Exaltation (Insight #11)
Jamie Magee
Chapter One
Raptly, Jamison BellaRose paced before the fireplace in his home on Royal Street, the location of his latest kingdom. He’d lived for ages, in more than one dimension, in more than one realm of power. He’d fought more wars than he could ever remember, and negotiated twice as many. Yet, this night would test him in more ways than any other.
A manic scream stopped him dead in his tracks. He rushed from the parlor but was blocked by Saige, a young woman he’d claimed as his sister long ago.
“It’s almost over,” Saige offered in a tone rich with ambivalence. She nodded for him to go into the parlor and sit before the dark-stoned fireplace but he refused. Instead, he paced more, anger marring his angelic features.
Jamison assumed before this night was over his death would come; it would come because for the first time in his near infinite life he would be mortal. At best he would only have fifty years left on this plane. And that was only if the spells Saige had put in place served their purpose.
The withering look in her gray eyes—eyes that would not meet his—gave him his doubts, and that just would not do.
“Vow to me,” he said evenly, barely controlling the emotions coursing through him.
Saige made no effort to meet his desperate gaze. She was adamantly pacing the narrow foyer. The flames from the fireplace were dancing across the sheen of the marble surface. Her heels were clicking back and forth with her pace, offering an eerie echo, almost like a countdown.
She was not certain how this night would end, but she knew that both of their lives would be forevermore changed before the coming dawn.
Saige could remember when her own daughter was born, ages before, the agony and bliss of that night. The pain was not what brought her anguish; it was the fact that she knew her daughter would be imprisoned within the first twenty years of life. Saige knew she would spend the remainder of her existence trying to free her daughter, all for the good of man.
Her daughter, Skylynn, along with this babe that would be born within the hour, were a part of the Rapture the Dominarum coven had been waiting on for ages. A quest that began in a dying world, and led them all to the safety of the vast plane they were in now.
The Rapture, the rise of kings and queens, would slay the corrupt Gods of emotion and birth new ones who would in turn deliver a balance to the universe at large. Things like Rapture took time, and sacrifice, ages of sacrifice. There were times, like that very night, when Saige was certain man did not deserve a ransom such as this—one which would test pure souls, pure hearts.
In whispered thoughts she repeated an American poet’s, Dylan Thomas...
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Saige drew her brow together and thought, Words of such perfection, mirroring our immortal fight…
Jamison stole her from her thoughts. “How many years do I have…or am I down to mere moments? Will I at least get to see the babe?” Jamison demanded in a quiet tone that was nearly washed away by Raine’s screams.
Raine was his enemy, but she was now also the mother of his child.
Long ago, Jamison left the life of an Escort, the dark, demonic, angels who wounded souls by feeding on emotions they invoked…the essence of their soul. He left because they were not meant to be dark and twisted, but a salvation, those who protected souls.
The transgressions of his species, the cold greed—lust for power—had darkened the universe at large…birthed unspeakable myths. Ones this plane he was within now would only dare to call fiction.
The moment he saw Raine, a royal in the line of Wrath, in his kingdom of the French Quarter, he was prepared to destroy her, just as he had destroyed every threat that broached his people.
He didn’t care that her particular line of Escorts had the favor of the Creator, that it was rumored her Sovereign was seeking to bring her line back to salvation. He’d sensed her—her intent was clear—she was hunting him.
Before he could strike, Raine wrapped her body around his, seduction saturating her gaze. Her powerful energy pulled him into a drunken haze of lust. Unfeeling, cold, lust.
She was hunting him, she admitted so afterward. Her charge, given to her by the Creator, or so she says, was to make him a father.
Jamison called out to the Creator, one he knew, who had given him his reprieve from his past life, but he never replied.
Leaving Jamison with Raine’s very vague explanation. “I am but a vessel at current. This is my punishment for my sins.”
The plotting began then. Jamison didn’t trust her. He thought she’d vanish with the child, use his child for malice—his seed, a part of him.
He’d composed spells over her to keep her in place; her breed of souls could vanish without warning—rise to planes he could not reach any longer.
Raine never even tried to get past them, which confused him all the more. All she did was lurk in his lair, humming as she caressed her growing belly.
Still not trusting her, Jamison assumed the only way he could stop her from vanishing with the child when it was born was to make Raine mortal—a death sentence. The spell, one that would dethrone a deity from their power would all but kill Jamison. It would strip him of his immortality at the very least. Worth it. No child of his would ever feel terror.