by Abra Ebner
And just like that, she was gone.
Max:
“Greg!” My feet slammed into earth, heart aching. I stormed up to him, noses inches apart. “Where is she?”
A silvery cloud appeared beside him, emanating with the smell of cinnamon.
“There you are.” Avery appeared, her familiar voice twisting my stomach.
She was so different, and yet so familiar. There was shade all around her, her once beautiful eyes bleeding shadows. I backed away, suddenly overcome with nausea. Falling to my knees, I buckled over. Greg did the same.
“You feel that, don’t you?” Avery laughed, her footfalls so silent that I hadn’t heard her close the small distance between us, her mouth right next to my ear. “Don’t you, darling?”
“You didn’t tell me this was going to hurt!” Greg complained from where he rolled in the dirt beside me.
Avery’s weight shifted, gravel crunching below her feet. “Oh shut up, baby.” She spat over her shoulder before sighing and turning back to me. Hooking one long nail under my chin, she lifted it. My eyes met her dark and empty ones. “Hurts, doesn’t it? When someone rips your heart out?”
I heard Jane’s mother’s frightened breathing, barely able to look up to see the blur of her body near the cliff.
“What d—did you do?” I demanded shakily.
“You don’t know? You don’t feel that life inside you, making you alive again?”
I could feel it. My body was warm and tingly. Every emotion I once felt from Jane was now mine alone.
“I took the only thing that mattered to you, darling. But look what I gave you in return!” She grasped my shoulders, pulling me to my feet with little effort. “I wanted to show you how much I love you. What better way than to give you your life back?”
My legs felt like jelly. “I don’t want my life back.”
She frowned. “Like being an angel too much, do you?”
I heard an owl’s cry then, and I cringed. I didn’t want them to come. I didn’t want more death.
Avery grumbled and dropped me. My knees buckled, sending me crashing to the ground. She looked skyward, noticing the owl as well. “Now what?” She marched back to Greg, kicking him in the side. “Get up, you idiot. Take care of this.”
He moaned, but managed to stand. The pain of my split from Jane was over, but the emotional pain still left me shaken. The owls descended, landing beside me.
Are you okay? Lacy asked, eyes darting between me and Avery.
Her pet just stared at Avery, feathers fluffed and eyes nervous.
I nodded, but my mind spoke otherwise.
I felt Lacy’s anger and saw her thoughts turn irate.
Don’t, Lacy. It’s not worth it.
She ignored me, slowly turning square with Avery. Her feathers inflated, and her wings were held extended at her sides.
Lacy, don’t. I tried one last time.
Foolishly, Lacy ignored me, lunging toward Avery. Avery welcomed her attack, simply swatting her away with one hand. Lacy’s body fell to the ground, alive but stunned.
Avery laughed. “Seriously pathetic. You need better friends.”
The other owl did the same, angered by her master’s defeat. Avery swatted her to the ground just as she had Lacy, only this time she finished by stomping on the owl’s head. I heard a crack.
“Foolish animal,” she spat. “She deserved to die.”
I shut my eyes, saddened and feeling worthless. I knew that owl was dead for no reason, and for no fault but my own.
“Well,” Avery sounded flustered. “I can see you need some time to come around.” She kicked the owl carcass away from Lacy and to the side where it rolled against a rock. “But when you’re ready to be with me, as you will be, you know how to get a hold of me.”
Greg arrived at Avery’s side, holding his stomach. I looked at him, my eyes crying out, why?
For a moment I saw remorse in his green gaze, but he looked away. I thought about our life before. I thought about Patrick, and what Greg had known. Something about him still wanted for a better life, I knew it.
“Please, Greg,” I managed weakly.
He turned away, Avery doing the same as she hooked her arm with his, sashaying her hips into the darkness of the woods. I took a moment to gather myself, the silence of the forest like the calm after a storm. Finding my hands beneath me, I pushed myself off the ground. Lacy’s body had since changed into human form. She lay unconscious and covered in dirt, her side badly bruised a deep purple. I removed my coat, every movement I made toward her like a million needles to the skin.
Jane’s life made me weak, and I could not allow it to happen. With Greg as my enemy, I had to stay strong. I had to remain an angel. The life in me was not mine, and never could be. I had to give it back to the universe to be born to another.
I put the coat around Lacy’s bare shoulders.
She roused, taking a moment as she stared at me. “I’m so sorry, I…”
I put my hand to her lips, shaking my head.
Her eyes fluttered, tears forming. She reached for my hand and removed it, grasping tight as she felt my warmth. “You’re alive, aren’t you?” She let go, knowing what that meant. “I never knew her, but I know how this must feel for you.”
I clasped my hands around her shoulders and helped Lacy to her feet. “I won’t keep this life inside me. I can’t.”
Lacy zipped the jacket which was like a dress on her. She shook her head, brows stitched together. “Do you even have a choice?”
