He thought he heard sadness in her voice.
“Where is he, anyway?”
Suspicion surged through Jake’s veins. Why didn’t Sheryl know about Laurel? As soon as the thought formed, he constructed a mental image of a brick wall, a trick he had seen in an old science fiction movie dealing with telepaths.
Standing before him, Sheryl looked into his eyes. “Relax. I won’t invade your privacy. I watched you deal with Prince Malachai and Katrina. I couldn’t help myself; I care about you too much. They’re both in the Dark Realm now, suffering along with Old Nick and the Cipher.”
He took a deep breath. “If I remember correctly, you ‘agents of Light’ aren’t supposed to divulge classified information like that.”
“We’re not even supposed to communicate with humans or make our presence known to them. But you’re a special case. You prevented the Dark from swallowing the Light. And you saved my soul.” She caressed one side of his face. “Thank you.”
Jake felt emotion flooding through him. Sheryl felt real: warm and vibrant, just as she always had. Setting one hand over hers, he threw his other arm around her and felt her hands on his back. He buried his face in her hair and recognized the familiar coconut scent of her shampoo. He fought tears. “God, I’ve missed you.”
Sheryl rested her head against his chest. “I know you have. But it’s different for me. I can observe you whenever I want, and the Light offers me so much more than I ever had here. It’s the same for everyone who ascends.”
He felt her heart beating against his chest. Gazing down at her, he set one hand under her chin and raised her head. Her lips were full and inviting.
She looked him in one eye, then the other. “Your poor eye . . .”
Unable to control himself any longer, he kissed her on the mouth and tasted her tongue. She did not resist, but he felt an odd sense of detachment on her part.
Then she drew away from him. “This isn’t possible. I’m here to talk. We can share this moment, but that’s all. No physical contact, sexual or otherwise. It wouldn’t be real, anyway.”
He did not want to accept that. “I love you.”
“And I love you. I always will. But I’m not human anymore. I’m just particles in a vast field of energy. You and I can never be what we once were, because I can never be what I was.” Sheryl gestured at her body. “This is an illusion for your benefit.”
“I figured, when I saw your hair was long again, the way I always liked it. Abel said I’d never see you again unless I ascended to the Realm of Light.”
She cocked her head, the way she always did when explaining something to him with the patience of a grade school teacher. “He told the truth. I was never meant to materialize before you.”
“Against company policy, huh?”
She smiled. “Something like that.”
“You sound like Abel.”
“In a sense, we’re all of one mind in the Realm of Light.”
“Sounds like a commune.”
Sheryl continued to smile. “We don’t choose what we become when we ascend; we just become. The choices are made here on earth. Those decisions determine which plane we reach.”
“I’m glad you achieved heaven.”
She raised one eyebrow, as if puzzled by the term. “You can ascend to the Light too, Jake. I know you can. You’re a good man.”
“I’m trying. I want to get there, to be with you.”
Her face and voice turned serious. “You need to want to ascend for yourself, not to be with me. It’s all about your personal being. You can’t have selfish motivations.”
“I can’t help it. I love you, and knowing that you’re still alive in some higher dimension makes me want to do anything I can to be there with you. It’s hard, though. I keep getting monkey wrenches thrown at me. Like Katrina.”
“Edgar killed Katrina, not you. You tried to save her. Killing in self-defense, or to save someone else, will not prevent your ascension. But you have to live your life to its fullest.”
He felt his eyebrows knitting together. “My life is hollow without you.”
Sheryl shook her head. “That isn’t true. Like I said, you’re a good man. You always were. You just allowed yourself to get sidetracked from who you are. You’re on the right path now, trying to help those you can.”
You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, Jake thought. The only one I ever can love.
Her face took on a shade of sympathy. “That isn’t true. You’ll find love again. I appreciate your devotion to your memory of me, but please understand that it stems just as much from loss and misplaced guilt as anything else. You want me because deep inside, you know you can no longer have me, and you blame yourself for the Cipher killing me.”
“It was my fault. I should never have gone home that day . . .”
“Marc Gorman would have killed me anyway. Kira Thorn ordered him to steal my soul, and that’s what he would have done.” She shuddered, a distinctly human reaction, as if remembering her murder.
“If I hadn’t screwed everything up . . .”
Sheryl moved close to him again, a smile on her lips despite the glistening in her eyes. “No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. That’s what human life is: making a series of decisions that impact your life and the lives of those around you. But you can’t blame yourself for my murder. Do you understand?”
“If I hadn’t messed up with the coke, I never would have been forced to resign from the department, and then I never would have hooked up with Tower and Kira.”
“You don’t know that. You still might have walked into that bar and killed those two robbers.”
Dread and Baldy: Kevin Creed and Oscar Soot. The lowlifes had returned as minions of the demon Cain, who had tortured Jake. “I doubt it.”
