How is he? I asked silently.
Better. We have work to do though.
Out loud, he said, “Hey Sean, when do you want us to resurrect your memories?”
“I’m not sure I want to. What if they’re fading because I’m not supposed to remember them?”
“That’s crap and you know it,” I said. “You know better than that. If you’re going crazy trying to remember, then you need to remember. Don’t be a wuss. We’ll figure it out and between the three of us, we’ll fix it. There’s no other option.”
Killian agreed, “I hate to admit it, but she’s right about this. Repressed memories are dangerous. You need to know what’s happening and deal with it.”
Sean turned and slowly sat at the island. After a few minutes of silence, he said, “Okay, let’s do it. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Well, we might as well get comfortable then,” I said on the way to the living room.
Once we’d sat down and gotten comfortable, I nibbled on my lip, considering our options. I thought I could enter his mind and pull up the distant memories like scattered postcards. In my imagination, they would be scattered around the peripheral edges of his larger memory. Between Killian and I, we ought to be able to bring them to the front so Sean could make sense of them. It didn’t seem to be too complicated and Killian agreed when I shared my plan.
He nodded and said, “I only have one major concern. Sean, you have to pay attention and help us. Don’t fight us or it might not work. Let the memories flow even if they suck. We’re all big people here; we’ll deal with whatever happened. Also, Dec isn’t here to anchor us. I don’t think I need to tell you how bad it would be for Mica to get trapped inside your head.”
We all laughed at the idea, but I cringed inside. Yeah, that would not be a good outcome.
Sean said, “How about if I try to anchor her? It might help.” He linked his fingers through mine.
Moving closer to me, Killian wrapped his hand around my free one. He plucked the locket from under my shirt so it lay gleaming in the morning light. Taking a deep breath, I settled my mind and looked into Sean’s face. Sean met my eyes and opened his mind to me. His irises were darker than usual but still formed of shades of blue and pieced together in layers of color. I ignored the puzzle pieces and went deeper into his head. Within seconds, I was totally absorbed in his memories.
At first the images slid past like a vacation slideshow--A reverse vacation slideshow. One right after the next, memories slid from one side to the other. I saw the images from today first. Then yesterday’s appalling bar fight; then the assassination of Lyle Holliday. Slowly I moved back in time, carefully sifting through his memories, unwilling to hurt him by rushing. I imagined this must feel odd to him, like having surgery with local anesthetic. You couldn’t feel the actual pain, but the pressure was there…unpleasant, but not unbearable.
Stoic as usual, Sean sat still and simply squeezed my hand harder whenever a particular bad memory drifted by. Suddenly I hit an invisible wall. There were images behind it, but I couldn’t see them. The clear wall reflected the pale light like a sheet of glass.
“Sean? Can you see this?” I murmured to him.
“It’s blurry to me. What is it?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to keep moving backwards.”
As I peered more closely, I realized the image was of him coming to me in the forest the day we called him home. It was a blur of green trees and fuzzy impressions. His brain hadn’t been fully functioning and couldn’t capture the images like it normally would have. I needed to go deeper to see the whole picture from the beginning. I moved further into the images and they got darker and less clear as I moved along. I didn’t bother to look at them until I reached a solid black wall.
This couldn’t be good.
Reaching around it, I saw Sean at the moment of the explosion in Vermont. His face contorted in agony as the two blasts pulled him into two directions. Sean’s fingers squeezed mine until my knuckles ground together and I winced.
Killian whispered, “Keep going. I’ve got Sean.” The pressure on my fingers eased and Sean released the breath he’d been holding.
Are you seeing this? I asked Killian.
Yes, I’m with you, but you don’t need my help this time. Use your powers to see behind the darkness.
The black wall had to go, so I directed some of my saol to my palm and lifted the soft light in front of me. The wall shimmered in the glow and disappeared. Sean’s breath hitched and his heart sped up. My own heart went off like a jackhammer and I clung to the terrifying vision exploding into chaos around me. In one agonizing heartbeat, Sean’s body exploded like a star into billions of particles of light that expanded in every direction. The screaming of a million souls echoed around us, soaking into my pores and turning my blood to ice.
What had once been Sean was now dust.
Oh, God! I did that to him! It was my fault!
Easy, Princess. It’s over, remember? Breathe and move forward.
Gulping a great lungful of air, I struggled to keep my heart from racing and losing the vision. Poor Sean! What he’d gone through was enough to destroy anyone. It was a miracle we ever got him back. I was still panting with emotion when Killian rubbed his fingers over my rune. An immediate sense of calm floated over me.
Focus, babe. Panic later. Sean’s struggling here.
I held my breath and moved to the next memory. Now they moved in forward motion…weird. What happened? The black wall must be a starting point of some kind. I shook my head mentally and shoved that aside. I didn’t care how the mind worked, as long as it did. The next memories were ethereal, light. The images were blurry and vague. It seemed as though he existed without form or conscious thought for a long time. It was him but there wasn’t any real memory to see. It was more like a set of impressions; colors and sensations, sounds. He floated in this limbo until gradually his mind began to wake up. Very slowly, he began to call to the pieces that floated and they came to him. The essential part of him refused to give up…refused to die.
