Chapter 14
Holy Hell’s Bells!
Yes, Manea was terrifying, especially since she’d been the cause of Jasper’s human death centuries earlier. But for Savannah, he’d fight the Devil himself. In truth, he’d rather battle Manea and Lucifer together than this cuckoo deity who was laughing in his face now. This guy had the market cornered on the mad-scientist-freakshow act.
Jasper was grateful Mantus wasn’t sporting his usual attire of a four-hoofed giant with the ears of a satyr and leathery wings sprouting from his back. Wearing Billy’s lanky teenage form with dirty blond hair falling in his eyes made him seem a little less overwhelming.
A little.
“Good to see you again, Mantus. New suit, I see.” Jasper schooled his features to show nonchalance instead of the fury brimming to the point of eruption that he truly felt. He reached for his guardian dagger held at the small of his back. It would take more than a slice from his blade to kill this deity, but it’d be a start.
Billy’s usual baby-blue eyes were glossed over, every vein in his eyeballs flaring to crimson life, giving the illusion they were bleeding. Jasper hoped the possessed boy hadn’t been irrevocably damaged already. He eased forward another small step.
“Yes, the young lad is… suitable for now. It’s been so long since I had a true sacrifice of a virgin boy to feed on.” Mantus licked his lips. Jasper shuddered involuntarily. “But I’ll need a stronger vessel soon. This body”—he gestured to himself—“can’t hold me for long. Such a shame.”
Jasper edged forward two more baby-steps. “So, how’s the little wife? You two lovebirds still happy? Any more rug rats from your blessed union?”
Mantus hooted with laughter so loudly that it startled the horses in the far barn. Jasper heard their frightened whinnies as well as the snorting of the bulls in the closest barn to the office.
“The little wife—as you put it—has been ruining all my fun for the last millennia or so. I half suspect one of our two sons isn’t really mine. Lares is too much of a golden child to ever be of my blood.”
Good to know. Cheating wife. Bastard child.Mantus may not be conspiring with Manea at all. If I could turn them against each other, there could be a way out of this hellish mess.
“Women! Can’t live with them, can’t kill them.” Jasper forced himself to smile at the loony-toon god as if they could sit at the local bar and bitch about their women over beers and watered-down whiskey.
Mantus—who had not yet lowered the Colt 45 revolver—seemed to consider Jasper’s words for a moment. Then he laughed maniacally again, tears streaked with blood running down his face.
When he finally stopped cackling, he sneered at Jasper. “Perhaps there is another way.”
Okay, that’s promising.Mantus wasn’t above killing his eternal spouse. If he didn’t murder the shrew while Manea still possessed Savannah, the plan forming in Jasper’s head might just work.
But would this potential deal he was about to offer up be a deal with the Devil? Or worse? He’d traded favors with Lucifer in the past. Not something he was proud of, but the situation had called for extreme measures. And saving the woman he loved? It would be worth the price.
“I’m all in favor of suggestions. What’s on your mind, Mantus?”
***
Savannah couldn’t see a thing. It wasn’t dark, quite the opposite. A blinding white light was everywhere. She screwed her eyelids shut.
Still, the light painfully lanced through her closed eyelids.
Her body ached more than when she’d first learned to ride a horse. She might not have been able to see, but her other senses were working in overdrive. The pungent stench of death assailed her nose, causing bile to rise in her throat. It smelled like roadkill mixed with a week’s worth of bull manure combined with all the trash accumulated at the end of a week-long rodeo.
She reached out to get a sense of her surroundings, but found nothing solid—only a stinging, burning energy that zapped every molecule. A buzzing filled her ears; no other sounds broke through, just concert-level decibels of white noise.
Savannah racked her brain for an explanation. The last thing she remembered was confronting Mama over her cursed walking stick after the Lakota spirits had clued her in about the cursed object. Then the handle had melted.
She tried to push beyond that memory only to have her mental vault door slam shut.
Dammit!
