Chapter Forty #6
I saw her in my head like a daydream, hair spun of light so that you could never call it blond, but yellow, or even gold didn’t describe the color of her hair, not really.
Her skin was a shade of paler light as if I needed other words that meant white and energy, and fire, and ice, and elemental things that did not exist for humans.
Her body was perfect, because she’d created it for me, the fantasies of a teenage boy and her own preferences from human media, thoughts and wishes.
She would always be my fantasy made almost flesh, except she could never get it quite right, because short of incarnating she couldn’t be human, but then human was overrated, I thought as I stared into her eyes like blue sky, but a sky that never ended and never touched the Earth.
It was like looking into eternity, beautiful eternity.
She reached one shining hand out toward me, and I knew that all I had to do was reach back and I could travel the music of the spheres and the light of God to find her.
I tore myself away from Jamie, screaming, “NO!”
Jamie stumbled back against the table as if I’d shoved him. He had to grab the edge of it to steady himself or I would have knocked him to the ground. “I didn’t know she was still there waiting for you.”
“She’s eternal, she can wait forever,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Z, I didn’t mean to channel her.”
“You were the clearest, purest channeler in our year at the College. It’s not your fault; when the higher angelic orders want to speak through you, it’s not like you can say no.”
“You said no.”
“She isn’t trying to use me as a channel to speak through, Levanael.”
“No, she wants you the way a woman wants a man. I didn’t know that she had fallen, I’m so sorry, Zaniel.”
“Is she completely fallen now? Did I damn us both?”
“You’re not damned, Z, and neither is she.”
The tears were back, why was I crying? “Are you sure?”
“She hasn’t joined the enemy, so she’s not damned, and not completely fallen, just sort of . . . crisped around the edges.”
“She didn’t look burned to me.”
“I don’t mean literal fire, Zaniel, you should know that.”
I nodded and wiped at the stupid, traitorous tears.
“I’d forgotten how good it felt to channel the higher levels of the angelic.” He raised his hand up in front of his face. “I feel like my skin should glow with all the power.”
I didn’t know what to say, because I was so scared, I could taste iron on my tongue. I’d felt her twice today. The first time was my fault, getting too caught up in my old abilities, but this time, I hadn’t done anything to call her to me this time, which meant she’d sought me out.
“I can’t imagine what it was like to touch her for real like you did, Z. If it felt better than this, I couldn’t have told her no.”
“One of us had to be strong enough to stop, or she would have fallen. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t be responsible for that, for her being . . . lost.”
“You were what nineteen, twenty?”
“Yeah, somewhere in there.”
“How did you have the strength to question it at only twenty?”
“I prayed for guidance and strength and God gave it to me.”
“When I prayed for God to help quiet my mind, nothing came.” The happiness in his face began to fade. The confidence and power that he’d gained from channeling an angel began to seep away like a cup with a crack in it. It hurt my heart to see it happening in front of me.
I wanted to hug him again, but I was afraid to touch him too much, afraid that She would come back through the clear channel of Jamie’s talent.
I put my hand on his shoulder where the shirt protected us both from skin-to-skin contact.
I prayed that it would be enough to protect us from her attention.
The touch on his shoulder made him look at me.
“Some prayers take longer to answer than others, Levanael.”
His eyes held sorrow like rain to drown all the sunshine in the world. His eyes had always been like that; expressive didn’t quite cover Jamie’s eyes. How could I help him? Then the thought came, and I thought, Oh, yeah , and felt slow for not thinking of it sooner.
“Let’s pray,” I said.
His eyes focused on me instead of on the dark thoughts in his head. “I remember you used to ask me that when you found me on the streets. We even tried it a few times and it didn’t help.”
“ ‘Prayer isn’t a grocery list for miracles, it’s a tool for talking to God.’ ”
Jamie smiled and his eyes filled with it. “Master Sarphiel said that all the time in every class we had with him.”
“ ‘Prayer is just one way to bring yourself into alignment with the divine,’ ” I said, repeating another common refrain from Master Sarphiel.
“ ‘Any person on the planet can pray, Levanael, you must do better than that.’ ” He even got the inflection of the voice right.
