I hadn’t thought about it like that. I’d come here looking for something. And I’d found it. Well, I’d found something. Power. But I definitely didn’t feel happy.
If I wanted anything, I had the ability to simply will it into existence. A storm. Rain. Fire. War. Death…But I didn’t really care about anything enough to bother with the effort.
None of those thoughts filled me with passion. The fun had been in the chase, not the destination. Here I was, a newborn Goddess, standing on a forgotten roof in a forgotten city.
On the other hand, why would I go back to square one? I’d obviously been unhappy then, too, or I wouldn’t have come here searching for something…
Maybe I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Had I done something wrong? Maybe I had tasted power and been changed. And that mistake had led me on the path to Cain’s death.
That thought set my pulse racing. I wanted Samael dead. No question. He needed to die for killing Cain. Wouldn’t it be a betrayal to let his murderer walk free—when I had the power to punish him? What would Cain want me to do? As I thought about it, I realized that I had no idea. I hardly know much about Cain at all. I knew that I loved him as a brother, but…why?
Where had that feeling come from? To know—as an absolute—that I loved Cain as a brother, but to not remember why. That was…oddly disturbing. What if he had actually been a bad man? I couldn’t think of one specific thing about him other than that he had fought beside me and sacrificed himself for me. But why had he done that?
That should have been a very easy question to answer. Like…Solomon’s other questions about myself.
Shouldn’t I know something more about Cain before focusing my entire existence upon avenging him?
And say I did kill Samael…what about after that? I didn’t have any friends. No one to tell about my great deed. Cain wouldn’t even know I had avenged him.
A new thought chilled my blood. What would Cain think if he saw me now? Would he approve or be disgusted of what I’d become? I honestly had no idea.
All I could say for certain was that he had been my ally, my brother, my compass.
And now he was gone. Neither Door could give him back to me…
I felt so goddamned alone.
I didn’t realize I had spoken out loud until Richard knelt before me, nodding in understanding. “Through that Door, you will fully forget your memories. But you will have two close friends—revenge and power. After you kill one, power will be your only surviving companion. But you will also have no fear,” he offered in a neutral tone.
Strangely enough, that made sense to me. I would have no one that could understand my level of power. They would all be inferior—bugs beneath my boots. If I spoke from the heart about my power, they wouldn’t have anything to bring to the conversation. Just…flaccid nods. They would literally have nothing to share with me that would be of interest.
Nothing that I hadn’t already learned without them. Likewise, their problems would mean literally nothing to me, because I would have no basis of understanding for their concerns.
“If you choose the window,” Richard continued, “you will never be alone again. But you will know fear—for yourself and your loved ones, of which you will have many. At times, you will feel powerless, but you will still feel,” he said, emphasizing the last word. “There is no correct answer. It is time to choose what you want most in this life.”
There were risks and rewards to both. Power after I killed Samael was a certainty.
But the idea of a life of uncertainty made my stomach flutter anxiously, letting me feel something different for a change. Almost…an excitement.
Or I could spend a life chasing more and more power—the thrill in the conquest, but ultimately holding an empty prize since I didn’t have anything I wished to do with that power. Like a life spent chasing butterflies.
Something about that made me smile and reach into my pocket.
I squeezed the butterfly charm, thinking.
I already had one butterfly. Right here in my pocket. And I didn’t think I had obtained it here. It smelled different. Familiar, somehow. And it was just sitting in my pocket with nothing to do. Like one half of a kiss. Why would I want to collect more of these?
Maybe I could do with a little mystery. Some answers…
I smiled at the lion. “Thank you, Dick. What do I need to do?”
Solomon coughed, but the lion narrowed his eyes for some reason. “You fall, or you walk.”
Then he stood and walked over beside Solomon, waiting for me to decide.
Chapter 39
I climbed up on the ledge, staring out at the window. The ledge was six-feet wide, more of a walkway than a ledge, but even with a running start it would be close.
Because as I made my final decision—to retrieve my memory—I saw a Silver Door between the man and the girl in the window. The Door was both impossibly large and impossibly small. I would have to be very precise.
I let my Spear disappear deep inside me, and ran as fast as I could for the edge, leaping into open air.
I flew towards the Door, cringing as I came closer to the window, because they no longer felt like images, but living people. The white-gold hair on the girl’s head even seemed to shift slightly from my rapid approach, and the man’s shoulders appeared to tighten.
They didn’t let go of each other’s hand, and the Silver Door grew larger as I neared—hopefully large enough for me to fit through or my suicide would be very disappointing.
The Door did not open as I struck it.
My weight shattered the entire window in an explosion of colored shards of ancient glass.
And in that explosion of glass, I suddenly felt like I had been reborn…given a name. An old name, but a name I knew well. It fit me just perfectly.
Callie Penrose.
I fell into a dark, forgotten church, and found two vampires trying to smash an ornate metal cross with clubs directly before me. They looked up, startled by the cacophony of broken glass and the crazy bitch flying at their faces.
