The Rift

by Skn Hammerstone

  There was something, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as what Joshua had caused. Had I not just experienced this “angelic trance” the night before I would have thought it to be stronger than it was. He pulled away slightly, resting his forehead against mine.

  “You’re a liar,” I told him. “That was amazing.” Please. I was terrible at this. He should have been able to see right through this but the trance worked both ways and he was far more affected than me.

  I could tell he was smiling. He was happy and now probably even more attached to me but I was growing more and more miserable the longer I was in this whole mess. I hoped my rule didn’t last long because the sooner I was gone, the better.

  65

  “The most important thing that you need to learn is how to use your power. Without it you are useless in a fight of any kind,” Gabriel told me.

  “Isn’t it just supposed to come to me like in the movies? I’m just suddenly able to use it?” It was sarcasm but he didn’t get it.

  “No. Why would it do that?” yeah. Why would it do that?

  “When we are trying to hide someone in the real world, we lock their power in a place they can’t use it and no one can detect it but it is still inside of you,” he explained.

  “How is it unlocked?” I asked.

  “You must find it inside of yourself and force it out of your body,” he said.

  “And where is it?” I asked.

  “Only the angel who locked it knows,” he said.

  “Who was that angel?” I asked. He gave a disgusted look as he answered.

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Where is she?”

  “No one knows,” he responded. “She shows up and goes away as she pleases. She never comes around unless there is something in it for her.”

  “She has black hair and she wears dark clothes,” I stated.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen her. I talked to her yesterday in the hotel in Venice and in the asylum in New York.”

  “What did she want?” Gabriel questioned. Obviously this was an important development in their plan.

  “She wants to serve me as my angel of death when I become queen,” I told him.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. She would never serve anyone, especially not someone who is connected to Joshua,” he began to pace back and forth.

  “I didn’t say it made sense. It was just what she said.”

  “Did she give you anything? A knife of some kind?” he wanted to know. I may be their puppet in some areas; who I could be with, what I could be, what I was going to do, but they weren’t going to take everything from me.

  “No.”

  “Until she comes, we can’t do anything to teach you how to use your power and she isn’t going to come when anyone else is here. We need to put you by yourself and if she comes to you…”

  “You don’t need to lay out some elaborate trap like you would to catch an animal,” Elizabeth appeared just like she always did; out of nowhere.

  “Well look who decided to show up,” Gabriel had always struck me in all of the stories I had heard as this gentle, sweet, angel. He wasn’t coming off that way right now.

  “Don’t act surprised. There is a war going on. I’m running out of places to hide,” she informed him.

  “Well would you like to do your job and release the power of the humans’ future queen?” he questioned.

  “Oh, that’s my job now? I thought it was a backup angel of death,” she walked towards Gabriel, a slight smile on her face. “After all, when the war is at a truce and you give Joshua to Job as Michael promised, you’ll need an angel of death and you can’t make Rachael the angel of death and the queen of Earth.”

  “That’s actually Lady Rachael to you and we can do whatever we want,” he stated.

  “It’s so adorable that you think you actually have a choice in what happens,” she stopped in front of him. “We all know that Raphael calls the shots. He uses that prophet’s paintings to warp the future in a way that suits his needs.”

  “That isn’t true,” she was angering him now.

  “Oh but it is and you know it,” she turned sharply and began to walk away from him. “I’ll release Rachael’s powers but I must warn you, with it will come all of the things she has yet to remember. Her entire life, right from birth, will come flooding back to her instead of those few short memories and feelings the demons accidentally gave her with their ECT treatment in that asylum.”

  “She doesn’t even understand this overwhelming love she has for that soldier, Josh. She barely remembers him yet she can’t let anyone else in her life because she can’t let him go. She doesn’t know all of the terrible things that human you left her with did to her. She doesn’t know what her brother went through to keep her alive.”

  “Essentially this incredible stream of power could potentially kill her. Not permanently of course. No one is dying these days. Someone must have left the door open.”

  “You are not amusing,” Gabriel told her. She turned around to face him again.

  “In your mind maybe,” she decided. “Should we begin then?”

  “Her guardian angel must be present,” he said.

  “That child? We wouldn’t want him to be scarred for life, would we?”

  “It’s the rules,” he snapped.

  “And the rules must be followed in this time where there are no rules on Earth or in Heaven. My bad, I should have known that,” she mocked him.

  “Mathew!” the young angel that had been gathering several bows and arrows turned quickly.

  “Yes, my lord?” he asked.

  “Bring Jesse to me.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Mathew left the room.

  “Did she tell you about the angelic trance?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Who?” he questioned.

  “The big bad angel of death is under her spell along with her teeny tiny guardian angel,” she answered.

  “Is this true?” Gabriel turned to me.

  “I didn’t know about it. No one told me until after it happened,” I protected myself.

