He gestured to the lodge. "The way to strong visions is through focus, and when focus is hard to find, great pain or physical stress can bring it. When the heat takes over your senses, robs you of consciousness, then you will catch up to your mind, find where it has been wandering inside the labyrinth of your soul."
Jonah glanced toward the tent, felt the heat coming from it. He spread his wings slightly, gestured toward them with a tilt of his head. "That's for your human victims, shaman. In this form, I'm not affected by heat. It will take much more than that for me to reach a state of great physical stress or pain."
Sam cocked his head. "Do you wish to find truth?"
Jonah knew the answer to that. The sullenness in his soul that made him care little for any of this was still there. But he could not push away his promise to Anna, the faith in her gaze, the sweet gentleness of her touch.
I cannot wait to see you well . . . flying . . . That will be your greatest gift to me . . . He'd heard her thoughts during her song, his mermaid likely unaware of how many things unsaid she'd sent from her mind to his.
Why he didn't resent her asking of him what he didn't want for himself, he didn't know, but his only sense of right and wrong, his only motivation, lay now in what she wanted.
"I'm willing."
Sam raised a brow, acknowledging that he hadn't received a direct answer to his question. Jonah stared at him, waiting. Sam spread his hands out. "So what will cause you enough suffering to send you into a vision state, if heat will not?"
It clicked then. His jaw clenching, Jonah moved his gaze to the sword.
"I'm really beginning to hate that witch," he muttered darkly, ignoring the flash of amusement in the shaman's otherwise somber face.
JONAH found the interior of the tent suffocatingly hot, but as he'd predicted, its impact on him was atmospheric only. Taking a seat cross-legged next to the hot rocks, he told the shaman what needed to be done. As he rolled his shoulders, laid his hands on his knees and adjusted his wings, he allowed Sam to lay lines of beads and shells over his shoulders that draped down to his stomach and knees. When the shaman began to chant, the lines became rigid, winding over his arms and holding them to his sides, immobilizing him. Jonah expected it, knew it was needed so the shaman's blow would be precise, striking him just below the heart to cause mind-altering pain, not death. However, he reflected it was the first time in his life he'd willingly put his life into a stranger's hands, let alone a human's. Whether that was intuition or loss of good sense, it was too late to change his mind now.
"If you're an agent of my enemies, shaman, then you're about to be in a position to take my life."
"I am not your enemy, angel," Sam replied. "But I am not your friend, either."
In the dim lodge, his dark eyes glittered, piercing. Jonah almost expected the shaman to spread wings of his own, glossy black and brown like the hawk he suddenly resembled. Shamans often traveled upon wings in their visions, leading some scholars throughout the ages to point to them as part of the mythology of angels. The ability to fly, to transcend.
"What do you mean, old man?"
But for the moment Sam had dropped into the hypnotic singsong chant used by wizards of this barren land for centuries, a rhythmic cadence that connected directly to the songs of the earth and the sky. Jonah turned his mind from the shaman's cryptic comment and focused on the chant instead, for he knew it was part of preparing himself. As he did, he modulated his breathing for the stifling atmosphere. His mind had almost started to drift off when he realized Sam was speaking directly to him again in the same hypnotic monotone.
"You paid attention to the lessons of the Dark Ones, to their words. You believe they say only what they mean, and they do. But what they mean may not be what you understand. Their ways are not our ways. They are closest to human ways, and there is an answer for you there, but you must listen closely for it."
Sam hefted the blade, used it and his hand to waft the steam over his face, closing his eyes as he spoke. "In battle, the Dark Ones destroy the heart of the angel to inflict a mortal wound. This is a physical matter. But in the spiritual realm, where the power they seek lies, they know the best way to defeat an angel is to take his heart. And so that is what they seek from you."
Jonah made a noise. "I know that."
"No, you do not. You listen with your ears still."
Jonah stared at Sam across the flickering firelight, through the clouds of steam. When the shaman shifted, Jonah did in fact see the shadow of dark wings thrown by the flame against the wall, and those images blurred. Hawk. Man.
