by Raine Thomas
Once again, Amber felt the tickle of fear in the back of her throat. She glanced over at Ini-herit, who shook his head. She then realized he couldn’t do anything else for Gabriel. Since her knees no longer wanted to support her anyway, she sank back down to the floor.
“Okay,” she whispered, her voice just a shaky breath.
She didn’t know what to do. Should they call an ambulance? Was there an EMT or nurse on staff at the museum for such things? Would they even be in time to help Gabriel if he had a bleed in his brain? And what if it wasn’t a normal injury, since none of this was at all “normal?”
Suddenly, she flashed to the experience at the pond and the first time they kissed. That connection had helped heal them both after she had nearly drowned. And kissing Gabriel since then had helped stabilize her during the onset of her recent episodes. Catching his pained gaze, she made her decision.
“I get extra points for this,” she said to him, and then, swinging one of her legs over both of his so she straddled him, she quickly leaned forward to press her lips to his.
When he started to jerk back, obviously cognizant of the blood all over his face and Ini-herit sitting a few feet away, she held him tighter. After a moment, he relaxed against her and deepened the kiss, probably sensing her reasoning. She ignored the salty, coppery taste of the residue left on his lips. Instead, she instinctively focused on his energy and essence, running her hands along his upper arms, chest and back as though she was rubbing a healing salve into his skin. Then she wove the fingers of her left hand into his dark, wavy hair near the base of his neck, gently stroking the muscles tensed there.
Eventually, his arms lifted from their bracing position on the floor so he could put them around her, a sign he was regaining strength. As the kiss continued, she felt his fingers brush against her bare skin several times, then encircle her waist. His fingers flexed on her hips as though they itched to move along her body and it was a struggle to keep them in place. Thus, Amber sensed the kiss had done its job.
Finally, she pulled away from his mouth, her heart racing and her lungs burning. Gabriel was in a similar condition, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he held her gaze. She was deeply relieved to see that his color had returned and the pain had left his eyes.
They both then became aware of the presence standing right beside them staring down, and they lifted their heads as one to look up at Ini-herit. Amber wondered how long the strange man had been standing there essentially watching her make out with Gabriel, and wanted to die of mortification. His dark gaze was inscrutable, but his eyes seemed to glitter with understanding as he looked from one of them to the other.
“So…it appears your powers have already started to Become.”
Amber sat in one of the armless visitor’s chairs across from where Ini-herit once again reigned over the desk. Gabriel had pulled the other chair up right next to hers and was now holding her right hand. By unspoken agreement, they had gotten up from the floor after Ini-herit’s announcement, none of them wanting to have this conversation while Amber and Gabriel were sprawled in such a position. There wasn’t a thing that could be done about the blood covering them at the moment, so they just had to deal with it. Now, Ini-herit sat quietly, staring unblinkingly at Amber.
“Powers?” Gabriel prompted in an effort to restart the conversation.
“Indeed,” Ini-herit replied, his dark eyes shifting to Gabriel. “We were unsure what form each of the girls’ powers would take. It appears Ambryl has already begun to develop the ability to heal. At least, she can heal you.”
Amber and Gabriel exchanged a look. “Ambryl?” they repeated at the same time.
Ini-herit paused. He seemed lost in thought. Then he said, “The story of your origins has many beginnings.”
Rolling her eyes impatiently, she said, “Look, could we just skip the trailers and get right to the main feature?”
“What she means,” Gabriel explained when Ini-herit blinked in obvious confusion, “is we just want to know what’s going on.”
“Yeah. I mean, am I psychic? Telekinetic?” she asked.
“No,” Ini-herit answered. “At least, not in the human way you mean.”
There was another heavy pause as they processed this information. Gabriel looked from Amber to Ini-herit and said slowly, “Let me be sure I’m getting this right. You’re saying that Amber isn’t human?”
“That is, indeed, what I am saying. And neither are you, Gabriel.”
Holy crap. The Dream.
Amber felt a little faint. There was just no way…was there? Could The Dream possibly have been more than just that? Looking sideways at Gabriel, she saw doubt and uncertainty in his eyes. Catching her gaze, he gave her hand a light squeeze.
Not human? Several months ago, she would have scoffed heartily at Ini-herit and pegged him for an insane liar. In the past few weeks, though, The Dream had been making frequent appearances, she had barely lived through some kind of explosion in a pond and witnessed Gabriel brought to the brink of death by a stare, among other crazy things. She supposed she was willing to set aside her usual cynicism for some answers.
“Okay, fine. Sure. So, what are we?” she asked at last.
Ini-herit had obviously been waiting to see how they would react before telling them anything else. Nodding in apparent approval, he replied, “We call ourselves Estilorians. We have resided here on Earth since the dawn of man.”
Amber started to speak when he once again grew silent, but he held up a hand. “Please, just let me speak. We do not have much time and I know you have many questions. I will tell you what I can now, but I must collect my thoughts.”
She closed her mouth.
