Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(32)

We leaned against the building. A sheen of sweat had broken out on Gideon’s forehead, and his eyes looked more dazed than usual, for such an angelic shade of baby blue.

“Was he aiming at me, or at Allred?” I asked softly. I pressed the back of my hand to his face like a blotting tissue, but really I just wanted to feel him, his face.

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just let him think it was him I was protecting.”

That answered my question. “I’m not letting you go back to your house. You and Dingo are staying with me. Here, let’s sit down.”

He tried to laugh but wound up coughing in pain instead. “With all those kids? No thanks. Let Dingo earn his full patch by cleaning my bed pan.”

“Look. There’s a guest house behind mine.”

Gideon tried to laugh. That’s when blood started trickling from the corner of his mouth. I did have some tissues in my purse, so I was blotting the blood pointlessly from his chin when Kimball brought my truck around with Drakelle sitting in the back seat. Kimball would have to drive.

“Don’t check out on me, tough guy,” I whispered as I helped him to his feet. “I need you now. I’ll need you forever. Don’t leave me. Don’t ever f*cking leave me.”

“I won’t.” He wasn’t trying to laugh now.





CHAPTER TEN




GIDEON


I must’ve drifted for a couple of days.

It seemed as though Mahalia’s words lifted me higher and higher. Maybe my fever was spiking so high I thought I could hear her speaking. “You have an origin,” I heard her disembodied voice say gently, soothingly, “a purpose in your life. Your future is out in the galaxy where you are part of something bigger than nature. You long to be whole again, don’t you? You crave a close union with your other half.”

I tried to scream, to cry out. But it was like in those dreams where you rant and rave with every cell of your being and all that comes out is a squeak. My little whisper didn’t begin to contain all the rage, passion, and love I wanted to express. “But you are my other half, Mahalia Warrior!” I thought I yelled.

She didn’t hear me. She kept on in that singsong voice. “You’ll be reunited with your other half, your guardian angel if that’s what you want to call it. You’ve been haunted by your memory of an idyllic past, back when you and your angel were one. That’s why you’ve been so unhappy. That’s why I’ve been so unhappy. Now you’ll be reunited.”

“But won’t that mean I’m dead?” I tried to yell. But again, just a squeak, and now I was being sucked up into a muddy, pulsing place. It was like I’d slipped into a quagmire and could hear the earth’s heartbeat. It’s hard to describe in words, but “I” still knew who “I” was. I knew I was Gideon, yet I wasn’t—I had moved past that. Like Mahalia’s voice had said, I was going to be reunited with my guardian angel, or my other half, and “I” knew this meant I was dying, down below on earth.

I wasn’t as freaked as you might think. Dying is the definitive act we commit in our earthly bodies, yet when it came, I barely blinked an eye. I wasn’t aware of having a body. I was just this consciousness floating in this dark, muddy space with deep burgundy roots running down, down, down into pulsing caverns. I was floating in this preternatural womb that was somewhere between the earth and heaven—like a holding area for people who were too traumatized to move on.

Gradually I heard chanting and roaring, just an absolute caterwaul of demonic beings, and I knew I had to get the f*ck out of that place. My complacency was replaced with panic now, and I looked for an exit. Yes, yes, off to one side—if there were sides in there!—a glowing spiderweb of spun gold appeared. I willed my being to follow it, as I mentally went hand over hand up the web. Once I realized I was climbing to see my angel, bam, just like that, I was hovering over this exquisite land.

It was what I’d pictured the Garden of Eden to look like when I was a kid. Rolling emerald green hills were bisected by gurgling creeks. I kid you the f*ck not, butterflies flitted so closely past my face I could feel their wings. Fucking butterflies. I half-expected a unicorn to appear, so when an old man materialized next to me, sitting Indian style like some guru, I nearly rolled my eyes.

“Just typical,” I said, or something like that—there weren’t really words in this place.

“You were expecting Saint Peter?” Again, this is just an approximation of what he said. He didn’t really move his mouth per se. It was like his thoughts were channeled into my mind, like some kind of Vulcan mind-meld. The old guy—my angel—also didn’t wear clothes per se. He was just sort of…there. Maybe that’s where the idea of white robes comes from.

“You’re my guardian angel?”

“If you want to call it that. I’ve been helping you out at your mine.”

“Oh, that’s rich. You’re an old miner?”

“In a way. I want to tell you to look on the Streaked Wall Bench alongside the west wall. You will find gold at two parts per million.”

“So this means I’m going back?” Then a more important question occurred to me. “So angels really give get-rich-quick tips?”

It seems that then we were plunged into some intense, death-defying conversation way out in space. I remember floating for an endless amount of time. Later, looking back, I think this was when my fever was the highest. When I returned to earth, I couldn’t begin to recall the tiniest shred of anything we’d discussed. It was all so highfalutin—Einstein type stuff. I don’t think my human brain could grasp it, or filters fell in place once I was back in my wracked body. It would be too much for humans to handle, to be given this sort of quantum physics type stuff. I knew it was far too much for my feverish brain to deal with.