In the far distance, high in the sky I see a shadow, a mere squiggle of ink. It moves and circles closer to the couple. As it nears, it begins to take shape. Wings at first, then it’s clear it’s another angel. He lands near the stream bank. The new angel is cradling someone in his arms. He gently places the person on the ground, then turns to face them. The first angel steps in front of the girl and pulls out a sword. The new angel pulls his sword from a sheath at his belt and they begin to battle, neither one paying attention to the humans.
The girl rushes over to the man on the ground and helps him sit up. When the man notices the fighting angels and the clashing swords he climbs to his feet, but the girl tries to hold him back. She pleads from her knees and clings to his clothes, but the man breaks free. He runs into the middle of the battle. The girl is screaming for everyone to stop. There’s confusion and chaos as swords swing and fists collide with body parts.
The man falls, injured, and the girl rushes to his side. The angels’ blades flash and one catches the girl, slicing her open. The first angel drops his weapon and catches her as she falls to the ground.
The angel spreads his wings and takes to the air. In his arms, he’s cradling the injured woman. The other angel hovers over the injured man on the ground covering his body with his huge wings.
The couple flies higher and higher into the sky, then right out of the picture. White smoke rises from the page and in it I see the outlines of an angel holding a girl cradled in his arms. Despair and madness are etched on his face. It’s Nathaniel and in his arms, I’m bleeding.
I blink and blink again. The smoke dissipates. The night around me seeps into my awareness. Just as the glow of the porch light comes into focus, I hear, “What are you doing, Juliana?”
Shocked, I look over and see Chris staring at me. How long has he been standing there? How long have I been holding the book?
I jump to my feet and thrust the stupid book at him. “I don’t know anything. I don’t understand any of this. I am completely done with everything!”
Slowly and cautiously, he takes the book. “Are you uncertain because you saw something you cannot explain?”
“I’m just done. Take it away. I never want to see the thing again.” I rub my chest where I saw the blood in that crazy vision. My hand moves to my neck, gently rubbing at the exposed skin. This is too much. I can’t be imagining things now. “I’m going to the hospital.”
“What happened just now? Did you have a vision?”
“I don’t know. I hate this. I can’t explain it.” I shudder and try again. “That book… it’s messing with my head.”
“You’re experiencing something unique.”
“I’m getting away from it. That’s all I’m doing.”
“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Chris says.
“No. I’ll drive myself.”
“You should not drive. Tonight was a lot for anyone. If I could make you stay home and integrate what we have accomplished, I would make you. I also understand you need to be with your family.”
Shaking my head with equal parts refusal of his offer, and frustration over the entire night, I open the front door and storm into the house. I make my brain focus on what I need to do for my grandma, mom, and brother. Chris follows me inside.
“If you really want to help, stay here and finish whatever you need to. I won’t be living here if otherworldly visitors continue to drop in to chat and scare the frijoles out of me,” I say over my shoulder as I enter the kitchen.
“It is not the house,” he says.
I cringe. Chris is implying I am the source of my own problems. Yeah, I get it, but wouldn’t it be so much more convenient to blame the house? I stare at the dumb clock — the hands have stopped moving again.
With disgust toward the creepy and taunting clock, I spin around, leave the kitchen, and make for the stairs. Chris watches me with his usual mask of indifference, but his look is tinged with a smidgeon of disapproval.
I hold up an open palm as I pass by him. “Don’t say any more. I know I’m the problem. I know I’m the one responsible for the demons and the ghosts in the house.”
Upstairs, I stuff everything I can think of into my backpack. I try my hardest to not look at the ceiling where there was a swirling void earlier, but of course I look — and it’s gone. No abyss, no unholy soul-sucking evil beings, just my sparkly popcorn textured ceiling. Even so, I book it out of my room, dart through Jared’s room, do a spinning dash through the bathroom, and I’m back downstairs in a wink.
“I will stay through the night. When I leave, I am taking the book with me for examination.”
I can’t stand the sight of it. I grab it out of his hand and walk out the front door. Chris follows me as I stomp down the front steps. I walk over to one of the fire pits, now extinguished by the fire department, and chuck the book into the soggy ashes.
“I don’t care what you say about powerful, magical, or non-magical, non-powerful objects. This book causes me more problems than it’s worth.”
“So the Ant has learned something of value this night,” he says.
Do I actually hear a hint of sarcasm and scorn coming from Chris? “That’s right,” I throw back at him. “I learned I am a danger to myself and those around me and I need to be at the hospital right now. I need to forget I have visions, I can call demons to my room, and I talk to dead people.” The spirits standing around the property line stare at me with interest. It makes me want to scream.
“You need to accept yourself.”
“Hmmph,” I snort. “Thanks for helping, Chris. I mean it, but I need to get out of here.”
∞
Alone in my car, my focus is entirely on being with my family at the hospital. Earlier events of the evening are hidden within my mind like the stars are behind the thundering clouds. Whatever it takes, I’ll be there for Grandma and Jared just like they’ve always been there for me.
