Protect Her: Part 10

by Ivy Sinclair

  “Acceptance cannot be coerced,” Viho said. “The natural order of things strictly prohibits it.”

  “Tell that to Paige,” I said. “Funny how there’s always a loophole in every contract and every supposed truth or fact can be proven false as long as you are willing to look for it.”

  I returned to my place next to Paige’s body. She appeared dead, and I understood why. As part of a possession, the consciousness is packed away into the deepest recesses of the mind. Then the new entity has to have time to set up shop. It requires an enormous expenditure of energy, so all ‘non-essential’ functions are shut down. Heartbeat, breath, all of the normal human body processes are put on pause until the new entity is settled and gives the body a jump start.

  Then I had an idea. I might not be able to reach Paige the way Adam showed me, but maybe I could reach her my way.

  “Where’s my kit?” I asked, looking wildly around the bar. “Didn’t I bring a kit here with me?”

  “I brought an extra.” Klein appeared from the back of the room. He cast sidelong glances at Adam and Viho that told me he would gladly be anywhere else right now. He moved around to the other end of the bar and picked up a small black bag. He tossed it to me.

  “You’re a lifesaver as always, Klein.” I picked up Paige’s body and carried her around the bar. I moved toward the dance floor where Paige and I had just had our first dance. We had more dances in our future. I was certain of it, which is why I wasn’t going to stop.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Viho asked.

  “Her essence is locked away somewhere. I’m going to pull it out,” I said.

  “You can’t do that, Riley. She’s not dead. Your methods will not work.”

  “Same difference,” I said. “Her mind is dead or pushed off to the side to make room for Eva’s. I just need to find a way to talk to her, and this can work.”

  As I gently laid her down in the middle of the dance floor and brushed the hair out of her eyes, I felt Adam’s lumbering presence heading in my direction. I wasn’t sure what I did, but I lashed out at him with my energy. I heard the swish of air and then a heavy grunt as he was knocked backward. “See how you like it,” I said under my breath.

  Viho slipped up to kneel next to me. “You are playing with forces that you don’t even understand. If you left her alone, you might be able to eventually find a way to reverse the possession. But you can’t go ransacking your way into her soul, especially when her body still lives. It’s dangerous and unnatural. You might destroy what is left of her as opposed to saving her.”

  “I appreciate the advice, but I’m doing this,” I said. “Paige didn’t want this. She was hurt and confused, and Eva took advantage of that to get her way. I’ll be damned if I let her get away with it.”

  “I’m not saying I agree one-hundred percent with old man Viho here, Riley, but you might want to take a few minutes and think this one through.” Klein moved from his post at the end of the bar a few steps closer to us. “Acting before thinking never really works out well for you.”

  “Haven’t I fired you already?” I wasn’t listening to what they had to say anymore. I didn’t care. What did surprise me was that Adam didn’t attempt to approach me again. I looked up and saw the man had pulled the cowl back up to cover his face. He stood at the back of the room. “Aren’t you going to try to stop me too?”

  “You amuse me,” Adam said. His tone didn’t hold any notes of amusement, but I couldn’t have cared less if he thought I was going to get up and dance a jig for him. As long as he stayed out of my way and kept his dark magic to himself, we’d be fine.

  “Fine. Stay in your corner then, and watch to your black heart’s content,” I said. I pulled the herbs and salts that I needed from the satchel. It was barely enough to make the spell work, but it would do. I began to sprinkle them in a large circle around Paige’s still form.

  “Riley. I must insist you stop this madness! Eva is in Paige’s body transforming every part of her as we speak. You are going to interfere with something that is far larger than you or me or anyone in this world. Our best course of action is to fall back, regroup, and try to find a way to keep Eva from wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting human race when she comes to.”

  “You go do that, Viho. You might as well give your archangel buddies a heads up while you’re at it,” I said. “In the meantime, I’m going to do this and try to stop all of it before it starts. If I can get to Paige and have her rescind the agreement, she might still be able to stop Eva.”