Without consciously thinking, I had drawn two wooden, silver-tipped stakes from my belt the moment I saw them. I proceeded to bury the stakes in their foreheads so deep that I was forced to let them go as I rolled past them. I realized I was smirking at their death throes, but I didn’t bother looking back. Grit fell from my fingers, and I glanced down to see my rings of power crumbling to dust.
I shook off the dust and then washed my hands in the vampire blood covering my knuckles, spreading it evenly over my skin like lotion.
Then I walked onward into the church…
Into the darkness of this abandoned, hallowed ground, wondering how vampires had made it inside with impunity.
Only to find two Angels sweeping down upon me from the rafters, their scarred faces a rictus of hatred, elitism, and disgust as they hurled spears at me, skipping allegations to commence with their final judgment.
Which wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
My shoulders exploded with fire as wings of stone and ice erupted from my flesh to shield me from the spears. I waited for the two impacts and then swept my wings at the ground to catapult me upwards to meet them midair. Silver Claws bloomed from between my knuckles just in time to impale their heads through the soft flesh beneath their chins—one on each fist. They gasped and struggled, their wings falling slack as I slammed their heads into the ceiling, burying my claws into the wooden rafters so hard that dust fell down.
With a twist of my wrists, I broke off my claws and hurriedly bent the ends so that they were like hooks, leaving the gasping Angels to hang like strung-up fish. I drifted back down to the ground and shook my head sadly at them. “We should have been allies.”
Black dust crumbled from around my forehead, and I realized I had lost the black halo crown. And a wave of memories beat at my heart, filling me with an inner fire.
“My father’s name is Titus!” I screamed my Nephilim father’s name loud enough to shake
the walls of the church.
“My father’s name is Terry Penrose!” I screamed my adopted father’s name loud enough to crack the pillars holding up the ceiling of the church.
“My father’s name is Roland Haviar!” I screamed my mentor father’s name loud enough to crack the floor and make me stumble as the church groaned in protest.
My shouts echoed off the walls, but the only other sound was the gasping Angels and my panting breath. I debated giving an honorable mention to my fourth father. Everyone’s Father. The Big Dog. But I was pretty sure the building would collapse at another shout.
I stared up at the ceiling and placed a hand on the Shepherd’s Crucifix at my throat—the one that had belonged to Fabrizio’s friend, Anthony.
And I knelt, tucking my wings back. “You know who You are…” I said respectfully towards the groaning ceiling, dipping my chin slightly. “I’m probably about to make you regret giving me Free Will,” I admitted, “but You should forgive me. I know I’m just a sinner, but I’m trying to act like a saint.”
I thought I heard a rumbling chuckle, but I was pretty sure it was just the church struggling not to collapse in on itself.
I climbed back to my feet and strode on, wondering what other enemies stood between me and my memories. The space ahead of me was now pitch-black, but the light from my brilliant blue wings of shifting stone and ice illuminated a ten-foot radius in every direction. The ground vibrated in agitation, warning signs that I didn’t have long before the church crumbled. The tips of my wings trailed frigid blue flame across the cracked marble floor of the church.
I saw an oval-shaped silver Door in the distance, looking like it was miles away.
Out of the darkness, I came upon two Demons kneeling on either side of my path. They hung their heads subserviently, praying—a sickening, twisted song—and held out their hands, palms down as if to swear allegiance to their dark queen.
“Come, my children,” I said, and I placed my blood-stained palms on the backs of their heads. “Father wants a word with you.” They flashed with light, suddenly encased in white crystal as I turned them into pillars of salt. I don’t know how.
I walked on, not even slowing as I shattered both pillars with mighty blows from my wings.
The jade earrings cracked loudly and then fell from my earlobes. They crunched like brittle bones as I walked over them. I didn’t look down.
I was too busy smiling as another wave of memories washed over me, rocking me back on my heels for a moment. I took a deep breath and then released it, giving my memories a moment to settle fully into place.
My thumb abruptly throbbed ice-cold and I glanced down to find a ring of shadows now encircling my thumb. You’re back! a voice gasped in astonishment, the sound solely in my mind.
“Quiet, Nameless,” I told the Fallen Angel. “Mommy’s busy.” I halted my advance as I saw what lay before me.
A gaping, bottomless pit stood between me and the oval-shaped Silver Door. So did a reflection of a friend—not the real thing, since her eyes shone entirely silver.
Phix—the Great Sphinx—was a wildcat the size of a horse, big enough to ride on. Her massive wings were tucked in close as she turned her human head to glance at me. Because like a centaur, the majestic creature before me was a cross between a human and a cat, so a human torso rose up from the feline’s neck—and it was a torso beautiful enough to make a male sculptor leave the love of his life in favor of having the chance to carve this beauty in marble.
Instead of a centaur, I had a cat-taur. Possibly a meow-taur. I would try out both to see which bothered the real Phix most before officially adopting it. Because I was classy like that.
Phix was beautiful and curvaceous. Worse, she knew it. She managed to flick her long, thick, perfectly-wavy, ebony hair like she was posing for the imagined sculptor. Even her reflection oozed ego-juice.
I had intended to use my own wings to cross the chasm, but…come on. Riding a Sphinx instead? No contest. She crouched down, seeming to read my mind. I climbed atop her back and pointed my finger at the Door ahead. “Good to see you, Phix.”
