Jewel of Inanna (Perils of a Pagan Priestess Book 1)
Page 1
Jewel
of
Inanna
Jewel of Inanna
Copyright © 2019 Hannah Desmond
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process or in the form of a photographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use – other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews without prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978-0-692-91302-4
First printing 2017
Second printing 2019
Author: Hannah Desmond
Editor: Roberta Binder
Cover artist: Kimberley Marsot
Interior design: Eswari Kamireddy
Jewel
of
Inanna
Hannah Desmond
A special thank you to Tom Johanson, my partner of many years. The song lyrics throughout the book are from Tom's original music. He provided valuable insight and ideas for the many rituals and magical events throughout the book. This book is dedicated to Tom with love and appreciation.
Special Thanks to Tom Johanson who was an integral part of the creation of this book. His insights, ritual knowledge, and patience were greatly appreciated.
All song lyrics in Jewel of Inanna were written by Tom Johanson.
Table of Contents
Prologue
PART I Captive
Chapter 1 The Dark Cupboard Opens
Chapter 2 I Will Not Always Hold You in My Heart
Chapter 3 Red High Tops
Chapter 4 The Power of Three
PART II Panthea’s Pantry
Chapter 5 Sanctuary
Chapter 6 A Witchy Welcome
Chapter 7 Morning Terror
Chapter 8 Trust Your Vibes
Chapter 9 An Early Initiation
Chapter 10 Matrix Magic
Chapter 11 The Jewel of Innana
PART III The Green Man Band
Chapter 12 Knight of Cups
Chapter 13 Resistance is Futile
Chapter 14 The Secret Courtyard
Chapter 15 Wild Magic
Chapter 16 A Ritual of Unbinding
Chapter 17 A Chat Below the Pleasure Palace
Chapter 18 Dipped Wicks and Flying Beer Bottles
Chapter 19 The Magic Flute
Chapter 20 Love Spell
Chapter 21 Of Pan, Diana and the Ladies of the Night
Chapter 22 The Order of Interplanetary Adepts
Chapter 23 Lundi Gras
Chapter 24 The Bliss of Kosmic Debris
Chapter 25 Sex Slaves = Freedom
Chapter 26 Venus and the Moon Spell Disaster
PART IV Raven Moon
Chapter 27 Crystal Visions
Chapter 28 Regina
Chapter 29 An Unexpected Oath
Chapter 30 An Interlude with Lucky Star Diamond
Chapter 31 Crystal Skull Portals
Chapter 32 The Fool
Chapter 33 Desperate Measures
Chapter 34 Contact and Confusion
Chapter 35 Poppy Seed Tea
Chapter 36 Carrion of the Soul
Chapter 37 Astral Scrying
Chapter 38 The Knight Arrives
Chapter 39 Tainted Blood
Chapter 40 The Threat of the Raven’s Claw
PART V Supernatural Intervention
Chapter 41 The Forces Unite
Chapter 42 The Peristyle
Chapter 43 The Divine Horseman Wields a Rusty Scimitar
Chapter 44 Normal Life?
PART VI Awakening
Chapter 45 Manuel Needed
Chapter 46 Psychic P.I.
Chapter 47 A Pearl Beyond Price
Chapter 48 Journey to the Dark Bayou
Chapter 49 Beneath the Silver Moon
Chapter 50 Touchpoint South
Chapter 51 Pyramids and Portals
Chapter 52 Spring Equinox (The circle in the square)
Prologue
Vernal Equinox, March 21, 1972
The first light of spring warmed the slate roofs and gilded the damp bricks of the French Quarter. Silver flute notes hung in the humid air of a private courtyard, teased the disappearing shadows, and bounced off the old brick walls. Lilly took the silver flute from her lips and smiled as James and Jolene came out of their apartment. Putting her flute aside, she joined them by the fountain in the center of the courtyard.
Jolene opened her arms and gently pulled Lilly into an embrace. “Blessings on the equinox, dear child.”