It made me laugh. “Inside the College with all the wards and magical shielding, yes, but outside in the world let’s just pray, okay?”
Jamie’s smile wilted around the edges. His serious eyes studied my face. “You’re afraid she’ll come back through me again, aren’t you?”
I took a breath trying to think how to word it, then finally nodded.
“It felt good to channel her. It felt good to be an Angel Speaker again,” Jamie said.
“Angels speak to me, but they speak through you.”
“Only because I’m not strong enough to meet them in person like you are, like Suriel was.”
“Neither of us was a clear enough channel for God’s grace and light to shine through us.”
“Master Bachiel said I was too empty, and the two of you were too full of yourselves, to be a clear channel for the divine.”
“You mean we were too arrogant in our power to let anyone speak through us, even God.”
“No, you both had strong enough personalities that there wasn’t room for anyone else.
I was always less sure of myself than either of you.
Master Bachiel said I didn’t fill up all the room inside myself, that’s why I channeled so easily and why I could hear prayers.
I was closer to the angels that sat nearer to God, reflecting his glory and praise. ”
“I don’t remember him saying that to you.”
“It was in one of our private sessions. He was training me to be his successor at one point, remember?”
I nodded. “I remember.” I had thought it was a bad idea at the time.
Surrie and I had both thought that Jamie was too gentle and felt too deeply to match the sternness of Bachiel.
I’d been amazed when the College said that Jamie was the first student in decades that rivaled Master Bachiel’s abilities, and that he should train him.
Their gifts from God might have matched, but nothing else did.
“What are you thinking, Zaniel?”
I was startled too far into my own memories, so I told him the truth. “I always thought that Bachiel wasn’t a good mentor for you; just because your gifts matched didn’t mean that he was the right teacher for you.”
“You and Surrie said so at the time, but the College and Bachiel insisted, and everyone else told me it was an honor to be groomed to take Bachiel’s duties on. Why didn’t he help me shut out the pain of all the unanswered prayers, Z?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to contact the College and find out.”
He grabbed my arm and I startled, half expecting her to take him over again, but it was just his hand on my skin, just him and me. Something tight and scared in my gut eased.
“Don’t go back, Z, if you do she’ll find you.”
I nodded. “After I told the College what had happened between us, She was put in a place between.”
“You mean they imprisoned her?”
“No, She agreed to enter because there’s really no way to lock up one of the seraphim, not really. She agreed to meditate on her transgression to decide if she saw it as an actual sin. She thought I would stay at the College and finish my training if she exiled herself, and she was half right.”
“You finished your training. I remember you coming and finding me to tell me you’d become an Angel Speaker. I was proud and happy for you, but I was ashamed that I had failed so utterly.”
“I’m sorry, Levanael, I just wanted to share it with you, but I was selfish and didn’t think how you’d take it.”
“That was the first time you took me to a hospital and got me locked up.”
“You were trying to hurt yourself.”
“I don’t remember everything, but I know it was bad. You were trying to keep me alive; some of the voices told me that you’d help me stay alive. It’s probably why I kept coming to find you sometimes.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t let you stay with me all the time.”
“I scared your little boy the last time. I remember that much. I’m so sorry, Z. I hope he won’t be scared of me forever. I hope he’ll forgive me.”
“I think he will,” I said, but thought that I wouldn’t put the two of them in the same room until Jamie had proven the recovery was permanent. Connery would get over one scare, but multiple ones . . . I didn’t want to push it. If I got my best friend back, I wanted my son to love him like I did.
“I’m too nervous to pray to God right now, Z. Emma introduced me to the Goddess and she’s, they’re both, it’s like the energy I’ve been missing. I’m not sure what God will think about that.”
“I work with a lot of people that follow the Goddess. They’re good people, and I don’t think God is as jealous a God as the Old Testament makes him out to be.”
“I think you’re right, but I’d still rather wait to test the theory.”
“You had an angel, a seraph, speak through you, Levanael. If that doesn’t speak to your purity of heart and soul, I don’t know what does.”
He smiled then. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. If you’d tried to get me to agree to channel an angel, especially one of the higher orders, then I’d have been too scared, felt unworthy, but it just happened and it worked. It means I’m not damned after all.”
“Why would you be damned, Levanael?”