His only focus was on surviving.
To that end, he pulled himself together until his core was recognizable. His mind was still shaky at this point and he had no previous memories.
Sean squeezed my hand and stopped me. He said, “Wait. I need a minute.” His whole body trembled beside me while I held the vision in my mind. After a minute, he told me to keep going.
I moved forward and came to another glass wall. The memory behind it was clear, but it was like looking through a window. Odd. This was how Sean would see these memories. Why did he separate himself from them? I started to move when I felt Sean’s consciousness interfere. He was taking control and I wasn’t able to stop him.
“I’ve got it. Let me do this,” he whispered next to me.
Instead of fighting with him, I slipped out of the way and let him unfold the reclusive images. Once I’d unlocked them, they came pouring back to him. As Killian and I watched, they played out like a movie in his mind.
Sean’s eyes opened to find a woman leaning over him. She was wrapped in a dark cloak with a hood covering most of her head. Her eyes were wary as she hesitated next to him. He blinked up at her and her face swirled in a lazy circle. Nausea churned in his stomach and he turned over and retched in the grass. When he leaned back again, she was still there.
“Where am I?”
Her blue eyes were huge as she stared at him. Without answering, she turned away.
“Wait!” he croaked.
She stopped and turned back around to study him with careful eyes. Her expression was hard to read. She didn’t say a word. She just stared at him as if he’d suddenly grown another head. He pushed himself into a sitting position and rubbed at his eyes. He was sitting at the edge of a stream. The sunlight sparkled off of the gurgling water and tiny rainbows of color dotted the air above it. Pretty...Cognition was slowly creeping back. His brain tried to turn over and work, but it stuttered
like a clogged carburetor. True, he wasn’t firing on all cylinders...
Realizing he was thirsty, he got to his feet and lurched and stumbled to the creek. Legs weren’t working all that well either.
After filling his stomach, he splashed his face and shaking hands then sat down before he fell down. His head felt oddly light and he was dizzy. The brilliant colors hurt his eyes and he had to squint to see. The land was green around him with the exception of the crystalline water. To his right, the land rolled gently towards a small hill. The grass was long and waved gently in the slight breeze. To his left, an overgrown forest loomed dark and foreboding in the fading light.
Where the hell was he?
Who the hell was he?
His mind was blank.
Seeming to come to a decision, the woman hovered beside him and said, “It’ll be dark soon. You should come with me.” Without waiting for him to agree, she walked away.
He stared after her, unable to fathom what she wanted him to do. He’d heard her words, but they didn’t make sense to him.
“What is the matter with you? Come with me or you’ll be stuck here all night!” She’d come back and grabbed his hand.
A few minutes later, they entered a small cabin. She pointed to a thick grass mat and told him he could sleep on it near the fire. She lifted a sturdy length of wood and said, “Try to touch me and I’ll take your head off. Do you understand?”
Sean blinked and sat down. He had no idea what she was talking about. Touch her? He was exhausted and his head ached. Instead of talking to her, he lay down on the mat and slept for several days. When he finally awoke his brain felt clearer. His headache was almost gone and he understood the woman when she spoke to him again.
She was in the middle of making some kind of food over the fire when she realized he was awake. Her back went ramrod straight even as she gauged his strength, his size.
She was afraid of him, he thought. Had he done something wrong? He wracked his memory for something but it was blank. He had nothing. She was watching his eyes with real fear and backed away from him.
Holding out his hands, he said calmly, voice husky from disuse, “I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t be afraid.” He tried to smile but it felt stiff, the muscles not quite moving as they should.
Instead, he growled, “What’s your name?” He cleared his throat again.
Still cautious, she said, “Aisling. Are you Primani?” Her eyes drifted to his, and she added, “Your eyes are blue.”
Sean said, “Are they? I don’t remember. What’s a primani?”
Aisling considered him with suspicion and asked, “What do you remember?”
“Nothing.”
“It’ll come back. What about your name?”
Sean tried to think but was overcome by an image of the chaos of being scattered. The ripping sound and screaming souls sent his stomach turning again. Shaking his head to clear the nightmare, he tried to remember his name. It just wasn’t there. His memory was full of fuzzy colors…Something more solid hung at the very edge of his memory but it was unclear.
“Nothing. Damn it!” He stood up and began to pace the space of the small room. Aisling backed away from him and put the rough-carved table between them. Her knuckles were white around the stick she gripped in front of her. Sean stopped and sighed in exasperation.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Why are you so afraid of me?”
Instead of answering him, she headed for the door and left it open behind her. Assuming she wanted him to follow, Sean hurried to catch up with her. She stopped in the middle of the meadow and spun in a circle with arms extended.
“Do you see this? All of this? There is nothing here. No one here. No one but me.” She lowered her arms and frowned at him, “And now you.”
The world swam and tilted as her words sank in. Sean held out an arm for balance and swallowed the bile rising in the back of his throat.
No, no, no!
How is this possible? How did he get here?
He looked down at his clothes and something tickled his memory. Camouflage pants, combat boots…He’d been...working? That seemed correct but he couldn’t take the memory further.
