A number of things happened all at once. An incredible pain lashed through my head. Something seemed to fill my brain and expand until an extreme amount of pressure built up against my skull. My vision failed me and everything faded into an unreachable distance.
Then came the darkness, that living, menacing darkness. It slithered through the swelling in my head like sharp, serrated snakes. It swirled like black mist, thrumming as it filled me so completely.
Then I saw him.
He was almost as massive as Bane. His body bulged and rippled with muscle. His skin was bronzed by the sun. Long waves of copper colored hair fell in thick curtains over his chest. His eyes were shimmering pools of liquid copper. His giant wings were the color of polished copper.
He was The Copper Angel.
He was absolutely beautiful!
But most of all, he was evil incarnate.
"Do you see, My Little One," came the voice of the copper angel, "how easy it is for me?"
The sound of his voice triggered some kind of mental paralysis, and, inwardly, I was comatose. No longer was I aware of my body or the fact that I was supposed to even have one. It was as if only a thread of my self existed now. Like everything else was dead and had been choked off by the darkness.
"I can take your mind. I can take your body. I can take your life."
The little thread that was me was thinning slowly, fading ever-so-slightly. I became clearly aware of the fact that if the thread were to disappear then so would I.
I didn't care. Caring seemed impossible. There was no room here. Feelings or emotions could not fit into the small, fine space of this thread that I had become.
Then, off in the far back corner of a distance that seemed endless, I heard a voice. At first, it made no sense. It was just sound that did not belong. But, as the darkness thickened and the thread thinned, I slowly made sense of it.
"Cast them out. . .demons. . ."
I knew this voice. I knew to trust this voice. But I did not understand what this voice was trying to tell me.
The thread that I had become was now a thin ribbon of grey in the blackness. Soon, I would be no more.
"In the name of Jesus Christ, cast them out!" The strange voice whipped through the darkness from the distance, only to be swallowed whole. An awful, eerie silence followed.
"Remember who you are," the voice throbbed, as it zipped past the thread that was me, shattering the silence like tinkling ice crystals.
"You. Are. A warrior!" The sheer, raw intensity of the voice seemed to shock the thread, like a defibrillator zapping a heart back to life.
I was a warrior.
"In the name of Jesus Christ, cast them out!"
The darkness laughed. But it wasn't a sound, really. It was more like a feeling, like thunder peeling across the sky without the rumbling sound, shaking the earth.
"Cast them out!" It was the voice of the girl whose hair smelled like baby powder, the girl I knew as Izzy. Recognition hummed through the thread, pulsing life into this frail, small space I had become.
"Say it, Luna. Say it, now! Cast them out!"
"In the name of Jesus," I heard my voice say.
The darkness squeezed, trying to smother me and my words, pressing against my ribbon of grey with rebellious resistance.
"Demon . . . Be gone!" I yelled.
Suddenly it felt like I was being sucked through something too small for me to fit through. As this happened, there was an explosion of light so bright, so pure, so clean that it washed away the darkness in an instant, disintegrating it with an ease that seemed unworldly.
I opened my eyes. Specks of that very light danced before my eyes and blinded me. I felt myself blinking. I felt myself as a whole. I was no longer a thread but a body, gasping for air. I was lying on my back, half on the ground and half in the lap of a man I did not know. He had electric blue eyes, but I could not see his face. My shoulders stabbed into his legs, as my body jerked in violent spasms.
"Luna! Oh, sweet Jesus, be with Luna!"
Then I went still, overcome by an unusual, powerful calm that sank into me deeper than bone and seeped into the very essence of my soul like sweet, warm honey.
My vision cleared. My lungs stung as they filled with air. Peace pulsed through my veins like lifeblood.
Izzy wrapped me in her arms and embraced me tightly. I had no idea what had just happened, but I knew for certain that something very good and something very bad was inside me at the very same time, and my body had almost been shocked to death because of it.
The smell of baby powder was what seemed to slow the whirring in my mind. "You did it!" Izzy said into my hair. She was crying. She was happy and scared at the very same time. "You commanded them out!"
"Him," I said. My voice sounded strange and new. It sounded strong, despite the physical fatigue that was now gripping me firmly. A reflection of newfound resilience and determination echoed in the silence that followed.
Izzy unwrapped her arms from around me and looked at me, trying to assess me for damage. Maybe she would realize that something was now different about me.
"Sean Hylander," I said.