by TW Knight
Bree arched off the bed, letting out a deep moan. Bass suckled and licked until she was screaming. "Bass. Please— I'm going to—"
Licking a path back to her breasts, Bass positioned himself between her thighs. His hands guided her legs around him. Teasingly, he arched his hips to rub his cock against her sensitive core. Bree wriggled, a needful whimper escaping. Lifting her with his left hand, he used his right to guide himself into her. Bree arched her back, impaling herself on his arousal.
With each slow roll from Bass' hips, Bree's climax built again.
Tangling her hands in Bass' hair, she pulled herself forward so she could see his face as she came. Her pleasured shout was lost when Bass covered her mouth in a searing kiss and took her down to the mattress again.
Once their bodies stopped trembling, Bass rolled to the side and tucked Bree against his chest, wrapping his arms possessively around her.
"Tired already," she joked on a yawn.
"I'm afraid I'll wear you out," he whispered, nuzzling her hair. "You rest now. We have days and days."
"I like the sound of that," Bree whispered, already drifting into a sated doze.
"Yeah," Bass admitted, kissing Bree's shoulder. "I like it, too."
***
Bass roused from his sleep with a start. Bree lay curled up next to him. He'd never woken with a lover beside him; he always left as soon as they passed out. Then again, he'd never spent hours upon hours with the same woman. Not that he couldn't any time he'd wished, he'd just never found anyone he wanted to spend that much time around.
In the old days, his exposure to human females was minimal and not enough to stir more than a healthy curiosity. He'd been so innocent then.
After he'd been expelled from Heaven for standing up for his friends, he'd been tormented with guilt. Their rebellious act resulted in millions of deaths.
He'd lived centuries in solitude before he'd given in to his curiosity, using sex more as a diversion rather than a way to connect. Bonds could be severed, stolen, used against you. Sex was an itch which occasionally needed a good scratching. An itch he could ignore for years on end if he wanted to. Of course, like any form of escapism, be it drugs or alcohol, he'd go on benders bouncing from bed to bed until disgust replaced need.
The others thought he was a hedonistic pig, chain-fucking his way through life— but it was a mask, a farce, a way to deal with the emptiness when alcohol no longer numbed him.
When he met Breanna, his need turned to hunger. A hunger only sated by the woman lying next to him.
He glanced at the bedside clock; the day had passed into night as they’d alternately slept and made love.
Made love.
He sighed. He'd never understood the distinction between having sex and making love. Breanna changed that definition.
Smiling, Bass took in every detail of her form. The delicious curve of her ass beneath the sheet. Her soft breath. The rise and fall of her chest, and the way the silky brown and caramel hair fanned across the pillow. As if sensing his lingering gaze, she moved closer and snuggled against his chest.
For a moment Bass thought his heart would stop.
A vision, a shaded memory thrust forward. The room vanished, becoming a sun-drenched day. He stood along a river bank in what would one day be called the Middle East sometime in the distant past. Across the water lay a beautiful young woman with long black hair, sun-kissed olive skin, and eyes of topaz. She held out her hand, reaching across the water, beckoning to him.
He remembered the day. He'd been exiled from Heaven for a couple decades and had yet to lay with a woman. There was a beautiful goddess calling to him. He felt it in his bones, the humming rang through him like the purest tone from a silver bell.
She levered herself up and Bass stepped forward. Something was wrong. She wasn't smiling. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth, running over her chin to stain the linen covering her breasts. She wasn't entreating him to join her on the sand, she was begging for help. Before he flashed to her aid, a demon erupted from the waters, tore her open, and dragged her below the surface.
The humming, the resonance he'd felt, vanished with her, leaving him empty and he knew she was dead.
Bass wrenched himself from the vision. He couldn't breathe. Gasping, he fought to pull the sheet away from his sweat-soaked body and sat up.
"What the hell was that?" Running his hand through his hair, Bass struggled to sort out what the vision showed him. Was it possible he'd really met, or at least saw, his first soul keeper? How could he have forgotten? The brief moment when their eyes met mirrored the feeling running through him when he'd first stared into Breanna's eyes— electric.