  “It wore off for you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It didn’t wear off for them,” Elizabeth laughed to herself.

  “Would you be quiet?” he demanded.

  “I found it amusing. Two angels forever trapped in their inability to love another. Wasn’t it meant for just one angel to be faithful to another angel for eternity?”

  “It has been… misused before,” he said carefully.

  “You had better not be talking about me,” she said.

  “You have trapped quite a few angels under your own spell,” he stated.

  “Just a few,” she spoke with fake innocence. “I just couldn’t help myself.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You wanted to see me, Lord Gabriel?” Jesse walked into the room.

  “This is Elizabeth. You don’t have to refer to her by a title,” he explained. “She will be unlocking Rachael’s power which means you must be present.”

  “Alright,” Jesse agreed. “Is there anything I need to do?”

  “Hold her down,” Elizabeth said.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Gabriel said. “Just stay where you are and make sure she doesn’t kill her.” Jesse swallowed nervously.

  “I’m not going to kill her,” Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

  “Begin,” Gabriel backed up and stood at the edge of the room with Jesse. Elizabeth walked towards me.

  “Now, this is going to hurt, but you have to let it run its course or you will most likely die and that would put you in the entrance to the rift and it would take us a very long time to get you out. So, prepare for intense pain and enjoy the flow of forgotten and lost memories.” Elizabeth gripped my throat like she was about to strangle me and looked in my eyes.

  At first there was nothing and then a black cloud covered her eyes.

  “Unlock the memories left behind, change the future; p
ast and time.” Her voice began to echo in my mind. “Break down the wall that hides the truth. Unleash the monster that hides in her youth.” That last part did not sound like a good thing, but it was too late. A surge of pure power tore its way through my body and with it came the agony.

  It began in the back of my mind but it swiftly spread to encompass my entire brain. She had let go of me but I didn’t even notice. The pain was too great as a huge rush of memories flashed into my head.

  66

  Rachael screamed and ripped herself away from Elizabeth, who moved back from the explosion she had set off. It was truly terrible to watch as she fell to her knees, moaning in agony. A red light became visible under her skin, following the path of her blood.

  “You left me. You didn’t care,” she began to mutter under her breath as her mind forced interaction with her memories. “Everything you have taught me has been for nothing. I don’t want this! I never did!”

  Jesse started to move towards her but Gabriel stopped him.

  “You can’t interfere! It could ruin the process,” Jesse stopped but it was killing him inside.

  “You can’t fight it Rachael,” Elizabeth told her.

  “I’m not fighting it,” she denied. “I won’t do it. I won’t kill him. You can’t make me.”

  “You are fighting it. You have to let it keep going.”

  “It hurts! It hurts so bad!” she insisted.

  “It won’t stop until you let it keep going!” Rachael searched the room in her agony.

  “Jesse! Please make it stop! She’s hurting me! Help me!”

  “I can’t do this,” Jesse turned to Gabriel. “I need to leave.”

  “You can’t. You must stay,” he refused to let him go. Rachael screamed again as the red light intensified. She lifted her entire body off of the ground, floating several inches above the floor.

  “Jesse!” she screamed again.

  “We can’t just let her suffer!” Jesse insisted.

  “There is nothing we can do,” Gabriel told him.

  “Isn’t there any way to speed it up?” Jesse asked.

  “Not without killing her,” Elizabeth answered.

  “Couldn’t you unlock her power without unlocking all of the memories?”

  “Not likely,” she said. “It’s difficult enough to have just the memories and the power instead of memory, power, and wings. I’m doing the best I can by taking out the scarring and agonizing experience of having wings sprouting out of her back.”

  Rachael fell back onto the ground, writhing in pure anguish. “You have to make it look real. You have to kill me.”

  “What memory is that?” Gabriel looked slightly disturbed.

  “You think I know all of her memories? I have no idea,” Elizabeth answered.

  Rachael gave one last agonized cry as an explosion of red energy shook the room before she lay still.

  “Is it over?” Gabriel asked.

  “It should be,” Elizabeth told him. Jesse ran across the room to Rachael as she began to sit up.

  “Are you alright?” he questioned, helping her get up.

  “I’m fine,” she stated.

  “Do you remember?” Elizabeth asked, a strange look on her face.

  “Yes,” Rachael responded, the same look on her own face.

  “Do you remember all of it?”

  “Every last memory,” she smiled in a way that was highly discomforting.

  “I believe my work is done here,” Elizabeth dissolved into the air.

  “How do you feel?” Gabriel asked as Rachael stood.

  “The way I was supposed to be,” she answered before she walked out of the room, ignoring Jesse and pushing past Gabriel.

  “That is not the way she is supposed to be,” Jesse decided. “Something’s wrong.”

  “It’s too late to fix it now. All we can do is pray to God that she still takes the right path,” Gabriel bowed his head.