I nodded. “It was my life to protect. I can do with it as I please.”
“You can’t give the life away.”
I pressed my lips together. “It’s already left her as mine left me. My life has been given to another somewhere in this world. I know you’re afraid this means I’m giving away her soul, but that doesn’t happen. A soul can only belong to one. This…” I thumped my chest, “is just a life, and it’s not mine. It must go.”
“I don’t understand,” she frowned.
I nodded. “You will.”
“Well, how do you get rid of it?”
“Like this,” I shut my eyes and let go. It was hard, my body craving it, wanting to hold it inside my bones. I felt my temperature drop, and before I knew it, the feeling of it was gone all together. An immense drought of emotion blew over me, and I felt more alone than ever. I shuddered as my legs faltered. Lacy was quick to support me. The longer I held on to the life, the harder it would have been to let go. It was the right thing to do.
“So, just like that you’re an angel again?” She looked me over, not really seeing the immediate difference.
I nodded. “I never lost the angel in me. That can never be taken away no matter how hard I try. What I would have gotten was mortality and the ability to live a short, human life of emotion and weakness. Sounds uneventful, but in my eyes it’s a luxury.”
“Oh.” I watched her let the idea sink in, looking down at her body. Her mind traced over the idea of what it felt like to be me. She understood, eyes leveling with mine once more. My gaze darted away from her to the nearby rock where her owl lay lifeless, changing the subject.
Lacy followed my gaze and gasped quietly. “Missy.” She rushed to her side, carefully running her hand over her crumpled feathers and broken neck.
I turned away from them, looking to the edge of the cliff where Jane’s mother stood, back to me, head looking down and over the edge. I felt my chest tighten, though no emotion existed for me to take. I walked one foot in front of the other, arriving at her side with my eyes looking out ahead of me.
Sarah reached for my hand and I felt her pain resonate through it. Finally, I gathered the strength to look down, seeing the one thing I never wished to see on the bank below. Jane’s body lay on the rocks, curled gently into herself. For a moment I wanted to believe she was simply sleeping, but this being on the rocks was just a shell, just a projection of the soul that once owned it. Her spirit had been ripped apart,
her soul locked in the Ever After where it longed to be.
“Will she come back?” Sarah asked.
I squeezed her hand. “She has to,” I whispered, fingering the chain around my neck with my other hand. It hadn’t released. This wasn’t over. “I promised her I’d fix this.”
: : :
The Master laid the owl’s dead body on a rock, her feathered head broken by the devil herself. “My Missy,” the Master whispered.
The owl heard her but could not reply. All she ever wanted was to be human. All she ever wanted was the chance to finally meet him and win his love. Since the day she saw his picture, her animal instincts had changed. She was stuck in a body that was not her own, and now she was dead inside it. Hope was lost.
The Master left her on the rock with a kiss, her guardian and friend for so many years. From above the owl watched as wind tickled at feathers she once possessed, feelings she once felt, and hope she once believed in. Her soul lingered for a while over the body she once called home, now filled with nothing.
Just then, as she floated above a world she was destined to leave, a blue light drifted toward her through the air with no direction. It was a strangely enticing blue light that drew her in, all the while still above the lonely body she once owned. She watched it curiously, danced around it until the light no longer danced back. Staring longingly at it, the owl was no longer able to avoid its beauty. The two collided.
Alone in the woods, a new life was born to a human girl, left lying on a rock where a friend once left her. Opening her eyes, the world seemed foreign, and quickly, the past she once knew faded away. Slowly sitting up in a body so suddenly natural to her, she noticed that around her lay a bed of brown and white feathers. Her soft, human skin was in strange contrast to these feathers she felt she knew, but something inside her forgot how.
“Who am I?” she asked out loud. The words sounded foreign on her tongue, but words she knew and understood nonetheless. The world whispered back, but it was too quiet to hear.
“Who am I?” she asked again, gently plucking a feather from the rock and inspecting it, pulling her knees to her chest against a chill.
The world whispered back on another gust of wind, but still she did not understand. Twisting the feather in her hand, a strange sensation overwhelmed her. “Stella,” she whispered, but she didn’t know why. In a second her body had changed, owl wings flanking her side. She did not understand how or why she had so quickly changed, but again it did not surprise her. A part of her felt this was what she’d wanted all along. Testing her theory, she once imagined the soft skin of before, and before she knew it, she again found herself sitting on the rock with human hands that were full of lose feathers.
A Natural Shifter had been born to a life already used...
: : :
About The Author
Abra Ebner lives in Washington State with her husband and two cats. She loves to golf, read, cook, write, and dream. She graduated from Washington State University with a degree in Graphic Arts, as well as studying abroad at the Queensland College of Art.
Aside from writing, she says there is nothing that gives her as much joy, other than love and memories. Every day we live our own story. Never forget that.