He ground the heels of his hands against his eyes.
Next to him, Bree stirred, sitting up with a sleepy, satisfied sigh. Looping her arms around his neck, she placed a kiss on his shoulder. "What's wrong?"
Snapped back into the present, Bass rolled from her embrace and off the bed, searching for his sweat pants. "Get up and get dressed," he barked.
Breanna crossed her arms over her breasts and flopped back into the pillows. "Excuse me, but this is my room. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
Still holding the torn remnants of his clothes, Bass turned to face her. She looked away. "Shit. Babe, I'm sorry. That's not what I meant." Dropping the fabric, he climbed back onto the bed and joined her under the sheets. "I wasn't asking you to leave. I wasn't— I'm sorry. I just remembered something and I was just so excited that I wasn't thinking."
Bree turned to face him. "What did you remember?"
"That I think we met before. Long before." He chuckled "Long before your memory-dream."
Her eyes brightened. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. That's why I was so excited. I want to check about what you said before, about souls being bound together over time. I wanted to take you to the library and—"
Bree giggled, playfully brushing her fingers over his jaw. "Can I at least take a shower first?"
Bass' cock twitched in complete agreement. "Yeah I think that's a great idea."
Chapter Twenty-Three
When they finally clambered from the shower an hour and a half later still touching and kissing, Bass flashed across the hall to get something to wear.
Bree sat on the bed basking in the afterglow. Mind blowing sex aside, she was in love with a man she'd only met a few days ago. She could no longer blame her feelings on the soul connection. She'd been in love with Bass since she'd first seen him in the hanger.
She was certain he was the man she'd seen in her dreams coming to rescue her and the village. Bass believed they shared more than one experience. While they'd washed and made love in the shower, he'd described the vision he had upon waking.
"I think we've been chasing each other through time." He'd laughed.
A knock on the door stirred Bree from her musings.
"You ready?" Bass walked in looking absolutely delicious in low slug black denim and a long sleeve black Henley.
"Yep." Bree jumped to her feet and took his offered hand. After being led through the manor, a basement, and a sub-basement, she followed Bass down a lengthy stone staircase leading deep into the heart of the island.
She understood why he'd told her to wear jeans, sneakers, a long sleeve shirt, and provided her with a hoodie. The temperature dropped with every step down.
At the bottom of the steps, Bree stared at the giant iron doors standing slightly ajar. Here the black and yellow cords trailing down the stairs snaked past them and into a shallow trench under the doors.
Catching her gaze, Bass nodded at the cables. "For the computers. We don't get Wi-Fi or satellite down here."
Well, that makes sense. She felt as if they were in the center of the Earth. "Why do you need computers down here?" Bree's jaw dropped when they crossed the threshold. Before her was a cavern filled with ancient books, scrolls, and tablets. Here and there sat wood and stone boxes alongside clay pots and amphoras. "Wh
at?"
"Welcome to Kaz's secret library," Bass joked, stepping forward. "By the look on your face, you haven't seen the one upstairs."
"There's another one?" She all but passed out. So many books, so little time.
"Yeah, we're calling the one upstairs the new library now. This is the old, and I do mean old, library. Think beginning of time old." He snorted. "Until a few months ago, no one but Kaz knew this was here. Zach wants to call it the lost archives."
"What do mean you didn't know?" Bree gave him an incredulous look.
"Apparently Kaz built this place first and foremost to be a repository for ancient knowledge. No one was ever meant to live here. The Knights' moving in was an afterthought when he met Rail, and later Tam."
"But why hide all of this?"
"Because," came a new voice. "Knowledge is power and Kaz is a paranoid control freak." Zach stepped out of the shadows carrying a stack books topped with a bundle of scrolls. "A lot of what's down here relates to our origins and the origins of many of the worlds' deities. Explanations of things that would cause the disruption of humanity and the way you think about how the world was created, including proof of parallel dimensions such as Heaven and Hell. I may have even found a historical treatise on the origins of the Fae and another on vampires. The rest are histories and obscure religious texts that were thought lost or destroyed by one conquering faction or another. I'm not sure, but I think he even has items that were once housed in the library of Alexandria squirreled away down here." He pointed to a dark section in one of the walls. "I haven't explored that tunnel yet."