  67

  “What do you mean you restored all of her memories?” Raphael kept his even tone, still facing the same window, his back to the people in the room.

  “Elizabeth was the one who had to unlock Rachael’s power,” Jesse told him. “We didn’t know she was going to give her back every single memory.”

  “So she now knows everything about her entire history from the second she was born?”

  “All of it,” Gabriel answered.

  “Alexander,” Raphael stated.

  “Yes, my lord,” the blind prophet also stood in the room with Jesse and Gabriel.

  “What does this mean?”

  “I haven’t seen this event lord Raphael. It could take her in any of the paths she has before her,” Alexander said.

  “You have been doing this long enough to know which one it is going to push her towards. So tell me. Which path is she headed towards?” he wasn’t going to take Alexander’s vague answers.

  “Not a good one. It is too much knowledge. She may know too much already,” he admitted.

  “Can she be directed back on the right path?”

  “Forgive me, my lord, but you are forcing me to do something that is both wrong and highly impossible. I have done my very best to do what you say but you are requesting things of her that are putting her in the wrong direction and then expecting me to fix it. I am just a prophet. I can’t change the future.”

  “Having her reverse her decision with Joshua pointed her in a very bad direction. Her going back to Jesse after following your orders once again is not helping her cause either. You know that she was supposed to fall in love with him on her own at a much later date but you couldn’t wait for that to happen.”

  “And now you want me to direct her back onto the right path again after she was misguided by your orders to return her power. I cannot do everything you are asking of me. It is impossible and I do not think it was what God intended us to do when he gave the gift of prophecy.”

  “You follow my orders, Alexander,” Raphael stated. “You follow them without question even if it means you will die. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Alexander sighed. “I will do my very best to keep her on the path.”

  “Good. Now go do it,” Raphael ordered. Alexander turned and left the room.

  “Gabriel,” he chose his next target.

  “Lord Raphael,” Gabriel responded.

  “You will not be continuing as planned. She knows enough to survive this war. The frontline is almost at our front door. They will be here by nightfall. I need you to get everyone ready to fight. Get them armed and in posts. This is the final battle in the war. It ends here.”

  Gabriel turned as well and left the room.

  “And now we are left with you,” Raphael shifted slightly.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “You love Rachael, yes?”

  “Yes,” Jesse answered without hesitation.

  “And you loved her before the angelic trance?” Raphael wanted to make sure.

  “Yes.”

  “What would you do for her?”

  “I would do anything for her,” he was being completely honest.

  “Even if it was called upon you to die for her?” he questioned.

  “I would burn in Hell for an eternity for her,” Jesse had no reservations when it came to Rachael.

  “Then I have a very special job for you.”

  68

  The training facility was eerily quiet and the young angels and half-breeds prepared for the battle that would be their first, and for many, their last. Swords, bows, and spears were given out at random in the hopes that as the final angel force they would be able to turn the tide of the war before it was too late.

  Fear showed in every face and anxiety in the trembling of every hand. War is not a pretty thing and it is not a good thing. It is a thing that destroys and ruins life, love, and light. War takes more lives than it saves. War would take the lives of most of these innocent apprentices and they all knew it.

 
; Several young angel women strapped silver and dark purple armor on Jesse. He was one of the most important people in the facility as the last line of defense between evil and Rachael. They tightly wove the laces on his arms and legs, tying them in place.

  A breastplate only a few millimeters thick was put on and perfectly formed to his body. One of the women took out a long sheath that protected a narrow sword and carried it carefully over to another woman who strapped it around Jesse’s waist.

  They tightened the leather collar protecting his neck and throat and adjusted the leather on his shoulders. Jesse’s face was abnormally pale in an anxious way that was more severe than the rest of the angels. Something about what Raphael had asked of him was above and beyond his call of duty.

  In another room three more women were preparing Rachael. Her armor was very similar to Jesse’s except it was gold and dark purple instead of silver and the same purple color. Unlike the rest of the angels at the facility, she was not anxious at all. She looked like she relished the opportunity to be in a battle.

  It wasn’t a heroic look either. It was pure and utter blood lust. The women fitting her armor were terrified of her as they laced the wrist and leg guards and adjusted her leather throat guard.

  “What weapon would you like?” one of the women quietly asked.

  “Bring me the knife in the bottom drawer of the dresser in my room,” Rachael told her.

  “Yes, my Lady,” the woman left the room. Another woman wrapped a belt around Rachael’s hips and secured it with a sheath containing an eighteen inch hunting knife. The third woman strapped a bow and quiver to her back as the first woman came back in with the knife she had requested.

  “Your knife, Lady Rachael,” the woman attached the gold sheath to her belt.

  “How far away are they?” Rachael asked.

  “They have reached the edge of Italy and they are preparing to cross over the water to Sicily,” one of the women answered.

  “Good,” Rachael rested her hand on the hunting knife as the last tie on her breastplate was secured.