“You will pay for leaving me behind,” she purred throatily, but she did arch her back affectionately as I wrapped my arms around her neck in a hug that probably looked more like a choke-hold.
Her words made me tense. “Wait. It’s really you—”
She screamed defiantly, cutting me off. Her roar felt like a protective challenge, as if giving a warning to anymore would-be attackers that dared to impede her path. My path.
Then she leapt up into the air. I grabbed a fistful of her hair for support, and she laughed loudly as we raced through the blackness.
The Door didn’t seem to grow any larger despite how fast we flew, and I heard the church crashing down to the ground behind us in one rolling, thunderous bell-toll. I squeezed my thighs, urging Phix on faster, growing anxious that the Door still hadn’t grown larger.
A gold and a silver knight suddenly shimmered into existence between us and the Door, looking like giants in comparison, thanks to depth perception. They stared at us, unflinching, growing larger at a dizzying pace.
Which is when I realized the Door wasn’t far away. And it wasn’t necessarily a Door.
It was as tiny as…the eye of a needle.
I gritted my teeth as I recalled the quote from Jesus in the book of Matthew. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.
Well, I wasn’t rich, and I wasn’t trying to enter the Kingdom of God, but I understood the metaphor. I was paying to play—giving up the powers I had accumulated from the Doors.
In favor of finding myself. Rediscovering myself.
I cast a hurried glare at the gold and silver knight on either side of the needle, and then I slapped Phix on the rump for encouragement. “Fly like a camel!” I shouted, leaning down behind her shoulders and wrapping my arms around her…the fancy bitch had a damned six-pack!
What the hell?
We were both screaming as we zipped between the two knights and hit the eye of the needle at full speed.
I heard a sound as if a treasure chest had been upended as all the powers—both tangible and not—I had acquired in the Doors were instantaneously torn away from me to pay for our passage through the eye of the needle.
My mind exploded with memories, visions, and conversations from my past—heart-aches and heart-felts, tears and laughs, angers and joys, failures and victories, vices and virtues…
And for a fraction of a second, I understood it all—the inner complexities of this thing called life, and how all the broken fragments of a stained-glass window fit perfectly back together.
Why all the answers in the universe rested in the space between two palms pressed together.
Between the palms of a noble man and a naive little girl.
Between a man named Roland Haviar and a girl named Callie Penrose.
And…it brought tears of astonishment to my cheeks.
Then it was abruptly ripped away from me, sending my mind reeling. My vision began to tunnel closed as everything around us flared with brilliant white light. But before the world folded in on itself, I decided that single moment of enlightenment—even if now gone—had been worth it.
Simply knowing that there was a purpose to it all…
Even if it was tragically malicious and beautifully elegant…
Well, that was more than most people ever learned.
I heard Nameless murmuring another Bible quote to me as I fell into unconsciousness, but something was wrong about it…
Let there be dark…
And there was…
Chapter 40
I slowly woke in a vibrating recliner—the warm back of the chair rising and falling with a steady thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump beat I felt against my spine.
“You live,” Phix said. I looked up to see her face only a foot away. I was tucked against her furry body between her paws, a
nd she was purring like a locomotive. It said something about me that I was disappointed I wasn’t actually sitting in a vibrating recliner.
I blinked rapidly, studying the white opulence all around me. The ceiling stretched impossibly high over my head. Birds chirped at each other as they flapped from one arch to the next high above. The air was warm and a gentle breeze brought the smell of fresh fruit and aromatic flowers.
Because we sat on an open-air balcony the length of a football field. The balcony was furnished with pillows, wicker couches and chairs, huge Persian rugs, and columns as wide as a car that held up the expansive roof. I stared out over the black iron railings to see fields stretching as far as the eye could see, a quilt consisting of every shade of green I had ever seen at any paint store. It was breathtaking.
“Better get your legs under you before he sees you’re vulnerable,” Phix murmured.
That’s when I noticed the arguing voices approaching.
I turned to see a massive, bipedal, white lion walking backwards towards me, fighting an impotent force on the other side like a bouncer at a club. Solomon walked beside him, smiling at me. He wore white linen pants and a loosely buttoned white linen shirt, making the black veins over his wrists, neck and cheeks really stand out. The dark veins even grew down his chest—an impressively fit chest for his age. The veins obviously weren’t a concern to him, more like an embarrassing tattoo from his younger, wilder days.
And I suddenly remembered our conversation on the rooftop. The highlights, anyway.
The arguing grew louder and my heart stuttered to a stop.
“I’ve waited long enough, Dick Breath!” a familiar voice snarled murderously. “Let me see my gods-damned sister!”
I forgot all about standing, my heartbeat picking back up in a wildly erratic beat. I was shaking, trying to see past the wall of lion.
The beast chomped his jaws furiously at the nickname. “Richard or Last Breath, not—”
But Cain suddenly darted out from under his arms and tackled me into Phix—who hissed indignantly. He squeezed me tightly, laughing and speaking at the same time into the side of my neck. “You did it!”
Sinner: Feathers and Fire Book 5 Page 24