Bree stood with her mouth hanging open.
"Hey, man," Bass welcomed his fellow warrior. "What are you doing down here?"
"I might ask you the same thing." He gave Breanna a pointed look.
Bass bristled at the tone. "I'm giving Bree clearance, okay?"
Zach gave him one of those looks which said, "It's your head," over his wire-rimmed glasses, and added his books to several others scattered on a stone table. "I'm looking for the symbols we found on the skratars. Several matched what Rail and Cassidy saw in Lucifer's trap." When Bree gave him a blank look, he added, "I'm searching for symbols of the arcane that haven't been seen in several millennia. How about you?"
"We're looking for information on human reincarnation," Bass offered, pulling Bree close and giving her a squeeze. "We think we've met before."
"Not really met," Bree clarified. "More like saw each other."
"Interesting. I saw something during our search regarding the prophecy." Zach moved off to a wall lined with shelves carved right into the stone. "Ah, here it is." Pulling a ladder over, he climbed to the top and retrieved something tucked in the back on an upper shelf. Dropping lightly to his feet, he handed a fragile bundle to Bass.
Fascinated, Bree watched as he unwrapped the tattered silk cloth. Within the folds lay a small stack of thin, crumbling clay tablets inscribed with symbols which looked like chicken footprints sandwiched between two polished wood pieces. "What is it," she asked, her breath hitching.
"The only copy of the Sumerian Book of the Dead," Zach answered, returning to his research. "Have fun."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Feeling totally useless, Bree sat next to Zach while Bass worked to translate the crumbling "pages" from the book Zach gave them. "Um, I didn't know the Sumerians had a Book of the Dead."
Zach didn't respond.
The silence closed in. Bree pulled the hoodie tighter. The place made her think of crypts and catacombs— places for the dead buried deep in the heart of the earth.
"You wear glasses," she blurted out when she couldn't take the silence any longer. "Why does an angel need to wear glasses?"
Zach let out a sigh reminding Bree of her father when she'd asked him a "why" question as a child. "I wear glasses because my eyes are still healing after being burned out by truca demon venom."
She didn't know what a truca demon was, but Bree shivered. Just the idea of having one's eyes burned out by anything made her stomach roil. "That's sounds awful. How long ago did that happen?"
"Fifty–six years ago," he ground out.
"Wow. I thought angels healed in a couple of days."
Zach grumbled something sounding a lot like, "Impertinent human," under his breath.
Ignoring the air of annoyance, Bree leaned over to see what he read. "I've seen some of these." She pointed to symbols covering some scrolls Zach discarded to the side of the table. "These are Celtic, and those are Nordic."
"Yes, but not what I'm looking for." He closed the ancient book in front of him and moved it to the growing discard pile.
"Well, maybe if you describe what you're looking for, I can help."
Zach made that patronizing sigh again and removed his glasses, squeezing the bridge of his nose as he turned to face Breanna. "Do you know anything about the world of the occult? Or the arcane?"
Bree shook her head.
"But you do study religion?"
"Yes. And mythology, folklore, and demonology." At Zach's raised eyebrows, she clarified, "I mean I study the lore of demons. That's why I'm studying world religions and theology."
"To better know your enemy." Zach nodded, approval softening his features.
"Not that it matters. No more school or fighting demons." Her shoulders slumped. "I'm going to miss my mid-term."
"Do you want to keep up your studies," Zach asked, replacing his glasses.
Bree all but jumped into his lap. "Of course I do! I‘ve been afraid to ask if I could, but—"
Zach held up a finger, silencing her.
"Sorry."
"If you want to continue your studies, then I will tell you something you won't learn in class. Did anyone give you an explanation of our history? How the One influenced man?"
