by Casey Herzog
“I need to know what makes you qualified to help him.” He was our last resort, but I wasn’t going to throw Damien into his hands without finding out more about him.
“I have been in the practice of magic and medicine for longer than you have been alive. You might have an idea of how old I am, but you couldn’t even come close to the number. I have seen and done it all, but there’s a reason I’m still around. I know how to live my life the right way; I avoid the poisons you ingest every day. If you don’t mind, I have work to do; time is not our friend.” I reluctantly let him go, watching as he scurried down the hallway, hunched over with his cane leading the way.
“The transfusion must take place immediately; I’m not taking no for an answer.” I saw the Professor wasn’t sold, but he threw his hands up in defeat. He left me to wonder how Damien was going to fare, and if I was going to join him.
I couldn’t stop pacing the floor, and then, the Professor came back with a book and had me lie down beside Damien. His words made no sense, and the scented candle made me sick to my stomach. I felt the lurch of my breakfast, and then, pain searing into my stomach made me forget about the possibility of making a mess.
Professor Bethesda stood over me, and my body began to glow. The energy seemed to drift in the air before making its way agonizingly slowly over to Damien. His body jumped off the table, and he was showing signs of stress, which manifested in frothing at the mouth like a wild dog.
“I don’t…want you…to stop. My life…means nothing…compared to his.” I didn’t want to be a martyr, but I was willing to do what it takes.
The old man returned, and I saw him administer a needle directly to Damien’s heart. My head was spinning, and then I abruptly sat up with a rush of air coming out of my mouth. I thought for a moment I was floating, and then suddenly, I was back in my body.
“After studying Damien’s DNA and blood work, I realized the medicine needed a more direct route into his bloodstream. A person’s heart is where their soul emanates the strongest aura.” I thought for a moment he was all talk, but then Damien fluttered his eyelids and looked around like he was no longer a prisoner of his own body.
I felt a little weak, and I stumbled before gaining my equilibrium. I was no doubt going to need some time to replenish what had been taken. I was just glad that Damien had not succumbed to his illness and I no longer had to worry about living with my mistake.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It had been a couple of weeks, and William was scheduled to come out of isolation within the next couple of days. I was scrambling to get everything ready for the wedding, and thankful my mother was around to give me a hand with the preparations. There was a lot to do and many little things that had to be adhered to because of tradition.
“I know your trust in me is tentative at best, but I have to say I am enjoying getting to know you all over again. Your father has given me a clean bill of health, and I feel like my life is my own,” my mother said, showing me how the necklace she had given me worked with the magic inside me. I could conjure up little things, like small animals and even the elements, but nothing to warrant any kind of alarm from the locals. I felt blessed to have the tiger shadow with me. It was comforting to know it was there looking out for me.
“I had a hard time talking to William about this, and you would think he would give me his support. We are going to be married and trusting one another comes with it a contract for life,” I said, wanting my mother’s opinion and thankful she was here to get it.
“I know William didn’t take the news of you joining with the voice very well. You have to understand where he’s coming from. This is not a typical thing, and it’s somewhat similar to what you have gone through already. He will come around, but maybe he won’t have to. The voice did say he would relinquish his hold on you if he were to find a suitable host.”
I didn’t know where my mother was going with this, but the result was a chill down my spine.
“Father has been working tirelessly to find an answer, alongside several of the other professors who have all come up short. I don’t see how you can do anything to help me. The voice has been quiet for quite some time. I don’t really know what to make of it, but I do know he’s still there; maybe he’s just resting. I can’t fault him for needed time to heal after everything he has been through.”
My father had not been around; sleep had lost any meaning when it came to the safety of his family.
“I’m not suggesting there’s anything I can do, but I have felt the magic from two young up and comers. You might be able to utilize their power for your gain, but it means taking off the training wheels,” my mother said, letting me know there was still some unfinished business that I needed to see to personally. Penelope and Tabitha were causing problems together. Tabitha had become Penelope’s criminal partner.
“I don’t know how to give them real power without feeling like I’m doing them a disservice. I don’t know why it’s so important to release the voice when he hasn’t done anything to bring about this kind of mistrust. Don’t get me wrong, I want nothing more than to be my own woman, but I won’t let anybody harm him unless they know for sure they can release him without hurting him,” I said, looking at the necklace as I manipulated it with the little bit of magic I had at my disposal.
“I’ve never seen you so defensive; it does my heart proud to know you can stand up for what you believe in. You have the same conviction I had growing up, but you need to be careful about how people might perceive you. A strength in your belief is one thing, but foolhardy actions are only going to give people a reason to lash out at you,” my mother said, creating sparks of blue along the surface of the necklace that resulted in tiny little birds flying around the room before disappearing.
