Covenant

Covenant

By

Maria Rachel
Hooley

Covenant

© 2010 Maria Rachel
Hooley

Smashwords
edition

Chapter One

The pain is like the fire
and light of a thousand suns searing through my body. I scream, but
no one hears. I wait for it to burn itself out—or for me to plunge
into the abyss. Maybe I’m already there. Maybe.

It’s like my body has been
polarized and consumed by that fiery brilliance. I don’t know where
or who I am. I know only an inferno, and in that holy fire nothing
else matters.

Chapter Two

“
Lev!”

An ebon-haired human leans
over me, her fingers probing my chest where blood plumes and
spatters, scatter-slick across my shirt. She’s crying, hysterical,
wrapped amid my mortal coil.

Why am I
bleeding?

I look closely at her dark
skin and eyes. Her face is long and thin, frozen in fear, and she
trembles; the turmoil roiling through her jostles me, yet I can’t
move. I can only blink.

I am trapped in this
revolting hide. And this mortal is grieving for me. I don’t
understand.

Then a great incandescent
bloom envelops all.

I stutter from slumber into
a wash of new brilliance. The world is filled with it as I look to
the endless light that seems to tug within me, reaching for the
deeply buried calm, yet some part of me resists—the part tangled in
my dream with the dark-haired human I don’t recognize. My heart is
racing. No matter how much I blink, her face remains—her features
as refined as though they had been born upon one of us. But she’s
human, isn’t she?

Human.

There is such an emptiness
within, stirring below the calm, like a fluttering of feathers amid
the blanketed numbness; there’s something I can’t
remember—something about her. But why? Why should I care? What does
she matter? Does she? And there is something about me, too.
Something troubling.

I blink away the last
fragments of sleep and dreams and sit up, staring at a brilliant
blue sky. My splayed fingers touch grass, soft and slightly wet
with dew. I struggle and stand, not expecting the jagged undercut
of agony at my chest that brings me to my knees.

“
Lev? Can you hear
me?”

The voice is frantic and
forces me to open my eyes. Evan kneels over me, his hand resting on
my chest. Sunlight halos his head. “What happened?” I ask, my mind
swimming.

“
You’re weak,” Evan
replies, leaning over me.

“
Why?” I stare at him,
feeling the light ebbing through me, yet it is disturbed,
especially around my chest. It ripples inside, distorted;
that
should not be. I’m
an angel. I’m not prone to pain and weakness. They’re beneath
me.

Disgusted, I try to break
away and rely on my own two feet, but even as Evan releases me, I
fall. Evan grabs my shoulder and eases me back to the lush
greenery. “You’re not as you were, Lev. A mark has been made, and
none of us can undo it.”

I close my eyes. The human
returns, her face some kind of iconic painting I have seen in
churches. Her tears smudge the hard lines, and even as I think of
her, some part of me aches, and my breath catches.

“
What mark?” I finally ask,
unsure I want to know. I plumb the depths of my memory, but nothing
rises. What did I do yesterday? It’s a simple question, yet I can’t
answer it.

“
What has happened to me?”
I ask, wondering what this human has to do with it and why her
memory won’t be pushed aside. Why is there such incredible
beauty
in her
pain?

She shouldn’t
matter.

“
Nothing that need be
spoken,” Evan says, kneeling beside me. Evan, my first mentor. He
refuses to meet my gaze, and that alone tells me my world has
changed. It’s all about what he doesn’t say, the words I don’t
hear. In the distance, I see mountains, the jagged edges hidden in
clouds. The huge mass of rocks are reflected in the ocean at its
base.

“
I would rather know than
not,” I snap, staring at him defiantly.

“
Perhaps you would.” He
shakes his head. “Then again, you were always one to walk blindly
into things. Trust me when I say you’re better off
blind.”

“
I don’t want to be blind!”
I rage. Yet my raised voice has no impact on him. He looks at my
chest, searching for something.

“
You’re insufferable!” I
snap, turning away as I prop my head with one arm.

“
Perhaps,” he quietly
agrees, his tone filled with some foreign emotion. “Then again,
there are things I have learned I can’t bear, and this is one, Lev.
I won’t open your eyes. I can’t.”

That’s when he leaves me,
and I want to throw something to stop this mad fluttering inside. I
can sense nothing amiss, so I look at my hands, trying to find some
mark upon my body to explain this crippled feeling that plagues me
so. As I stare at my hand, I see another hand with that same
lovely, dark skin, drape my own, those fingers encircling mine, and
I feel it hold me.

I inhale sharply and blink.
That makes it vanish. From beneath the wall of nothingness, I feel
a small stab of regret, and it takes my breath away. Regret is a
human emotion. I’m an angel.

I don’t regret. I have never
regretted. It is a mistake.

I clench my fingers into a
fist, trying to forget that image, but no matter what, some part of
it lingers within me, and suddenly I hear the word “hesed”
whispered in a female voice—
that
dream voice.

“
Hesed.” She says it
again.

Love.

This time, the regret is
sharper, as though its wings have bones that have splintered into
jagged thorns raking at my insides. They cut. I see the blood
mingling with the golden light within. It starts out as a circle
about the size of my thumb and grows.

A movement to my left forces
my attention. Celia stands there, her long blond hair falling
around her face, but a frown mars the perfection. For a moment, we
just stare at each other, and in that moment, I sense that whatever
darkness blocks the truth, she knows everything, she and Evan
both.

