Bound by Time (14 page)

W
e still have a lot to discuss,” Damien said gently, wishing he knew what was going through her mind at that moment.

Isobel nodded, the reality of her world crashing home. Damien was a dark angel, and he was real. Everything was real. The demon, her power, everything. There could no longer be any denying or running from it. “You have to finish telling me how the window went from being safely in the wall of a chapel in Naples to becoming part of my parents’ house.”

“Breakfast first.”

“Breakfast?”

“Bringing my powers forth like that takes a lot of energy.” Damien walked toward the kitchen.

Isobel followed him slowly. He set two plates on the center island and turned toward the fridge as she entered the room. The black tattoos on his back showed through the two large rips in the fabric of his shirt. “You’re cooking breakfast?”

He gave her a half smile. “Because I’m an angel I can’t cook you breakfast? I’m also a man who needs to eat and who is capable of cooking. If I can fight demons, I think I can handle scrambling eggs.”

Well, when he said it like that… She leaned against the counter. “You were whispering something that sounded like Latin. What was it?”

Damien glanced at her over his shoulder, a carton of eggs in one hand.
“Adiuva me, quaeso, in meo certamine necessariamque da mihi fortitudinem.”
He shut the fridge door. “I was bringing the full force of my powers to bear and asking for the assistance of the Higher Powers. It means, ‘Please aid me in my struggle, give me the strength to do what is needed.’”

“Are you talking about God?” Isobel glanced out the window at the dark, brooding clouds that hung low in the sky trying to wrap her mind around the idea. She’d never really believed in gods.

Damien shrugged and shut the refrigerator door. “I suppose.” He cut open the pack of bacon and began laying the long strips out on a shallow baking sheet. Sorsha appeared, meowing around his feet. He separated a small bit of the bacon and walked over to set it in her dish.

“You suppose?” Isobel watched him move around the room opening cabinets to look for things. There was an angel in her kitchen cooking breakfast like a normal person. It was surreal and totally at odds with how she had always thought of angels.

“Humans too often confuse the Higher Powers. Some call them God, others divide them up into gods and goddesses, and they all think they believe something different. In reality, they all believe in the same thing and the Higher Powers have no interest in the titles bestowed upon them by humans,” he said in answer to her question.

“There are so many religions that all worship things completely different.” Isobel shook her head. “How can it all be the same?”

Damien chuckled. “Just because humans have confused themselves doesn’t mean they’ve confused the Higher Powers.”

“In other words, nobody has it right.”

He popped two slices of bread into the toaster and set a pan on the stove. “Not really, no. And yet at the same time they all have it right in a way. The Higher Powers know no religion.”

Isobel watched him crack eggs into a bowl and whisk them around, her mind coming up with so many questions she didn’t know which to ask first. Damien poured the eggs into the pan and started to stir them around.

The toast popped up and Isobel went to get it as she considered her next question. She spread butter on the warm toast, and laid it on the plates as he divided the eggs between them, then turned to get the bacon out of the oven. “What about heaven or hell or an afterlife of some sort?”

Damien shrugged and dropped a couple of pieces of bacon onto each plate. “The afterlife definitely exists if you are talking about ghosts and such. Not every spiritual energy moves on. Where they move onto when they do go, I have no idea.”

“But—” Isobel protested as he sat down. “You’re an angel. How can
you
not know?”

“Sit and eat.” He waved his fork at her.

Isobel sat and picked up her fork. “Happy?”

“Yes, actually I am.” He smiled. “As to your question, I don’t know because I have never been. When I die, I go to a place of waiting. Where other people go when they die, I have no idea. I know there are Higher Powers; they are the ones who created me and gave me this task. I know there is an underworld where demons exist. Heaven and hell as believed in by humans though? I don’t have an answer to that.”

Isobel eyed him sideways as she scooped a bite of egg onto her fork. “You’ve spoken with these Higher Powers? What language do they speak? What do they look like?”

Damien laughed softly. Her lack of full memories had left her a bit of a skeptic it seemed. “They don’t speak in a verbal language, yet still they are heard and understood. When angels call upon them for help we use Latin. It’s a language we are most familiar with. As far as what they look like, if they have a shape it isn’t discernible. The light you saw on the landing is pale compared to that which they carry with them. It’s so bright it hurts the eyes and so beautiful it reduces even angels to tears.”

Isobel took several bites before forming the next question. A low roll of thunder broke over the house. “So where are they? Sitting in a city of gold in the clouds with harps? Or living in the forests or what?”

Damien swept his arm through the air. “They are everywhere and they are nowhere. A part of everything and a part of nothing.”

Isobel scowled at him. “Well that answers the question clearly.” She couldn’t help the sarcasm in her voice.

“It is as clear as I can describe it.”

“If all religions are the same why do you wear so many symbols on that bracelet?”

Damien glanced down at the solid band of gold encircling his wrist. “Some demons align themselves more closely with different religions, preying on their weaknesses. Especially lower and mid- level demons. When they do that, a symbol blessed by a leader of that religion weakens them, and makes it easier to banish them.”

Isobel swallowed and tried to imagine getting close enough to a demon to find out if it was weakened by one of the symbols. “What about a demon that doesn’t align themselves with a religion?”

“Any blessed symbol will work on them.” He flashed her a dark smile. “That is why the mid-level and lower level demons tend to align with one religion. It may restrict their power but it also reduces what they are susceptible to.”