“Those girls are too young to be of any kind of help. They need me to keep them from losing their way. I can’t depend on Julian when he is obviously dealing with something of his own. We still don’t know the cause of his behavior and why he lost time.”
I was about to mention Damien and then he appeared with the same innocent smile on his face.
“I thought I felt my ears burning. Wait, you weren’t talking at all; you were thinking. It’s almost like we speak our own language,” Damien said, looking no worse for wear.
Seeing him standing and talking was making everything I had done worth it. It didn’t look like it was going to work, but eventually, he snapped out of it long enough to say a few words. I remembered them clearly “It’s about time.” It was just like him to be obstinate, to me of all people. He thought I was a little slow and believed I would come to his rescue sooner than later.
“I do admit that worrying about you coming out of your trance kept me up at nights. You may not want to hear this, but I feel like you are my little brother and I needed to look out for you. We’ve had a rocky relationship, but we’ve come a long way from when you wanted to burst me into flames.”
I saw the look on his face, and he closed his eyes, remembering a past not too long ago.
“Those were the good old days. I can’t believe I can say that at my young age! We all do what we need to do, and whether we are right or wrong is inconsequential. I know we have a deep bond and understanding that we have relied on to find our way out of some tough spots.”
He was trying to keep me from thinking about anything more than my wedding in the next few days.
The wedding was postponed, and I didn’t think my father shed a tear because he had been quite vocal about his displeasure about me marrying William. He liked him and treated him like a son, but he thought we were too young to join forever. We still had a lot of living to do, but I didn’t know how he could say that considering everything. We had experienced a lifetime in such a short period of time.
The monastery and the monks were responsible for postponing the wedding because they didn’t think they were getting William’s undivided attention. They understood the reason, but it still made them hesitant to allo
w him to join with me without fully immersing himself into the teachings they were providing.
“I have a meeting with your father, and I don’t want you to get your hopes up about reconciliation. I wasn’t myself at the time, but I still believe in everything I said to him. We will never be in love, no matter how much you try to manipulate us into seeing each other more often. You think you have been so clever, but we see through you. Maybe you should concentrate on yourself than worrying about us,” she said, giving me the smirk I knew so well.
She left me in the company of a young boy becoming a man.
“I didn’t want to say this in front of her, but there’s more going on. I’m not sure if this is a residual of my trance, and I would really like to be wrong for once. I suspect there was a reason something wanted me out of the way. They didn’t want me interfering in whatever plan they had in mind.”
I was worried there was something to what Damien was saying, and it did make sense to eliminate the threat of something more powerful than anybody realized.
“You and I are the only ones who know what you deal with every day. I thought mistakenly it had become too much for you keeping this secret from everyone. Working together creates a heavy burden. I shouldn’t have asked you to become my second.”
I gave Damien a hard choice for someone so young, and he had become the anchor to keep me from doing something stupid. I informed him before the evil had taken me that he could be something more with my guidance.
“I was prepared to sacrifice my life, and I would gladly do it several times over to protect you. I could hear you every time you came to see me, and I wanted to reach out, but something was preventing me. I don’t think anybody would have done for me what you did, not even my parents.”
We were bonded by a blood oath, he took half of the fight out of my hands concerning the evil staining my soul.
“The rest of the shrouds need the same help I gave the one. He hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with any answers. I don’t think I could’ve gone through with it except I knew you would always be there to help me regardless of the danger. I expect a lot, but you always come through.”
My friendship with Damien had made it impossible to break it without hurting both of us.
“I’ve been thinking about that, and it might be best to refrain from giving them the same freedom. I sense the one inside of you is the only sane one amongst them. I would have liked to be there when they came to the consensus. Why was he given the doorway out of purgatory?”
Damien was only saying what I wanted to, but was afraid to without the voice finding a reason to rise up in retaliation.
“I know you’re right. It most likely would be a huge mistake on our part to allow them to run amok. I’m just going to have to try to convince the voice.”
I didn’t think it was going to take much out of him to speak through me, but he has been neutered like some kind of animal. Not even my best friend knew of the position I put Damien in, and we had agreed this would be our secret to tell. William was unaware, and I didn’t know how I would be able to keep this from him.
“Your mother might be right about Penelope and Tabitha, but asking too much of them would most likely break them. You’ve been thinking the same thing, and it shouldn’t surprise you to see them working together. They are the strongest. You need to be very careful about how you allow them to develop.”
This was the same advice my father had used to help Damien find his way.
“My father won’t stop until he finds a way to release me from the voice. I can’t say his efforts are in vain, but it’s going to take something quite special and strong to break me from what was my decision in the first place.”
The voice was safely inside the warmth of my embrace, and I felt like I was responsible for what happened to him.