Lilly spoke a simple thank you.
James gave her a quick hug, stood back and looked into her eyes, “Have you been to sleep at all?”
“I slept a little. Since my trip through the portal, I don’t need much sleep.”
Her friends nodded in understanding.
Picking up her flute, Lilly headed up the stairs to her apartment. “I’m going to rest; I know we have a big day ahead of us. I want to be ready for the ritual.”
She quietly closed the front door of her apartment and slipped into the bedroom. A swirl of psychedelic rainbows greeted her as hundreds of crystals, hanging in the bedroom window, caught the dawn light. Lilly smiled as she looked at the sleeping form of her lover, snoring quietly. She pulled the window shade down, then reached up and pulled the cord turning the ceiling fan to a lazy circulation.
The comfort of the soft cotton sheets and the steady thrum of the fan calmed Lilly’s mind. She was drifting into sleep when visions of her past besieged the dreamscape. She mumbled a banishing in her sleep but the past, undaunted, unfolded as she slept.
PART I
Captive
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.”
Samuel Butler
Chapter 1
The Dark Cupboard Opens
Lilly closed her eyes, massaged her temples and tried to relax. The silence in the car was deafening. It hung in the air like a time bomb. With her eyes closed, the bundle of dynamite tied to the leaden weight between she and Alex appeared real. Shrinking inside of herself, she took tiny breaths of air and tried to disappear into the leather seat of the Mercedes.
The tension had been increasing for several months. As they traveled in silence, Lilly’s anxiety grew. She rubbed the sweat from her fingers and hands on her skirt. Her heart pounded and tears burned behind her eyelids as her mind sped through the previous months. She couldn’t pinpoint any transgression on her part. As far as she could recall, she hadn’t spoken an irritating word, she hadn’t whined or complained. She didn’t want to give Alex an excuse to grab her hair, slap her, put his hands around her neck, or cancel their trip to LaPoint. She needed to come to LaPoint to try to get some help from her mother.
When they turned into the dirt road to her mama’s house, Lilly took a deep breath and pulled her lips into a smile. She stepped out of the car in front of the big old wood framed house that had been her childhood home. The cold, moist air of the bayou town was welcomed, it allowed her to cover her bruises with a turtle neck sweater.
By late afternoon, her facial muscles ached from forcing a smile. She couldn’t fake it much longer. ‘I need to talk to mama,’ she thought. ‘Maybe, this time, she will understand. Maybe mama could tell her what to do.’
After dinner, when mama headed to the back porch for a cigarette, Lilly joined her for a private moment. She didn’t know how to approach the topic, so she blurted out with a sob, “I don’t know what to do, mama! No matter how hard I try, nothing I do pleases Alex.”
>
Her mother grimaced, grabbed Lilly’s arm and spoke harshly in her face, “You have always been headstrong. When your married, you have to listen to what your husband says. Are you keeping the house clean? Do you cook decent meals for him? Do you open your legs willingly?”
Lilly leaned away from her mother’s grip and spoke softly, “Of course I do Ma. I want to have a good marriage. I don’t know what I have done to change his love for me into hate.”
“I find that hard to believe, Lilly. You never wanted to cooperate or do a damn thing to help out when you were living here.”
Lilly ignored the tears burning her eyes and spoke in a hushed voice, “You don’t understand, Ma, Alex is scaring me. One minute he’s whispering sweetly in my ear, the next he is backhanding me and throwing me around the room. I’m scared.”
Her mother took a long drag from her cigarette, flicked the ash off and quietly commented, “If you ask me, he has good cause to try to knock some sense into you, God knows we never could.”
Lilly ignored the mocking tone in her mama’s voice and tried to get through to her. “Do you remember how daddy could see the colored light around people and animals? I could see them too. The brightness around Alex was what attracted me to him. He shone like a gemstone with yellow and ruby red light all around him. The last time I saw his colors, they swirled wildly, muddy colored and filled with holes. I don’t know what’s happened. I’m worried about him, and I am afraid.”