When Ini-herit again spoke, his deep, level voice held them in thrall. “Millennia ago, when civilization first began, humans and Estilorians shared the Earth. We both have similar physical characteristics and compatible mental processes, so this seemed logical for everyone. Where we differ, we have since discovered, is at a very significant cellular level. And as this evolutionary difference became more apparent and Estilorians advanced more rapidly than humans, there was an unmanageable shift in the balance of power.
“For many centuries after we were first identified, Estilorians were revered by humans. We were depicted as gods and goddesses and other fabled beings in human literature, art and music. Our unique abilities and the fact that we are long-lived set us apart from humans in a way that no social construct could withstand. Humans are emotional beings, and what began as reverence ultimately turned, at least for many, into jealousy and resentment. Unwilling to accept that they would never acquire the powers and abilities of Estilorians, those humans grew to revile us. And because they knew they would never defeat us if they challenged us directly, they did what to them was the second best option. They turned on the humans who still called us friends.
“There were wars and persecutions…and far too much death. Seeing how our presence was destroying humanity, we did the only thing we could. We joined together and created a new plane of existence, removing ourselves from humanity. In time, the stories about us were deemed nothing more than mythos.”
He stopped and studied them.
Gabriel shifted in his chair. “You’re saying that human stories about Zeus and Apollo and stuff like that are based on fact?”
“Yes.”
“So, Estilorians are immortal? Like the gods in those ancient stories?” Amber asked. Her eyebrows were up near her hairline by that point.
“Not immortal. Long-lived. There is a difference. Although we heal quickly from injury and can survive more significant injuries than humans, we are quite mortal. But we do not age.”
Blinking at that, Gabriel said, “You’re saying that we’re Estilorians? How can that be if we age?”
“You, Gabriel, are an Estilorian, presently in an aging human form. Ambryl is a new being altogether, one we have been working to protect since her birth, just as we have her sisters.”
Afte
r exchanging another look with Gabriel, Amber asked, “Well, if Estilorians removed themselves from humanity, how come we’re here?”
“An excellent question. I will begin to answer that by explaining that the creation of the new Estilorian plane was completely unprecedented. It required the cooperation of the most powerful of each of the nine different classes of Estilorians. Even with those combined talents, the power required to complete this feat nearly killed all of us.”
“You were one of the nine?” Gabriel guessed.
“I was,” Ini-herit answered. “And so were you.”
Amber had been rather proud of herself up until then. She had suspended her disbelief and tried to make herself open to the idea that the strange things that were happening to her were because she wasn’t quite human. But this stopped her in her tracks. “Are you saying that Gabriel is like, a thousand years old? And that he’s this Estilorian being who is more powerful than other, similar beings?”
“He is actually much older than that,” Ini-herit responded calmly.
She stared at him, then realized he wasn’t going to expound. Then she turned and caught Gabriel’s gaze. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged, obviously at a loss.
“Once the new plane of Estilorian existence was formed,” Ini-herit continued, “humans could no longer detect us. Well, some of the more intuitive humans sometimes catch glimpses of us, but for the most part we are able to move about the Earth undetected. Even those who sense us think of us in human terms…as ghosts or spirits or angels. Those kinds of beings.”
“And you just come over to this plane whenever you feel like it?” Amber asked, still trying to make sense out of what he was saying.
“On the contrary, crossing over from one plane to the next is extremely difficult. Very few of us have the ability to move between them. And we have found that when we do cross to this side, our powers are not at all what they had been while on this plane before we removed ourselves.”
Shaking his head in bewilderment, Gabriel asked, “So, how is it that you apparently crossed over now and have retained all of this knowledge, but I’m on this plane and have no idea what you’re talking about?”
“Because you asked this to be the case.”
“Come again?”
Ini-herit paused again, evidently lining up his thoughts. Then he continued, “Let me go back nearly twenty years. And first, you must understand that Estilorians do not have reproductive systems designed like those of humans. We resemble each other in appearance, yes, but Estilorians cannot breed or carry children. At least, not with each other.”
Here he stopped to look at Amber, who blinked and said, “You mean you, uh, have babies with humans, instead of with each other?”
“No. In fact, we had proven over time that this was genetically impossible. Instead, Estilorians as a species have historically repopulated by harvesting human souls on the brink of expiration and transitioning them into new Estilorian forms. The circumstances for this to work successfully are nearly enough to make human conception look simplistic, and over the centuries, our numbers have dropped dramatically.”
Amber’s eyes widened. What Ini-herit had just described sounded an awful lot like the idea of passing through the Pearly Gates. It made his reference to humans equating Estilorians to angels even more impactful to her.
He continued as if he didn’t notice her reaction. “There is an Estilorian class called the Corgloresti who can pass through to the human plane. I am the oldest and most powerful. Our primary purpose is to identify willing humans whose souls make the best candidates for what we call The Embrace. Because of the nature of our role—that is, developing relationships with humans whose lives are ending—our level of emotional detachment is even higher than that of other Estilorians to protect our psyches.”
Well, that certainly explains a lot, Amber thought. She once again noted Ini-herit’s impassive face. She had to admit that getting to know a bunch of people only to watch them die sounded like one of the worst jobs in the world.
