in the painting was me. All my bits were there, on display, for the world to see. Every awkward curve. Every dimple. And not a fig leaf in site to cover any of it. While I wanted to curl up and die, there was more. A lot more.
The naked man next to me with gray, soulful eyes, dark wavy hair, and nothing short of beautiful, was Kai. No fig leaves there, either.
Hovering over us was a stark-naked angel with a blazing halo, six glorious white wings, and an immaculate body I had once seen at the lake dripping with the light of the full moon. Jake.
2
“This has to be a joke,” I insisted, hiding my face behind my hand.
“I assure you, Miss Maverick, it’s no joke,” Sister Clara said. “Reincarnation is very much a real thing. At least, for those of us that are mortal. And as far as the nudity, which you seem to be a bit uncomfortable with, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Nudity and sex are quite natural, I assure you.”
One, it wasn’t her body laid bare for the entire world to see. And two, Sister Clara teaching a class on nudity and sex education was something I just wasn’t ready for. Ever. The oxygen in the room dissipated at the thought. I could no longer feel the ground beneath my feet or the feeling in my hands.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I whined.
Sister Clara’s eyes glistened like black tar as she twirled her hands in the air. The images leaped from the wall and became a living projection, a hologram. “The Fallen venom blesses us with certain gifts. Mine are transcribing angelic languages and storytelling, bringing the pictures and paintings within the halls to life.”
The images of the Elohim breathed before my eyes as though alive, my hand going straight through as I tried to touch them.
“The Elohim had grown bored with the worlds and universes they had constructed. They wanted to experience more and agreed to create something quite unique: beings that were a direct reflection of themselves. Humans.” Sister Clara summoned the symbols that surrounded the Elohim to the center of the room. “Earth, wind, fire, water, and celestial light. The first woman was created from the five elements of stardust. They named her Eve. They then fashioned the body of man and named him Adam. With their collective breath, they tried to breathe life into Eve as they had done with any other creation. But for some reason her body rejected it. Adam, on the other hand, received the breath of life and became a living being.”
“The Elohim, all except Gadreel, agreed Eve was a failure, an experiment gone wrong. Gadreel believed Eve possessed something extraordinary within. To him, she was merely sleeping. The Elohim decided to scrap Eve’s body and start from scratch. Gadreel, however, had an idea and convinced them otherwise. He took Eve’s body to The Source itself, that which even the light of The White Sun had been made of, the fire, the spirit of Source within every living thing they called The Goddess Particle.”
Mystified, I was swept into space, a darkness beyond stars and planets that shimmered in golden particles and droplets of fire.
“Something different stirred inside the heart of Gadreel; feelings, and sensations none of the Elohim understood, or had ever felt. Love. Adornment. Passion. Attraction. While the experience of these new emotions piqued the curiosity of some, others within the Elohim were terrified.”
“Gadreel had fallen in love with his creation,” I said. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach at the thought.
“That is the belief. Nothing like what Gadreel proposed to save his creation had ever been done. Gadreel offered Eve’s body to The Goddess Particle, the Source itself. Within that cosmic cloud of dust, Eve’s soul had been formed and fashioned. Love, passion, desire, and beauty coursed through her veins. But more than that, magic. She was different than Adam, different than the Elohim and any other creature that existed in the universe. It made some of the Elohim quite nervous, those parts of Eve that were beyond their control. Of course, Gadreel reveled in it, the idea that Eve could think and feel. Know herself completely.” Sister Clara paused.
“What happened next?” I asked anxiously. Not that I was completely buying into the whole reincarnation thing, but I wanted to know more about Eve and Gadreel. Jake. The way he saw Eve, saved her. Brought her to life. The way he did that for me. It was more than Jake saving me from Cassie’s dad, more than him healing the bullet wound that almost killed me. Being close to Jake, let alone jumping off a building only to land in his arms, it awakened me to an entirely different part of me. One that was alive, electric, and in living color. Being with Jake took me beyond the drab gray world of my mom’s death, the emptiness of feeling alone and left behind, and of not knowing exactly how to be here without her.
Sister Clara smiled with amusement. “Eve and Adam were placed on the earth. The Elohim kept watch over Adam’s development while Gadreel kept watch over Eve’s. She was smart, wise, and clever. She had also become more than the Elohim ever expected. Eve had become one with the heart of the Earth. Given the magic that coursed through her veins, it made sense that she would become the first natural witch, a guardian, and caretaker of this world. Eve could wield nature and the elements at the sound of her command. Every flower, every plant, and every animal she touched flourished with life, including Gadreel’s heart.
“But Eve was designed to be with Adam, not an angel. And while she was closely intimate with Adam, she grew even closer to Gadreel. And vice versa. The Elohim grew jealous of Eve as Gadreel, distracted, had grown weary of his duties as the Angel King. He wanted to be with Eve forever, never leaving her side. The Elohim would not hear of such blasphemy. One of their own consorting with a human? Never. Thus, they devised a plan, a tree in the garden they told Gadreel was a gift from the Goddess Particle. Eve was to eat from it in order to please The Source. They told him it would make her one of the Elohim and that was the only way they could ever truly be together, a bridge between heaven and earth. Gadreel, blinded by his love, convinced Eve to eat the poisoned fruit and she died instantly.”
“How could they do such a thing?” My gut twisted in confusion. The Elohim. Weren’t they supposed to be better than that? If we were made in the image of the Elohim, maybe that was the problem to begin with.
“Gadreel knew he had been tricked. The day Eve died was the day Gadree
l had cursed his brothers and sisters. However, in so doing, he also cursed the very light he had been born from, The White Sun. His wings blackened. And so did the golden fire that once flickered in his eyes. Yet, there was still a celestial flame that burned deep in his soul.”
“As the tears streamed down his face he kissed Eve and filled her lifeless body with the last bit of all that was good in his soul. Eve had been awakened with a kiss, but she was no longer the same. The poison from the apple had seeped too far into her mind. The moment her eyes opened, everything fell into darkness. The planet, man, woman, and child, all of it. War, hate, and envy. A new power had been born out of the jealousy of the Elohim. Dark magic. Lilith, the Mother of Shadows and Hell on Earth. Eve did her best to overcome her shadow, but it was too much to bear, the battle of light and darkness that raged inside of her mind. The only way to keep Lilith from destroying everything in her path was to kill her. And so to protect the good, Eve took her own life. But Gadreel refused to let her go. He used what magic of the Elohim he had left to create an incantation that would give Eve the chance to transcend her shadow.”
“The Codex Rose.”
“Yes. Time after time, Eve would be born again until she was strong enough to overcome her darkness, Lilith.”
I was sweating bricks. It was a horrible story. No wonder Jake never said a word of any of it. The last thing I wanted to do was think about the darkness inside of me. Or admit that any of it was true and had a thing to do with Eve or Lilith. Sister Clara and God knows who else had concluded that I was Eve. But I wasn’t. I was just a seventeen-year-old kid from Nashville.
“And if she defeats Lilith? What then?”
The images of darkness around me morphed into a being with fiery wings of light.
“The day Eve defeats Lilith is the day she ascends into an Elohim. Angels have been at war ever since. There are some that believe in the union of angel and human, heaven and earth, a new order of magic. And there are others who believe in keeping the purity of heaven and the light of the Elohim as it is, far from reach.”