“
Out with it,” I growl,
breaking the silence that seems to weigh upon me so that even
breathing is difficult.

“
I don’t know what you
mean, Lev.” She takes a tentative step and then another. Finally,
she sits on the ground beside me. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired of these games you and Evan play. I want the
truth.”

She stiffens and looks down
before finally turning back to me, a hardness gleaming in her eyes.
“Do you? Really? Somehow I doubt that.”

I rake my fingers through my
hair. I’d rip it out if I thought it would help. “You speak in
riddles—I want answers!”

She takes a deep breath and
forces her stare directly ahead. “I know what you want, Lev. We all
do. But sometimes it isn’t about our desires.” She reaches out for
the hand still lying uselessly on my chest, and her palm settles
atop it. Fingers encircle mine and softly squeeze in
reassurance.

At first, I want to snatch
my hand away, but I know that won’t change her stubborn streak.
Nothing can change that. So I shift to something that should be
much easier for them to answer.

“
Fine. Since you won’t tell
me what happened, at least tell me when I am free to resume my
duties.”

Another look away to tell me
she is hiding more than I thought. Either I am not well enough to
complete my tasks or being in the Lower Realm has something to do
with my present condition. Or both.

She chews her bottom lip
while struggling to come up with an answer. “Perhaps we should talk
to Evan before any decisions are made.”

That’s it.
I pull away from her well-intended hand holding
and get up in spite of my earlier mishap. I have to put some space
between us before I lose my temper. Right now the fury is bubbling
just below the surface, and there is no telling how much longer I
can rein it in.

“
We should talk to Evan?”
No matter how hard I fight to keep my voice even, it rises with the
frustration inside. “That’s part of the problem, Celia. Evan isn’t
talking, not about what matters—what made me like
this.
So that means he
should automatically have say over what I do and when I do it?” I
feel myself standing before an invisible line and my feet are
poised at the edge. I know I should back off. Even though I feel
the chaos stirring deep inside, I know Evan is ever-constant. He is
older than I am—wise beyond measure. That is why he is among my
band, because Celia and I are neither old nor wise by righteous
standards. Evan knows what he is doing for the most part. I seem to
blunder more than I should, and for whatever reason, Celia looks to
me for guidance, perhaps because I first helped her with
sojourning.

But even if Evan is so much
more capable than I am, I grow weary of waiting. Thus the
line.

“
You are still barely
recovered, Lev—if you are even recovered at all.” Her gaze falls to
my chest, the same place Evan touched me—the place I feel the
distortions within.

Gritting my teeth, I raise
my shirt and look at the area where I’ve seen them staring. Celia
tries to stay my hand and stop me, but I’m too fast for that. In a
split second, I see a round scar.
Angels do
not scar. We are not bound by mortal rules. We are above
them.

I stagger back to the
ground, suddenly exhausted. My mind is churning, and the pain is
back, telling me I should sleep.

“
Are you all right?” Celia
touches my face, her blue eyes troubled.

“
What has happened to me?”
I whisper. “My being aches.”

She nods. “I know. Just give
it time. That’s what you need more than anything.”

I rest my head against the
wild clovers blooming in a blinding white and shut my eyes. As the
darkness starts to take me away, I hear low voices drifting around
me.

“
I don’t think we can keep
this from him,” Celia says. “He’s going to figure things out one
way or another. And he’s smart enough to know that whatever might
be wrong with him isn’t physical.”

Another voice—Evan’s.
“Perhaps you are right. But until things settle a bit, we have to
keep up the façade. And making him think the wound is physical is
just to cover the true history. We both know that.”

Even in my drowsy state, I
find myself wondering what they are talking about. What wound do
they refer to? I try to drift closer to consciousness, but it won’t
have me.

“
But taking him back so
far, Evan. I hardly recognize him with that distain for
humans.”

“
I know. But that was the
only way to separate his existence from Elizabeth’s. I had no
choice.”

Elizabeth?
I wait for more, but silence lulls me to
sleep.

Chapter Three

I wake to a darkness that
cocoons my body with warmth. Above, there is an infinite blackness
punctuated only by stars. I still lie upon the ground, cradled in
soft grass. For just a moment, I close my eyes, and another image
jumps in my mind. I’m flying toward this darkness, holding a human
in my arms, the same one I saw earlier. Her head rests against my
chest, and in that fleeting glimpse, I feel a different kind of
warmth that is foreign to me.

Who is she?
Elizabeth?

Sensing motion, I turn and
find Celia standing there, watching me. “What is it?” I
ask.

She shakes her head.
“Nothing.” For a moment, it seems she might turn away but instead
decides to sit beside me. “How are you feeling?”

Hearing her voice triggers
bits and pieces of the conversation she had with Evan, and I have
even more questions I know she won’t answer. “How should I be
feeling?” I ask softly, wondering about the edge she says I have. I
am as I always was. What can she possibly be referring
to?

“
I don’t know.” She won’t
meet my gaze. Just another ‘tell’ on her part. Part of me just
wants to jump right in with the questions, but I am smart enough to
know where that will get me. “So, Evan and I were talking last
night, and he seems to think that getting you back out in the Lower
Realm might actually help speed up the healing. I mean, it’s going
to probably be a little while before you are ready to sojourn
again, but some time away from here might do you some
good.”