  “What do you know of possession?” Viho asked. It was a stupid question, but I humored him as I continued tracing Paige’s body with the herbal chalk outline.

  “I know what everyone knows about possession,” I said. “There’s forced and then there’s tacit. Forced means that the entity took over the one inside without the other’s knowledge or agreement. It’s like a leech or parasite. The host is helpless to do anything about it. In tacit possession, the host invites the entity in. They throw down the welcome mat and bake cookies. It’s the most fucked up version of free will at its finest. But even in that situation, you can kick them out if you decide they’ve fucked up your house. You have to be willing to try.”

  “How often do you think that happens?” Viho asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “It does matter. Because in tacit possession the host wanted the result of the possession. So what would happen to make them change their minds? They’ve gotten their sincerest wish. It came true. That is why tacit possessions are the most dangerous and diabolical and are the archangel’s preference when they take a vessel. You can guarantee that Eva isn’t going to let you anywhere near Paige now that she has Paige’s agreement.”

  “I’m not after her consciousness. I’m going after her soul,” I said. The outline complete, I dug out a small candle from the bag. “I don’t give two shits about what Eva thinks is hers or not. Paige was manipulated into giving over her body under false pretenses. I’m going to fix that.”

  Viho backed away even as I set the candle on the floor in front of me as the flame sprang to life. I didn’t really need it to do what I was about to do, but I found that in tense moments focusing on the flame kept me centered. I bowed my head and began to recite the words that had been blazoned on my brain.

  Hear me, the one whose essence and soul I seek. Obey my command, and come to me. Do not hold back for I will find you. Do not shy away because you are the one I seek. Come to me now.

  Nothing happened. I knew the sensations I was looking for. It would feel as if threads of string reached out from me and connected to the essence of the one I wanted to summon. It didn’t matter how near or far away in time and space they were from me. My spell always found them and brought them to me.

  “What the hell?” I murmured.

  “This is one thing that you can’t undo, and you can’t fix,” Viho said flatly. “You will only do more damage.”

  “Shut up, old man,” I growled. I closed my eyes and said the words again. I should have felt the connection almost instantly. But again, I felt nothing. It was strangely empty on the other side of the void I tried to breach.

  “This isn’t as interesting as I hoped,” Adam said from across the room.

  “You’re welcome to come over here and give me a little boost of that magical dark junkie juice,” I said.

  “I am here only to ensure that my sister never sees the light of day when she arises. If I were you, I’d take your father’s advice and leave before it’s too late.”

  It was as if the words were said at just the right moment. Paige’s eyes opened, but I knew immediately that something was terribly wrong. It went beyond the fact that Paige’s eyes were blue, and the eyes that stared up at me were so dark they were almost black. As she sat up, I saw her hair darken even as I watched. It wasn’t the raven black that I knew was Eva’s hair color, but an odd hue of silver gray that seemed to be a hybrid blend between Paige’s blonde l
ocks and Eva’s dark tones.

  “Hello, Riley.” It was Paige’s voice, but I knew this wasn’t Paige.

  “Eva,” I said evenly.

  I heard Klein’s heavy gulp. I was amazed the kid had made it this long without finding the nearest exit or passing out. Viho stood a few feet behind me. Eva’s gaze swept around the room before coming to rest on Adam’s still form. He said nothing when her eyes found him.

  She sprang to her feet in a catlike flip that would put a gymnast to shame. “Brother. How?”

  How? Why was that the first question she’d have for him?

  Viho tugged on my arm. I shifted up onto my heels and got to my feet as quietly as I could. I felt a keening sense of loss. Eva was transforming my love before my eyes. I had missed my opportunity to find her and convince her she had made a mistake. Now there was Eva to get through to get to her. I flexed my fists and steeled my mind. I would have to keep Adam from destroying her. If he did that, he’d kill Paige’s essence that was locked away in her body in the process. I couldn’t have that.

