Blessed

by S. J. West

  “I have given you the only clues I’m allowed to. You need to discover the answers on your own. I am forbidden to interfere any further.”

  “Can you at least tell me if we’re on the right track? We think Lucifer wants to use me to get back into Heaven for some reason. Am I special because I contain Lilith’s power to enter Heaven?”

  “It is not the only reason. But, I think you have already figured that out. You need to search deeper.”

  “Please,” I begged. “You know what I need to do, just tell me!”

  “I have done everything I could to eliminate you as a threat,” Uriel said. It was a little disconcerting to hear the regret in his voice at not being able to accomplish his mission. “Trying to kill you was not pleasurable for me, but I saw no other alternative.”

  “Are you saying I have to die in order to stop what’s going to happen?”

  “Once you learn the true treachery of Lucifer’s plans, I hope you will be strong enough to choose the right path.” He paused for a few seconds before saying, “There is no sin in a martyr’s death.”

  “Are you implying I should kill myself to stop what’s going to happen?”

  “That is not for me to say,” he said cryptically.

  “Has God told you anything? Does he know what will happen?”

  “He has not shared his thoughts with me, but obviously, he has hope you will do what is right.”

  “Why has he ordered you to stop trying to kill me now? Has something changed?”

  “I have no idea why he has chosen to step in now. I can only assume you have chosen to do something which will stop Lucifer’s plans for the future.”

  “Then we shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Perhaps. But you humans are fickle creatures. You may have chosen the right path for now, but what happens if you stray from it? Are we all to be doomed because of one wrong decision?”

  “I won’t stray,” I promised him. “If He believes in me, then I have to believe in myself.”

  “I hope you are right, Lilly, for all our sakes.”

  Before I knew it, he was gone. I felt him leave before I actually noticed the shimmering of his presence was no longer in front of me.

  I was filled with a new sense of hope for the future. Maybe Brand had been right all this time. Perhaps God actually did have a plan for us.

  I quickly phased back home, desperate to see my family again.

  When I got home, I was surprised to see only Will in the living room. He was pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. As soon as he saw me the worry in his eyes disappeared and he rushed toward me, taking me in his arms and holding me tightly to him.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded, almost harshly. Though the tone in his voice was filled with worry so I knew it wasn’t intentional.

  “I’d rather wait until we’re all together so I only have to explain things once,” I told him. “Where are they? Are Tara and Malik ok?”

  “They’re at Allan’s house. Allan took Brand and Malcolm back to the forest to search for you.”

  “And Abby, Sebastian and Angela?”

  “They’re at Allan’s too, in the room he has for Angela.”

  I took Will’s hand and phased us to Allan’s home. I knew Allan might not appreciate me bringing Will along because of his prejudice against the fallen rebellion angels, but I really didn’t care. Will was part of my family, and I wasn’t about to leave him behind.

  We were standing in the foyer when we heard the shuffling of feet and the sound of hushed voices emanating from the sitting room to our right. When we stepped inside the room, I saw Tara lying on the formal couch with Malik knelt down beside her. He was only wearing a black and white plaid throw blanket tied around his waist and a thick gauze bandage taped over his left shoulder. I assumed his state of undress was because he lost his clothes when he transformed into the black panther I had seen in the forest.

  There was a tall, lanky man of about sixty with grey hair and a mustache dressed in a maroon velvet house coat standing at the foot of the couch talking to Allan.

  “I’ve stopped the bleeding but she’s lost a lot of blood,” he was saying to Allan. “She should be all right after she gets some rest. I’m afraid the bite mark will leave a nasty scar though. There isn’t much I can do for that.”

  Allan looked up as we came further into the room to stand beside Malik.

  He walked to me and gave me a hug. “I thought…” He couldn’t make himself finish the sentence.

  “I thought so to,” I replied looking down at Tara. Guilt racked my body. She looked like a corpse. Her ebony skin was ashen in color. If I hadn’t heard the man say she would be all right when I came into the room, I would have thought she was already dead.

  “Malik,” I touched his naked shoulder and felt him jump. He hadn’t even realized I was standing in the room.

  “Lilly?” His eyes slowly left Tara’s face as he looked up at me. He stood, letting go of Tara’s hand and hugged me. “I tried to protect her,” he said to me, more in an attempt to convince himself he had done all he could too keep Tara from being harmed than convince me of his efforts. “I tried...”

  I pulled away from Malik and saw the distress and guilt in his watery eyes.

  “There wasn’t anything more you could have done. If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Don’t blame yourself. You did the best you could under the circumstances.”

  Malik nodded his head like he understood what I was saying but the haunted look in his eyes told me Robert had done his best to make Malik suffer while playing his sadistic games with Tara.

