Infernal Father of Mine (29 page)

David looked away. "I didn't want to feel what
I was feeling, Justin." His eyes met mine, and he placed a hand on
my shoulder. "I didn't want to care. I didn't want to feel pain if
something happened to you."

"All that smart-assery was you deflecting
emotion?"

"Yeah."

I rolled my eyes. "Man, we're both gonna need
therapy after this."

He chuckled. "I hope our healthcare plans pay
for it."

We walked back to the minder. "Can you link
us?" I asked it.

Tentacles reached for us and paused, inches
away.

"Ah." I nodded. The thing remembered. "Let's
lie down first."

My father and I laid down next to each other.
One of the minder's tentacles reached for me, and I was suddenly
standing in a dimly lit room.

Dad looked at me. "Man, this is
weird."

"Tell me about it," I said. "Let's
start."

"Here goes nothing," he said, and the room
vanished.

I walk through a forest. A
beautiful voice echoes through the trees. I'm entranced. I have to
find whoever is singing. I see sunlight painting a green meadow
through the trees. A shimmer of golden blonde hair catches my eye.
A woman is sitting on a boulder, looking at a deer as it looks back
at her. It seems as taken as I am. I approach as silently as
possible. A branch crackles beneath my feet.

The woman turns. Her eyes widen
when she sees me, but she doesn't seem frightened.

"Who are you?" I ask.

"I might ask the same of you," she
says.

"You might." I grin, and approach.
This woman's eyes shine like sapphires. Her skin is fair. Dimples
form in her cheeks when she smiles. She will be a fun conquest.
"What is that song?"

"Oh, it's not a song," she says.
"More of a tune."

"I've never heard it before." I
switch to demon sight and am taken aback by how brightly her halo
of soul essence shines. It's unlike any I've seen before. "You're
not like any human I've met."

"Nor are you." She smiles,
displaying her cute dimples. A stray lock of hair falls across her
face, and I want to tuck it behind her ear.

She is so confident. Power radiates
from her. Something tells me she will be much harder to bed than
any woman I've met before.

The scene flickered back to the room. I
realized with a start I had seen the past through my father's eyes,
when he and Mom had first met. I looked at Dad. His mouth hung open
slightly, and his eyes seemed full of longing. "Are you okay?" I
asked.

He nodded. "That was…intense."

"Yeah." I'd felt his emotions. Felt the lust
burning in him when he'd seen Mom. I hoped the minder avoided any
sex scenes, because I did
not
want to see them.

"I remember more now," David said. "I met
Alysea in the meadow every day. She sang to me."

"Let's revisit those memories," I
said.

I sit on the boulder next to
Alysea. She refuses even to kiss me. It's maddening, but so
alluring all the same. "Where is your homeland?"

"Far away," she says, looking into
the distance.

"As is mine."

Her blue eyes fix on me. "Why do
you continue to come to me when you know I won't bed
you?"

"I find your company
enjoyable."

"Enjoyable?" She laughs. "I hardly
think you a man who idles time away with frivolous
pursuits."

"I am David," I say, finally
telling her my name. "I am not exactly a man."

She raises an eyebrow.
"Truly?"

I sigh, and tell her of my demonic
origins. How I am here to stop the invasion of the mortal realm by
those we call the Seraphim. Her eyes grow troubled as I speak.
"What's wrong?"

"David, I am Seraphim."

I jump from the boulder and look at
her. "You are one of the invaders?"

She gives me a sad look. "I am the
one who allowed them here. All this destruction is my
doing."

The scene flickered.

Alysea and I sit in our usual
place. She sings the melody which attuned the Cyrinthian Rune to
this realm.

"Is there a way to close the Grand
Nexus?" I ask.

She nods. "I am attuned to the
rune. I can remove it from the arch and close the
gateway."

"Will you help us?" I
ask.

"Do the demons plan to invade if we
drive away my people?"

I shake my head. "No. We only wish
to protect our own realm."

A lovely smile graces her lips. "I
don't know why, but I trust you, David. I will help."

A warm feeling blossoms in my
heart. To have the trust of this woman means more to me than
anything else before. I don't understand why. She could die in our
quest to disable the nexus. The thought of her death, of her
absence fills me with such pain I can hardly bear it.

I reach my hand to her hair and
tuck a golden lock behind her ear. My thumb traces her cheek, her
dimples. Every part of my being aches when I'm apart from her. I
don't understand what is happening to me.

Each day we meet and speak. She
sings the melody which aligned the Cyrinthian Rune to Eden, and
those aligning it to other realms.

"I can usually sense what lies on
the other side of the nexus before opening it," Alysea says.
"Sometimes there is nothing but void. In this case, I sensed life,
but when I opened it, there were horrific creatures
there."

"Were you attacked?" I
ask.

She shakes her head. "They wore
chains and crawled like animals. One made it through before I could
close the gateway. It lunged at me, but I killed it."

"Were you afraid when you opened a
gateway to Eden?"

"I was more careful," she says with
a smile. "I was shocked to discover beings so much like
us."

"How many realms do you think there
are?"

"Does not your sire, Baal, know the
answer? Is he not the most powerful demon?"

"If he knows, he does not tell me.
He thinks me a failure."

Alysea's hand goes to my face. Her
touch sends wonderful chills down my back. "You are no failure,
David. Moses trusts you, and so do I."

Flicker.