There was nothing else to see.
While he struggled, Aisling watched and came to a decision. Coming over to him, she said, “If you are Primani, you’re more or less immortal. You’ll be stuck here forever so you might as well get used to the idea. You can share my cabin for now as long as you don’t try anything. Once you’re stronger, you can do what you want. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
She had a small compound all to herself. She explained that she had built everything by herself and it had taken years to do it. The small cabin was accompanied by a storage shed, a chicken coop of sorts, and a crude spring house. The cabin was one big room with a sleeping area and a main living area. Everything was made from wood, stone or woven from grass.
“How did you manage to cut the wood?” Sean asked her.
She slipped and smiled before smothering it under a scowl. “I actually found some ancient tools in a cave. Nothing fancy, but there were some arrowheads and flint. I used the flint to cut the smaller branches. It took forever. But I had nothing else to do…”
“How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know exactly. But I think maybe 100 years. When your memory comes back, you can tell me what year it is.”
Stunned, he gaped at her. “You don’t look any older than 20. How is that possible?”
She laughed at him and narrowed her eyes. “You really don’t remember what you are, do you?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” His tone was light but there was an underlying edge of steel to it.
Aisling hesitated but plunged ahead. “Primani are warriors powered by the blood of angels. They don’t age. I saw you come here…in streams of light…like a backwards shooting star. It took weeks…You reformed yourself where I found you.”
“How do you know that?”
Shrugging, she said, “I’m Primani.”
After the first few days, Sean’s blurry memory gradually cleared and he remembered his name. They celebrated by sitting outside and watching the stars. The next day, he remembered he was Primani and realized he had no powers. He tried to teleport but couldn’t move an inch. One by one, he tested his powers and one by one, they failed him. That night they sat by the fire and Sean’s heart stopped as he watched Aisling braid her long brown hair. Her slender fingers winked in and out of the heavy curls as she deftly wound the pieces together. The movement was so familiar…she noticed the intensity of his stare and dropped her hand to her throat. The fire lit her skin, reflected in her blue eyes…
“Mica…” The word ripped through his mind like an avalanche, unleashing wave after wave of memories.
Mica! Oh, God, where was she?
He stared at Aisling like a wounded animal; trapped, cornered, panicked.
“Take it easy, Sean,” she whispered, backing up as his face twisted in grief and he flung himself out of the cabin.
He was gone for days that time. He wandered the land searching for a way out. He walked until his feet were torn and then he sat and brooded. When his feet healed, he got up and walked again. Making a series of radial trails, he covered every direction within a hundred miles of the cabin. Not once did he see another human. At night he slept on the ground and stared at the endless sky wondering what he’d done to deserve this purgatory.
Why had he been sent here? Why couldn’t he leave?
Was anyone looking for him? Where was Mica? Killian? Dec?
Desperate to be heard, he prayed on his knees until they were raw and bloody. And still no one answered him.
Where were the angels now?
He was forsaken.
Bowing his head one night, he thought of Mica and let the tears run down his face. There was no one to see him fall apart; no one to hear him howl with pain. He would never see her again and his heart broke into tiny pieces. He coul
dn’t bear to think of her alone and afraid for him. Grieving, crying, heart breaking each day he stayed away. She’d think he was dead. She’d be devastated. Was anyone helping her? Where was Killian now? He’d sworn to protect her, but did he survive the explosion or was he in limbo too?
Growing more despondent every day, he kept walking, kept praying, and kept Mica in his mind. It made him crazy to know he’d never see her again. Never hold her again or watch her smile in her sleep. How was that even possible? At first he couldn’t imagine it. But as the days blurred together and he lost track of time, he realized it was true.
He was never leaving this place.
That night, he threw himself off a cliff only to land in a pond. After dragging himself back to the bank, he hung his head and gave up. He sat on that bank for days until he finally decided to find Aisling again.
“You’re back,” she observed from the doorway. “You look like hell. Have you finally given up?”
Sean felt the thick hair on his jaw and sighed. He probably did look like hell. He looked into Aisling’s cool eyes and realized she was being kind enough letting him stay here. The least he could do was wash up and act civilized. Taking off for the creek, he stripped out of his clothes and washed them on a rock. Laying them in the sun, he sat naked in the water and let the current wash away the grime. Using the edge of his knife, he scraped the hair off his face. When he was done, he sprawled on his stomach across a boulder and let the sun dry his skin.
He closed his eyes and brought Mica’s beautiful face to his mind. He had a million favorite memories, but for this moment, he wanted, no needed, to remember her as she looked the last time he saw her. With her back pressed against the tree, she moved feverishly against him in the pouring rain. Desperate to touch her, he molded his body against her and plundered her mouth with his own, tasting her and the sweet rain running between them. Her skin nearly burned his hands as he held her face between his palms, kissing her hard enough to bruise her lips. With her eyes closed against the rush of water, she’d burned for him and he’d wanted to rip her clothes off and make love to her, claim her, one last time before leaving her forever.
The Lost Soul Trilogy (Primani Book 5) Page 84