Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
His energy sharpens, and his eyes narrow on me. “Who?”
“Jeremy.”
He goes still as stone, his expression unreadable. “What did he say?”
“He taunted me like he did you. Can demons do that? Get in my head. Is that normal?”
“I’m not sure what the definition of normal is with Jeremy. Or you, for that matter.”
Anger spikes in me, and I push to my feet. “Do not connect me to that monster. I am not like him.”
He’s standing across from me now, and the table between us would mean nothing if he wanted to get to me. “He’s targeted you, Ember. It’s impossible not to make a connection.”
“You spoke in my head, too. I felt you there. Why is that any different?”
“I am not him. He was trying to rip you open from the inside out. I was trying to save you.”
He’s right. I felt him. I felt what he did. Of course, he’s right. “You forced him out of my head,” I say, and it’s not a question.
“I did, but I didn’t hear him speak to you. I felt him. I felt what he was doing to you.”
“Is that how he stripped your powers? You lowered your own guard to protect me?”
“Bound, not stripped, and you had no chance with him on your own.”
In other words, yes. He let down his guard, and he was attacked.
“Because my assets were suppressed.”
“Yes. In our world, we learn from a young age to shield ourselves from intrusions. You need to learn. Now. Try to enter my mind.”
“That’s impossible. I…can’t do that.”
“Try.”
“I can’t—”
You can, he insists, and this time he’s in my subconscious, and inconceivably, I can feel him there—almost a visual path between my thoughts and his. My mind conjures the woodsy scent of shampoo and body wash, and, oh my God—my hands fly up in stop-sign fashion. “Stop. No.”
Make me, he says, or thinks, or whatever he’s doing inside my head.
“Can you read my thoughts, too?”
“I haven’t tried,” he says, this time using his verbal skills. “I won’t invade your privacy that way, but others will. Create a guard, and they’ll be locked out.”
“You say that as if it’s simple. I don’t know how.”
I’m right here with you, he says in my head. Follow the path between our minds. Shut your eyes and find me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and this time, it’s as if little sparks of light flutter about in my mind, fireflies illuminating a path between my mind and his. It’s intimate—so very intimate. It’s as if he is with me in his purest form. The scent of him permeates my nostrils again, a flashback of him on his knees with me, our foreheads together, but that is as close as I get to a connection.
I breathe out, my lashes lifting. “I can’t,” I whisper in defeat. “Are you sure I’m even capable of such a thing?”
“You’re capable of many things, including this, but to harness your assets, you must believe they exist and embrace them as yours to wield.” He doesn’t give me the chance to reply, adding, “For now, I’m going to walk the garrison and handle a few situations.”
“What situations?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. I suggest you spend the time I’m away studying.” He walks toward the door and pauses just beyond the foyer. “If I wanted to read your thoughts, Ember, you’d be an open book. Think about that long and hard.”
I bristle at the accusation lancing his statement. “I have nothing to hide from you.”
“Don’t you?”
With that, he disappears beyond the wall, and a moment later, the door opens and shuts.
The Sacred Book of Nephilim
Magic is everywhere, in the air we breathe, in the cascading light of a new dawn, a new day. In the darkness of a midnight hour.
Chapter nineteen
Perhaps he fears the serpent.
Or maybe he simply fears me.
Time ticks by with a heavy hand, eternal hours it seems, as I’m caged in Micah’s quarters, the quarters of the Overseer, a man, a Nephilim—my captor?
Sitting at the kitchen table, I study the books he’s left for me, searching far and wide for anything that justifies a serpent as my familiar, but there’s no peace in the writings to be found. There’s only the promise of destruction, and that promise is plentiful and scattered about the pages of every book I scour for answers. One such passage reads:
The serpent represents temptation and destruction.
All the rest say the same thing in different ways:
The serpent is the end.
The serpent is the enemy.
The serpent will slither under the radar in the dark of night and bleed out your young.
That last one has me quaking in my own shoes, nauseous with the idea that I’m the serpent. I’m not, I all but scream in my head. I am not the serpent. I am not evil.
Desperation spurs my wild hunt for another answer—a better answer. A real explanation as to why this is happening to me and how it might hold another meaning other than darkness and pain, created by me. But there is nothing—no hope, no alternate meaning. At some point, I end up on the floor in front of the couch, and I sit back on my haunches and pant out a frustrated breath, hope fading into the silence of the cavernous structure of the room.