“You can’t stop what’s coming,” Gabriel said. He started to lift me off the floor. “You’re coming with us.”
Eve’s low voice, radiating superiority and the same smugness Zayfeer’s usually did, echoed inside my head. She was out of breath, but seemed almost high on my power. “It’s time.”
Another set of hands clamped onto me, lifting my legs. Adam’s.
I choked back the fear and hate tangling together in my throat. Luc, my mind called. Where the hell are you?
My magic reached out searching for him, and the Mark of Cain, annoyingly quiet until that moment, seared to life on my forehead.
Chapter Eighteen – The Axeman and the Afterlife
Adam’s eyes widened as realization dawned. At the same moment, Gabriel dropped me, taking wing.
Too late. As I hit the floor, the Mark of Cain flashed its white light, searing my vision. My magic detonated a second time, the force so violent, it lifted me from the ground.
I hovered, limbs rigid. My brain blanked out like a television signal lost. Still online, but nothing coming through.
Around me, all noise ceased and my senses went on lockdown. I opened my mouth to call out to Keisha or Emilia or anyone who could hear me, but my vocal chords were frozen.
Icy air skittered over my skin. Then I was falling…a straight shot to the ground. I landed hard a second time, gasping at a sharp pain in my ribs as I bounced with the aplomb of a basketball and tumbled once, twice, three times.
Something that tasted like dirt got in my mouth. I coughed and spit it out as I finally came to a stop. For a couple of long seconds, I didn’t move, just laid on my stomach, catching my breath. All was quiet, except for the slight ringing in my ears.
The quiet was peaceful, but wrong. I leveraged my body into a sitting position and braced myself with my hands. My vision swam and I had to close my eyes, keep them closed for a minute, and then try again.
There. I could focus. Sort of. Was that green stuff grass?
The white light was gone. So was the party and Keisha’s house. My shirt and pants hung in shreds and my brain swam in a pool of murky thoughts. Even my magic struggled to come online after such a hard reboot.
Lifting my gaze from the ground, I found an intimidating forest stretched out in front of me. Bulbous thunderheads darkened the sky above.
“Noooo,” I moaned. I was back in purgatory. How had that happened? “No, no, no!”
I struggled to my feet, legs shaking, and raised a fist to the heavens. “Not fair,” I shouted. “I didn’t even get to have sex this time!”
In response, lightning danced over the tops of the trees. Almost playful like.
One tree in the center towered over the others, its trunk thick and solid as a castle turret. The trunk was gray with age and the bark twisted and braided its way to the top. The branches reached skyward, strong and mostly devoid of leaves. Their skeletal limbs rustled and poked out irreverently, skewing the heavens.
Wind whooshed around the tree in a spiral, making several of the remaining leaves break off and ride the wind’s helix down to the underlying canopy.
For a moment, it looked like the tree was waving to me, even as it shed tears made of leaves. Was God having a good laugh at my expense?
Go ahead and laugh, I challenged him. But one of these days…
The thought went nowhere. One of these days, what, Amy? You and God going to go mano-a-mano?
Ridiculous, of course, but I’d gotten out of this purgatory nightmare before. I’d do it again.
Summoning my magic, I glared at the heavens and dared them to stop me. I thought about my apartment, my friends, my determination to stop Zayfeer.
Back.
I waited for the sucking sensation indicating I was headed for the land of the living. No rush of magic. No movement of any kind.
Return!
Nada. Maybe this new one-word incantation wasn’t as effective as I thought.
The wind continued rushing through the trees in bursts that sounded like faint laughter. Flickers of lightning cavorted in the clouds. I sat on the piney-smelling ground and hugged my knees. Why did I keep ending up in purgatory? Was my magic backfiring or was it that stupid Mark of Cain?
Maybe this time it had been Gabriel’s magic.
Or God really was laughing at my expense.
God sends you challenges to teach you a lesson, Cephiel’s voice rang in my head. How many times had he used that as an excuse to try and change me?
The surrounding area grew darker as I pondered my predicament. Maybe I’d simply had a psychotic break. Sounded reasonable.
The forest seemed to breathe as it waited for me to do something. Goose bumps rose on my skin and my stomach tensed. The eerie weight of eyeballs watching me made me shiver. Call it instinct or whatever you like, but something told me to run. The forest was alive and it wanted me.