Where’s Jasper? Wasn’t he supposed to keep me safe?Wherever she was, whatever this was… she wasn’t safe. Her gut screamed that loud and clear.
Jasper. What if something happened to him? What if…
Her hands clenched until her nails bit through her callused palms in an attempt to fight off her panic. He has to be okay. He just has to be. Her heart would accept no alternative.
Well, if her physical body could provide no answers, she had to find another way. She took ten calming breaths, holding each inhale one count longer than the last and each exhale even longer, just the way Jasper had taught her years earlier. With each breath in, divine white light entered her nose, flowed down her throat, and into her lungs. Each exhale expelled grayish matter in puffs of acrid smoke, cleansing her body of spiritual debris. Her racing heart slowed to a mere flutter.
The oppressive air surrounding her cleared in an instant. The odor of death evaporated, leaving behind the scent of a salty, ocean breeze intermingled with a woodsy floral perfume of white orchids. Opening her eyes, the blinding white light retreated, unveiling a pristine sandy beach with calm, clear water lapping at the shore. A cool breeze tickled the strands of hair that brushed against her cheeks.
This was her sacred space—where her soul escaped during her meditations to soothe herself. A place she had never physically been to, but where her spirit visited to be nourished and refreshed.
Her sanctuary.
Her breathing became steady, but deep. Anxiety fled from every pore. Negative energies had no place here and were easily banished. Only love dwelled here.
Basking in the warmth of the sun, Savannah relaxed every muscle, starting from her scalp to the tips of her toes. She allowed the fresh energies to take root into the sandy ground, twisting and intertwining to the very crystalline core of the earth.
As the divine energy from above showered over her, a fresh pulse of grounding energy rushed up to meet it and intermingled, filling every cell of her body and aura with serenity. Where the energies met in her heart center, two glimmering tetrahedrons intersected and formed a symbol of sacred geometry—the Merkabah. Its three-dimensional energy field bloomed around her, uniting her own feminine and masculine energies with those of the cosmos and encasing her in its protection.
Nothing bad could touch her in this place.
Savannah allowed herself to be encompassed by the light, which wasn’t harsh like the light that had blinded her earlier. This was pure love.
A voice faintly called her name as if the ocean breeze carried the sound from a faraway shore unseen over the horizon.
“Savannah! Where are you?”
Rex? Josiah? Big Pete?Other male voices joined in. How can I hear the cowboys from the rodeo—my family—in my meditation?
The ocean scene pixelated and fell away, another picture forming in its place. A dozen or more trucks were packed with familiar faces who were calling out for her, searching. She raised her hands and waved frantically to flag them down, but no one saw her. The trucks rumbled past, kicking up red dust in their wake.
“Guys, I’m over here!” she shouted, but no sound escaped her lips.
She slumped to the ground, expecting the hard earth of a Midwestern pasture—mostly dirt with patches of weeds and grass here and there. But she found her butt sinking into the warm white sand of the beach. Dejected and dispirited, she blinked back tears.
“Must have been a vision,” she chided herself. Not real. Or at least she hadn’t been real in that reality.
The cowboys were searching for her. That made sense. But if they couldn’t see her in their world, then where the hell was she? Her mind had been transported to this place of solitude and peace, but where was her physical body?
A wave of panic ripped away the earlier illusion of internal peace she’d enjoyed from the meditation. She jumped to her feet, spun around, and combed the horizon for a sign to show her where she truly was. Desperate to break out of her meditative state, she dug her nails into her palms to the point blood oozed down her fingers to splash on the white sand.
No change.
The only sound was the soft waves of the water colliding with the beach. No birds chirped overhead. No other voices. Just silence. And though it soothed her nerves, loneliness pressed in.
“Jasper, where are you? Please find me. I need you.”
Savannah prayed the wind carried her words to him. Only a guardian angel could help her now.
While she should be irritated that her mind had capitulated that she indeed needed someone else to save her, she accepted that some things—this situation especially—were not in her sphere of control.
It would take a miracle.