“Once a soul crosses planes through The Embrace, it retains no knowledge of its human origins. Most often, the new Estilorian is entirely different from the human shell it left behind.”
And thus, wouldn’t be the same person that the Corgloresti had befriended on the human plane. So they wouldn’t even be able to reconnect on the other side. Amber sighed. Yep…definitely the worst job in the world.
“Twenty years ago, a Corgloresti named Saraqael crossed to the human plane in the form of a deacon at a small church.”
Now, Amber felt the blood drain from her face. Saraqael.
Oblivious to the reaction he had caused, Ini-herit continued, “We have found over time that this type of role draws us closest to those humans most likely to accept The Embrace. Due to the need to convey the human emotion of compassion, this role is also best suited for our youngest Corgloresti who have not yet become too detached. Saraqael was just over two centuries as an Estilorian. And he became emotionally attached to a human parishioner whose soul would be perfectly suited for The Embrace.
“She was a young woman and innocent, but dying of a rare human disease of the blood. Although he knew what he must do, Saraqael could not accept that she would be lost to him. He tried to extend his time with her in her human form by communicating with human doctors, all to no avail. When that did not work, he returned to the Estilorian plane to seek out a way to extend her human consciousness into her Estilorian form. But such a thing is impossible. Still, determined not to lose the human woman, Saraqael spent his every waking moment searching for some way to stop the inevitable. And then, to all of our surprise, he found it.”
Amber realized she was holding her breath and slowly released it. Ini-herit’s smooth and intense narration held her transfixed. His eyes never flickered from hers.
“In the oldest Estilorian library, there exists a room of scrolls. This vast vault stretches longer than the eye can see, and is filled floor to ceiling with cases of scrolls. There is not an Estilorian in existence who knows everything contained in that room, but I can tell you that there are scrolls in there that this world would be better off never seeing. Scrolls identifying some of the darkest and strongest powers imaginable. Saraqael managed to find one. And he used it.
“As the human woman lay in her bed recovering from her last failed medical treatment, Saraqael entered her home with the scroll and performed the ritual it outlined. He believed it would save her life. The ritual involved a joining of both body and soul…powerful energy far beyond his control. It destroyed him.
“But not before the human woman conceived.”
Chapter Fourteen
After swallowing in an attempt to moisturize her dry throat, Amber broke the ensuing silence. “You’re telling me that I’m a result of some evil spell used by a love-struck Estilorian who died after using it?”
She couldn’t believe how absolutely ridiculous that sentence sounded as it came out.
“You are one of three such ‘results,’ if you choose to look at it in such a way,” Ini-herit replied matter-of-factly. “Though I said the scroll that Saraqael used was powerful, not evil. In any case, due to the scroll’s power, the human woman’s genes were apparently altered enough to allow her to carry an Estilorian’s offspring. She gave birth to three girls before ultimately succumbing to her human frailness. You, Ambryl, were her firstborn.”
Amber didn’t have a clue how to feel about that. She was too busy reeling over Ini-herit’s unemotional revelations and the stunning fact that she believed every word of them. It was like pieces of a nebulous puzzle had finally taken shape for her, and she could actually put it all together for the first time in her life. In the rational part of her brain, it seemed absolutely crazy to her that she could just accept Ini-herit’s story as truth. But it clarified the glimpses she had seen through The Dream, and it fit so neatly with the events of her life that it made perfect sense.
Her world had been turned completely upside-
down in the span of an hour.
Realizing that she had a death grip on Gabriel’s hand, she deliberately eased up. When he tightened his hold in response, she looked at him and caught his understanding gaze. She suddenly didn’t trust her voice, and he seemed to sense it.
“Is Amber’s mother an Estilorian now?” he asked Ini-herit.
“No. When Saraqael perished, he severed the chance that her soul could be successfully harvested. Once a Corgloresti marks a soul, he or she is the only one who can successfully Embrace it.”
Well, that was a real kicker, wasn’t it? Amber mused darkly. She finally learned who her parents were only to discover they were both dead.
She supposed that it didn’t change a thing as far as she was concerned. Her birth parents hadn’t ever been a part of her family equation and she had gone her entire life thinking much worse things about her parentage. In fact, it should have seemed like an improvement that her father had cared enough for her mother to risk everything for her. Instead, the knowledge brought a brutal wave of grief. She pictured the handsome young man with gray eyes in The Dream and realized what he had sacrificed for love. Her chest felt too tight and she was horrified she might actually lose her composure with Ini-herit’s cold, dark eyes watching dispassionately.
Drawing a deep breath, she clamped down viciously on her reaction. Grief had to wait.
“I want to know her name,” she said at last. “My mother’s name.”
Ini-herit nodded as though to himself. His voice was surprisingly soft when he said, “I knew you would be the strongest.”
“What?”
He waved that away. “The woman who birthed you was called Kate. As I said, you were born first, followed by Olaya and then Skylar. The birth was an amazing experience…unlike anything we had ever seen. All of the most powerful Estilorians attended. Including you, Gabriel.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows drew together. “You keep saying things like that. It doesn’t make me feel any differently than I did before this morning, or remember anything unusual.”
