Greys IV - Chains

Chapter 23 - What Love Is

Ailech tended to Jordan immediately after I released him, which was as soon as my mind could fight through the pain enough to realize I was still controlling him. His eyes flickered up once, past me to my mother's body, like he wanted to heal her too, but she was already gone, we both knew it.

He touched Jordan's forehead and closed his eyes for a few long seconds, her whimpered pained sounds mingling with my grunts, before she stilled. Then she looked peaceful, asleep even. A few more seconds of my well-deserved punishment coursed through me, and then it left as swiftly as it had come on. I let out the last breath I had been trying to hold in to stay quiet, and carved the memory into my mind, to remember why I had never disobeyed Baraqiel. The pain of disobeying your soul was the worst I had ever felt, even in my wealth of experience, like every spec of yourself was pulling away, being pulled apart, stretching in ways it shouldn't, skin, bones, blood, your organs and mind and marrow. It was like I was being separated, dissected, while still living. I drew my first steady breath and looked up.

"It isn't physical."

Ailech muttered his assessment of Jordan, though he wouldn't look me in the eyes, like he was only stating the fact for himself. Then he disappeared, sending his soul somewhere else. And though I couldn't see him, I felt he was still near, probably just on the other side of the door, in the dark parking lot or deserted lobby. Anywhere away from me. I didn't blame him.

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I wanted to wake up. I needed to. To get back to Ailech and Malachi and tell them what I knew, tell them that James was alive so we could search for him, find him and save him - so we could do something to make up for even a minute of the time we wasted thinking he was gone. Of the time he was really back with his father - in the only place that scared him, with the only person who scared him. The thought hurt so bad I wanted to scream, I wanted to be sick, to cry and rage. But I also wanted to dance around laughing like I was insane - he was alive! That one truth was both the best and the worst possible revelation my mother could have told me. But none of that mattered if I couldn't wake up.

Some semblance of consciousness settled on me, but it wasn't anything I had known before, been before, seen through before. I wasn't awake or asleep, I wasn't in a vision or a prophecy - I just was. Bodiless, voiceless, not looking through another's eyes, just seeing. I wasn't even real, but yet I was there. And I was aware that others were there with me. An energy ran through the room, a power.

Then I knew: Angels. I was there with the Angels, in Heaven, before the fall. I heard a voice, or felt it, in my mind and soul and being. I didn't know if it was mine or not, but I listened.

"As above, so also below. You know what will come to be. Angels will not be born of Earth, able to lay and create new - not until the First Children. Even then, only two, two halves made whole, two Angels, incomplete without the other. They will know pain and betrayal, loss and defeat, because that is what their Earth is. They will be equal darkness and light, and they will choose their own path, because that is what their Earth is. They will die on the Earth, of the Earth - killing their world's hold on them. And then they will return in true form, a pure form, for Heaven or Hell. It will be their choice.

There will be another, who will be gifted a dark power. And when he chooses it, the end may begin. Two will fall for one to survive, to rise. Her blood will save her, disobeying darkness to carry her away. Though her kin will carry two souls that day. Both who fall will return bound, one broken and one willing. And the saved, the final, her love will lay down her life. As above, so also below."

A new voice spoke, melodic and swaying. And even though it was different, light and fresh and new like a breeze, there was enough familiar in it for me to recognize. It was my mother's voice, back when she was an Angel, before any of the stories she had shared with me, before she was corrupted by the Earth she hated so much.