Everlong: (Book One of the Everlong Trilogy) (7 page)

I couldn't fight it, it was too powerful, so I surrendered.

In my mind, I entered his life.

I found myself standing in a field of lush green crops, the sun burning high above in the azure sky. Around me, people were digging, weeding or carrying harvested crops in large wicker baskets hoisted upon their heads - all gravitating around the vast white marble mansion that stood in the centre of the fields, like the planets around the sun - singing in unison, a lament of beauty that told of misery and longing.

But, despite the heat and the burning of the sun in the sky, a brutal darkness lurked amongst the cotton plants, a sinister feeling that clawed deep into my skin.

'Obadiah!'

I turned to see where the voice had come from. A woman stared back at me, her eyes the colour of golden amber, and when she smiled my heart felt like it would break. I tried to speak but the words caught in the back of my throat with my breath.

Love coursed through my body like blood.

She folded her fingers through mine, her other hand resting on her round, protruding stomach and for the briefest of moments, I felt totally at peace.

And then she was gone.

I turned around to look for her, but darkness was falling fast, clouding my vision. In the sky, dark, threatening clouds smothered the blood red moon and a cold wind whipped up around me, throwing up grit that bit into my flesh.

On the horizon I could just make out figures, cloaked in white, dancing around blazing fires of gold. A bloodcurdling scream was cut short by thunder as it rumbled around the sky. A flash of lightning ripped the dark apart, illuminating a woman's body hanging lifeless from the branches of a poplar tree, the flames of fury licking at her feet.

All of this had happened in the past. This horror was a fragment of Obadiah's memory unfolding before me and inside of me. I stood there, unable to save his soul-mate but also unable to look away. I felt his pain, felt his heart being torn from his chest like it was my own.

Like waking from a nightmare, it took a few moments for my mind to clear, to tell what was real and what was not; I was lying on my side in the doorway of the house, entangled in Obadiah's body.

I untangled myself from him and stood up. The room was freezing, filled with light flurries of snow from the open doorway, so I dragged him inside, then closed the door, shutting out the artic wind and snow.

The house smelt like old books, mouldy paper and coffee. I looked over to the large oak table. Every inch of its surface was covered in books, vellums or chunky candles with tears of hardened wax spilling down their sides. A half-drunk mug of coffee sat next to a warm carafe and an opened book.

I grabbed the carafe, refilled the mug, and took it to Obadiah, lifting his head up, to let the warm coffee moisten his lips, and waited for the aroma to revive him.

His eyes flickered open and he pushed the mug away with his trembling hand. 'I'm sorry...I don't know....what-'

'It's okay,' I said, as he tried to lift himself up off the ground. I put the mug on the floor and grabbed onto his arms to help him up.

'No, it's not.'

'It was the shock-'

'No, not shock,' he said, 'shock didn't knock Obadiah off his feet.' He shook his head. 'The crashing waves of disappointment knocked me down.' He pointed his crooked finger at the table, telling me, I think, that he wanted to sit down.

I pulled the angel to his feet and led him to the table.

He nodded his head in thanks and slumped into the chair. 'I need coffee, and plenty of it.'

I grabbed his mug, refilled it and offered it to him. He took it with both hands and gulped it down. He dropped the mug on the table and wiped the corner of his mouth with the sleeve of his cardigan, before grabbing the carafe and pouring himself another cup. 'I've been waiting for so long, and after I told Her about Hyperion, I thought She might finally let me go. Then you show up, an Angel of Death...I thought...you...and then...' He sighed, and let his head fall forward in defeat. 'How long must I wait?' he said, gently to himself.

I slipped into the chair opposite him. 'You want to die?'

He looked at me, the despair clearly written in the lines on his face. He nodded. 'Obadiah is tired, so very tired. But She won't let me go.

It struck me, in the silence of that room, that we both had what the other wanted. He had life, I had death.

Finally, he spoke again. 'I just thought.' He closed his eyes and rested his forehead in the palm of his hand. 'I'm sorry, for my mistake,' he said, opening his eyes. 'You must forgive an old angel's blindness, in my haste I missed the disruption in your aura, the slight distortion of your music. It's as if parts of you are missing or something is interfering with it, like some of your powers have been taken away?'

'Yes, but how can you-'

'See?' Obadiah smiled, and for a moment his face came alive. 'This is confusing you?' he said, pointing to his milky white eyes, 'Obadiah is almost blind to the world, but can still see many, many things.' He reached his hand out across the table, 'The name's Obadiah, pleased to meet you.'

I took his hand in mine, let the pain, his pain, the memories, soak deep within me. 'Josh, I'm Josh.'

'Sorry,' said Obadiah, wrenching his hand away, 'I see that your gift, of taking the pain of others away, ain't one of them powers you've lost?'

I nodded.

Obadiah bowed his head. 'I will make sure I ain't touching you then.'

'What is this place?' I asked, looking at the bookshelves covering every available wall in the house, each overflowing with leather bound books, rolled up parchments, vellums and modern paperbacks, written in every language you could possibly think of.

'It's the place I call home,' he said. He took a sip of coffee before continuing. 'So, if you're not here to take Obadiah, you must be here because She sent you to ask me about Hyperion?'

'Yes, She wants me to find him. The Virtues are having trouble locating him, there's something wrong with their instruments.' I watched Obadiah's white eyebrows knit together. 'She said that the last place he visited, for certain, was here?'

'Yes,' said Obadiah, nodding his head vigorously, ' I didn't know who he was when he arrived, his angelic music was weak and deformed, and easily disguised by the storm he rode in on.'

'Weak and deformed? Like my music?'

