by Michael Todd
Every ounce of energy he had was drained. He wasn’t even sure how his body could continue to pump his heart and inflate his lungs. Damian could put his thoughts together enough to know that if Ravi wasn’t healing him—if he was that weak and that unable to move—that she must be in really bad shape as well. He had no idea how he could help her or if he had the ability to do so.
In that moment, he couldn’t even help himself. A sense of desperation flooded over him and he tried one last time to open his mouth, to no avail. He rested from the miniscule strain he had attempted to put on his muscles and sank back into the darkness.
In a dream world, the limitations of one’s own body have no effect on what the mind can create. Damian’s eyes opened and a clear picture emerged in front of him. He stood on a concrete walkway through some sort of park. On either side of the path, flowering trees with violet petals swayed wildly around him. He looked quickly at his body, and realized that he was dressed in his normal attire—no dirt or blood, and no rips or tears.
The park scene was immensely beautiful. The laughter of children and low hum of conversations drifted on the wind, but there was no one else there. Slowly, he meandered on toward a bench. A girl sat there with long brown hair that tumbled wistfully around her shoulders. She wore a long black dress, something he would have placed in the 1700s. Her hands were folded carefully in her lap, and her cheeks were rosy.
As he approached, she turned her head and gave him a small smile. She patted the bench beside her, and Damian sat. He had the definite sense that this was where he was supposed to be. While he had never seen this girl before, there was something familiar about her.
“This is exactly like the park I used to sit in when I was on Earth,” she said and gazed at the violet flowers.
His eyebrows raised in surprise. He recognized that voice. “Ravi?”
She chuckled, stood, and offered her hand. “What did you expect? A hideous beast? Come on, let’s walk.”
He took her hand and tucked it in his arm, and they strolled along the path. Ravi moved elegantly and gracefully. He had never really thought about her as a human. In fact, he had never given her a face.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “I miss the air sometimes. The feeling of being a person.”
Damian nodded, still confused. “What happened? Where are we?”
“I’m not sure where this is.” She shrugged. “Your dreams, perhaps? My dreams, maybe? A world in between? Back during the fight, I knew you wouldn’t survive without some help, so I pulled magic from the cult leader and filtered it through you. I gave you the ability to fight him on a more even playing field.”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” he replied.
Ravi merely smiled. “The problem is, I used everything I had to draw that magic. I gave everything in me to make it so that you had a fighting chance. When the battle was done, so was I. It bled my energy so completely that I am now only holding onto you by a thread. I think I can come back and make myself strong again, but I don’t know for sure. Right now, I am as weak as you are. I can only concentrate on not letting go at this point, and what happens from there is yet to be seen.”
Damian stopped and turned her toward him, his brow creased in worry. “I can’t do this without you, especially with the wizards coming. We have to find a way to get you back. I’ll wait. I can wait here in our dreams for you. Maybe with us in the same place and me using little energy, it will help you heal.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think that is possible. You need to go back, Damian. I will do what I can, but you can’t wait for me. Not here, not in this place. You could get lost here. It’s not meant for you.”
He gritted his teeth obstinately. “I’m stronger than that. I won’t leave without you.”
Ravi pushed him hard and yelled now. “No! The world needs you. Max needs you.”
Damian stumbled back and tried to find his footing but the ground seemed to disappear beneath him. Suddenly, he fell through his dream and the flower petals drifted with him. Above him, Ravi watched with sadness in her eyes. She grew fainter by the second as gravity pulled at his body. He didn’t even know where he was falling to.
“Ravi,” he screamed and reached his hand toward her as she faded from sight.
The tunnel he tumbled through pulsed and her voice resounded around him. “Heal, Damian. You need to heal. Do not worry about me. I will do what I can to make my way back to you. Don’t wait for me.”
“I have to,” he whispered as his head began to spin.
“No,” she shouted firmly. “Prepare yourself for the wizards. They are the threat and your destiny.”
He twisted his head around and everything went dark. A voice whispered to him, and he thought it was her. “Wake up. Damian, wake up.”
With a deep inhale, he jolted awake. He sat up in the bed and clutched his chest as he wheezed in and out and tried to fill his lungs with air. Catherine stood at his bed and placed her hand on his. “Damian. It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re at your house and in your bed. We’re all here with you.”
Damian nodded and his gaze drifted around the room. Max stood there beside Rose and gripped the footboard nervously. He looked at his body and the bruises and cuts that marred his skin. They immediately began to sting, a sensation he had not felt in what seemed like years. A pain surged in his ribs and he grimaced and lay back.
Catherine eased him down. “You have some broken ribs and some bruises. Lie still, all right? Max will get you some water.”
He didn’t respond. Weary beyond belief, he laid his head on the pillow and stared at the door as Max hurried out of the room. Ravi? Are you there? Can you hear me?
Silence was the response. If she were there, she was too weak to answer him.
Chapter Eighteen
The morning chill seeped through his thick cotton robe. Normally, Damian would hate it, but at that time, he merely wanted to feel something. Anything other than pain, at least. He sat on the patio, his feet propped up, and enjoyed the foggy sunrise. The sounds of birds chirping overhead and the smell of the misty morning dew were comforting to him.
