Page 23 of Raven's Dawn
It was like darkness in reverse. White light was supposed to shine your path, but it was like staring directly into the sun. There was no heat. No warmth aside from the burn when I opened my eyes again.
“I can’t—” I began.
“I can. I can see.” Warren gripped my hand. I knew that touched better than I knew my face in a mirror. His other hand brushed past me. “Ezra?—”
“I’ve got it,” Ezra said. His voice was calmer than either of ours. “I smell them too.”
Suddenly, through that bright white, there was darkness. The darkness brightened the blindness, no matter how counterintuitive and disorienting.
In front of me, through the fabric tent that I knew was there but couldn’t see, there were colors. They were all trimmed in black. As if I was a part of that blackness. It was such a difficult thing to describe, but suddenly, I wasn’t seeing with my eyes. I wasn’t seeing the world I existed on.
This was what Warren meant when he talked about the twilight world with Jeremy and Hannah. I’d never understood it, but now I did. While everything else was entrenched in white light, obscuring faces and bodies, I could peer through it all to see the colors of their souls.
It wasn’t sight in the traditional sense. Warren’s soul and my eyes were the same. I could only see through him. While I didn’t have control of his body, in my peripherals, I saw that I had no form. No true form. There was no physical substance. I was black and gray smoke, speckled with neon blue.
If Warren and I hadn’t once talked about souls, I would have thought I was in a dream or a bad acid trip. But he had told me that his soul looked like this. Black and gray, speckled with blue.
Beyond the soul I saw from, there were others. Two dozen at least.
So many colors. More blue. Purple trimmed with gold. Pink, and green, and yellow, and orange, and everything in between. It was beautiful.
The screams floated through the tent.
So many voices. So much pain. And I was frozen, only one word on my lips. “Graham!”
I’m alright, mo stoirín. No matter how much of a relief it was to hear his voice in my mind, to know he was still okay, I didn’t believe that. Thanks, Warren.
Just hang in there, Warren’s thoughts sounded in the telepathic connection.
Another hand grasped mine. Ezra’s, I had to assume. “He needs us behind him.” Assumption confirmed.
Warren’s hand trembled.
I squeezed it tighter, but followed Ezra’s lead. As he stood, I stood with him. Warren did too, but there was resistance. Like I was dragging him. I didn’t know if it was through the bond or because I could see through his eyes, but I swore that his heart was going to beat out of his chest.
And I only squeezed tighter.
“I’ll listen behind us while we move,” Ezra said. “Warren, you’ve got to take the lead.”
He didn’t speak, but he did so. Once he moved in front of me, I stayed like a bridge between them. As we stepped forward, drawing closer to the screams, to the chaos unfolding before us, I tried to remember.
I knew this spell. The blinding white, Luci had called it. He had taught it to me. It was Angel magic. But I wasn’t familiar with the Enochian tongue. It was nothing like Latin, which most of my spells were spoken in. Harsher. Rougher. Like each word was a slap.
I’d only worked with it a few times. Luci hadn’t taught me how to reverse it, but that wouldn’t be a problem if I had remembered the original spell.
If I could just fucking remember it, reversing it wasn’t so complicated. The spell was spoken with words, not ingredients. It only relied on the power of the one casting it. Which told me something about our assailants.
They were Witches. Either Angel Witches or Elvan Witches, but Witches.
But I couldn’t fucking remember it, because all I could think about was the scene before me.
A whoosh of a blade sounded.
There were two souls. One of yellow and another of pink. Both upright, as if they were standing. They almost seemed to meld together, making it difficult to tell where one person ended and the other began. Then a splash, the sickening sound of gurgles, and the pink one collapsed to the ground. That brilliant rose floated slowly upward.
I didn’t see the blood, but I knew it was there.
Someone had just killed someone else, and I didn’t know who.
