My hand jerked, coming alive with small impulses of electricity. I watched in mild amazement all over again as my hand wrote seemingly independent of me.
You are the better thing for me to do, Samantha.
“Now, that was a sweet thing to say,” I said. In fact, those words were exactly what I wanted to hear. I nearly broke down at their kindness, even though I wasn’t sure who or what Sephora was. But I powered through, fighting back the tears...after all, I had cried enough for the night.
A kind word goes further than you think, my hand wrote on its own volition.
“I’ve heard that,” I said. “The Ripple Effect.”
Kindness is kindness, Samantha. It’s not a theory or an effect or a movement. It just is.
I thought about that, and I thought about the bitch living inside of me, the demoness, as I thought of her.
“And what of her?” I said, knowing that Sephora knew my innermost thoughts, suspecting she was as close as I got to a guardian angel these days, since my own guardian angel abandoned his post nearly two years ago. “Do I show her kindness, too?” I added. “Perhaps let her take me over for all eternity, while I watch from the shadows, a prisoner in my own body?”
It is a grim picture you paint, Samantha.
“It’s a grim reality,” I said. “And, for the love of God, please don’t tell me to choose a new reality.”
I won’t, Sam, especially since you summoned in the love of God.
“Is that a joke?”
An observation. Love is a powerful tool. In fact, it’s your only tool.
“To beat her?” I asked.
To help her, Sam.
I blinked in the darkness, which wasn’t really darkness. All around me, like sunlight sparkling on ocean waves, glittered flashes of radiance. As always, within the radiance, I could see anything and everything.
I blinked again, and said, “Help her how?”
To move on, Sam.
“Move on to where?”
There was a long pause and my hand remained motionless, finally I felt the tiny electrical impulses and watched as my hand spelled out a single word: Home.
And just as the word appeared, I heard a small shriek in the back of my mind, deep beneath my many layers of consciousness. It was her. And following that faint shriek, I saw an image of a bright soul being absorbed by a much brighter light.
“She’s showing me an image,” I said, not liking this at all, not liking that she could leak images to me now. Yes, she was growing bolder and more powerful. I swallowed and said, “At least, I think it’s her. She’s showing me a soul—hers perhaps—being absorbed by a much bigger soul...or by something eternally big. God, perhaps.”
Yes, Sam, my hand wrote, she will be returned to the Creator.
“I don’t understand what that means.”
This question was followed by silence. In particular, my hand remained motionless.
I added, “You don’t know what that means, either.”
No one does, Sam. Not exactly.
“Is it a bad thing?”
Never. It’s a loving thing. A loving process.
“At least, you think it is.”
She will be returned to the Creator...who created you and me out of love.
“I see lots of people around me who are not very loving.”
You see lots of people who are growing, Sam. Evolving.
“Meanwhile, they hurt others, terrify others, and wreak havoc upon the world.”
These lost souls are not as abundant as you are led to believe, Sam. Remember this: there is more good than bad.
“But there is bad.”
There is also confusion, anger, hate and misery, all of which can drive good people to do bad things, temporarily.
“So they are not really bad. They are bad in the moment.”
Bad is relative, Sam.
My head was hurting, which was saying something since my head almost never hurt. And, like the true freak I was, the pain in my head went away almost instantly. I said, “What’s bad to one person...”
Is justice to another, or fair to another, or right to another.
“But there is evil in the world?”
There is only light and dark, Samantha.
“Then who or what is in me?”
There was a long pause before my hand twitched and twitched, and the words it spelled out left me sick for the rest of the night...and it wasn’t the kind of sickness that my immortality could heal.
Perhaps the darkest of them all.
Chapter Twenty-five
I was alone in bed.
Dawn was coming. I knew this because I could feel it coming in every fiber of my being. It wasn’t a good feeling. In fact, it made me nervous, agitated. Now I knew the reality behind the feeling. Sunlight made her nervous and agitated. The demoness within.
And Fang wanted this? I thought. Fang sought this?
I shook my head and clawed at my covers, restless as hell, agitated as hell. My kids were still with my sister, as they often were during the summer. She took them willingly enough, knowing my penchant for working the late shift. I think she also wanted to give them a normal home, even if for a few hours a night. She hadn’t said so in so many words, and, truthfully, I didn’t blame her. In fact, I was okay with it. A few times a week with her was okay by me, especially during the summer.
Yes, I had missed a golden opportunity to dig deeper into the murdered jogger case tonight, but I had needed my time with Russell. It had to be done, and now was the time.
And now, of course, he was gone.
Would I ever see him again?
A part of me thought no. A part of me thought my handsome, young, sexy boxer with the bad-boy tattoos was forever gone.
I loved him, yes. But our love had never had time to mature. Too soon, it was stunted and distorted by the curse. I had not gotten to know the real Russell, and now, I never would.
Yeah, I moped around most of the night, depressed, pissed, agitated, slightly sick to my stomach. The blood packet I had downed had too many impurities in it. Enough to make me slightly sick.
But now, the need for sleep was coming hard. I was presently in stage two of three, of what I thought of as my before-sleep countdown. Stage two meant that I damn well better be near a bed, and in a dark room. I suppose a casket would work, too, but how weird was that?
“Too weird for me,” I whispered into my pillow.
The entity within me was silent, as she usually was. What provoked her into contacting me recently, I didn’t know. And whether or not she was truly getting stronger, I didn’t know that either.
But I suspected she was, and I thought I knew why.
Her strength had been building over the years, but not because of time itself. I added to her strength each time I lost a little more of myself. Sephora had hinted at it.