"It has been in my dreams, and in those of the seawitch, that a great and horrible chance must be taken. By taking your heart from you, the Dark Ones may actually help you find it again. The physical and spiritual will come together there, such that there is no difference between the two. It is what we all hope and must risk. For the alternative is much darkness and the Great Mother's voice being silent forever." Sam's tone sharpened. "There is much more than you at risk here. And yet your pain, your confusion, is a mirror of what the whole world suffers. Your quest is the quest of us all."
"My heart is within me, old man. And no Dark One will take it. I will skewer it myself first."
"You gave your heart away. You could not bear the pain of its weight, and so you gave it to another to hold."
Your heart. The physical, versus the spiritual . . .
Oh, Goddess. Anna. Anna was his heart. They were coming for Anna.
The meaning hit Jonah as if the shaman had rammed the sword through his chest right then, though he still stood across the lodge. He struggled, but the weight of the ritual pieces with which the shaman had bound his arms to his body held him.
David. Anna. A force of Dark Ones would come, great enough to take Anna. David would fight them to the death. And here he was, in a temporal shift, unable to communicate with anyone.
"Let me go. I can't do this now."
Sam raised the sword. His gaze was sad, but implacable. "You must."
With that last directive, he drove the sword into Jonah's chest, between the ribs that were several inches below the heart.
HE'D prepared the damn blade himself, charged it with enough of his own power to help Sam knock him out of his own reality and into this far different one. Jonah roared his fury, but he was on fire. No, in fire, a place of black rock and orange flame. He turned on his heel, hemmed in on all sides, nowhere to go. Then, out of that darkness, a familiar figure materialized, the fire licking at his ebony wings.
The Goddess didn't create the humans, Jonah. She created all of what you see in the world and universe, including us, but not humans. Have you not asked yourself over and over why they are so different from any other creature on Earth?
"Luc, I have to go." Jonah said it desperately, even knowing it was futile. He wasn't really talking to the Lord of the Underworld but to an illusion of his own mind. "I can't be here. Anna and David are in danger."
But She is connected to them anyway. Lucifer took more corporeal form, his eyes red as bloodshed. That's important. Remember that.
Jonah shook his head. "Why are you here, Luc? What is this? What--"
But then the vision was gone and instead of fire, he was in deep water. Deep as the Abyss and colder. He struggled, swimming against the weight of his wings, which felt ten times heavier, though angel wings were usually supple as fins in water.
There were millions of sea creatures around him, swarms of sleek sharks interspersed with silver schools of fish, the swiftly pumping tentacles of squid, as well as floating man-o'-wars with their ethereal forest of legs. Their arms caught him, burning, stinging, as if trying to keep him from ascending.
An angel did not cause harm to a creature of the Lady if it could be avoided, but only the discipline of a millennium kept him from sending out a blast of electrical energy that would have scattered them from his path.
They rolled him, over and over, until he wasn't sure if he was going the righ
t direction, if he was even conscious.
Up, up. He had to get free. A whale struck him, hard enough that he heard bones creak inside his chest cavity as he tumbled along the creature's side. When he had the presence of mind to seize a fin, it dissolved in his hand. They could impede and touch him, but he could do nothing to them after all.
He thought of Anna in the waves. She seemed to get where she wanted to go by a curious mixture of not resisting and not losing sight of her destination. He tried it, letting the creatures carry him. Their drifting or turning at a key moment resulted in openings that let him be elevated upward in a slow spiral, rolling with them, feeling the silky passing of a dolphin's side, a blowfish's sudden startled expansion along his instep . . .
The increasing warmth of the water, its sensual caress on his exposed skin, reminded him of being buried deep in Anna's body, rediscovering that soft, warm wetness. Despite the stories he'd told her of couplings with women, those had been earlier times. He had been grounding himself with meditation for some time. When was the last time he'd taken a woman? Had it truly been over two years? No wonder he'd been such a rutting animal with her.