'No,' said Obadiah, 'your music is distorted, but it's still the music of an angel. It may have been interfered with but you can still see your history, your fingerprint hidden within them notes. Beneath the distortion it's still your signature tune, the melody of Josh, an Angel of Death. Hyperion's music was almost unrecognisable as the mark of an angel, let alone that of an Archangel. It was damaged, like it had been blackened by fire.'

'How can it be damaged?'

'I don't know for sure,' he said, stroking the tight white curls on his head, 'but it was only because he told me, that I knew who he was. That an Archangel's music could change so much, that he could speak with such a fervent madness.' He sighed loudly, before continuing, 'It un-nerved me, put me on edge. I could feel the madness burning inside him, on the verge of spilling out.'

'And so you told Death?'

'No,' he said, gently shaking his head. Obadiah grabbed the mug off the table and took another sip of coffee. He lowered it, resting his hand on his stomach. 'I reported him because of them things he spoke of.'

I looked at Obadiah, at his heavy brow, the lines of worry trailing across his face. 'And what did he speak of?' I asked, my body automatically leaning towards him as the presence of evil made itself felt in the air.

'He asked Obadiah if he knew of the ritual of Cleaving,' he replied, his voice lowered to a whisper.

'Cleaving?' I said, shaking my head, 'I don't know what that is.'

'I would've been worried if you did,' he said, placing his mug down on the table. He reached into his trouser pocket and fetched out a small silver flask. 'Them ain't natural things to be talking about, that's why I told Her.' He unscrewed the top of the flask, took a small sip of its contents before offering it to me.

'No, thanks,' I said, 'So what is Cleaving?'

He tipped the rest of the flask into his mug. 'An Angel's soul has two parts, the Divine Spark of Life and -'

'The Arkhe.'

'That's right. The Arkhe is the part of an angel's soul where our music comes from, whereas the Divine Spark is the seat of our immortality, the place that animates us. Together they make an angel's essence, there ain't one without the other.

'A long time ago, before the One-hundred-thousand-year Truce, them Demons used to trap us and extract our Divine Spark, so that they could eat it. Cleaving was the name given to the process of extracting it.'

'They used to extract it, and eat it?' Suddenly I felt sick.

'Oh yes,' said Obadiah, 'Them demons loved to devour our Divine Spark, gives them a high and all sorts of crazy stuff.' He discarded the empty flask on the table, 'But they won't touch the Arkhe, you see it's deadly poisonous to them, turns them to stone from the inside out.'

'But why would Hyperion want-'

'Patience. I'm getting to it,' he said, holding his hand up to quieten me. 'The Divine Spark has to be taken whilst the angel still lives, else it's no good, it dies when the angel dies and loses all its potency. But them wily demons worked out a way to keep the angel alive just long enough to extract the living Spark-'

'How?'

'They have an elixir to keeps the angel alive, but in a state of catatonia, whilst extraction takes place.'

'Sounds like torture.'

'It's the worst kind of torture. You would not believe.'

'So Hyperion wants to torture other angels?'

Obadiah shook his head. 'No, though that would be bad enough. No, our brother, Hyperion, wanted to know if there was any way to alter the process, to use Cleaving on himself to cleave his Arkhe from his own soul, leaving his Divine Spark behind, and that's truly the horror of it.'

'But why would he want to cleave his own Arkhe? Why would you do that?'

'I don't know. Even with all my years as an angel, I ain't never come across such a thing. This is a dangerous, un-natural thing Hyperion wants to do. That's what I told him and that's why I told Her.'

'Would it kill him?'

'No one knows, not even them demons, but let me say this,' said Obadiah, pointing his crooked finger at me, 'even if he could do it, and remain alive, well, he would never be the same again, he would be damaged, broken in ways we can't even imagine.'

'Why did he come here? Why did he come to you?'

Obadiah shrugged. 'He thought I had the answers he needed.'

'And?'

'I may be a Watcher, I may have access to certain information, but Obadiah don't deal with them kind of evil things.'

'So what happened next, when you told him you didn't have the answers?'

Obadiah lifted his mug to his lips and took a sip. I noticed his hand was badly shaking. He placed the mug back on the table to hide the tremor. 'I ain't gonna discuss them things. I sent him away, told him, if you really want to know them things you need to find a copy of the Necrodemonicon-'

'The what?'

'The Necrodemonicon. It's a most evil book, written by them demons. If he wants to find out about them things, that is where he must look, not here,' he said, tapping his chest with his finger. 'I told him to go and find it and leave Obadiah out of it.'

'And where would he find this Necrodemonicon?'

'The place that most of them evil things end up,' he said, 'The Vatican.'

'The Vatican? If this book is as evil and demonic as you say it is, why would it be in the most holy of cities?'

Obadiah's eyebrows knitted together and, despite his blindness, he looked straight at me and shook his head. 'Most holy of cities? I know you don't believe that-'

'No, but it still doesn't make sense-'

'It makes perfect sense,' said Obadiah, relaxing back in his chair, 'the Vatican loves power, information is power, books contain information-'

'Yeah, but still, demonic books?'

'Even demonic books. They collect whatever they can find; texts that support their theories about God, religion, and their more warped ideas,' said Obadiah, waving his hands wildly in the air, 'especially their more warped ideas. Yes, them texts that validate their teachings are paraded about like rum in a Speakeasy. But them demonic texts, them evil things are hidden right beside the books and texts that don't fit in with their ideals and philosophies.'

'How could they hide all those books? Someone must know-'

'Of course, but contact with them is restricted. Only the most trusted, most faithful to the Vatican have access to this Forbidden library.'

'A Forbidden library?'

'Yes. It's hidden in a vast vault located deep in the bowels of the Castel Sant' Angelo, in Rome-'

'Are you sure? How do you know all of this?' I studied his face looking for answers.

'Because I have been there,' he said, 'but only once, a long, long time ago.'