The Darkest Joy (12 page)

“Help is coming, baby. Hold on!” she said, and he felt her hand comb though his hair.

She kept talking to him, but her voice seemed to be getting carried away in the fog. It kept getting farther away until he sank so far into the mist he could not hear her anymore.

* * * *

His eyes fluttered as bright lights seemed to whoosh past him while he was moving. For humans, they would be unconscious with this amount of trauma to their body. But not
Caim
, he had fallen from heaven and then from hell. He could feel and hear it all through the murky and gray of his subconscious.

We need an IV in this arm now! Start a morphine-saline drip and get x-ray down here! Bliss, get out of the way. Your hands are shaking, and you can’t help!

A voice was shouting orders, and
Caim
could hardly understand what they were talking about. But they were shouting at his love, and he wanted to get up to defend her. His body would not even move. It felt heavy, and now the pain that was clouding his mind was becoming dull from something entering his veins. They slipped something into his throat, and soon he felt air pumping into his body. This was what it was like to be human and to have such a fragile body. His heart was beating, but then as suddenly as it had started when he fell from immortality, his injuries caused it to stop.

“
Paddles!
” the voice yelled. The shock that entered his body caused him to arch off where he was lying.

Bliss was crying softly in the background. “
Caim
, baby, I’m here. Fight. I love you. Just fight, damn it!”

He would fight for her. He would try hard, but the mist seemed to be getting thicker. Another shock entered his body as they worked feverishly to try to start his heart up once more. A loud droning beep signaled his heart was still not beating. During their zealous work on his broken body, he felt himself being pulled somewhere else. This was a place he knew from long ago. The sense of serenity that filled him brought tears to his eyes. Home. The peace of the ever after surrounded him, but he could also tell he was outside the gates of heaven.
Caim
looked around and saw a figure walking out of the mist, tall and magnificent with wings unfurled and a golden armor across his chest.
Caim
dropped to his knee and bowed his head low to the new presence that stood before him.

“Why are you on your knees,
Caim
? You know you should never bow to me,” the deep voice said gently.

“Raphael, it seems only proper. I have not been in your presence or so close to the gates in a thousand years. I am not worthy to face you for all I have done.”
Caim
spoke while he was still on his knees.

“No one faults you for what you have done. You carried out your sentence with honor.” Raphael touched him on the shoulder. “Rise, brother. I cannot talk to the top of your head.”

Caim
stood and raised his face to the angel. With one hand on each shoulder, they greeted each other, and he smiled. “It has been too long. I never thought I would set eyes on your face again.”

“Even though you were in the pits,
Caim
, we always kept watch over you, and he always saw you.” Raphael smiled with affection as he spoke. “We saw how your heart bled for the souls of the innocents. We saw you find love with Bliss and how you fought valiantly to climb from the bowels of hell.”

“It didn’t work, because here I stand outside the gates of heaven, and my love cries for me back on Earth.”
Caim
heard the grief in his own voice. “Am I to exist in purgatory now?”

“No, you are here for a gift,
Caim
, nothing more,” Raphael explained. “You are free, human now, and the Almighty has given you his blessing. Your crime has been forgiven a thousand times over for each year you spent in hell.” Raphael pressed his hand over
Caim’s
chest, and a jolt hit him like the shock from the paddles when the doctors were trying to restart his heart. Raphael stared at him intently. “One more gift for you, heal yourself and heal others as you walk on Earth. You are needed more than you think. Belial may be gone, but another will rise in his place. Where they steal souls, you will take them back and even the scales on Earth once more. Do you accept this gift?”

“I do, with every fiber of my being,”
Caim
replied solemnly. A smile broke across his face. “I get to be with my love and still serve as I did in heaven. I cannot ask for anything more than that.”

Raphael smiled. “Then go with our blessing. Go to your Bliss and live!”

With those words,
Caim
felt himself being pulled back to his own body that lay in a hospital bed. His body began to heal itself. Bones knitted slowly while skin bonded itself back together.

He heard Bliss speaking to him softly next to his bed. “I need you,
Caim
, and you said you needed me. I’m always going to love you, so why don’t you open your eyes and let me know you are okay?” She took a shaky breath, and he felt a tear hit his hand that she held. “I wish you could see that my heart belongs to you, that it would stop beating to save you if it could. I miss your touch and your smile. I set you free. Now you do the same for me. Come back and take the pain away from my heart. Don’t leave me lonely, without your love.”

He could have never imagined that someone would love him this much.
Caim
opened his eyes and whispered her name. When her soft, tear-filled eyes met
the his
, she gasped and began crying all the more.

“Don’t cry. I’m here, my love,”
Caim
said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere ever again.”

“I thought I lost you. I thought my love wasn’t enough to save you!”

“Bliss.”
Caim
caressed her face. “Your love is what kept me from going over into the darkness. Even in the pits, you were and always will be my joy.”

Bliss climbed onto the hospital bed with him, and he pulled her into his arms. She lay against his chest, and he pressed kisses into the top of her head and inhaled deeply of her scent.

“Even after all this, you still smell like honeysuckle,”
Caim
said against her hair.

Bliss giggled and raised her head to look at him. “So what is the first thing you want to do now you are human?” He raised his eyebrows at her teasingly, and she laughed at his unsaid innuendo. “Other than that, I mean.”

“I want to try chicken fingers with honey mustard,” he said with a grin. “They looked good when you were eating them, and after a thousand years, I am starved.”

“Chicken fingers it is,” Bliss said with a smile that left him breathless at her beauty. Their lips met in a kiss that held promises of the future to come. He had fought his way out of the darkest corners of hell to find her, and now the sun would shine on his future with his Bliss.

The End

About the Author

Dahlia Rose—
author, mother, lover, friend, she is a rainbow of openness never to be defined. Defining her would be like trying to block a bullet. But, if you tried and happen to stumble upon her in
wikipedia
, you would find that she has lived nine lives and has warmed a million hearts. She has done more than most and navigated everywhere, loving freely and forever changing her hair. A light to this world
who
uses her being to unfold secrets and keys that lay beneath destinies and blessing. She worships the moon and tattoos her dreams in books. A lioness brought here to conquer the sun with a pen…no war…with love as a weapon to win and love as her sweater constantly warming you and
I
with words.