This was my last thought before Marcus appears in the passenger seat next to me.
“How about talkin’ to me for a moment?”
I jump and accidentally jerk the wheel. The car lurches into the wrong lane. My feet hammer the clutch and brake pedals. To make things worse, I try to correct and end up swerving off the road. My car skids over the berm and bounces down a grassy slope coming to an abrupt stop in front of a barbed-wire fence. I see the broad side of a sleeping heifer and I close my eyes, shutting out the world for one blissfully silent moment. I almost totaled my car, hit a fence, and killed a cow in like three seconds. I wanted to go to the hospital, but not as a patient.
“Sort of overdramatic, Jules.”
Unable to unpeel my fingers from the steering wheel so I can punch him in the face, I decide to go with a different approach. “Please don’t ever do that again,” I say with measured spaces between each word.
I lift my left foot off the clutch and the car leaps forward and dies with a grinding clunk. I scream at the unexpected movement, and also because the car rams into a fence post. Apparently I was still in fifth gear. Note to self: Do not start from a dead stop in any gear other than first. The cow runs off into the pasture bucking and kicking. I think she flips me off for good measure.
“Just great!” I say as I yank the emergency brake on, push in the clutch, and park my Saab in gear, which is what I should have done in the first place. I open the door and climb out to inspect the front end of my car.
Marcus meets me in the headlights.
“Seriously? It couldn’t wait until I was at the hospital?” I’m so perturbed right now Marcus should probably be wearing a helmet, shin guards, body armor, and a cup for protection. I grip the newly returned medicine bag hanging around my neck for staying power.
“Come with me,” he says.
“Go away.”
He reaches over and wraps his hand around my upper arm. As I attempt to yank myself free, the cloudy night, the smell of the warm engine, and the headlights shining across the field fall away. I can’
t tell if I’m flying or falling. Marcus is a solid anchor at my side. If he wasn’t there, I’d be a screeching, hysterical lunatic.
“My apologies, Juliana. If it could be any other way, I would’ve chosen differently.”
“Is that my house?” I ask, but as soon as I say it, I recognize my front porch with the light on and my mom’s car and Chris’s truck in the driveway. “What are we doing here?” I revise my question.
“Looking at what the shaman has created.”
“Say what?”
“Observe more carefully, Jules.”
We seem to float over my house like clouds. As I watch, the scene below zooms in, but we stay a good distance overhead. The four shaman spirits are still holding the line around my house. Between them, there is a stream of white energy, like flowing silk in an invisible current. It flows around the boundaries of the property.
“What is that?”
“A safeguard.”
“Against demons and ghosts?” I ask.
“Yes. It is strong enough to keep me out as well.”
“Are you sure you should have told me that?”
“It makes little difference if you know or not. At least you will be safe inside your home. No more monkey business with that black book.”
“Thanks. I think.” I cringe at the mention of my shortcomings. “Chris is pretty amazing, isn’t he?”
“He’s an incredible human. Now that you’ve seen this, I’m going to show you something else.”
“How are you doing this? How are we flying?”
“The how doesn’t matter. One more moment of your trust is all I need.”
“I’m not sure I do trust you.”
“You must or you would not be with me right now. Ready?”
“No,” I say, but it doesn’t matter. We’re moving again, except this time it’s as if we’re sliding through a wormhole, or what I imagine a wormhole might be like. Swirling streaks of light surround me as we slide through space and time.
It takes only an instant, then we’re hovering over a land of rolling green countryside with an indigo sea in the distance. The sun is just above the horizon and I somehow know we are very far from Colorado. Far from the United States, too.
“Down there, Jules. What do you see?”
I can hardly get over what just happened, let alone form an intelligible explanation.
“Marcus, why are you putting me through this?”
“In time, Jules. Bear with me. I suspect we won’t be stayin’ long.”
I tear my eyes away from the unbelievably lush hills and vast sea and attempt to focus on what he wants to show me. The terrain here is so different from the mountains where I live. I want to go touch a small piece of the greenness below, smell the blooms I can see in the garden of a quaint little cottage. On a hillside is a crumbling stone ruin practically begging to be explored.
But no, I see what Marcus wants me to look at. Not the picturesque cottages or the narrow lanes leading to the seaside beaches, but the anomaly. The strange and the unexplainable. It is of another level of perception, like the shield around my house, but this is different.
I think it’s some type of supernatural barrier. What it keeps out, or in, I have no clue. It moves slightly, like a shimmer of light on dark water. Shades of gray, from charcoal to heather, weave among black and green ribbons to form an otherworldly defense system which surrounds the entire cookie-cutter neat piece of land. It has a center where the energy is concentrated, but the borders are clearly marked.
“It’s another safeguard, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Where are we exactly?”
“Over the Emerald Isle.”
“Ireland? Really? Why?”
“You should be asking who, and then why.”
“Okay, who lives here?”
“He’s someone who you should stay away from.”
“Then why did you bring me here?” I say, confused.
“Sometimes we need to know what we’re up against so we can avoid it.”
“Just from the look of the place, you couldn’t pay me to go near it.”
“What does it look like to you? I’m wondering if it appears the same to the living as it does to me.”
“It’s darker than the protection around my house. It makes me want to stay away. I can’t say why exactly other than a normal house doesn’t have an aura like that one does.”
“Good enough. And, you’re a hundred percent right. If Nathaniel had as much sense as you, he wouldn’t be in the mess of trouble he’s gotten himself into.”
“What’s going on, Marcus? Where’s Nathaniel?” I wondered why he never showed up at the house after I called for him, but I assumed he was resting and would come when he was able.
“He’s involved in this witchcraft.” Marcus nods down at the dome of unsettling energy below us.
“No, he’s not,” I say in instant denial.
Marcus strokes his jaw. “If he makes it out unscathed, you tell him your thoughts on this mad house.”
“What do you mean, ‘makes it out’? Tell me where he is.”
“In there. He walked himself right into a trap set by the old fallen one. Now he has to help himself.”
“No. We have to get him out of there right now.”
“Can’t. Sometimes lessons can only be learned by going through them. I don’t want him harmed, but he won’t listen to me anymore.”
“And that’s why I’m here,” I say starting to comprehend Marcus’s intentions.
“Time to go,” Marcus says, his hand tightening on my arm.
“No. We can’t leave Nathaniel.”
“Look, Jules, we don’t have a choice. The angel down there doesn’t play nice like the rest of us.”
“I don’t bloody freaking care!”
“You will care. Look what’s coming at us.”
I shoot a glance down at the house and see the field of energy lifting in spikes away from its center. Forms are taking shape. Forms with wings and long necks. One shadowed creature breaks free and beats its sprawling wings. It’s made of the churning energy and it picks up speed as it soars straight for us.
I grab onto Marcus’s hefty biceps with both hands and squeak, “Go!”
∞
“Hello? Miss?”
Tap, tap, tap. The car vibrates around me. My conscious brain feels tied to a lead weight in another hemisphere.
“You all right in there? Wake up or I’m going to break into your car,” the voice says.
Not hardly. Not okay. And, don’t break my car. Consciousness slaps me quick and fast and I bound to attention. It’s still night time and I’m staring at my steering wheel.
“I’m awake?” I say, wondering if I was even asleep to begin with. I turn my head toward the stranger standing outside the window. His obnoxious five-thousand-watt flashlight makes me regret having eyeballs.
“I’m Officer Suarez, Archuleta county sheriff. Roll down your window please.”
Sheriff? What? Where the hell is Marcus? I roll down my window, then place both hands on the steering wheel.
“Are you injured?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, wondering if I hit my head or some other more reasonable explanation for my recent mental vacay to Ireland.
“Want to tell me how you ended up off the road, miss?”
In my current condition, I’d like to lie on a couch and spill my guts to anyone who would listen and have them tell me I’m having a “normal” bout of psychosis due to enormous amounts of stress. I seriously doubt this guy would be the right person. “I overreacted to someone. I mean, something. I swerved and accidentally ended up in the ditch.”
“Were you texting?”
“No, sir. I don’t even have a phone with me.”
“I need to see your driver’s license, registration, and insurance.”
My pulse quickens. I’m going to get in trouble now after everything else tonight. With shaking hands and a poun
ding heart, I lean over to the glove box and dig out the papers. Officer Suarez instructs me to stay in my car as he leaves to check me out on his computer. He returns with a ticket for failure to control my vehicle. I want to die. I stuff the ticket and my registration card on the passenger seat. And if I’m dead already, I’m going to ream a hole into Marcus for getting me into this mess.
“Oh, crap-in-a-hat!”
“Pardon?”
“Sorry. That wasn’t for you. I’m getting out to look at my car now, then I have to get out of here,” I tell the officer as I reach for the door handle and pry myself out of the car and into the cool night.
He steps back to give me some space and holds the flashlight for me.
“I was on my way to the hospital,” I explain as I move around the front of the car where I should see a mashed in bumper and a crushed fence post, but there are no marks. The fence isn’t even bent. “I really needed to be over there like a couple of hours ago. My grandmother was struck by lightning and my brother is really sick.”
I stare between the bumper and the fence, perplexed. When no answers magically formulate to explain why my car is dent-free, I reach up and run my hands over my scalp. Could this night get any weirder and more stressful?
“I heard the calls on my radio earlier. So, you’re a member of that Crowson family.”
“That’s me,” I admit.
Unfortunately, this summer has turned into a never-ending fiasco involving the authorities. First, I was questioned about Castle Hill and Mason’s drug bust, then there was the accidental death of the wicked, demon-wielding warlock, Travis. Tonight, no cops were involved, but any news in a small town, especially a fire and a lightning strike, would spread instantaneously.
“I’m supposed to call a tow truck, but since it’s an emergency, I’m going to help you get this car back on the road.”
Haunting Me (An Angel Falls Book 3) Page 20
