“I never thought about magic having rules,” Evelyn said. “I mean, it’s magic.” “Everything has rules that govern it,” Astrid said. “You’ll have to learn the rules that govern the Trueworld,” she added. “Will you stay with Cadell until Helen comes back? I don’t think that he should be left alone.”
Evelyn looked to the sofa where Cadell lay. Theo had climbed onto the sofa and was lying across Cadell’s legs while Leo sat, sentry-like, in front of the sofa. “I don’t think he’d really be alone even if I left,” she said, kneeling down to scratch Leo’s head. “But Leo, Theo and I will take good care of our wounded warrior.”
Cai moved toward the living room’s door. “We’ll talk in the library,” he declared. “Maybe Cadell can answer more of your questions, Evelyn.”
“You have a nice family,” Evelyn observed, plopping into chair near the sofa after the others had left. She looked around the room and noted the dozens of family photographs hung on every wall. “There’s a lot of love in this house.” Even the large liquid-crystal television had a family portrait on its screen when not in use.
“The Selkirks stick together,” Cadell said. “Cai said I should answer some more of your questions. Do you have any?” he asked, shifting slightly to accommodate Leo as he found a place to lie beside Theo.
Evelyn nodded and leaned forward in her chair.
“Lots,” she replied. “But the first one is personal. How did a guy who was born into a demon-hunting family wind up in the Marine Corps?”
Cadell drew in a careful, deep breath. “My dad was killed about eight years ago. Grandpa was too old to lead the family, so that meant that Cai became head of the household. That’s the tradition of the Blessed: leadership goes to the eldest fighting-aged male.”
“Okay,” Evelyn said. “Chauvinistic and sexist, but okay,” she added.
“The thing was that I’m a Seventh,” Cadell went on. “Because of that, the heads of the other families, including Mister Corey and two of dad’s brothers, thought that I should lead the family. I made it clear that I didn’t want to be leader, but the patriarchs of the other Blessed bloodlines kept pressuring Cai to step down and me to step up. They wouldn’t quit and eventually they had the rest of my brothers second-guessing Cai and looking to me for leadership, even in the middle of fights. Eventually he started second-guessing himself. That kind of division was bound to get someone killed. So I decided I had to get away from the Blessed for a while, give Cai a chance to prove himself as a leader and get the patriarchs off his back.” “But why the Corps?” Evelyn asked, with a playful grin. “You could have backpacked across Europe or gone across the country on the back of a Harley. Did you have to be a jarhead?”
Cadell tilted his head slightly. “Blessed or not, I’m also an American, and my country was at war. So I thought that I could do my part in the war and do right by Cai, too. Besides, I figured I could learn some new combat skills that could be useful to the Blessed. That’s why I went out for Force Recon.”
“Force Recon? Holy shit!” Evelyn exclaimed,
“You’re not just a jarhead, you’re super jarhead.”
Cadell smiled. “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”
“Why did the other families want you to take over your family so badly?” Evelyn inquired.
Cadell shook his head. “Hell, I don’t know. Like I told you before, Sevenths can do a lot of things that other
Blessed can’t, but being a Seventh doesn’t automatically make you a master strategist and tactician. I’ve never once doubted Cai. I have no problem following him. He does his homework on tactics and he has good instincts. The patriarchs seem to have the idea that Sevenths are almost divine creatures themselves. The Blessed families gather together once every seven years. At the last gathering, some of the Blessed were oohing and aahing over me almost like they were worshiping me. It was creepy. On that same track,” Cadell interjected. “How did you wind up in the Air Force?”
Evelyn sighed. “Well, Uncle Randal kept me at boarding schools my entire life,” she answered. “He sent me away when I was six. I got to come home when school was on break for holidays, but even then Uncle Randal and his family kept me at arm’s length; I never felt at home. The only one that ever treated me like family was Aunt Eve. She told me stories from ancient mythology and told me about her adventures on archeology expeditions. I wanted to become an archeologist like her. When I told my uncle that, I thought that he was going to have a stroke.”