“It doesn’t matter. You made a mess of your life, but you atoned for it. You freed me and the other captured souls and saved the Realm of Light from being destroyed by our enemies. That couldn’t have happened if you hadn’t wound up working in the Tower. My energy still exists, just like it always did. But if things had been different, we’d all exist in a very different reality right now, one impossible for you to imagine. You saved me, Jake. You saved the world. You saved everything. My death was inconsequential in the long run. You have to stop blaming yourself and get on with your life.”
“I don’t want to get on with it. I want to be with you.”
“You’re as stubborn as ever. Hopefully, one day you’ll ascend and we’ll be reunited, but in a different manner than you expect.”
“Different how?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Will the home office dock your bonus?”
“Don’t be angry. It accomplishes nothing.”
“That isn’t true; it makes me feel better.”
“No, it doesn’t. You only fool yourself into believing it does.”
“Did you come back just to lecture me?”
Closing her eyes, Sheryl shook her head again.
“Then why are you here?”
She opened her eyes and locked them on his. “I need your help.”
Jake did a double take. “You need my help?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You’re an angel. How the hell can I help you?”
“You know that ‘angel’ is a primitive term for what I’ve become. That’s like me calling you a monkey or a fish.”
“Forgive my inadequate linguistic skills. Compared to you, I am a primate. So I’m having a difficult time grasping how I could possibly help you. I don’t play a harp, and I don’t walk on clouds.”
“No, you don’t. And that’s exactly why we need you.”
“We?” he said, knowing exactly what she meant.
“The Realm of Light.”
“I think my brain just flinched. Can we sit down?”
“Please.”
Jake sat on the sofa and Sheryl joined him. The furniture had come from their old apartment in the Upp
er East Side. He never thought they would share it again.
Sheryl turned her body so it faced him as much as possible, her exposed knees close to him.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s have it.”
“There are powerful forces in the universe beyond your ability to comprehend.”
“You said that before, and you can say it again.”
“Most of them we know about. But there are mysteries even for us. Only God knows everything.”
Jake grunted. “Abel never actually told me that God exists.”
“I believed in God when I walked this earth. Why wouldn’t I believe in Him now that I live in the Light? Surely you’re not still an atheist after everything you’ve experienced?”
“No. Not an atheist. How could I be? I’ve seen Abel. Cain. You. I accept this world is just a stepping stone to more evolved dimensions. But I still don’t buy the dogma. No man knows what God expects from us, if God expects anything from us, if God exists.”
“You’ll understand everything better when you evolve to your next form, whichever Realm that’s in.”
Jake blew air from his cheeks. “I know so much already that sometimes I feel like my head will explode. Knowledge may be good, but it can also be frustrating.”
“You carry a burden you can’t share; it’s true. But you also have reassurance that no one else on this planet truly has: that in the grand scheme of things, there’s more than this.” Sheryl gestured at the office. “Your brain will be fine.”
He tried to read her eyes. Once easy, he now found it impossible. “What can I do for you? I have a plane to catch, and I haven’t even packed.”
“I know how you pack. That will only take you two minutes.”
She knew him so well. He didn’t smile.
“You understand that life begins here and evolves to the higher planes. If life on earth ceases, then no new energy ascends to the realms. The Dark Realm and the Realm of Light will reach their final densities and will be locked in an eternal status quo.”
“So what? I mean, bad for the planet, but if everyone gets where they’re going anyway, no harm, no foul, right? It’s just a roll of the dice whether the demons or angels hold the majority.”
“If the Dark Realm obtains more energy than the Realm of Light, the amount of suffering that will result will be immeasurable. Since the dawn of time, the agents of Light have kept this from happening, sometimes with ease, sometimes with great difficulty. When the Cipher captured my soul for Tower, the balance was perilously close.”
“I know: thirteen souls made all the difference.”
“You made the difference. That’s why we need you now. There’s a reason why that soul count was so critical.”
“Those powerful forces you mentioned.”
“Both the Light and the Dark have a vested interest in what happens to humanity, and we’re natural observers. But there are places on this world even we cannot see. Blind spots: areas that have developed with increasing frequency, which we can’t even enter to investigate.”
“Like the Tower, shielded by the security spell that Kira cast.”
“Exactly. Some of these blind spots have been created by human beings who have tapped into greater cosmic resources. We saw these situations developing but were powerless to intervene. Others are completely beyond our comprehension.”
“Is it possible the Dark Realm is establishing beachheads here?”
“We would sense if that was the case. Positive and negative energy detect each other. These blind spots are simply blank to us.”
“So there’s a new player in town?”
“We think so. It’s powerful and hungry. For almost three centuries, it’s been devouring souls in their human form. Those souls have not ascended. They’ve simply ceased to exist.”
“How many souls?”
Sheryl’s expression turned grave. “Over half a million.”
Jake blinked. “Holy shit.”
“Some of them should have reached the Dark Realm, but most were bound for the Realm of Light. That’s why my soul and the others you freed from Tower’s Soul Chamber were so crucial in holding the Dark forces at bay. Mathematically, souls are now vanishing at a rate of at least six per day.”
“Can’t you protect them?”
