Exaltation (Insight #11)(68)

“That’s not Berries,” Soren teemed as Raven felt his vim elevate to a threatening level. “Now,” he said in a tone that offered no compromise.

Raven was going to get the car all right—and drive it through the school. It’s not like that would be an odd thing to add to her record.

Raven was running at top speed when she slammed into someone. Raven screeched but then she heard her father’s voice. When she looked up at him, he already had his hands on her face and was looking over her.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Soren is facing off with Berries but it’s not Berries, and there are dark figures everywhere and Benjamin is back. I don’t know where the twins are!”

“They’re the ones who called me. They’re safe. Listen to me. I need you to hide in the Veil.”

“Dad, I can’t! I have to help Soren. This is wicked. Like not a good wicked!”

“I will not let anything happen to Soren, you know I won’t. Calm down and hide. Do that for me.”

“Dad.”

“Shh,” he said, as he glanced over her shoulder and a wave of rage came over his stare just before he looked back at her. Raven tried to turn and see what was behind her but he wouldn’t let her. “Veil. Deep breath. Do this for me.”

Raven let out a shaky breath but was way too wigged out to adjust any vision of hers to see a curtain. Right then she felt a wave of vim come over her, a numbing one.

Jamison was doing it. He was using his energy to calm her down. “Go,” he said right as the hallway changed to a field. “Run.”

And she did. Raven ran at top speed, feeling the evil at her heels. One glance over her shoulder told her she was right, men in black were not far off. She started saying where she wanted to go in the Veil, up, down, north, west, south. She said them all because she kept landing exactly where she didn’t want to be, either in the middle of gore or with those beings at her heels.

Finally she breathed one word: home.

That was when her entire world flipped upside down.





Chapter Twenty

There was no death. There was nothing that looked morbid, or dark. There was nothing odd at all. Raven felt peace, a peace like she had never felt before. The sun was so bright it took her eyes a second to adjust. When they did she saw the old man from the rink sitting in a chair whittling away.

What is he doing here?

“Um, excuse me?” Raven said, and as she did the sun dimmed. There was an awesome house before her. The one she had seen the last time she was in the Veil, the one that had the addicting music coming from it, that guitar. Up close it was easy to see this home was one that was out of this world.

It was made of brick but there were no straight lines in its structure. There were terraces, porches, bay windows, recessed windows, it was like everything in one. And everything except this home was now shrouded in darkness.

The old man glanced up. “You seem lost.”

“You know my dad.”

“Very well, a good man.”

“Agree. I’m so lost. He sent me in here to hide but I was scared and moved a thousand different ways, now I don’t know how to get back.”

“What command did you say to reach here?”

“Home. But this is not my home.”

The old man smiled faintly. “The Veil is eccentric in that it leads you to truth. And it rarely sees home as a structure, but more so something much more irreplaceable.”

“I have only ever had one home in my life. Well, I’ve had a few, but they are all the same and not like this.” Trust me.

He grinned and as he did Raven could have sworn she saw clouds move through his blue eyes. “Yet this place knows the home of the soul.”

A rumbling thunder came from behind Raven and she edged closer to the old man. There was nothing but night behind her now. And as far she knew those evil men were going to come from that night at any second.

“Can, can we go in? I’m scared.”

“This is not my home, but yours. You can follow any path you wish.”

“You don’t get it. I’m lost. I just want to go home.”

“I understand. Everyone loses their way before they find the right one, and that path creates us into who we are meant to be. It allows us to see what we need to see.”

Right…

Raven did not have time for a philosophy chat. She really didn’t. She had already edged past him, thinking this frail old man might be her last line of defense.

“Can I go in?” she asked. But when she looked behind her he was gone.

Another rumble sent Raven sprinting toward the house. She opened the door and charged through. Inside it was just as wild as the structure outside. It was decorated with a mix of period-specific furnishing, random yet on purpose. She halted, then slowly began to creep through the house, knowing it had to belong to someone—someone dead.

Raven thought she heard a slow guitar or at least someone tuning one up, preparing to play it. She moved in that direction. She wanted to announce herself and hoped that would put her in the good graces of the owner.

Manners are bound to charm the dead…

She tried to prepare herself for the most gruesome ghost in imagination as she stepped into what she could only assume was a den.

Its lair…