I broke the surface and said, “I accept the power that has been given to me. I accept the cost that will come to me.” I whispered to the injured, “Be healed.” Magic, the power of the Glob andle breloque, sparked and flew from me and into them. Looking up into Eli’s eyes I smiled. Without taking my eyes from his, I said, “Let go of me.”
“Janie.”
“Do it.” His eyes went cold, the hard, blank gaze of his battlefield self. He released me. I dipped the seventh time. Snapped the magic braid away from them. The current caught me. Sucked me down. And pulled me into the deeps.
The water buffeted me, boiling up and sweeping down. My body followed the current. But instead of taking me straight down, it swept me under a ledge to the side and swiftly into the dark beneath the crevasse. The light vanished. I crashed into rocks, unable to protect my broken body. Pain shot through me and I figured the rocks had broken me open again and I was bleeding out what little blood I had left. I was desperate to breathe, but my throat seemed to have closed down again too. I was too weak to fight any longer.
The water began to cool. Then grow cold. The underground river rushed me through the mountain. In the cold dark, I opened the Gray Between wider around me, pulling the new magic into me, twining it about myself, about the star magics, about Dudley, tied it intole breloqueand the Glob. I didn’t struggle. Couldn’t struggle. The water grew colder and colder. My bodily functions began to close down. I gave in. I let the darkness take me.
CHAPTER 22
Dudley Had Caught Fire
I woke in the dark. I was lying in frigid water, the ground sandy beneath me. The roar of water surrounded me. Mist rose and fell. The sound and smell of this place was familiar. I was in the water below the waterfall in my soul home.
I had no idea if I was alive or not.
A light appeared in the darkness. On the bank over the stream stood Hayyel, his body glowing, his wings spread. He was dressed in white, loose pants and a tunic belted with a vibrant blue. He stepped down, across the rocky drop, the broken boulders looking suspiciously like the rocks below the cave in the crevasse. Which was odd.
He took my hand and pulled me from the water. Lifted me to my feet. I could stand, but I wasn’t sure this was real; it might be a vision. Probably was.
Hayyel helped me up the grade to the level floor of the tunnel. There he dropped my hand and turned, walking back toward the main room of my soul home. I was pretty certain that this wasn’t real, but something that was happening in my brain as I died. Not that I could change it. So I went with it.
I walked beside him, my clothes wet and clinging, my feet squelchy, in moccasins. I wasn’t in pain and when I touched my middle, I didn’t feel Dudley. I was wearing the woven cloth pants common to the men of my clan, with a long overshirt, tied with an even longer scarf. I was dressed kinda like Hayyel, or he was dressed like me. My vision, so my rules? At the thought, my clothes were dry. Yep. This was a vision.
My medicine bag and my doubled gold necklace were both around my neck. The Glob was in my belt. The Anzu feather was tight against my skin at my waist. My hair felt strange, and when I touched my head, I discovered two braids, the strands woven with feathers and beads and bits of ribbon and lengths of leather, which made no sense. The Cherokee didn’t adorn their braids often, and certainly not in a spirit dream. The hair was sort of like the vision of the soul. They should represent my spirit, my image of myself. Ornate and pretty wasn’t it. The braids swung with each step.
I was wearing the crown. Pulling it off, I threaded my left arm through it, propping the crown on my shoulder to carry. It felt good there.
After a bit, the angel said, “You did not take the path I expected.”
“Yeah. Drowning myself. Who’d’a thunk it? Surprised me too. Am I dead?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Okay. Sooo. What am I doing here?”
“You are in your soul home,” he said, stating the obvious. “The place where you first changed your shape and becameWe-sa.Bobcat. The place where you were welcomed into your clan. Where you fulfilled the genetic call to walk in the skin of animals.”
“Wait. No.” I plucked the clothing. Dry. Not stuff I owned. “Nope. Not reality. The rift did not take me to the actual cave.”
Hayyel chuckled. His laughter warmed me to my toes and rang through the darkness.Angel magic.“No,” he said. “This is no miracle or loop of time. This is your brain, taking you where you need to go, to your beginning. To your own origination story.”
Interesting choice of terms. “Like the origination story of the shadow.”
He nodded, clasping his hands behind his back as we walked. The sound of the waterfall fell behind. “Shimon and Yosace sacrificed their sister to bring back their father. Shimon ate her and took in her soul. You and your Beast sacrificed yourselves twice, the first time to survive together, becoming two-souled. And just now, the second time, to keep others alive. It is not exact, of course, but there are parallels. Your life has been one of violence, of death and war and pain. You are dying. And you have chosen a remarkable way forward.”
“The beloved woman was adaptable. War women have to be to survive.”
Hayyel glanced sidelong at me, amused. “You gave me the head of your enemy. I took her spirit to the other side.”
“Hell? Heaven?”
He unclasped his hands and flipped one back and forth. “Judgment is not my responsibility. But your choice was unforeseen.”
“I can’t see how. What else was I supposed to do with the spirit head of the shadow?”
“I expected you to kill the vampire and feed the soul of the shadow to your weapon.”