  “You let go of my memory so easily that I’m surprised you even recognize me. I am disappointed that you didn’t think I could be as resourceful as you. But then again, you always did underestimate me. That is why you were the favored one.”

  “I was the favored one because I didn’t murder all my siblings,” she said.

  Holy shit. I realized that I might have just stumbled into a family that was more fucked up than mine.

  “They were weak,” Adam said with a shrug. “You weren’t though.”

  “No, I was strong,” Eva said. “You were too cowardly to come after me to my face, so I see now that you constructed this whole elaborate plan to get rid of me once and for all.”

  Adam shrugged. “I’ve always said I don’t like competition. Our other siblings didn’t believe me. They paid the price.”

  “You cursed me,” Eva said. “You took away my Protector and let that dark magic drive me mad. I killed…too many to count in my grief. Angels, demons, humans, it didn’t matter. My good judgment eroded into thoughts of jealousy, pain, and revenge. Then I was tortured and banished for a thousand years.”

  “Yet here you stand,” Adam said. He shook his finger in her direction. “See, dear sister, I have never underestimated you. Not even for one second. I knew that someday, you’d find a way to come back. In fact, I’ve been counting on it. You needed some time away to gain some valuable perspective. What I did wasn’t curse you. I gave you everything you needed to have an epiphany like I did. What I gave you was a gift.”

  I wasn’t sure what in the holy hell was happening, but it was pretty obvious that things were about to go sideways for me once again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT – PAIGE

  Eva assured me that everything would be better once I relaxed and accepted her, and she was at least partly right. I was left to my own devices after that. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it wasn’t the sense of floating nothingness that seemed to overtake all of my senses save for the part of my consciousness that still carried an awareness of myself.

  I knew I wasn’t going anywhere else. There was no Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory decision point for me. In a way, I just ceased to exist to the outside world, but I wasn’t crossing over into death. It should have felt a lot scarier than it did, but after a lifetime on the run, I was ready to be in one place. I thought I might finally be able to be content.

  There was a part of me that was a bit off-kilter though. That was until I found myself in a place where a rotation of images floated in front of me. I cast myself toward them. It wasn’t unlike walking toward a sparkle in a pane of glass that catches your eye, except I no longer had feet to take me there. I saw the colorful images and realized with delight that these were my memories presenting themselves back to me.

  If I had a bucket of popcorn, I would have felt like I was at the movies. I settled into this place that I assumed was deep inside my mind and let the images slowly scroll past me. If this was my fate by being possessed by Eva, then perhaps it wasn’t so bad.

  I had no idea how long I watched the images of my childhood flash before me. All of the happy memories of my youth had been retrieved and were on a feedback loop for my enjoyment.

  That was when I saw an image of my first and only dog. I named her Ruby. She was a stray that wandered onto our porch in the first commune I was old enough to remember. Ruby was a beagle mix who had warm brown eyes that made me melt. She was super sweet and snuggled up with me in my bed every night. Ruby followed me all around the commune every day. We were inseparable.

  When we moved away from that commune, Ruby hadn’t been able to come with me. I was inconsolable for days. I recalled hearing my dad tell my mom in hushed tones that under no uncertain circumstances would we ever have a pet again. That was that. My father decided, and everyone in the household fell in line.

  That thought pulled me up short. I had been so focused on all of the happy memories of my childhood that it seemed like my mind had tripped up over the others. Another image flashed up in front of me then culled from my memory banks. I was five years old, and I sat on the porch step looking forlornly up at the night sky. I had a small bag sitting next to me. It was my old suitcase. It served me well as we moved from house to house, commune to commune and then into small towns. We were always moving.

  I remembered that night because it was the first time Mom and Dad left me alone in the house. They told me they had an errand to run, and they’d be right back. I was to be a good little girl and wait for them. I wasn’t allowed off the porch. I was supposed to stay put.