Alysea sings the song of Eden to
me. We speak of finding others who may have the perfect pitch
needed to remove the Cyrinthian Rune in case something happens to
me and Alysea when we attempt it. So far, we have found no one who
is capable of the task. We are meeting with Moses tonight to hear
his plan. Though we outnumber the Seraphim, most of our soldiers
are only human. We have the Darklings as well, but most aren't
nearly as strong as their Brightling brethren.

Moses thinks engaging the
Brightling forces with our army will give a small group a chance to
slip through and disable the nexus. I will go with Alysea and
Nightliss. My heart swells with fear for Alysea's
safety.

The vision ended. Dad and I stood feet apart in
the dream room. He wiped at his eyes.

"So vivid," he said in a whisper. "I'd
forgotten so much. The way she made me feel. The way she touched
me."

I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Dad, I know
it's hard."

His eyes met mine. "You're calling me Dad
again."

I felt a smile tug my lips. "Don't get
sentimental on me now, old man."

"I'll do my best." He squeezed his eyes shut,
pinched the bridge of his nose then opened his eyes. "Did you
memorize the song to Eden?"

"Yes, but we have another problem."

"You can't sing it, can you?"

I shook my head. "I'm a terrible singer.
There's no way I could get the perfect pitch I need."

"Damn." He rolled his shoulders, as if
loosening tension. "It was a great idea, Justin, but I don't know
how to fix your voice."

"I don't either." The grim realization hit me
in the gut like a fist.

The room vanished, and I jerked awake. The
first thing I saw was Serena's smiling face as the diminutive woman
looked down at me.

"How are things progressing?" she
asked.

I blinked a few times and sat up. "Figuring out
how to fix the nexus."

"Wonderful." She looked at David. "The minder
said you needed him to help. How?"

"My mother is the one who tuned the Cyrinthian
rune," I said. "My father is the one who knows more about her than
anyone else here."

"Ah." She pursed her lips and regarded the arch
for a moment. "Very clever. I knew you could do it." Her gaze
returned to me. "What did you discover?"

"I have to sing to the rune to align it with
another realm." I hated telling her the information, but she
already knew a lot about me and my mom, so I had to assume she also
knew about the singing part. "I just don't have the voice for
it."

"Perhaps you can practice," Serena
replied.

"You don't understand," I said. "Some of the
notes are so high, I'd need supernatural hearing to hear them. I
probably need a supernatural voice to go along with it." I knew for
a fact my voice was just awful, supernatural or not.

"I'm confident you will succeed," the Arcane
said. She gave me a sweet smile. "Feel free to use your father's
help." She tilted her head slightly. "Do you require more
food?"

I wanted to tell her I didn't believe this nice
act for a minute, but decided to play along. "No,
thanks."

"Very well, I will leave you." She turned and
left, writing in her notebook as she walked.

I stood, and walked in a circle. How in the
world could I crack this nut? I couldn't hit the notes. Hell, I
couldn't even hear them if I did. Hearing them in a dream was
obviously different since Dad's hearing was supernatural at the
time of the memory. There had to be an answer.

"I know why Daelissa wants Ivy," I said. "She
might be the only other person besides Mom capable of attuning the
Cyrinthian Rune. She must have developed her abilities much faster
than I did. If I'd had supernatural hearing when I was little, I
might be able to sing it now."

"Possibly," Dad said. "But Ivy's voice is too
immature to handle it."

"Who actually removed the rune from the Grand
Nexus during the battle? Who caused the Desecration?"

He shrugged. "We never even made it close
enough to find out."

"Where is the Grand Nexus?" I'd been there
during the portal glitch that had sent me, Shelton and some others
to the realm with the siren women. The control room was so full of
cherubs, we hadn't dared go back.

"Chernobyl."

I felt my eyes widen. "The radioactive place in
Russia?"

He returned a wry smile. "Actually, it's in
Ukraine."

"Oh." Geography had never been my strongest
class. "Why am I not surprised?"

"The Soviets nearly stumbled upon it several
times, so those few of us who knew what it was decided on drastic
measures and caused the nuclear plant meltdown."

"All this time, you've known where the Grand
Nexus is, and you never told me?"

"Believe me, it was best we kept the secret."
Dad folded his arms. "Daelissa doesn't even seem to remember,
thanks to the Desecration."

"Somehow, your memory has remained intact all
this time?"

"Not exactly," he said. "We may be immortal,
but our brains don't have enough room for every memory. Only the
important ones remain."

"Like how you met Mom?"

"Yeah." He sighed. "I remembered, but the dream
memory brought it all back with such clarity. It was like being
there all over again."

"Nothing quite like falling in love is
there?"

A smile touched his lips. "No, there
isn't."

An odd sensation tugged on my senses. I turned
as another minder drifted into the room. Dad and I looked at it
with apprehension. The first minder reached a tentacle for me. I
flinched, but allowed it to touch me.

Yours,
came its whispery
presence.

"Mine?"

Your minder.

I looked at the creature floating before me.
Like the other minders, it resembled a brain with jellyfish
appendages. In other words, I couldn't tell the difference between
it and the other one floating next to me. I wondered if it was an
actual representation of my psychic emanations in the Gloom, or
simply a minder who was in charge of enacting my dreams.

The image of a minder taking another of its
kind under one tentacle and explaining the job popped into my head.
"Look here, Bob. It's your job to stalk this guy's dreams, and
recreate them here in the Gloom so we can fill the world with
magic. The pay might suck, but the benefits are
amazing."

Something about this situation felt right, as
if I'd been waiting my whole life for this moment. "Hello, Minder
Justin," I said, not sure how to greet it.