  “He didn’t do anything else to her did he?” I asked, knowing Robert’s predilections ran toward the sexual spectrum.

  “No,” Malik said, seeming to understand the meaning behind my question.

  “She’ll be fine after some rest,” the stranger in the room said to me.

  “Who are you?” I asked, trying to remember if I had seen him in Allan’s house before.

  “This is Elliot,” Allan answered. “He helps us with certain things around the house.”

  “Shouldn’t we get a doctor?” I asked, not understanding why a servant had been put in charge of taking care of my best friend’s medical needs.

  “He’s a licensed doctor, among other things,” Allan explained. “You can trust him.”

  Before I knew it, Brand and Malcolm appeared behind the couch Tara laid on. Both of their faces were absent of hope until they saw I was standing in the room. Brand had me in his arms kissing me like he had completely lost all control over what he was doing, not caring that we were in a room full of people watching us.

  “Where have you been?” he asked me, pulling away from me searching my face for any damage or sign that I had been hurt.

  “I finally met the person who’s been trying to kill me,” I told him.

  I told them all what I had learned from Uriel.

  “We know the answer?” Will asked. “You’re sure he said that?”

  “Trust me. I have every word he said etched in my memory.”

  “What could we be forgetting?” Malcolm pondered. “It’s obviously something we should know about.”

  I saw Tara stir on the couch. Malik hadn’t left his position on the floor beside her and immediately sat up on his knees, hovering over her slightly as she opened her eyes.

  “Where am I?” She asked him weakly.

  “You’re safe,” he told her, caressing her cheek gently with the back of his hand unable to hold back his tears of relief.

  I went to her, kneeling beside Malik.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Tired. My neck hurts,” she cried.

  “Here,” Elliot said, handing me a glass of water and a couple of pills. “Have her take these for the pain before she goes back to sleep.”

  Without asking him to, Malik gently lifted Tara in his arms and sat back down on the couch with her in his lap to make it easier for h
er to drink the water and take the pills. Once she was done, she rested her head on his chest and quickly fell back to sleep.

  I got instructions on how to care for Tara’s pain and wound from Elliot. I also made arrangements to bring him to our home the next day to check on her.

  “I want to keep her close,” I told Brand.

  “We can make up the spare bedroom for her,” he said.

  It didn’t take us long to make sure we had everything we needed to bring Tara home with us. Malcolm took Abby and Sebastian back to his house and asked us to call him if we needed anything else.

  Will and Malik refused to leave Tara’s side even after we brought her home and had her resting in the spare bedroom. We brought in chairs for them to sit in to make their vigil more comfortable. Will quickly turned on Brand’s computer in the room determined to start his own research into Uriel’s cryptic statements.

  Brand made me change clothes and lie down on our bed with him.

  “You have to be exhausted from what you’ve been though tonight,” he argued. “You’re probably just running on adrenaline right now. Lie down for a little while and if you aren’t asleep within a few minutes, I won’t badger you anymore.”

  I cuddled up next to him and tried to relax. If only I knew what had caused God to order Uriel to cease his attempts on my life. What had changed? The warmth of Brand’s body against mine helped lull my tired mind and body. He was right, as usual. I was a lot more tired than I thought and quickly found myself drifting off to sleep.

  I was standing inside the house Malcolm built for me looking out the picture frame window at the snow capped mountain and lake in the distance from the first floor living room. My eyes fell on the table in front of me and saw the beautiful mango wood bowl we had received as a wedding gift. It was filled with large red apples because those were what I had been craving the past few months. My hands cradled the large bump at my belly as the child inside me kicked. I knew it had to be a boy. Only a man could kick so hard.

  “Give me your hands,” I told Brand as he came to stand behind me. I put his palms on top of my belly just as our son kicked again.

  “He’ll probably be a pro-kicker for the NFL one day,” Brand said kissing me on the side of the neck, making my flesh break out in involuntary goose bumps like his touch so often did.

  “Mommy!”

  We turned at the sound of our daughter’s excited voice as she ran down the stairs from the second floor of the house toward us. She was almost three years old now with a head full of chestnut colored hair like mine and beautiful grey eyes like her father. How quickly time passed when you were enjoying life. Brand bent down as she got closer and picked her up, holding her against his side.

  “Mommy, will you come play princess with me?”

  “Oh not again,” I said, pretending I wasn’t interested in playing her favorite game. “Do I have to be the evil witch again or can I be the beautiful, courageous princess this time?”

  “I’m the princess,” she said, as if not understanding how I could even conceive of asking such a question.

  “Well while you girls play princess, Daddy’s going to go make you both some supper.”

  Brand kissed our daughter on the cheek, setting her back down on the floor.

  “Ok, Daddy.”

  Brand kissed me on the cheek before leaving us and heading to the kitchen at the back of the house.

