Chapter 16 #2
We’ve crossed the length of the backyard and come to a stop at the tree line. I squint up at Jaak. “What’s the catch?”
“When we battle, and make no mistake we will battle, our strength will only come through true surrender. Here,” Jaak taps a finger to my chest and then my temple, “and here. We must become one in every sense of the word. Only then will you be able to access my power.”
I don’t want access to Jaak’s power, I don’t even want to think about taking it for my own safety, but if it means being able to finally protect my friends then I’ll do it.
“Once we do this, you will be my anchor and my sword. When you raise your hand against a foe, so will I. You will be a scourge in this world to any that stand before you. None will be able to go against you. Not without calling hell itself down on them. Do you accept this, Bride of the Hell Maw?”
My breath catches in my throat. This is big bad news but in the best way. I’m going to be the big bad news that comes down on the mages and the cult that think it can make Charlie lose his mind and attack Buffy and my friends.
The choice Jaak is offering me is easy to make.
“I do. I want that. Please.”
In the weeks that have passed since the fall of the old cult and the rise of the new one, I’ve heard a saying over and over again: "Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I don’t know who said it first or where it comes from but I know they’re right.
It does corrupt. I’ve seen it over and over again and a spike of fear rises in my throat.
Is that what’s going to happen with me? Will I turn into a foul and ugly thing, someone out for their own gain because I’ll be the one with the power?
My fear only lasts for a second before it cracks and breaks into a million little pieces.
Jaak smiles, the morning light making him as beautiful as he was in the moonlight.
That’s all it takes, that flash of earnestness and warmth from him to bring me back to earth.
I won’t be evil. I won’t. I won’t be like my parents or the men who forced me to obey.
I’ll be good. I’ll do the right thing.
“Please is not something you need to use when it comes to me. Anything that is mine, is yours, ask me and I would bring down heaven itself for you.” He’s going to kiss me, I know he is from the way he leans in closer.
My heart starts to race when he tilts my head up and cards his fingers through my hair.
“Take what you will of me, my heart. You only need to ask what you desire and it’s yours. ”
I put my hands on his shoulders and offer my mouth to him.
Jaak claims my mouth in a kiss so sweet that I forget where I am.
My toes curl into the grass beneath me and I lean into my husband.
When I open my mouth to him, heat flares between us and the bond from me to him grows heavy and warm on my skin, like a well worn chain.
When I tug on his shoulders to bring him closer, Jaak bends low, big body curling over mine so there isn’t an inch of space between us.
My body feels alive, my breasts ache and I feel a heat burn inside of me that I’ve never felt before.
Jaak stands straight and my feet leave the ground but we never break apart.
The longer we kiss the more I can feel the familiar tug at my mind that signaled the start of one of my night terrors.
Jaak said they were memories and I believed him before, but now I understand it.
His memories come flooding into my mind and there’s so much I don’t understand.
The flash of a green pasture with the sound of a woman humming, the chiming of bells in the distance and children laughing, it all vanishes into the blow of a war horn, the sound of battle and screams, the blinding light of an explosion.
That battle and so many more flash through my mind faster and faster.
A sword raises in front of me, the light of two suns bearing down, orange and purple, and I realize the sword is mine.
It’s in my hand. The side of it flashes and I see myself, but it’s not me.
It’s Jaak. It’s his hand that holds the sword, clawed with dark brown fur bleeding into tattooed muscled skin.
When I look at the reflection in the sword, its two horns, and fur that I see, a snout pierced with a gold ring and lips drawn back in a snarl.
Blood drips down the side of his face, the fur and skin there so bloodied, so dark, I don’t know what color it is.
I wouldn’t think it’s him but then I see his eyes.
They are the same dark eyes that I know.
They look like liquid amber in the dying light of those two suns.
This is his true face. Why does he hide it from me?
All around the battle rages on. I hear death screams and explosions, the sound of a fortress crumbling and the delighted cheers of the demons at Jaak’s back. Then there’s nothing.
The silence is deafening and it echoes in my ears in a way I well know from years of being locked up as a child but it’s not the basement that I’m in now.