“Oh, Lilly, are you still talking that craziness about the colors around people? Your dad was nuts, and so are you.”
“Mama, you remember the long talks we had about the people in town and the colors around them. You were there. Why do you think I’m crazy all of a sudden?”
“Oh, it’s not all of a sudden. I thought your dad was nuts and, sadly, you inherited his peculiarity.”
“You never said anything like that when he was with us. We use to laugh and share and….”
“Lilly, he was a good man. He was paying the bills. His wood carvings brought in good money, and his fishing skills were legendary. He treated us good. I didn’t want to mess that up. I always thought he was nuts. It was a disappointment when you turned out as crazy as he was.”
“His family was a real doozy too. I met them once, when I was pregnant with you. After I met them and saw what they were, I was worried about having a child with him.”
“You met his family? I never knew!”
“Oh, yeah! He took me out to the bayou bungalows. I have never met a stranger bunch of bayou trash in my whole life. Your daddy and his sister, Pearl, were the only members of the family anywhere near normal. That should tell you something.”
Salty rivulets seeped out of Lilly’s eyes, burning her cheeks. She hung her head, her hair falling over her face.
“Don’t go getting all sulky on me. Thank God you never met the rest of the relatives.”
“I did meet them, mama. We visited them several times when daddy and I were out fishing. I thought they were magical.”
“There you go with the magic nonsense. They were trash, crazy trash. Some of them were downright mean, crazy trash. Don’t be fooled by their sweet smiles and shining eyes. They have no scruples. Their hearts and minds are foreign, lacking humanity.”
“Once your daddy was dead, I thought I could knock that nonsense out of you. Bring you into some sort of; I don’t know, regular sense about things. It looks like blood won out. It seems I failed because you are as looney as he was. Messing up your good marriage cause Alex’s colors are off.’ Chances are, you’re sick in the head?”
“No need to worry Ma, Alex has accomplished what you and Rex couldn’t. I don’t see the colors anymore. I am blind to them.”
Her mother smiled, “I told you he would be good for you. There is hope yet.”
Lilly’s hand flew to her chest. She stepped away from her mother, her mind opening like an old cupboard door. Childhood memories poured from the dark, dusty shelves in the recesses of her mind. Scenes of violence surfaced. Images of her stepfather, Rex, appeared, a dark red cloud of fire swirling around him, as he cursed and beat her with a leather strap. Mama stood beside him, her shrieking accusations, providing lightning sharp strikes to the thunderous blows. Lilly’s body flinched as the vivid memories bore down on her.
How could she confide in this woman? How could she believe there would be any help from a mother who encouraged beating and abuse? Understanding wouldn’t come from this woman who denied the essence of who she was. “Okay,” Lilly whispered and turned away as her mother lit another cigarette.
Opening the screen door to the house, Lilly stopped and called out to her mama, “Where are daddy’s wood carvings?”
Her mother gave an exaggerated shrug, “Gone. They were stolen while Rex and I were on our honeymoon.”
‘Those carvings probably paid for your honeymoon,’ Lilly thought as the screen door slammed behind her.
Chapter 2
I Will Not Always Hold You in
My Heart
Scenes of that Thanksgiving trip, the hugs and tepid goodbyes from her mother drifted into her equinox dream.
She and Alex left early the day after Thanksgiving. Determined not to ride the two hours back to New Orleans in tense silence, Lilly turned the radio on as soon as Alex started the car. It was tuned to her favorite radio station. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” Richie Haven’s voice proclaimed through the radio speakers. “Freedom, freedom, freedom,” the refrain of the song filled Lilly’s mind. Tears crept out of the corners of her eyes.
Alex switched off the music. “Enough nonsense!”
Lilly’s hands curled into fists. She stared out of the car window and remained silent. The question she couldn’t answer played over and over in her mind, “What has happened to Alex, to our marriage, how have I failed?”
