Chapter 28
“We’ll find him, Lucy,” Linda assures me for the hundredth time, as I pace around the circle of elders. They’re preparing yet another locator spell, a stronger one this time, using Sam’s battle halo, rather than his everyday tunic or his kingship halo, since it’s the most recent thing he wore that’s still here. It should still have a strong imprint of his energy signature on it. In theory. I’m not convinced.
A week since his abduction and about a thousand versions of this spell later, and there is still no trace of him. It’s like he vanished from the fabric of the universe.
“You said that yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that,” I mumble, sounding grumpier than I mean to. They’re doing all they can to get him back, practically moving heaven and Earth to do it, in fact. I’m just frustrated that I can’t personally do more. How can I save him if I don’t know where to find him? “You can’t be sure it will work this time.”
“That’s true,” my grandmother admits, her worried gaze following me as I prowl around the room. “We don’t know what wards Jonathan may have put around Sam to keep him hidden. All we can do is keep trying.”
“It’s not good enough!” I cry, pounding my fist into my hand. “We need to get him back. I need him to be here, with me.”
Ella approaches me from her perch in the corner of the room. She’s hardly left my side all week, commiserating with me in my misery, just as frantic to get her brother back safely as I am. She puts a comforting arm around my shoulder, and I lean my head on hers, briefly.
“We do have other options,” she reminds the group. They know. We’ve discussed them almost as many times as we’ve tried this spell.
“Yes, but none of them are practical,” I moan, wishing we could use one of Ella’s ideas. They’re all excellent, just not prudent.
“If we just sent out one of the archangels…” she begins.
“We only have two of them, and they’re our strongest fighters,” Linda cuts her off, knowing what she’s going to say. “If Jonathan brings his army back, we’ll need them both. Plus, we can’t risk them being captured by one of their own. You heard what the four we interrogated said. Jonathan has promised any of them who join his army their own universes to rule once he takes over this one, and they believe he has the numbers to back up that promise. Other archangels may have been swayed to his side, and that means they may be getting to the guardians. If the guardians join them, Jonathan’s army could recruit regular people, not just seers, and they would all come here to try to fight us. We need every defense we can get, Ella. We can’t send either of them away from the town. Sam wouldn’t want us to, either. You know it.”
In fact, our two archangels are in charge of guarding the four I froze in time during the battle. We quickly discovered they wouldn’t un-freeze unless I personally un-froze them….something that took a few tries for me to learn. It gave us an excellent opportunity to get them into the same type of angel-proof restraints Jonathan used on Sam, and put under constant guard in the local police station, which has now been converted into our interrogation facility and prisoner of war camp. Once I un-froze them, they were surprisingly talkative, especially once our own archangels “encouraged” them.
Unfortunately, they were all exceptionally hostile in attitude and unflinchingly loyal to Jonathan. It seems, for a mere Earth Angel, and far lower on the caste totem than the archangels would normally deign to speak to, he is extraordinarily charismatic, just as Aaron and Kira said. Even more troubling, he is apparently in touch with some dissatisfaction in the balance of power among a large faction of the more powerful angels. Jonathan gave them a cause they believed was worth fighting for….themselves.
Fortunately, an equally large portion of archangels favor the existing system of serving and protecting the various parts of the universe, as they’ve been doing since the beginning of time. The bad news is that with the most powerful angels of this universe so divided, they are heading toward civil war, with the inhabitants of the universe’s planets choosing sides and fighting with them, or becoming prizes for the victors. Jonathan saw this previously hidden conflict on the outskirts of the universe during his travels and quickly capitalized on it with a thorough and potentially do-able plan; the disaffected archangels discarded their prejudices against him as a lower caste angel, and jumped on board with him.
Our archangels said there is no precedent for anything like this in this universe as far as they know, and they’ve been around almost since the beginning. There has always been harmony among their kind. Angels of lower castes sometimes have minor skirmishes, hence the mandatory military training most of them go through when they’re young. The archangels, though were always united and above it all. Until now.
This makes the disaffected archangels just as much of a problem for us as Jonathan. While we know the conflict is going on around the one edge of the universe Jonathan has so far reached, it may be going on elsewhere, in other similarly hidden locations. If it’s not stopped, it will eventually affect the entire universe. In a way, Jonathan is controlling it by getting the rioting archangels on his side. But neither option…an archangel war or Jonathan controlling the universe and all the angels in it…is a good one.
“The spell is ready,” Linda announces, sitting back on her heels. The elders of our group sit in a circle on a sand floor inside their purposefully primitive log cabin meetinghouse, strange Enochian symbols drawn in the amber grains. Sam’s gleaming golden halo is in the middle of it all.
Ella and I draw back, letting them do their work. We aren’t magic practitioners, nor are we elders. Despite everything we can both do, this is something we have to leave to the older women who are called to it. For some reason no one knows, the really talented magic practitioners among the seers are always women. We could learn it, but would never reach the level of proficiency as the naturals who sit before us.
My surrogate sister and I clutch each other’s arms, hoping this time it will work, as the ladies before us hold hands and begin chanting the Enochian incantation. I know Ella understands every word, and I can pick up most of it by now. They are calling for the elements to come together and pick up Sam’s energy signature, pointing the way to him.
After a few minutes, a small flame pops up in the center space of Sam’s halo. The chanting stops, and Linda waves an intricately carved stick with a satchel of herbs hanging from the end of it over the flickering embers.
