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The increasing warmth of the water, its sensual caress on his exposed skin, reminded him of being buried deep in Anna's body, rediscovering that soft, warm wetness. Despite the stories he'd told her of couplings with women, those had been earlier times. He had been grounding himself with meditation for some time. When was the last time he'd taken a woman? Had it truly been over two years? No wonder he'd been such a rutting animal with her.
As the darkness in him grew wider and wider, he hadn't trusted himself with the fragile gift of female flesh. He couldn't obliterate the sense that his hands were covered with blood when he touched their soft skin.
Or maybe you had no desire to soil yourself in the filthy cunt of Creation. The Great Harlot . . . the Great Thief . . . Deceiver.
Darkness. The shark's teeth scored him as it passed and snapped down on a fish. The burst of blood and fluid misted before his eyes, a macabre cloud illuminated by some malevolent light source. Losing his bearings, he thrashed, shoving away, getting out of the feeding frenzy.
Stay with us; eat with us. Taste flesh and death.
It boiled up in him, an oil slick he could ignite, spreading fire and flood upon those around him. Send them to the bottom of the ocean and mire them all in a tar pit, those who would impede him, innocent natural creatures who were not so innocent and natural. Not if they were standing in his way.
No . . . He struggled for the thought of Anna again. Intimate, physical things, when the emotional eluded him. Of the stretch and give of her impossibly tight channel taking him, accepting him, Joining with him so they could both climb out of their darkness. Looking together at something that shone above these dark clouds, even if it was just the reflection of what they felt for each other. The axis of the world turning in that powerful moment of connection. Where meaning was found, though there was none to be found elsewhere. It was the divine feeling. The purpose. The way.
He was rising again, his lungs bursting, but his strokes were more sure as he turned and twisted in a symbiotic dance with the creatures, headed for the light spearing down in the water, seeking him.
When that first ray fell on his outstretched hand, its energy poured into him. Before he could draw a deep breath in reaction, a convulsion ricocheted inside his body like shrapnel. The poison was rejecting that light, trying to escape it, doubling him over, pulling him away. But he was disciplined, used to pain, tearing agony.
Anna. David.
The beams wrapped around his forearms, legs and his body like the shaman's shell ropes. Now he was turning again, only this time slowly, watching the sea creatures around him who were still free to move and turn, flirting with the light but then disappearing into the blue, cool waters again. In and out. The agony in his gut was going to tear him apart, even as the beams ruthlessly held him in the light. He screamed as the poison burned its way out of his soul, scrabbling to get away from that light, willing to tear him apart to do it. He tried to let the light do its work, purify him, even as the pain was so intense he shamed himself by crying out.
Then he was going up again, limp in the hold of the light, his body shuddering, too weak to straighten.
Wet sand. He was on a beach, the water lapping at his feet, tide rushing over his bare buttocks and genitals. Just for a moment, he was disoriented enough to look for Anna's cottage, but that was too much to hope for. She was beyond his reach now, and likely safer. No, she was in danger. Wasn't she?
He made it to a knee, clutching his stomach, tried to rise and stumbled. Working his way up the beach on his hands and knees, he used his wings for balance. Though he couldn't yet stand, he stayed at least that far off the ground, taking shuddering breaths.
He couldn't collapse in the presence of the Lady.
The body of water he'd climbed out of was no longer an ocean, but a tranquil lake, just a piece of mirrored glass on which She stood, directly in the center. The Sea of Glass.
Though he still shook from having the poison extracted from him before he reached Her presence, the disorientation had settled. Nothing of the Dark Ones could bear any proximity to Her. Had he enlisted Raphael's help from the beginning to remove the poison, this was likely what the Full Submission angel would have done to ensure his healing was complete. Though Raphael might have chosen gentler methods to do the initial extraction. Well, Luc would say he deserved the pain. Bloody black-winged bastard.
Jonah finally managed to get to his feet, turn, and then purposefully drop to one knee. He stayed on the beach, though, while She still stood in the middle of the lake, facing away from him.
"Why do you not approach, Jonah?" Her voice was the breeze, the answer to so much inside of him, answers for the questions he couldn't ask.