He stretched to pick his mug up and grunted at the pain in his chest. Catherine had been by that morning before he woke and left a warmed pot of tea by his bed. He didn’t know if Max was asleep or gone, so he had shuffled carefully and painfully out to the patio on his own.
It was the first time since before he was Damned that Damian was injured to the point to where he didn’t care about the missions or the phone calls. For now, he simply wanted to be still and allow his body to heal. He didn’t want to use any more energy than he had to, either, in the hope that any extra would go to Ravi to help her to come back. She was still silent, and it had been three days since he woke up surrounded by everyone.
The gate opened, and the rattle and squeak tore him from his thoughts. Max backed through it with two armfuls of grocery bags. He turned, stopped, and studied his mentor. A smile moved across his lips. “Hey. Did you come out here on your own?”
Damian grunted as he eased his feet down carefully and turned in his chair. “I needed some air. I was tired of staring at the same spot on the ceiling.”
The young man chuckled and placed the bags on the table. “I ran to the store early thinking I would make it back in time to make you some breakfast.”
The priest raised an eyebrow at the box of Lucky Charms that jutted out of the top. Max wrinkled his nose. “I guess I’m not too good at grocery shopping. Not for more than one meal. I basically winged it and decided that if you were hungry and I wasn’t here to cook something, you could eat easy stuff.”
He stood and rifled through the bags. “I got cereal. Instant oatmeal. Uh, crackers and this cheese that you squirt out of a can. I thought that would be easy. There are a few frozen meals in here you can heat up in the microwave, but I didn’t remember that we don’t have a microwave until I was almost home. But there are oven directions on them too.”
> Damian tried not to laugh because his ribs made that an entirely painful exercise. “You did fine, Max. I’m easy to please when I am taken care of by someone else.”
The trainee stared at the back of a bag of Cheetos with a package of sliced deli meat in his other hand. He smiled broadly and shrugged before he tossed the stuff back into the bag. After a moment, he refilled Damian’s teacup.
He sat in the empty chair and studied the bandages on his mentor’s arms. “We’ll need to change those in a while and put more ointment on them. The doc from the church left all kinds of stuff for you. Some antibiotics which Catherine put in the pudding you’ve eaten to make it easier. And if you’re in pain, he left pain medication too. How are you feeling?”
Damian thought about it for a moment. “Still weak, but way better energy-wise then I was. That soup Rose made helped a lot. Other than that, the pain isn’t so bad if I don’t move a muscle.”
They both chuckled and the older man shrugged. “I don’t think I’m ready to be back, you know? We have the wizard issue to handle, and if they call now, we can assume that hell will be released because in a fight, I would definitely go down in the first thirty seconds. If I could even get there.”
Max shook his head. “We wouldn’t even try. We’d call in backups. Katie or something. There would be no reason to have you walk in there on a suicide mission.”
Damian scowled. “It might be that either way if Ravi doesn’t come back. If she is still even here.”
Silence hung between them for several moments before Max took Damian’s phone from his pocket. “No one has called. Not even the Secretary. I wanted to keep an eye on it for you. I checked it every morning and I kept it on the nightstand next to my bed. It never showed that I missed any calls or messages.”
The older man smiled, took it, and set it down on the table. “Thanks. It’s nice knowing you have my back while I’m down and out. Not that I plan on that happening ever again. But still, thanks for taking care of things.”
Max nodded and stood briskly. “Well, I’ll put these groceries away. When I’m done, I’ll come out and see what I can make you for breakfast. I’m not completely inept. I can make some mean pancakes.”
Damian chuckled and instinctively held his side. The trainee gathered the groceries and hurried down the walk, then balanced a bag on his knee as he opened the door.
The steam from his tea swirled up into the cool air and he could feel himself tiring again. He was about to reach for his tea mug when his phone rang and he picked it up instead.
The Secretary’s name appeared on the screen. He grinned and pressed the answer button. “You could have called Max and asked him how I was. You didn’t have to wait until your stalky cams found me.”
“And you could learn not to get yourself almost killed during a mission,” she retorted. “Even the Wise Men said a prayer for you. I didn’t think they actually prayed out loud. I was surprised they had human enough bodies to pray on their knees.”
Damian laughed and winced at the pain. She sighed. “Those broken ribs will hurt for a while. Luckily, there was no internal bleeding, but the bruising will be enough to keep you immobile.”
He shook his head. “I see that your server hacked the doctor’s server and you two chatted for a while.”
“Yes, but he wasn’t very interesting,” she joked. “All ones and zeroes, and he never thought of anyone else. Very sad song.”
“I’m sure. He sounds very selfish,” he replied with a grin.
“So, I will go out on a limb here and assume that you might take a few days off.” Her mood was playful, better than the last time he spoke to her.
“I can say that your assumption is right on target,” he replied and raised his legs onto the other chair again.