“Show us Sam, King of the Earth Angels!” she commands in Enochian.
The flame dances around a bit, and gradually, a shimmery, barely there image appears in its center. It takes a moment to resolve enough to make out any details. When it does, it is still hard to see, and transparent. Still, there is no mistaking what we’re viewing.
It’s Sam, in diamond chains…the only kind that can hold an angel…, looking blessedly unharmed, though his symbols of kingship are gone, his battle tunic is torn to tatters, and his skin is filthy and covered in soot and grime. His arms are secured to a rock wall high above him, stretched almost to their limit, and he hangs low, his knees bent, clearly past the point of being able to hold him up, which means all his weight is on his shackled arms. He is in pain and exhausted, that much is plain. But he raises his face as we watch, as if sensing us looking at him, and the defiant glint in his eyes and determined set of his jaw makes his situation plain. He is beaten and battered, yes, but by no means is he defeated.
I know Sam probably better than anyone, even his own sister, and I know he will never be defeated or give in as long as he lives. Even now, I’m certain he is formulating a plan to escape and take out as many of the enemy as he can in the process. I actually sense it, as if opening up the window on Sam created a portal for my seer senses to reach through. I can also feel his pain and how hard he is struggling to survive and get back to us. He feels like he failed us by getting captured, and he wants to make Jonathan pay for every life lost on the battlefield on both sides.
&nbs
p; The feelings are so overwhelming, I actually stagger backward a little. Ella, who has grown astoundingly strong in the past few months of training, holds me up with ease. “He’s alive, Lucy,” she whispers joyfully in my ear. “He’s alive!”
“Thank God!” I whisper back.
But I’m not entirely happy. He’s alive, but we still have no idea where he is, and he’s being tortured. I feel like my legs are going to crumple under me with the pain of seeing my most cherished love like this, especially when I can’t ride to his rescue. I know he would be tearing the universe apart to find me if the situation were reversed. I’ve been doing my best to do the same, but I feel like my efforts are so pitiful in comparison to what he would or could do. In that moment, I don’t feel worthy of him.
Ella seems to sense my despair and momentary self-loathing. “He knows you’re doing everything you can to bring him back,” she assures me. “He knows you love him. It’s probably knowing you’re safe and loving him that’s keeping him going, so don’t you dare feel sorry for yourself. You’re protecting him and keeping him alive just by being here, and by being his. Keep doing that, and he will come back to us.”
“You’re right. Of course, you’re right,” I say, ashamed I doubted myself. Sam wouldn’t want me to feel that way, and I always want to live up to his high expectations. I know he sees the best in me, when I can’t always see it in myself, just as I do for him. If he trusts that I’m doing what I can to rescue him while also doing what is best for our people…something else he would want me to prioritize,…then I can be secure in the knowledge he will hang on as long as it takes for us to be reunited.
With that realization comes the sure knowledge that we will be reunited. I feel better, but seeing Sam in pain and being tortured is still more than I can stand. I want to go to him now. The time for waiting is over. I can’t just leave him like this, wherever he is. I need to find him.
“Reveal this angel’s location!” Linda commands the flame, opening up the bag of herbs and sprinkling them over it. I don’t know what herbs she’s using, but each little flake of green lights up and glows like an orb, floating above the flame, circling it. Bit by bit, they form a line going upward and to the east. There are hundreds, even thousands of tiny pieces of dried herbs doing this, and they eventually make their way to the ceiling and out through the spaces between the logs.
I grab Ella’s hand and we run outside to see where they are going.
Up and up they go into the late afternoon sky, forming a perfectly diagonal line into the clouds and out of our range of vision.
“We’ve got to follow them!” I cry.
“Already on it.” Ella unfurls her wings, which she’s only done a handful of times since I’ve met her. An angel with full wing deployment is always something spectacular to behold, no matter how many times you see it. She takes my hand and flies upward, following the herbs, taking me with her.
I’ve only flown with angels a handful of times, but I liken it to Wendy and her brothers following Peter Pan to Neverland. Basically, it’s effortless and only requires that I touch the angel doing the flying. Therefore, holding Ella’s hand is all I need to do to stay airborne with her. It is so natural, it almost feels like I have wings myself.
We go up, following the glowing herbs, until we’ve almost cleared the Earth’s atmosphere. This isn’t a problem for Ella, since angels travel through space with ease, but I’m going to need some kind of protection from the vacuum and the cold. Once again, she’s one step ahead of me, and wraps a wing around me, giving me a shield much like a NASA spacesuit. She keeps going without missing a beat, taking it for granted that I want to fly into space with her. I love it that she knows me so well. Best friend psychic powers at work!
Ella picks up speed as the herbs move faster in the vacuum, and soon, we’re high above the Earth and the moon; in fact, they look like small specks below us. Before too long, a large, white sphere appears above us, shimmering with an inner light, the herbs disappearing in its glow as if going inside.
“What is that?” I ask, having never seen anything like it.
Ella stops her upward ascent, and hovers in place, frowning in confusion. “It’s the Dome,” she says, perplexed.
No wonder I didn’t recognize it. The one time I was here, Sam and I just materialized directly inside. I’ve never seen it from the outside. It’s amazingly beautiful.
The AngelSphere.
Why would Jonathan bring Sam home?