Page 76 of Sleeping Redemption
I raised my sword in front of me, watching as the sticky lines of crimson slowly rolled down the metal.
“Give them my love,” my words were distant and cold, almost like someone else spoke them. Then, like a puppet being a slave to the pull of its strings, I drove my sword clean through Sy’s gut. The sharp edges sank into his flesh and through bone with ease.
A guttural groan emitted from him as he doubled over on my weapon before he started choking on his suffering.
Retracting my sword from his body smoothly, I watched as he dropped to his knees before me.
The Devil’s voice echoed all around me, “Forever.”
Sylas looked at me as his hands clutched onto his fatal wound, the blood pouring out through his fingers. His pained eyes met mine, and he gasped out his final words, “Salvation will only come through the awakening of your holy redemption.”
The trance of the dream broke, prompting my eyes to open. I found myself lying on my side, tucked into the comfort of my bed.
As the grogginess dissipated from my brain, I noticed a foreign object resting on the pillow in front of my face. Focusingmy vision, I realized it was a rose that had been burned, leaving it shrunken and frail.
I pushed myself upright and took in the startling sight all around me. It wasn’t just a single burnt rose, but there were dozens scattered all over my bed. Their crisp and delicate state left black smudges against the otherwise unmarked bedding.
My heart raced to the call of panic’s erratic rhythm. Frantically, I looked all around my bed, and it wasn’t just the scorched roses there. With a trembling hand, I picked up one of what looked like a hundred Polaroids. The square photos littered my bed like an obscene scrapbook.
The first picture was one of me inside a coffee house. I dropped it and quickly selected the next, that one depicting me getting into my car at the mall. The next? I was getting my mail. The speed with which I began looking at every photo within my reach increased. Every single photo was of me and only me.
Then, there was one that raised every hair on the back of my neck. It was of me during my nap that I had just woken from. Surrounded by all the smoldered blossoms and other Polaroids.
If that wasn’t horrific enough, the angle of the snapshot drew my attention to the chilling message written across my headboard. The photo fell from my fingertips and fluttered down onto my comforter as I spun around to see my headboard myself.
On my knees, my eyes widened in disbelief at the sight before me. The message appeared to be written in soot. The writing may have been crudely smudged across the padded material at the head of my bed, but its message was unequivocally clear:
forevermyangel
All my thoughts caved in on themselves. My inner sanctum had been breached while I was helplessly unaware. Every picture that surrounded me had been taken without me knowing, going back months, years even. The remnants of the ruined flowers harshly assaulted the air I breathed. The memory of flowers lit ablaze during my killing spree in pursuit of destroying Nicodemus came rushing to the forefront of my mind.
My body shook as my emotions swelled up in protest at what had taken place. Every sane fiber in me was ready to snap like a piece of dental floss attempting to lift a Baby Grand.
And snap, it did.
Chapter Thirty-One
Iwas surprised that Sy had readily offered to help me cook. Aside from the fact that I had never seen him so much as boil a pot of water before, he generally wasn’t the first one to volunteer to help with tasks he believed were not in pursuit of some higher calling.
But one should never look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
He followed me out of the kitchen through the sliding doors into the backyard.
While he stood there supervising as I assembled the chunks of wood for the fire, my mind drifted to our fallen angel.
Kinley had looked like she could have slept for an eternity, whether she wanted to admit it or not. There was a weariness in her eyes that spoke to the stress she had been harboring inside her soul. She didn’t need to profess it, you could see just by focusing on how she observed her surroundings or the way she lost a bit of her lilt when she talked.
“We need to come up with a strategy,” Sylas said, breaking me from my train of thought.
I piled the small logs strategically over the pieces of kindling and let out a measured sigh. “As much as I hate to admit it, you’re right. It seems like we are no closer to helping Kinley break free of this fucked up situation she’s in.”
While I got the fire started, Sy hovered nearby with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Camiel should have been able to track down her Divinity Sword. That’s damn near his entire purpose, finder of lost things.” He shook his head in clear frustration.
As I watched the small flames slowly taking under the strategically placed pieces of wood, the gears in my head churned with how to even process the information. Finally, I raised the question that irked me more than any other. “What’s that mean then, Sy? That her sword isn’t lost? That she has been lying about it all this time? It doesn’t even make sense.”
Sy pinched the bridge of his nose, equally as frustrated over this as the rest of us have been.