  “Can we play, Mommy, please?” Our daughter had the cutest look of pleading in her eyes. I wasn’t sure who she had learned that from, probably her Uncle Malcolm teaching her bad habits again.

  “Lilly.”

  I heard Brand call to me and turned to see him standing only a couple of feet away from us.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be cooking us some fabulous gourmet meal for supper?” I asked. “I’m eating for two you know and we’re both hungry.”

  “What is this place?” Brand asked looking around him like he’d never seen our house before.

  “What are you talking about? It’s our home in Colorado,” I replied, wondering why he was acting like he didn’t know where he was. “We’ve lived here for a while now Brand. Are you all right? Are you coming down with something?”

  “Who is that?” he asked nodding to our daughter. “And…” he stared at my protruding belly like he’d never seen a woman with child before, “are you pregnant, Lilly?”

  “Go up and change into your princess costume, sweetie,” I told our daughter, not wanting Brand’s odd behavior to frighten her unnecessarily. “Mommy and Daddy need to talk for a minute. I’ll be right up.”

  “Why’s Daddy acting so funny?” she asked.

  “Just go up to your room, please. I’ll be there in a bit.”

  Without anymore protest, she went back up the stairs.

  “You act like you’ve never seen our daughter before when you just saw her a minute ago,” I said coming to stand in front of Brand who seemed unable to move on his own. I picked up one of his hands and laid it on my belly as our son began to move again. “I swear he’s going to kick his way out one of these days,” I laughed.

  “Lilly,” Brand said taking his hand away from my stomach like what he felt was unnatural. “This isn’t real.”

  “What are you talking about?” I was getting worried about him now. “What isn’t real?”

  “My love, you’re dreaming.”

  “Dreaming?”

  “Yes, this is a dream. And somehow you’ve brought me into it. I thought I would give you a nice dream tonight after everything you just went through with Robert and Uriel, but when I fell asleep, I found myself here, in your fantasy world.”

  “But,” I could feel the sting of tears well up in my eyes, “this is real. Our daughter…”

  “Just a dream,” he said gently, seeing how distraught I was becoming.

  “No,” I said firmly, determined to make him understand. “She’s real. I can remember everything about her. I know her favorite color, what she likes to eat, her favorite games to play. My God, I know what she smells like! I remember giving birth to her and holding her in my arms for the first time. You saw her. She’s real! And this baby,” I said, touching my stomach. “He’s real! I can feel him moving, living inside me.”

  “Lilly, it’s just a dream. You need to wake up before you get more upset.”

  “No,” I said stubbornly. “I’m not leaving our children.”

  I turned away from Brand and hurriedly made my way up the stairs to our daughter’s room. I found her standing in front of a small child sized vanity dressed in one of her pink frilly princess dresses and putting on the tiara I had bought for her the previous Christmas. I stood there staring at her, marveling at how perfect she was. It was then I realized I had no idea what her name was.

  She turned to me and smiled before slowly fading away.

  I could feel things around me slowly being pulled away from me. I tried to hold on to the image of our daughter’s smiling face and will her back into existence but nothing seemed to work.

  I opened my eyes. Brand was shaking my shoulders.

  “Wake up,” he kept saying.

  I burst into tears, unable to control the sense of immense loss I felt. My chest felt empty, like the part of my heart where my children lived had been unceremoniously ripped out and thrown down a bottomless pit, forever out of my reach. Brand held me close to him trying to soothe me as I cried uncontrollably over their absence.

  “It all felt so real,” I finally said between sobs. “I had memories of her. I had memories of us in that house. How could that be?”

  “I’m not sure,” Brand cradle me to him. “I’ve never been able to make a dream like that. Not one where everything had a history and felt so real.”

  “It did feel real, didn’t?” I asked concerned that maybe I was losing my mind.

  “Yes, my love. It felt very real.”

  I sat there silently trying to etch everything I could remember from the dream into a lasting memory befor
e it had the chance to fade away like most dreams have a tendency to do over time. I didn’t want to lose the feeling of joy and contentment I had felt seeing Brand with our daughter and feeling the powerful movements of our son inside me. It was a future I desperately wanted, even if the dream had just been fabricated by some unknown longing I had buried deep inside my subconscious.

  The future was uncertain and free flowing. That was what Uriel had been trying to tell me. I knew the future for everyone I cared about would hinge on the decisions I made from this moment on. Maybe my dream was a sign, showing me a possible future for Brand and I. I held onto that thought, desperately clinging to the hope it gave me. I let myself be comforted in Brand’s arms as he softly sang me a lullaby in a language I didn’t understand. Exhaustion from crying finally made me drift off to sleep. I hoped to meet my daughter again someday, even if it were only in a dream.