“He was probably afraid that if you became an archeologist, it might lead to you discovering your family’s heritage. Especially if you followed Eve,” Cadell surmised. “I suppose so,” Evelyn agreed. “But I didn’t know that at the time, and I flipped out when he said that he wouldn’t pay for my college if I studied archeology, history or anything even remotely like those subjects. He wanted me to go into medicine or education and those were the only courses of study he would pay for.”
“So you decided to let the Air Force pay for your schooling,” Cadell concluded.
Evelyn nodded. “I’ve always had a gift for languages and mathematics, and I had the grades to get accepted by the Academy. I figured that I’d get a linguistics degree there, do my service and then get an archeology degree specializing in ancient languages.”
“Is that still your plan?” Cadell asked.
“Any plans that I had went out the window back at the Homeward earlier tonight,” Evelyn said, chuckling. “But it seems way beyond coincidental that I’m good at languages and codes, and the scrolls we’re fighting over now are written in an ancient language and encrypted as well,” she added.
Cadell smiled knowingly. “One thing that I’ve come to believe in my short but adventure-filled life is that there are no coincidences,” he observed. “When I first met your aunt, I was running for my life with a shot-up squad and about a hundred pissed-off Taliban on my tail. In all of
Afghanistan, the only place to run to was a cave where a Zoroastrian mage had imprisoned a greater demon hundreds of years earlier and Eve just happened to be there looking for Solomon’s scroll. On top of that, Josh McLaren was with me, and he turned out be a latent psychic. I don’t think any reasonable person could call all of that a coincidence.”
Evelyn’s eyebrow arched again and she smiled. “I suppose not,” she said, laughing. “It’s funny,” she added. “I joined the Air Force because my family didn’t want me around, and you joined the Marines because part of your family wanted you around too much.”
“Synchronicity,” Cadell said with a chuckle. “We’re two peas in a pod,” he added. “If there are no coincidences, then we must have been destined to meet.”
“A match made in heaven?” Evelyn joked. There was a profound silence then. Cadell and Evelyn realized that her joke could be a more prophetic than humorous.
“Oops,” a voice said from the doorway. “We’ve walked in an awkward silence.”
Josh McLaren came toward the sofa with a kitchen tray that held a liquor bottle and several glasses containing ice. He wore the uniform and equipment of a patrolman of the Boston Police Department. His hair was kept in a short, high-and-tight fashion and he was grinning at Cadell. Behind him Randal Corey glared at Evelyn, his eyes filled with both anger and relief before walking away. A tall, auburn-haired man with a medium build and a brilliant smile stepped around McLaren and took a knee beside Cadell.
“Are you okay, Cadell?” he asked.
“I will be,” Cadell replied. “Evelyn, this is my brother Colm and Josh McLaren, my best friend.” Both men exchanged handshakes with Evelyn.
“Damn, son,” Josh said, looking down at Cadell. “You look like just had a fight with me,” he joked, placing the tray on the coffee table near the sofa and held up a fifth of Johnny Walker Double Black whiskey so that Cadell could see it clearly. “I thought you might need some medicine.”
Cadell grinned broadly. “Joshua McLaren,” he proclaimed, “Thou art a good man.”
Josh grinned at his friend. “There’s plenty,” he encouraged. “I thought I’d be sharing with all of the Selkirk men, so I grabbed glasses for everyone on my way through the kitchen.” he looked at Evelyn. “Is the lady a whiskey drinker?” he asked her.
“She is tonight,” Evelyn responded with a tilt of her head.
Josh laughed. “Yeah,” he said, looking at Evelyn.
“From what they told me, you’ve had an extra-super-sized bucket of weirdness dumped on you tonight. I know the feeling, believe me.”
“Josh didn’t know that he was psychic until we got chased into that magically-charged cave I told you about. The mystical energy in the cave brought out his power,” Cadell explained.
Josh had begun filling the glasses. “Right,” he affirmed. “Before I went into the cave, I lived in a shitty but totally explainable world. I came out of the cave covered in demon guts and now I’m living in an even
shittier world that’s shitty on a cosmic scale.”