As the darkness in him grew wider and wider, he hadn't trusted himself with the fragile gift of female flesh. He couldn't obliterate the sense that his hands were covered with blood when he touched their soft skin.
Or maybe you had no desire to soil yourself in the filthy cunt of Creation. The Great Harlot . . . the Great Thief . . . Deceiver.
Darkness. The shark's teeth scored him as it passed and snapped down on a fish. The burst of blood and fluid misted before his eyes, a macabre cloud illuminated by some malevolent light source. Losing his bearings, he thrashed, shoving away, getting out of the feeding frenzy.
Stay with us; eat with us. Taste flesh and death.
It boiled up in him, an oil slick he could ignite, spreading fire and flood upon those around him. Send them to the bottom of the ocean and mire them all in a tar pit, those who would impede him, innocent natural creatures who were not so innocent and natural. Not if they were standing in his way.
No . . . He struggled for the thought of Anna again. Intimate, physical things, when the emotional eluded him. Of the stretch and give of her impossibly tight channel taking him, accepting him, Joining with him so they could both climb out of their darkness. Looking together at something that shone above these dark clouds, even if it was just the reflection of what they felt for each other. The axis of the world turning in that powerful moment of connection. Where meaning was found, though there was none to be found elsewhere. It was the divine feeling. The purpose. The way.
He was rising again, his lungs bursting, but his strokes were more sure as he turned and twisted in a symbiotic dance with the creatures, headed for the light spearing down in the water, seeking him.
When that first ray fell on his outstretched hand, its energy poured into him. Before he could draw a deep breath in reaction, a convulsion ricocheted inside his body like shrapnel. The poison was rejecting that light, trying to escape it, doubling him over, pulling him away. But he was disciplined, used to pain, tearing agony.
Anna. David.
The beams wrapped around his forearms, legs and his body like the shaman's shell ropes. Now he was turning again, only this time slowly, watching the sea creatures around him who were still free to move and turn, flirting with the light but then disappearing into the blue, cool waters again. In and out. The agony in his gut was going to tear him apart, even as the beams ruthlessly held him in the light. He screamed as the poison burned its way out of his soul, scrabbling to get away from that light, willing to tear him apart to do it. He tried to let the light do its work, purify him, even as the pain was so intense he shamed himself by crying out.
Then he was going up again, limp in the hold of the light, his body shuddering, too weak to straighten.
Wet sand. He was on a beach, the water lapping at his feet, tide rushing over his bare buttocks and genitals. Just for a moment, he was disoriented enough to look for Anna's cottage, but that was too much to hope for. She was beyond his reach now, and likely safer. No, she was in danger. Wasn't she?
He made it to a knee, clutching his stomach, tried to rise and stumbled. Working his way up the beach on his hands and knees, he used his wings for balance. Though he couldn't yet stand, he stayed at least that far off the ground, taking shuddering breaths.
He couldn't collapse in the presence of the Lady.
The body of water he'd climbed out of was no longer an ocean, but a tranquil lake, just a piece of mirrored glass on which She stood, directly in the center. The Sea of Glass.
Though he still shook from having the poison extracted from him before he reached Her presence, the disorientation had settled. Nothing of the Dark Ones could bear any proximity to Her. Had he enlisted Raphael's help from the beginning to remove the poison, this was likely what the Full Submission angel would have done to ensure his healing was complete. Though Raphael might have chosen gentler methods to do the initial extraction. Well, Luc would say he deserved the pain. Bloody black-winged bastard.
Jonah finally managed to get to his feet, turn, and then purposefully drop to one knee. He stayed on the beach, though, while She still stood in the middle of the lake, facing away from him.
"Why do you not approach, Jonah?" Her voice was the breeze, the answer to so much inside of him, answers for the questions he couldn't ask.
"You might be part of a vision, my Lady."
"That's not an answer. Vision or not, you've always come and knelt at my feet, where I may place my hand upon you. Do you hate me so much now? Have I lost your love?"