I’m not me, I’m Jaak. I’m here with him at the gate of the Hell Maw imprisoned and silent.
I don’t know how long we sit there in the dark.
Little by little I forget who I am, my own name, the sound of the wind, the way water feels or what a voice sounds like when someone speaks.
I lift my hands to my throat and try to make myself talk but there’s nothing. I’ve forgotten how to do that too. The only thing I have is the darkness, bleak and silent. Until the light comes.
At first it’s just a pinprick in vast nothing in front of me but slowly it grows and the pinprick becomes a line that runs the length of the gate that gradually broadens to let in the world.
I press my fingers to the opening and feel the wind tickle my fingertips.
The sun warms my skin and it’s that light through only a crack in the wall that reminds me that this is not a dream.
It’s real. That there’s a world, life, so much more outside of the never ending darkness.
And yet, in that never ending darkness where I’ve forgotten how to speak, I hear my voice. I don’t know what I’m saying but I know it’s me. My laughter comes a second later, it fills the space and for a moment I forget the nothing surrounding me.
“Meadow,” I hear Jaak say softly from somewhere in the dark and I understand now what he meant when he said that I saved him. When he had nothing, he had me.
“Jaak,” I say and the world comes rushing back around us like a flood.
We’re not in the dark empty place that held him prisoner.
We’re here, together. I hold tight to him, one hand wrapped in his hair, my other arm looped around his neck to keep my mouth to his.
When he breathes, so do I. Our tongues move together just the way our bodies do.
I don’t want to let go of him, not now, and not ever.
My heart and body ache from what I’ve seen.
He was a prisoner just like me but all of that has changed.
We’ll never be controlled or locked away like that, not me, not him, not ever again.
I won’t let it happen.
“I’m ready.” I press my forehead to his and stare into those dark eyes that I’m quickly coming to recognize and smile at him.
He smiles back. “Clear your mind. This will take but a moment.”
I take a deep breath and do as he says and a second later I feel the first brush of power push against me.
It presses close to my chest until it forces its way inside of me and then it grows.
It’s warm and heavy, the weight of it becoming heavier by the second and it’s hard not to react.
I feel like I’m being burned from the inside out, like I’ve swallowed a sun but I don’t make a sound.
If I do, Jaak might stop. I don’t want him to stop.
Another minute or maybe an hour goes by, I don’t know and the heat in my body snaps, as if something inside of me has been released.
The fear and anxiety I’ve drowned in has been cut with one neat slice of a knife and now…
and now every part of me is spilling out.
All the versions of me, who I wished I was, what I wanted to do, how I thought my life would be with a different family, or never born into the cult and made to be a Blossom.
All of those different versions of me force their way free and the power goes with them.
It happens so quickly that I don’t realize what’s happened until I hear a resounding boom that splits the air like an axe.
It sounds like it’s right above us and I scream and press myself closer to Jaak while the trees sway and creek and wind whips around us like a tornado.
Jaak holds me while the wind calms around us until it’s nothing but a gentle breeze.
I open my eyes and look around. “Is it over?” Everything looks…
okay. I mean, the house is still standing so that’s a win, right?
I don’t even see a broken window. The only thing that looks like it suffered is a tree in the corner of the yard that’s fallen over.
“It is,” Jaak says. He gently puts me down on my feet and gives my shoulders a squeeze. “You have done what few have ever survived. Well done, Meadow.”
I look up at him in surprise. “Are you telling me that I could have died?”
“Not died. No.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, because for a minute there you had me thinking something crazy would-”
“But those with weaker minds have gotten lost in the journey. Some never find their way out.”
The dark cave of nothing comes to mind and I gulp.
I could have been stuck there forever? “Ah, that’s-that’s something I could have gone without knowing to be honest. If I ever am in danger of getting stuck in some memory prison just don’t tell me, okay?
If I get stuck, I get stuck and that’s how I go but I’d rather not know. You can do that, right?”
“For you, anything. But if you get stuck I’ll be there with you.”
I smile at him because just like that, getting stuck in a mind prison doesn’t seem so scary anymore.