Evelyn accepted a glass. “Does this stuff make the world less shitty?” she inquired.
“Nope,” Josh answered. “It just makes you stop caring that it’s shitty.”
“Ms. Corey,” Colm said, accepting his own whiskey glass settling into the chair across from her. “They told us that you’re a Seventh. Is that true?”
“Call me Evelyn,” Evelyn said. “And yes, it looks like I’m a Seventh.”
“And you’ve haven’t been trained at all?” Colm queried, astonished. “What was your family thinking?”
Evelyn sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “They were trying to protect me, I suppose.”
Colm eyes widened. “Well, when this crisis is over, they’ll have to train you.”
“Maybe,” Evelyn said. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do, yet.” Colm looked at her quizzically. “She’s been brought into her Truesight,” Cadell explained. “But she hasn’t decided if she’s going to embrace her blessing or not.”
Colm turned to Cadell and leaned forward. “Don’t you think that that ship has sailed?” he responded. “She fought at your side and killed at least three Tainteds. Even if they don’t know who she is, they’ll find out pretty quickly. Eventually they’ll figure out that she’s a Seventh.” He looked sympathetically at Evelyn. “”I’m sorry, Evelyn, but any choice you may have had about embracing the Blessing is gone. You need to be brought into your full power and learn how to use it fast. That’s about the only way I can see for you to live out the month.” “Is that true?” Evelyn asked Cadell.
“I’m afraid so,’ he admitted. “We killed all of the Tainted at the university, but only some of them were killed with trueblades. The rune blade only killed their bodies. The demons in those bodies were just disrupted. Once they pulled themselves back together, they would have told whichever Nephilim or Grigori that sent them about you.” “So they’ll be after me no matter what I do?” Evelyn asked.
“You shouldn’t have been put in this position,” Colm declared. “What was your family thinking? Sending you out in the world without knowing what you are was like not teaching a baby how to walk.”
“You should be resting, not talking!” Helen said, returning with a freshly-made poultice.
“I am resting,” Cadell retorted. “I haven’t moved an inch.”
“And you’re not drinking this!” Helen admonished, snatching the Johnny Walker bottle from the coffee table. “Technically, no,” Cadell said, suppressing a laugh. “I already drank some, but I am not currently drinking it.” Cadell saw that Helen was not amused.
“Look, little sister,” Cadell said. “You need to lighten up. Mom’s tincture is really starting to kick in and I’m starting to feel better. I’ll be ready to get back in the fight in a few hours, just like you said,” he assured her, “especially with that poultice you made to help.” Helen grunted and knelt to apply the new poultice. Once it was in place, she carefully secured it with gauze and copious amounts of medical tape.
“As I was saying,” Colm went on. “We need to start getting you up to speed, Evelyn. You did damned well tonight, but you took the Tainteds by surprise. They won’t get caught flat-footed like that again. You have to embrace your Blessing.”
Evelyn stood and downed the last of her Scotch. “Let’s get on with it, then,” she announced.
“No Evelyn,” Randal said. “I can’t stop you from doing this, but I won’t help you embrace your blessing. I promised your mother I’d shield you from the Blessed. I’ve already gone back on that promise. I won’t go back on it any more than I already have.” He took a long breath. “I love you, Evelyn. You’ll always be welcome in my home, but I won’t help you with anything to do with the Blessed, nor will anyone in my family.”
“Except me,” Eve said from her place near the living room’s fireplace. “I’ll help you any way you need me to, dear,” she told Evelyn.
“Then you’re disowned, Eve,” Randal said. “I’ll see that no one on the family will even admit that you exist. I’m the family’s Patriarch. You are bound to obey. It is the way of things.”
“It’s not my way, Randal,” Eve argued.
Evelyn stepped closer to her uncle, her eyes ablaze.
“If Aunt Eve isn’t welcome in the family, then neither am I, Uncle Randal,” she challenged. “Hell, it’s not like I had a family life to begin with.”