The idea of it, voiced like that, in this place, did more than tear at his gut. It cracked his heart, twisted like the vicious bite of a sword in the empty place where the poison had been, leaving him an empty shell. It made him squeeze his eyes shut.
"No, my Lady. I . . . I must return. The shaman holds me here, but there . . . I must protect David and Anna."
"Do you fight so hard to protect them because you can't remember anymore why you fight for me? Has it been lost in the blood?"
She turned then. A woman. She'd chosen the simple form of an average mortal woman, and yet the energy that poured off of Her had him closing his eyes again, his heart breaking with all of it, everything. She was overwhelming as always, and whether he was seeing Her in the vision or in reality, She was here, inside of him, where he hadn't allowed Her to be for so long.
"Let me tell you a story, Jonah. A story of a young Goddess, who had to learn that compassion can have terrible consequences."
She moved over the water, and the scent of Her reached his nose, a mixture of several things. Deep earth, salty foam. The wind whispered as she moved. Fire was not a part of Her, but he often sensed it lingering upon Her person, one of Her many mysteries.
"I pondered whether to tell you this story before you found your own truth. May I touch you, Jonah?"
Never in over a thousand years had She had to ask. But he knew free will was both the blessing and curse of all species, except to those who delivered themselves for Full Submission.
"I'm unclean, Lady," he said, his voice choked. "I can't . . . I won't take the chance of tainting Your Spirit."
In all of those thousand years, he'd never lied to Her. Not until now. He couldn't bear Her touch, wouldn't bear Her looking at him, seeing all he was, had become. He understood now the stories of betrayers of gods, how they sought to hide from the face of their deity out of shame, revulsion. The darkness gnawed at the flesh of his soul, whispered evil, and it did so without the help of the poison.
The poison had to attach to something, Anna . . .
"Jonah." Her voice was the voice of love and compassion. Of justice. Of endings and beginnings. "You fear my answers to your questions. You fear it will further wall your heart against me, if the answers are wrong. But your fears have already built that wall, and that is what will keep you from your true self.
&nb
sp; "The essence of everything I have created in the Universe is feeling. The male balance to that is structure. You have lost the feeling part of yourself. Rejected it. The branches of a tree spread far. Its leaves are magnificent colors. You can see the tree, touch it and smell it with your physical senses, but it is your soul that feels it, finds pleasure in it. Structure and feeling."
When She took a step forward, Jonah's muscles quivered. Just short of a flinch. She stopped. During the long moment that passed, he could hear a woman weeping somewhere.
"I shall tell you that story, after all," she said quietly.
"I am at Your service, my Lady."
Her robes rustled, like leaves in truth, but She didn't come closer. When Jonah lifted his head, he saw She was sitting on a rock that had materialized for Her. A mist drifted around Her, partially obscuring Her features from him.
"Back before the world was formed, I wandered between the worlds, dimensions, galaxies. Saw what had been created, what had potential, what was being formed . . . I found the Dark Ones, their dimension. All the utterly dark venom of it, a vat of hopeless despair. It was unfathomable to me, having no purpose I could understand except hatred and killing. At length, I wondered if I'd stumbled upon a well from which other worlds draw in measured amounts to balance and challenge good with the existence of evil. Perhaps that is their purpose. I did not know. Still do not.
"But something was about to change. They were at a pinnacle of evolution. The Dark Ones could not reproduce, and while immortal, their numbers could still be decimated. So they'd learned, with great effort, how to create children, only not through the sacred act we know and enjoy. They'd created bodies out of the clay of their world and infused them with breath and their darkness. There were nearly a thousand of them, preparing to be 'born.' As evil is not adept at creating life, the effort required of the Dark Ones to do just these thousand had apparently taken them thousands of years. As I moved among them, unnoticed, I could not bear it, all that potential life intended for evil. I thought, 'Perhaps the spawn of these evil creatures will have a chance at love and life if there is just one small spark inside each of them . . .' "