“And upper level demons? Why don’t they align themselves?” Isobel asked.

A rueful look crossed Damien’s face. “They are strong enough that they don’t need to. Any symbol can be used against them but not to any sufficient degree. That is why the Higher Powers created people like Eusebia. Like you. And you must understand, though I refer to them as lower, mid, and upper level demons, there is actually more to it than that.”

“What do you mean?”

Damien paused trying to decide the best way to explain it. “Imagine a parking garage with three sections stacked on top of each other.” When she nodded he continued. “Now imagine each section has three levels. That is the true levels of demons.”

An icy feeling settled in her stomach. “And where is Xapar in this parking garage?”

Damien looked her in the eye. “He’s on the roof. Directly under the powers that created him.” He stood and walked into the foyer while Isobel mulled that over. He picked up the bag he’d dropped earlier and brought it into the kitchen. Setting it on a chair, he opened it and pulled out another shirt.

Isobel watched him take the torn shirt off and toss it in the trash. She couldn’t help admiring his body as he pulled the new one on, remembering the night before. She picked up the empty plates and carried them to the sink to rinse them. “If they have all this power why are there demons and serial killers?”

Damien took a plate from her after it was rinsed and set it in the dishwasher. “There is always a balance in everything. That is why dark angels were created, to help maintain that balance. It’s why there are guardian angels. That’s why channels, people like you, were made. To balance the evil with good.”

“There are guardian angels and yet people still get hit by busses.” Isobel handed him the other plate and grabbed the pan.

“Like I said, they have multiple charges. If more than one of their charges needs them at the same time, they help the one that is closest.” Damien smiled sadly. “There is only so much they can do; even guardian angels can’t be in two places at once.” Isobel washed the pans by hand and handed them to Damien to dry and put away. Her mind reeled from all the information. It was too much to process.

Damien watched her leave and walk into the family room. Her silence was deafening.

I
sobel stared at the coffee table for a long moment as rain started to spatter down outside. Everything was different from the way she thought it was.

“No more questions?” Damien asked quietly. He leaned against the wall giving her space.

She shook her head.

The silence stretched on while Isobel continued to stare at the coffee table. She watched in fascination as the table faded, and memories from the past surfaced and filled her mind.

She was young, no more than sixteen, and she stood on a road made of stone. An old chapel rose high above her, beautiful in its design. It wasn’t the building that drew her eye. It was the window. In full control of her power, Isobel saw the seal, whole and strong, glowing in the night with a soft white light invisible to the eyes of others. This was why she was here; it was her destiny. Damien stood in the shadows, her dark, protective angel at the ready, should Xapar prove too much once she pulled him from his prison.

He didn’t have the power to banish an upper level demon, but he had the power to keep Xapar from killing her, especially since they stood on holy ground and there would be no demons coming to Xapar’s rescue to divide Damien’s attention. To her right, a priest from the church stood with a cross in his hand bringing his own brand of power and protection.

She closed her eyes and embraced her innate power. The sweet, pure energy rushed into her and Isobel finally understood what she was. A conduit, created by the Higher Powers, to balance the evil of Xapar and other demons like him.

Isobel gathered the energy into her hands as her fingers worked to remove the seal on the vial of blood. The earth rocked and shuddered beneath her feet. She stumbled and fell as the ground dropped then slammed back up. The roar of the earthquake filled her ears. The vial of blood skittered across the stones. Unable to keep their balance both Isobel and the priest scrambled after it.

Damien’s cry of warning came too late. His strength and speed were no match against the force of nature. The walls of the church crumbled and tons of stone rained down. Stones that battered her body as the earth continued to heave. Through a deepening darkness that had nothing to do with the night, Isobel watched the window land on its edge and bounce across the ground.

Damien struggled to free her, but it didn’t matter. Her body in that life was giving out. Though the earth continued to shake, the priest clamored across the fallen stones to her side. He took one of her hands in his. “I have it. The blood is safe. Go in peace.
”

Damien, his black wings battered, stroked her face as tears spilled down his own.
“
Usque ad proximum tempus, meae deliciae.
”

The words he spoke were clear in her mind as death claimed her: Until next time, my love.

Damien sat beside her and touched her face. “Isobel? Are you okay?”

Isobel raised her eyes to his. “An earthquake took the window from the church.”

Damien nodded, remembering the night. “1456. That was the first time you tried to banish Xapar. You had lived several lives before, but your power wasn’t strong enough yet. You’ve grown stronger with each life.” He paused. “Most of the chapel was destroyed in the earthquake along with a lot of the city. I couldn’t get to you in time.” The pain of that memory was still fresh despite the intervening centuries and lives.

Isobel ran her fingers down his face. “It wasn’t your fault.” She dropped her hand. “What happened after that?”

“The vial of blood beneath the wall was crushed in the earthquake. The window was there, leaning against the rubble. Eusebia’s seal prevents the window from breaking even when nature destroys everything around it. However, without Saint Januarius’ blood to help hold the seal, it began to weaken. Xapar was able reach out. Every time someone touched it, he drove them into madness. Aiden and I had no choice but to move it.” Damien raked a hand through his hair. “Poveglia Island was all but deserted in that century. Foreseeing is not a power angels possess. Had we known what was coming we would never have moved it there.”