The happiest day of her life, her wedding day, came vividly to mind. She remembered the vows she and Alex had spoken, surprising the magistrate, who offered a sterile civil service.
Lilly had spoken vows from her heart, “I will always think well of you, I will speak well of you, and I will always hold you in my heart. I will love you forever.” Alex had repeated the same vows as he looked lovingly into her eyes.
Their honeymoon in New York was thrilling. Lilly, raised in the little bayou town of LaPoint Louisiana, was excited by everything in New York. Alex took her to the theater. He introduced her to fine dining and showed her the city from the top of the Empire State Building.
One night, after dinner at Tavern on the Green, they cuddled under a blanket as a horse-drawn carriage drove them through Central Park under the full moon. The carriage was gently rocking through the park when Alex pulled her onto his lap. She straddled him, and they made love slowly and deeply. It was the first time she experienced an intense orgasm.
Her memory was so vivid there was moistness between her stiffened legs.
“Stop!” Alex yelled.
Lilly jumped, “Stop what?”
“Stop the finger jiggling, finger rubbing, whatever it is you do. I’ve told you before, it is beyond irritating.”
A sob caught in her throat as she whispered an apology, “I am not aware I’m doing it, my hand’s tingle and I...”
“OK, stop doing it,” Alex growled and resumed his stony silence.
Lilly headed straight to the shower when they arrived home. The hot water relaxed her muscles. She felt the tension washing away, as a deep breath turned into a yawn. She wrapped herself in a towel and walked into the bedroom. She wanted to take a nap before she had to cook a big dinner for Alex’s mother and sister that evening.
She slid under the sheets and laid her head on the pillow when Alex walked into the bedroom. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I want to take a short nap before your family comes over for dinner.” she said.
Before she could take a breath, Alex lifted her
head up by her hair.
“No, no, you’re not going to take a nap” he growled. “You need to look in the refrigerator and see what you need to prepare a full course meal tonight.”
Lilly’s head ached with weariness, as she climbed out of bed. Wrapped in her bathrobe, she stood in front of the open refrigerator. There was a shriveled andouille sausage rolling around in the meat tray, wilted lettuce and a block of dry cheese. “I don’t have anything to cook for dinner, why don’t we order something from Becnel’s Deli?”
Alex’s jaw tightened, his eyes bulged from his head. His voice was as hard as nails as he spoke, “I would never disrespect my mother by serving her deli food. You get your lazy ass to the supermarket and put together a home cooked meal for my family!”
Lilly struggled to calm herself. She turned her back on Alex and bit back an acidic remark. Alex’s hand darted quickly from behind her, popping her hard on the ear. The assault threw her into a spin, she grabbed her ear and screamed.
Alex caught her long silvery hair, again, and stuck a $50 bill in her hand. “Get your scrawny Cajun ass dressed,” he yelled in her throbbing ear. The minute he released his hold on her hair, Lilly rushed into the bedroom and dressed. She walked quickly to the front door, but not fast enough. Alex grabbed her arm and drew her to him. Kissing her neck gently, he cooed in her ear, “You know I love you. I want my family to love you as much as I do.”
Lilly nodded her head, “I know, I want them to love me too.”
Alex squeezed her arm as she slipped from his embrace. As soon as he unlocked the front door, she ran to the car. “Hurry back” he called after her.
Her ear was throbbing, and she screamed with rage, as she sped out of the driveway. Different scenarios for escape played in her head. She always arrived at the same question, ‘How far can I get in thirty minutes with $50 dollars?’ Hot tears of frustration blinded her.
~
Later that evening, Alex’s mother, Fatima, his sister, Angelina and her husband, Vince, sat around the dining room table as Lilly placed a gourmet feast before them. Lilly watched Fatima look adoringly at Alex, admiring his fine high forehead, thick wavy brown hair, deep-set hazel eyes and the beautiful smile he was beaming in her direction.