“No. We can’t directly intervene, even to save ourselves. And it’s impossible for us to know which souls are at risk. They simply vanish from our radar.”
“There must be patterns—”
“The souls that disappear do so in pairs.”
Jake divided six by two. “Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“So it would seem.”
“And you believe they’re disappearing into these blind spots?”
“It’s the only explanation for why we’re powerless to detect what’s happening. We call this new enemy the Destroyer of Souls.”
“How many blind spots are there?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Then how do you expect me to help you?”
“Ask me the right questions.”
Jake rose. “Look, I’m no idiot. Abel sent you here because he knew he could play on my emotions that way and I could never say no to you. But I really don’t have time to play games. If you want me to go find this Destroyer of Souls, then you’d damn well better point me in the right direction. I won’t jump through hoops blindfolded, you understand? I won’t be a pawn for heaven, hell, or even you.”
Sheryl rose as well. “Abel didn’t send me. It was my decision to come here. Abel is partly the reason why I’m here.”
“Oh?”
“He’s missing.”
Jake narrowed his eye. “How is that possible? He’s one of you.”
“He made it his mission to find the Destroyer and stop it. It’s been a goal of his since the first soul disappeared. During the last year and a half, since we almost lost the war with the Dark Realm, it’s become an obsession with him. He finally got close to the answers he sought when he disappeared. We can’t detect him any more than we can the souls the Destroyer’s already consumed.”
Jake searched her eyes for sincerity. He thought he saw it, but as Sheryl had already pointed out, she had created her present form for his behalf. “Are you telling me Abel is dead?”
“Abel hasn’t been alive for centuries. He’s energy, just like me. And that energy has vanished. Abel was the first being to ascend to the Realm of Light. We don’t have leaders, but Abel was the oldest and wisest of us. His absence has left a huge void in our dimension. If his energy has somehow been destroyed, that poses a far greater threat than we ever imagined. I’m not talking about souls that will never ascend. I’m talking about something destroying the earth, the Realm of Light, and the Dark Realm—everything that we know exists.”
Jake sank back into the sofa. “You want me to find Abel and slay this soul-eating dragon, is that it?”
“Find Abel. We’ll do the rest.”
He looked at her. “And if my soul disappears?”
“You carry some of my energy inside you, remember? I gave you a part of myself. I’ll know where you are and when you need me.”
He felt resignation settling over his body. “That won’t really help me if I disappear into one of these blind spots, will it?”
Sheryl offered a weak smile. “Maybe not.”
“I don’t suppose Abel kept any sort of files I can see?”
She shook her head. “I can’t share specific information with you, anyway.”
Jake pounded the arm of the sofa. “Damn it! You’ve got to give me something to go on.”
Sheryl slid her hand over Jake’s left wrist. “You have to understand. There are laws of physics that govern the higher realms. It’s against my nature to break those laws. If I do, my energy will change. I could wind up in the Dark Realm, never to return. I’m willing to make that sacrifice to stop this Destroyer. I really am. But I don’t think it’s necessary. I have faith in you, Jake. Have faith in yours
elf.”
“I don’t even know where to start looking—”
In the blink of his eye, Sheryl disappeared.
Jake leapt off the sofa and spun around the office. “Sheryl?”
Gone.
Again.
First the tears came, and then he closed his hands into fists.
CHAPTER
8
Jake tossed a light load of clothing into a duffel bag, just enough for one change, and packed a laptop. He had planned to drive to JFK since he only intended to park the car overnight at most, but Sheryl’s visit had left him too shaken to drive, so he took a cab.
During the car ride, the wait in the airport, and the flight, he grappled with the extreme emotions that had surfaced within him. He had seen Sheryl, touched her, kissed her even. She had reentered his life, something he had considered impossible seventeen months earlier, and his refusal to enter into a new relationship felt justified. But she had made it clear to him that reviving their relationship was impossible, at least according to the angels’ handbook.
Crushed against the airplane window, a heavyset couple beside him, Jake switched on the mini-TV recessed into the seat before him and inserted his earphones. At the same time, he opened the stapled research he had printed out on Lily Dale. He jumped from a game show to a talk show to a nature documentary before locating a cable news channel. He disliked the station, but it was the only news he could find, a situation he had experienced before, everywhere from doctors’ offices to pizzerias. Mindless partisan propaganda, but at least they dished up what little actual news they delivered in bite-sized bits that didn’t require much concentration. As a newswoman with hair as plastic as her smile did everything in her power to make a political candidate favored by the network appear charismatic, Jake drummed his fingers on the arm of his seat.
How the hell did Sheryl expect him to find Abel with zero concrete leads to follow? It was impossible. The heavenly confidentiality clause frustrated the hell out of him. Six people would die every day that this Destroyer Sheryl mentioned continued devouring souls unchecked. By his calculation, 42 people disappeared a week, which amounted to 168 a month, 2,016 a year, 20,160 a decade, and 201,600 a century.
Cosmic Forces: Book Three in The Jake Helman Files Series Page 8