"You might be part of a vision, my Lady."
"That's not an answer. Vision or not, you've always come and knelt at my feet, where I may place my hand upon you. Do you hate me so much now? Have I lost your love?"
The idea of it, voiced like that, in this place, did more than tear at his gut. It cracked his heart, twisted like the vicious bite of a sword in the empty place where the poison had been, leaving him an empty shell. It made him squeeze his eyes shut.
"No, my Lady. I . . . I must return. The shaman holds me here, but there . . . I must protect David and Anna."
"Do you fight so hard to protect them because you can't remember anymore why you fight for me? Has it been lost in the blood?"
She turned then. A woman. She'd chosen the simple form of an average mortal woman, and yet the energy that poured off of Her had him closing his eyes again, his heart breaking with all of it, everything. She was overwhelming as always, and whether he was seeing Her in the vision or in reality, She was here, inside of him, where he hadn't allowed Her to be for so long.
"Let me tell you a story, Jonah. A story of a young Goddess, who had to learn that compassion can have terrible consequences."
She moved over the water, and the scent of Her reached his nose, a mixture of several things. Deep earth, salty foam. The wind whispered as she moved. Fire was not a part of Her, but he often sensed it lingering upon Her person, one of Her many mysteries.
"I pondered whether to tell you this story before you found your own truth. May I touch you, Jonah?"
Never in over a thousand years had She had to ask. But he knew free will was both the blessing and curse of all species, except to those who delivered themselves for Full Submission.
"I'm unclean, Lady," he said, his voice choked. "I can't . . . I won't take the chance of tainting Your Spirit."
In all of those thousand years, he'd never lied to Her. Not until now. He couldn't bear Her touch, wouldn't bear Her looking at him, seeing all he was, had become. He understood now the stories of betrayers of gods, how they sought to hide from the face of their deity out of shame, revulsion. The darkness gnawed at the flesh of his soul, whispered evil, and it did so without the help of the poison.
The poison had to attach to something, Anna . . .
"Jonah." Her voice was the voice of love and compassion. Of justice. Of endings and beginnings. "You fear my answers to your questions. You fear it will further wall your heart against me, if the answers are wrong. But your fears have already built that wall, and that is what will keep you from your true self.
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sp; "The essence of everything I have created in the Universe is feeling. The male balance to that is structure. You have lost the feeling part of yourself. Rejected it. The branches of a tree spread far. Its leaves are magnificent colors. You can see the tree, touch it and smell it with your physical senses, but it is your soul that feels it, finds pleasure in it. Structure and feeling."
When She took a step forward, Jonah's muscles quivered. Just short of a flinch. She stopped. During the long moment that passed, he could hear a woman weeping somewhere.
"I shall tell you that story, after all," she said quietly.
"I am at Your service, my Lady."
Her robes rustled, like leaves in truth, but She didn't come closer. When Jonah lifted his head, he saw She was sitting on a rock that had materialized for Her. A mist drifted around Her, partially obscuring Her features from him.
"Back before the world was formed, I wandered between the worlds, dimensions, galaxies. Saw what had been created, what had potential, what was being formed . . . I found the Dark Ones, their dimension. All the utterly dark venom of it, a vat of hopeless despair. It was unfathomable to me, having no purpose I could understand except hatred and killing. At length, I wondered if I'd stumbled upon a well from which other worlds draw in measured amounts to balance and challenge good with the existence of evil. Perhaps that is their purpose. I did not know. Still do not.
"But something was about to change. They were at a pinnacle of evolution. The Dark Ones could not reproduce, and while immortal, their numbers could still be decimated. So they'd learned, with great effort, how to create children, only not through the sacred act we know and enjoy. They'd created bodies out of the clay of their world and infused them with breath and their darkness. There were nearly a thousand of them, preparing to be 'born.' As evil is not adept at creating life, the effort required of the Dark Ones to do just these thousand had apparently taken them thousands of years. As I moved among them, unnoticed, I could not bear it, all that potential life intended for evil. I thought, 'Perhaps the spawn of these evil creatures will have a chance at love and life if there is just one small spark inside each of them . . .' "