"Yes," Bree interrupted. "But would you mind using God instead of the One?"
Zach rolled his eyes. "Fine. Now then, first lesson, the birth of magic."
"Wait. I want to take notes." Bree looked around until she found a yellow legal pad buried under a pile of clay tablets.
The warrior waited, impatiently drumming his fingers, while she extricated the pad and rescued a pen from under a large tome. "Simply put," he began. "Magic is the manipulation of the energies imbued in this world by the elemental entities present since time began, but enhanced by—" he hesitated and sighed, "—God. This energy is part of everything that is alive. It runs in lines, like a web, encircling the Earth. Where these lines meet are nodes of power. In fact there’s one just off shore here."
Bree nodded. In her studies, she came across passages regarding lay-lines and power nodes. It was believed by many that great monuments such as Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Giza, and even The Obelisk of Axum were built on power nodes.
"In the beginning, when God charged us with mentoring mankind, one of our first duties was to teach man how to harness these energies." Zach moved some papers around and pulled one an ancient scrolls toward him staring at the faded hieroglyphics. "The thing about humans, though, is that they lack focus. So we created words and symbols of power to help them."
"You guys invented magic?"
"We invented the keys to elemental power," he corrected. "Humans created magic. They took the words and symbols we taught them and in time began using them in ways we had never considered."
"How so?" Engrossed, Bree leaned forward and forgot about taking notes.
"We taught them to use the harnessed energies for the good of mankind. To help them build, heal, grow, evolve. To learn about the world they lived in. To create harmony and communication. There were a few individuals who excelled at this and created magnificent civilizations." The warrior grunted. "Then some idiot got the bright idea to use this power as a weapon and everything went to Hell from there. First, they enslaved the primordial elemental beings, and then they created natural disasters rivaling some the Hierarchy had in their arsenal. Numerous civilizations were wiped out of existence. Their citie
s destroyed, their knowledge lost. Because of that most, if not all, of the symbols and words we taught the humans were also erased so that no one could repeat what had happened. As angels what magic" —he made air quotes— "we have is inherent, although limited since our banishment."
Bree thought back to what Bass told her regarding the lost ancient civilizations and technology. "You guys destroyed them."
"The Hierarchy destroyed those who didn't destroy themselves or their neighbors. It was supposed to be a new, slower, beginning." He snorted. "Again."
Tilting her head Bree regarded him curiously. "But there are still people that can tap into those lay-lines, aren't there? You know psychics and wiccans?"
Zach nodded. "There have always been those who were born with the innate gift to feel and understand the energy around us, to converse with the ancient elementals, and be one with the natural world. There are those who pretend. The point is, some of that knowledge could be hidden in here just like that book I gave Bass. Kaz didn't bother to catalogue anything. Bloody pack-rat. So now I'm on yet another scavenger hunt."
"You mean you don't remember the words or symbols?" Bree stifled a giggle. It came out a sneeze. The idea was absurd.
Bass made a rather impolite noise across the room. "That, like many other of our gifts, was stolen from us by the Hierarchy when we were unceremoniously sent back to Earth." Carefully wrapping the tablets back in their silk covering, he picked up his notes and joined them.
"Why do you need to find these symbols," Bree asked, intrigued by their history.
"Because I'm trying to prove a theory about the skratars," Zach answered flatly.
Bree gave both men a quizzical look. "What's a skater?"
"A skratar," Bass responded, "is what attacked us back at the hanger. Zach believes they are the end stage of what we've become."
Horrified, Bree shook. "What— what do you mean? You can't possibly believe that you're going to turn into one of those, those, things?"
"That's exactly what I think will happen. Eventually." Zach stood and paced alongside the table. "We've been finding markings on the skratar lately. Markings that turned out to be tattoos." Zach's voice shook, his eyes glowed, showing his building anger. At Bass' warning growl, he reigned in his emotions. "My apologies, Bree. I didn't mean to scare you. But I'm sure you can understand why I'm so invested in discovering what these markings mean."