“Your father has always been stubborn, and there’s very little we can do to stop him.” Damien was strong, and I could feel it inside him courtesy of the darker arts. Nobody else knew how we were connected, and they wouldn’t find out from either of us unless we agreed to it before hand. “I want you to take a chance on letting me be instrumental in helping Tabitha and Penelope to find their true potential.” He was asking a lot, but I trusted him more than anybody, including my own family.
“I will consider your request, but I can’t promise anything, especially when giving you any kind of responsibility will lead to my father looking at you more closely. If we could somehow limit your exposure to those girls, then we might be able to make it work.”
The girls were strong, but they were stronger together than apart. This was something they had learned. Having each other to fuel peer pressure was only asking for trouble.
“I understand your reasoning for keeping me at a distance when it comes to the girls. I think I can help them, but we should do whatever we can to keep our suspicions about their power to ourselves.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. Damien was the reason I put myself at risk to bring back the cure. It was getting harder every day to keep the evil from taking over my life. I breathed a sigh of relief when Damien opened up his eyes. I think he understood the solemn vow we had taken together.
“I owe everything to you, Damien. The darkness isn’t hard to deny when somebody like you is there to reach out and take me into the light. I don’t want to make you feel indispensable, but to me, you are,” I said, looking at him and feeling the tears welling up inside for an emotional outburst to embarrass him.
“I don’t want you to think becoming your second benefits only you. I can also be corrupted, but your influence in my life prevents me from going down that road. We hold each other’s hands, and we’re there when we need to fight off something nobody else would understand.”
Damien instilled guilty feelings, but I understood joining together was best for everybody concerned.
“It makes me feel better to hear you express how you feel without me putting words in your mouth. I will always protect you from your worst fears come to life by your own hand.”
We had been testing his limitations, and he didn’t seem to have any, as far as I could see, which would’ve sent shock waves amongst the locals.
“I’m just trying to be truthful. I never had this kind of deep connection with anybody. It makes me feel good not to be alone and to have somebody there to listen to my problems. I just hope things will be the same when you marry William, but I would never do anything to ruin what is obviously the best thing for you,” Damien said, letting me know not even my marriage to William was going to pull us apart unless it was by our own hands.
“Nobody will understand, but we are family and it doesn’t matter if we are blood or not. You have become something of a staple in my life, and I never want to lose you for anything. It pained me severely to see you incapacitated after what I did.
“You have to know our bond, and joining together before that happened helped me to find my way back to sanity. It wasn’t just you, but without you, it wouldn’t have happened no matter how much my family begged me not to become a maniacal tyrant.”
It broke my heart to know how close I came to destroying everything with a single thought. It would’ve been so easy, and the love of my family and my bond with Damien gave me the strength to push through to the other side.
“I regret nothing; what happened to me wasn’t your fault.”
I heard somebody clearing their throat and I looked up to see William standing there with his arms stretched wide.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything, but the monks in their infinite wisdom decided to give me time off for good behavior. I’ve worked very hard, and they recognized how much I have put in.” Damien excused himself from the room, leaving us to reunite with a loving embrace and a hot passionate kiss.
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, and I feel sometimes I’m nothing without you.”
I had my hands wrapped around his waist and was looking into his eyes; I could see the love shining
through like a beacon of hope.
“If this is the greeting I get, then I can only imagine what the wedding night will entail. I’m getting ahead of myself though. I have missed you so much. I hope you know I was with you in spirit. I had no idea you were going to find your mother. I imagine it was quite a shock to the system, and the voices didn’t exactly make anything easier on you,” William said, his hands on my shoulders and a wide smile on his face to indicate his happiness was right there for everybody to see.
“I’ve gone through a lot, but being separated from you was the worst of it all. I know you still have your doubts about what I did, but I felt I had no choice,” I said, as he stood silent letting me wonder what his response was going to be.
He didn’t get a chance to say anything because there was some kind of commotion outside. My main concern was if Penelope or Tabitha were in the center of the chaos. We went down the stairs quickly and out onto the street to meet aa chorus of excitement and people gravitating towards the edge of the village.
We looked at each other, not quite knowing what was going on, but feeling compelled to follow the masses. We pushed through the crowd, and I found myself staring at the one person I had hoped to never see again. They were holding him, and he was struggling. I could understand their reaction to him showing up after all this time.
“You have some nerve coming back here after what you’ve done.”
I was the only one willing to say what was on my mind, and I didn’t care what anybody else thought of it.
“You obviously know me, and you have me at a disadvantage. I have no idea who you are. Come to think of it, I don’t even know who I am or why I was pushed to come here.”
If this were anybody else, I could give them the benefit of the doubt, but standing before me was the unmistakable image of Jasper. Everything was coming around full circle.
