The Time Has Come: Dark Angel Creation (Part 31) CROSSOVER with Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (Part 4)
Written by @DeathsRenegade.
https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srigo6
*Misting back to Hawaii had been for the best. And, as Declan had warned, Sean had been waiting for me but I’d refused to allow him to heal my wounds. His gift of healing warred within him with the powers of Death even when he was merely allowing his empathy to overflow into soothing and balancing the reaper corps. Active use of it to physically heal was dangerous for him and I needed him whole, although he’d gritted his teeth in an effort to not shout at me and said the same to me. I’d settled for letting him use his senses to locate the bullets within me and dematerialize them out of my body, as nearly a sensitive task for him as actually healing the wounds, but one that relied only on his special gifts enough to allow him to find the bullets with his empathic sense. The power of the reaper to dematerialize solid objects let him finish the job. It was, in its way, an interesting test of his abilities. Normally, at my insistence, he took great care not to allow them to actively interact in order to prevent the different forms of power from mixing and risk killing him. This, however, was not a “mixing” of them, so much as using them in active coordination. Rather like Adrian using a flash of foreknowledge to direct Bryn’s fireball strike, each relying on the other for effectiveness but not blending the gifts. I shall have to think on the ramifications of this ability for future use.
With Sean’s successful ministrations finished, he had admonished me about taking foolish chances, to which I had simply looked at him with an arched eyebrow and replied “I took no chances, foolish or otherwise. It is not as though mortal weapons pose a serious threat to me and if I have not learned to deal with a little pain in 35,000 years I should not be your captain.”
He’d simply rolled his eyes and huffed at me. Sean would follow me to Hell and back but reticence when he feels I have done something risky is not his strength. And then he’d left me on the lanai and gone to have a private word with Declan. One that I’m sure involved a great deal of growling on both their parts, but as I had no interest in listening to it, I chose that moment to shift my black leathers into the loose white linen trousers and open shirt I preferred when at home and walk out onto sand. Sitting down on the on the beach I focus on the ocean before me, letting the eternal nature of the tides and the endless sound of the waves coming in calm my mind. Yet even as I do so, my thoughts turn to her, wondering if /she/ would value this as much as I, if the moonlight on the waves would bring her as much joy as it brought me. No matter how I try, that chance encounter is one I cannot easily put behind me.
She was beautiful, that was a certainty. Dark hair that had gleamed in the dim light, eyes a light blue, the irises rimmed in dark grey, the delicacy of her features belying the her warrior’s strength and grace. But her appearance was not what captured my thoughts now. No, it was the soul I had glimpsed.
It was unlike any I had seen before. As a reaper I perceive the soul in colors. Those ready to ascend were unfailingly a glowing white; those doomed to eternal torment a smudged black. And those traveling throughout their multiple lifetimes were myriad colors, depending upon where they had been before and what they had learned in this one. I had seen Nephilim souls before. They tend to be unique, the grace of the angelic parent blending with the soul that inhabited the physical form, my reaper senses seeing the metaphysical grace in the mortal soul as the same silvery-blue that runs through an angels veins. That angelic magick gives the Nephilim great power and strength, and it is fortunate that when an angel chooses a mortal companion it is the beauty of the soul that draws them. For this power to find its way into a darkening soul could have terrible consequences.
The woman’s…female’s, that is the word that vampires prefer according to Layla…the female’s soul had the distinct silvery-blue of grace woven through it intertwined with a very mortal red. In humans reds were often signs of an angry soul, but her mortal half was not human, it was vampire and I had seen that particular shade in them before on the rare occasions I had assisted them. In a vampire that shade of red, the deep, rich color of blood, denoted the purity of their soul and their readiness, should death claim them, to ascend into their Fade. The deeper and richer it was, the more prevalent in the aura, the more the vampiric soul had matured. In her soul it had not yet been the dominant color, leading to me to believe she has miles to go before her journey is done. Other colors had also swirled within her soul. The misty grey of a soul that has been hurt deeply; the green of the soul that has learned to work hard for what they wish; flecks of the deep blue of serenity and the soft yellows of energy and hope… and all combined in a way that was very familiar but that could not be what it seemed to me. But the most interesting thing of all had been the indigo. Indigo tells me the soul is indeed a very old one. Often the predominantly indigo soul will erupt into the white light of a being ready to ascend at the moment of their body’s death. And there should not have been indigo in her soul. Indigo in a soul, even small amounts, indicate one that is tens of thousands of years old, that has lived many mortal lives. Vampires souls live only one life, their souls at most a bare 1,000 years old. And the fact that she is an angel hybrid cannot account for this anomaly.
Abruptly my thoughts are interrupted by mental inquiry from one of my lieutenants. ‘Yes Adrian?’
“Zav, Celia, and I were followed to Truely’s by rogues. Bryn has given me a Dybbuk box to contain the souls until we’re ready to dispose of them, but Sin... first Layla and now Truely? They may not be aware that we went to you for help, but we’re making them nervous enough to keep us under surveillance. If they don’t know already, they’ll find out soon enough and then we’ve lost a tactical advantage.
‘They will not be able to find the Brazil house. The wards and our established protocols will only let them know you have disappeared. The same is true of my home and of Sean and Layla’s. If they cannot track you to those places then my anonymity should still be sound.’
“Maybe, Sin, but we the reapers that will fight with us know. When it gets obvious enough that neither the Horseman’s boys nor demons can find us when we go off radar, they’ll start putting pressure on the rank and file and sooner or later they’ll torture it out of someone. The less prepared the Horseman is to face you in the final battle, the greater the chance we win.”
He is not wrong. When I drop the dam that separates the Horseman’s power from my own, his response will be immediate but if he is unprepared for it I have an advantage that I am going to need. ‘Contact the others. Tell them to meet me in Brazil. The time has come.’