  My parents were true to their word. They came around the side of the porch a short time later. In little girl time though, it had felt as if they had been gone a lifetime. I started to run toward Mom to give her a hug, but Dad grabbed me and swept me up into his arms before I reached her.

  I had been distracted back then, but my adult eyes now caught something I didn’t remember seeing or even registering then. My mom followed a short distance behind my father. Her face and clothes were dirty as if she had been rolling in dirt and mud. Her hair was disheveled, and I could see small splatters of something red decorating the front of her blouse.

  The image started up and came to life as if it truly were a movie in my mind.

  “Daddy! Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.” Even at five years old, I was a precocious child. I repeated the phrase I had often heard from my mother’s lips.

  Dad chuckled. “We told you we had an errand to run before we could go to our new home. It’s all done now.”

  “Why’s Mommy carrying a shovel? Did you plant some new vegetables in the garden?”

  “We did have something to tend to in the garden. You are exactly right, sweetie.” My dad kissed my forehead as we moved into the house. Mom followed us a few minutes later.

  As I stared back at this scene seventeen years later, I started to think about some of the odd things that always happened before we moved on from a place. We moved a lot, and there was a pattern if one knew to look for it.

  We’d settle into our new home. My parents would join the local church. For a few months, maybe even a year, life would be normal. But always, things turned dark. I’d hear whispers around me. The stares in my direction grew longer. People would ask me strange questions, like what my name was even though they had met me before.

  Then my mom would pack our suitcases. I’d pout and say I didn’t want to go. My parents would leave to ‘run an errand’ which I always assumed meant they needed to empty the bank accounts or get gas for the car. When they returned, it was a quick jump into the car, and then we left. It was always the same.

  Only that one time, when I was five years old, did I see them immediately upon their return from their errand. If I was corporeal, I thought I would have shivered. My parents had been eliminating threats. I was sure of it. It’s what I would have done if I had been in their position.

  Another scene flipped
in front of me. It was of my room on Calamata Island where I lived for the three years after my accident in the bay. That place had been my refuge after I left the hospital and accepted the fact I might have amnesia for a lot longer than anyone anticipated. I filled the room with things that I thought I loved in my previous life. As I looked at it now, I saw so many things that conflicted with who I had been before.

  One of the most glaring was the stacks of romance novels on the bookshelves. They were my guilty pleasure. I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but I secretly wanted to be a princess in another time and place and have my Prince Charming come and save me. I realized with a start that my real life had taken a similar track even though I wasn’t a princess and didn’t live in a faraway land.

  Prince Charming arrived in my life in the form of Riley Stone. He saved me from a demon bounty hunter and took me in. He promised to help me find out who I was. Although he didn’t directly do that, it was during the fight with Bruno Proctor in the church with him that my memory came back, and I knew who, or what, I was.

  Bruno took me prisoner in Hell. Riley found a way to jump through time and space from the other side, and he pulled me out. When we took refuge in the commune with Abigail and Fernando and the other Disciples of Eva, they tried to call Eva forth to possess me. Riley stepped in and brought me back to reality before I accepted her.

  After that, it was as if our roles reversed for a while. I became a bit of a modern day kick-ass female hero. When Riley went to Hell, I brought him back to life. He became a dark angel then, but he lived. He saved me once and for all from Bruno Proctor. In the process, he finally had his revenge on the demon official who had made a game out of messing with Riley’s head, but he almost lost himself in the process. I was the one who kept him from giving in to his darkest instincts.

  That was when the shortsightedness of what I had done truly hit me. My parents hadn’t been saints. I was fairly certain they had killed more than one person to protect me. Even if Riley had a moral compass back then, he wouldn’t have known the reason behind my parents’ actions. To him, they would have looked like nothing more than common murderers who didn’t deserve any special treatment for their actions. Without the context, they were.