“So be it,” Randal said, turning toward Cadell. “Teach her well, Cadell. You’re probably the best suited to that, anyway.”
“Joshua,” Astrid Selkirk said. “Would you see Randal to the door, please?”
Josh popped out of his chair. “On it, Mama Selkirk. I know when you’re politely telling any non-Blessed friends to get lost while you all do Blessed stuff. ”
Astrid smiled. “Thank you, Joshua. I’ll make you lasagna to make up for my rudeness.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Mama Selkirk,” he replied. “Let’s go, sir,” he added, looking to Randal.
“Helen, I’m afraid you and I will need to leave, too. The spiritual energy the others will be releasing comes from the Lord through his archangels. It could hurt us,” Astrid said. She cast a concerned look at Cadell, who had managed to stand and was leaning against the back of the sofa, and then she left.
Cai pulled the two wooden doors to the living room closed. “We should get started,” he said.
Eve took a step toward Evelyn. “Come here, dear,” she instructed. Evelyn complied and went to stand close to her aunt. “Show me your sigils,” she added.
“I don’t know how,” Eve said.
“Yes, you do,” Eve said. “You’ve been holding the power in. Let it out.”
Evelyn looked to Cadell and he came closer to her. “It’s not called embracing the Blessing for nothing,” he told her. “You have to grab hold of it, make it yours.” He held up both hands and the symbols on his palms flared brightly to life. Eve’s eyes traveled from one of the Selkirks to the next in turn as first their sigils and then their auras began to shine. When she turned back to Eve, she was surrounded by ethereal blue-white light and her right hand was held with the palm facing Evelyn.
Evelyn touched the Corey family sigil on her left hand to Eve’s family marking. Light surrounded her body. It pulsated, alternately changing color from gold, to silver, to white. She felt warm from head to toe; the warmth became heat. The heat became so intense that it felt as though she would be consumed by it. She fought to not scream, struggling not to pull her hand away from Eve’s. Then she remembered Cadell’s words. ‘Make it yours,’ he had said.
She stopped fighting the pain and pulled Eve into an embrace. The auras of both women pulsed, brightened, and sent sparks cascading through the auras of the Selkirk brothers. The pain increased but so did her ability to endure it. The searing spiritual heat burned away any doubt about who and what she truly was and why she had been born. Her place in the universe was manifestly clear and with that clarity came joy. She stepped away from Eve and approached Cadell. She extende
d her right palm toward him and he met it with his. Evelyn’s mark of Camuel met Cadell’s mark of Uriel and the pain stopped. Their auras merged and showed in a rainbow of shifting colors. Pain was replaced by a sense of well-being that overwhelmed them both. Their fingers interlaced and they fell to their knees as the light that emanated from them became ever brighter until it flashed out in a single powerful surge that left everyone in the room breathless and dizzy. Evelyn and
Cadell’s fingers were still entwined together. For several seconds, no one could speak.
Evelyn opened her eyes to stare into Cadell’s. She found him gazing back, his wounds totally healed. “Is that the way it was supposed to go?” she asked, still catching her breath,
“It was until you touched Cadell,” Callum said.
“After that, it got … a bit weird.”
“It seemed like the right thing to do,” Evelyn said. “It was,” Cadell announced. “Look at your sigils.”
Evelyn looked at her palms. “This one’s different,” she said turning her right palm so that the others could see it. “It looks like yours, Cadell,” Evelyn told him. Eve and the Selkirk brothers gathered around Evelyn and each looked at her palm. The Symbol of Camuel, a winged angel with a large radiating eye above it, had been replaced with a rendering of an angel standing in front of a gate holding a sword: the symbol of Uriel.
“This has never happened before,” Eve said, trembling.
“Mister Corey denied her heritage all of this time and he disowned totally her a few minutes ago,” Cai observed. “The Lord and his angels must have decided that the Corey family didn’t deserve the responsibility of having a Seventh among them. So Uriel claimed her, and Camuel acceded to it.”
“He’s right,” Evelyn confirmed, looking at the new angel’s mark.
“How do you know that?” Eve asked.
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