Visit her blog at:
www.AbraEbner.Blogspot.com
Visit her websites at:
www.KnightAngels.com
www.FeatherBookSeries.com
www.ParallelTheBook.com
: : :
P R E V I E W
: : :
PARALLEL
The Secret Life of Jordan McKay
: : :
Letter
Found in the Personal
Effects of Patient #32185
Vincent Memorial Hospital, Boston
July 12, 2009
My name is Jordan Mckay, and if you’ve found this, then you have seen the consequences of what led me to my death. There may be things about me that you will find strange, but if you could understand the life I’ve lived, then you will know more about the nature of my makeup. I am different from everyone; special, unique. I am what I have come to understand is called a Shifter.
Within the boundaries of our life from birth to death, we can travel from one age to the next, leaving a foggy line between our present, past, and future. Here we are able to see how events can change the world, or at the very least, change just one life. If we can manifest a thought hard enough, then we can go there. This is the key to our talent.
I am not completely certain how many of us there are, or why we were created, or even where we came from. I can only guess that it’s a glitch in human kind and a chance at playing God. In this world, we learn to fend for ourselves and fight for our basic need for selfish gain. For me, my gain was the love of a woman. A selfless act in my eyes only, but now as I grow to learn what it’s done to her, I can see that it was all a mistake that I can no longer take back.
Either way, I have seen that there is a pattern for disaster in this world, and a fear so dark it could swallow the night. I have learned now that you cannot hope to erase all the wrong, only replace it with another. After all, you cannot change your luck; you can only try to change the events that caused the misfortune in the first place.
Manipulation of time is a powerful tool but something I fear is deadly if not completely understood. I hope to reach out to those like me, to save them as I have failed to do for myself, and to tell them that no matter what you do, you cannot hope to make things better. My personal belongings will tell the story…
Jordan McKay
Statement from Dr. Ashcroft, Vincent Memorial Hospital, Boston
August 3, 2009
11:56 p.m.
Agent Donnery:
When did you meet him?
Dr. Ashcroft:
I met him at twenty-five.
Agent Donnery:
But it say’s here that you knew each other since you were six? How is that?
Dr. Ashcroft:
I met him a couple times throughout time, but if you understood what Jordan can do, then you would understand what I mean when I say that we met for the first time when I was twenty-five, and he was twenty-seven. At least according to his driver’s license.
Agent Donnery:
What do you mean, according to his license?
Dr. Ashcroft:
Think of Jordan’s life as a timeline, only his timeline has been chopped up and rearranged in an order that does not fit science. He could leap around from one place to the next, each place revealing something that has changed, each a parallel life of the one you were just in. When I met him at twenty-five he may have been in the body of his twenty-seven year old self, but his mind had just been six. It’s a terrifying thing to have happen to you when you think of it.
Agent Donnery:
I see. So what happened? How and why do you believe, or I suppose know, all this is true? (laughter) It just seems far-fetched is all. I’d like to hear your side of it.
Dr. Ashcroft:
It’s hard to believe, I know, but considering the fact that you’re from a branch of the C.I.A. that is set up in order to research just such happenings, I believe that there is more out there than I can even try to understand, and that you actually do, or can, believe me.
Agent Donnery:
I can see your angle. It is true that the somewhat fictional nature of what happened here is not too uncommon. Our world has been polluted with so many chemicals and synthetic agents that you would not believe the things I’ve seen, the things you never thought possible, but of course, you’ll never know of them either.
Dr. Ashcroft:
(laughter) Except this.
Agent Donnery:
True, but I also expect your explicit secrecy on the subject.
Dr. Ashcroft:
I’m a doctor, Agent. I’m good with confidentiality.
Agent Donnery:
Then we understand, so please, tell me about Jordan McKay.
Dr.
Ashcroft:
(pause) It’s difficult for me to accept, even still, but my life was stolen from me. If I had known all along about what was happening, I suppose I would have tried to stop it, though it would have been hard. I have been lied to, led down a path that I no longer see as my own but I am now forced to live. When I was a little girl I used to think I was lucky, that all the great things in my life were God’s choice for me, but now I see that God had nothing to do with it.
Agent Donnery:
So you believe that you were at the mercy of Jordan instead?
Dr. Ashcroft:
Yes, he made the decisions, took over God’s roll, so to speak, but I only saw it as my reality. I did not know I was like a modern day puppet. (pause) There is nothing left of my real destiny but the stories of a man describing a life I thought was no more than a faint memory, imprinted on my mind like a dream.
When I think back, I can remember it all but it hurts too much to imagine. As I sit here I still can’t believe that I fell for it, that I took the easier path that ended with a life that was false.
In the end, I suppose all I can do is live with the cards I have been dealt. I’m in love with my fate, the fate that took me on this parallel path into a place I was never meant to be. I only hope that grace can still find me here, and that I will be forgiven. After all, if God was no part of it, then I guess love is the devil’s creation.
Agent Donnery:
