“But,” Devon faltered, “we shared a regression. Don’t you remember, Danielle? In those last moments… we saw our deaths, on Cerilyn. You, me…” He did not mention Cairn.
Danielle furrowed her brows. She remembered a painful flashback, full of fear, of loathing, of certainty in death. She remembered the gash in her side and someone holding her hand. She remembered Marlow’s words and Nerilis’s assertions. It wasn’t enough. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember that life.”
“Then there is nothing I can do for you,” Marlow said. “Only you can face those fears.”
A deep sigh exerted from Danielle’s chest, strong enough to knock her back down to the cool grass. Devon sat beside her as they stared out at the setting sun. “I’ve never been to Europe before,” Danielle mused.
“I’ve never been outside of America.”
After a pause, both Danielle and Devon laughed at the absurdity of his statement. Devon had most certainly been outside of America before, thousands of times in a hundred different bodies. Truthfully, he had only been in America for a total of twenty-two years in the span of a millennium.
Marlow stood from his rock with the help of his cane “Perhaps it is time I took you two home.” Charlie dashed around his feet, tail wagging.
Devon extended a hand to help Danielle up. “The first thing I’m going to do is go home and call my grandmother,” Danielle said. “What about you?”
He shrugged. “Call my friends, I guess. Actually, the first thing I’m going to do is take a nap. I am so fucking tired.”
Even though his statement was not humorous, they laughed again. They faced Marlow with the expectation that they would depart immediately, but the sorcerer kept his eyes low.
“There’s one last thing,” he told them. “Your tattoos.”
Both Danielle and Devon fell silent at this reminder.
“Hold out your hands, please.”
Synchronously obedient, Devon held out his right hand and Danielle her left, their arms brushing together. With one wave of his hand, Marlow obliterated the tattoos, their hue fading into dust as the breeze picked up and carried the remnants of their power away. The dust twinkled in the setting sunlight like tiny stars.
Devon lowered his hand, but Danielle’s remained extended. “What’s wrong?” The quivering lips on her face took him back to a dark place.
Danielle spread her fingers apart to show off the blue jewels on her ring finger, complacent against her skin. “I’m still wearing it.”
“Apparently it likes you,” Devon said.
Flustered, Danielle yanked the ring off. “This thing tried to kill me!”
“It also saved the world,” Marlow reminded her.
“But it doesn’t hurt me anymore. Does that mean it’s lost its power?”
“No,” Marlow continued. “It will always be the Third Piece. It will always have the power to destroy the world.”
Danielle sucked in her cheeks. “Then why won’t it affect me anymore?”
A shrug. “Who really knows? Perhaps it had something to do with what happened back there. Maybe you should keep it to remind you of your own mission now.”
She glanced from the ring between her fingers to his wobbling cane. “This isn’t even mine to keep, honestly. It belongs to…” her mouth went dry. “What happened to…”
Marlow motioned for them to follow him to the bottom of the hill, where two bodies lay in the grass. Miranda’s body was laid with gentle care, the vessel of beloved Joiya, and Syrfila’s thrown against the ground like a sack of forgotten shit. “They are alive,” Marlow said before anyone could ask. “But worse for wear than the two of you. Nerilis’s abilities are stronger than mine, and he did a number on them.”
“Shouldn’t you, I dunno, arrest her or something?” Devon gestured to Syrfila. “Most wanted woman in the universe, right?”
What seemed so obvious to Devon did not sit well with the old man who gazed at Syrfila with infinite pity. “They will come for her soon enough. She now lives without Nerilis’s protection. It’s only a matter of time before the bounty hunters come to get her. Let them have her – the reward will suit them better than me.” He caught sight of Devon’s scowl. “She’ll no longer be able to harm the world at large. Nerilis is gone.”
“Will she remember?” Danielle faced Miranda. “Will she remember any of that?”
“I’m sure she’ll be as you remember her soon enough.”
“And Dunsman, then? What about him?” Devon continued the inquisition while Danielle remained distracted.
“Ah, yes. Nerilis…” Marlow gazed at the splendid sunset. “I cannot say for sure, but I think his pledge is genuine. I will have to keep following him, but rest assured, I will not involve you again. Your trial with him is over now – leave the rest to me. If nothing else, he should not bother Earth again.”
Without missing another second, Danielle broached the other subject. “What about the Relics? Are they gone now too?”
“You two took a couple of them, did you not?”
“Uh…”
“I figured. You lost them. No, don’t worry about it, I’ll see to that as well. What remains is my responsibility.”
He bowed in a formal apology for what he had put them through in the past one thousand years.
“If you really want to apologize, you’ll take us home now,” Danielle told him. “Don’t you think you owe us that? I want to see my friends and make sure they’re all right, considering all the other ones from past lives were killed.”
Marlow nodded. “Yes, of course. I will take you back to your city.”
He meant it, too. All of them. As the landscape melted away into a stream of greens and golds and nausea swelled inside mortal stomachs from the shifting of the universe, four bodies were transported to the other side of the world and left in a sunny, warm park in the middle of their natal city.
“What the…” Danielle was alone with the two sleeping bodies of Syrfila and Miranda. “He left us here with them!”
“But look.” Devon pointed to the city skyline. “Everything’s okay.”
The park was full of families, couples, and singles meandering and playing as if the world had not tried to end its own life. Perhaps it was true that nobody was any the wiser about Relics, natural disasters, and even their own deaths. Were they really all dead at one moment? Danielle slumped her shoulders. “Does this mean I get to sleep a whole night without worry?”
“I think so.”
“Great!” She slapped her hands against her knees and tossed back into the warm grass. A pair of children ran by, screaming loudly enough to alert her that nobody, in fact, was dead in that city. “I think that’s what I’m looking forward to the most.”
Devon smiled, his hand shielding his eyes from the warm sun shining upon that bustling June afternoon. “It’s going to be weird not having to wake up every day and wonder if we’re totally fucked.”
A ladybug rolled off a blade of grass and tickled Danielle’s fingertips. “I don’t know what I even did when I was a boring-ass person a month ago.”
“Has it really only been a month?”
“This time, anyway.”
Devon pressed on. “Do you think you’ll ever regress?”
Her content countenance turned into a frown. “I’m not going to worry about that right now. I want to get my life back. I’ll worry about getting a righteous death later.”
Satisfied with such a response, Devon picked up a dandelion from the grass, its fragrance sharp and bitter in his nose but a timid icon of all they had achieved. He compared its yellow petals to the softer hues of Danielle’s hair before reaching for her hand.
She snatched her hand away before the wrong idea was perpetuated. Danielle turned to the two unconscious bodies sleeping in the field. “What are we going to do about them?
“Just leave them,” Devon said. “They’ll either wake up on their own or somebody will take them to a hospital. Come on.” He extended a hand. “L
et’s get back to our lives.”
FIFTY-TWO
Early the next morning, Devon rolled out of bed while Danielle showered and dressed in her uniform. A call had come in that M-Town was open and operational. The world had truly gone back to its usual machinations, even though parts of it still recovered from the lingering natural disasters and permanent loss of life.
Devon used the kitchen sink to freshen up his face and hair. Danielle emerged from the bathroom, her nonplussed demeanor distracting enough to keep Devon from staring at the blue ring still on her finger. She had never taken it off since using it to save the world.
“What are you going to do with that?” Devon asked. “Are you going to keep it?”
Danielle slid the blue ring off her hand. “It’s technically not even mine.”
“You gonna give it back?”
“Yeah, right. Like I could now.” Danielle stood in front of her mirror and adjusted her nametag. “I guess I’ll keep it for now. Add it to the box of jewelry I never wear.”
Devon nodded. “I think it would be safest with you, you know? At least you have a gun.”
“As if that was all it took to keep this world safe.”
She spritzed on the tiniest bit of perfume to keep the stench of fatigue away. A curt goodbye sprang between them as Danielle left for work. She was lucky that Marlow had arranged for her car to be dropped off in its parking spot after it spent a world-ending night outside the last known location of St. Lucia. Just another part of the clean-up to keep normal Earthlings from knowing about the universe beyond their atmosphere.
Devon took the bus to his campus apartment. Everything was as he had left it only a couple days before – scattered clothes, molding fruit, and the stagnant air of rooms unventilated. Without Alicia there, it was like a black hole.
He flopped onto the couch in the living area and stared at the blackened TV and the dusty windows behind it. Was this the type of environment a man who had helped save the world inhabited? Devon told Danielle they should get back to their lives, but he forgot how much of a life he no longer had.
At least he had friends. He called Clyde in Colorado to make sure he was fine. After learning that the worst was over, Clyde announced his plans to return to the west coast before his birthday in July.
Devon then called Serge and heard the magic words, “We have another gig!” as if they should cheer Devon up.
What was his life? Devon tossed his cell phone onto the other end of the couch and leaned back into the cushions, where over the course of the past year he had written songs, played video games, done homework, napped, ate frozen dinners, made love to his girlfriend, and even kissed Danielle for the first time. Yet he could no longer look at that apartment with the same eyes from a month before. Those eyes held a soul too old for this humble life.
The cognitive dissonance suffocated his ability to think clearly. He could remember, in almost frightening clarity, moments from his original life as Sonall Gardiah as if they had happened decades before instead of a thousand years ago. He remembered the lovely house, full of doting servants and a constant stream of his father’s patrons sitting at the dinner table and talking business beyond child-Sonall’s understanding. He remembered playing with his older sister in their nursery – his sister, who was also his best friend.
He remembered the day the mercenaries from Cerilyn assassinated his parents and took the children as their prizes. He remembered those harsh years in the fortress of the Second Tribe, where he became a warrior and met Sulim. He remembered his sister caving to the strains of their new life and dying before the first year had passed. He remembered how the barbarians tossed her body into a canyon, where everyone who died on tribal lands rested for eternity.
He remembered grieving, and how he channeled his anger into becoming a muscular, mindless drone. He remembered losing his virginity to a woman named Kila in a storage room, thus beginning his adult life as a wasteful philanderer who probably produced more progeny across the Federation than men who made it their missions to procreate. He remembered the day someone found Kila’s body, another sacrifice to the mercenary life.
He remembered his years of service as the brawn to Sulim’s brain, usurping mutinies, gaining intelligence, and stopping entire armies from launching across the universe. He remembered his promotion to Second-in-Command. He remembered the day Marlow arrived and hired him and Sulim to gather the Relics of Cerilyn.
He remembered Sulim coming into his camp one evening and attempting to seduce him before melting into a puddle of tears. He remembered the day he rode home to find Sulim’s battered body on the jungle floor.
He remembered dying.
Devon rolled his neck across the sofa as spiritual desolation washed over him. Who was he now? Devon Anderson was a nobody compared to Sonall Gardiah. Who was once a man besting any other at a fight, gambling his way into a woman’s bed, and claiming pseudo-sovereignty over an entire army was now nothing more than a scrawny young man with nothing but a guitar and a pitiful love life. The only thing Devon had done that Sonall could not was finish their mission. In the end, it all came full circle again.
There was more to it than that, however. Sonall was embarrassing. A cherished boy forced to become a brute in the name of survival. What did it matter that Sonall had a girlfriend on every Federation planet with plausible children to spare, or that he had killed more men than the grim reaper himself? Sonall laughed at others’ misfortunes; he abandoned morality. Even in the last moments of his life, he attempted to solve every problem with force in the face of losing everything he had regained. How could he ever be an effective leader like that? Sonall barely deserved the recognition he received. Had he not entered the Process, he would have been forgotten in the annals of history.
Devon may not have been physically blessed in his new body, but at least he felt at peace with the life he was now allowed to live. Sonall became good at fighting and fathering because that was all he could do. Sonall would have laughed at Devon for his artistry, but Devon figured that’s what it was like for an older man to look back on his past and sigh in embarrassment. Sonall was Devon’s bell-bottom pants and porn-star mustache.
And he was now free – that was the most important, beautiful thing. Soon the chains of the Process would fall, and the spirit living inside those bodies over a thousand years would go wherever it was supposed to go after death. Devon had his one last life to live, as he pleased, and with the knowledge he should have had as Sonall.
Which meant he did not want to make the same mistakes in love Sonall once had.
Devon picked up his cell phone again. The serenest voice he could ever wish to hear greeted him a few moments later.
“What is it?” Alicia asked.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“How’s your ankle?”
“Healing. Why are you calling me?”
Devon sucked in a large breath before explaining what had happened. He and Danielle had saved the world. Alicia had probably died at some point, and the world adjusted around the truth until she was alive and oblivious. The universe could do amazing things. The Void was so powerful, so full of mighty spiritual energy that anything could be accomplished if enough of it was manipulated by the correct source.
Alicia was almost amused. If only she could fully grasp what it meant to experience what she had. But how could she? If she didn’t remember dying, if she didn’t remember coming back to her body before it was forgotten, then how could she take it seriously? Devon might as well have told her that she experienced the passing of a millennium in a single second. Like Devon had, when he reawakened as Sonall and realized that a millennium had passed, and he couldn’t remember any of his previous lives if he tried. They didn’t matter anymore, like Alicia possibly dying and being righted in the universe no longer mattered. “No more world ending, huh? No more people chasing you and kidnapping me?”
“Yes,” Devon said as he filled a glass with tap water.
“I’d almost say it was safe enough to come back… you are coming back out west, right?”
“Of course I am, at some point. I have to finish school. But I don’t know when. I want to heal my ankle up before traveling back out there, so it will be at least a month.”
Devon drank his water and left the glass in the sink. “A month? I was hoping to have a new apartment figured out by then. Awkward to do without you here.”
Alicia was silent for a moment. “Is that your way of asking me to stay with you?”
“I suppose. We aren’t totally broken up yet.”
“Ah, no, I suppose not. I just sort of left and we argued and I was kidnapped… and then I don’t know what I thought. It’s been such a long month.”
“Tell me about it. You got the fishbowl view.”
She paused. “Why would you stay with me, though? Don’t you have Danielle now?”
Devon’s throat was dry again. “It’s not like that. Or at least I’m pretty sure it’s not.”
“No, I suppose she would object to that. Do you still love her?”
The question was like a slap across the cheek. “I’ve loved her for over a thousand years – I don’t think that fades away.”
“Of course not. But I don’t want to be with you if it means you’ll be chasing after her.”
“Likewise, you know. I don’t think it’s going to happen with her. I think the most I can hold out for is to be her friend as she tries to regain her memories.”
Alicia paused another second before saying. “I think we should wait to talk about ‘us’ until I get back. I think one more month should be enough to sort our feelings out on the matter.”
They switched the conversation to how her family was and Devon’s news of a band gig. Eventually, they ran out of topics, and what they had to say kept dwindling back to their apartment and future lives.
“What will you do now?” Alicia asked.
It did not matter how nicely she said it, the weight of her sentiment still blew into the side of Devon’s head. “I’ll hopefully find a job sooner rather than later, so I can start saving money for a new apartment beyond what I… we… have now.”
Rebirth (Cross Book 1) Page 55