“Slacker,” she joked. “But I won’t keep you. Some of us actually have jobs to do.”
Damian shook his head. “It isn’t considered a job when you are the computer. It’s merely keeping your system running.”
“Damn, you’re right.” She laughed. “You know, while you have some time, you should consider heading to the Gardens at Westmoreland for a little relaxation and change of scenery. I used to go there a lot.”
“You mean your drone went there,” he corrected.
“Yes, yes, of course,” she said with a serious tone. “He is my only eyes and ears of course. I kept the voice but had it tweaked. I was originally programmed him as a balding, fat forty-five-year-old man, but I couldn’t deal with that.”
He struggled to hold his laughter in. “I knew it!”
With a chuckle, she continued. “But seriously. Go there and relax. Two p.m. on Sundays at the North Rose Gardens can be completely life-changing.”
Breathing slow and deep, Damian rolled his shoulders. His back aching. “I will keep that in mind. The full team of health professionals here tends to keep me squarely in one place, but I will request a field trip.”
“Good. Do it,” she commanded. “I’ll call you soon.”
“Oh, the joy,” he joked as he hung up.
He dropped it onto the table and shook his head. Of course, he should have known she would be watching and wait until he got the phone back. He grabbed his tea, took a sip, and wrinkled his nose. It had gotten cold in that short time. He set the cup down and felt the teapot, which was also barely warm.
Still, he didn’t want to move, not yet. His mind was still hazy, stuck in that dream world with the wild blooms floating all around him. He could still see Ravi’s human face as clear as day, her emerald eyes beaming with youth. It made it hard to picture her being so neglectful of life that she would end up in hell.
He knew she was still there—at least part of her. Damian had seen the flash of red in his eyes that morning. But it was much dimmer than it used to be, and he had no idea how long she could continue to hold on for. He hoped it would be until she made it back, but he had lived enough of his life under the haze of demons that he knew not to hope for it.
The sound of the television from the house filtered through the open window and across the patio. It was the news, something he almost welcomed. Anything besides the sound of his own voice. He eased his sore legs carefully off the chair and grasped the armrests of his own. Slowly and with shaking arms, he hoisted himself off the seat and clutched the table to stabilize himself.
His legs were weak and tired, shaking more at that point than they had when he first woke up. He retrieved his phone, tucked his mug under his arm, and held the teapot against his chest. He didn’t want to drop it since it was made of glass and one of Rose’s favorites. He knew this because when she had struggled, she asked for the one with the purple flowers on it religiously. It really was silly how a teapot could make you feel better when you struggled.
He hobbled up the walk, made it to the door, and opened it. The room was warm and the lights were dim, which made his mind go immediately to the soft warm bed in his room. He shuffled through the dining room and into the kitchen where he placed the mug and teapot on the counter. Max stood still with a spatula in his hand and watched the small kitchen television. He wasn’t even sure the trainee had noticed him slide into the kitchen behind him.
The last thing he wanted to do was scare him, so he cleared his throat to get his attention. Max’s muscles tensed and his head swiveled to look over his shoulder at his mentor. At first, he didn’t look at the young man’s face, but his gaze seemed drawn to it and concern blossomed in his chest.
The old fear was there again, only this time, it was more sedate than usual. Still, he couldn’t figure out where it came from. “I dropped the teapot off. I’ll go lay down, I promise.”
Max ignored his statement and glanced back at the television. “Didn’t you say that Moloch was really bad?”
Damian’s face fell and he clutched the other section of counter to stabilize himself as he walked around his companion. He shuffled up to the television and increased the volume. The reporter sounded frightened. “This just in.
A massive incursion is in progress, and from the live footage, it seems there is a huge demon lurking on the other side.”
The screen flipped to the choppy footage. The camera bounced slightly and the whump of the news chopper rumbled loudly in the background. The video centered on a portal that sparked and wavered. A pair of enormous red eyes belonging to a behemoth of a demon stared directly through the gateway.
The reporter came back on screen and pushed her finger to her earpiece. “They are saying that this is, in fact, the demon Moloch.”
Chapter Nineteen
Damian sat up in bed and positioned the laptop in front of him. The video chat rang as he opened it. He smiled as he answered in an effort to make sure he didn’t look too worse for wear. They knew he was down and out since he had talked to Calvin for a few minutes during his recovery, but he didn’t want to make them worry too much.
Katie smiled widely as the video connected. “Damian! I have missed your face so much!”
He chuckled. “This old thing? I’m still looking for the elixir of life.”
They both laughed and she shook her head. “I’m sorry it has taken me so long to contact you. Calvin updated me on everything. How are you feeling?”
Damian shrugged. “Sore. I’m not used to being in pain for more than a few seconds.”
She wrinkled her nose. “So, nothing from your demon yet?”
The word threw him off for a moment. After seeing Ravi’s face, he had a hard time thinking of her as one. “No. My eyes are still red, though, so I know she’s holding on for now.”
Pandora popped into the screen. “Old man broken hip! Sorry about your body. If I were closer, I would jump on in there and pick up the slack.”
